I’ve lived in Mexico City since 2017 and this article is pure sensationalist bullshit. Condesa for instance has been gentrified for decades… smh. It’s hard to overstate how large this city really is and how tiny the gentrified neighborhoods are in comparison. And those neighborhoods like Comdesa and Roma, while attractive to foreigners, are a far cry from the neighborhoods where the truly wealthy people live.
It might happen without foreigners too, but it's so easy to blame them. Besides every country has foreigners from other countries. Don't they realize U.S. is full of Mexicans, for instance?
I went to Mexico 20 years ago. I thought I'd try to find work for a few months. Even though I found a job other people prevented me from working. They were orders of magnitude more aggressive against me than I remembered Americans were in California against illegal aliens from Mexico at that time.
Imagine that! Impoverished citizens of a third-world nation are more aggressive against wealthy foreigners, than are wealthy first-worlders against the pittance-wage illegal immigrants that they hire to harvest their crops! Inconceivable!
A small number of foreigners couldn't organically make rents go 2x "everywhere". Having small gentrified areas aren't so bad. If the impact was instead quite large, it's a failure by the local government and developers to manage scarce land resources.
> "I refuse to talk about the invasion of foreigners, it is not a matter of nationality, of labeling them guilty," explains Mayela Delgadillo, a citizen rights activist
But if labeling them xenophobic makes you feel better about the situation, and allows you to ignore their legitimate complaint because it was made in terms you find objectionable, go ahead
Your local wealthy people isn't going to price you out your low-income neighbourhod because he fancys going downstairs and watching people working and speaking in spanish.
I don't think locals in Mexico are saying "sois una plaga", which is a very Spain verb form befitting the Spanish source. The original quote says "eres" which is singular.
Anytime I read about why someone likes some new low-cost locale better than SF, NY, or pick-your-US-city, I just can’t help but read it as “I like being rich.”
Or maybe they just don't like being poor and miserable. Most US cities are crazy expensive, have no real public transportation, extreme wealth divides, rampant homelessness, no economic mobility, limited green space, cultures that are materialistic, shallow, and antisocial, a dominant car culture... they just lack so much of the vibrance of many foreign cities.
I think there are a few exceptions to this, like Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans... and maybe not coincidentally, they are also some of the poorer cities.
...only if it means moving to poorer place (this needs rent/buying property regulation).
The other way you would end up with rich countries (read EU for instance) collapsing under flood of economic migrants unless they would completely scratch any welfare. We see where it goes with "refugees". There is reason why economic migration should be regulated, I have no problem welcoming economic migrants who upon arrival declares he won't use and won't be eligible to any welfare in next five years, but it would still cause problems anyway with people living in ghettoes willing to lube worth much lower living standard undercutting locals from low paid jobs.
Here are over 200 listings in Warren MI (a middle class suburb of Detroit) with houses for sale under $200k - https://www.zillow.com/homes/Warren,-MI_rb/. That's just one suburb, there are many others in this Metro Detroit are of 4.5 million people.
Check the same thing in Metro areas surrounding Cleveland, Cincy, Indy, St Louis, Atlanta, Charlotte, Knoxville, Dallas etc etc..
People in the handful of highest priced cities are so divorced from reality it's concerning. This is a huge country with a ton of multi-million population metro areas.
