Hound Dog
Jun 25, 2009, 1:55 PM
Post #12 of 16
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Since we maintain residences at both Ajijic, Jalisco and San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, the former a largely foreign community in our neighborhood and the latter a purely Mexican community in a neighborhood primarily inhabited by mestizos and indigenous people, , we see first hand the way crime is handled in each respective community. The foreign community neighborhood is largely inhabited by self-centered WASP types showing only marginal concern for their neighbors. The almost purely Mexican community in a poor to middle-class barrio is inhabited by people with a sense of community and driven by the need for mutual self-protection from both criminals and the police. Homes are typically monitored with loud alarm systems in the San Cristóbal Mexican community and, at the first sound of distress, the entire community spills into the street ready to seriously confront miscreants. The neighbors will run down and assault theives and muggers and arrest and severely beat them pending the arrival of police. In the Ajijic community, folks roll over and ignore the sounds of distress. People in poor communities with corrupt police departments tend to join together in community groups to help each other. People coming from communities where there are dependable police enforcement agencies and efficient due process allied with the law become lazy and hide under their pillows.
In the desparately poor hillside barrio of Las Hormigas outside of San Cristóbal they were suffering from a rash of serious burglaries and then one night last year they caught a local kid stealing and assauted and killed him viciously and without mercy and this sort of vigilante justice is commonplace around the third world just as it was in the American West. I am not justifying that lynching but, guess what, there has not been any serious theivery in Las Hormigas since.
Decide wht is important to you and live that way.
On a practical note, when I suffered a serious seizure and almost died a few months ago in that poor barrio in Chiapas, the whole street came to my aid and saw that I was transported to the hospital immediately. They literally saved my life. I could suffer a seizure in the San Francisco bohemian quarter where I lved for many years and passersby would take me for a useless drunk deserving of a sorry fate. Guess which town I will take in my dotage.
(This post was edited by Hound Dog on Jun 25, 2009, 2:01 PM)
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