Gringo go home?
Are digital nomads and refugees from US politics ruining Mexico? A semi-ex-pat considers.
On July 4 and other recent days, Mexican protesters have taken to the streets to say they’re fed up with the digital nomads and other US citizens who have gentrified their towns. Like Florence, Venice, Barcelona, and other cities that have been spoiled by their popularity, Mexicans are beginning to feel the pain of rising rents and fewer housing options as more people move there from North America, first searching for a less expensive place to live indoors during Covid, and now fleeing what many see as a dangerously autocratic and vindictive government.
I partly sympathized with protesters, whose signs read, “You’re a colonizer, not a fucking ex-pat,” and “Gringo go home.” Their rents are rising because people from the US find living in Mexico to be so cheap. I’ve felt the rage of gentrification in my own city, San Francisco, as highly-paid tech kids pushed most of the artists, teachers, writers, and other middle class folks out to Oakland and—now that Oakland is gentrified—far beyond, to towns in the outer stretches of the East Bay, to Portland, to North Carolina, and, yes, to Mexico, Portugal, and other European and Latin American cities. I’ve only been able to afford to live in San Francisco because I have rent control and I’m old.
I also understand protesters who resent the free-spending US immigrants taking over their best, tree-lined neighborhoods while their own people are being brutalized for immigrating to the US in search of better opportunities. We in the US think we can live anywhere else in the world we desire, including Mexico City, driving up prices because we have the money, and for us, it’s relatively cheap. Meantime, locals have been crossing the Rio Grande at night to go to shitty jobs in the US picking fruit or washing dishes that no one here wants to do and are now being picked up in raids and thrown into cells, even when they’ve been paying taxes and getting their naturalization papers in order.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, my favorite head of state, responded to the protests and vandalism: “The xenophobic displays at this demonstration must be condemned,” she said at a press conference. “No matter how legitimate the demand, in this case gentrification, we can’t just say ‘Out!’ to any nationality in our country.”
It is indeed more complicated than Gringo Go Home. The Guardian story reported that the increases in housing prices in Mexico City have as much to do with barriers to new housing construction (as it does in San Francisco) than to the influx of digital nomads, and quoted a 2024 study saying that “displacement and gentrification predominantly originate from government policies and politics.” But certainly, these newcomers with pockets full of pesos don’t help the situation.
A few young people in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial haven for ex-pats since the end of World War II, also protested gentrification there. And in San Miguel de Allende, I am part of the problem. I’m a permanent resident who spends part of her time down in Mexico and intends someday to retire there, where people care more about old people than in our compassionless culture.
San Miguel de Allende has long attracted ex-pats, especially artistic ones, since the GI Bill made it possible to go to art school there in the late 40s and live like kings, so the situation is somewhat different from Mexico City. But in recent years, the numbers of AirBnBs in the historic Centro have increased, and since Trump was voted in to his second term, the number of people who are moving down, almost sight unseen, has increased substantially. I am somewhat alarmed about the number of my own friends who have made quick decisions to move down there and buy houses at near-San Francisco prices, and wonder how much they’ve thought the issue through.
I have considered my role in gentrifying San Miguel de Allende, and thought about how a foreigner can have a positive impact on a community, rather than going there to build houses, employ people, and eat out for less money than you’d spend in the US.
In my particular case, my roots to San Miguel de Allende go way back, to 1971, when I lived there for a summer with my family; my parents wanted us to get a taste of a different culture and language—something I think broadens kids’ perspectives and makes them more open-minded and tolerant of other cultures. That’s a good thing, and in general, I think travel is a good thing, making us understand more about other ways of living—as long as we’re not just consumers of culture, but contributors.
Even though I loved Mexico as a child, I stayed away for many years, because I was worried that there were so many ex-pats in San Miguel de Allende that it would be ruined. Instead, I returned in 2007 and was charmed again by its colonial facades and magical gardens inside plain-faced walls. I bought a piece of property that had been long abandoned, a lot that was only 3.5 x 14 meters. I hired a Mexican architect and crew and paid good wages. I lived there part-time and rented the house the rest of the time. That feels different than building a place just to AirBnB it.
Fast forward 15 years and it has become much more difficult to rent out houses. State and federal taxes are about 30%, the market is saturated, and the city has decided that everyone who rents their house on a tech platform needs to pay $2500, regardless of whether it is a 10-bedroom house or a house that is also a home and only 11.5 feet wide. I don’t mind paying more in taxes and to the city, but that flat fee isn’t fair to people whose businesses are small and only rent when they aren’t living there.
During Covid I bought the house next door and have been renting that, too. My intention wasn’t to buy it to be an AirBnB, but to eventually make my house bigger than a couple of bowling lanes so my husband and I could live there during retirement without driving each other crazy, and still be able to fit a piano inside. I bought the house from my neighbors, and when, after they split up the purchase price, they didn’t save enough to pay their capital gains taxes, I paid those, too. The owner was pleased, and offered to bring his mariachi band over to celebrate one of these days.
