What s up guys!
It s Jason here and welcome to my YouTube channel, Expat Insight.
As you might know, I ve published two other videos on Mexico 20 Things to Know Before
Moving to Mexico and 8 Reasons Why You Should Leave Mexico Now.
I ve spent so many years in Mexico and I love deeply this amazing, polemic, and mysterious
land.
So I don t overwhelm the subject, this will be my last video on Mexico and it s on the
8 Things that really make Mexico amazing in 2022.
Besides the extremely varied and beautiful land itself, Mexico has diverse, strong people,
with a bloody history full of acts of heroism and sacrifice (oh boy), and of course, the
curious and sometimes terrible clash of civilizations.
And you can t speak of Mexico without speaking of drug trafficking, which could not exist
without deep corruption at the highest levels of government.
Petroleum is also extremely important, but it is the culture; sports, food, music, and
of course, the remarkable Olmec, Toltec, Mayan and Aztec Empires.
With this video, we ll examine the Top 8 things that make Mexico unique and uniquely amazing
in 2022.
By the end, I guarantee you ll be an expert on Mexico.
But first If you wouldn t mind just tapping that LIKE button for the YouTube algorithm,
I would really appreciate it.
And as this is a brand-new channel I started this year, it helps me out and it s free to
do.
If you love Mexican food, be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell for new videos
each week.
Thanks for doing that and now let us continue on with What makes Mexico Amazing in 2022.
#1 Food in Mexico Once again, we learn from wikipedia that In
2005, Mexico presented the candidature of its gastronomy for World Heritage Site of
UNESCO, being the first occasion in which a country had presented its gastronomic tradition
for this purpose.
And it is not hard to figure out why.
Mexican food is simply awesome.
Both for its variety and sheer good taste, Mexican food has been exported world-wide
and many variants and cheap imitations have tried to annex the popularity of Mexican dishes,
like the traditional taco to ride the wave of yumminess into the bank.
Thank you, but no thank you Taco Bell; stop trying to pretend you are Mexican food.
Intelligent Americans know that you can eat far better in any Mexican street corner than
in actual restaurants.
And the most iconic element in Mexican food is the tortilla, and the most iconic dish
prepared with tortillas is the taco.
Tortillas and tacos can be traced all the way back to prehispanic Mexico.
But tacos are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to delicious food.
What about Chocolate?
Yep, chocolate was first used in Mexico.
Avocados?
Mexico.
And then of course there is tequila.
Some of the lesser known delicacies can only be found by the bravest of anthropological
gastronomic adventurers.
Can you imagine how utterly mind blowing is to try chocolate covered grasshoppers with
hot chili peppers and avocado sauce?
The God Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of Old, is said to have gone to the land of
the dead, Mictlan, to discover the secret of corn, and the Mexhicas, which is how the
Aztecs called themselves (hence the name Mexico), were therefore known as the people of the
corn.
Or perhaps the Children of the Corn?
. Sorry, that was Corny.
#2 Electronics in Mexico You don t really associate Mexico with electronics,
but a little known fact is that Mexico has the sixth largest electronics industry in
the world after China, United States, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Mexico is the second-largest exporter of electronics to the United States where it exported $71.4
billion worth of electronics in 2011.
Currently electronics represent 30% of Mexico's exports.
You might not see the electronics in your PC s, iPhones and plasma televisions as being
Mexican, since most do seem to have Japanese names.
But take a look inside these little gadgets and you will see that many of the components
that make them work actually have tall sombreros and big moustaches.
Take that, Japan!
Also, Telmex, the nation s multinational Latin Language conglomerate that provides content
for most of Latin America operates 120 satellites and utterly dominates the telecommunications
industry for all of the Spanish Speaking world this side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, lots of Spanish-speaking homes in the good ol USA tune in to watch El Chavo del
Ocho . Deal with it, Hollywood.
#3 Automobiles in Mexico There is a very good reason that Detroit does
not manufacture cars any longer.
It s called Mexico.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have been operating in Mexico since the 1930s, while
Volkswagen and Nissan built their plants in the 1960s.
Cheap Mexican labor is the principal reason, but the Mexican Government's clever way to
look the other way when it comes to environmental and employee s rules and regulations in order
to please Big Auto is another.
Are you listening, Nicola Tesla?
So yeah, traffic jams in Mexico City can last for months at a time and the sky looks like
something out of Dante s Inferno, but hey, there is no lack of cheap labor, and nobody
here is going to worry about turning rivers and lakes into oily-mud puddles for the sake
of progress.
#4 People in Mexico Mexicans are a varied lot.
It is the 13th largest country in the world in terms of territory, and the 10th in terms
of population with over 120 million people representing most of the world s ethnicities,
but also, and more importantly, 56 native ethnicities who still speak their original
language.
Although Spanish is the principal language spoken, the fact that languages like Nahua,
Otomi, and Yaki are still spoken, speaks volumes of the resiliency of the natives against the
Spanish onslaught.
Still, Roman Catholicism still dominates with 77% of the population being slavish to the
Church, although Protestantism is rising steadily taking an 11% of the faithful out of the fold
of the Romans.
Romantic, hot blooded, and eternally macho, the typical Mexican is always willing to fight
to defend what is his.
Most Mexicans are mixed-race, and the fact that most Meztisos (as mixed-race Mexicans
are known) came from the rape of indigenous girls by Spanish Conquistadors is not lost
on the Mexicans.
