Mexico Doesn't Like It! - Truncated

YouTube = https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGobVm8zABdoMmv8Fbc1wMg

Locals = https://sweethomesa.locals.com/

POPULIST REVOLT = https://populistrevolt.com

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/californians-and-other-americans-are-flooding-mexico-city-some-locals-want-them-to-go-home/ar-AA101pW6?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3fe7f3d540ed4d77a0f9694f94141ace

Fernando Bustos Gorozpe was sitting with friends in a cafe here when he realized that — once again — they were outnumbered.

“We’re the only brown people,” said Bustos, a 38-year-old writer and university professor. “We’re the only people speaking Spanish except the waiters.”

Mexico has long been the top foreign travel destination for Americans, its bountiful beaches and picturesque pueblos luring tens of millions of U.S. visitors annually. But in recent years, a growing number of tourists and remote workers — hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., Silicon Valley and points in between — have flooded the nation’s capital and left a scent of new-wave imperialism.

The influx, which has accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely to continue as inflation rises, is transforming some of the city’s most treasured neighborhoods into expat enclaves.

In leafy, walkable quarters such as Roma, Condesa, Centro and Juarez, rents are soaring as Americans and other foreigners snap up houses and landlords trade long-term renters for travelers willing to pay more on Airbnb. Taquerias, corner stores and fondas — small, family-run lunch spots — are being replaced by Pilates studios, co-working spaces and sleek cafes advertising oat-milk.

lattes and avocado toast.

And English — well, it’s everywhere: ringing out at supermarkets, natural wine bars and fitness classes in the park.

At Lardo, a Mediterranean restaurant where, on any given night, three-quarters of the tables are filled with foreigners, a Mexican man in a well-cut suit recently took a seat at the bar, gazed at the English-language menu before him and sighed as he handed it back: “A menu in Spanish, please.”

Some chilangos, as locals are known, are fed up.

Recently, expletive-laced posters appeared around town.

“New to the city? Working remotely?” they read in English. “You’re a f—ing plague and the locals f—ing hate you. Leave.”

That sentiment echoed the hundreds of responses that poured in after a young American posted this seemingly innocuous tweet: “Do yourself a favor and remote work in Mexico City — it is truly magical.”

“Please don’t,” read one of the kinder replies. “This city is becoming more and more expensive every day in part because of people like you, and you don’t even realize or care about it.”

Hugo Van der Merwe, 31 — a video game designer who grew up in Florida and Namibia and has spent the last several months working remotely from Mexico City, Montreal and Bogota, Colombia — said he understands why locals are vexed by the growing population of “digital nomads.”

“There’s a distinction between people who want to learn about the place they are in and those who just like it because it’s cheap,” he said. “I’ve met a number of people who don’t really care that they’re in Mexico, they just care that it’s cheap.”

Clear financial incentives are drawing Americans to Mexico City — where the average local salary is $450 a month.

For the cost of a $2,000 one-bedroom in Koreatown, an Angeleno can rent a penthouse here.

Despite growing tensions, Mexico City is not Paris, where an American stumbling over French in a boulangerie will get a dose of hostility along with her croissants. It’s not Berlin or Barcelona, where locals in recent years have mounted major protests over excessive tourism and the gobbling up of urban properties by global investment firms.

The vast majority of people in this crowded, colorful metropolis are unwaveringly kind and patient with international visitors, who in the first four months of this year spent $851 million on hotels alone, according to tourism records.

But there is friction beneath the surface, as more locals consider what gentrification means for the city’s economics, culture and even race relations.

Over the weekend, a tenant advocacy group hosted a walking tour of “places we have lost to gentrification, touristification and forced displacement.”

“Our homes,” the event flier read, “now house digital nomads.”

The dynamic playing out here is, in many ways, an old-world problem colliding with tech-age mobility, one that is forcing Mexico to confront its own history and traits.

After his revelation at the cafe, Bustos uploaded a video to his popular TikTok account, complaining that the influx of foreigners in Mexico City “stinks of modern colonialism.” Nearly 2,000 people posted comments in agreement.

His critique is multilayered and speaks to generations of injustices. He also believes that Americans, many of whom are white, are reinforcing the city’s pervasive — if infrequently discussed — caste system.