Reflections on Culture Shock in Mexico City

This post is the last of four that describe what has been involved in renewing the rental contract on our apartment, a condo. At the first renewal, our landlady, the condo's owner, shocked us by giving her own arbitrary interpretation of the contract's terms. Earlier posts describe the events as objectively as possible (see Still Curious? after this post). 

This post describes our subjective experience with an aspect of Mexican society we had previously encountered in only the most tangential way. Although I wrote it last year, I dragged my feet in publishing it. Unsure about its message, I asked a trusted Mexican friend to read it. His response was reassuring: it is a fair description of this facet of Mexican society.

Reassured on that front, I still hesitated to publish. The story seemed 'unfinished'; it lacked an ending. In the last month of the contract, under the law, the owner could notify us of her desire for us to vacate the apartment, but the initiative was hers. As the final month came up, we waited quietly. Nothing. No contact whatsoever. None.

With two weeks to go, we sent an email to our attorney asking him what our next action should be. In the email, Reed relayed what he calculated to be the new rent based on the annual inflation rate as specified in the contract.

The attorney contacted the owner, who after some delay, finally responded. Accepting without comment Reed's calculation of the new rent, her only request was that since she has been having problems proving to the government the source of the rental income, she is asking that instead of making cash deposits to her bank account, we write a check and deposit it into her account. 

We were also asked to sign the new contract in person, which meant a trip to the office of the company that writes rental contracts and underwrites rent insurance for landlords (in case we fail to pay). After the meeting, I wrote an Update to describe the meeting. You'll find it at the end of this long-delayed Post.

We feel comfortable in Mexico. We have developed enjoyable daily routines and have begun to reach out to ordinary Mexicans by participating in a workshop on Reading and Writing at the Coyoacán Culture Center.

But none of this seemed to matter when we received the owner's email response to our message informing her of our intent to remain in the apartment. We know full well that most landlords are not like ours, but it seems important to tell this story as a way of fostering understanding about an aspect of Mexican society often hidden from view and rarely discussed.

Culture Shock

First defined in 1958, culture shock is the disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or visit to a new country, or to a move between social environments. In the United States, I experienced a certain culture shock when as a young adult, I moved from the breezy informal style that characterizes California to the East Coast, where a far more formal culture prevails.

We are just completing our fourth year of living in Mexico—three years in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, and one year in Mexico City. In Pátzcuaro, our Mexican friends were middle-class professionals and small shopkeepers. Slowly, we are making friends in Mexico City—once again, among middle-class students and professionals in our workshop at the Culture Center and our local shopkeepers.

A scant month ago, we would have placed ourselves in the Adjustment phase of culture shock:

• Honeymoon phase, where everything is seen in a romantic, rosy light;  
• Negotiation phase, where initial excitement gives way to unpleasant feelings of frustration and even anger as one continues to experience unfavorable events that may be perceived as strange and offensive to one's cultural attitude. Cultural anxieties arise not only from unfamiliar ways of performing basic daily routines, but of almost-constant communications challenges—language, including culture-specific body language signals, linguistic nuances and faux pas, conversation tone and customs;
• Adjustment phase, where one grows accustomed to the new culture and develops routines based on knowing what to expect in most situations; the host country no longer feels all that new as events and situations become increasingly "normal". As problem-solving skills for dealing with the culture develop, one begins to accept the culture's ways with a positive attitude. As the culture makes more and more sense, negative cultural reactions and responses diminish;
• Mastery phase, where one participates fully and comfortably in the host culture. Mastery does not mean total conversion; expats often keep many traits from their earlier culture, such as accents and languages. It is often referred to as the stage of biculturalism.

Although it seems unlikely that we might become bicultural at our age, it does seem to us that the longer we live in Mexico, the more genuinely accepting we become of cultural differences. A comment by a British philosopher and his wife interviewed on the occasion of their Golden Wedding Anniversary is equally applicable to culture shock:

"If you live long enough, you even come to enjoy each other's foibles."

So that's where we thought we were when our rental contract came up for renewal. Our sense of "adjustment" lasted until the condo's owner sent us an email asking for a 10% rent increase—more than double the 4.3% increased allowed under the contract (rent increases are pegged to Mexico's inflation rate).

We replied in writing that it was our understanding that the annual increase is subject to the terms of the contract, copying the applicable clause from the rental contract. Her reply put us into culture shock:

"The amount specified in the contract is the minimum the rent can be raised."

From our Northern European point of view, she was saying that her signature meant nothing; the contract was meaningless; she was in control of the annual rental increase. Feeling that we had just fallen down Alice's Rabbit Hole, we contacted a lawyer. See Jenny's post, Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo in Jenny's Neighborhood.

