I’ve been trying of late to put into words just what I’ve learned about living in Mexico for the past four years that is significant enough to share with my readers. There is so much. Some things I’ve grown to love: the fine restaurants and the slower pace of life here. Some things I’ve come to bemoan: caring for the environment doesn’t seem to be high on the list of things to worry about in this country.

Some things have been city specific. We moved to Guanajuato four years ago and have not lived anywhere else. Just recently, we’ve seen the handwriting on the wall and have decided it is time to seek out other pastures to expand our expatriation experience. So, I guess it comes down to “what have we learned about Mexico by living in Guanajuato?” That sums it up in a nutshell.

Guanajuato has two worlds or two realities coursing through its existence. Maybe it has always been this way. I do not know. There are two classes of people here and rarely do the two meet.

There is the class with money, education, and world experience. Those in this group seem to have a keen sense of there being more to life than just Mexico. They have traveled, studied abroad, obtained university degrees, and are far more sophisticated than the other group’s members.

The second group consists of those who may or may not have graduated from what we in the States would call high school. They are laborers. They work hard or not at all. You see a lot of unemployed men in the cantinas and on the streets with bottles of liquor in their hands. It seems their women are the workers who bring home the bacon, take care of the kids, and try to keep their men out of trouble. They don’t always succeed.

These two groups, or classes, do not mix. You would not see someone of education and means shopping at the small Mom-and-Pop shops in Guanajuato. Those with the means drive their very expensive American-made SUV’s to the Mega Superstore. You would never, or at least rarely, see the other class shopping at Mega. Never would you see the two classes at the same social function.

American expats tend to forget or ignore this fact of Mexican life - class structure.

We were at a dinner in the country given by some Americans. The Americans invited people from both classes. Their handyman’s family attended, as did their maid’s family. There were also men and women with state government jobs who were obviously of means. The two groups never interacted. They sat in separate corners of the patio to eat, and didn’t say hello or good-bye to one another. There was no social interaction at all. This is a perfect example of the two worlds that exist here in Mexico’s heartland and, I suspect, all over Mexico.

American expats also comprise two separate worlds in Guanajuato.

You have the American expats who tend to congregate in enclaves. They socialize with others of means, they shop only at the places where Mexicans of means shop, and you would rarely, if ever, see them walking the barrios of Guanajuato as my wife and I do daily. They live a bubbled existence.

Then, there are the American expats who live in Mexican neighborhoods. They’ve bothered to undertake the monumental struggle to learn Spanish. They shop in the small neighborhood stores. They have mostly Mexican friends, mainly from the working class. These Mexicans have to struggle to get by, but what they lack financially, they more than make up with lots of soul and heart. These American expats have assimilated into the Mexican culture.

The expats living in the enclaves also claim to have “Mexican friends.” However, upon careful examination, you learn their “lots and lots of Mexican friends” are those of the educated class who are bilingual. These expats use these “Mexican friends” as their translators and interpreters in order to interface with the Mexican culture they claim to love. Without these bilingual friends, these expats could not survive here. These American expats rarely learn enough Spanish to put together a cogent sentence. Their Mexican friends are those who do not, even if they wanted to, associate with the guy who sells bags of dirt from the backs of his burros.

We stop the guy with the burros, by the way, when we see him and ask how the wife and kids are. His name is Oligario. Those are the people we’ve grown to love in Guanajuato. No pretension. No make-believe expatriatism. We chose to live in the real world of expatriation.

Now it’s time to see what other regions of Mexico are all about.

But, there is a problem.

I am beginning to wonder if there is any spot on the Mexican map where those rich North Americans, when they discover that real estate can be had for a song and a dance, won't form a corporation to pool their millions and buy those towns as they've done others in Mexico - the ones suffering now from a cultural transformation.

I recently returned from Chapala and Ajijic (in the state of Jalisco), two Meccas of Gringolandia. These were towns that, at one time, no gringos in their right minds would have considered moving to. What changed it was word getting out that real estate was cheap. Individuals came first. Then came those who formed corporations, pooling their millions, to buy land in mass to build it up with “exclusive” developments to attract Gringo Americans and Canadians with the thought of absolute exclusivity. And, I would love to ask, "What or who is it you are wanting to exclude from your mansions and developments?" Anyone got a guess?

