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 Editorials | Issues | March 2007 
"They Love Us Here": American Migrants in Mexico
 Sheila Croucher - Foundation for Study of Independent Ideas
Winter 2007
| | (moma.org) |
The town I was destined for is full of immigrants, and over the past decade they have arrived in increasing numbers. Most do not learn the local language and reside and socialize within an isolated cultural enclave. These immigrants practice their own cultural traditions and celebrate their national holidays. Grocery stores are stocked with locally unfamiliar products that hail from their homeland. Few choose to pursue citizenship in their adopted land, and most follow closely and participate in the political and economic life of their homeland. Some live and work in the new country without proper documentation and have even been involved in the illegal transport of drugs across state borders. Their presence is so pervasive that local governments have been forced to adapt by providing services to address the needs of this growing foreign population. 'They' are U.S. citizens living in Mexico.
I was on my way to San Miguel Allende, nestled in the mountains of central Mexico in the state of Guanajuato, to begin a research project on the town's large, and predominantly American, immigrant community. During the weeks prior to my departure, in June 2006, anti-immigrant hysteria swept the United States. Republicans in the House called for making undocumented residence in the United States a felony. The Senate declared English the official language. Immigrants and their supporters took to the streets. So did the Minutemen Militia. The day I flew south across the infamous 2,000-mile border, in the comfort of an air-conditioned plane, George W. Bush ordered National Guard troops to deploy along that border, in an effort to stop the desperate thousands arriving from the other direction.
Meanwhile, San Miguel prepared for its second major tourist influx of the year. January through March, the town is packed with snowbirds escaping the frigid winters of the northern United States and Canada. In July and August, Texans arrive seeking reprieve from the sweltering heat of the U.S. Southwest. In addition to climate, people flock to San Miguel to enjoy the scenery, colonial architecture, art galleries, and cultural festivities. For decades, artists and writers have marveled at the way the light reflects off the Gothic-style, rose-colored Parroquia, or parish church, next to the town's main square. Some local residents, namely Mexicans, welcome the capital infusion that accompanies the tourist seasons. Others, namely Americans, bemoan the growing commercialization of 'their' authentic Mexican town. This latter group, who may have once been tourists themselves, now form a resident population of anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000 U.S. citizens who proudly call San Miguel home. City officials and Mexico's National Migration Institute estimate that foreigners (mostly Americans) make up close to 15 percent of the town's 80,000 inhabitants.
The history of foreigners living in San Miguel dates back to the 1940s, when Chicago resident Stirling Dickinson settled in the town. He established the famous art school, Instituto Allende (boasting teachers the likes of the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros), and recruited Americans who could use their G.I. bill to attend the school. These recruits could 'live like kings in Mexico' on a stipend that did not stretch nearly so far in the United States. Since then, the city has continued to attract U.S. artists, writers (Jack Kerouac hung out there, and Beverly Donofrio, author of the cult classic Riding in Cars with Boys, is a full-time resident), adventurers, and retirees. U.S. author Tony Cohan romanticized San Miguel in his 2000 best seller, On Mexican Time, and the town's popularity increases with every new feature story in glossy travel magazines.
With so much attention focused on border crossing in North America, little attention has gone to migration southward. Volumes of scholarship address why Mexican immigrants come North, from where, how, and with what implications for the United States. Turning the lens toward U.S. citizens moving southward offers a fuller picture of the porousness of borders in North America and the intersection'sometimes collision'of global forces that underlie human migration and settlement. While the United States faces zero population growth and a bulging cohort of Americans sixty-five and older, an estimated 40 percent of Mexico's population is under the age of fifteen. Increasing numbers of Americans will soon enter retirement (approximately seventy-six million in the next twenty years), and many will struggle to support themselves on meager pensions, a failing Social Security system, and a rising cost of living (including astronomical health care costs). Meanwhile, Mexican youth enter adulthood facing a stagnant economy coupled with heightened expectations for material well-being, resulting in part from the success of globalization in homogenizing consumer tastes the world over. San Miguel, which attracts one of the largest populations of Americans in Mexico, is located in the state of Guanajuato, which is one of the top states for sending Mexican migrants to the United States. Whether these two flows are related remains to be seen, but both countries could benefit from a better understanding of the less visible dimensions of globalization.
