NOTE: I’m going to mention some prices below, and because converting them to US dollars using an official exchange rate can give an incorrect impression, I’ll use the price of a Big Mac as a measuring stick (currently $95 MXN at the nearest mall), which is actually something economists do.
It was Sunday morning, and I’d been in Guadalajara for almost a week. As I went out for a walk, I reached Avenida Juarez, a major thoroughfare that goes from east to west, and found it totally transformed. Instead of the usual noise and crush of cars and motorcycles, there was a quiet river of bicyclists and runners. At every intersection, crossing guards with whistles stopped the flow now and then so cars could get across. Signs on traffic barriers announced that this was Vía RecreActiva (roughly “recreational route”), a city program that closes down some 65 kilometres (40 miles) of roads every Sunday from 8:00am to 2:00pm. I walked along the street to take in the scene. In the morning, the traffic leaned more toward the health nuts (lots of sweat and spandex), but as the day wore on it diversified, filling in with cargo trikes, inline skaters, skateboarders, custom stretch bikes sporting ape hanger handlebars, bikes with substantial sound systems, and teenage boys popping wheelies. I came to a bike shop along the route, where repair work spilled out onto the street, with lots of tires getting pumped up and in the center a mechanic patiently truing a wheel. I found the whole scene delightful; it was as if the Critical Mass activists had actually won and taken over the city. According to official counts there are over 30,000 users each week. Now this is a sane public health policy, I thought.
Well, sort of. Apparently the program was suspended as part of pandemic restrictions, and had only reopened around two months ago on November 21st, long after the scientific consensus had settled on outdoor transmission being a negligible risk. And officially, masks were still required as part of the reopening, although by the time I arrived, there were few in evidence, and mostly the now-officially-deprecated cloth kind. Oh well, I guess superstitions and cover-your-ass politics are pretty universal, and because of them the citizens were denied one of the safest and healthiest forms of recreation when they could have used it most. But even so I think Guadalajara’s government is doing a better job than most cities in the US. So many of our public health interventions take the form of heavy-handed admonishments or resources nobody asked for and nobody uses. But this one is fun and inviting, and it doesn’t require any advertising because it is an advertisement: anyone moving around the city center on a Sunday can hardly avoid bumping into one of the routes and noticing the transformation.
And this got me thinking about what we call “public health”, and how most of it should really be called '“public safety”. As a recent example, all pandemic response policies from masks to lockdowns to vaccines are designed to either reduce exposure to the virus or limit the damage it causes. But to me, prevention of injury isn’t health at all, it’s only safety, and these measures are no more about true health than railings or seat belts; they won’t help a sick person get well or help a well person get stronger. Not that I’m discounting the value of safety, but to live with safety alone is to be the boy in the bubble: protected from death but also insulated from life, and probably not feeling great. Some things that I believe really do promote health are nutritious food, clean water, fresh air, exercise, a feeling of belonging, stress reduction, and good sleep. Maybe it seems like a linguistic quibble, but I think this re-branding of safety as health can make us think we’re doing more good than we actually are. For example, safety-focused pandemic policies have had quite a few negative health consequences: many people gained body fat, drank more alcohol, socialized less, binged on television, and struggled to maintain their mental health, and there’s been measurable damage to child development. And that’s just the globally wealthy I’m talking about, I’ve heard there have been even worse effects on the global poor. As a second example, our so-called healthcare system profits only from providing treatment, so there’s a much stronger financial incentive to keep people safe from death or dysfunction than to actually prevent or cure disease. As a third example, foods are often branded as “healthy” because of what they don’t have (e.g. fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, low-carb) rather than what they do have (e.g. fiber, antioxidants, micronutrients), promoting the idea that if a food doesn’t actively harm you then it’s something you ought to eat. I think if we could better distinguish between these two concepts of safety and health, it might expose how we’re spending most of our resources on the first and neglecting the second.