Culture Shock 101

We have read a lot about los de arriba (the Haves) in Mexico, its moneyed elite class. We have visited Polanco and seen the opulence, but it has seemed far removed from our lives here in Coyoacán. An expat friend from Pátzcuaro told us about a neighbor who had steered her to a reliable woman for household help. Both  the woman and her husband have been very helpful. My friend pays her what seems fair.

The neighbor woman, who claims she is a granddaughter of one of Mexico's former presidents, asked my friend point-blank what she is paying for household help. When she learned, she hit the roof:

"Do you realize what you are doing to me? You don't realize that the point is to get as much work as possible out of these people and pay them as little as possible."

Gulp. This sheds new light on a remark the apartment owner made when she called me. When I asked her to call our lawyer and discuss the issue with him, she asked me,

"Why are you calling a lawyer? You are my inquilinos, tenants." 

When I thought about her remark later, I couldn't help thinking, "It wouldn't be much different if she'd said, 'You are my peons...on my hacienda." She was saying, in effect, "I own you; I define reality; you do as I say."

When I told Reed, he protested,

"We are not her anything. We are renters mutually bound with her in her role as owner under a signed contract." As our lawyer put it, "As a renter, you have rights and obligations, and so does the owner."

At the end of the earlier Jenny's post, we wondered how she would respond. When we met with the lawyer, we found out that she had insulted him by asking, in a blatant attempt at intimidation, "Joven, young man, how old are you?" Refusing to rise to the bait, his answer was,

"I am young, but fortunately, the law is clear, and I am old enough to know what it says."

The owner called Doña Carlota, the building's administrator and told her that we are groseros, rude people, because we had consulted a lawyer. Carlota was magnificent. She pushed back, saying,

"They are not groseros; they are good people. They came to me because they were worried about your response, and I sent them to the lawyer."

We are in Mexico, which means we were not surprised to learn that the story has yet another layer. Intuitively, I have intentionally developed a good relationship with Carlota, who now told us that the previous tenant had left without paying the rent for several months. Furious, the owner approached Carlota and informed her that part of the money the tenant had paid the building for her parking spot was rightfully hers.

Clearly stung by the episode, Carlota told me, "I had to write her a check from the building's funds." So on another level, our struggle with the owner was, in Carlota's book, payback time.

The owner lives in Cuernavaca, a small city about ninety minutes away from Mexico City. Many of Mexico City's wealthy elite have weekend homes in Cuernavaca, which makes me wonder about her own status.

When we met her a year ago to sign the rental contract, we thought her very well put together. Given her poised self-assurance, we guessed that she was a professional—physician, lawyer, possibly a businessperson. Now we suspect that she may be de arriba, from above.

After the signing, Reed laughingly commented,

"This could have been the closing on a house; it was that formal!"

Little did we know! By asking us to sign a renewal contract, she was binding us to an obligation to pay the full year's rent, whether or not we continued to inhabit the apartment. With her current actions she is, in effect, telling us,

"You are legally bound by the contract, but I am not."

We have neither the owner's address nor her telephone number; her nephew's wife, introduced to us as a lawyer, fronts for her. Last fall I called the lawyer-niece to report that the toilet bowl was leaking water all over the floor and had to be replaced. She explained, "The tenant is responsible for all repairs in the apartment," which is not what the contract says.

Under the contract, infrastructure repairs are the owner's responsibility. Repairs or improvements "for the tenant's convenience" are the tenant's responsibility. Fortunately, I had respectfully hit the roof:

"I am seventy years old, and I have never paid for infrastructure repairs in a rental apartment!" 

The end result was that we split the repair cost fifty-fifty. Given all that's happened since, I feel proud of having successfully extracted fifty percent from her!

Culture Shock 102

Symptoms of culture shock include feelings of helplessness, irritability, anger, withdrawal, fatalistic thoughts, and sleep disruptions. I can relate to these symptoms, but I am also thinking of los de abajo, those from below, Mexico's Have-nots, who historically have been truly powerless.

A Purhépecha friend in Michoacán once told me about the company store still in place on the former hacienda where many of her friends live and work. Theirs is a no-win situation. I can't help thinking about the famously fatalistic mindset of many Mexicans: Is it rooted in this helplessness before arbitrary authoritarianism?

The owner's sense of entitlement ("you are my tenants") to get what she wants is coupled with her willingness simply to ignore the law in order to get it. Her attitude rings a bell. In an earlier post, I wrote,

To be absolutely clear, the social and political structure of Nueva España—authoritarian, hierarchical and often arbitrary—was designed to protect and preserve the Spanish ruling elite. The common people (los de abajo, those below, the Have-nots) had no choice but to defer to the demands and whims of anyone with any kind of official authority.

