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| August 14 at Dawn! We feel blessed by the gods! After way too many days totally socked in due to rain bands from Huracán Ernesto, here's the vista that greeted us this morning! At the left, snow-capped Iztaccíhuatl sleeps nestled among the clouds, while Popocatéptl continues smoking away at the right. Today is a very good day! |
The number thirteen is significant in Mesoamerican culture. The Divinatory Calendar (El Tonalpohualli) was created by combining twenty day-names with thirteen numbers in rotation. The Divinatory Calendar was used to foretell the fate of individuals at birth. I haven't been able to discover specifically why thirteen, but a scholarly paper notes that:
"The mathematic relationships and interactions of the tonalpohualli, involving the Venus cycle in conjunction with the solar and lunar calendars, gave rise to complicated calculations, auguries, myths and legends in the Mesoamerican belief system."August 13: Auspicious Day to Sign a Contract
Our meeting with the lawyer was quite remarkable...as have been many of our encounters with the people of Mexico.
We were at the lawyer's office promptly at 9:00 AM. He arrived a couple of minutes later. The contracts were ready for Reed to initial and sign. We wrote the check for the "rent guarantee" that will kick in if we fail to pay the rent.
Then we chatted a bit. He told us that the owner had been ignorant of the law in the area of "successive contracts", such as rental agreements. Then he added:
"My job is to conciliate—not to provoke the owner, but to find ways to raise awareness about the applicable law and in so doing, to reconcile the interests of all the parties to a contract."I responded:
"As foreigners, there is nothing we can do to raise awareness about the rule of law in Mexico. But when we encounter a legal situation that involves us directly, we feel it is our responsibility to take a position that upholds the rule of law.
"We could not have done this alone. We want to thank you for your help. Not only do we lack the language skills, but we lack the necessary legal foundation and cultural awareness. You have been essential in helping us, perhaps, to raise the awareness of one landlady in all of Mexico about the rule of law."He smiled as he nodded in agreement, then added:
"It is my pleasure to help you. When people try to take advantage of someone, I want to use the law to protect the rights and obligations specified by the law on behalf of all the involved parties."
At his words, I recalled our first meeting, he spoke what is, for him, obviously a much-rehearsed line:
"As renters, you have certain rights and obligations under the law...but so does the owner."
His comment is interesting because it speaks directly to the observation of a recent legal expert who wrote in a Mexican newspaper:
"The Mexican citizenry has a weak commitment to 'legality'. The citizenry has a tendency to see the law as a space for negotiation rather than as a framework of obligations with which one must comply."
I shared this comment with a wise friend much experienced in the practical aspects of Mexican legal practice, and I asked her, "Is this how the condo's owner sees the issue?"
"I agree fully with the author of the paragraph...that the majority of Mexico's people do not see the law as a set of rights and obligations, but as something that can be adjusted to their own needs or simply not even taken into account, if one has sufficient influence or economic power.
"And yes, effectively, that is the position of the owner of the condo."
Given this legal context, it is encouraging that our lawyer sees his role as one of raising awareness of the legal 'rules of the game'.
So it is our hope that we have succeeded in establishing a precedent. We hope that next year's renewal process will be routine. We hope that our record of consistent on-time rental payments, coupled with our care of her condo, will persuade the owner over the course of the next year that we are the buenos inquilinos, good tenants, that she initially judged us to be.
This has not been a comfortable process for us, but we feel gratified by the outcome. We are hopeful that this process may have contributed in a minor way—by helping one landlady become more aware of what 'rule of law' in Mexico is coming to mean in everyday terms.
Still Curious?
Related Jenny's posts:
- Renewing Rent Contract 1: Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo relates the first actions we took in response to the owner's 'arbitrary' demand for a rent increase in violation of the contract;
- Renewing Rent Contract 2: Rule of Law Kicks In adds richness to the tale by adding the point of view of both the rental agent and don Rigoberto, who owns a couple of rental properties;
- Partying With Impunity next-door to Jenny's apartment touches on a key issue for rule of law; namely, the absence of reliable enforcement mechanisms;
- Aztec Stone of the Five Suns describes the Divinatory Calendar;
- Bureaucracy: Labyrinths of Power relates what we learned when we had move our bank account from Pátzcuaro to Mexico City;
- What Makes Mexico's Legal System So Different? is the question we had to answer when trying to renew our Mexican resident visas;
- Work in Mexico: "It's my job" discusses the rise of the informal economy not only as a coping strategy for dealing with an authoritarian, often arbitrary and hostile environment, but as a way of maintaining personal dignity and respect.
- UNAM Head Urges Mexico Legal Profession to Resolve Challenges of Justice reports remarks by President of National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) to meeting of legal professionals;
- Mexico: Citizenship in Its Infancy and the Culture of Illegality by Héctor Aguilar Camín—journalist, historian and novelist—who writes often about Mexican politics and the challenges facing Mexico. He is editor of Nexos, a monthly magazine of political and cultural commentary.
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