Strays in Mexico

Stray dogs in Mexico are generally not treated very well, and the most common reaction of street dogs is to dodge when humans come close, probably a conditioned response to having been frequently kicked or stoned or hissed at to scat.

One overblown fear is that you could catch rabies. Years of government vaccination campaigns —since 1990— has reduced this probability to practically zero. In 2005, officials noted 125 cases of rabies among dogs and cats in nine states, compared with more than 3,000 cases in 1990 in 29 states. The latest data from Mexico’s health ministry demonstrate that in 2017 there were just three cases in three states—and not every case affected humans.

According to estimates from health officials, there are around 100,000 reported cases a year of dogs attacking humans, of which nearly half were vaccinated dogs, suggesting that dogs with owners are just as likely (or unlikely) to bite you as strays. This is in a population of 130 million people, and an estimated 18 million to 20 million dogs.

Concerns about stray dogs that have been mentioned by different local governments carrying out round-up campaigns include health problems caused by feces, and in one case in northern Durango state, dogs were said to be a threat to drivers as they crossed the highway.

Precise data are hard to come by

While there appear to be fewer street dogs every time you look, the number of dogs with owners seems to be increasing, along with other security measures in residential areas. (Keeping a dog is a deterrent to burglars.) Statistics in this case don’t go very far—the maze of data on the country’s National Statistics Institute web site turns-up little meaningful data about man’s best friend.

They don’t say, for example, how many dogs get taken for walks every day and how many are left to rot on rooftops, barking in desperation at anyone who walks below, and raising their level of excitement if the pedestrian is accompanied by a dog.

Trends observed by watching dog walkers

A walk in the park —or in one of Mexico City’s trendy neighborhoods where younger generations can be seen walking their dogs instead of pushing baby buggies— of a morning or an evening turns up a fair amount of anecdotal evidence about the habits of people and their dogs. The ‘poop scoop,’ for example, is becoming increasingly common, although it’s still sensible to keep an eye on the ground before you.

In middle-class suburbia, there is a good deal of oneupmanship when it comes to owning a dog. It’s not very practical to staple a pedigree certificate to the animal, and so the more obvious implicit superlatives are biggest, rarest, most expensive—things that people just know and dogs just don’t care about.

With many city dwellers living in apartments, sub-compact dogs appear to be more plentiful than the larger breeds. Schnauzers and Pugs enjoyed a period of popularity in recent years, although their fame has become overshadowed by the Bulldog. But most likely, as more and more people get Bulldogs, and their novelty wears-off, a need will arise for a new “in” dog.

Learn more about caring for pets in Mexico

Mexperience publishes guides and articles about bringing pets to Mexico and caring for them here:

• Latest articles about pets in Mexico
• Dog walkers in Mexico
• Bringing your pets to Mexico

The easiest way is to look up the event online at Ticketmaster, which tends to handle sales for the usual commission to most events. A number of store chains have Ticketmaster booths.

This is fine for a regular season game, a play, a ballet at Bellas Artes, or even a relatively little known group or singer.

But since the rock stars of old — old rock stars — discovered that Mexico is a profitable place to perform, the number of “big” concerts has increased. Mexican fans are willing, and frequently do, pay higher prices for their tickets than their counterparts in the U.S. or the U.K. Literally higher, not purchasing-power-parity higher.

For blockbuster events, such as soccer finals, big time artists, visiting theater or dance troupes, and Broadway productions, the normal channels can be impossible unless you happen to have a particularly fast Internet connection and can fast-type credit card details, or have a whole day to spend lining-up at the venue when ticket sales are announced.

This is where the ubiquitous revendedores – ticket touts – come in.

No one seems to know when and where they get hold of the tickets that no one else could find either at Ticketmaster or at the box office, but they do, and the price they charge can go up exponentially for certain events, particularly concerts.

If you decide to get tickets through this channel, and it may be the last resort, it’s better to do it with the help of a regular concert goer, someone who knows the ropes and may even have the mobile number of a reliable revendedor.

The higher prices commanded by the touts can be attributed to supply and demand, but the resale of tickets under false pretenses, for example lying about what part of the stadium or hall they are in, isn’t beyond some of these people.

For particularly popular concerts where even the regular revendedores say they can’t get tickets, there will be others offering counterfeit tickets, known in the trade as chocolates, which will be found-out at the gate. One thing to watch for here: if more ticket touts are asking if you have spare tickets to sell than offering to sell you tickets, chances are that they are genuinely sold out, so beware.

