Gringo Guilt: Should I Go Back to Where I Came From?
the gringo problem in mexico city (and everywhere else) ☼ a love letter to jazz (or: what jazz sounds like) ☼ a netflix series and book to binge this weekend
gringo guilt in a globalizing world
There are signs around Mexico City that read: GRINGO, GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY. These signs echo a wide-spanning anti-foreigner sentiment in Mexico City, specifically targeted towards western gringos from the United States and Europe. On The World’s Most Expensive Cities list published by The Economist, Mexico City jumped from #76 in 2022 to #16 in 2024. The cost of living has disproportionately surged in the areas that foreigners flock to, and the urban benefits of increased wealth (e.g. public investment in infrastructure) are not reaching the majority of the city’s residents, many of whom are being pushed out to peripheral neighborhoods—farther away from their jobs—where rent is more affordable and public services are not as robust.
For the most part, I agree with the anti-foreigner sentiment: Many people who move from the United States or Europe to places like Mexico City, Lisbon, Bali, or any global destination in which their purchasing power and sociopolitical privilege increases (see: passport mobility, embassy support, English-accessible neighborhoods) tend to speak, act, and think from a place of entitlement, even if that entitlement is not intentional. And even if we are not the organizers of gentrification—say, owners of Fortune 500 companies, real estate developers, or one of the foreigners purchasing property and renting it out as an AirBnB—we are agents of it. Foreigners with remote jobs (and without) have been transforming Mexico City for years. Many writers have tackled this topic, including a well-thought take from Marko Ayling (a traveler and content creator):
The question is not “is this happening,” but: Are we doing enough?
In my spare time (where is it? what does she look like?), I have been working on an essay of my own that attempts to make sense of the various identities I hold in Mexico and the sociopolitical impact I am contributing to as a foreigner in Mexico City. The essay might better be described as a jumbled river of self-conscious thoughts and existential questions—which, by design, often don’t have clear answers. At its core, it is an attempt to understand how to exist in a globalizing world with American privilege in a way that does no harm (or, if that is implausible, as little harm as possible). I want to understand how living in a foreign country outside of the Global North can be done responsibly, actively supporting the local populations as opposed to remaining passive, and thus complicit, in their extortion.
In my most recent YouTube video (she’s in her content era!), I self-therapize around the frustrations I feel whenever I encounter a foreigner that embodies the “gringo” behaviors and mindsets I have attempted to deconstruct. In the video, I summarize what I perceive to be the colonizer-adjacent thinking that many foreigners exhibit when moving to, or through, a place like Mexico City. One viewer commented an eloquent thought: Maybe it is impossible for a gringo to never have a non-exploitative relationship with Mexico, because the economic and legal powers of anyone from North America or Europe will always be directly tied to the exploitation of other countries (on a macro level) and the local economy (on a micro level).
While there are some parts of the comment that I think deserve more context (namely: the statement "gringos go home" being incomparable to "immigrants go home," considering I have seen instances in which “gringos go home” is racially charged towards people of color, which has its own relationship to Mexico's history with racism and xenophobia—a history that is rich and long-standing), I agree with their idea in general. I think that is why I have been writing the essay I’ve been writing, and why I talked to myself for seventeen minutes and shared it on YouTube:
We live in a world in which the powers of the Global North organize the extraction of value and life from other countries (see: genocide, forced labor, illegal trade, human trafficking). If we are from the Global North, how can we move about the world in a way that does not amplify or replicate that design?
My relationship to Mexico City has been confusing, to say the least. I am an Asian-American in Mexico with the privilege of earning in dollars and spending in pesos. I am dating a kind, sweet, intelligent man from Ciudad Juarez, which I mention here to poke fun at how I like to think, at times, that being connected to Mexican culture via my partner—who is neither fresa nor foreigner—helps distance me from the entitlement of the gringo and protects me from being grouped with other gringos, many of whom say and do things that I so desperately want to separate myself from. Of course, none of this is valid by default: Just because we are considered different or a part of the in-group by locals does not mean that we are cleared of blame. As a part of the foreigner body, we are each responsible for its impact.
