a different part of MX culture?

[DonJuane]

That's a tough one. I resigned when I came here not to maintain anything of great value, to rent and not to buy because in a country that has few laws or enforcers of them, it seems the overall mood of the people can cause anything to sway from tears of joy to the level of fear and further down the scale that you may have encountered. It was also an objective of mine to try to break down my own ideals on what value means to me to the point where having nicer things than normal here would not mean so much to me any longer. And I have to admit that getting away from the culture we are born into makes this a very difficult thing to change.

Still this does you no good. Sounds like you are invested deeply and if the lawless pendulum goes the wrong way, you like anyone being in the wrong place at the wrong time can become a victim and therefore suffer. An important thing I have learned here, however, in protecting my assets is to lay low and your antagonist will eventually tire and move on to the next target (unless you provide them a reason to continuously return). Then once you are certain they have moved on, you can try to repair the damages they've left you. Never confront because most people will have more friends than you do. And this goes for everything, including children who ring your doorbell each day to see you come to the door (stop coming to the door), a neighbor below you who plays his stereo 12 hrs a day (stop complaining to him) or someone who paints your wall every month (either leave it or resign yourself to pressure wash and re-paint monthly).

There's really no getting around it. You can do small things that aren't obvious like wetting down the area before they arrive and if they don't see you doing it (perhaps covering part of the yard to make it look like over-spray rather than antagonistic), collecting rover's digested passings and strategically placing them around the area or any number of natural deterrents that aren't absolutely showing that you have done them in order to provoke. Still, thinking there is safety behind a gate or anywhere really, is a false sense of security. We can't be antagonists in this country to protect our rights because in reality we don't really have many.