Her attitude is infuriating precisely because it cannot be challenged within her frame of reference. This no-win situation engenders feelings of helplessness if one intends to remain in the relationship (like us), or if there is no other option (those living on the former hacienda). At the time, the only option we saw was to walk away from the apartment. It seemed to us that the psychological price of remaining was too high.

Unfortunately, walking away is not an option for most of Mexico's Have-nots. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that it has not been an option in the past, because today there are signs that many of los de abajo, the Have-nots, are claiming their appropriate status as free agents. It must be noted that the price they pay for claiming their free agency can be very high.

Predictably, our decision not to give in to the owner's attempted manipulation has infuriated her: "How dare you defy me by going against my will?"

Through our lawyer, we communicated our intent to comply fully with the terms of the contract by depositing the legal increase directly into the owner's bank account. We have subsequently learned that the owner has accepted the legal increase, and we are now waiting for the new rental contract. On August 1, we deposited the rent plus the legal increase into the owner's bank account.

Postscript

When we met with our lawyer to sign the new rental contract, he observed:

"The owner was ignorant of her rights and responsibilities under successive contracts, such as rental agreements."

His comment is interesting because it speaks directly to the observation of the legal expert who wrote recently 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 Mexican 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."

Teasing out cultural meanings in Mexico often seems like trying to do a 5,000 piece puzzle without the picture on the box top! It often means making connections between comments and observations made by many different people. In this case, I recall Sandra's offhand comment about the owner,

"She believes that you are foreigners alone in Mexico...without support."

Vulnerable and hence fair game because we seemed to her to be alone, defenseless. Given this legal context, it is encouraging that our lawyer sees his role as one of raising awareness among his fellow countrymen and women about 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 property, will persuade the owner over the course of the next year that we are in fact the buenos inquilinos, good tenants, that she initially judged us to be. Time will tell.

Update: August 7, 2013

We just returned from signing the new contract. It proved to be the case that the on-time appearance of rent payments in her bank account, plus our care of her property appear to have persuaded her that we are, in fact, buenos inquilinos. In fact, she said as much, as did the rental contract/insurance company representative.

Interestingly, in her review of the new contract, the landlady noticed that it indicated we had paid a one-month security, when in fact we had made a two-month security deposit. She also discovered an error in the amount of the maintenance fee.

Our attorney was late. While the administrator was having the errors in the contract corrected, the landlady made several disparaging comments about how difficult it is to deal with our lawyer. She observed that since the rental contract is now quite routine, perhaps it isn't necessary for us to have an attorney. Reed responded diplomatically, saying that since we struggle with the language, it's advisable for us to have a lawyer.

By the time the attorney arrived, the errors had been corrected, and we were in the process of signing the contracts. The day ended well.

Still Curious?

A light-hearted, even humorous article comparing U.S. and Mexican attitudes toward rule of law appeared recently in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Legal "Fines" as a Teaching Tool was written by a Mexican anthropologist and academic who lived in California for some months while he taught at UCLA.

Other Jenny's posts dealing with the general theme of the rule of law:

• Renewing Rent Contract 1: Civil Society, Rule of Law and Personalismo relates our initial reaction and the first actions we took when our rental contract came up for renewal;
• Renewing Rent Contract 2: Rule of Law Kicks In describes how 'the system' effectively corralled the owner by enforcing limits around her arbitrary wishes;
• Renewing Rent Contract 3: We Sign New Contract!; 
• Bureaucracy: Labyrinths of Power relates what we learned when we had to 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 resident visas at Immigration;
• 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;
• Partying With Impunity next-door to Jenny's apartment discusses yet another aspect of the rule of law; namely, a lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. 

Related articles translated from Mexican newspapers and posted on Reed's Mexico Voices blog:

• Mexico Post-Election: And now what?" asks Marta Lama, anthropologist and leader in the movement for women's rights. Her description of the destructive role of machismo in Mexican political practices and advocacy for development of a strong opposition in the Congress includes the role of negotiation in arriving at solutions agreeable to the entire country; the discussion is useful because it means developing agreements that are mutually beneficial, rather than one-sided;
• Mexico Post-Election: On Education and Politics by Manuel Pérez Rocha, President of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), celebrates the success of informal education projects undertaken at the grassroots level by the left and urges their continued effort;
• Mexico Post-Election: Creatively Fed Up by internationally-recognized activist Gustavo Esteva describes growing grassroots social movements, precisely the kind of activity urged by Pérez Rocha in the previous article.