You should go back; you'd be both pleased and appalled
Sanborn's is now a chain \ufffd la Denny's -- much of the Norteamericano consumer culture has been imported. Your sweetie need not make political gestures any more; large proportions of the drivers everywhere I've been have been women. Much Pride in the announcement: all but a vanishingly few villages in the southern jungles have electric power and telephone service!
Most of my visits over the last ten years have been to the interior. Interior Mexico and border Mexico are two very different places -- and in general, Mexico varies in ambiance from place to place more than the U.S. does now; more like what we were in the Fifties. Aguascalientes (the Mexican Rhode Island, in many ways) used to be PRI, is now a mixture, with a PRD governor and a PRI mayor.
Mordida is still there, but much reduced in most places -- it's actually possible to get and pay a traffic ticket without winding up in the carcel, for tourists and natives alike; much appreciated. Anything major -- export/import, serious charges -- still needs, ah, subsidy though. Stacks of twenties are the ticket (if you carry C-notes, you're probably a druggie). I got stopped for inspection (looking for drug dealers) going into Zacatecas. The lieutenant of the Mexican Army who inspected the car was businesslike, polite, and honest -- apparently did not even notice the corner of a bill sticking out of my shirt pocket, and waved me on with a smile after a much more thorough search of the car than our side seems to accomplish without disassembly.
I truly enjoy Aguascalientes, Leon, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, and the northern parts of Mexico state. I detest Mexico City -- twenty-five million people crammed into the stupidest place in the Western Hemisphere for a major city -- and the border areas are appalling. Never been to the southern part or to the jungles. Baja California Sur can be fun, though in some places it's hard to find anyone who speaks spanish :-) If what you want is kick-back-and-relax, it's hard to beat La Paz -- stay at one of the older hotels along the Embarcadero, and watch the sun set over the bay.
But nowadays, if you try a bit, you can move and act as if you were in the United States. Convenience stores, convenient (and clean!) gas stations, decent sanitation (and getting better), and representatives of the major North American hotel chains, usually with alternate names -- Hoteles Posadas is part of the Holiday Inn empire, for instance. Not to worry. You can still get caf\ufffd de olla in a lot of places, and a few cups won't hurt you enough to notice :-) I get very impatient with people who claim they're contaminating the "real Mexico." The real Mexico is part of the Western Hemisphere; I've become convinced in my travels that from Hudson's Bay to Tierra del Fuego we have more in common with one another than we do with anybody Over the Water. When (and if) Mexico gets rich, it'll be different from the U.S. in details, but just as easy to get around in for everybody. You can see the bits emerging.
Quite hopeful, really. You should go back, you really should; just being able to pull into a Pemex without feeling as if you were descending into depths that hadn't been cleaned since around 1950 will probably astonish you --