Every so often, public outrage will be such that authorities will announce a crackdown, a couple of touts will be “arrested” and their tickets recovered, but as surely as it rains in the rainy season, they will be back the next week.

Of course you can put on some music to enjoy, although even the most avid music buffs might need a break from their usual fare, or want to listen to someone speaking “live,” especially first thing in the morning.

Car-pooling is still very much a thing for the well-organized, and a quick glance at the traffic in a big Mexican city suggests that the average occupancy per car is one-point-something. But even for those vehicles that might qualify for a car-pool lane, if there were such a thing, one-on-one conversation isn’t that attractive an option when leaving home before it gets light, as traffic levels in the capital suggest many do here.

Enter the radio.

Here in Mexico you could say that you are spoiled for choice. There are endless news shows, music shows of all kinds, talk shows, and call-in shows, but not that many documentaries or decent game shows.

As in other places, the popularity of a radio show has a lot to do with the personality behind the microphone. And ratings are their principal guide. Among the most competitive spaces, but not necessarily with the highest ratings, are the morning news programs.

Some run from 5:30 until 9 or 10 o’clock. The FM frequencies are the most coveted, and some shows will be on for an hour on FM, and then continue on an AM frequency as FM makes space for the next ‘ratings king’.

Four hours or more may sound like too much for one day’s news, and most of the morning programs are filled with the previous day’s news (since nothing much has really happened since then). This isn’t that much of a problem.

Commercial breaks are frequent and long, and are apt to cause listeners to flick through the stations to avoid them, usually with limited success.

Interviews are often dragged out affairs for this same reason. Then there are the “on this day in history” fillers, the traffic updates, and frequent updates on the outside temperature—or the time.

One particular show gives the time only in minutes, but not the hour. “Ten minutes to the hour,” “fifteen minutes past the hour.” The host will occasionally explain the reason for it, namely that Mexico has four different time zones and therefore it would be presumptuous to give a particular hour. It’s hard to know if this is simple pedantry, knowing that there are four time zones, or bragging about nationwide coverage of some kind. In any event, it serves to fill in some more space.

Most of the show hosts are also quite expert in spinning out news items with long introductions, to the news itself or someone who is about to be interviewed. These can be interspersed with comments and opinions, even about the least controversial of subjects. And in these days of Social Media listener-interaction, no host worth his salts will fail to read out a few Tweets or Facebook comments.

The main radio broadcasters in Mexico are Radio Centro, Radio Formula, W Radio, MVS, and Imagen—and their program listings and frequencies can be found on their web sites, which also include live streaming, and links to previously recorded shows.

Wide assortment of sweet and savory bread

It’s not unusual in the evenings to see people hanging around inside the shop, metal tray and tongs in hand, waiting for the next batch of hot rolls —oval-shaped bolillos or flat teleras— to be wheeled out from the ovens and tossed into the bins.

Then there are the shelves organized with a large variety of pan dulce —sweet bread— each piece with its own particular name.  Among the most popular are chocolate or vanilla coated conchas (shells), the sugar-covered bigotes (moustaches) or moños (bows), the plain mantecadas (cup cakes), ear-shaped pastries called orejas (ears), and the inevitable cuernos (croissants).

Then there are the crumbly cookies called polvorones (in various colors), the long, glazed pastries known as banderillas, and chinos, largish splodges of cake baked in wads of thick grease-proof paper, usually sprinkled with small pieces of walnut.

Bread shop scenes of a bygone era

In an era gone-by, the local panadería would often be the focal point of a bustling street corner, and in more innocent times than these, an evening meeting place for young lovers, particularly among the working classes. This was so common that the expression “¿a qué horas vas al pan?” (What time are you going for bread?) became a joke as a chat-up line.

Seldom lacking outside would be the vendor of tamales —sweet or savory corn dough served in a natural leaf wrapper— from a steaming pot settled into the front of a large tricycle; and not far away the wheeled oven-cart loaded with camotes (yams) and baked bananas would come trundling by, announcing its imminent arrival with an ear-piercing screech from a steam whistle mounted on the mobile stove, accompanied by the reassuring smoky odor from the smoldering charcoal embers inside.

A common and natural next-door neighbor to the bread shop is the grocery store —tienda de abarrotes— selling cold cuts, canned foods, soft drinks and liquor, and some have installed a rosticería: a roast chicken stand mesmerizing customers as they wait and watch inordinate amounts of grease drip from anemic-looking fowl going round and round on a spit.

