The Myth of Mexico

by Scott

We're currently in the small fishing village (and surf/windsurf mecca) of Punta Abreojos. It's quite different than other Baja towns of it's size. There's a noticeable lack of litter, paved roads, really nice commercial and personal pickup trucks, and the locals aren't interested in pandering to the gringo tourists. It's great!

Serious money in these trucks in Abreojos

The secret is a very successful fishing co-op. It employs a couple hundred people who catch lobster and collect abalone, both of which are shipped to China. We hear that they make $35-50k per year  -- great for Mexico.

A lot of people think of Mexico as a 3rd world country. It's not. Mexico is by no means rich, especially Baja, but many countries we will be visiting will be far poorer. Here's a partial list of per capita GDP's from the IMF (2010).

I've included the countries we're planning to visit, as well as some places we recently visited, and a few others that we have no plans to visit, but are just plain interesting...like China. For all the talk about China becoming the world's largest economy and dominating the globe, blah, blah, blah, it's important to recognize that China is still a very poor country, about the same as El Salvador. Mexico, on the other hand, is nearly twice as rich as China!

RANK COUNTRY $USD
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6 United States 47,123
9  Australia 39,692
11  Canada 39,033
32  New Zealand 27,460
55  Chile 14,982
61  Mexico 14,266
67  Panama 12,397
69  Venezuela 11,889
71  Brazil 11,289
75  Costa Rica 10,732
83  Colombia 9,445
85  Peru 9,281
90  Ecuador 7,951
91  Belize 7,894
93  China 7,518
94  El Salvador 7,442
114  Paraguay 4,915
115  Guatemala 4,871
118  Bolivia 4,584
121  Honduras 4,404
125  Iraq 3,599
131  Nicaragua 2,969
170  Afghanistan 998