Read the following text and then answer these questions:
1) How inequality in urban Mexico is related through this text?
2) How these urban communities become a slum and poor colonies?
3) Why you think poverty has become an spectacle?
You have until October 22th as deadline to post your answers.
1. The text proves that there is a lot of inequality between wealthy and poor people in urban areas in Mexico. Poor people live in suburbs or slums under poor conditions or in the city’s garbage dump, while the wealthier people live under much better conditions in real houses and with all the resources that they need. Wealthy people in urban areas tend not to care about the situation of the poor people, because they see these people as an undifferentiated problem or even as a source of shame. The text also shows that poor people in urban areas are in a very vulnerable situation, compared to the situation of the wealthier people. Poor people often cannot control the circumstances around them and they do not have any chances to affect the decisions that are made by other people. For example, when tourist agencies want to make trips to their neighborhoods and “homes” and want them to behave and look in a certain way, they cannot really affect this.
ResponderEliminar2. Urban communities are turned into slums because of mobility and movement, and also to some extent because of modernity and progress. Slums can be seen as an outcome of city development, since people from rural areas and migrants from gentrified neighborhoods move to urban areas to find jobs and start a “better” life. However, they are often unable to find either a job or housing in the cities, which makes them move to the slum areas because it is their only option considering their money situation. Urban areas that are modernizing fast and that experience a fast economic growth are simply incapable of coping with the rapid social and structural change. This is why these slum areas are appearing in especially bigger cities that experience economic growth.
3. People have through media come into touch with poverty and the life of poor people. Because of this people have already created preconceptions of how these poor areas are supposed to be and how poor people are supposed to live. However, today media is available to a lot of people all around the world, and I think that this is why some people want to actually experience it and see the reality of the poor with their own eyes. For many people, slums and poor colonies represent a world that contains things that do not exist in their own world, such as deprivation, filthiness and criminality. This is why some people want to experience this “other world”, that in many cases can be really different from their own. Others want to do something good and travel to the poor areas because of charity reasons. They want to help the poor and try to make their lives a little bit easier.
Q1-The city of Mazatlán has luxury hotels, fancy restaurants and beautiful beaches and is the home for many US and Canada retirees and tourists. But at the same time, there are many slums in the city and many people live in bad conditions. The inequality in the city is even more astonishing because there are some people who live in extreme luxury and others in extreme poverty.
ResponderEliminarQ2-Poor people who can’t find a good job and make a living live in these communities, maybe because the housing is poor and therefore the rent is quite cheap. Because many poor people live here, the sanitary facilities and infrastructure is poor, and crimes and violence happen more often, making these communities unsuitable for other people, only poor people are willing to live here.
Q3-Because there are many people who are born in a wealthy family and have no idea of poverty during their life, they are just bored with golf club and beautiful beaches. They have never experienced poor life so how these poor people are living and working has become a new adventure for those rich people. This also reflects the fact that poor people are being isolated from the life of the rich people. The rich don’t know anything about the poor, which is even worse. If the poverty can be informed to more and more people, then there will be more improvement and charity activities.
1) How inequality in urban Mexico is related through this text?
ResponderEliminarSlums in Mexico and particular in Mazatlan as this text show are very contrasting with wealthier places and resorts that tourists and wealthier people live, the slums are represented when the author walks through them mainly as research purpose but also as part of tourism. Poor people in urban areas are exposed to many dangers and lack of resources, meanwhile they are unable to extent this discomfort because they are told to "behave" when tourists approach.
2) How these urban communities become a slum and poor colonies?
They became slums with the mobility of poor people to urban areas, the cities had to extent which led to logistical difficulties to provide thes enewcomers with all the basic needs, such as water or even building "real" houses. This is why slums start to appear, the development of the city can't keep up with the mobility in the search of better opportunities.
3) Why you think poverty has become an spectacle?
Because wealthy people does not feel identified with these conditions of living, they feel so disconnected with these and as they keep portraying it in films they think this is kind of a science fiction thing. They haven't experienced real poverty in their lives, so they can't imagine how these conditions possibly are in real life.