How US view differs from the rest of the world & where to go.

Another discovery I made while walking the streets of Mexico City was startling and surprising.  Since I had been indoctrinated to believe Fidel Castro was a cruel tyrant dictator that everyone in the world hated, I was surprised to find numerous book shops and small "junk" shops that displayed books, pictures and and other items which praised Fidel and elevated him to hero status in Hispanic speaking countries.  The people in Mexico and  neighboring countries(not the US) viewed Fidel with reverence and they idolized him for what he had done for the Cuban people.

This support for Fidel Castro was reaffirmed on my cab ride back to the Mexico City airport.  I shared the cab with a young upper class white female college student who got in the cab and started telling the cab driver how horrible Fidel Castro was.  She repeated all the same tired phrases that you repeatedly hear and read in the US fascist media.  A heated discussion between the cab driver and the young woman followed to the point I thought the cab driver was going to stop the cab, throw our luggage on the road and let us walk to the airport.  Fortunately I was able to intervene and direct the conversation to another less contentious topic.  But there was no mistaking about how the cab driver felt about Fidel Castro and Cuba and how the Ugly American college student knew nothing about what she was arguing.  It was a real eye opener.

I stayed a week in Mexico City and tried to figure out a way to stay there for an extended period.  The economics just didn't work out and I was really becoming mentally fatigued having to live in a Spanish speaking country.  In Cuba there would be periods where I could speak English and converse in a language with which I was comfortable.  But in Mexico, everything was in Spanish and I never got a break from it.  I concluded that I couldn't live permanently in that environment and that I would have to return to the US.

The problem then became where would I go?  Because of my fragile health, I knew I had to be in a warm climate.  My first choice was California, but the cost of living there was prohibitive for me.  My other choice was Florida.  Since I had lived in Gainesville, FL some fifteen years earlier,  I had some familiarity with the state and knew that at that time, the cost of living was lower that in most other states.  Once I decided to return to Florida, the question was where?  That decision was easy to make.  I got a map of Florida, spread it out on a table spun around and blindly put my finger on the map.  Honest! That is what I really did.  I let fate decided my destination.

In the next post I will tell where I was heading after Mexico City.