On Friday, July 4, hundreds gathered in the streets of the Condesa neighborhood in Mexico City to march against the area’s gentrification. The meeting point was the Foro Lindbergh, an open-air space that serves as a performance theater in Parque México, located in the heart of the Hipódromo Condesa. The space was named in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who in May 1927 crossed the Atlantic nonstop from New York to Paris. Lindbergh visited the Mexican capital on December 14, 1927, and was honored by then president Plutarco Elías Calles.
It was there that hundreds of young people gathered to march along Sonora and Amsterdam Avenues, ending up on Paseo de la Reforma, near the Angel of Independence and the former U.S. embassy building. During the march, it was evident that young people from various parts of the city, along with longtime residents of Roma, Condesa, Hipódromo Condesa, Juárez, and surrounding neighborhoods, are fed up with the constant increase in rent and service prices in the places they have lived for decades.
After the 1985 earthquake, the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods were severely impacted. Several buildings collapsed or were damaged. In the following decades, they were often considered dangerous areas, thanks to insecurity and the influx of more “plebeian” settlers.
All that changed in 2006 during the administration of Marcelo Ebrard, who was head of the Mexico City government at the time, and today serves as secretary of economy. Investment incentives began to be introduced to “reforge” the neighborhoods, and “chic” businesses, cafés, record stores, and vintage shops began to appear. Hence, Condesa was even nicknamed La Fondesa (from the Spanish word fonda, meaning “inn” or “restaurant”), given the high number of restaurants and cafés that opened in the area). These “star neighborhoods” began to attract real estate investments, appealing to middle and upper classes seeking “affordable” rents (for them) in a centrally located neighborhood with nearby services, transportation routes, and “organic,” “pet-friendly,” etc., products. The intention was to transform it into a bohemian area with galleries, green spaces, and bicycle paths, reserved for a select few.
Postpandemic Gentrification
In the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the neighborhood, already attractive to foreigners, saw a boom of “digital nomads”: young people, mainly Americans, working remotely for a couple of months in the Roma-Condesa area. A notorious tweet (now deleted) from an American entrepreneur named Becca Sherman, declared, “Do yourself a favor and work remotely in Mexico City; it is truly a magical experience”; it was accompanied by a photo of a remodeled building.
The indignation was immediate: thousands of internet users ironically copied and pasted her tweet, accompanying it with images of the Pantitlán station of the capital’s subway, showing thousands of people crowding the stairs and the platform; countless cars enduring the constant traffic jams in the city; and the floods in various areas. All the “magical” experiences that Sherman’s invitation does not mention but which are the reality for millions of chilangos (as the capital’s inhabitants are called) who spend hours commuting each workday.
As several neighborhood residents have pointed out, it has become common in recent years for menus to be in English; workers are asked to speak English, while foreigners are not encouraged to learn Spanish. Some have even made two tongue-in-cheek suggestions. First, that it would not be a bad idea to “roast cascabel chili” in the streets of Condesa and use the irritating fumes to scare away the digital nomads (who call themselves “expats” to avoid acknowledging what they are: illegal migrants whom no one persecutes thanks to their U.S. nationality). Second, that “they have even gentrified the homeless,” given the increase in English-speaking people living on the streets.
Meanwhile, rents and the price of real estate have increased. Living in the Mexican capital is now unsustainable, and several residents of Roma and Condesa have complained about the rise in rent: from 23,000 to 30,000 pesos a month in rent, or about $1,200 to $1,600, depending on the number of bedrooms, what the street the property is located on, and whether it has amenities, security, an elevator, or parking. This has forced many longtime residents to move.
During the mobilization, a neighbor pointed out that a large portion of the city’s Airbnbs are concentrated in Condesa; foreigners who arrive do not integrate and expect to be served in English. “We no longer have neighbors,” she added. That is why many banners at the protest said things like “Here we speak Spanish,” “Housing is a right, not a commodity,” and “My culture is not your trend.”
The Next Day: Neighbors Denounce Yet Another Ecocide
The next day, another action took place at a construction site in the Del Valle neighborhood, on Patricio Sanz Street, at the intersection of José María Rico 8th South axis, where the National High School Administration building once stood, along with several palm trees. With the relocation of the institution and the company’s construction permit, these trees were cut down.
This is not a minor issue. The neighbors of the Del Valle neighborhood have also reported the increase in rents and services in their area, in addition to the scarcity of water due to the construction of several high-rise apartment complexes, the most emblematic being the Mítikah Tower. On José María Rico Avenue, there are several other buildings that are more than 10 stories high (which possibly violates that neighborhood’s construction rules, since the Mexican capital is prone to earthquakes due to its uneven and clayey terrain), advertised with amenities, services, and a central location, but they have been for sale for several years.