Push-and-Pull Factors
Scholars often rely on the notion of push and pull to describe human migration. The goal is to identify the confluence of factors that push migrants to leave their home and pull them to settle in a new location. The framework is straightforward, although the analytical distinction between push and pull can blur. When migrants leave Mexico to work in the United States, they are being both pushed by a lack of economic opportunity and pulled by the promise of better wages. Americans in San Miguel are also pulled and pushed simultaneously, although many bristled at the notion of being objects of study: 'Our situation,' they assured me, 'is completely different.'
U.S. migrants to San Miguel identify a range of reasons for the move, but no one answers the question without reference to economic factors: 'In the United States, I could not sustain the lifestyle to which I was accustomed, living on my retirement pension,' or 'There are such great real estate deals here. In the United States, you can't buy anything anymore in the $200,000 to $300,000 range,' and 'Property taxes in Mexico are next to nothing.' With few exceptions, the lifestyles to which these Americans in Mexico have quickly grown accustomed, even those who are living on Social Security, include a maid, a cook, and a gardener. The houses they purchase for bargain prices are magnificent colonial structures with spectacularly tiled floors, garden fountains, and rooftop terraces.
By Mexican standards, San Miguel is not cheap'in fact, it is reportedly the most expensive city in Mexico'but for Americans living off the U.S. dollar, bargains are plentiful. Deals are even more abundant for those U.S. citizens in Mexico who choose to break the law by working without the proper permits or not paying Mexican taxes. These undocumented American workers in Mexico won't be forced to run out the back door of a restaurant when immigration officials arrive, but they may choose not to answer the door when the Hacienda (Mexico's IRS) comes knocking at their bed and breakfast to check for a lodging license or arrives at the offices where Americans deal in lucrative property investment to request to see their Mexican real estate license. The same holds true for the U.S. professionals who practice their craft within the foreign community, whether financial advising, architecture, psychotherapy, massage, or art dealing, without securing a work permit or reporting their income. As with any clandestine activity, firm data are elusive, but both Mexican officials and the expatriate community are well aware of the activity. Cristobal Finkelstein Franyuti, director of international relations for the city, explains: 'Just look on Vrbo.com [Vacation Rentals By Owner]. At least 150 houses are listed in San Miguel, and 95 percent are owned by foreigners. They are not registered as rental properties. They are not paying income tax or lodging tax. They are typically not paying Mexican Social Security to their domestic help.' Franyuti estimates that unlicensed business in the city costs the local government more than four million pesos a year'an excess of $360,000'in lost taxes and fees.
Real estate bargains, affordable servants, low taxes, and other financial loopholes pull Americans to Mexico, but many U.S. migrants also identify financial push factors, particularly with regard to health care costs. Doug Bower, author of The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico, for example, begins his tale with a 'terrifyingly compelling reason to leave America. We wondered if we would ever be able to afford to retire in our own country.' According to a study by the Harvard Medical School, 50 percent of bankruptcies filed in the United States in 2001 were medically related. For Bower and many others, migration southward solves the problem: 'In Mexico, my pension is more than twice that of a middle-class family's income. It covers not only our medical costs but also almost all of our cost-of-living expenses.'
Financial security is one draw; culture is another, particularly for Americans who have grown disenchanted with the pace or tone of life in the United States. Americans in San Miguel frequently comment on the ways in which they find 'Mexican life' preferable to that in the United States: 'I can't remember the last time someone asked me for a business card'I love that about Mexico.' Many Americans seem disillusioned about rampant consumerism in the United States and respect less materialistic attitudes in Mexico: 'The kids here are happy with any kind of toy; they don't have to have the latest Game Boy.' (Ironically, many of these same Americans report with enthusiasm the arrival of a new Home Depot just outside of town, joining Wal-Mart and Costco.)
