I should mention that not everyone in Merida is cheap, by any stretch of the imagination. A lot of people appreciate and are willing to pay for quality, be it a service or a product. It's just that there are a lot of persons with an apparently privileged educational background and upper-middle to upper class socio-economic position that take great pride in paying absolutely the least possible amount of money for anything they can, and then brag about it. Please note: If you are offended by this particular article, obviously a nerve has been touched and perhaps you should review your spending habits and/or visit a psychologist.

As is the case anywhere, many wealthy folks in Merida derive great satisfaction contemplating their ever-growing bank balance, feeding it and stroking it like a cherished yet unresponsive pet and convincing themselves that it is the source of eternal happiness and the their claim to coveted social status. Their feeling of economic well-being, of self worth is all a reflection of the amount of money and assets accumulated. When death arrives, as it inevitably does, the years of accumulated wealth are not taken along, but rather left to a gang of unruly, spoiled and lazy offspring with no notion whatsoever of the concept 'work' who usually blow the entire fortune in a year or two. So why even bother? What is the point of having millions of pesos in bank accounts from here to Miami, and then (this is a true story) when visiting Miami, killing cockroaches on the walls at the dilapidated Dilido hotel in Miami Beach, and upon returning to Merida, bragging about how cheap the hotel was!? Of course it's a cheap hotel compared with others in the area - it's one of the worst hotels in Miami Beach! Sin embargo, when you open the local paper and check out vacation packages to the Florida area, there are always many ofertas including accommodation at the now infamous Dilido, because many locals are loathe to part with their hard-earned pesos even though they have money to burn.

When lying on his deathbed, with those millions in the bank, will the millionaire say to himself: "Que bueno that I didn't stay at any luxury hotels, never ate at an expensive restaurant, never took a spontaneous trip anywhere without checking for special fares first, and always paid as little as possible to the mozo who has worked in my house for the last 25 years, because now I'm rich! I'll be dead tomorrow, but look how much money I have!!" As the salivating family members await the outcome of the reading of the will, your money obsessed little soul makes it's way to wherever it will go, and that's it. End of story.

But this codera or cheapness, is by no means limited to the very wealthy; it permeates it's way into the middle class as well and is reflected in day to day living. For example, when the subject of piracy comes up, as in movies, CD's etc. most people will tell you that it's terrible, should be banned etc. etc. etc. But these same people, who are decidedly not poor, have studied at the Colegio Merida, Rogers Hall, Teresiano, or some other well-to-do school, drive late-model Voyagers, Windstars and Blazers, will drive all the way downtown to the market, fighting the insane traffic and trying to find parking on the street so as not pay the 3 peso parking fee in a lot; and buy pirated audio cassettes at 1/10th of the price of what the original would cost in a real, tax-paying, employment-creating store. The pirate-tape puestos are all over the place, in the open, and no municipal or state authority will touch them. It's a political problem, they say. The fact that these tapes are a) illegal; b) hurt the established economy and c) sound like s**t!! makes no difference to the Windstar ladies. The important thing is to have saved a few pesos and have somehow 'beaten' the system.

In Merida you will notice that computer store shelves are virtually empty when it comes to the software section. "Why is this?" you ask, "does no-one use software in Merida on their computers? Do they only have hand-me-down versions of Dos 3.0 from 1980 and stare at their blank screens?" No, everyone is running the same software that one person bought (usually the company where that person works) and has made multiple CD-ROM copies of.

But there are more ridiculous examples of this phenomenon. Check out some of these true stories:

The group of apparently well-to-do ladies (they all drive expensive shiny late-model vehicles and live in fashionable neighborhoods) who decided to go out for breakfast at a local luxury hotel, got all dressed and made up, left the mozos and muchachas in charge of the house, drove to the hotel, parked at the hotel; then changed their mind, while greeting each other in the lobby of the hotel, when they realized that no-one had brought along their discount card! They certainly weren't going to pay full price for the buffet!! What a thought!

Or the lady that wasn't going to order anything when she went out for dinner and simply asked the waiter for a glass of water. She then proceeded to borrow a lemon wedge from someone else's drink, added some sugar and stirred... voila! A free lemonade!!! She beat the system!! Or at least she thought so until the perceptive waiter presented her with a bill for a lemonade.

The couple that went to Las Vegas, with the cost that such a trip implies, and spent a grand total of 2 (two!) dollars gambling during the entire weekend, and lived to tell the tale upon their return.

My censor has asked me to remove the story of the man and his dental floss in the interest of family unity, so I'll leave that one to your imagination...

Those folks who, having purchased tickets for food and drinks at a school sports day function, and learning that the event was coming to a close, sent their daughter with the leftover tickets to buy all the bags of snacks she possibly could. "Go, go, they're paid for, go!"

