A Santiago Niltepec farmer harvests indigo plants. Fidel Ugarte Liévana / INAH
Oaxaca indigo producers are hoping that recent interest from German and North American investors could be the beginning of a revival for the ancestral crop.
A German company reached out to Santiago Niltepec, a small town in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in search of an organic dye for its fabrics and garments. Indigo has been produced in the region’s indigenous Zapotec towns since the 18th century, the newspaper Milenio reported.
But the pandemic hit the clothing industry hard and cultivators of the crop struggled as prices dived, said Advir Vásquez Fuentes, a spokesperson for the indigo producers.
Now, the area’s fortunes appear to be changing. Vásquez said the investors approached municipal authorities for 500 kilograms of indigo for textile companies in Germany and confirmed that the producers were also in conversations with a North American company. While those negotiations are carried out, the state government has helped organize the distribution of the dye to local artisans.
Vásquez added that there were more than 100 hectares of land planted with jiquilite seeds in Santiago Niltepec ready to produce the organic ink, which producers hope will create more than 1,000 kilos of organic indigo and generate profits of more than 300,000 pesos (US $14,700). The first indigo plants should be ready before April.
Niltepec indigo producers agitate the giant tubs of water and plant material by hand to extract the dye.
The process to produce the dye is not simple, Vásquez explained. Once the seed is planted, it takes 100 days for the plant to reach maturity. If a young indigo plant is harvested too soon, it is useless. Dye producers cut up the mature plant, place it in giant tubs of water and then can begin extracting the first “curds” of unrefined dye. The traditional labor-intensive process makes for “unrivaled” quality, Vásquez said.
The natural dye is used in the design industry to give color to threads, silk, wool, embroidery or denim jeans. A kilogram of organic indigo can dye more than 10 kilograms of wool or cotton.
Airbnb has more than a fifth of the short-term rental market in Quintana Roo, and even more in popular destinations, according to short-term rental analytics company AirDNA.
The accommodations platform Airbnb now has more than 30,000 listings in Quintana Roo, according to a provider of data and analytics for the US $140 billion dollar short-term rental industry.
AirDNA data shows that there are 31,134 Airbnb lodgings in the Caribbean coast state, compared to the 107,128 hotel rooms there were at the end of last year, according to Tourism Ministry statistics. Airbnb properties account for 22.5% of the combined offerings across the state, and considerably higher percentages in some popular destinations.
They represent 43.5% of the combined accommodation offerings in Tulum, 43% in Bacalar, 35.5% in Lázaro Cárdenas, which includes Isla Holbox, and 31.5% on Isla Mujeres.
Their share of the Playa del Carmen market is a more modest 21.8%, while it’s just below 20% in Cozumel and Cancún, 12.7% in Puerto Morelos and 10.2% in the state capital Chetumal.
There are a broad range of Airbnb listings including single rooms, apartments, houses, bungalows and more.
Airbnb listings range from bare basics to ultra-luxe. This Puerto Morelos listing, which boasts a private cenote, falls into the latter category.
One luxurious Airbnb property ensconced in jungle near Puerto Morelos has its own cenote, or natural swimmable sinkhole.
One of Quintana Roo’s Airbnb entrepreneurs is Rafael Solís, who rents out rooms in a residential building on the main tourist strip of Playa del Carmen.
“The new mode of workers is to be a digital nomad,” the former hotelier told the newspaper Milenio.
“In other words, people who are working remotely during the pandemic and who decide to move continually to work in a tourist destination,” Solís said.
In Tulum, where there are more than 6,200 Airbnb listings compared to just over 8,100 hotel rooms, the growth of offerings in the former category has been spurred by new construction.
Casa Tau, another high end Mexican rental located in Nayarit, is advertised as the most expensive Airbnb in the world.
The number of residential developments in the municipality, located in the southern portion of Quintana Roo’s Riviera Maya, increased from 123 to 625 between May 2020 and July 2021, according to the Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals.
David Ortiz Mena, president of the Tulum Hotel Association, said that the rapid growth has caused problems.
