The church
The Virgin of Guadalupe really runs Mexico. She is everywhere! Mexico is one of the world's most religious countries in terms of those who practise. We have seen taxi drivers and pedestrains cross themselves everytime they pass a church, wealth is installed in the churches and bells ring to let you know just when to say a prayer. We are quite over it.
I have seen more blind people than you can poke a white cane at. Every train trip I have taken a blind person gets on and sells CDs. Sometimes they are accompanied by a son or daughter who collects the money. But sight is a health issue and praying to the virgin wont make it better. (Comparisons with Cuba are just too easy to make.)
Women
In Mexico the population is increasing. All over Mexico women walk, and work and shop, and run stalls with children strapped to to them. Talk about encumbered! The only people we have seen with a pusher are tourists. But in the whole time I have been here I have only seen one man carrying a child and he did not have the child strapped to him.
There are shoe shine guys on every corner, but I have not seen a woman getting her shoes shined, very few women drive cars and perhaps it is my imagination but when I see couples in public, the women seem to be tending to the men.
We heard many truely terrible stories from tourists about being extorted by the police, but the worst one of all was a Filippino woman who was raped by the police, she realised a few weeks later that she was pregnant and so went to the doctor. From there she was taken straight to jail where she was imprisoned for three months in order to prevent her from having an abortion.
The connection between the church and the position of women could not be clearer.
No comments:
Post a Comment