Juntos Somos Mas…o Menos
All over the area here in San Miguel is a painted exhortation in Spanish: “Juntos Somos Mas”. Roughly translated, it means “Together we are more,” meaning something like “we are more working together than separately.”
In practice, what “Juntos Somos Mas” actually means is that whenever it’s possible to split a job that would ordinarily employ one person into one that would employ several, do so. That way, everyone gets a little bit of something. On the bus there’s a kid whose job it is to hand out ticket stubs and help people on and off. In the supermarket, whenever the cashier needs to break a large bill, a second cashier actually runs the bill over to the manager’s table and brings back change.
Alternatively, the piecework realities of Mexico’s economy also mean that if there’s a way to split up something sellable, do so, and more people can get a little something selling it. If there’s a spare spot of roadside, a place to set up a table or a booth, there will be someone there, selling something. In the streets are flocks of kids selling gum, toy vendors, shoe shine salesmen, ladies with buckets full of nopales, salsa, and tortillas. The mercados are already carrying bootlegs of first run movies still playing in theaters down the street. Most booths selling music “discos” carry their share of CD’s of dubious provenance, sporting xeroxed labels declaring the contents to be the “best Hip-Hop of 2004,” or whatever. Stand still longer than 30 seconds in the Tuesday flea market, and someone will wander by with replacement blender carafes, tools, honey products, or anything else. Most startling today was the kids in the flea market trolling the aisles selling insecticide. Each kid had a rolling table, loaded with fly strips (the dangerous kind that should never be used in sealed buildings) and bright red bug killer piled in paper plates, sparkling and glittering like colored sugar.
Joy’s told me a story of an old woman she and Lena encountered in Morelia. In the mornings this woman panhandled change. Then, she would stop in the market to buy limes, which she would quickly turn into limeade and sell during the afternoons. The combination gave her more money than she would get just by panhandling. Few people, as long as they have some way of making a living, wait for handouts. It’s a stark contrast to the homeless panhandlers you see in the Bay Area–I’m often shocked by how many are younger and probably stronger than I am.
