MEXICO CITY — For more than a decade, Marcos Del Rosario Santiago lived in la Roma — then an up-and-coming neighborhood on the west side of Mexico City.
But Del Rosario saw a shift in his neighborhood. More Airbnbs are popping up after those living in apartments, some who already had three or four roommates, can no longer afford to live there. At his local panadería, where he often orders a coffee and pan dulce, he only heard people ordering in Spanish, even if they weren’t Mexican. Now he said he sees and hears more foreigners speaking English.
“Some of them don’t even try to speak Spanish,” he said.
While many Mexicans are increasingly concerned about the gentrification brought on by the influx of Americans who flock to “el D.F.” as the capital used to be called, Del Rosario, thinks having new neighbors isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Diversity.” The single word Del Rosario used to describe the impact of this new phenomenon. And the rising rent and food costs? Well that’s just the price to pay for progress, he said.
Less than five miles from the neighborhood of Del Rosario, President Joe Biden met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador this past week to discuss how to stop large streams of migrants from entering the United States illegally.
“We are working together to address this challenge in a way that upholds the laws of our nations and protects the human rights of migrants who have desperate circumstances,” Biden said at Tuesday’s press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City.
While immigration rhetoric in the United States has focused on sending migrants back to Mexico, another burgeoning phenomenon remains largely ignored: Americans migrating to Mexico.
Over the past decade, Mexico has become the top nation for U.S. Americans to move to — a trend that has increased during the pandemic. There are now a record number of US Americans who will become temporary residents in Mexico starting in 2022.
According to an analysis by Bloomberg, there was an 85% increase between 2019 and 2022 in the number of Americans who became temporary residents in Mexico.
Americans also choose to move to Mexico because of the easy process compared to other countries.
A majority of expats who flock south work for US-based companies, earn US dollars and can take advantage of a favorable exchange rate and do not need to go through the cumbersome process of applying for a visa if they plan to stay there for 180 days or less.
Some neighborhoods in Mexico City, such as Roma, La Condesa, and Coyoacán, are beginning to mirror gentrified areas in the United States such as East Austin, Texas, Brooklyn, and Miami’s Wynwood district.
At a cafe called Ojo de Agua—a Mexico City chain that is now opening locations in the United States, such as in the Brickell area of Miami—in the La Condesa neighborhood, American top-40 pop songs blared over the speakers.
A group of English-speaking people found their way to the cafe after initially passing by. They sat down at a long table that fit their group of ten. Immediately a worker who spoke to them in English came to greet the employers. She explained the concept of the restaurant, saying they had to go to the register to order.
But as the group of US citizens settled into the cafe, a Spanish-speaking couple sitting at a table on the sidewalk just got their order of an agua de fresa and smoothie bowl, enjoying the balmy 60-degree weather .
A mariachi band stopped by to serenade the couple. At the same time, Demi Lovato’s ”Cool for the Summer” blasted the whole cafe – competing with the melody of Mariachi.
The migration of US citizens to Mexico is not new, said Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on immigration policy.
What is new is the demographic of Americans moving to Mexico.
“More US citizens, usually understood as digital nomads, could work from Mexico, be paid in US dollars by their US based companies and have better living conditions,” said Ruiz Soto. The number of US remote workers is only a few thousand compared to the more than millions who live in the city.
Ruiz Soto added that Mexico and Mexico City officials are not deterred by the rise of “digital nomads,” noting that the country relies heavily on tourism.
In fact, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum partnered with Airbnb last October to increase the number of remote workers coming to the city. At the time, Sheinbaum dismissed concerns about rising rents, saying those coming would move to areas where rent was already high.
But some of the pushback among residents to the rise of US remote workers is based on social perception and perceived fears about the budding group of citizens moving to the country, Ruiz Soto said.
In the past, when U.S. tourists would come to the city, or U.S. investment would come, it was on a temporary basis, he said. Now Americans stay in local restaurants and shops catering to these US citizens. Shops now have English menus. Some businesses are now even running TV ads in English.
“Although the number is still relatively small, in the city of millions of people, Mexicans tend to see this as a significant change in the social fabric they are used to,” said Ruiz Soto.
And even some Americans who have lived in Mexico City for more than a decade see the cultural shift.
Dan DeFossey, a New Yorker who has lived in Mexico City for 13 years, said that when he first moved to the city, he was forced to integrate because there were so few Americans living there.
“We had to be immersed in Mexican culture,” DeFossey said of the small group of Americans he knew when he first moved to Mexico City. “When you walked down the street, when you spoke English, people would turn and look at you. It was a different experience. We were forced to learn Spanish and immerse ourselves in the culture.
DeFossey, who owns a Texas-style barbecue joint in Mexico City, said new U.S. telecommuters are relying heavily on social media to find good restaurants, the best neighborhoods and just the “cool places to go.”
He said that because of crowdsourcing, the Americans all end up in the same neighborhood, like la Condesa or la Roma.
DeFossey noted that while there is some weariness for Americans coming to Mexico City — some of his friends are concerned about feeling like “an alien in their own city” — there is still a sense of pride that he is among sees his friends. People want to move to Mexico.
“People were so excited to hear that their city was something an American would want to come to,” he said. ”And I think there’s still a little bit of that.
While many residents and local officials have grown accustomed to the new group of Americans, Mexico’s top leader has often taken a more nationalistic stance during his government of Mexico. López Obrador has repeatedly taken hits in the United States and is not afraid to call the new immigrants, including Americans, “foreigners”.
But that messaging doesn’t resonate well with the Mexican public, said Duncan Wood, senior adviser to the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, a public policy think tank.
“We’ve seen this in the past year that the president has tried to single out the United States several times, and that has to back off because the Mexicans are showing that the Mexicans actually have a very favorable opinion of the United States,” Wood said. .
He noted that many Mexicans now have ties to the United States or have visited the country more.
“I actually think there’s a lot less mistrust of the United States today than there was 20 years ago,” Wood said.
While many Mexicans accept the new Americans settling in Mexico City, some are still concerned about the rising costs for Mexicans who can no longer live in the neighborhoods they once called home.
Betsabé Basáñez, who has owned a residence in the La Condesa neighborhood for almost 20 years, said that the rent is now “sky high” in her neighborhood and that shops and coffee shops have started to raise their prices.
“Most of the people who were there, like the rent, they had to leave,” said Basañez, 43. “They would flee to the surrounding neighborhoods because they just couldn’t afford it.”
“It’s not as cheap as it was three years ago,” she added.
Reach Rebecca Morin on Twitter @RebeccaMorin_
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