Dear Sir,
I was bemused by the letter in the Reporter complaining about barking dogs at the animal shelter in a commercial area on the Carretera in Riberas. Are there actually places at Lakeside where barking dogs are not heard? Perhaps in a gated community where, I suppose, they may be prohibited?
I live on the main east-west street of San Antonio Tlayacapan, in a non-commercial area just three blocks from the plaza. I am often awakened during the night by the barking of the dogs of my neighbors, including those that are kept on roofs for, it seems to me, the specific purpose of barking. Some of my neighbors have roosters that crow at all hours of the night, and caged doves coo loudly outside my bedroom window. I am sometimes awakened at 7:30 a.m. by a priest broadcasting the rosary from loudspeakers atop the church. A two-story house across the street has big loudspeakers mounted on a tall tripod on its roof. Music is broadcast from them at 6:30 a.m. on occasions that the owner apparently thinks important. Announcements may be made at all hours of the day and evening, including not only of public events to be held in the plaza, but of sales to be held at the house. I cannot hear my TV while those announcements are being made.
Trucks selling gas, produce, cooking oil and other staples, ice cream, baked goods, etc., as well as a truck collecting discarded appliances, go by with loudspeakers blaring, and when one stops in front to make a sale or a collection, I cannot hear my TV until it moves on. Cars pass by with bass speakers so loud that I can feel the vibrations from them. I had no idea that complaints about all that noise would be taken seriously. Indeed, how would I know when to go to the street to buy the best bolillos obtainable if I did not hear the bakery truck’s loudspeaker?
I have traveled in every Mexican state and the cacophonies I have heard everywhere have suggested to me that if Mexicans do not actually like loud noise, they tolerate it without complaint. I have concluded that noise is a natural condition of life in Mexico that must be accepted by all who live here. I will be interested in seeing if an exception to that is made for particular barking dogs.
Kenneth G. Crosby