A violent protest in Mexico city Railing against gentrification and mass tourism was heated by state failures and active promotion to attract digital nomads, according to experts, who said that the tension has increased for years.
After the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum claimed that the protest on Friday was shaped by xenophobia and revived a debate about an influx of Americans in the city.
Many Mexicans say that they were rated from their neighborhoods – partly because of a step by Sheinbaum in 2022, when she was the Mexican mayor and an agreement with signed Airbnb And UNESCO to increase tourism and attract digital nomads, although the effects could have a short -term rent.
“Gringo: stop stealing our home. ‘
That came up on Friday. A largely peaceful protest against hundreds of demonstrators marched through the city’s tourism centers with signs “Gringo: stop stealing our home” and “Now Housing regulations”!
Towards the end of the march, a group became violent by demonstrators, broke the windows of the shop fronts and looted a number of companies. In one case, a demonstrator banged a butter knife against the window of a restaurant where people hid, and another person paints “kill a gringo” on a nearby wall.
“The xenophobic representations that can be seen in this protest must be convicted. Nobody should be able to say” every nationality increases from our country “, even because of a legitimate problem such as gentrification,” said Sheinbaum on Monday. “We were always open, fraternal.”
The frustrations are based on years of mass tourism and rising rental prices in large parts of the city. The influx of foreigners began around 2020, when the Americans flooded into the Mexico city to work from a distance, avoid coronavirus restrictions and use cheaper living costs.
In the years since then, Choice districts such as Roma and Condden, lush central areas with cafes and markets, have increasingly grown from foreign tourists and the remote employees who are known as digital nomads.
As you have, the rent and livelihood prices on the streets of these areas are increasingly common. Some groups have described the phenomenon as a kind of “neocolonialism”.
Assembly voltages
The anti-genuization front in Mexico City, one of the organizations behind the protest, was “completely” against physical violence and contested that the protests were xenophobic. Instead, the organization said that the protest was a result of years of failure by the local government to tackle the root of problems.
“Gentrification is not only the guilt of foreigners, but also the guilt of the government and these companies that prioritize the money brings foreigners,” said the organization in a statement. In the meantime, “Young people and the working class cannot afford to live here.”
In his list of requirements, the organization called for more rental controls, mandates that the locals in larger development projects in their region have a voice, stringent laws make it more difficult for the landlords to throw the residents and prioritize Mexican tenants from foreigners.
The protest in Mexico has a wave of similar protests across Europe against mass tourism. The tensions in Mexico were also reinforced by broader inequalities and the Trump government on Latino communities in the United States while increasing deportations.
The US Ministry of Homeland Security drove to demonstrators with a thrust on Sunday and wrote in a post on the Social Media platform X: “If you are illegal in the USA and want to join the next protest in Mexico city, use the CBP Home app to make your departure easier.”
Government failure
The screams of the demonstrators against government failure were repeated by experts, who said that the stridification on the route is a product of both the lack of affordable apartments in the city and for long -term government failure to regulate the real estate market.
Antonio Azuela, lawyer and sociologist and others said that they saw the protest as an xenophobic counter reaction, and around 2020 the core of the problem was the influx of “digital nomads” in the city, but due to lax apartment laws it was no longer in hand.
“What has done this explode is a lack of regulation on the market,” said Azuela.
The government of Mexico city has made some efforts over the decades to control the development and create affordable apartments.
Legislators estimated that there are around 2.7 million houses and apartments in the city, but it takes around 800,000 more. Such affordable housing developments that have appeared frequently are often pushed to the edge of the city, said Luis Salinas, researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who has been studying gentrification in Mexico City for years.
Use “inadequate” laws
Meanwhile, the controls were characterized by a lack of enforcement that developer travel access companies such as Airbnb are using, he said.
Today, more than 26,000 properties in Mexico city are currently listed in Airbnb, according to the Inside Airbnb, an advocacy organization that pursues the effects of the company on shared apartments through data. This is compared to 36,000 properties in New York City and 19,000 in Barcelona, Where protests have broken out.
“The government treated living like its goods,” said Salinas. The measures that the government has taken is “completely inadequate. The federal government has to intervene far more nowadays”.
Airbnb said that it contributed more than one billion dollars to “economic effects” in Mexico city last year and that the expenditure of guests supported 46,000 jobs in the city. “What is needed is not based on prohibitions, but on respect for rights and transparency of the obligations,” said an explanation.
Last year the government in Mexico City approved the most ambitious rental control law since the 1940s In order to control the prices and limit short-term rents to 180 nights a year, Salinas said that the enforcement of short-term rental legislation was initiated into a break until after the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
And even then the state of the country has to take far larger measures to control the situation, said Azuela.
“This will not end by ruling only in Airbnb,” he said. “You have to do a lot more.”
