shoestring gringa

I’d have to say the difficulty of getting information is right up there with shopping withdrawal as a major source of culture shock to gringos in Mexico, or at least to this one. We’re always hearing about how we live in an “information society,” but it never really meant much to me until I moved to Mexico, which is decidedly not a member of the club, surface appearances to the contrary. It’s true that communications technology here has improved vastly. Cell phones and internet cafes are everywhere, and you can get phone and even high-speed internet service in most places now. So, if I need to find the zip code of a bank in NY, or find out the hours of a museum in Paris, it’s business as usual. However, if I need the zip code of a bank in Mexico City, or the hours of a museum in Oaxaca, say, I’m likely to be out of luck.

The tech revolution in Mexico has mainly accomplished two things that I can see: (1) Enabling the population to do what it loves best, which is to chat with one another, more often, and (2) enriching the providers. In terms of making information available, it hasn’t done a whole lot. Getting information is not the easy walk through the Yellow Pages we gringos are accustomed to, and I’ve personally found this more frustrating than shopping problems.

I used to get really irritated with the Mexigringo, in the early days of our relationship, when we needed to shop for some specific item. He’d jump in the car and drive to the nearest likely store, get out of the car, wander all over the store, finally find a clerk only to learn that they didn’t have such an item, then get back in the car and drive on to the next store. We lived in L.A., by the way, where there are lots of stores. I found his approach to shopping the biggest waste of time I’d ever seen, and thought it was some kind of character defect on his part. With time, I convinced him of the superiority of looking in the Yellow Pages and calling around first. Well, twenty years later, I now know why he did it that way. It’s the only way you can ever find anything in Mexico.

It’s not that Yellow Pages don’t exist in Mexico, they do; you’ll usually be given a copy when you get a new phone, and you can also obtain them just by asking in any TelMex office. And they look just like the ones in the states, from the outside. It’s once you try to use them that you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore.

One big problem is that only a miniscule portion of businesses advertises in them. It’s way beyond the means of most small businesses here. So you’re less likely to find a good price even if you manage to find the item or service in question.

If you do find a place in there, don’t expect their business hours to be noted, that’s rare indeed. Sometimes even the address will be lacking, you’ll need to call and ask for it. Good luck if you don’t speak Spanish!

The rationale behind the categories used in the Mexican Yellow Pages is obscure, nay mysterious, in the extreme. One of my favorites is the long series beginning with the designation “Artículos” (things). You have things for beauty, things for photography, things for the home, things for engineering and architecture, things for publicity and promotion, religious and church things, things for industrial cleaning and maintenance, and things for regular cleaning. Some, but not nearly enough, of these are cross-indexed to the more useful word (i.e. the non-thing word). Another great category is “Materiales,” which encompasses teaching materials, electric materials, first aid materials, materials for laboratories, schools, and industries (huh?), materials for hospitals and clinics, iron materials, construction materials, decorating materials, packing materials, raw materials, raw materials for the food industry, and raw materials for the rubber industry. Oh and, not wishing to belabor the subject, but I can’t neglect to mention the eminently helpful “Tiendas” (stores) category.

The White Pages are not much better. An amazing number of really large concerns are nowhere to be found in them. (I remember spending half a day once trying to locate the number of the beauty salon at Liverpool, a huge upscale department store in Merida. The MG finally found it by calling directory assistance). And just FORGET trying to find the number of a government office or anything like that.

Lots of big places, like banks, have websites now. Beautifully designed, great graphics, a button to click for all the bank’s branch locations which you’re looking for – and no locations listed behind the link. Lots of style. No links.

You can try finding stuff through the newspaper classifieds too, but these have their own special annoyance: They almost never specify a price in the ad. People are very coy about stating prices in Mexico. So, you have to call in order to find out if you’re even interested in the item.

The real information network in Mexico is the person-to-person one, as it has always been. This involves asking anyone you can corner where to find the desired item or service, following up on their suggestion, and repeating the process (also known as the wild goose chase) until you either find what you need or decide you really didn’t need it after all.