The rub is the long-standing problem of trying to define “middle class” in economically emerging societies, often harried by fluctuating economic circumstances, unsteady political management — and at the same time account for residual institutional non-economic problems that impede or distort reasonable change.
In Mexico that means trying to pin down — or at least shrewdly guess — how much Mexican society is earning and spending. The most obvious obstacles: the Republic’s mammoth underground economy, the tradition of false income reporting — by both the public and private sectors — the unknown expense of the drug war now and in the future, and wringing out some kind of estimate of how much institutionalized corruption costs Mexico’s citizenry.
This last has always been a major obstacle for the poor, making it difficult to merely exist, materially and psychologically, to say nothing about any possibility of “upward mobility.”
Though that term wasn’t used then, when I first began coming to Mexico the people I hung out with, matadores, were the epitome of a most obvious and celebrated example of upwardly mobile Mexicans. Poorly educated young men — beginning when they were teenagers — risking their lives not for “fame,” but for a better life for themselves and their families. Risking one’s life to leap up the economic ladder was an accepted reality. And it was possible, even though bullfighting was misshaped into a notoriously corrupt system by managers, bullring owners, even the breeders of the bulls. The ambitious, poor and aspiring novilleros were the fodder for the machine.
Along Lake Chapala, a seriously ambitious youngster from a poor family — and most families in Lakeside pueblos were then poor — either went north across the border, or sought to become, at most, an albinil — a mason. A great many had to settle for a life as a fisherman, and if he or his father were lucky, a campesino, share-cropping a milpa, growing Mexico’s ancient agricultural trinity, maiz, frijol, calabaza — corn, beans and squash — paying the owner of the field his quinto — fifth of the crop. The maximum schooling meant a poor sixth grade education, and the average a spotty third to fifth-grade education. Children, as once was the custom in rural United States in the 1930s and ‘40s, were taken out of school to help families work their fields. I have campesino friends who received no education, and cannot read or write. The thin middle class was made up locally of store keepers, doctors and parochial politicians.Today, Mexican society has changed greatly — except for the ubiquitous practice of corruption. As more than one cultural expert has pointed out, most Mexicans are persuaded that the corruption which they must deal with every day will never end.
In trying to define Mexico’s middle class, the (relatively new) Mexican Association of Market and Public Opinion Research Agencies (AMAI), has thrown out previous criteria used by census takers and other government officials, in order to better determine polling standards, so as to “define” those Mexicans who qualify as middle class. Pollsters of all kinds have learned to distrust answers regarding occupation and income. Experience has showed that “Most people in all societies tend to “massage” the truth, or baldly lie about their income “for tax reasons and similarly noble and valid motives.” AMAI surveyors ask a “battery” of ten questions to define six socioeconomic levels. The questions have to do with living standards or educational experience. None of them have to do with income, occupations, aspirations or “self-definitions.” The queries are specific and generally simple: the number of rooms, bathrooms, light bulbs and shower heads, water heaters, stoves, toasters, and/or microwave ovens are in the house, how many washing machines/dryers are there, and what kind of flooring is in the dwelling visited; how many TVs, DVDs and PCs; the number of years of schooling the head of the household “claims”; how many vehicles the residents own.
Most Mexicans covet a middle class classification (lower middle class, mid-middle class, or upper middle class, it doesn’t matter). And independent pollster Jorge Buendia has reported that 65 percent of respondents consider themselves in the middle class. Twenty-seven percent describe themselves as lower class, only two percent say they were upper class. Pollsters using the AMAI criteria contend that more than half of the population has, or soon will, become middle class. At the same time, according to government figures, some 47 percent of the population is either poor, or “live in extreme poverty.”
A number of analysts who tend to be generally up-beat regarding Mexico’s present circumstances, agree. Well-known author and former Mexican foreign minister (2000-2003), Jorge Castañeda, now a professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University, wrote enthusiastically of Mexico’s expanding middle class last year. However one views this matter, daily association with a wide array of people who wish to be members of that middle class suggest: not quite yet. For many of those who possess — too often through the unforgiving blessings of credit cards — all the accouterments pollsters identify with the middle class, debt weighs heavily. Today, in Jalisco, many of those with middle class appurtenances — including burdensome payments — possess slim wallets, and crimped weekly budgets. There are no funds available for contingencies. Such folks are at the edge of their incomes. Any emergency expense — a vehicle that needs immediate repair, a serious health problem, etc. — can put them beyond their their earnings. In most such households both husband and wife work (45 percent of Mexico’s work force is now female), and often one of them works two jobs. Mexico’s former home-spun safety net of helpful relatives has a number of holes in it today as families scatter and become immersed in their own demanding economic wrestling.
Making the leap to the middle class comes as a shock to many, even if they’ve been hovering on the edge for a while. This is especially true of those living in pueblos surrounding any large city. Such pueblos themselves are changing, as small branches of big-city companies arrive, and as modest local businesses struggle to become more sophisticated to deal with competition in a tight economy.
Workers used to rough, boisterous campo ways (especially the young) have a hard time adjusting. Some abruptly find themselves in a working environment where all their colleagues own laptops, while they’re used to an outdated borrowed computer. An upwardly propelled young friend dropped his newly acquired used laptop. It cost the sum of eight days’ work to get it repaired, during which time he had to drop his after-work English lessons. The first step upwards also requires adjustments in wardrobe and grooming (no more green and red long hair), promptness, a more demanding work ethic, including a different kind of “office conduct.” Relations between males and females in such workplaces frequently — if the women are lucky — call for a more “formal” attitude. Such new jobs normally call for long bus trips, and at work long stretches of intent focus.
New work places — and university night classes — often demand such intricate, time-consuming bus rides that many people soon buy a used vehicle. This usually means a loan, and of course insurance, vehicle permit, car upkeep, and, most of all, costly gasoline.
For those who are married, a move up to the middle class seems to entail a myriad of changes, some large, others small but daunting in number — for the entire family. Driving to and from work, and in the performance of work-related errands in some states today has become dangerous. Working late means traveling home in the dark, a favorite time for criminal activity, notably in a short list of states. (Think here of border towns frequently making crime headlines, and especially of the states of Tamaulipas, Michoacan, and Chihuahua.) One of the rich pluses created by the surge toward middle class status is that it prompts Mexicans to read more newspapers to learn the crime index each day.
A fundamental obstacle facing people seeking a place in the middle class is a poor education. Young people beating this obstacle are those devoting much of their free time to taking whatever after-work classes, public or private, they can. Some are picking up as much English as possible. Today, being bilingual can be critical to finding a job. But some can’t generate such self-propelled action, and fall by the wayside.
Those who manage it, are learning to read rather than skim, which leads them to texts, including novels, that tell them about the roots and the surreal history of their country’s culture of corruption. It is something they take for granted, but they do not understand how to avoid its contagion. And that understanding is essential to a rational middle class, and to Mexico’s rational growth.
Because, as numerous candid Mexican authors, educators and analysts have noted, a middle class of bright, skillful charlatans is not what Mexico needs. It already has that, with replacements standing impatiently in the wings. This means that youngsters who have completed only the sixth grade, yet are capturing a “continuing education” on their own, face a towering obstacle to a fruitful life in which they can take pride. That means finding a way through a nearly 500-year-old labyrinth of sly, well-honed and intransigent traps. Those becomingly designed snares have much to do with why Mexico has not yet become a middle class nation, say veteran cultural critics. And why that status may well be vulnerable and possibly susceptible to relapse when attained.