Look, I am not opposed to progress. This is the argument that the Gringolandians offer me, at least what I can glean from their vitriol about expat issues in my books and articles. They become all huffy and, to tell you the truth, I can never quite get why. They make the outstanding claim that I cannot possibly be telling the truth about what I've seen and reported in these expat colonies. They call me a liar when I quote what I've been told by cab drivers (an excellent source of information, if you must know) about the behavior of some, not all, of the North Americans. If you press them, you will soon get them to admit that a minority of the gringos knows how to behave and the majority verbally abuses them.

We were once with a Mexicana in San Miguel de Allende who wanted to park in a paid parking facility. We were not out of her car for more than 30 seconds when we witnessed a gringo blowing up at the parking lot attendant because the attendant could not break a $500.00 Peso bill so the gringo could pay a miniscule parking fee. So, the gringo's plan? He left without paying anything at all.

I have in my possession a collection of emails from my readers who have not only agreed with my screeds, but have added stories of their own. They tell me they've witnessed monolingual Americans in Mexican towns (as well as in other countries) who have a philosophy of expatriation pretty much summed up in the quote sent to me in a vitriolic fit by an American in San Miguel de Allende:

"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."

That last line is really the zinger: "If Mexicans can't handle it they are welcome to live elsewhere."

Is it just me, or does this hideous quote seem to confirm my thesis? Is this not expressing the self-entitlement of the overly indulged? "Mexicans are welcomed to leave their town if they can't handle that their existence is to serve the Americans?" This is the quintessential Gringolandian's philosophy of expatriation.

And, progress? How is the infiltration of Americans into a quaint and charming Mexican town that brings all the blandishments of Americanization a sign of progress? Why is it considered progressive if an American fast-food hamburger joint comes to town? And, which Mexicans have any say so whatsoever whether they want monolingual Americans invading like an army with their armaments of Wal-Marts, American shopping malls (no doubt with thousands of American investors funding the things), and thousands of Americans demanding the locals learn English. [i] <#_edn1>

”Our American Tastes” is the dominating theme, which prevails throughout the land as their justification for the trans-morphing of Mexican towns into their Disneyland playgrounds for the rich and the insufferable.

Making Mexican towns into carbon copies of America so that those with the money will have their American tastes satiated is not progress. An American expatriate community of more than 40,000 is not an expat community; it is a small city. The community wields a great deal of political clout with all that money!

I am not opposed to progress Mexican style. I am opposed to the common Mexican, trying to eek out a living in her little grocery store, not being given a say in whether her store gets swallowed up in corporate ventures. Should they not have a vote?

I am not opposed to progress Mexican style that progresses without the destruction of Mexican heritage: preserve heritage at all costs!

Lord Palumbo of England, a prominent developer, said this:

"…heritage carries the baggage of nostalgia for a non-existent golden age which, had it existed, might well have been the death of invention."[ii] <#_edn2>

If his reasoning is sound, then you might as well tear down any structure more than fifty years old, rip down the ancient churches or anything that smacks of colonial Mexico. And on a worldwide scale, while you are implementing the hugely biased developer's philosophy, let's destroy all The Seven Wonders of the World and put up a few Burger Kings and maybe some Holiday Inns in their place, shall we?

It is never an issue of anti-progress.

It has always been an issue of Gringo-Style Greed to make a fortune at the expense of the Mexican people!

If I had a message for the Gringolandians of Mexico, it would be this:

Just because you get along fine in an artificial environment, your Gringo Bubble, looking out at Mexican culture, it does not mean you could get along at all in the rest of Mexico. In your Gringolandias, you live in a hybridization of cultures. You are in Little Americas no different than living in Echo Park, California, or El Paso, Texas. There are hints of Mexico but it is not the real thing. You've conformed Mexican towns to an image that suits your American tastes. That's what you've done. That's where you live.

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[i] <#_ednref1> If Mexicans want malls and Wal-Marts, then they should have a say so with a vote!

[ii] <#_ednref2> Notes From A Small Island; Bill Bryson; Perennial Press; page 146