Due to a lack of planning, growth in Tulum has been “complicated,” he said, explaining that sustainability has been threatened by the increased number of residents and visitors. Providing the services needed by the growing number of visitors has also been a challenge, Ortiz said.
Rodrigo, an Airbnb host with four apartments in Tulum, told Milenio that demand for short-term accommodation has increased in the resort town during the pandemic, and that the number of people seeking to buy a property and rent it out on Airbnb has also risen.
“A lot of people want to work in Tulum. For some reason they want to go to the beach … so they generally book long stays,” he said. “We get a lot of reservations for two months … a lot of them are foreigners from Europe.”
Rodrigo said the price of Airbnb accommodation makes it more attractive than hotels for a lot of travelers.
“Airbnb apartments are extremely cheap, … the average price for an apartment for seven people with a private pool is about 3,000 or 4,000 pesos [US $145-$195 per night], when … it would be a thousand times more expensive in a hotel,” he said.
Ortiz said the increase in violence and drug trafficking in Tulum could be related to the Airbnb boom.
“All this comes … from demand. If nobody buys drugs of course we wouldn’t have this sequence of problems. In the case of Tulum I think it’s important that this makes us reflect about the kind of tourism we’re promoting. … If one bets on party tourism, logically this type of consequence will follow,” he said.
“If on the other hand, we seek to promote sports, leisure, wellbeing, gastronomic or cultural tourism, I think it would be very difficult for this kind of [violent] atmosphere to permeate.”
Thanks to the high prices they command, avocados are sometimes referred to as ‘green gold.’ Jose Castanares/AFP via Getty Images
To the relief of avocado lovers from coast to coast, the recent drama between the United States and Mexico was fleeting.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture banned imports of the fleshy fruit from Mexico on February 11 after an employee of its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, who was working in Mexico, received threats after refusing to certify a mislabeled shipment of avocados.
With only a two- to three-week supply stored in U.S. warehouses, any extended disruption to the avocado pipeline would have been quickly felt.
Eight days later, the ban was lifted, and cooks could resume smashing avocados into guacamole, blending them into smoothies and smearing them onto bread without trepidation.
Yet to me, this disruption – however brief – reveals just how reliant the U.S. has become on its neighbor for a product that has seen its demand soar. When I was working on my book Avocado: A Global History, I was struck by the extent to which this lucrative trade has evolved over the past 25 years, making it an attractive business possibility for both legitimate and criminal enterprises.
Mexico’s cash crop
Avocados from Mexico have been fueling America’s taste for the fruit since 1997, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture lifted a 1914 import ban, which originally was implemented due to fears over pests like seed weevils infesting U.S. crops. At the time, Southern California produced about 90% of the avocados eaten by Americans.
Since then, per capita avocado consumption in the U.S. has ballooned from 2 pounds in 2001 to nearly 8 pounds in 2018.
This increase in the popularity of avocados, coupled with the limitations of domestic sources, has allowed Mexican avocados to dominate the American market. Today, Mexico – specifically, the Mexican state of Michoacán, which is the only state certified to sell the fruit to the U.S. – supplies about 80% of the 60 million pounds of avocados eaten north of the border each week.
Avocados are sometimes referred to as “green gold” because of the price they command in international commodity markets. Exports of avocados from Mexico were valued at nearly US$3 billion in 2021, ahead of both tequila and beer, two other popular Mexican exports. The average price of an avocado is up 10% from a year ago; during the brief ban, the price of a carton of the fruit catapulted to nearly $60, up from around $30 a year ago.
Currently, less than 1% of avocados eaten in the U.S. come from places other than Mexico and the U.S. Countries like Peru and Colombia also produce the fruit.
A TV ad for Mexican avocados aired during the 2022 Super Bowl.
Cartels want their piece of the pie
In Mexico, the high profit margins of the avocado trade attracted the interest of crime cartels, and those operating in Michoacán began to infiltrate the avocado business more than 20 years ago.
As various cartels have vied for control of the avocado industry, violence and extortion have escalated in the region. In the beginning, cartels were content to extort farmers, packers and exporters – in essence, taxing them for the ability to do business without interference from the cartels.
