Jakarta as The Melting Pot of Ethnic Groups

The politically correct way to refer to Jakarta's chaos, petty crime, turf wars, mob rule and inter-ethnic hatred is to call the city a big cultural melting pot. The melting pot doctrine views the city's populace as a smiling happy bunch, grateful for the opportunity to celebrate their colorful diversity through a collective urban experience. 

In a way, this isn't far from the truth, Indonesians from across the archipelago have always flocked to the bustling capital in search of new opportunities and the promise of big city prosperity. Each year after the Muslim Lebaran holiday, some 250,000 migrants reckon Jakarta still isn't full enough and decide to hop on board. This may be a city of immigrants, but one ethnic group, the Betawi, claims to be its true natives. Myth! The Betawi people are actually of mixed Sundanese, Javanese, Balinese, Malay, Chinese and even Arab and Dutch descent. And since Betawi only emerged in late 19th-century Batavia, other ethnic groups can claim an earlier foothold on this land. But never mind all that. An unwritten, highly stereotypical occupation code exists underneath Jakarta's cultural confusion, and it goes something like this:

You are an upper-middle class Indonesian of Chinese descent,and therefore work for your family's trading company; you place legal affairs in the hands of your attorney, an ethnic Batak from North Sumatra; he recently even helped you purchase a plot of land behind your house from an ethnic Betawi Jakartan, who owned the property for three generations but needed the money to go on Haj pilgrimage to Mecca on the advice of this soft-spoken neighborhood cleric, who's from East Java; meanwhile, your housekeeper Inem, from Central Java, said she thinks your rich neighbor - a mafia boss originally from Ambon in the Maluku islands - can get tour car fixed for free by a thug from Flores island who runs a garage in the Tanah Abang market; this sounds like a good idea, beacause ever since the car trouble began you've been unable to take your wife to tacky hotel bars to hear her favorite singers' usually Christians from Ambon, Lake Toba, or Manado in North Sulawesi. You colud go by taxi ,but you'd hae to deal with a driver from Cirebon, West Java, who has yet to find his way around the city since moving here a mere 19 years ago; or you could take a Metro Min bus, but the Batak driver, Batak conductor and Batak pickpocket wouldn't be nearly as classy as your Batak lawyer, and you might mess up the new suit made by your tailor, that chap little bastard from Padang in West Sumatra; you thought of buying anew car with an advance from your loan shark, who is of course from Tasikmalaya in West Java, but his wife, a former bar gilr, just left him so she could re-marry for the fourth time, because she is ethnic Sundanese. 

Now you know.