Awareness

Other random things: two days ago we went to El Palacio de Cortes, which is near the center/Zocalo of Cuernavaca. Many of the walls inside had murals painted by Diego Rivera which depicted the Spanish Conquistadores in the Inquisition taking over Mexico. Morelos and Zapata were also highlighted for their importance in the Mexican Revolution. Rivera always portrays the plights of the Mexican indigenous people in such strong ways.
The other day we went to the market, which is packed with different fresh fruit, fresh vegetable, beans, meat, mole, and any other types of vendors you can think of. The point of us going there was to uncover the economic differences between Mexico and the US, but even more so to realize how extremely difficult (to say the least) in the job market here in Mexico. The minimum wage in Mexico is $4.95 pesos PER DAY for an 8-hour work day (that equals out to be $6.2 pesos per HOUR or US $0.56 per hour). Currently (or at least before I left for Mexico) there were 11 pesos to the US dollar. Upon analyzing the results when we had our "lab group" back at the house, our leader, Julie, gave us an annual study done by the "Economist.com." :
"Since 1986, "The Economist's" 'Big Mac Index' has compared the real purchasing power of currencies around the world. UBS, an investment bank, aims to measure well-being by estimating how many minutes workers in various countries must toil to buy a Big Mac. In Kenya, UBS says that it takes just over three hours of labor for a typical worker to afford ONE of McDonald's hefty burgers. [North] Americans, lucky for them, need to work for only ten minutes. Such differences reflect variations in productivity as well as desparities in local costs of ingredients."