MEXICO - part 1

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· MEXICO - part 1

In a nutshell. The Federal Republic of Mexico with its area of 760,373 square miles and its population pushing 30 millions is the third largest nation of North America (following Canada and the United States) but the second largest in population.

Considering the fact that she is an immediate neighbor of ours, it is astonishing how many misconceptions Americans who have never been to Mexico have acquired. Perhaps this is because the least colorful, the least desirable sections of this fascinating country are right on our border and directly across from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. In fact, the traveler has to proceed several hundred miles into the interior before he finds what could be called the "real Mexico."

If I had to spend the rest of my life in any one country and couldn't choose my own, I think it would be Mexico that I selected. There is certainly no other country I have seen in the world that offers so much in the way of the enjoyable things of life. She has scenic beauty to rival anything in Switzerland; her climate tops by far that of Spain, Italy and Greece; her food rivals that of any European land save France, and any Oriental country save China; her historic monuments are surpassed only by Egypt; the variety of her countryside is rivaled nowhere from the deserts of the north, to the cool plateaus of her central sections, to the jungles of Yucatan. You can ski in summer, if you wish, or swelter in winter. Or you can abide in such high altitude towns as Cuernavaca or Guanajuato, where the tropical climate is cooled by the seven thousand feet that they are above sea level. Here you will be comfortable wearing your sport jacket in August, nor will you need more in January.

Only a few years ago Mexico was comparatively unknown to we Americans from the United States. The majority of us had a vague picture which involved Pancho Villa, played by Wallace Beery, dashing over the countryside, shooting and burning, and sneering at "the gringos." We thought of Mexico as backward, her people barefooted peons a hundred years behind the "civilized" nations of the world.

But then a change began to come over us. Our art students returning from Europe informed us that in Paris and Rome the most famous "American" artists were not from the United States, as far as opinion in Europe was concerned, but were Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and Tamayo, from Mexico. Occasional visitors south of the border returned with the information that Mexico city was one of the most cosmopolitan and beautiful large cities in the world.

And then, following the war, we began to hear in earnest of the cheap prices. Why, you could live in a fabulous beauty spot for less than a hundred a month!

So we began to visit this land to our south. First a trickle, then a stream of tourists, and then a fabulous rush which is still taking place. As in any land which enjoys (or suffers, according to how you look at it) a tourist boom, certain cities became centers of tourism and prices there zoomed. Such places as Acapulco, famed Pacific coast beach resort, quickly became almost as expensive as Florida or California. Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City, became a city of retired wealthy folk, sky-high in price by Mexican standards. Mexico City itself began to feel the boom and American style apartments and houses upped in price.