Mexicans’ Holiday Spoilt By Strike

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31247, 20 December 1966, Page 18

Mexicans’ Holiday Spoilt By Strike

Most people had the wrong idea about Mexico and Mexicans, Mr U. Rodriguez, a travel agent from Mexico City, said in Christchurch yesterday.

The picture he felt most New Zealanders had of Mexicans was a sleepy people, sitting in the sun, with big hats.

Mr Rodriguez is taking 25 Mexican secondary schoolteachers on a tour of New Zealand and Australia to help dispel this idea. They have brought 100 selected drawings and paintings by High School students from Mexico City to show to schools in Sydney and privately in New Zealand.

Similar exhibitions will be brought to New Zealand by further groups of Mexican teachers in April, May and September. The paintings and drawings were of a geographical nature and were selected in a contest among Mexican high school students, Mr Rodriguez said.

The Qantas pilots’ strike had caused his party great anxiety, he said. For eight to 10 days they had been on the waiting lists for three alternative flights. The apprehension and uncertainty of obtaining a return flight to Mexico City in time for teaching in the new school year had ruined their 11-day New Zealand holiday, he said.

When the 25 Mexicans learned yesterday that Air New Zealand had obtained definite seats for them on Air New Zealand aircraft flying to Australia last evening and this evening, some of them burst into tears. “More than half of us were on the *fly-now, pay-later’ plan and the rest had made the trip on their personal savings from their teachers’ salaries,” said Mr Rodriguez. “We already had to spend an extra 80 United States dollars for an extra four days we were forced to spend in Tahiti because of the Qantas strike.

“We thought we might have been faced with spending an extra week or two in New Zealand, which we could have ill afforded.”

The Mexicans now expect to reach Mexico City on December 31, as scheduled. “Every day for 11 days we have been saying our prayers—are we going to leave this country. We could not enjoy Rotorua. The strike has spoilt the whole thing,” Mrs Rodriguez said.