Upper class Mexicans are mostly descended from the Spanish and have made a strong effort
to keep it that way, so Mexican racism is strong, and although it is not institutionalized,
it still prevails in many ways.
#5 Economy in Mexico There are three economic superpowers in the
American Continent: The USA, Brazil and Mexico.
Mexico is the USA s principal trading partner in the world, and also, sadly, a source of
cheap undocumented labor which manages to keep the American dominion over the rest of
the continent.
Industry comprises 33% of the Mexican Economy with Electronics and Auto Manufacturing being
the strongest.
Although never spoken, and usually hidden from the mainstream, the second largest producer
of wealth in Mexico is crime, particularly drug and people trafficking, with estimates
between 15 and 30% of the GNP.
The Mexican Government denies these figures, but most serious Mexican economists agree.
Tourism comes a hard third, with around 15%.
The validity of these figures is always suspect but certain facts are undeniable: Mexico has
the 15th largest GDP in the world with an estimated annual income of 4.5 trillion dollars.
Among the OECD countries, Mexico has the second-highest degree of economic disparity between the extremely
poor and extremely rich, after Chile.
This is something that can be easily observed if you go to the city and then take a trip
to some of the more isolated villages where people are still dying of hunger, have no
running water or electricity and are easy prey for the many Cartels who use them as
slave labor or worse.
The fact that the oil industry belongs to the government and year after year has lost
money although Mexico is one of the principal producers of this slippery product demonstrates
easily the level of corruption that brings about this terrible income disparity.
It's amazing how a nation so rich in natural resources can mismanage these resources to
such an extent that Mexico has to buy gas from the USA, when it sells Oil to other nations.
#6 Tourism in Mexico From Wikipedia we learn that As of 2017, Mexico
was the 6th most visited country in the world and had the 15th highest income from tourism
in the world which is also the highest in Latin America.
What would Spring Break in 2022 mean in the USA without Cancun and Acapulco?
Sadly, Coronachan has dismantled much of what made Mexican tourism attractive, like being
able to actually go out.
#7 Sports in Mexico The Granddaddy of all sports in Mexico is
the game of Pelota , which was originally played by the Olmecs but later on the Toltecs,
Mayans, Oaxacans, and pretty much everybody, including of course Aztecs.
It was similar to a mix of racquetball and basketball, with two teams having to score
by pushing a rubber ball through a circular disk made of stone.
The secret of the game (like so many other secrets) was lost when the Spanish put an
end to the good times.
It is said that the game, which was very much a ritual of some sort, claimed the lives of
the losing team.
Surely, when the Martians colonize Earth, they will say the same thing about football.
Modern day Mexicans love soccer above all things, although our current President Lopez
Obrador is a baseball fan, and he has built a stadium to promote the sport.
Anyhow, Mexico hosted the 1968 Olympic Games, and a little known fact about this is that
somehow, the Games led the Mexican Government to commit one of the worst massacres in Mexican
History, known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, when many students united to protest the Games
because of accusations of corruption.
This did not repeat when Mexico hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1986.
Predictably, Mexico is best at boxing, with thirteen Olympic Medals and a host of World
Champions.
After soccer (in which Mexico has sadly never been a World Champion) the two most popular
sports are Wrestling and Bullfighting, which is still legal somehow.
We did mention that Mexicans are hot-blooded, right?
#8 The Future of Mexico in 2022.
Last but not least.
There is an old saying in Mexico: Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.
There is no denying that the future of Mexico depends profoundly on its relationship to
the USA.
To begin with, Mexico lost half of its territory during the Mexican American War.
About 5% of Mexico s GDP depends on money that Mexicans living in the USA send to their
relatives back home.
Between 15-30% of Mexico s GDP depends on drugs and other illegal products sold to Americans.
So, yeah Poor Mexico.
But also poor US of A. Mexicans living Los Angeles, California are outnumbered only by
those living in Mexico City.
So the Mexican people have a huge say-so in American life, including the fact that most
of the drugs Americans consume come from Mexican Cartels.
Donald Trump s dream of a Big Wall was doomed to fail because Mexico and the USA are fast
becoming one big country, due in part to the enormous economic impact they have on each
other, but also due to the gigantic cultural history that has made Mexico the US s nervous
little chihuahua lapdog.
Ask any Mexican who rules Mexico? and they will say unanimously: The USA.
I for one, dream of the day when Mexico becomes the 52nd State of the Union, or maybe the
53, right after Canada.
It is somehow inevitable, and oddly enough, if it ever happened, it would give Mexicans
a huge advantage in negotiating with their northern neighbors, so the US would lose its
last actual slave-force, emancipating the Mexicans who now pick most of the oranges
in California, build most of the homes in South Carolina, and sell most of the drugs
in Chicago and Florida.
But who knows?
Maybe China will take over Mexico before that.
In that case, a Mexican-Chinese alliance might just recover California before it sinks in
the ocean.
So with that said, thank you so much for watching my video.
What do you think makes Mexico amazing?
There was a significant amount of research, production and exploring in Mexico that went
into making this video possible.
As this is a brand-new YouTube channel I just started - if you enjoy videos like this, please
click the subscribe button and hit that notification bell!
If you haven t seen already, check out my video on What I wish I knew before moving
to Mexico or 8 Reasons Why You should Leave Mexico Now!
As always, stay happy and healthy and stay tuned for another episode of Company Insight
next week.