Mexicans & Orientals

The Mexican not only does not open himself up to the outside world, he also refuses to emerge from himself, to „let himself go“.

The impression we create is much like that created by Orientals. They too – the Chinese, the Hindus, the Arabs – are hermetic and indecipherable. They too carry about with them, in rags, a still-living past. There is a Mexican mystery, just as there is a yellow mystery or a black.

Octavio Paz: The Labyrinth of Solitude