For anyone else besides me who was unfamiliar with the term, it's a bribe: https://www.tripsavvy.com/definition-of-mordida-1588821
(for those that do not speak Spanish: embarazada = pregnant)
Mexico is safer than the US - some will find that unpaletable. Get over it.
This is quite verifiably false?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_states_by_homi...
edit: fixed link
I stayed in various of the "safe parts" of Mexico for three months and felt much safer than in any of various cities in the US, both experienced as a European traveller.
Also, even comparing apples to apples those stats don't paint the day to day reality of living in Mexico. Very often murders are from fights between narco gangs, or between narcos and the police/military.
Edit:
It's also true that crime and narco presence is not equally distributed.
See Queretaro vs Boston:
I can't help but wonder if a Spanish accent buys you some cred in Latin America that other gringos don't get.
On the other hand, Mexicans use more diminutives compared to Spaniards and have lost the informal plural "you", always using what would be the the formal form of address in Spain. Mexicans often also say "¿mande?" to acknowledge you or request that you repeat yourself, but this more literally means something very servile like "order me" or "what is your command?", a remnant of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. For this reason, Mexicans sometimes sound excessively polite to Spaniards.
Of course, these are just broad stereotypes and it's entirely possible that pier25 has not experienced any of this. Possibly simply due to being foreign and the generally unacknowledged racism we have in Mexico (white is pretty), pier25's experience may have been entirely positive.
Also, pier25 may look like a gringo but he's not a gringo. In Mexico, only people from the US are gringos, regardless of their appearance. Obama is a gringo; Trudeau is not a gringo (other countries use the term "gringo" differently). As soon as pier25 speaks, no Mexican would call him gringo. Gachupín is an older somewhat pejorative term for Spaniards in Mexico, but I think it's rarely used nowadays.
Yes, this is totally true.
Also Mexicans generally try to speak properly unless they are with friends or family. They typically shush bad words, use more polite substitutes, or they start a sentence with "excuse me but...".
In Spain nobody cares.
> pier25's experience may have been entirely positive
Yeah, totally. I've lived in different countries so I adapt very quickly to different customs and forms.
> As soon as pier25 speaks, no Mexican would call him gringo.
You'd be surprised. Most people in Mexico associate Spanish accent with Madrid accent (eg: hola como eshtash) and since I don't have that accent they think I'm a gringo with a weird Spanish accent. Dozens of times Mexicans have insisted speaking to me in English even when I was speaking in Spanish to them. Once I even had to insist that I was from Spain and the answer was "¿Pero español de España?" :)
With my wife we've joked about making a t-shirt for me that says "Que no soy gringo joder!".
Jajajaja me encantaría ver esa playera.
That's so interesting. I'm from Brazil, and to us Continental Portuguese sounds pompous, much like what a British accent sounds to an American listeners.
Different languages, I know, but interesting contrast considering both cases are related to the Iberian peninsula :)
Outside of touristic zones (Vallarta, Cancún, etc) Mexicans tend to like and be curious about people from abroad. There's actually a pejorative term called malinchismo for this preference for foreign stuff.
>we're now planning to go back to Europe
Where in Europe are you planning to relocate?
Also nod to NL, as other poster. Lived there for three years. Again, stuff works.
Yes!
Both Switzerland and NL are at the top of my list.
FWIW, I've been living in Budapest now for a year and is quite nice, I like Europe overall too, but we'll be returning to Canada :-)
As for getting money from abroad you have to declare it and pay a percentage to the state.
Could you expand on this? I'm not keeping up with Mexican politics so I don't know much besides him being left leaning.
He is surrounded by incompetent and bootlicker advisors.
This administration is one of the most corrupt and violent in the past 20 years.
He has three pharaonic projects to build an outdated infrastructure that only "benefits" the president's home state.
He is actively stopping the construction for renewable energy projects and foreign investment.
With the combination of COVID and the current political situation, Mexico is going to plunge into the worst recession it has seen in modern history. I wouldn't be surprised if Mexico becomes the next Venezuela in a couple of years.
A more accurate description would be “he surrounds himself with incompetent and bootlicker advisors.”
At the presidential level he appointed all of those people
Oh! Thank you for teaching me this word.
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/approval-tracker-mexicos-pre... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/amlo-is-me...
I won't deny there are some horror stories coming from Mexico, but I'm a European and have been living here since 2009. I've never seen or experienced anything even remotely violent. I paid for a mordida once, that's it. I've lived in Mexico City, Estado de México, Veracruz, Cancún, and now near Querétaro. I've travelled to most states either for tourism or work. Although I'm from Spain I totally look like a gringo so I never pass unnoticed.
We live in a little village about 3 hours from Mexico City with almost no crime at all. We only lock our door when leaving town. We have 200Mbps fiber. We rent a 3bdr house with garden for about $500 USD. Life is really good for us.
My wife is Mexican and her mother passed away a couple of months ago so we're now planning to go back to Europe in 2-3 years once my gig starts generating some income. There is not much here for her and I'm a bit bored of Mexico. We also don't like how the political situation is changing with Amlo.