‘It’s modern day colonialism’: Mexico City residents are fed up with Americans descending on capital to escape high rents in California and gentrifying it by setting up Pilates centers and swanky coffee shops
Residents of Mexico City are getting fed up with Americans moving south from California to enjoy cheap real estate while working from home.
One TikTok influencer even called it ‘modern day colonialism’ as Americans have brought upscale coffee shops and Pilates studios, according to the Los Angeles Times.
They even reported seeing flyers around the city saying: ‘New to the city? Working remotely? You’re a f***ing plague and the locals f***ing hate you. Leave.’
The number of Americans moving to the Mexican capital has raised rents in the area and a noticeable shift in language from Spanish to English.
The US State Department says that at least 1.6 million Americans currently reside in Mexico, but it’s unknown how many of those people are in Mexico City. Over 1.2 million foreign visitors came through Mexico City’s airport in the first four months of 2022.
Fernando Bustos Gorozpe, a writer and university professor, said: ‘We’re the only brown people. We’re the only people speaking Spanish except the waiters.’
Bustos, who has over 108,000 TikTok followers, posted a video saying what the Americans are doing ‘stinks of modern colonialism’.
He added that white people ‘are given preference’ in Mexico. ‘Now, if a local wants to go to a restaurant or a club, they don’t just have to compete with rich, white Mexicans but with foreigners too.’
Nearly 2,000 people agreed with him on social media.
When one American posted to Facebook that their countrymen should ‘do yourself a favor and remote work in Mexico City’ many simply responded with ‘please don’t.’
Hugo Van der Merwe, who grew up in Florida and Namibia, said that it’s just about cheap places to live: ‘I’ve met a number of people who don’t really care that they’re in Mexico, they just care that it’s cheap.’
Alexandra Demou, who runs a moving company in Mexico, says she gets 50 calls a week from people who’d like to move there.
Meanwhile, Lauren Rodwell, a black woman who moved there from San Francisco, understands that Americans are gentrifying the city but says it still beats being black in America, which she called ‘exhausting’ and ‘nice to take a break’ from.
‘I kind of feel like, as a person of color from America, I’m so economically disadvantaged that wherever I go and experience some advantage or equity, I take it,’ she said.
The American diaspora to Mexico City may date back as far as 2016, when the city was named the world’s top travel destination by the New York Times.