Gringo go home! Why Mexico is turning against US immigrants
The broken glass had been swept away and, of the furious graffiti, only a faint pink stain remained on the walls outside the Starbucks — but the damage had been done.
Days earlier a mix of Mexicans and foreigners were sipping flat whites in this trendy Mexico City neighbourhood last Friday when an anti-gentrification protest descended on them.
The Starbucks customers hit the floor as a group of the protesters turned violent, throwing chairs, smashing windows and looting snacks to toss into the crowd, where people brandished signs reading “Expat = gentrifier” and “Gentrification is colonisation!”
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Clips of the chaos went viral, sparking a bout of soul-searching in Mexico City over its embrace of tourism and remote workers and the toll this has taken on local life.
Anger has been building over the issue for years. Remote workers began flocking to Mexico City during the pandemic, when Mexico imposed few restrictions and Americans — often known as gringos — in particular realised they could have a high quality of life for a fraction of what it would cost in New York or Los Angeles.
Demonstrators target buildings in a protest against the gentrification of neighbourhoods in Mexico City
MARIANA HERNANDEZ/REUTERS
The new arrivals concentrated in pretty and pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods such as Roma, famous for Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning film of the same name, and Condesa — where the storming of the Starbucks took place.
Five days after the protest the cafe was half full but there were noticeably few foreigners. Next door, in a Japanese store selling household goods, a sales assistant said he was there when the protest arrived. “It was peaceful at first, hundreds of people came by chanting,” he said. “Then they saw the Starbucks and as there are always gringos there they starting shouting at them. That’s when it all kicked off.”
An anti-American protest in Mexico City on 4 July, US independence day
ALAMY
Graffiti reading “decent housing for CDMX [Mexico City]” in the capital
YURI CORTEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Further down the road, a security guard outside a gym recalled the incident. “They tried to get in,” he said. “They smashed the windows and were stealing stuff from shops along here.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he added. “They say, ‘f**k the gringos.’ Sure, f**k the gringos. But I’m Mexican. Everyone who works here is Mexican.”
The trendiness of Mexico City has created winners and losers among locals. While a boon for landlords and businesses that cater to foreigners, it has also priced some locals out and threatens to change the character of neighbourhoods.
Some Mexicans complain that Roma and Condesa have turned into enclaves where more English than Spanish is spoken, full of hipster cafes, pilates studios and “concept stores” that seem to exist for Instagram and sell a bit of everything, from vinyl records to vintage clothes.
As restaurants adapt to foreign tastes, others fret that you simply cannot find proper Mexican hot sauce anymore. Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, on Monday criticised the protests as xenophobic but also said that something needs to be done about gentrification.
Peaceful protests have sometimes turned violent
AUREA DEL ROSARIO/AP
“No matter how legitimate a demand may be, such as opposing gentrification, it cannot call for any nationality to leave our country,” she told reporters. “Mexico is a country open to the world.”
The Anti-Gentrification Front, which organised the march, subsequently stated “to clarify we are not against migration, which is a human right … gentrification is a matter of inequality, not migration”.
“Every year or so there’s a big outrage about gentrification,” said Alex González Ormerod, a political analyst and Mexico City native, who noted that the focus is always on Roma and Condesa, where well-off Mexicans love to live, and rarely working-class neighbourhoods that are in turn being gentrified by middle-class Mexicans.
What was different this time was the geopolitical context, with President Trump back in the White House and US authorities aggressively deporting Mexicans. It was no accident that the protest took place on July 4.
“It was described as a protest against US imperialism, and they were walking around with Palestinian flags,” said González Ormerod.
The protest did not passed unnoticed in the US, where the Department of Homeland Security used it to drily suggest that undocumented Mexicans self-deport. “If you are in the United States illegally and wish to join the next protest in Mexico City, use the CBP Home app to facilitate your departure,” it wrote on X.
