Is this shoplifting?

This was a test posting. I need to download some pics.

I took this one in a little silver mining town in the Sierra Madre Mountains when I was in Mexico last October. I can't remember the name of the town, but it was a former ghost town slowly making a comeback. I mean slowly. We saw maybe ten people in the whole town. I know I didn't really post about the trip. I loved Mexico and would go back in a second, but my family and I were so overcome with the begging and poverty there. Especially in this area.

We were there as part of a day trip during our stop in Mazatlan. Our tour stopped here for lunch (prearranged by the cruiseline) at a little family owned place. The food was fantastic and the beer was so welcome. This donkey in the picture, though, belonged to a little boy who would go up to people in these tour groups that stop here on their way further up the mountain and ask, in very broken English, if they wanted to take his picture on the donkey. After people said yes and took his picture, he would then follow them around for the remainder of the tour in this town demanding two dollars.

It really made me think twice about coming back home and buying jewelry from a specific silver company when I saw the exact bracelet I had bought from them for $40 in this mining town being sold for $3... by the family that crafted it. It made me wonder, is it Americans taking advantage of these miners? Or is it other Mexicans?

Like I said, the cruiseline had prearranged all of our day excursions and stops and more than once I felt these people's poverty was being commercialized and put on display for us. And I do mean poverty in some cases (not just differences in economics or lifestyles).

Enough. I now know how to post more pictures.