Mexico Living: Is Gringolandia An Offensive Term?

From my rantings and ravings about the unnecessary formations of Gringolandias in the Mexican Prime Living Locations to which future Gringolandians are attracted, I got a comment from a reader who asked me not to use the word, "Gringolandians." This reader, who was not the only one actually, believed I was using this term in application to him as an individual. A lady from San Miguel de Allende, the Gringolandia Capital of the Mexican Highlands, also wrote one of those "How dare you imply I don't speak Spanish" comments.

Let me go on the record with crystal clarity: Not once have I ever targeted individuals in my prose regarding the subject of Gringolandia and her inhabitants. If I had, you would have known because I would have mentioned names. That's how any thinking person would infer that I was targeting individuals because I would have done just that by naming names. Somehow, someway, I get people who write me in a huff and take exception because I said "they," the vast majority of Gringos in these Gringolandias, do not learn Spanish.

If you speak or are learning to speak Spanish, then good for you. I am not talking about you, then, am I?

I know a travel writer who came out with a fairly innocuous book on a certain city in Mexico. He was deluged by those in that city who were so self-centered, so taken with themselves; they believed he was targeting them as individuals when they read his book. Does the word self-absorbed come to mind here?

Gringolandia and Gringolandian are terms invented by Mexicans. I didn't make them up. No Gringo made them up. Mexicans invented the terms to describe America and her people. With the formation of little American Sectors in Mexico, the term has come to be used, by Mexicans, to refer to these sectors or enclaves and the people who inhabit these areas.

I first heard these terms and their various usages when I attended Spanish school in Guanajuato. The Spanish teachers referred to San Miguel de Allende as Gringolandia and the Gringos who now own most of the town as Gringolandians. I have talked with too Mexicans many to count in the city where I live, Guanajuato, who refer to Gringolandia and the Gringolandians in San Miguel de Allende.

The Concept

When I write about Gringolandia and the Gringolandians, I am referring to a Concept. I am referring to a phenomenon that, like a snowball rolling down a hill at an unstoppable speed pushing and squashing everything out of its path, is coming to Mexico. It is already here in many cities. The stars of this drama are mainly Americans who have the money to change everything to conform it to their tastes and expectations. Mexico is a foreign nation? Not for long. The Gringolandians will change it into an "American Sector, Enclave, Colony, Gringolandia!" As one Gringolandian woman boasted: "I always get what I want. My money and my lawyers always win."

Americans respond to the sales pitches slanted toward them that present living in Mexico as easy, cheap, and safe. They say it will be just like moving to a country club except the locals will work for you for almost nothing. They present the locals, by the way, as eager little puppies just waiting for you to arrive and satisfy them with no more than a pat on the head.

A Gringo from San Miguel de Allende emailed me the following:

"Mexicans in this town understand that their economic welfare depends on the foreign resident, and for generations have taught their children that this is a fact. If Mexicans can't handle it they are welcome to live elsewhere."

Americans want a pre-existing Gringo Infrastructure into which they can insert themselves and call themselves expatriates to Mexico. While I've rigorously contended that if Americans would learn Spanish, the need for a Gringolandia would be superfluous.

The problem with my postulation is that Americans think, "Why should I learn Spanish when I live in a Gringolandia and don't have to!"

This is where I say the Mexican migration to the States is radically different from the American migration to Mexico.

The Mexicans we met in the Mexican Methodist church we attended in inner-city Kansas City, all-no exceptions-wanted to learn English. Economics dictated that if they became bilingual, they would become more marketable. Economics drew them to the States and also to the learning of English. Survival is the issue.

That which pushes the Gringo and the Mexican from their respective homes, and that which pulls them to one another's countries, a kind of exchange, is different.

For Gringolandians, it is different

The Americans hear of their former neighbors who now live in a Gringolandia in Mexico and come for a visit. Envy may become their driving force. They go on a home tour that is for the implicit purpose to draw them in for the kill. It is a slick campaign to get the American with the means to buy a house in Mexico, in its local version of Gringolandia, to buy, buy, buy. These people are told they can have everything they had in the States, only more and for less money. They are told this will be a place where each day will be a day in paradise and the locals will love them. Americans are attracted to a Concept of Mexico that "Foreign Forces" from beyond Mexican borders have planned and executed.

I went to San Miguel de Allende a few days ago to research this article and just marveled at what I observed. A once-unique and distinctly colonial Mexican town is now a circus, a carnival extravaganza totally redesigned to serve a presence that is as much an invader as were the Spanish when Cortez defeated the Aztecs and took over the show. Whereas the extra-national force in the form of Spain's Cortez reshaped and redesigned the local culture to serve the Spanish, the extra-Mexican force of the Gringolandia now has effected yet another redesign and has forced the locals to serve another invader.

Forces beyond the realities of the tamale vendor, the newspaper seller, the shoe-shine hombres, the Abuela who sits with her nietos in the park, and without their consent, set about altering the San Miguel de Allende they once knew into something into which they no longer fit.

Make no mistake about it. Gringolandias were no accident. Those who come to live in them (The Gringolandians) do not do so as a choice of last resort. There was a definite targeting of these areas with the intent to bring certain forces to bear upon those who had the power to make decisions in the local Mexican government to make changes. Those who had no power were forced to go along for the ride.

Forces from beyond the border came swooping into the areas where culturally embedded divisions of power and money made it possible to not only figure out who to target but also to allow the extra-Mexican forces to have their way in creating a highly lucrative Gringolandia that would attract those with the money to buy what they had to offer. Do you think those at the lower end of the economic and power scale had any say in the matter? Someone else decided the direction their lives should take.