THE OTHER EVE Twelve years ago I lived for a while in the Boston area. I had gone through a tough divorce and was starting to date again. Since my name is not Hispanic, but German, the gentlemen I dated were surprised to learn that I was Mexican. As soon as they found out about my Latin-American heritage, their faces lit up. I became suspicious. Maybe, I thought, these guys have in mind the typical “prieta, sumisa y aguantadora” (dark skinned, submissive, tolerant) Mexican women, who put up with everything, wait on their men, pamper and spoil them. The main thing I made very clear on our first date was the fact that I was not one of them, but quite the opposite. I also made it clear that the modern, educated Mexican woman can no longer be stereotyped. Then I met my late husband, an American. He must have agreed with my point of view because he married me anyway.

Over the past ten years I have witnessed the false expectations about finding a partner that some foreigners, especially men, have when coming to Mexico. I have seen, with a lot of respect and sympathy, how some gentlemen come with a broken heart, offering it on a silver tray with a gift card attached that says, “please love me.” I remember a gentleman who came to Guadalajara looking for a wife because the U.S. Social Security would give him a $200 dollar raise if he married. I have always wondered how he was going to support a Mexican woman with such a small amount of money.

Another case was Mr. X, who was warned about some Mexican women fishing for older American guys with plenty of dollars. Mr. X settled in a nice home and hired a maid who thought that such a huge house needed more than two hands to keep it clean. One day she took along her niece to help her, a young, sexy, attractive girl and a single mother of two little children. Pretty soon the niece came on her own to the house, seduced the old guy and got pregnant. When this gentleman asked what he was supposed to do, he was advised to either flee to the U.S. and never come back to Mexico, pay child support until the child was 21, or marry the girl and start a family. Abortion was not even considered, since it is still a sacrilege in this country. Mr. X chose to marry the girl. After he had finished raising a family in the U.S., he started all over again with a new litter. He adopted the two boys of this single mother, and two more of his own that he presently has.

A dramatic case was that of Mr. Y, who was in his mid-seventies and did not like to date any lady beyond forty. One day someone introduced him to a 58-year-old lovely Mexican lady who he thought was an old hen. He met on his own a 28-year-old girl who also had a child. They started to date. She always visited him, but never introduced him to her family. Mr. Y took the girl to Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Cancun, even to Las Vegas and other parts of the U.S. He bought lots of clothes for her, helped her pay the boy’s school tuition, even chipped in for the family house rent. The relationship went well for about one year, but one day the sexy girl disappeared. Mr. Y asked his Mexican neighbor to call the girl’s mother and inquire about her. The mother would not let the neighbor talk to the girl. In a very blunt way the mother told the neighbor to thank Mr. Y for his concern about her daughter and to tell him she was doing well. That was the end of the relationship.

The most painful case is that of Mr. Z, a middle-aged American man who came to Mexico feeling like a “sheik” or a “pasha,” and thinking he was full of charm and sex appeal. He hired the services of a person to introduce pretty girls to him at fifteen minute intervals. His requirements were very particular. The girls had to be very slender, dark-skinned, of certain astrological sign, educated, and no older than 35. He only cared for her looks. Her heart did not matter. His representative placed many personal ads in the paper and interviewed more than sixty lovely girls, who were thoroughly screened and introduced to the “sheik,” as he wished, every fifteen minutes. His time was very valuable. He did not want to waste more than a few minutes in trying to find out if the girls had any feelings or were just flesh and blood. Some of the girls he met were pretty, slender, educated, proper, classy; in a word, ladies. But he always found a flaw in each one. They were either too old, too light-skinned, too proper, too inhibited, too skinny or too fat, etc. He never found the right one. I heard that his initial female hunt took place several years ago and the process is still going on. I wonder if he will ever find Ms. Right.

The truth is that Mr. or Ms. Right does not exist--not in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Europe, China, or any other place. The only human beings you can find all over are ordinary people with virtues and defects, but always ordinary. What makes the difference is the way we look at them. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The translation of that saying in Spanish is “Todo depende del cristal con que se mira.” (All depends on the glass you look through). Some people wear magnifying glasses to see the beauty of the world and the kindness of human beings, and others wear dark glasses so as not to see anything. What kind do you wear?