Contemporary bakery stores in Mexico

Some of these scenes have been replaced over the years by the proliferation of multi-purpose supermarkets with their own in-house bakeries, particularly in the cities. The fancier supermarkets like CityMarket purvey a wide variety of sweet and savory breads baked in-store throughout the day.

Many of the old traditional corner street bread shops have closed, or their quality has gone downhill. Some are unable to compete with the variety of fancy doughnuts, and the slick presentations, or the price advantages of buying in bulk enjoyed by the large chains and many, if not most of the them, have lost their charm.

In their place, supermarkets with their own bakeries, specialist local independent bakers (most often advertising on social media), and larger bread shop chains like Esperanza have emerged to fill the never-ending demand for sweet and savory bread.

For every new bypass, overpass, or underpass, there appears to be a fleet of new cars ready to take up the additional space.  Unclog one main artery, and another one clogs up somewhere else. Surprisingly, the number of people using the capital’s Metro has fallen, perhaps as the proliferation over the last decade of attractive car loans which have made new cars more affordable.

Parking fees, on the other hand, have gone up substantially, and there’s nothing like driving to fully comprehend the reality behind the headline news that the government is rolling back the subsidies on gasoline. Local authorities have also been contracting firms to manage parking in districts and residential neighborhoods across the city: parking meters are appearing in ever-greater numbers, enforced by use of wheel clamps, or “candados” (padlocks) as they’re called in Mexico.

In more recent years, the hi-tech speed trap has complemented the wheel clamp as a way of punishing wayward motorists and filling the coffers of the city government. All across Mexico City, drivers are now presented with signs warning that traps are in operation—cameras that capture the license plates of passing cars and mail speeding and other fines to drivers’ homes. Where the speed limit is 80 kph (50 mph), this is reasonable, and may well reduce the number of accidents caused by speeding. But on stretches of major thoroughfares where the speed limit has been lowered to 50 kph (30 mph), it’s hard to persuade those being fined that the reason is any other than to collect money.

The calibration of the camera-operated traps is such that tolerance is low: a kilometer or two over the limit will trigger a fine.  Contesting the fines is a complicated and drawn out process, and most find it easier to just pay, especially as an 80% discount applies if payment is made within 10 days.  As letters sometimes get lost or delayed in the post, some drivers choose to download an App called “Auto Chilango” which alerts them if their license plate has been photographed so they can pay within the discount window.

Not only has traffic volume in the capital reached a critical point, so have people’s stress levels, it seems, with the resulting behavioral anomalies that will be obvious to visitor and veteran alike without any need to go into them here.

On the city’s cluttered roads, right of way appears proportionate to the monthly payments on the car. Exceptions to this rule are large trucks, interstate buses, and beaten up old cars and pick-ups on which the rust is proof of manufacture in the days when they still used metal. Your mostly plastic, fuel-efficient, zero emissions, lightweight “nave” will crumple to the tune of several years of deductibles and no-claims bonuses while the older vehicle in question will just need a dent hammered out for less than the cost of a tank of gas.

If, all this considered, you insist on sallying forth into the melee of capital city traffic, here are some simple rules for driving ‘the Mexico City way’:

• never let anyone pull out into your lane, unless you want to be late to your destination. If a bus or truck does pull out, yield and pepper the driver with abuse;
• if you reach the stop line in heavy traffic and the light’s green, enter the crossing even if you can’t exit. If you don’t, someone else will, snarling up the junction anyway;
• if you can advance three or four cars by slipping into the turning lane, do it, even if it means blocking the lane when the arrow goes green and getting the people behind you all worked up;
• if you think the car in the lane to your left plans to pull in front of you, or if it has indicated that it intends to do so, speed up;
• if someone is waiting for your parking space, take longer than usual to adjust your mirrors, fasten the seat belt, connect your phone to the in-car kit, etc.

By applying some or all of these rules, you can become a bona fide Mexico City driver, but if you wish to be an out-and-out five-star chilango behind the wheel, try the following: accelerate behind a car that is going at the indicated speed limit in the fast lane, up against the dividing wall. Brake within a few yards of it and turn on your left-indicator, showing the slowcoach that you intend to pass him on the left, without specifying whether you plan to go over or through the wall.

See also: Driving In Mexico and Living in Mexico Without a Car

You might imagine this would lead to a well-informed population, although the programs appear designed primarily to make sure you get to work twice as neurotic as you would have done had it just been the heavy traffic, and not also the frantic flicking back and forth through the radio stations as you navigate your way around an inordinate number of advertising breaks.