But a bloody turf war has intensified in recent years.
In 2019, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel killed nine people in Uruapan, Michoacán’s hub of avocado distribution, hanging their corpses from a prominent overpass in the city. They dumped seven more bodies on the side of a road, leaving a banner at the scene that taunted a rival gang, the Viagras. There are even reports of cartels using drones to drop bombs as part of their efforts to control the economy of the region.
Threats directed at inspectors have happened before. While no individual cartel has been directly tied to a specific threat, U.S. officials seem to think the threats are linked to increased cartel participation in the avocado trade.
In 2019, a team of USDA inspectors working in Ziracuaretiro, a city just west of Uruapan, were robbed and threatened with violence. Later that year, the USDA wrote a memo stating it would suspend inspection activities if threats of physical violence and intimidation against inspectors continued. After the most recent threat, the USDA referenced this memo when announcing the temporary import ban.
The Hass holds all the cards
President López Obrador dismissed the notion that the suspension was due to cartels associated with the avocado trade. Instead, he blamed unspecified political interests in the U.S. and pressure from other countries who want a share of the lucrative American avocado market.
Members of a self-defense group guard an avocado plantation from drug cartels in Michoacán. Enrique Castro/AFP via Getty Images
One of the reasons the U.S. began allowing Mexican avocados to be imported over the objection of domestic growers was NAFTA. The U.S. wanted the ability to send corn and other agricultural goods to Mexico under the rules of the 1994 free trade agreement. But the Mexican government demanded some sort of agricultural export quid pro quo to help balance trade between the two countries, and avocados were ripe for the job.
The recent brief disruption underscores the risks of being so heavily reliant on a product that comes from one region in one country that’s rife with violence and corruption.
Yet it isn’t easy to simply open up an avocado spigot from another country. Americans really prefer just one variety of avocado: the Hass, which is the type imported from Mexico. While the U.S. allows Hass avocado imports from Peru and Colombia, wholesalers prefer not to sell them because they’re thought to be lower quality. Hass is the dominant variety grown in California, too, but American growers can’t grow nearly enough to meet the demand.
Greenskin avocados, which are grown in Florida and the Caribbean, along with many other countries, aren’t nearly as popular with consumers due to textural differences and the fact that they don’t change color to indicate when they are ripe. Greenskin avocados could ease U.S. dependence on Mexican avocados, but until they gain acceptance by avocado eaters, they won’t help wean Americans off the Hass avocados grown in Michoacán.
Avocados might be a source of political tension, but their unicorn status as a creamy, delicious food that’s considered healthy makes most people willing to put politics aside and pass the guacamole.
Mercado Libre plans to invest in digitization and financial inclusion.
The Argentina-based e-commerce and online auctions company Mercado Libre is set to invest almost US $1.5 billion in Mexico this year, 34% more than it invested in 2021.
The $1.47 billion the company plans to invest in the country is equal to 67% of what it has invested in Mexico in the last five years.
The funds will go toward innovation and technology, strengthening logistical operations and reaching new customers.
The head of Mercado Libre in Mexico, David Geisen, said the company has confidence in the country.
“Mexico is a priority country for us. We believe in it and its talent, so we’ll continue to speculate with a constant and growing investment that allows us to add value and build better opportunities for our users,” he said.
Geisen added that serving customers with improved technologies and promoting financial inclusion were priorities.
“This year we will focus on bringing sellers closer to buyers, promoting digitization and providing financial tools to Mexicans in an innovative and sustainable way … For us, fintech development is essential to continue democratizing access to financial services in the country. Therefore, we are working on new online and offline solutions that we will make available to everyone and thus contribute to generating true financial inclusion,” he said.
One way that the company has promoted such inclusion is through the Mercado Crédito (Market Credit) payment option, whereby customers can borrow small sums of money to pay for individual products.
The company said that during the pandemic more than 288,000 Mexican families drew their principal income from the platform. In 2020, more than 38,000 small businesses in Mexico joined Mercado Libre, according to a study carried out last year by market research organization Euromonitor.
Mercado Libre was Latin America’s highest valued company in late 2021, the newspaper The Financial Times reported in October.
