Handicapped in Mexico
We have a lot less of that in Mexico, especially in a colonial town like San Miguel de Allende, where streets were laid out in the 1600s without SUVs and wheelchairs in mind. (Our situation can hardly be called poor urban planning.)
Narrow sidewalks and steep hills characterize our city terrain. Steps may be wheelchair-unfriendly, but without them, the resulting steep, slick flagstones would greatly increase the already large number of injuries from falls, conceivably putting more people in wheelchairs.
Stopping in our narrow streets blocks traffic, so no estacionar (no parking) signs abound. If people actually obeyed them, commerce would grind to a halt. Instead, they park on sidewalks, leaving just enough room for passing cars, but making walkways impassible for pedestrians, handicapped or otherwise.
To prevent sidewalk parking, bollards have been placed at the edges of some walkways. While they clear the way for strolling tourists, they reduce the width of this particular sidewalk just enough that no wheelchair could navigate it.
Just ahead of the illegally parked Safari (note that his plates have been taken by the traficantes), the sidewalk has been narrowed, permitting parking without blocking traffic. So the bollards really haven't reduced the effective width of the sidewalk, anyway. No matter how passible the path looks, you can rest assured that some obstacle will appear a few meters farther on.
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We have many handicapped people in Mexico. Some make their livings by begging.
This man is a fixture in San Miguel de Allende. He sits patiently in high-traffic spots or tap-tap-taps along as he moves from one place to another. He has the city layout memorized; the locations of potholes, open utility holes, and those quintessential Mexican sidewalk hazards, lengths of rebar sticking up like punji stakes.
Other beggars inhabit our streets. One plays guitar and harmonica. Both of his feet are bent inward at 90º angles—a condition that probably would have been corrected in a rich society. Another musician hobbles along on her crutches, one leg missing.
This woman plies her trade in an outdoor market near Oaxaca. Her legs end at mid-thigh and she's missing both hands. She crawls through the market to where she sells whatever that stuff is on her back. Waiting for customers, she sits with other women, talking and laughing: she has not let her disability destroy her spirit.
I imagine it would be against the law to crawl down a sidewalk in Indianapolis.
Julieta lacks the mental capacity to perform any but basic functions. She works as a sander in a workshop that makes mesquite furniture in Adjuntos del Rio.
No government program placed her in this job; her family did. But she is self-supporting.
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In the last few years, handicapped parking places have become more common. Some spaces are reserved for pregnant women. (Are they handicapped?)
The sign with a wheelchair signifies a parking space is exclusively for the handicapped and "persons of the third age." That would be me, among others, although I'm way too healthy to feel right about using these spaces.
Not these people, though. We're looking at nine handicapped parking spaces, eight of which are occupied by automobiles none of which bears any indication that it transports the handicapped. The man in the blue shirt has just parked his tan car, springing lightly out of the driver's seat and striding purposefully toward the store entrance. He appears to be neither handicapped, aged, nor pregnant.
The woman in the red dress doesn't appear to qualify either. From her slim form, I'd judge that if she's pregnant, she isn't very. She has just backed out of a handicapped spot and is briskly pulling away. She's clearly too busy to bother with parking another ten meters from the entrance. You can gauge her acceleration from the bow in her radio antenna. Believe me, she was cooking!
In the US, years of awareness-building, strict enforcement, and heavy fines pretty much have freed parking spaces for those who really need them. Here in Mexico, many unqualified people have no compunction about abusing them.
There's a couple of handicapped parking spots near the Jardín in the center of town, clearly marked with blue wheelchair signs. The section of Canal where they're located is constantly patrolled by a covey of traficantes. I rarely see cars with handicapped plates or stickers parked in either of them. They seem instead to be reserved for Cadillac Escalades and H2 Hummers. Such vehicles never receive citations: the local cops know better than to tag a narcotraficante.
Drug runners aside, Mexican people's awareness of the needs of the handicapped appear to be at the level of the US in the 1970s. Facilities for people with disabilities are expensive—the province of rich countries. As Mexico advances economically, we're seeing more wheelchair ramps, more, reserved parking, better funding for appropriate government agencies. Hopefully too, more people will support them.
In San Miguel we have NGOs that look after the disabled. One of the best is Centro de Crecimiento, which trains children with disabilities in skills that will allow them to support themselves and contribute to society. Their funding comes mostly from the norteamericano community. Check it out.