Amid this on-air array of news, phone-ins, trash music, noise, and seemingly endless and fruitless discussion on “topics of the day” fit to cure insomnia, lies an oasis of frequency modulation.

Radio Universal—88.1 FM* in Mexico City, and also available online—has two hours a day of Beatles music and trivia—8 to 9 a.m., and 1 to 2 p.m.—a harking back to the 1970s when “Beatles hours” were as frequent and as competitive as today’s news.

Back then, when English was less widely spoken, The Beatles were referred to as Los Beatles and shamelessly pronounced Los Beetlays. Now that the cuarteto Liverpool is making a bit of a comeback among the savvy Internet generation, the group is pronounced more like Beadles—probably the U.S. influence.

This doesn’t mean a return of Beatlemania, but rather that any iPhone worth its salt is expected to have at least a smattering of retro bands and in that sense, a member of the earphone set will happily concede that the Beatles had “buenas rolas“—and perhaps in the same breath ask: “John Lennon was one of the Beatles? Oh. I thought so.”

* For decades, Radio Universal broadcast on 92.1 FM until 2016 when the frequency changed.  The exact reason why is unclear, although it appears related to the term of the contractual frequency concession, which ended in June 2016.  Frequent listeners and fans won’t mind the frequency change, and in these days of digital airwaves, where people listen online and in-car radios automatically scan the networks and display key information like the station name, it probably won’t make much difference anyway.

But on one particular kind of Friday in Mexico —viernes quincena— when pay day coincides with the last day of the week, the congestion is even greater.  Not just the traffic thickens. As the working people have money to spend, this day you can find yourself in long lines for restaurant tables, cinema tickets, or at the supermarket checkout.

People mill around at malls, and finding a parking spot can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. (Navigating the narrow underground parking lots is a particularly useful skill to develop in busy cities.)

The advent of direct deposit for wages did away with much of the lining-up at banks to cash checks, which in years past was about as daunting a prospect as can be imagined. But people in Mexico still often prefer to use cash so lines at ATMs have replaced many of the lines at bank branches.

What the British call a fortnight the Mexicans call the quincena—a 15-day period between pay days. And as most wages are paid bi-weekly, the pay day is also referred to as la quincena.

The noticeable buzz of commercial activity illustrates the fact that much of the working and middle classes, here as elsewhere, live from one paycheck to the next. Sales numbers from the retailers association Antad, and from its biggest member Walmart reflect this. Months that have an extra Saturday —a typical shopping day— tend to see bigger increases in sales, and the effect is even greater when the weekends coincide with payment of la quincena.

Officially, pay days are on the 15th and 30th of each month, or the nearest prior working day. So if the 15th or 30th falls on a weekend, wages should be paid on the Friday before. Pay days that fall on the Monday can be devastating for weekend plans.

And as there are 24 pay day quincenas per year (52 weeks), inevitably there are a number of quincenas largas, or long quincenas. These are usually following months with 31 days, and they can become even longer if the preceding pay was deposited ahead of a weekend.

Social media provides many examples of the anxiety surrounding the timing of deposits and the efficiency of HR and payroll departments. The X account @MundoGodinez addresses with considerable humor the daily life of the typical Mexican office worker, and la quincena looms large as a subject at the front of most minds.

See also: El Aguinaldo

The British set a lot of store by the quality of their tea, hence George Orwell’s eleven golden rules for ensuring a nice cup of tea, or Monty Python’s “oh they don’t make it properly here, do they?”

The British are best known in Mexico for the Beatles, and after that for “la hora del té.” But being renowned for this four o’clock refreshment isn’t enough to fill local stores with PG Tips.

Mexican tea culture is known for its traditional herbal teas —some of which are reputed to carry medicinal properties— and so the tea shelves at even the best-stocked Mexican supermarkets tend to be loaded with herbal and fruit infusions that reflect this culture:

• manzanilla (chamomile);
• tila (linden flowers);
• azahar (orange blossom);
• yerbabuena (spearmint); and
• limón (lime, or lemongrass)…

…are just a few you’ll find in a colorful array of choices, but there will be only a limited supply of black tea—and that often at a higher price than you are used to paying.

The most common locally-packaged brand of black tea is Lagg’s. Imported Lipton tea is available at some places at times, and several supermarkets sell imported Twining’s English breakfast and Earl Grey teabags.  But none of these come close to delivering the experience that can be enjoyed from a freshly brewed pot of tea made using high quality whole-leaf loose tea.