Pallets of onions were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection after finding packets of methamphetamine hidden in the shipment. U.S. CBP
United States authorities seized almost US $3 million worth of methamphetamine hidden in a shipment of onions in San Diego, California, on February 20.
Officers from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Otay Mesa border crossing between Tijuana, Baja California, and San Diego stopped a 46-year-old Mexican national driving a tractor-trailer.
A CBP canine team screened the truck and trailer and a sniffer dog indicated there was contraband on board. CBP officers unloaded more than 606 kilograms of methamphetamine in 1,197 small packets in sacks that were alongside the onions.
The packages of the the highly addictive illegal stimulant were shaped into small globes with a white covering, designed to blend in with the onions they were hidden with. The CBP estimated that the narcotics had a street value of around $2.9 million.
The driver was handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations.
The drug packets were shaped into globes with a white covering, designed to blend in with the onions. U.S. CBP
CBP’s director of field operations in San Diego, Sidney Aki, gave the criminals some credit for their efforts.
“This was not only a clever attempt to try and smuggle in narcotics, one I haven’t seen before, but also time consuming to wrap narcotics into these small packages, designed to look like onions,” he said.
It shows “the lengths drug trafficking organizations are willing to go to as they try to smuggle narcotics into the U.S. While we have certainly seen narcotics in produce before, it’s unusual for us to see this level of detail in the concealment,” he added.
Mexican federal security forces seized nearly six tonnes of methamphetamine from a property in Sinaloa on January 27 in what authorities called “the most important seizure made under the current government.”
In November, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a massive almost eight-tonne bust at Otay Mesa. A Mexican citizen was arrested on trafficking charges.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Mexico has delivered a letter to Congress asking the federal government to send arms and ammunition to help repel the invading Russian forces.
Oksana Dramarétska delivered the letter Sunday to Ricardo Monreal, the ruling Morena party’s leader in the Senate.
“Russian troops are attacking peaceful Ukrainian cities from several directions. … This is an act of war, an attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, a grave violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of the fundamental norms and principles of international law,” says the letter, which was endorsed by 240 signatures.
“We ask the government of Mexico to break diplomatic relations with Russia, immediately adopt strong economic and financial sanctions against Russia, help the Ukrainian army with arms and ammunition and support the United Nations’ peace maintenance operation,” it says.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said late last week that Mexico intended to maintain diplomatic relations with Russia.
Protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City.
Mexico has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for an immediate ceasefire but, unlike many countries, hasn’t announced any sanctions on Russia or the Russian government. Mexico officially follows a policy of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries, meaning that it would be highly unlikely to provide arms or ammunition to Ukraine.
Among the sanctions urged in the letter signed by Dramarétska was an embargo on gas and oil trade with Russia.
“We are representatives of different nationalities — Mexican, Ukrainian, Guatemalan and others. We demand help for the Ukrainian people,” the missive says.
“We’re asking that the governments of the world — including the Mexican one — help Ukraine with everything possible to stop the Russian aggression. Not just the very existence of the Ukrainian state but also the security of Europe and the future of the world order depend on our common response.”
Marta Koren, an organizer of the Ukrainian community’s protests against Russia in Mexico City, said it was regrettable that a Mexican Air Force flight that departed Sunday to pick up Mexicans who had fled Ukraine to Romania didn’t carry any humanitarian aid.
“We hope that in the future we can … help Ukraine in a humanitarian way,” she said.
Mexicans who fled Kyiv, Ukraine, to Romania. The first flights to Mexico left Romania on Sunday.
The company plans to open 15 new stores of its Suburbia brand and two new Liverpool department stores this year.
The big-box retailer Liverpool is set to invest 10 billion pesos (US $491 million) in Mexico this year, the company’s finance director Enrique Güijosa said.
The figure represents a 66.6% increase on the company’s investment in 2021 in real terms. Last year, it only invested 5.97 billion pesos ($294.6 million).
Güijosa said the company plans to open 15 new stores of its Suburbia brand and two new Liverpool department stores this year. Half the investment will go into logistics and technology.