Or the people that never take their kids to fancy restaurants where there is a buffet or the prices are a little higher than Burger King or Wendy's because the kids won't eat anything anyway. Never mind that they would learn how to distinguish good food from bad food, or would learn how to behave in a classier ambiance than that found at the local Pizza Hut; it simply doesn't make economic sense!

Even well-to-do doctors, or perhaps especially doctors, who make more than anyone else in Merida are obsessed with saving every possible centavo wherever and whenever possible. It's downright embarrassing to see a family of five sharing a couple (as in two) of lemonades around the pool in a resort area like Cancun, just because it literally hurts Daddy to spend any more money. Or the doctor that was in charge of organizing a convention and wanted to have a large sign made, but was too cheap to hire someone like HighTech Signs or some other computerized sign place, so decided that it would be more economical to laser print the sign in an extra large size, and then scotch-tape the 16 sheets of paper together... You can just imagine the impact this home-made 'sign' had on the convention participants who were coming from all over Mexico. This same member of the medical profession also found it rather prohibitive cost-wise to print color overheads for a presentation he was doing and enlisted the help of a local photographer who took pictures of the computer screen, and printed the results onto slides. In case the photographer is reading this, he and I have laughed about this particular case and a hundred others since then, and he thankfully no longer has the need to perform these kind of 'services'.

Kids birthday parties are a constant source of insight into the flimsy mechanisms grinding inside some Yucatecan heads. Where I come from, when someone invites you to a birthday party, you go out and buy a present that you think the birthday kid will need or appreciate or if you're lucky, even like. Here, it is amazing the amount of people that buy anything, but anything, with the sole deciding factor being the price of the gift in question. No matter if it is ugly, useless, tasteless, ridiculous or inappropriate, the important thing is that it was cheap, cheap, cheap. And if more money can be saved by not even wrapping the gift and presenting it in a Comercial Mexicana plastic shopping bag, the better.

The principal of the school whose main criteria when it comes to anything involving even a modest outlay of dinero, before talking quality or anything else, starts any conversation with a potential supplier with the phrase "pero que no sea muy caro" (but it shouldn't be expensive). The same philosophy is also applied to the hiring of teachers, so one can safely assume that the good teachers are there only because they are committed, and not for monetary reasons alone...

The cheapskates running businesses, owners of successful commercial enterprises who find 50 usd is just to much for a new logo design and so hire a graphic design student to design one in exchange for a couple of bucks, hassling the poor student endlessly until they get it just right - after all, they are paying for the service, so it must be done right. And those in the export and maquiladora business who are too conservative with their wallets to hire someone who knows English to check and or translate their texts, preferring to do it themselves (after all they did study in Iowa for a year - how hard can it be?) thereby rendering the results on par with some of those hilarious Chinese packages. These same businessmen, who should know better, also contract someone to provide an outline for a new project; be it a logo, promotional photos, whatever; then decide that "No, thank you, it's not what we wanted." They keep the samples and use them freely, thereby saving themselves a bundle in the process. On the radio, they use the latest hits to announce their products, not only incurring in flagrant violation of intellectual property rights (I'm sure that Marlboro paid a handsome price for their jingle music, and never intended it for the selling of shoes), but also saving more money!

These are just some examples of the pathological codera that has become a source of constant amusement to me, and sometimes leave me shaking my head in disbelief. Obviously, in the world of commerce, this attitude reflects directly on the types of products and services that are offered in Merida. When "cheaper is better" is the norm, anyone trying to provide a quality product or service at a premium price is bound to fail eventually, since the market for such a business is quite small. In addition, those of us who do not mind paying a little more for something that will last, that is well made, etc. are frustrated as well since the businesses who are trying to provide us with whatever it is they're offering can't survive and eventually disappear. In Merida, for example, you would never find a concerned group of citizens opposing the construction of a Sam's Club, as is the case in some cities in the U.S. where members of the community felt that opening such a super-store would threaten the livelihood of local businesses. Since cheaper is better, let Sam's come in and destroy local businesses; your average Merida citizen would rather save a few pesos than save a fellow citizens' business. Obviously malinchismo* plays an important part in this particular case as well, but that's a whole 'nother ball of wax!

Perhaps this desire to 'beat the system' and pay as little as possible, stems from some inherited insecurity from a long time ago, combined with the constant and consistently ineffective economic failures of the government. It is certainly not valid now, when many of Merida's citizens from all social levels boast about their penny-pinching tactics and cause the rest of us to shake our little uncomprehending heads in bewilderment.

Did you enjoy this page? Were you offended or intrigued? Are you a cheap person? If you are, then perhaps you would like to read about other people's attempts to save themselves money -
a little or a lot it doesn't matter - at the following page...

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