In many ways, I am the epitome of the gringo, even if I am constantly thinking about how to be a “good one”: I have a remote job, I live in Condesa, and my Spanish comprehension is still a work in progress. One of my friends is a polyglot, meaning he can speak over eight languages fluently and learn any language within a week (or so it seems). That makes me a nolyglot, since I cannot seem to learn any language well, even after studying it for three years (first Japanese, now Spanish). However, I am trying.
Is trying enough, though? We can put our money towards local businesses, respect the culture, be kind and engaging to everyone around us (Buenos dias! Provecho! Hasta luego!), and learn Spanish so that we are a part of the city beyond what is worshiped by New York and Los Angeles and London (see: Condesa, Roma, Juarez). But how is any of that stopping gentrification? How is any of that opposing the corruption within the Mexican government—or say, helping the 36.3% of the country that lives below the poverty level—or challenging the neocolonial design that perpetuates the wealth of people from North America and Europe at the exploitation of others?
I do not know.
Sometimes I wonder if it is our battle to be waging in the first place. If our efforts to combat the the global inequity that Western colonialism has exasperated will ever be enough. The answer I always come to is: Yes, it is our battle. We experience the everyday privileges of being American—including our passports, our jobs, and the power of the U.S. dollar—which are tied to the realities of the rest of the world. It is our responsibility to challenge these designs. We should do what we can, the same way we might adjust our diets and reduce our carbon footprints in response to the climate crisis. Even though we may not wield the power to change everything, we can change something, and everything starts with something.
Maybe the easiest, albeit extreme, answer is that people from the Global North should stay in their respective home countries (that we should go back to where we came from), but that both feels reductive and insufficient for the lived realities of many of the people who choose to leave the United States and Europe, many of whom are children of immigrants themselves. Meaning: We do not really belong anywhere, not in the United States, not in Europe, not in our native countries, not in Mexico. And the reasoning becomes more nuanced when I consider that many of the friends I know who left the Global North chose to do so out of economic or sociopolitical pressures—fleeing racism, inflation, or rising costs of living.
A better answer might be for the governments of these countries to develop stronger policies around the foreigners entering—and living within—their borders, maximizing the profits earned from tourists, temporary residents, and foreign investors whilst reinvesting those profits back into the public. Governments should, and can, create policies that protect the local residents, such as Barcelona’s recent announcement of its complete ban of AirBnBs (to start at the end of 2028). Perhaps foreigners should be required to complete a course on cultural competency, embedded into the visa process, that deconstructs the neocolonial mindset. All of this requires, however, a proactive, cooperative and socialistic government, and risks creating friction for tourism, potentially decreasing the income of a vital industry. Furthermore, all of this puts the responsibility onto the host country itself, which poses obvious setbacks (see: slow bureaucratic processes, government corruption, industry lobbying).
Hence: Individual responsibility is imperative to protecting local cultures, communities, and ways of life. Hence: We need to do the best we can.
Whenever I need a break from existentialism, I try to look at myself from a more comedic perspective. This is what I see: A little boy in a man’s body from the United States attempting to figure out how to be a good person, pleading for the love and acceptance of the people around him, wanting to cause no harm.
Maybe it is impossible to come from a place like the United States and think that we are doing no harm. Maybe this is the length of our reach: To try to be good people, to try to know the pains and perspectives of those outside of the foreigner bubble, to try to be a friend of the city and a contributor to its cultures and communities—the ones that have existed far before Mexico City became a playground for people who use summer and winter as verbs.
When it comes down to it, I think that all of these questions reside over one bigger question, which is why I have been unable to finish the essay I started:
How do we exist in a capitalist society—and do “well” in it (see: reach a point where we are no longer at its whim or under its pressure)—without contributing to its harmful design?
