I just got back from two weeks in the Yucatan. Overall, a fantastic trip. Though Tyler told me we were crazy to go to Mexico during COVID, I’m sticking to the life course I set last June. And since almost all our activities were outdoors, we felt very safe. After factoring in the lower quality of Mexican health statistics, I’m still a little more nervous here in Texas. In any case, here are my thoughts on our Yucatanean odyssey.
1. We stayed in Cancun for five nights, then spent two nights in Chichen Itza, two nights in Mérida, and four nights in Playa del Carmen. Partly due to COVID, we drove in Mexico for the first time.
2. I was expecting to witness dire COVID-related poverty, but Chichen Itza and Xcaret were hopping. Throughout the peninsula, I witnessed ample desperate peddling, but less begging than you’d see in almost any American city. Even the poorest areas between Cancun and Chichen Itza were coping tolerably.
3. Almost all of the major attractions were open. General rule: The smaller the attraction, the greater the COVID theater. There were no more than 25 tourists total at glorious and immense Uxmal, but park employees barked when we took off masks for a photo or strayed from their prescribed one-way path. All the ruins on the Puuc Route were closed, even though they’d be lucky to get 25 tourists a day. My Spanish-speaking sons tried to smooth-talk our way into Kabah for just five minutes, but all we could do was look over the gate.
4. When I toured the Caribbean, I could at least understand thinkers who attribute differences in development to the virtue of the inhabitants. The islanders really did seem disorganized and fatalistic; the level of broad-daylight public drunkenness shocked me. If I were an investor, I would worry about my ability to build a team of reliable workers in the Caribbean. In the Yucatan, on the other hand, the idea that lack of a “Western work ethic” impedes development is preposterous. The people were model workers. Everywhere I looked, I saw Mexicans energetically and cheerfully doing hard jobs. Almost everyone I dealt with seemed to take pride in his work. I’m not just talking about resort workers; wherever I looked, the population was hard at work. The Yucatan is a can-do land.
5. If you have any sympathy for the “agorist” ideal of universal self-employment, the Yucatan should change your mind. As Bloom and van Reenen’s work on international management highlights, even model workers flounder without sagacious management. Big business, especially international corporations, fuse their Mexican workforces into crackerjack teams. Most self-employed Mexicans, in contrast, are floundering. On every beach, I saw lone peddlers trying to sell hats to tourists, yet never saw a single hat sold. While old-school Chicago economists might insist that this desperate business model was somehow “optimal” given their complex constraints, I seriously doubt it. The problem is that high-quality business management is too scarce in Mexico to give every Mexican the opportunity for high-productivity formal employment.
6. We toured four major Mayan sites: Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Coba, and Tulum. Each filled me with a sense of alien wonder, but the ubiquity of human sacrifice in Mayan religion weighed on me the whole time. The mere fact that a major civilization embraced human sacrifice so thoroughly and durably makes me shake my head at not only religion but humanity itself.
7. Our Chichen Itza tour guide insisted that human sacrifice was “voluntary.” He also embraced the view that the winners, not the losers, of the Mayan ball game were sacrificed. At minimum, I’d say, “How could you possibly know that?” The fact that official accounts claim that the victims saw death as an honor is hardly probative. It’s scarcely better than saying that the Jonestown massacre was voluntary because Jim Jones said so. Nor should we retreat to agnosticism. Darwin alone should give us a mighty prior that human beings want to live and reproduce, not drown in a sacred cenote or have their living hearts ripped out.
8. Chichen Itza has the most ubiquitous desperate peddling of any tourist site I’ve ever seen. When I grilled my tour guide about how these businesses work, he explained that every peddler has an informal property right to his location in the park. The peddlers near the front almost certainly do the best, while those in the remote sections of the park eke out a bare existence. According to my guide, peddlers can bequeath their spots, so the same vending table we see today was probably once run by the current vendor’s parents and grandparents.
9. Driving in Mexico was much better than I expected. The roads are probably better than in the U.S., though the number of roads is far fewer, with almost no gas stations in remote regions. The biggest problem is the extreme inequality of vehicle quality. Even on the highways, many of the cars are too frazzled to go 100 kph. If you have a modern car, as I did, you have to either slow down to a crawl or continuously pass struggling vehicles, usually on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, Mexicans driving low-performance vehicles were extremely courteous. While many American drivers speed up when you try to pass them, Mexicans drive half-way off the road to make passing easier.
