Graham Greene on Mexico

“After Mexico I shall always associate balconies and politicians — plump men with blue chins wearing soft hats and guns on their hips. They look down from the official balcony in every city all day long with nothing to do but stare with the expression of men keeping an eye on a good thing.”

“No hope anywhere: I have never been in a country where you are more aware all the time of hate. Friendship there is skin deep — a protective gesture. That motion of greeting you see everywhere upon the street, the hands outstretched to press the other's arms, the semi-embrace — what is it but the motion of pinioning to keep the other man from his gun? There has always been hate, I suppose, in Mexico, but now it is the official teaching: it has superseded love in the school curriculum. Cynicism, a distrust of men's motive, is the accepted ideology.”