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[MotherF]

Can I vent for a moment?
December is still a week away and the firecrackers are DRIVING ME CRAZY!
One of the great things about my house, which is in a very typical Mexican fraccionamiento is that this fraccionamiento is actually several kilometers outside of town and there's not even a church here so it's generally a very very quiet oasis in what is one of the noisiest places on earth.
When I moved in 8.5 years ago there were a lot of people with babies and toddlers--a lot of boy babies and toddlers. Well those boys are now 8 to 12 years old and each year the firecraker-play is getting worse. The firecrackers are louder and now they are totally unsupervised, just "boys being boys" and discovering that you can actually use these things to blow up stuff like soda cans. And IT'S BEEN EVERY NIGHT for weeks--I swear two kids (brothers) in particular must be spending 20 pesos a day on firecrackers, and I know their parents aren't rolling in pesos because we helped them with some accounting issues earlier this year.
It's so bad, I'm actually really wishing that one of them will get hurt so the other mothers will be motivated to make this stop.
I mentioned this in an online mother's group (mostly Americans) and they were like, if minors are lighting firecrakers unsupervised you should call the police. Yeah, right.

Oh and did I mention this is happening within a few feet of my car? AHHHHHH!

[Isla Guapa]

It sounds awful, MotherF. What about talking to the parents of these boys?

[Guy Courchesne]

Firecracker season is always hard on one of our dogs...she cannot stand them and when you get a day full of them, she'll just cower in the bedroom trembling.

I generally don't mind them myself. Seems every December there's a warehouse or mercado somewhere that burns down though for unsupervised storage or sales of fireworks...

[MotherF]

Our dog doesn't like them either--but she just goes to her safe place and seems okay if she's there. But these days she goes to her bed as soon as the sun starts going down and doesn't get up for anything until the sun starts coming up.

[Phil_K]

Let me join you in your vent, MotherF, because this is probably the biggest thing I hate about living in Mexico (almost equal with street parking space reserving and the obsessive use of whistles).

Some will say that this is a part of the culture of Mexico and many other Latin American countries, but I don't buy that as a justification. Firstly, whatever the culture, human morality should teach that respect for others is paramount in a civilized society. Didn't Mexico's own Benito Ju�rez say,

"Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz"

And isn't one of those "derechos" an individual's peace itself?

Also, as MotherF implied, many of these "celebrations" are connected to the church, which is a hypocrisy given that the congregation is asked in each mass to "Darse fraternalmente la paz"

Unfortunately, in any society, there will always exist the antisocial element, and in the case of Mexico (and some other countries) this unsociability is expressed in a way that is very difficult to escape. Whether it is fireworks, loud music or anything else, I have a theory that the uncultured and uneducated mind never evolves from childlike state of having to make a noise, any noise, in order to be noticed.

[MotherF]

Phil,

I live in Oaxaca, where that Benito Juarez quote is on the official stationary and is painted on school walls in 6 foot tall letters. But people take it the opposite way. I have to respect their right to have a party in the street in front of my house until 4 am.

And the firecracker thing--IT'S DANGEROUS. My husband's cousin was burned as a child. Fairly minor as firework accidents go, but he does still have a scar on his hand. And last year I watched jaw agape has he handed his 4 year old a handful of "cebollas" (tiny pop firecrackers). My girls have always been very cautious children, but my two year old is much more of a risk taker and this is the issue that most makes me what to pack him up and take him north.

[roadwalker]

Many years ago now, but seemingly only a couple years back, I was visiting some friends in a small city/ big town roughly between Mexico City and Puebla. I stayed in their apartment. One of the last conversations we had the evening that I had arrived was me complaining about living in China and hearing firecrackers and rockets many mornings as early as 7am! In China they are lit to scare away evil spirits (in this non-religious country) to assure good luck for a new business venture, a wedding, a holiday, or for safe passage to wherever the recently deceased pass to.

I slept rather well that night considering travel. Maybe I complained too much about China, because it turns out that the Archbishop was gracing that small city for the first time in a while - my first morning in Mexico (not including a hotel resort), and the firecrackers commenced promptly at 6am.

[geaaronson]