It''s a Free Country

Mexico. A free country. You are free to drive around in a pick up truck with your kids and dogs in the open bed. Your kids are free to throw trash out of the truck. You are free to burn trash on the street or in your yard any time of the day or night. You are free to park your truck on the street with the radio or CD player blasting at full throttle for as long as you want. You are free to charge as much as you can get for whatever you sell at the Tianges, whether the item is marked or not. You are free to tear down your house, leave the accumulated rubble in a huge pile in the middle of the road without the slightest concern that it will be an imposition on anyone's transport on your street. And you are free to build whatever you want, how ever many stories you want it, without a worry that some pesky building inspector or City Council is going to interfere and tell you that it is too close to your neighbor, too intrusive and not in keeping with the "style" of the area, and doesn't conform to the building codes and regulations of the town.

You are free to have a religious parade through town without worrying that the ACLU is going to be on your case. You can have shrines and altars to the Virgin of Guadalupe on public property, in the street, in public restaurants without offending anyone. In fact, she gets her own holiday when banks, public businesses, the civic life of Mexico comes to a halt, and to my knowledge, nobody objects.

As I said, it's a free country.