As I read about the controversy surrounding the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce’s offensive stereotypical portrayal of Mexicans (“Chamber removes video promos,” April 27), I thought about a weeklong vacation I took with my daughter to Mexico City and Oaxaca last month.

I am an Anglo who had never been to this country that makes up one-third of North America, except to a conference in Acapulco years ago. We were warned by otherwise well-educated friends and family not to go. Too much drug violence, they warned. They’re bound to hate Americans, they said.

What we found instead was this: Our bed and breakfast, in the Condessa neighborhood of Mexico City that would rival Northampton in beauty and hipness, had more fine art than any hotel I’d ever stayed in. Mexico City is home to more museums than any other metropolis in the world save London. On Sundays, museum admission is free, and el centro was packed with thousands of families seeing exhibits ranging from Salvador Dali to ancient Mayan art.

There was opera in the Almeda, an elegant park opposite the beautiful Palacio de Bellas Artes, where we saw some famous murals of Diego Rivera, and, that evening, a performance by the world famous Ballet Folklorico de Mexico. Unlike similar productions in other countries, the audience was mostly Mexican, not tourists.

All the Mexicans we met were proud of their heritage and culture. Most of the visitors to Teotihuacan, outside the city, site of the third largest pyramid in the world, were Mexican.

The achievements of this 2,000-year-old civilization included the first indoor plumbing and sewage system in the world, as well as incredible architecture.

Outside Oaxaca, we visited the 600-year-old ruins of Mitla, “the place of the dead,” which may have been the first center in the world to provide compassionate hospice care to the ill and dying.

I could go on and on about the range of culture, natural beauty, great food, art and music that we experienced. We ate an incredible variety of food, including street food, and suffered no “turista.”

We don’t care for mariachi bands, so we did not go to hear any. But there is so much else, like the intricate harp and guitar of the son jarocho style, not to mention cumbia, pop, rock, Latin fusion and jazz. In Oaxaca, we found a club with no cover, away from the old city, with a jazz singer and trio, as good as any we’ve heard at the Academy of Music or the Iron Horse.

On the streets of Mexico City, my 27-year-old daughter sang along with all the reggaeton she recognized from back home. On our last morning, walking down Paseo de la Reforma, we happened on a free open air zumba class, led by a woman whose dancing was of professional caliber. I couldn’t resist joining in, which, to my great embarrassment, my daughter videotaped and Instagrammed to all her friends!

We felt perfectly safe in all the neighborhoods of Mexico City and Oaxaca in which we roamed. Many of the people were poor, but welcoming and surprisingly friendly, given the ugly vitriol spewed by our president. As one of the Oaxaca guides we became friendly with explained, “I think of politicians like flowers. They bloom, flourish for a short while, then they die. The people will always be the same.”

The organizers of the Amherst Chamber Margarita Madness celebration, and their counterparts elsewhere, should go spend a week in Mexico as we did (the real Mexico, not a resort). I’m sure they’ll come back with ideas for a party which is more fun and authentic, which can give us New Englanders a taste of what this great nation on our southern border is about.

By the way, the real national drink of much of Mexico is not tequila but mezcal, which can come from any cactus. Like Mexico itself, its taste is rich and complicated.

Dr. David Gottsegen, of Belchertown, is a pediatrician with Holyoke Pediatric Associates, which has offices in South Hadley and Holyoke.