Occasionally the section of fancy goods at your local supermarket will have one-off deliveries of quality whole-leaf teas, —Darjeeling or Assam, for example— which if you want you should snap up quickly as there are no guarantees of restocking. Stumbling upon surprises like that can make the enjoyment even greater, as things are very easily taken for granted.

Devotees who attempt to seek a regular supply of whole-leaf tea for their brewing pleasure in Mexico should repair to specialist food markets that tend to offer a selection of imported gourmet brands, although there’s nothing to be gained caviling about the price as these teas trade at a generous premium in Mexico.

Traditional wisdom says that a proper cup of tea needs to be prepared with water boiling at around 100 degrees centigrade which would pose a problem for those visiting, or living in, Mexico’s highlands, where water naturally boils at lower temperatures.

However, tea expert and founder of the Rare Tea Company in London, Henrietta Lovell, says that the 100-degree rule is a myth, and that only mass-produced tea bags require this treatment, whereas better quality whole-leaf teas benefit from being brewed in water at lower temperatures: white teas 70-degrees, and black teas 85-degrees centigrade.

If you can’t source the better quality teas locally and can’t get used to the taste of tea from teabags here, then it’s a good idea to stock-up on your next shopping trip overseas, or ask friends and family to pack some on their next visit. Otherwise, there is nothing to be done but switch to coffee, which Mexico has plenty of, and great variety.

One of the best known works of Spanish literature is such a one – Lazarillo de Tormes.  The delightful 16th century satirical novel is standard fare in schools and is frequently used as an introduction to Spanish literature for both students of Spanish and native speakers.

The novel is considered to be a pioneering work of the genre known as picaresca, to which the later, even better-known Don Quixote de la Mancha belongs.  It’s also plugged as a fine example of Spain’s golden century, and serves to introduce the subject of censorship by the Spanish Inquisition, since it was one of the works that made the Index of Forbidden Books, a sort of a sixteenth century hall of fame.

The book is an autobiographical account of the fictional life of Lázaro, an orphaned boy who describes his adventures with a series of masters, each one a typical character of the society of the time.

And while Don Quixote is better known than Lazarillo, it’s probably not better read, on account of the length of it.  One of the advantages of Lazarillo is that it’s very short, so short that anyone can finish it without the excuses and other dubious claims made by those (of us) who made it some distance past the other’s introduction to an “idle reader” and intend to finish it one day.

Lazarillo should probably grace any bookshelf that includes Spanish works, but the text is also available online at a number of sites, both in Spanish and English.

The birds living in the capital —of which there are a considerably large number for such a vast expanse of concrete and bitumen— find their dawn-welcoming choruses competing for ears with the continuous rush of tires on tar, the roar of diesel combustion, and piercing shrieks from the whistles of policemen trying to keep it all moving along.

Perhaps not surprisingly, noise is something of a status symbol for the chilangos as they struggle to be noticed among 20 million others.

The owners and operators of the ubiquitous micros —shuttle buses— may well skimp when it comes to seating arrangements, faulty light bulbs, or sticky doors, but spare no expense when rigging up sound systems for the apparent entertainment of the driver alone. From the intricate set-up of tweeters and woofers, no one is spared the blast of música tropical, corridas, or rock en español.

In case this isn’t enough, some replace the standard horn with a series of trumpets pumping out Yankee Doodle or La Cucaracha, both proclaiming “make way for the raucous.”

The penchant for forcibly sharing dissonant tastes extends to the owners of cars, many of whom roll down their windows to let fellow motorists and pedestrians appreciate the finer points of disco, rap, or hip-hop—at full volume.  Pathos comes to mind as the driver tries to shout “look at me” through the speakers, but actually insists, “listen to this awful din.” None of the loudies seem to like Simon & Garfunkel.

And, as elsewhere, even in the best of homes decibels rather than premises, inference, and deduction are the main currency for settling differences in points of view.  Here, the more the merrier combines with the louder the better to produce some ear-splitting enforcement of opinion, making the expression, el que calla otorga, (whoever says nothing, consents) somewhat redundant.

Mexico is seeing a renewal in excitement about railways as the government tries to make passenger service a thing—again.

A brief backdrop

First a bit of history. The thing for which president Porfirio Díaz was most famous —before he became infamous for clinging to power for 30 years— was the development of a network of railways, much of which was done by foreign companies.