We try our best to support the people around us, to understand our role as consumers and agents of Western colonialism (so that we might change it), and to lift up those who have been disenfranchised by capitalist extremes (see: the fashion house Loro Piana selling a vicuña sweater for $9,000 atop the exploitation of indigenous workers in Peru). Of course, still, these sentences feel incomplete.
When I do not know what to think anymore, I listen to jazz.
a love letter to jazz
Early Summer by Ryo Fukoi (a Japanese pianist) is one of my favorite jazz songs of all time. Any of Fukoi’s albums are a go-to choice whenever I want to bike through a city like a main character, inspire a delightful mood on a plane ride, or ease a bout of existential anxiety into something a bit more joyful. Early Summer reminds me of so many things. The last time I listened to it, the urge to write something playful overcame me, and I ended up with a love letter to jazz (or: “what jazz sounds like”):
Jazz sounds like hot coffee and milk on an empty stomach, sun pouring into a wood drenched house, the belly of a drape sung awake by the breeze, red wine, chocolate milk, a conversation with my grandmother in a dream that feels so real it jolts me awake in the middle of a breath as she holds my hand and tells me a story, how she ran around the streets of Seattle in search of sound and laughter, knocking on iron doors that opened to fireflies, chatter that washed away worry like rain, speakeasies back when they were speakeasies, a time before elevator music, back when blues were a remedy for the grey brought on by the war, dry, warm toes spread out before a fireplace, tires sloshing puddles soaked in canary paint, tired eyes tucked behind a cab window, headlights splattered across glass like ornaments on a tree, gold, red, purple, green, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, spring, the texture in my chest when I hear my father’s voice, bright yarn, train rides, a stretch that summons the soul, the spirit of the sun and the hug of a mother and the smell of baked bread, the first bite after a fast, a sober night of sleep, a pair of eyes that smile once, twice, three times, the shy and awkward first hello, the moment you build their name into a home, a graze on the hand, a kiss on the neck, the forehead, the thigh, a conversation that starts a thousand times, laughter leaping like light from a mirror, the glee of him and her and her and him and the five of them packed into a car or a bus or a plane, all of us talking together, memory in motion, all the hope that surges in when you focus on this part or that part, seven, seventeen, twenty one, thirty two, forty, seventy, wisdom, gratitude, the shape of a Sunday morning or a Saturday afternoon, retirement, summer break, a school holiday, wrapping a gift in golden paper and sealing a card, pine, rosemary, the joy of this because this is what we have, the promise of that because nothing is forever, the day we stopped wanting to do things right, when we spread our colors and mixed our shapes, you, me, them, us, the time we were there altogether.
a netflix series & book to binge this weekend
Last but not least, a couple of recommendations! Summer in Mexico City means showers of rain and more clouds than usual, both of which Mijael and I have welcomed with open arms. Last weekend we snuggled up on the couch and spent a Sunday inside, eyes glued to an image tossed across our wall from the jewel of a tiny projector.
Supacell: Mijael and I watched this show in one sitting, which is something I don’t think I’ve done since the pandemic. It gives modern-day Heroes (in London) with a refreshing cast of extremely talented and diverse Black artists. The only issue is that we are left to wonder if it will be renewed for a second season…And wait for it, if it is (or most likely forget about it, if it is not released within a year).
Erasure by Percival Everett: I picked up this book when I was in California and didn’t realize that it was made into the major motion picture American Fiction, which I haven’t actually seen (but plan to after finishing this book!). I listened to an interview with Percival Everett on the New Yorker Radio Hour and was fascinated by the personality that shone through the audio. The book, so far, is a brilliant read: Hilarious, heart-wrenching, and extremely clever, focused on a Black writer’s journey after publishing a book he hates that goes on to become a best-seller (and is, in his eyes, a trope of the Black experience). It is the perfect book for a rainy day—and an especially inspiring, curious work for writers of color. ☷
With love,
Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane