If each before their own door swept, the village would be clean. I often heard this as child in England, and although I doubt if anyone actually does that there anymore, it is an obsession with most Mexicans. Every morning in San Miguel buckets of water laced with Fabuloso, a noxious cleaner which is meant to smell fresh but which smells more like a chemical factory, are sloshed onto the sidewalks and street and are dutifully brushed around. The end result is not so much to wash the dirt away, but to repaint it evenly on the stones, at least giving the appearance of clean.