Mexico
Down in Del Valle
(Page 2 of 2)
Most of San Pedro’s grand families live in walled villas occupying a square block each, hidden from the public eye, in homes whose construction costs exceed $2 million. But it’s the upwardly mobile middle-class engineers, accountants, and personnel managers who give the sprawling neighborhood its peculiar stamp. These are the people who have built the ubiquitous neo-McAllen houses on 4,500-square-foot lots—houses and lots whose current prices most of them couldn’t afford to pay. Most of Del Valle’s professionals earn the equivalent of $40,000 to $80,000 a year, but property values in the area have risen so much since 1988 that the next generation of managers may be forever barred from homesteading there. This possibility, of course, only adds to the prestige that Del Valle’s residents wear on their shirtsleeves. Lots in Del Valle sell for $20 to $30 a square foot, a steep price anywhere; ten years ago they sold for half as much.
Though the cost of housing has gone sky-high, Del Valle’s families still enjoy a relative bargain in domestic services. Maids and gardeners earn about $150 to $200 a month, and every professional family hires at least a full-time maid. The statistical result is that 25,000 residents, more than 20 percent of San Pedro’s population, are domestic workers.
The gap between rich and poor in Mexico is re•Ââected in the differences between San Pedro and Monterrey. The latest figures show that the student-staff ratio in high schools, 19 to 1 in Monterrey, is 9 to 1 in San Pedro, where most students attend private academies. Professionals account for 15 percent of San Pedro’s work force, compared with 5 percent in Monterrey. The Monterrey Country Club is located, naturally, in San Pedro, and costs $145,000 to join. (Athletic club memberships are a comparative bargain, at $6,000 and up.) But you don’t have to go poking into statistics or the costs of private clubs to see Del Valle’s af•Ââuence: GQ and Architectural Digest, not Fama, Mexico’s version of the National Enquirer, are the publications that are sold from racks in supermarket checkout lines.
Del Valle’s conspicuous consumers record their lives in a neighborhood press that is unrivaled in the field of society reporting. It is Sierra Madre, a rotogravure section published as a suburban supplement to the Monterrey daily El Norte. The thrice-weekly tabloid section averages more than 1,200 pages a month of weddings, anniversaries, quinceañeras, and “baby showers”—the English phrase is always used—and also serves as a guide to services that you can’t buy in the States, such as home delivery of hamburgers. If the son or daughter of a San Pedro magnate sets up a lemonade stand in the summertime, you’ll see and read about it in Sierra Madre, where the kid’s infant baptism was undoubtedly also chronicled in picture and story.
If Del Valle were to adopt a logo, it would be the parabólica, a satellite dish that brings HBO, Cinemax, and CNN down from the skies. The neighborhood bible, Orbita—a monthly satellite guide the size of a telephone book—reported a few years ago that San Pedro has more dishes per capita than any other municipality in the world. This summer the usually reliable national newsweekly Epoca reported that there are more than 80,000 parabólicas on San Pedro rooftops. That claim can’t be true; San Pedro’s population is only 120,000.
As things stand, Del Valle already has a symbol that re•Ââects its tastes, appropriately donated to the city by a real estate developer. It is a chalk-white larger-than-life •Ââoodlit replica of Michelangelo’s David, which stands in a fountain at the community’s entrance on Calzada San Pedro. Anywhere else in Mexico, such a statue would depict an Aztec warrior or a revolutionary hero. But nativism is low-rent in Del Valle, which—as if to deliberately offend traditional Mexican sensitivities—also has several streets named after conquistadores like Cortés and Pizarro.
Both Mexican and American old-timers insist that Del Valle is not much different from South Texas—and since most have second homes in the Valley, they ought to know. But one obvious difference is the status of women. Despite all the American in•Ââuence in Del Valle, traditional Mexican attitudes prevail. In Del Valle and San Pedro, just as in Monterrey and Mexico City, female professionals have a hard time getting a job in the commercial world and are more likely to be found in nonprofit jobs. Even if a woman can get a good job, she is still dependent on her husband’s status. I met a single woman who earned $45,000 a year working for a transnational company but who was refused membership in a video-rental club until she listed herself as the dependent of a man who made half as much.
Del Valle remains Mexican, too, in its view of community mores. People are expected to lead a life that, in its appearances, at least, is above reproach. An anecdote frequently told here is set at a wedding. A couple is taking their civil vows; the church ceremony is a month away. After the vows are spoken, the groom leans over to kiss the bride, but her mother intervenes. “Don’t!” she shouts. “You’re not really married yet.” The couple obeys, because the story is set in Mexico.
But Del Valle’s residents don’t agree that their community’s values leave something to be desired. “Coming here was the best thing I could do for my children,” says longtime Del Valle resident Sam Calderón, who moved here from Chicago in 1957. “My daughters were getting into their teens, and I thought that the best family group could be developed here, where they do not have drug problems, drive-ins, and all of those gathering places where peer pressure is so great.” Other Del Valle pioneers, most of whom are now retired, similarly endorse their community. But the offspring don’t always share the parents’ enthusiasm. Looking for jobs and personal freedom, two of Calderón’s three children have returned to the United States.
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