Although many Americans find cultural attitudes in Mexico more welcoming than in the United States, established social networks also influence migration southward'just as similar networks influence Mexican migration northward. In the United States, Mexican immigrants typically settle in cities where large numbers of Mexicans already reside, where Spanish is spoken widely, where they can buy fresh tortillas, and where they can interact with fellow nationals who share information about how to navigate unfamiliar terrain. With the increasing popularity of places like San Miguel, many Americans now know someone, or know someone who knows someone, who lives in Mexico. (I met one of my most helpful contacts after mentioning the upcoming trip to my dental hygienist, who put me in touch with her high school friend who had recently moved to San Miguel.)
Transnational Belonging
Americans repeatedly list the large and friendly expatriate community as a significant pull factor to San Miguel, and indeed, it is very easy to meet Americans in San Miguel. They gather in the jardÃn to discuss politics, they attend cultural events at the public library founded by the American community in the 1950s, they worship at services that range from Baptist to Unitarian to Buddhist, they enjoy English-language films at American-owned luxury hotels, they shop in specialty stores that sell anything from Silk brand soy milk to 'Pinche Bush' buttons (the most polite translation offered is 'Screw Bush'), and they run an impressive array of philanthropic organizations from the Lions Club to the Animal Protection Society.
Internet groups also exist through which Americans in San Miguel organize social gatherings, coordinate philanthropic activities, and exchange tips about how to avoid intestinal amoebas or establish a secure high-speed Internet connection. In June 2006, one popular list with more than three hundred members had several posts by U.S. residents seeking tickets to the sold-out Fourth of July celebration. Whether they invoke the friendships they have established, the satisfaction they receive from volunteering, or the pleasure of chatting with neighbors on the street, a sense of community is important to these Americans in Mexico; contrary to Robert Putnam's thesis regarding their counterparts in the United States, they are not 'bowling alone.'
The image of U.S. citizens in Mexico living together, working together, and playing together begs the question that consumes policymakers and academics in the United States about Mexicans. In other words, to what extent do these American migrants assimilate into Mexican society? The answer is minimally. Few American residents of San Miguel speak Spanish, including those who have lived in the city for ten or more years. Some arrive with good intentions and periodically enroll at one of the town's language institutes, but they repeatedly bemoan the challenge of learning a new language later in life, and in a town heavily populated by English speakers. Indeed, travelers interested in learning Spanish are advised to avoid San Miguel. The schools are fine, but once you exit the classroom door, the lingua franca in the restaurants, stores, on many park benches, and in the public library is English.
U.S. citizens in San Miguel live their lives speaking English, socializing with Americans, and mixing little with Mexicans outside of the relationships they form with their domestic help. Many also continue to focus political energy toward the United States. Democrats in the town report outnumbering Republicans ten to one, and the officers of Republicans Abroad suggested that the ratio is even more unfavorable. On June 4, 2006, the Democrats Abroad held a meeting of close to a hundred people in Finnegan's Pub. The newly appointed American consular agent, Ed Clancy, was an invited speaker. In 2004, this group raised more than $10,000 to support presidential candidate John Kerry. In anticipation of the 2006 U.S. midterm elections, they were trying to decide whether to raise money for the party as a whole or to support particular candidates in tight races. Clancy was at the meeting to introduce himself to the American community and field questions'a majority of which focused on the import of prescription drugs from the United States. Americans in Mexico who get prescription drugs through Medicare must either return to the United States or have their drugs shipped to Mexico. The latter requires navigating complex and costly Mexican customs regulations. Hence, it had become common practice for Americans in San Miguel to have family members ship the drugs to the American consulate, because the Mexican government is prohibited from opening a diplomatic package. Clancy explained that the practice was not legal and would no longer continue because of increased security concerns.
Discussing the U.S. population in San Miguel poses a terminological dilemma: are they immigrants, expatriates, a diaspora, gringos, aliens? Most respond by stating, simply, 'I am an American living in Mexico.' In the United States, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, for whatever reasons they came and for however long they or their ancestors may have been in the country, are typically referred to as 'immigrants' or, often erroneously, as 'illegal aliens.' The possibility of this group's widespread self-identification as 'Mexicans living in the United States' is precisely what many U.S. politicians and pundits rail against. Whatever the labels, both Americans in Mexico and Mexicans in the United States live in a world where'thanks to technology'place and space are less determining factors in their sense of belonging or habits of daily life. Beginning in the 1990s, the concepts of transnationalism and transmigration emerged to capture changes in the nature of migration and belonging. Scholars described how immigrants to the United States were remaining closely interconnected with their countries of origin while establishing new networks in their country of settlement. Technology facilitates for these migrants more frequent travel and communication across borders, the sending of remittances, the support and oversight of civic improvement projects in home villages, and long-distance participation in special celebrations. The result is a new realm of identity and belonging not constrained by geographical borders and not analyzable through reference to the concept of the nation-state. In fact, this growing insignificance of territoriality to how people live their daily lives is a defining feature of globalization.
Like Mexicans in the United States, Americans in Mexico make regular trips to the homeland and maintain close contact with relatives and friends across the border. Whereas many Mexicans in the United States share videotapes (of weddings, birthdays, and annual fiestas) that arrive from the home village, Americans in Mexico blog. These bloggers share stories and photographs of their life in a foreign land and offer advice to other Americans contemplating migration. As more Mexican immigrants in the United States are sending money back to Mexico, financial institutions utilize new technologies to ease the transactions and profit from the cross-border ties. Technology similarly allows Americans in Mexico to bank, pay credit cards, and manage investments in the United States without leaving the spectacular view from their high-tech home offices in the Mexican mountains. Mexicans in the United States now have access to inexpensive phone cards for calling home, although this often requires arranging to have a family member stationed at one of the local homes or businesses in the village that has a functioning phone line. Americans in Mexico use Voice Over Internet Phones (VOIP). For an average of $20 a month, companies like Vonage provide U.S. citizens in San Miguel with a U.S. phone number and unlimited calls to and from other U.S. phone numbers. This facilitates connectedness across expansive space, but also illustrates the insignificance of place. VOIP customers choose from a list of U.S. area codes, and callers have no way of knowing that the person who answers is actually in Mexico, not Pittsburgh. Some Americans and Mexican city officials acknowledged that this was not technically legal in Mexico, but that the technology was far ahead of any agency's ability to regulate it.
In recent years, San Miguel has become home to a growing number of younger American professionals whose work in the high-tech industry allows them to live anywhere. A software developer in his forties and an online computer science teacher both commented that many people with whom they worked had 'no idea where I am, and it doesn't matter.' Curiously, almost every American in San Miguel also has an address in Laredo, Texas. For many reasons, Americans living in Mexico find it useful to have a U.S. address, and several American-owned mail companies in San Miguel provide them one. Twenty dollars a month provides a Laredo address and regular delivery from that address to a P.O. box in San Miguel. This way, Americans in Mexico maintain Medicare benefits, access to U.S. financial services, memberships with Netflix, and eBay, and the timely arrival of their favorite U.S. magazines. Americans in San Miguel not only live financially convenient, transnational lives, but virtual ones as well.
