Mexico’s crowded holiday calendar marks November 12 as Dia del Cartero (Postman’s Day).
While employees at Ajijic’s post office will spend next Monday performing their normal duties according to the regular 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. work schedule, they also anticipate marking the occasion with an after-hours staff party.
“We don’t know yet whether we’ll have a simple get-together in the back of the office or go somewhere else to celebrate,” says manager Maria del Sagrario Vargas. “It all depends upon the kindness of customers. When I started here six years ago people were very generous, but Postman’s Day tips have been more meager in the last couple of years.”Perhaps that may be attributed to be the shift in postal dynamics that has come about in the information age. Personal correspondence in the form of letters, postcards and holiday greetings has dropped off dramatically as folks increasingly use email and social media to communicate with friends and family, Vargas observes. “We still handle quite a lot of parcels, but most of the incoming mail is commercial and government stuff: bills, bank statements, advertising material and official communications.”
Every day, Monday through Saturday, Vargas and the four mailmen under her charge deal with ten or more sacks of outgoing correspondence, bagged according to state or country destinations, and sort through 15 to 25 sacks of envelopes and packages arriving from all over the globe. What comes in will be doled out among 960 P.O. boxes or delivered door-to-door by motorcycle and bicycle to hundreds of addresses stretching between La Floresta and San Juan Cosala.
New technology is also applied in mail processing nowadays. Barcoding is being utilized to move the mail more efficiently. Old-fashioned letter scales employing metal weights as a balancing mechanism have been phased out with the invention of slick digital devices.
On the downside, handsomely designed postage stamps so treasured by casual collectors and hard core philatelists alike are harder to come by since the postal service has introduced electronic gadgets that spit out humdrum print-out tickets. Vargas says she stills gets limited supplies of the special edition stamps put out by Correos de Mexico, but they usually sell out quickly. Christmas season stamps and postcards will be arriving soon.
Commenting on current rates, Vargas reports that letters weighing up to 20 grams going out to Canada or the United States cost 11.50 pesos, while those headed for Europe run at 13.50. Mail sent to or from abroad through Mexico’s postal system usually arrives at its destination within 10 to 12 days.