Buying that second, adjoining house sometimes feels like a mistake. I like having friends stay there, but I don’t like being in the rental business. I’m sure if I hadn’t bought the house, someone else would have, given the situation in San Miguel de Allende, and I certainly wouldn’t have bought another house if it hadn’t been right next door. The other AirBnBs on my end of the street are all owned by Mexicans, by the way. This is not a purely gringo phenomenon.
So I can’t say that I’m not a part of the gentrification problem. But there’s a lot I have done to be more like a community member than an exploitive ex-pat. That of course has benefitted me as much as the people who live on my street. The last thing I want to be is an ex-pat who moves to Mexico and doesn’t speak Spanish, but has dinner parties only with other gringos, plays golf or pickleball, and only interacts with Mexicans who serve them in some way.
So here are the ways I’ve tried to be respectful about the city I live in:
I learned the language. From my early days in Mexico, I made a rule that I would only speak Spanish unless the people I was with didn’t speak the language, in which case I would limit my time with those people. My Spanish is fluent, and I try to constantly improve it; when I’m in Mexico, I only read books in Spanish. That may seem a little OCD but it helps me communicate with people. Most of my friends in Mexico are Mexicans, or are North Americans who speak such good Spanish you can’t really tell the difference. Some gringos move to Mexico and say they aren’t good with languages. Well, what about all the Mexicans who are speaking English to you? They didn’t learn it because they were “good” at it; they learned it to get a better job. Your job as an ex-pat is to at last try.
I pay my taxes. I became a permanent resident and went through a lot of hoops to make my rentals comply with local business rules. I pay my housekeeper’s social security, and raised money for her when her sister, brother-in-law and uncle were assassinated by narcos and she was left with three more kids to raise on top of the three she had.
I don’t complain about how things are in Mexico, and don’t compare them to how we do things in the US. People may show up late, traffic may be slower, it may take longer to get things done because of holidays and difficulties making appointments, but it’s Mexico. Just relax.
I don’t talk about how cheap things are in Mexico. I am aware that San Miguel de Allende is an expensive town for Mexicans, even though their wages are higher than in other parts of Mexico. It’s insulting to say that things are cheap. And, of course, things are becoming more expensive all the time.
I patronize local Mexican-owned businesses. I was outraged when a food writer from the US came down to San Miguel de Allende a few years ago and wrote a story about all the best places to eat, shop, etc.—and almost every one of them was owned by a gringo. One restaurant, journalistic ethics be damned, was owned by a business associate of hers. The writer never got out of her North American hipster bubble to find anything run by an actual Mexican. Gringa go home.
I pay good wages, above the going rate. Other gringos complain that this is making wages rise all over. Well, I believe in paying people fairly and not driving a hard bargain with people who have so little. I try to always be generous, because they are being generous in sharing their culture with me. I let my housekeeper know that she doesn’t have to put up with any bullshit from guests, and that she should let me know if they’re being demanding or making her uncomfortable; my relationship to her is far more important to me than to anyone staying in my house.
I don’t bargain in markets. That used to be a thing. It isn’t any more, unless, say, you’re buying 20 pieces of something. Pay people the price they ask. Bargain when you might bargain in the US, which is to say, not that often in a retail context.
I tip well, especially musicians.
I know my neighbors. I say buenos dias to them on the street. I contribute to the fund for the street party even if I won’t be in town. I buy popsicles for Don Rafa, the 90-something-year-old who runs the little bodega a few steps from my house, and show him photos I took at the parade and around town because he can’t go anywhere in his wheelchair. I eat at the restaurants on my street. I buy my jewelry, tablecloths, napkins, stools, and other household goods on my street and in the nearby mercado. People know me.
I participate in a mixed, mostly Mexican social community. I spend most of my free time in Mexico dancing salsa, and the dance community is wonderfully mixed, though almost everyone speaks Spanish; if you take a dance class, you should know your izquierda from your derecha. My other best friend in Mexico doesn’t speak hardly any English at all. She’s very well educated and speaks perfect French, but doesn’t think everyone should have to speak English. I agree.
I try to be as polite and considerate to all the Mexicans I meet as they are to me. I talk to cab drivers and servers and learn shopkeepers’ names. It makes it all more pleasant to live there.
If all of this sounds like a justification, I can understand that. But having spent a lot of time in San Miguel de Allende, I know there are big differences between the worlds of ex-pats who try to become part of the community and contribute to it—as so many do with volunteer projects, art, and making friends—and those who stay inside their gringo bubbles, being demanding and disdainful of the locals. I feel lucky to be able to call Mexico my part-time home, and want to be sure that my presence there is welcome.