In 2022, it projects growth of 5% to 5.5% for Liverpool and 8% to 8.5% for Suburbia.
Güijosa added that the challenges facing the chain were inflation, which soared to 7.2% in the first half of February, lack of economic growth and potential disruption to their supply chains.
However, he said the company could mitigate supply related challenges. “We have already seen some stock outages in various departments. We are confident that we will be able to follow the issue closely and anticipate it,” he said.
Liverpool reported earnings of 151.7 billion pesos in 2021, a 4.7% increase on sales in 2019 and a 30.8% hike on 2020.
The chain has 1.5 million square meters of floor space in 69 cities in Mexico. Its portfolio includes 122 Liverpool department stores, 169 Suburbia stores, 60 boutiques including Gap and Banana Republic and it partners with Spanish department store giant El Corte Inglés to run 50 Sfera boutique outlets.
It also owns 28 shopping malls.
Founded by Frenchman Jean Baptiste Ebrard in 1847, it was originally called The Cloth Case but changed the name to Liverpool because most of the merchandise it sold in the mid-19th century was imported from the English port city. Its headquarters are in Santa Fe in the west of Mexico City.
Video screenshots show the victims lined up in front of a house, before shooting started and they were engulfed in a cloud of dust.
As many as 17 people were killed in a massacre in Michoacán on Sunday afternoon. The victims were lined up along the facade of a house and shot dead after armed men forced them out of a wake they were attending in the town of San José de Gracia.
Authorities haven’t disclosed the number of fatalities, but unofficial reports put the number of victims between 10 and 17.
A video shot from an elevated point some distance away shows a group of people lined up in the street before a rapid series of gunshots rings out. The area where the victims were standing is engulfed in smoke after the firing squad-style execution.
The perpetrators, who haven’t been identified, removed the bodies and took them to an unknown location. It appears to be the worst massacre in recent years in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violent states.
A gunfight was reported near the scene of Sunday’s massacre, but there were no reports of additional victims.
San José de Gracia is the municipal seat of Marcos Castellanos, located in the northwestern corner of Michoacán on the border with Jalisco. The area is controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), the newspaper Reforma reported, adding that the victims are presumed to be members of Cárteles Unidos, which is engaged in a turf war with the CJNG.
The Michoacán Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said in a statement that it had opened an investigation into the crime. Spent bullet casings from firearms of four different gauges were found at the scene and a motorcycle and two cars in the same location were damaged by bullets, it said.
The FGE also said that the location where the massacre occurred had been “recently washed.”
“No victims were found. However, containers of cleaning products were found in a bag,” it said.
The army, National Guard and police responded to reports of the massacre but no arrests were reported. The Michoacán government called on San José de Gracia residents to report any information that could assist efforts to detain the perpetrators of the brutal multi-homicide.
Ejecutan a 17 personas quienes se encontraban en un velorio en San José de García , Michocán. ¡17 ejecutados! pic.twitter.com/xoDuCSr3ya
A video recorded on a cell phone showed how the aggressors lined up their victims then began shooting, kicking up a cloud of dust that obscured the scene.
At his Monday morning news conference, President López Obrador said that authorities were continuing to investigate the crime and that more details would emerge later in the day.
“There is evidence that there was a confrontation. There are bullet casings, some [human] remains, I believe, but no bodies,” he said.
López Obrador said there was talk on social media that 17 people were murdered, but expressed some doubt that the number of victims was so high.
“I wish with all my soul that it is not as they are announcing. … More will certainly be known today,” he said.
Asked whether the video of the massacre may have been manipulated, López Obrador responded: “Well, who knows? … Hopefully, … it won’t be as is being disseminated.”
The president subsequently criticized the media for reporting the high death toll “as a fact” when all the information about the crime is not known.
Zapotecs in Mexico City celebrating the Vela Muxe in 2019. Octavio Murillo Alvarez de la Cadena
Talk about “multiculturalism” in Mexico City and other urban areas and you do not mean the integration of peoples from outside of Mexico’s borders but rather those who have come from those within them.
However, it is not completely inaccurate to use the term since these migrants face many of the same processes and challenges that foreign migrants do.
