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 Editorials | Opinions | August 2006 
Life in San Miguel de Allende
 Doug Bower - PVNN
| | I just wonder in which direction the builders of and homebuyers in these gringo-gated communities have been looking. Have they been looking at the future, the present, or looking over their shoulders into an American past? |
When trying to write an "op-ed" piece, one has precious little space in which to attack an issue in 600-1000 words. Mostly, one is able to take one point (or two at the most) and deal with it. In my story on San Miguel de Allende, I was trying to make the point there is a significant portion of the expat community that has turned to the dark side.
Not all have.
The dark-side expats are those who have yielded to the temptation, because of their lot in life and consequent heavily endowed stock portfolios, to change San Miguel de Allende into something more suitable to their American Tastes. They are those who listened to the slick ads, the used car salesman's tactics that try to sell San Miguel de Allende to those with the money to buy it. These "second generation" SMA expats have done it. They bought the town.
However, there are different expats in San Miguel that I need to acknowledge. These are expats who have not taken the path to the dark side. These are the expats who "get it." What they get is that when you are invited into someone else's home, you do not set about changing that person's home to conform to your image of a home — one with your tastes.
They are those that fully get that they are guests in someone else's home. They understand they are here because of Mexico's graciousness and no matter how different it is, they haven't the right to make it "more suitable to American Tastes." They understand Mexico is what it is and if they do not like it, they can leave and go where American Tastes reign — back in America.
I think there is a third wave of expats flooding into SMA. They are much like the first ones who came decades ago. They are much like the first-generation expats who despair over the second-generation expats and what they've made in SMA. I think the third-wave expats get that a horror has been brought upon SMA that needs excising. I doubt seriously there is any going back. Sad.
I think I am so possessed with this because what happened to SMA is beginning to happen here in Guanajuato where I live. The gringos are flooding into the city, they are buying up everything, and they do not speak a word of Spanish.
I want to make two points here:
1) Without the linguistic skills, there will never, ever be any assimilation into the culture. Impossible.
2) I have had emails, as well as face-to-face talks, with gringos who say these very words,
"We do not like what we see here in houses, so we are going to build a house more suitable to American Tastes."
Is this not the path to the dark side?
It gets worse.
I get lots of email from readers who read my column and books. One came from a retiring professor in the Midwest who told me of his desire to semi-retire to Guanajuato. He contacted the University of Guanajuato to inquire about possibly teaching a class or two. When the university official informed him of his need to be proficient in Spanish, he was thrown for a loop. (I am not at all surprised.)
Then he asked me about the "AMERICAN SECTOR" in Guanajuato. He wanted to know because he and his wife DID NOT want to live in a Mexican neighborhood.
As I wrote in our second book, Guanajuato, Mexico:
"This was absolutely repugnant to me. I took his question as an invitation to tell him about the uniqueness of Guanajuato. I was not so nice and was quite direct about what I thought of American Sectors. I never heard from him again."
What the first-generation and the third-wave expats are doing in SMA is the right way to expatriate. What the second-generation has done, buying up the town and the city government with well-placed "incentives" to conform it more to American Tastes, is NOT the way to do it.
They haven't the right!
If what you want is something that tastes American then why not stay in America?
Let me sum it up with a passage from our first book, The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico:
“Gold Coast was a term used to describe an area of New York’s Long Island where residents built colonial-era villages and monolithic estates. It was an area where a lifestyle of exclusivity prevailed. The riffraff and rabble were kept out so as not to taint the lives of the wealthy.
“It is an area of old money, old families, old social graces, and old ideas about who should be allowed to vote, not to mention who should be allowed to own land. The Gold Coast is not a pastoral Jeffersonian democracy.”
The huge estates that they built were essentially gated communities. It wasn’t enough to have massive acreages of land on which to build mansions in the French or Italian style - the likes of which the common man (peasants) had never seen. These rich people walled in the land, erected fortress-like walls complete with iron gates and gatehouses, and hired live-in gatekeepers to keep out the riffraff.
Am I on the wrong track here? Is not the reason for having these fortresses, gates, and gatekeepers to keep the rabble (the peasants) from bothering the Lords of the Manor? If, for the sake of argument, I am correct in my assumption, then who are the Lords of the Manor behind the gates and walls and who are the riffraff in these gated communities in Mexico?
I have seen these gated communities in San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta. The houses are ultra expensive and make me wonder how a middle-class Mexican family could ever begin to afford to buy one. This, of course, leads me to assume that these homes and communities are meant for only a certain class of people. They are for the rich Mexican (of which there are very few) and the gloriously rich American and Canadian expatriates.
On Sundays, there is a half-hour infomercial on our local television station that advertises these homes. The narrator used the words “exclusive” and “exclusivity” in every other sentence. They constantly highlight the same amenities which these gated communities have in common with Long Island’s Gold Coast estates. They have walls surrounding the community, security guards and cameras, and 24/7 gatekeepers who are always at the ready to keep out the “undesirables."
Again I ask, just who are these “undesirables?”
Of the Long Island Gold Coast architecture, DeMille says:
“But the architects and their American clients of this period were not looking into the future, or even trying to create the present, they were looking back over their shoulders into a European past that had flowered and died even before the first block of granite arrived on this site. What these people were trying to create or recreate in the New World is beyond me.”
I just wonder in which direction the builders of and homebuyers in these gringo-gated communities have been looking. Have they been looking at the future, the present, or looking over their shoulders into an American past? I also wonder what these people are trying to create or recreate on Mexico’s Gold Coast and in other regions in this country that has graciously allowed them to live here as guests. It is beyond me.
“I can’t put myself in their minds or hearts, but I can sympathize with their struggle for an identity, with their puzzlement, which has troubled Americans from the very beginning - who are we, where do we fit, where are we going?”
Though I don’t understand it, perhaps I too can sympathize with the identity struggle behind the erecting of these gated communities and the isolation from the Mexican people they create. The Mexican people genuinely don’t understand why these gringos come to Mexico and refuse to socialize or interact with them in any way. We’ve had Mexicans ask us:
“Why won’t these Americans learn Spanish?”
“Why won’t these Americans associate with us? What is wrong with us?”
One cannot learn the language while hiding behind the walls of a fortress and refusing to interact with the Mexican population. The Mexicans are genuinely hurt by this attitude of isolation. They've told us so.
“The whole silly Gold Coast was a sham, an American anomaly, in a country that was an anomaly to the rest of the world.”
Sadly, I think the Gringo Land expats display the same sham to the locals in the cities where the gringo enclaves exist. The relationship between the locals and their gringo guests is flimsy, at best.”
Click HERE for Life in San Miguel de Allende - Part One
FOOTNOTES:
Guanajuato, México Your Expat, Study Abroad, and Vacation Survival Manual in The Land of Frogs. Copyright © 2006 Doug & Cindi Bower All rights reserved. Universal Publishers Boca Raton, Florida USA • 2005
The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico Copyright © 2005 Doug & Cindi Bower All rights reserved. Universal Publishers Boca Raton, Florida USA • 2005 ISBN: 1-58112-457-0 Universal-Publishers.com
| Doug and Cindi Bower, Americans living in Guanajuato, Mexico, have co-authored a brand new print and ebook titled, "Guanajuato, México - Your Expat, Study Abroad, and Vacation Survival Manual in The Land of Frogs". Click HERE for info. |
Doug Bower is a freelance writer, Syndicated Columnist, and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Transitions Abroad, International Living, and The Front Porch Syndicate. He is a columnist with The American Chronicle, Ezinearticles.com, Cricketsoda.com, and more than 21 additional online magazines. |
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