From Them We Eat
It may matter little to U.S. employers or friends and relatives in the United States that so many Americans now reside in San Miguel, but how does their presence affect Mexican residents? Sitting on a bench in the jardÃn, one American woman who had been living in San Miguel for eleven years assured me, 'They love us here.' Some Americans were less certain, but emphasized (sometimes unsolicited, and often defensively) that the foreign influx is good for Mexicans in San Miguel: 'Forty new Americans here means forty new maid jobs.' One American woman remarked, 'Mexicans don't have a culture of civic involvement like Americans do; and we are doing important things for them that their government won't do.' The impact of the foreign community on San Miguel is also debated in relation to the town's real estate boom. City officials and real estate agents estimate that foreigners now own more than 50 percent of the homes in city center, and Mexicans increasingly live in the neighborhoods, or colonias, growing up outside of the town. Many Americans assess the situation as follows: 'If Mexicans can sell their homes in el centro to foreigners for a huge profit, then they can buy a bigger house outside of town and maybe send a kid to college.'
As an American, and an outsider, it was difficult for me to gauge accurately the Mexican response to foreign immigrants; but perhaps the most honest answer came from a forty-six-year-old Mexican woman, born and raised in San Miguel, who teaches Spanish at one of the local language schools: 'De ellos comemos,' she said, 'From them we eat.' Her response conveys a dilemma for San Miguel not unlike the dilemma that Mexico and other developing countries faced at earlier stages of global capitalist expansion. During the 1980s, dependency theorists analyzed how countries throughout Latin America, or other 'peripheral' countries, were developing in the sense of increasing their gross domestic product or foreign direct investment. This development, however, was deemed dependent development in that it tied Latin America more tightly into the international economy but did not lay the groundwork for stable economic growth or equitable income distribution. Today, San Miguel clearly benefits from a service economy fueled by foreign residents and tourists; yet, it is unclear whether the expansion of maid jobs or the selling off of prime downtown real estate benefits the town and its native inhabitants in the long run.
Some Mexican officials are paying attention to this question, but what interest does the U.S. government have in its growing expatriate population in Mexico? The short answer seems to be very little. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Government Accounting Office recently dispensed with plans to include the American population abroad in the 2010 Census'arguing that it would not be cost effective. The American Consulate in San Miguel does not know how many Americans are there. Registering with the consulate is voluntary, and many Americans laughed at the idea that they would bother to do so. Nor is Mexico on the growing list of hotspots where U.S. citizens might be in danger. Nonetheless, there are some arguments for putting this issue on the U.S. government's agenda. Migration to Mexico is increasing the size of the overseas electorate, and tight races as in the past two presidential elections magnify the political potential of this population (as does the fact that as retirees many of these migrants already belong to a politically mobilized demographic). Americans abroad also unite around specific policy issues, such as current calls for U.S. Medicare to be extended overseas. Scholars have analyzed how migration can act as a safety valve for countries like Mexico or Cuba, which lessen their domestic tensions by exporting disgruntled citizens to the United States. Is the United States doing the same with cash-strapped retirees who move to Mexico?
Finally, albeit unlikely, there is the potential for backlash against Americans in Mexico on the part of the Mexican government or its citizens. In May 2006, San Miguel's English-language newspaper surveyed Mexicans about U.S. proposals to build a wall along the border. Responses varied, but included the following: Ana MarÃa Sánchez, a merchant, said, 'They know we Mexicans and other Latinos do the hardest jobs gringos would never do. Here in San Miguel, there are plenty of gringos, and we treat them politely. They should do the same with Mexicans.' Sandra Galicia, a flower seller, commented, 'We should forbid gringos from coming into Mexico, just as they do with us.' Raquel Matehuala, a merchant, complained, 'We are neighbors, and they should not take such measures against us. Why do we Mexicans allow them to come to our country and treat them politely, and they instead treat us like that?' Living in Miami, in 1990, I remember many Americans responding to that city's immigrant influx with a bumper sticker that read, 'Will the last American leaving Miami please bring the flag?' No such response has yet emerged in San Miguel, although on one of my last nights in the city, as I had dinner in a restaurant with a Mexican woman who works in real estate, my companion paused and said (in English): 'Look around. I am the only Mexican in here!'
Sheila Croucher is a professor of political science at Miami University in Ohio and author, most recently, of Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World. |
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