shoestring gringa

The conventions regarding street addresses in Mexico are somewhat different than those in gringolandia, and not terribly consistent from one place to another, but here are some general pointers that may be helpful.

The street name is given first, the number second:

Calle 25, No. 150 (25th Street, Number 150)

There is often, especially in big cities, a helpful addition of nearby cross streets given:

Calle 25, No. 150 ÷ 66 y 68 (read as “entre [between] 66 and 68th Aves.),

or Calle 25, No. 150 x 76 (por [near, by, or at] 76th Ave.)

or Calle 25, No. 150, Esq. 76 (esquina [at the corner of] 76th)

Most towns consist of named neighborhoods called colonias, which are included in the address.

Calle 25, No. 150 x 76, Colonia Centro

Or newer areas of housing developments may be designated as Fraccionamiento (abbreviated Fracc.) rather than Colonia.

And finally, there’s the city, state, and zip.

Merida, Yucatan C.P. 97000

Mexico

I saw somewhere that it’s a good idea to write “C.P.” before the codigo postal on mailing addresses in Mexico to distinguish them from US zip codes which are identical in some cases. Probably not a bad idea.

Many buildings, especially in smaller communities, have never been anointed with a number. These may be designated as either

Calle 150 S/N (Calle 150 sin numero [without number])

or

Domicilio Conocido (known residence)

This may seem excessively vague and annoying by gringo standards, but Mexicans move about far less than their northern neighbors, making a rigid system of addresses a low priority item to say the least.

If you’re searching for a specific address, locating the street and then the number is unlikely to work too well anyway, as street signs and building numbers are conspicuously lacking. It’s usually necessary to ask for directions, often repeatedly until you zero in on the location. As with most things in Mexico, personal interaction is required, and landmarks such as “the Corona beer store” or “the telephone tower” are usually more useful than street names and numbers.

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.

Well, I don’t know how secret this actually is, but it sure got by me until a recent evening when I was perusing the details of our latest, appallingly expensive, phone bill from TelMex. At first I assumed the cause was simply a large number of long-distance calls still coming in from when we were buying our house. But no, there was more. On the bill I noticed a section which shows the local numbers called, along with the number of calls made to each one. And one of these numbers, which had an oddly familiar look to it, showed 136 calls! It turned out to be the number the computer called for our dial-up internet access (recently changed to a low-speed modem connection when TelMex apparently got rid of all dial-up).

Feeling quite the Sherlock Holmes, I calculated that we had 136 local calls to dial up the computer in that month, plus 58 calls in all other categories (local, Mexican long distance, international long distance, to cell phones, and to 800 numbers), for a total of 194 calls.

Now, here’s the point I hadn’t quite understood before (and I bet plenty of other people don’t either). You supposedly get 100 calls included in your monthly service fee. But these are not “free local calls” like in the states (where the number of local calls is generally unlimited and actually IS included in the basic service fee). No, no, no. These TelMex “calls included in the monthly rent,” are not free, or indeed actually “included,” at all – in fact EVERY FREAKING CALL is billed separately according to the number of minutes talked and whether it was made at peak or non-peak times. (Non-peak is like between 3:45 and 4 a.m. or something – okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Forgive me.) What is actually happening, people, is that there is a SURCHARGE for any calls exceeding the 100-call limit. And that surcharge is 1.48, one peso and 48 centavos each, which is say 14-15 cents US. Which added up, on this particular bill, to $139.12 pesos, or ~$13 US.

I’m just wondering now how it’s going to work with this new modem we have which is connected all the time. How are they going to make up these revenues they’re losing by getting rid of dial-up? I’m sure they’ve got something in mind.