Over much of Mexico’s history, its indigenous population has lived almost exclusively in rural areas. Cities became populated almost exclusively by those of European and mixed-race heritage. One reason is that in urban areas, most indigenous people mixed and became mestizo; in rural areas, indigenous residents were better able to conserve a distinct ethnic identity.
But that conservation came at a cost: poverty.
For better or worse, opportunities to move into Mexico’s cities started in the first half of the 20th century. As in other countries, industrialization enticed many rural poor to try their luck in growing urban centers. The case of Mexico City demonstrates this phenomenon best as it is the largest and oldest. But the same process occurred in Guadalajara and Monterrey and today continues in other urban centers.
Mural depicting the arrival and integration of the Triqui community in Mexico City outside their communal apartment complex in Colonia Doctores. Leigh Thelmadatter
Mexico City’s population tripled from 1930 to 1950 due to a rural influx, then again from 1950 to 1970. Into the 21st century, it again doubled. As of the 2020s, the metropolitan area has 22 million people. This growth has slowed down, not only due to a lack of space but also because the city has moved much of the industry, and its need for unskilled and semiskilled workers, out of the Valley of Mexico in the last 20 years.
At first, the indigenous men came, seasonal employees not intending to stay. By the 1960s, entire family units arrived. The first very visible migration of this type was that of the Mazahua and Otomi, who came from northwest of the capital.
Eking out a living in menial jobs and street vending, their numbers and distinctive dress caught the public and authorities’ attention. They inspired the television and movie comic figure of La India María as well as the famous María (Lele) doll. They are also fairly well-documented by academics, who began investigating them in the 1970s and now study later generations.
These migrants face the same problems that immigrants all over the world do but within their own country. The most obvious issue is discrimination, but others include a need to maintain a somewhat distinct identity, even for successive generations, and to keep a link with their communities of origin.
Maintaining language and traditions is important to these “new” city dwellers who try to adapt rituals and ways of life developed for farm life to an urban setting.
As for other immigrants, indigenous languages seem to be the most vulnerable, with city-born generations losing the ability to communicate in their ancestral tongues. How much they lose or keep such knowledge seems to depend on the family, especially on how much the mother insists on using the indigenous language at home, says Mexico City Triqui leader Moises Tello.
María dolls for sale on a Mexico City street near the historic center. Germán Torreblanca
The Mazahua and Otomi continue to come to Mexico City, but since the 1970s, they have been joined by many other ethnicities, including Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Triquis, Nahuas and others who have formed distinct communities. Most are found in the east and southeast of the city, at the far fringes of Mexico City proper, stretching into adjoining cities in México state. There are, however, notable exceptions, such as the Mazahua and Otomi of Colonia Roma and the Triquis of Colonia Doctores, both near the capital’s historic center.
This large, diverse group of people looking to maintain a somewhat separate identity means that, at least in Mexico City, local and federal governments make efforts to accommodate them — although with programs and bureaucracies of dubious efficiency at best.
As of 2018, over 700,000 indigenous people were estimated to live in the capital, roughly 7% of the country’s total indigenous population, although counting is problematic. Most have origins in states like Puebla, Hidalgo, Guerrero, México state and Oaxaca, but representatives of all of the country’s 65 recognized indigenous groups can be found in Mexico City.
Most still have familial and other ties back in their original states and communities, although identity shifts occurring between the rural and urban branches of these communities do strain those relationships.
Most of these populations, even those with several generations here, are still considered marginalized outsiders by both the city at large and the indigenous communities themselves. They are generally not seen as cultural or economic contributors to the city.
Since the 1990s, indigenous migration within Mexico has become somewhat complicated. Many still come from impoverished rural areas to Mexico’s Big Three cities — Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey — but many now opt for other cities, especially those with agro-industrial and tourism opportunities. Some indigenous people who migrated to one city turn around and migrate to another. However, Mexico City now has by far the widest indigenous ethnic diversity. This has caused some academics to name it the largest indigenous city in the Americas.
Otomi street sellers in Mexico City.