The country’s first railway was conceived in 1837, when the president at the time granted a Mexican businessman a concession to build a line from the Gulf coast port of Veracruz to Mexico City. The first train to run between the two cities, under a later concession, left the capital in 1873—not bad as delays and cost overruns go. The network expanded from 9,500 km (5,900 miles) in 1890 to more than 19,000 km (11,800 miles) by 1910. A nicely illustrated history of the railways (in Spanish) can be found here.

The Mexican railways were nationalized in 1937 by then-president Lázaro Cárdenas, a year before the expropriation of the oil industry, and run by the state for the next six decades.

By the time the government decided that private companies would do a better job of maintaining and improving the country’s railways, passenger travel by train from one city to another was virtually unheard of.

The private concessions were only granted for freight service, and the railway companies focused on that with few exceptions such as the journey through the picturesque Copper Canyon and the tourist train connecting Guadalajara with the agave-growing town of Tequila.  Passenger rail travel was removed from Mexico’s consumer price index around the same time that bottled drinking water was added. Signs of changing times.

Service on the handful of routes where passenger travel was still available into the 1980s was somewhat typical of a state monopoly in its last throes—bad. Air travel was still prohibitively expensive at that time for many people, but highway expansion made bus routes more convenient, and significantly faster than the rail services being offered.

Getting back on track

Fast forward to the 21st century. Low-cost airlines fly all over the country, interstate buses come equipped with toilets and movies, and long-distance passenger rail is beginning to make a comeback.

The idea began with the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who had plans for a bullet-train from Mexico City to Querétaro, including a future extension to Guadalajara, a trans-peninsular passenger train joining the Yucatán state capital city of Mérida with the popular tourist region of Riviera Maya, and a train from Mexico City to the State of Mexico capital Toluca.

From the outset the projects were criticized as being unprofitable, which they evidently would be, but that wasn’t the point: the plan was to reignite the rail industry and recreate a modern high-speed passenger train network capable of reducing travel times along what have become highly congested highways and give passengers more choice in travel.

To cut a long story short, the bullet train project was canceled for political reasons —all was not well with the way it was awarded— and shortly after, the trans-peninsular line was postponed indefinitely for economic reasons. The Mexico City-Toluca line went ahead but was far from complete by the time his term ended.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) went a step further. The idea of a trans-peninsular train was rekindled and expanded into the Tren Maya, a tourist line running around the entire Yucatán peninsula. The Mayan Train opened almost a year ago, although some parts have yet to be completed.

Initiatives begin to pick-up steam

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office on Oct. 1, 2024, took up the baton and intends to continue expanding passenger rail service. Her government has resumed plans for a Mexico City-to-Querétaro train —but not a bullet train— and others in different parts of the country.

They include completion of the Tren Maya, the Mexico City-Querétaro project, the Interoceanic line crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, several lines to the new Mexico City airport at Santa Lucía (including a stop on a new Mexico-to-Pachuca route), and others from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border, and Querétaro to Irapuato.

Her efforts will be supported by a recent constitutional change restoring government control of the railways. The railway bill was even supported by the opposition—an unusual occurrence in these days of political division. Private operators can make their own plans for offering passenger service, and have expressed interest in several projects, or they can allow third parties access to their lines. Government plans also involve laying new rails where necessary.

Apart from a veritable army of windshield cleaners and vendors of newspapers, loose cigarettes, phone cards, confectionery, toys, maps, balloons, and so on, also competing for space at the capital’s junctions are jugglers, spinning top whizzes, fire-eaters, acrobats, and clowns.

Many drivers have little time for windshield cleaners, and frantically wave them away as they approach the car armed with a plastic bottle filled with soapy water, a small cloth, and a rubber scraper. Some quickly wind-up the windows and turn on the car’s windshield wipers, and become particularly irate if the cleaner has disguised his intentions and hit the windshield with a jet of water from the bottle while appearing to look in the other direction, shrugging as if to say, “well I’ve started now so I may as well finish.”

Contributions to the cause are voluntary, and as people easily become bored, and necessity is the mother of invention, a fair deal of ingenuity is required for success in some of these thankless occupations.

A fine example came recently on Reforma avenue: a mime with painted face, flower-pot hat, and white gloves went through the motions of cleaning a windshield. First the invisible jet of water, then the circular motion of scrubbing the glass clean, then the scraping off the water, first vertically then horizontally. The gimmick seemed to work, as the driver handed over a coin, so did the driver behind who watched it. After all, what better if people don’t want their windshields cleaned than not to clean them.