Mexicans protest tourists and gentrification

The timing of the first of several recent anti-gentrification protests in Mexico City was no coincidence – 4 July, US Independence Day.

Demonstrators gathered in Parque México in Condesa district – the epicentre of gentrification in the Mexican capital – to protest over a range of grievances.

Most were angry at exorbitant rent hikes, unregulated holiday lettings, and the endless influx of Americans and Europeans into the city’s trendy neighbourhoods like Condesa, Roma and La Juárez, forcing out long-term residents.

In Condesa alone, estimates suggest that as many as one in five homes is now a short-term let or a tourist dwelling.

Others also cited more prosaic changes, like restaurant menus in English, or milder hot sauces at the taco stands to cater for sensitive foreign palates.

But as it moved through the gentrified streets, the initially peaceful protest turned ugly.

Radical demonstrators attacked coffee shops and boutique stores aimed at tourists, smashing windows, intimidating customers, spraying graffiti and chanting “Fuera Gringo!”, meaning “Gringos Out!”.

At her next daily press conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the violence as “xenophobic”.

“No matter how legitimate the cause, as is the case with gentrification, the demand cannot be to simply say ‘Get out!’ to people of other nationalities inside our country,” she said.

Masked radicals and agitators aside though, the motivation for most people who turned out on 4 July was stories like Erika Aguilar’s.

After more than 45 years of her family renting the same Mexico City apartment, the beginning of the end came with a knock at the door in 2017.

Long-term residents of the Prim Building, a 1920s architectural gem located in La Juárez district, they were visited by officials clutching eviction papers.

Erika, the eldest daughter, recalls the shocking news: “They came to every apartment in the building and told us we had until the end of the month to vacate the premises, as they weren’t going to renew our rental contracts.

“You can imagine my mother’s face,” adds Erika, her voice momentarily wavering. “She’d lived here since 1977.”

The owners were selling to a real estate company. But they gave the residents a final, albeit unrealistic offer.

“They told us that if we could raise 53m pesos ($2.9m; £2.1m) in two weeks, we could keep the building,” she remembers with a hollow laugh.

“It’s a fortune! New apartments were available for around one to 1.5m pesos ($50,000 to $80,000) back then.”

Today, her old home is covered by tarpaulin and scaffolding, as a construction team converts it into luxury “one, two and three-bed apartments designed for short and medium-term rentals”, boasts the company’s website.

“It’s not a construction for people like me,” Erika – a newspaper layout designer – comments ruefully. “It’s for short-term letting in dollars. In fact, before we were forced out, we’d already started to see rents being charged in dollars in some buildings here.”

Erika and her family now live so far out of the city centre, they are officially in the neighbouring state, almost two hours away by public transport. It is what activist Sergio González refers to as “losing the right of centrality, with everything that entails”.

His group has recorded more than 4,000 cases of “forced displacement of residents with roots” from La Juárez district over the past decade. He was one of them.

“We are facing what we call an urban war,” he says at one of the subsequent anti-gentrifications protests held after 4 July.

“What’s in dispute is the ground itself – who does and who doesn’t have rights to this ground.” Most of the residents forced out of his neighbourhood were unable to stay in the city, he says. “They’ve lost rights which are protected under the city’s constitution.

“The first apartment I rented here cost around 4,000 pesos a month in 2007,” Sergio explains. “Today, that same apartment costs more than 10 times as much. It’s an outrage. It’s pure speculation.”

In face of the growing anger, the mayor of Mexico City, Clara Brugada, unveiled a 14-point plan intended to regulate rent prices, protect long-term residents, and build new social housing at affordable prices.

But for Sergio, and thousands like him, the mayor’s plan came too late. He believes the administration needs to do more to tackle gentrification in Mexico at its core.

“We have a local and federal government which continues to promote a neoliberal economic model, that hasn’t changed,” Sergio argues.

“For as much as they have increased the social security safety net for people, which personally I think is very good, that hasn’t changed the economic paradigm by which they govern.”

He called the mayor’s measures “palliative”, and a case of “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted”.

Claudia Sheinbaum’s critics say she failed to meaningfully tackle the issue when she was the capital’s mayor and, in fact, actively enticed foreigners to resettle in Mexico City by signing a partnership agreement with Airbnb to boost tourism and digital nomadism in 2022.

Erika points the finger of blame at a range of people for her family’s upheaval – the building’s former owners for selling to a real estate development company, the city government for not protecting long-term residents, even the tenants themselves for failing to act sooner over the creeping gentrification taking place around them.

However, she does not particularly blame the foreigners who have flocked to Mexico in their droves, particularly around the coronavirus pandemic. “If I had the means to live better elsewhere, I’d probably do it too,” she reasons, “and tourism has been good for Mexico, it’s a source of income.”

Yet plenty of others, including many on the recent marches, do blame the recent American and European arrivals – at least in part. They accuse them of being tone deaf to Mexican customs, of failing to learn Spanish or, in many cases, even pay taxes.

The wave of well-heeled Americans heading south feels particularly galling to some when placed in contrast with the Trump administration’s harsh treatment of Mexican and other immigrants in the US. Immigration is a problem when travelling from south to north yet apparently fine in the opposite direction, argue activists.

Back at the site of the 4 July protest, a wide esplanade at Parque México, the graffiti calling for “Yankees Out!” has been whitewashed, and the early-morning boxing and salsa classes continue unabated, often in English rather than Spanish.

Given the cost of living and the polarised politics in the US, the draw of the leafy streets of Condesa is obvious.

“It’s quiet, walkable, the park obviously is a great draw for people. It’s peaceful. We’ve really enjoyed it,” says Richard Alsobrooks during a short trip to Mexico City with his wife, Alexis, from Portland, Oregon.

As they walk through the Mexican capital, they admit to having half a mind to resettle here one day. “Obviously we don’t want to contribute to gentrification,” says Alexis, acknowledging the extent of the problem.

“But you need to have a good job in the US, and obviously the dollar goes a lot further here. So, I can understand the appeal – especially for those who can work remotely.”

Richard, who works for a major US sportswear company, says “the cost of living in America is too high”, and too often predicated around the idea of working until your 70s.

Both think, though, it is possible to relocate in the right way. “If you treat those around you with respect and try to be part of the community, that goes a lot further than trying to make somewhere your own,” says Richard.

“Exactly,” agrees Alexis. “Learn the language. Pay your taxes!”

Yet the speed of change in Mexico City over the past decade has left casualties.

Erika’s family life has spun on its axis in a matter of months, and her mother has struggled with depression. As we wander through her former neighbourhood streets in La Juárez, the memories come flooding back.

“That was a great bar called La Alegría, over there was the tortillería [tortilla shop], the tlapalería [hardware shop], I used to buy candies in that place when I was little,” says Erika pointing to another shop.

“Most of all I miss the people, the community. There’s hardly any families or children here anymore.”

Most of those small businesses are gone, replaced by hip cafes and expensive eateries.

“I think the soul of La Juárez has died a bit,” she laments. “It’s like you’ve been living in a forest, and gradually the trees are uprooted and then suddenly you realise you’re living in a desert.”