What still does not seem to be happening with many communities here, however, is complete assimilation into Mexico City’s wider culture. Education levels are low, and many born in the capital continue to make a living the way their migrant parents and grandparents did.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
Expats in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato's main square. News San Miguel
A good friend of mine lives in an area of Mexico whose modern iteration is basically a playground for tourists with U.S. dollars to spend (they’d moved there because of her husband’s non-tourism-related job). Having lived in both Xalapa and Mexico City previously, finding herself in that environment was a shock to the system.
It wasn’t simply that everyone automatically spoke to her in English without even trying to address her in Spanish, though that was indeed odd (as was the assumption when they went out that her Mexican husband was some kind of servant or guide to her).
Sticker shock was another one-two punch. As the mother of young children, she had hoped to find someone to help her at home at least a couple of days a week. Then she realized that most in-home helpers were insisting on more money — in dollars, no less — than she herself was able to earn with her online job that required a college degree to perform.
“Mexicans still make good-for-Mexico wages here, but how can they afford anything in this city when everything is priced for Americans?” she frequently asks.
That’s a question I have too.
The answer is, of course, that they live with less general financial stability as well as a lesser ability to enjoy some of the fancier amenities that one’s community has to offer. Sure, there are things that are always out of reach until you hit a certain income level. But what happens to a society when those things are out of reach by 100 meters instead of just 10?
What happens when people far richer than you can ever even hope to suddenly arrive in droves to make your place their own?
In Mexico, this usually plays out as foreigners arriving at a new “it” place, but of course, it’s not the only way that this happens. It’s simply a more complicated way, piling on cultural and linguistic issues atop regular economic ones.
It’s comparable to the phenomena we’re witnessing in the U.S., in which highly paid remote workers move to places like Spokane, Washington, thus rapidly increasing the cost of living in those places, including housing prices.
It’s what many of us have done here. I myself work for “U.S. wages” that would keep me under the poverty line and forever unstable in my home country, but they stretch well enough here that I can afford a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle in Mexico.
Still, the presence of foreigners with foreign currency and (often) the best intentions certainly shuffles things around in the local economy a bit once a certain number arrive.
Some well-off immigrants arrive to truly immerse themselves in the culture and language and live the way locals do; they consciously try to blend in and not make waves. Others come without much intention of integrating at all; they come to make their money stretch further, similar to a move someone might make from San Francisco to Oklahoma City.
Exploring Mexico and integrating themselves are priorities much further down the list.
Immigrants everywhere face this tension: to what extent do you try to simply blend in with your new environment and to what extent do you try to preserve (and perhaps impose) the things and values you’re used to?
Tensions regarding this question have been increasing for a while now — please take the Mexico News Daily poll if you haven’t yet! — many of them centering around the ethics of money and what responsibility we as generally rich immigrants have to our host communities.
I know some will recoil at the thought of being considered rich, but an income of US $2,700 a month or more puts you in the top 10% of earners in Mexico. Whether that allows you to live like a king or not depends on where you live.
Two recent fights in a local group that my tourist-city friend told me about were about pay for domestic help and tipping.
On one side were well-meaning foreigners who insisted that if one could afford to pay the same price as in the United States for comparable service and didn’t, it was stingy and criminal, even if that price was more than the going rate — end of story.
On the other side were other well-meaning foreigners, most of whom had integrated to some degree into their Mexican communities. Those who lived in touristy areas often pointed out that when such high payments came to be expected in a community, then the average citizen was priced out of accessing those services — kind of like my friend looking for domestic help.
The battles were fierce, and plenty of insults and ugly words were exchanged.
Though I wasn’t part of it, it’s something that I think about a lot: what’s my responsibility to pay a little more if I can? I already do, I suppose, although not to the extremes promoted in that conversation.
Whether we want to affect a local economy or not isn’t the point; we simply do.
San Franciscans who move to a new, cheaper city aren’t trying to raise the cost of living of their new communities; it just happens when there’s more money to be spent.
So where does that leave us? Is there a way to be generous without drastically changing a local economy? One of us doesn’t make that much of a difference. But what happens when all our little drops become a wave that pushes other people further from accessing what we ourselves enjoy?
