On being a bad immigrant
Bethany Platanella is a travel planner and Michelin Guidebook writer based in Mexico City. She lives for the dopamine hit that comes directly after booking a plane ticket, exploring local markets, practicing yoga and munching on fresh tortillas. Sign up to receive her Sunday Love Letters to your inbox, peruse her blog, or follow her on Instagram.
My neighbors – a couple who cat-sits for me when I’m on the road – mentioned the process to obtain their marriage certificate, followed by a comment about pruebas de sangre.
Doubting my Spanish, I asked for a deeper explanation. As I’ve never been married in Mexico (I’ve never been married, period), I’d never heard of such a thing. A blood test? To get married? Where are we, Saudi Arabia?
Being ‘foreign,’ I couldn’t help but immediately feel disgusted at such an infringement on one’s life choices.
Being a writer, I thought the topic required further investigation.
Turns out, pre-marital blood tests are a product of the Mexican Revolution. In 1917, the Family Relationships Act was introduced to combat the devastating reduction to Mexico’s population. Reproduction was critical. To ensure healthy children, couples had to obtain a physician’s medical certificate before marriage, uncovering incurable illnesses or deathly contagions.
At the time, syphilis and tuberculosis were running rampant and no cure — not even penicillin — existed. Both diseases could be passed to a newborn during pregnancy, something the country couldn’t afford both in terms of growth and cost. Moreover, doctors tested for impotence, severe cognitive conditions, or hereditary physical defects.
Since men were initially assumed to be disease carriers (especially venereal ones), they were subject to thorough examinations. But by 1928, and subsequently in 1932, women were legally bound to take equal part. In the end, the State decided if a pair was fit to marry or, at minimum, delay a civil union substantially while waiting for proof of recovery.
Infected with syphilis? You may be forced to undergo treatment involving mercury- or arsenic-laced medications, both toxic enough to kill you. TB? A surgeon might collapse the weak lung to “rest it”.
While these extreme rules aren’t in place anymore, the process has gotten murky with time. It doesn’t help that no federal requirements exist – they range from state to state, but premarital blood testing still largely exists.
On the bright side, in 2021, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the State of Mexico's marriage laws were discriminatory on the basis of health and impeded one's right to form a family. Quintana Roo officially dropped the prenuptial test mandate in June (2026). Nowhere on Mexico City’s online marriage certificate registration site does it say a medical exam is required.
Thank the good whatever-you-believe-in, because that is one rule I’d absolutely refuse to engage in.
Among others.
I know I know. Every country has rules — whether social or government-mandated — that outsiders simply haven’t experienced before. There are those we know as established residents of Mexico: the non-existence of a flat-out no, the expected formalities exchanged before asking a question, the buen provecho to a neighboring table when leaving a restaurant. (The latter two, I find quite endearing.)
But a handful exist that I just can’t get down with. Premarital blood testing at the hands of the State is certainly one.
Others are more nuanced.
Let’s take a real-life example. My museum story.
I leave my apartment with my Bose headphones and a small white purse, no particular destination in mind. I stumble upon a museum, which I’ve visited before, but is so damn pretty, I decide to pop in again. As I ascend the stairs to the entrance, a security guard stops me to run through his predictable spiel of the museum’s layout and the proper way to enjoy it (literally, one route exists, because it’s a house, and should you stray off course, you’d walk into a wall).
While he chatters, I remove my headphones from around my neck and attempt to stuff them into my purse. They’re a bit clunky, so they don’t entirely fit.
I’m sorry, senorita, but you must close your purse.
I zip the purse to about 76%. My protruding headphones block me from zipping any further.
You must close your purse all the way.
I motion to the obvious.
You’ll have to bring it to the lower floor and secure it in a locker.
The house museum consists of one floor, four rooms – each roped off so one cannot enter, and, on the aforementioned lower floor, an outdoor garden. A visit takes no more than 15 minutes, and that’s usually because you’re taking a series of shameless selfies in the garden’s full-length mirror.
“I think this is fine, the purse is basically closed,” I reply
I’m sorry senorita, you’ll have to put it in a locker or I can’t let you in, he says, standing firm.
In a huff (even now my blood boils) I spin around and leave, forgoing the museum visit because this is ridiculous. What does he think I’m going to do? Knock over an expensive statue with my oversized headphones? Steal a lamp and shove it into my already-overstuffed purse? I hate this man and, at the moment, I hate Mexico.
Over the course of hours, my anger subsides, and I revert to being an adult again. I decide Mexico City’s lovely verdant streets and charming cafes and tamale vendors outweigh this man’s inability to break a rule (that barely applies to me).
There are rules you follow, there are rules you don’t. Does that mean I’m a bad immigrant?
I don’t think so. Unless, of course, I marry a Mexican.