When the next Sunday came around, I was prepared: I’d bought an annual subscription to the local bike-share system for around 4 1/2 Big Macs. If you ever come here, be warned that for a visitor, this is somewhat complicated and requires decent Spanish skills, a transit card (costing 1/3 of a Big Mac), and some back-and-forth which can only be done using the Messenger app (yuck, surveillance capitalism). But with all that out of the way, I borrowed a bike and joined the fun. By 9:30am, I was pedaling west on Avenida Juarez among a sparse crowd of early risers: a rusty old man on a rusty old bike sporting a blue plastic milk crate, a graybeard with a helmet and red and yellow spandex cycling shirt, a woman on rollerblades in a skin-tight tie-die outfit, a teenager barreling along with his front wheel in the air, a muscular tattooed dad and his son on skateboards, a dreadlocked couple with a happy kid on the back rack, a few smiling tourists on shared bikes like mine. After a few miles, we went under an arched masonry gate painted with Guadalajara’s coat of arms and reached the end of the route, a big traffic circle around a statue of the goddess Minerva. I returned my bike to a nearby station, bought some water at a convenience store, and walked around taking in the morning sun, the fountains, the groups of runners stretching in the shade, the flirting teens, and the bicyclists relaxing on benches. Without cars, this major interchange had turned into such a lovely park. By the time I’d finished my drink and was ready to head back east, traffic was picking up, and I had to walk a little to find a station with bikes available. Back on wheels, I coasted effortlessly down the gentle slope toward the center of town, reached my starting point, and kept going east through the crowded chaos of San Juan de Dios and into the shady neighborhoods beyond. Looking at a map, I saw that I was running out of stations to park my bike, so I turned around, dropped it off, hopped on the eastbound L2 train and rode to the terminus at Tetlán. I ate some street food for lunch, bought a few guavas that smelled good, and kept walking east past a bright pink church and the electric train maintenance yard to Parque Solidaridad (Solidarity Park).
It was a lovely park with trees, clearings, and a canalized stream running through the center, lined with tall reeds and jimsonweed. I sat on a shady slope eating guavas and watching kids playing in the playground. So far it looked not much different from a lot of city parks I’ve seen, but as I started walking around, a few things caught my interest. The first was a pair of boys riding around on what appeared to be pedal-powered ATVs. Each had a single seat, four wheels, a steering wheel operating a linkage at the front, and a big metal lever operating a simple brake. The chassis was straight steel tubing, and the paint job was dingy and flaked but had probably once been red. They looked like something an enthusiast with a welder might knock together in their back yard, by which I mean cool as hell in a Mad Max sort of way. I figured they must be for rent somewhere, so, my curiosity aroused, I set out to find where they’d come from. Further down the path, I spotted another quadricycle, this one a taller sort of carriage with two sets of pedals. A mom and dad were pedaling, and their small daughter was sitting on a bench in front. As I went on, the density increased; I was nearing the source. Another carriage passed loaded up with six children, the two oldest pedaling, and everyone grinning. Then an even bigger vehicle, this one with five wheels! There were three in the back, each connected to a set of pedals. How much bigger could these things get? When I found the rental stand, there was a big sign with the prices: one Big Mac would get you two hours and 20 minutes on a single-seater, over an hour on the four wheeled family size, and almost an hour on the five-wheeler. They also rented trampolines, and a Big Mac would get you 40 minutes, unfortunately nowhere near long enough to burn the calories from the hamburger, but plenty to tire out most people. There was a line, but I’d done enough pedaling for the day already, so I settled for testing out one of the little ATVs where it sat. The power train was a fixed gear with no freewheel, and the steering was pretty unwieldy. I now realized why I’d seen riders weaving off the path and struggling over fairly small bumps, but the wonderful thing was that I didn’t see a single rider without a smile on their face. The challenge was the fun part, and turned even a little jaunt around the park into a big adventure. What I loved about this whole business was that it had people using their bodies, cooperating (I saw a little girl pushing her dad up a hill as he pedaled a single-seater), challenging themselves, being outdoors, and having a great time.
There were other ingenious features of the park. Ramps and jumps for mountain bikers, artificial mounds for climbing, jumping, and all sorts of play, intricate jungle gyms in the shape of airplanes, mountain ranges, and chains of icosahedra, big soccer fields, benches in the shade, grills, snack stands, colonnades around a sculptural tower. This place could be so many things to so many people, and none of the features were particularly expensive, they just required a more relaxed atmosphere around liability and commercial activity. Having lots of things to do attracts a diverse crowd, and it also keeps people outdoors for longer; no ways the kids were getting bored here. They say spending time around greenery is mentally soothing, and I certainly felt soothed as I walked around. I stopped to put a slipped chain back onto a kid’s bike, and later sat by a reedy little pond and shared my last guava with a sweaty guy who’d stopped to pump up his back tire and was in a hurry to get back home before the ice cream in his backpack started to melt. This park felt like a humane place, down to earth, here and there well-loved until the grass was worn away to dust, but still pretty and inviting for all that. I left the path, picked my way between cuddling young couples, found a spot in the shade, lay down to think, and slipped into a nap. When I woke up I saw my surroundings again with fresh eyes. Is such a place merely an “amenity” or is it a vital part of the staff of life? It depends how much we believe the spirit matters, but to me, to take rest or exercise surrounded by greenery and a joyous community is not the same thing as sweating alone on a treadmill in a basement, where the body is worked like a beast of burden while the mind takes itself far away with a podcast.
