I am sure that these photos are not typical of all construction or painting sites in Mexico, they are certainly representative of most of the work I have witnessed here. The finished product is usually good, but the methods are quite different from what I am used to.
One key difference is the approach to safety, which seems fairly blase. Recently for example, a tradesman was doing some work at our house and he was squinting from the concrete dust he was generating, so we gave him some safety glasses to wear. He seemed amused, but put them and started to use them, however half an hour later when we returned he had discarded them and was back to squinting again. I have not seen anyone here using a safety harness at heights, not are hard hats a frequent sight. They get the job done, in what I suspect might be less time than if they adhered to some of the safety procedures I find normal, but at what human cost I am not sure.
The other difference is that fewer tools and aides seem to get the job done. Take a look for example at this guy painting a house. His only tools to paint the entire house have been a ladder, his paint buckets and two brushes. He hasn't used rollers and because he only has one ladder, he has to climb up and down the ladder carrying the paint bucket the whole time and he has to move his ladder all the time to move along the house.
The other photos of the guys doing some construction on a house in our street, show a great blend of the approach to safety and ingeneous use of materials at hand to complete a job. Note the lack of any harness at height and look at what has been used to construct the "scaffold"!
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