That is to say: while in the city there are people cleaning windshields on the corners, a few meters away there are buildings that cannot be filled. Or, to put it another way: houses without people and people without houses, where the main beneficiaries are the large real estate companies.
The administration of the “Fourth Transformation” of Morena — the party of former president López Obrador and current president Claudia Sheinbaum, as well as Mexico City head of government Clara Brugada — often blames the neoliberal right-wing opposition, which has governed areas such as the Benito Juárez Delegation (where the Del Valle neighborhood is located) for several years, for granting concessions to the so-called real estate cartel that controls construction. For her part, Brugada posted on her Twitter account,
<blockquote>Mexico City does not agree with gentrification. We reject this phenomenon that excludes people from their neighborhoods and communities. For this reason, we promote public housing policies that strengthen roots, with accessible credits for the improvement and construction of housing in these areas. We also implement actions so that young people have access to affordable rental housing and families can achieve affordable home ownership.</blockquote>
Yet it was Sheinbaum who, while in the same position, signed an agreement with companies such as Airbnb in 2022, which we reported on La Izquierda Diario, sister site of Left Voice in Spanish. This policy has been continued by Brugada and her team, despite their claims of promoting progressive housing policies (which do not address real estate speculation and have not implemented price caps on housing). The capitalist center-Left has governed the Mexican capital for decades, first under the banner of the PRD and now under Morena (which emerged from the PRD, splitting over the latter’s involvement in the disappearance of the 43 high school students of Ayotzinapa).
Brugada added in her statement that “in no way do we endorse violence to confront this problem. We reject violence as a method to resolve conflicts. This is a city of rights and freedoms. We respect the demonstrations and social expressions in any situation, but not aggression.” This was in response to the shouts of “gringos out” and the actions of the black bloc, which the right-wing press used as an excuse to criminalize Friday’s mobilization.
Let’s Defend the Right to the City
Although some attendees used slogans with strong xenophobic content, most did not and mobilized in defense of the right to housing. But the right wing was quick to hypocritically condemn the attack on people of other nationalities, yet they are the first to stigmatize Central American, Arab, and South American migrants.
Even official U.S. government social media accounts noted the absurd comparison between the “gentrification” that Mexicans cause in the U.S. and its true meaning. The word “gentrification” originates from “gentry,” which refers to a wealthy sector of society. Mexican and Latin American migrants in the U.S. perform low-cost labor, which does not compare to a young American who can travel, work remotely for a few months, earn in dollars, and spend in pesos (thereby driving up the cost of living in Mexico).
It is not a matter of whether “gringos” make the area more expensive — although their class background and the way they replicate imperialist mandates certainly lead many of them to adopt arrogant attitudes, such as demanding to be spoken to in English and wanting to change the local culture without any intention of assimilating, showing little regard or respect for Mexicans. The real issue is that companies like Airbnb are displacing residents to market apartments and neighborhoods in the Roma-Condesa area at prices that are comfortable for foreigners.
Gentrification is not a problem that occurs only in Latin America; it is a worldwide phenomenon that has sparked struggles in Spain, Greece, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Colombia, the United States, and many other countries. The immigrants from Central America and Mexico in the U.S. do not seek to change the local culture (putting aside that half of U.S. territory was taken from Mexico), and their presence, as demonstrated by the mass deportations from ICE, helps drive the local economy. This contrasts sharply with digital nomads who live lavishly and inflate local prices to match their spending capacity.
In our fight against gentrification, we must emphasize business speculation, not the consumption of tourists as isolated individuals, since the right-wing media tried to criminalize the protest and frame it as a xenophobic, anti-Semitic attack, among other lies, in order to portray the protesters as enemies of the “good neighborhoods.” This editorial line promotes the false narrative that the intention was to drive out tourists, when, at the end of the day, gentrification is part of a larger struggle over public space, in which real estate speculation aligns with public policies that enable the dispossession of low-income inhabitants. The struggle is not against the presence of “gringos” or tourists but against capitalist speculation, which displaces people from their homes.
In view of this, we in the Left Voice–La Izquierda Diario Network believe it is important to mobilize independently of the capitalist parties (whether they support the Fourth Transformation or belong to the neoliberal Right) and to organize ourselves to demand caps on housing prices and a housing plan controlled by the inhabitants of the construction zones that ends mega-projects, ecocidal real estate developments, and excessive multifamily housing construction; a plan that aims to occupy, auction, and use apartments dedicated to Airbnb as social housing, along with a housing relocation plan managed by neighbors and public employees with community oversight of concessions and constructions.
We take this position because we defend the right to the city, which also involves fighting for a decent public transportation system under the control of workers and users; public spaces with adequate infrastructure; housing; and a comprehensive reconfiguration of cities to meet the needs of workers, rather than treating them merely as commodities.