Our city is not friendly

A few days ago on a whim while I was thinking of the things I have not done and would like to do, I wrote off to some Spanish immersion schools. Most of them are a bit too "studenty" sounding, ie. meant for 18 year olds. But what the hell. It wouldn't really matter; I just thought some structure and a week or two of immersion would be good for my Spanish.

I got this reply from one school, after I wrote to ask them if there was an elevator in their building. The photos on the web site made it look like a building on a flat street without stairs and it was multi-story. So, I asked, and got this answer:

The Institute and the some host families are wheelchair friendly... the only problem is the City of Puebla. The city of Puebla is not friendly at all so that is the reason that we do not accept students that are in the need of a wheelchair.

Don't you love the part about how they're wheelchair-friendly? So friendly that they don't accept wheelchair-using students!

Now that's friendly!

The whole Ciudad de Puebla -- friendly!

*snort*

I wrote back to say that they should not make a policy not to accept disabled students. Instead, they should provide specific information about the buildings and town, and let people make their own decisions.

Comments

[badgerbag]

Oh, that was even more hilarious. Here is the school's answer, and my further reply.

========================================
Spanish Institute of Puebla wrote:
> The infrastructure in México is not user friendly for individuals in wheelchairs... we have had students that use wheelchairs and have had many problems due to the infrastructure, so we are upfront in telling you the limitations you will have...
No, you aren't upfront. Your web site isn't, and you didn't tell me about "limitations I will have", you said that your school doesn't accept students who use a wheelchair.

> I know this is a concept hard to understand from a US point of view... but the sidewalks are full of potholes and they do not have ramps in the corners.
The sidewalks aren't so good here either, and I daily deal with curbs with no ramps. How do you think I manage in daily life?

Do you think sidewalk potholes are the most difficult thing I have to deal with in a wheelchair? I'm amused...
>
> Individuals in wheelchairs in Puebla have someone that helps them out all the time (an assistant) so they can get around.
How do you know I don't? Why do you think that if I needed an assistant in Puebla, I wouldn't hire one?

Cheers...

[Donna]

I find this shocking 17 years after the ADA was passed and wonder if their policy and lack of accommodation is illegal?

[badgerbag]

It's not very shocking, and it's Mexico not the U.S obviously and I don't know what the law is, but what a condescending attitude from the school -- to make the decision that PWD are too inconvenient, and wouldn't know that "things are different in Mexico" and wouldn't know how to deal with it if they needed extra help.

I should have recommended Moving Violations as a good book for someone who thinks that people with wheelchairs can't travel independently in "inaccessible" places.

[Pretty Lady]

It's not just about disabilities. Everything is like that in Mexico. Everybody is friendly and non-accomodating. People who have 'official' jobs do not do those jobs; they do not take responsibility for either solving problems or communicating about problems, they just placidly let people suffer. It's not a malicious thing, it's a passivity thing. There's a profound will-less-ness in the culture.

It's not condescending, either--it's just a lazy refusal to think.

[vito excalibur]

Dicks! Good on you for at least bitching at them...

[badgerbag]

Pretty Lady, I feel like I can't let that pass... summing up all of Mexican culture as exhibiting a "lazy refusal to think" is at worst racist and at best extremely US-centric. Another thing, everything you say could also apply to many situations in the U.S., where I have many times encountered bureaucrats who pass the buck for one reason or another. And when you go around with a visible disability anywhere, people are "friendly and non accomodating". Yes there are cultural differences. But I am uncomfortable with your saying that an entire culture is will-less... based on what? Didn't they install your plumbing or phone fast enough when you lived there? Or what is it? I'm sure you could tell stories, but I might interpret them differently.

What I might think of as a sort of passive resistance to systemic problems combined with anarchic individualism in the political sphere can be a useful adaptation or survival mechanism. Rather than a thing being a reliable, anonymous civic system (such as getting your phone turned on or a disabled person going from home to school) it is a family system, so your brother's wife's cousin hooks up your phone or gets his friend with a taxi to take you to school. Thus, you sidestep a civic system which has many years of history of corruption (corruption which also has more complex causes than "laziness" or "not thinking". Also, why would people in a city want to make it amenable to gringo-invasion and annoying, if rich, tourists? Or anyone who doesn't have connections/isn't "family" or known through connections? We expect anonymous service in our culture. Who is to say that isn't wrong ? Small towns in the U.S. also have histories of resisting outsiders and change, if you look. In short, it is more complicated, as I'm sure you actually do know from history as well as personal experience.

Yes, I would like ramps everywhere, and I want other disabled people to organize and fight for civil rights. I also will call out ableism when I run into it directly (ableism common everywhere such as that cab driver's the other night, when he told me he wouldn't pick me up in a wheelchair for fear of having to be responsible for me.) However, I'm not generalizing that to saying that an entire other country is lazy and doesn't think. So, I have to call you out on that. Surely you knew I would - were you trying to provoke my response?

[Pretty Lady]

What I might think of as a sort of passive resistance to systemic problems combined with anarchic individualism in the political sphere can be a useful adaptation or survival mechanism.

Certainly it started out that way, 500 years ago when the Indians were enslaved by the Spanish. Now it has ossified into, as I say, pandemic will-less-ness. People exhibit no cognizance of the notion that their own actions can affect their own or anyone else's circumstances. It is a terrible thing to destroy the will of a group of people. One of the major problems with the Mexican economy these days is that anyone with any initiative at all is over the border as soon as they can scrape together the travel money.

You are right that getting anything done in Mexico is all about personal and family connections. But the substance of your post was highly US-centric, in that you expected full disclosure on the website, and practical assistance from the person you contacted. It was my experience, living in Mexico, that that is a wholly unreasonable expectation. It doesn't work that way.

You also made the assumption that the attitude of the person you communicated with was 'condescending,' and that it represented the attitude of the school as a whole. That's a HUGE assumption; you're crediting the whole system with a great deal more engagement and cohesiveness than actually exists. People in official positions in Mexico will tell you whatever's easiest for them to say in the moment. It will change from moment to moment, and usually represents nothing remotely connected to an 'official policy.'

The shorthand, US-centric word for this attitude is 'lazy,' which is why I used it. Another shorthand US-centric word for common, everyday communications in Mexico is 'lying.' You have to learn to pay close attention to things like verb tenses, context and intonation to figure out what the facts are and what to expect; before that, you spend a lot of time going on wild goose chases and getting stood up for appointments.

Living in Mexico I had my US-centric assumptions challenged daily, by a culture which did not at all share those assumptions. Slowly learning what to expect from a different culture is not 'racist,' it's just learning what to expect.

I could tiptoe around PC sensibilities and maunder on about 'passive resistance to systemic problems,' but that wouldn't make a blind bit of difference to the 'passive resisters,' who don't give a fuck about whether I'm PC or a racist gringa-bitch, and wouldn't communicate any practical information to someone who is actually considering going to Mexico.