- Author,Daniel Pardo
- Author’s title,BBC World Correspondent in Mexico
In February the water from Lake Chapala looks like a mirror, reflecting boats, birds and the volcanic domes that surround the largest natural reservoir in Mexico.
In the north of the lake there are a dozen small towns, known as the Ribera de Chapala, where one lives in an oasis mode: the calm and silence emanating from the lake spread, and the violence that gives something to talk about in other regions of the state Jalisco, here you don’t feel.
One of these towns is Ajijic, which in the Mexican ancestral language, Nahuatl, means “place where water flows.” And indeed: here the water makes the breeze come fresh, less dry, and that temperatures, even in the summer, do not exceed 30 ° C.
The first American tourist arrived in Ajijic, 50km from Guadalajara, one of the three most important cities in the country, in the 19th century.
Today there are more than 10,000 Americans living in what they themselves often call, with pride and some humor, “the most gringo people in Mexico.”
And they are dedicated to walking along the majestic boardwalk, teaching English to Mexicans, volunteering, taking art or ceramic classes or participating in events “for gringos”, such as trivia nights.
“I live like a king,” says Keith Starling, a retired American here 4 years ago. “It seems that there was a divine intervention to bring me here,” he adds, dressed in a Yucatecan guayabera.
Most of these Americans —added to a few Canadians — are retirees who get more out of their pension here. After the pandemic, however, the average age has been falling to the point of young migrants who work remotely or want a different lifestyle.
“People in the US ask me all the time if I’m sure here,” says James Burns, a historian in his 50s who arrived 5 years ago. “And the truth is that I feel much safer in Mexico than in the United States.”
The “gringos” in Mexico
According to official data, some six million Americans live outside the country. And almost 20% of them are in Mexico.
Many Mexicans who migrated north decades ago had children there and returned, so much of the million Americans in Mexico actually have Mexican roots.
But there are also Americans who have migrated south, in what some jargon in the sector has called “reverse migration”; that is, flows contrary to the most frequent migration.
Many Mexican towns are, then, “full of gringos”: in Tulum and Cancun, two paradises in the Caribbean, 15,000 live; in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial city in the mountains, there are 10,000; and in Baja California, a peninsula in the Pacific Sea on the northern border, official figures record 130,000 Americans.
But Ajijic is the only place where the northern neighbors —most of them white, retired, who know little Spanish — are as many as the Mexicans.
“60% of my clients are Americans,” says Noé López, a real estate agent in the area. “And there are those who come to buy and those who come to lease, but everyone here lives as if they were rich: they go to restaurants, they have cleaning service.”
They are middle or lower class north of the border, and high in the south.
“We know we are privileged,” says Craig Purcell-Beard, originally from St Louis, referring to purchasing power. “Partly that’s why there are so many people involved in volunteering, not out of guilt, but out of a desire to get involved.”
Some Mexicans fear the impact of this migration on local prices and culture. The graffiti of “out gringos” in neighborhoods like La Condesa and La Roma in Mexico City has generated the idea that there is an anti-immigration sentiment.
But in Ajijic, where American migration is at least seven decades old, you don’t feel that complaint about the so-called gentrification.
“I don’t feel like a stranger, but a welcome guest,” says Burns.
The Trump factor
In all the conversations I had with Americans in Ajijic I found more a criticism of their own country —a deep criticism, which with recent news seems to confirm — than a search to make Mexico a “more gringo” place.
Burns himself says the decision to leave —that “it was not easy”, because he lost 85% of his income — was “for mental health reasons”.
“I began to feel that I enjoyed getting out of the house less and less, even for daily activities such as walking the dog or going to the supermarket, the way people treated each other,” he says.
K.J. Purcell-Beard, who migrated with her boyfriend Craig and put on a YouTube channel to refute the “lies” said about Mexico, explains that “in the US they teach us from childhood to work hard, to try our best and they tell us that with that you will get everything you want. “
Craig, his partner, adds: “Culture, economy, the system in general became increasingly toxic and ended up expelling me; staying was no choice; if I stayed now I would be homeless.”
And then Mexico, assures KJ, emerged as an alternative: “Mexicans, by culture, have a natural predisposition not to fall into materialism; the family comes first, they spend time with their neighbors; and they will find a way to pay their bills, yes, but I don’t see this constant need to buy the latest iPhone. “
To my question of why they came, many mentioned the climate, the prices, the proximity, but all, without exception, agreed, distressed, in a more in-depth reflection: values.
“The white culture that is now in power in the US has the mentality that everything it does is the right thing and that everyone else has to assimilate it,” said Susan Brewer, a Californian who is over 60 years old.
“Going to my country no longer feels as good as it did before.”
Donald Trump’s coming to power has meant, among so many things but perhaps more than any other, a cultural revolution on the values of community, solidarity and respect that these migrants seem to find more in Mexico than at home.
“Mexicans value what is inside before what is outside people,” says KJ.
And Burns adds: “People in Mexico live their lives with mastery; I wish Americans could do the same.”
In the mirror of Lake Chapala you can see a new life, an arrival, but also a departure, the exodus from a country that, Burns says, “is receding, while Mexico is progressing.”
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