10. While we’re on the subject of Mexican inequality, my experience convinces me that official statistics greatly understate it. Wikipedia reports after-tax/after-transfer Gini coefficients of .38 for the U.S. and .48 for Mexico. Looking at the Yucatan, though, I’d say about 10% of the people are living on under $2000/year and about 10% are living on over $50,000 a year. About 70% of the people at fancy resorts were Mexicans. I know that COVID distorts these numbers by scaring off foreign tourists and depressing prices, but still.
11. Growing up in Los Angeles, I was raised to be terrified of Mexico. The implicit model was: The typical Mexican is extraordinarily prone to both property and violent crime. In 1990, this was a severe exaggeration: Mexico’s murder rate was only 50% higher than America’s. Now, however, the disparity is far greater: In 2017, Mexico’s murder rate was almost 400% higher. How do I reconcile this with my direct observation of the hard-working, respectful, and frankly docile people of the Yucatan? My best story so far: While the median Mexican is wonderful, high Mexican inequality extends to virtue as well. Mexican crime gangs are like wolves among the sheep: A handful of villains terrorizing a vast, gentle population.
12. If true, this story sheds new light on the tragic history of violent revolution in Mexico – and presumably the culturally similar nations of Spanish America as well. Socialist and nationalist revolutionaries are Latin America’s most successful criminal gangs, augmenting sheer brutality with fanatical ideology. The average person in these countries, however, craves tranquility and opportunity. Revolutionaries are a handful of wolves who make daily life hell, all the while vainly promising a heaven-on-earth that never comes. Unlike ordinary criminal gangs, however, Latin America’s revolutionaries have global legions of defenders and apologists. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Some men just want to watch Mexico burn.
13. Best easy-to-overlook place in the Yucatan: Choco-Story across the street from Uxmal. They call it a “museum” but it’s really a chocolate jungle park and a place of wonder. Try one sip of their bitter authentic Mayan hot chocolate, then add sugar and spice to enjoy the best hot chocolate you’ve ever tasted. Hand-feed the monkeys. And if you go to Chichen Itza, stay at the Hacienda Chichen. Our first night, we were the only customers in this wonderful resort, where the staff’s response to every request is “¡Claro!” During non-COVID times, you can even walk straight to Chichen Itza. Do yourself a favor and book today.
READER COMMENTS
ABV
Dec 21 2020 at 11:29am
Brian,
I visited Playa Del Carmen about 5 years ago. I also noticed the high number of Latino tourists. I wondered at the time how many were from Mexico or if many were visitors from other parts of Latin America.
At the time we were told by the locals that the federal government had made a lot of effort to keep the cartels out of the area. I think the area’s geography and lack of infrastructure also helps, the better transhipment routes are on the west coast.
James Strong
Dec 21 2020 at 2:19pm
Great observations! As someone who lived 15 years in Orizaba, Veracruz, some comments:
On Mexican Inequality.
I agree with you, from subjective experience, that Mexican inequality is much higher than U.S. inequality. Perhaps this is because, in the U.S, consumption inequality is much lower than income inequality, whereas in Mexico I’d be willing to wager consumption inequality is quite high.
That said, there are some factors that do distort the comparison. Even if 70% of the people you saw were Mexicans, there’s a selection effect going on, as the sort of Mexicans that live in the Yucatan are quite different from the sort of Mexicans that live in other, less touristy areas. But far more importantly inequality in Mexico is much more visible. In Mexico, it’s not uncommon to see a tin shack neighboring a mansion.
Inequality is more visible in Mexico in part because, surprisingly, Mexico’s zoning laws and land restrictions are much more reasonable in key ways than in the U.S. In Mexico, zoning is controlled a state level. While this form of central planning carries its own dysfunctions, one advantage is that you don’t see the same level of regulatory capture as you do with neighborhood associations in the U.S. The Mexican state government doesn’t care nearly as much about blocking development or the type of people living in a neighborhood as neighborhood committees do in the U.S. You also don’t have the same dysfunctional set of incentives driving house prices, such as proximity to a good school. As a result, zoning is much more mixed use, and it’s more common to see people on all ends of the income distribution living in close proximity.
On Crime.
You’re exactly right. One noticeable exception, I’ll say, is petty crime. Petty crime is much more common in Mexico … you wouldn’t want to leave a backpack unattended as it will likely get stolen. That said, violence among the average Mexicans is much lower (will talk about drug gangs in a second). Anecdotally, I lived 15 years in Mexico and nothing happened ever to me. I’ve been subject to more theft and violence in Austin, Texas than I ever experienced in Orizaba, Veracruz.