I believe another cornerstone of public health is the food system, and of course Guadalajara has been touched by the industrial food supply as much as most places, and there are plenty of options that probably aren’t good for you, and plenty of people who choose those options. But also, some of the most ubiquitous street snacks are fresh whole foods, like big cups of chopped or shredded fresh fruits and veggies garnished to taste with chili, salt, and lime juice (costing around 1/4 of a Big Mac) or elotes, which are little salads made to order with fresh corn kernels, broccoli, potatoes, and boiled eggs, optionally topped with cheese and crema (costing around 1/2 a Big Mac). Even at a stand that sells only tacos, I almost always find something fresh that I can serve myself as much as I want of: shredded cabbage, radishes, raw salsas, and limes. I don’t know anything about the inner workings of the food supply here, but I don’t need to go far to get closer to the source of all this fresh stuff, I just have to poke around and find the greengrocers’ stalls at the market. In Mercado Libertad, you can buy fresh vegetables of all kinds for 10 pesos per kilo, so one Big Mac will get you 9.5 kg (over 20 pounds) of vegetables! And I’m talking fresh, closer to farmer’s market quality than trucked-and-misted-for-weeks supermarket quality. The tomatoes are juicy and flavorful, the broccoli has a natural sweetness, the nopales are glossy green and have a satisfying snap. Of course with the mild weather here you could grow nearly anything, but the same is true of Florida or southern California, and there I’ve paid a lot more for this kind of quality if I could find it at all. The low prices mean a street vendor can buy produce, carry it to a popular area, prepare it, and charge a good markup while still providing an affordable snack or meal. I have no idea what economic, political, or cultural factors create this situation, but I enjoy the hell out of it.
Another thing which is definitely a government policy is that the Secretary of Health requires packaged foods to carry prominent labels saying things like “excessive calories”, “excessive sugars”, “excessive salt”, or “excessive saturated fats”. For some of these labels I don’t believe in the nutritional theory behind them, but for the ones I do, I really appreciate not having to pull every damn product off the shelf to scrutinize the tiny ingredients list. My guess is we’re still a long way from this type of thing in the US, since even after a seemingly all-consuming pandemic where obesity and diabetes have been known risk factors, the public discourse has rarely strayed away from medical interventions to what the food supply has been doing to our bodies in the first place. When whole foods are expensive, producers compensate by adding cheap filler ingredients, and I think this has been causing a long slow erosion of our foodways. In the US, even seemingly health-focused genres like smoothie joints will do everything they can to cut your drink with ice and soy protein powder, then add artificial sweeteners to fool your taste buds into thinking you aren’t consuming an agro-industrial output. Here they don’t do that, and when you order a licuado or jugo you just list some fruits and veggies, and maybe milk or yogurt, and that is exactly what they put into the blender or juicer. If you get a cup of fruit, it’s not all melons and grapes but a real variety with things like jicama and cucumber for contrast. Sorry if I’m ranting a little here—it probably doesn’t do any good—but I want to call out my own country’s deficiencies, and point out that it’s not just about individual choices as long as we still have corn and soybean subsidies but not a broccoli subsidy. Do we want better public health? I think we can get it by turning away from the belief that health has to come from willpower, self-denial, grim determination, risk aversion, and buying exotic superfoods and supplements. Guadalajara shows me that it can be easier, tastier, more communal, more fun, and more beautiful.
And at a deeper level I believe that, given the right conditions, health wells up from the soul. Every evening in Guadalajara, an orchestra gathers inside the ornate ironwork gazebo in the center of the Plaza de Armas. High above, the colorful tiles on the cathedral’s domes and spires catch the light of the setting sun. The conductor raises his arms and the musicians begin to play to the gathering crowd. A mother runs across the flagstones behind her tiny child. A skinny old woman shuffles through the traditional steps of her youth. The music reaches a finale and we all applaud; an old man shouts out his approval. Is this only entertainment? Is it only art? Or could it be nourishing the very lifeblood of the people?
100% agree