In Mexico there is a strange, surreal juxtaposition between a very pacifist, peaceful, harmonious culture with horrific violence fueled by drug gangs. You will go to the movie theater, have a great time, and then read the following day that 10 decapitated bodies were found buried right next to it.
Culturally speaking, Mexico’s history of violence and unrest makes the average Mexican fearful of violence. The average Mexican will tolerate far more injury before resorting to violence than the average American. But amidst this, you have a country with far weaker political institutions, much more cronyism, and a much greater distrust of them. Mexicans doesn’t respect the Rule of Law to the same extent as Americans, which makes the country a breeding ground for drug organizations to operate in the shadows, inflicting violence upon each other while leaving the civilian population (mostly) intact. The drug violence inflates murder stats but does not represent the average Mexican experience.
James Strong
Dec 21 2020 at 2:22pm
(just realized there’s no way to edit comments .. apologies about the typos and awkward sentence constructions)
Rob
Dec 21 2020 at 3:27pm
Enjoyed reading this and I’m glad not to have listened to others and also travelled to Mexico (Mexico City, a truly wonderful city just a short flight away from the US) and now in an even more wonderful and tourist free Rio de Janeiro. Already looking at Hacienda Chichen for the next trip.
A quibble about your comment about inefficient beach peddlers for evidence that private employment is less efficient than formal employment: I think you are not adequately considering the role of the state, arbitrary regulation, and corrupt officials in limiting the informal employment choices left open to people. It could well be that the guy selling hats on the beach would be more beneficially employed selling food, driving an Uber, or some other endeavor which has been rendered impossible by these governmental factors, and hat peddling is all that is left to him. I know you must be familiar with El Otro Sendero (The Other Path) by Enrique
Rob
Dec 21 2020 at 3:47pm
Looks like somehow the rest of my comment got got off.
(cont) I know you must be familiar with El Otro Sendero (The Other Path) by Hernando de Soto, who explained that arbitrary regulations and corrupt bureaucrats not only deny formal employment and force people to enter the informal sector, but also greatly impede their abilities to operate within the informal sector. It could be that this sub-optimal hat seller was denied the opportunity to express his entrepreneurship by putting his skills to a better use because of these things. If you saw many desperate hat peddlers, that might suggest that the most likely reason for this is that this is all that his open to them, rather than what seems like the less logical conclusion that they are all happy spinning their wheels.
Mark Brophy
Dec 21 2020 at 4:55pm
The Chichen Itza tour guide insisted that human sacrifice was “voluntary” because the guide thinks of people who lived thousands of years ago the same way that you and I think of our grandfathers who died 10 years ago.
Floccina
Dec 21 2020 at 5:18pm
Your comments in 4 agrees with my experience in the Bay Islands of Honduras. The Spanish speaking people seem quite energetic hustling almost hyper and English speaking quite the opposite.
HispanicPundit
Dec 21 2020 at 10:17pm
Glad you had a great time Bryan. As a Mexican-American who travels to Mexico regularly, I fully agree with all of your perceptive commentary. Fully endorse commenter James Strongs comments above.
I live right next to Tijuana, and I am shocked at how many Americans think that going there is tantamount to visiting Syria during their civil war. I go regularly, and though it is considered “the most dangerous city in the world”, I feel it as perfectly safe every time I go. The drug war, which happens on the margins of society and primarily to people involved in it, distorts the real Mexico to the rest of the world.
Saludos amigo!
Mark Z
Dec 22 2020 at 11:15am
Sounds like an exciting trip.
On 7: I’d recommend you look into the writing of WD Hamilton and George Price (and perhaps John Maynard Smith as well) to learn about natural selection self-sacrificial behavior. Obviously, in humans we observe this plenty of selfless behavior even up to the point of sacrificing one’s life, so it wouldn’t be that unusual for Aztecs to volunteer for this, as they sincerely believed it was an act of altruistic sacrifice. That said, Mexican historiography has generally shifted in recent years as I understand toward identifying/sympathizing less with the Spanish (as in the past) and more with the Aztecs, so there may be a bit of a nationalistic desire to rehabilitate the Aztecs to some extent.
On 11: Isn’t it also the case that there’s a lot of regional heterogeneity in Mexico with respect to violence? It seems like the northern border regions where the gangs and cartels are most active are very violent, places like Nuevo Laredo and Juarez being really bad, but some regions, like the Yucatan, being not so bad. Which raises the question of just how much of Mexico’s violence is a result of drugs/the drug war. The murder rate spiked ~2006 or 2007, nearly tripling in a few years, and it was clearly due to the drug gangs and the state’s war against them, and fairly concentrated in cartel-dominated regions I think.
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