(source: Mexico News Daily under fair use)
For some of us USAmericans… well, at least for this USAmerican living abroad, there are moral and ethical dilemmas. First of which is: what do I even call myself? The most common handle I’ve seen is expat—short for expatriate—but I’m sticking with immigrant. Not because it’s more accurate, necessarily, but because it feels more honest. Less colonial.
There’s been a flurry of protests in Mexico City reported lately, demanding that gringo immigrants “go home.” The complaints against us include offensive behavior, failure to integrate—or even learn Spanish—and most pointedly, that we are driving up the cost of living, especially rent.
I saw something similar in Bogotá last year. A group staged a theatrical protest, clearly modeled on activist tactics like those of ACT UP. And just like with ACT UP, the larger public dismissed them. Too loud. Too messy. Too easy to ignore.
Most of us immigrants feel welcome here in Colombia. We don’t recognize ourselves in the anger of the protestors. But that’s exactly the point. The protests get ignored because they don’t reflect the average Colombian experience—and that’s how their legitimate concerns get buried.
(Photo by Jon D Barnett)
Protest always risks being caricatured. The media focuses on the drama, not the demands. The angry chant, not the root cause. It’s a classical dilemma I’ve watched play out dozens of times.
But the passion felt by protesters demands a response—from whom?
Who’s responsible when rent soars out of control in cities that once housed their own people affordably?
It’s easy to blame the gringo. Or the landlord. Or Airbnb. Or the mayor. Or the algorithm. But maybe that’s just what we humans do—find someone slightly more guilty than ourselves.
Yesterday, I posted a video tour of our new apartment in Bucaramanga. It’s lovely. Three bedrooms, two baths, a balcony view. It costs us $375/month in rent, maybe $600 all-in with admin fees, internet, and utilities. I admitted, maybe a little too eagerly, that the price was one of the reasons we chose to live here. A few people responded with admiration—and a kind of wistful envy. “Wow,” they said, “that’s so cheap.”
But it’s not. Not really.
Cheap rent isn’t cheap if it comes at the cost of someone else being priced out.
Colombia, let alone Bucaramanga, is not yet a hotspot for English-speaking immigrants, but if enough of us show up with U.S. dollars, that can change fast. It already has in parts of Mexico, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.
And while we may be contributing to the economy—buying food, hiring help, paying taxes—we’re also reshaping the local housing market. Unintentionally, maybe. But still.
Protesters shouldn’t ignore that inflation and the cost of living in Colombia would be rising regardless of foreigners. Our presence may exacerbate the issue, but making us go home won’t fix it. The real culprits—greed, policy failure, and globalization—aren’t leaving.
Still, so-called expats—and I include myself in that messy label—need to accept that we have a moral and ethical responsibility to the communities we now live in. That’s part of the cost of our own struggles to maintain a high standard of living on a reduced Western income.
At the very least, this should include being willing to pay the dreaded “gringo tax”—whether it shows up in inflated prices or just a social tax on privilege. And for gawd’s sake, let’s stop bitching about it.
I don’t have the answers. But I do have the questions.
Maybe one of my epithets will be: “I found the right answer, only to learn I was asking the wrong question.”
Or maybe: “The right question is more important than the right answer.”
One question I can’t shake is this:
Can we live gently in a place we love, without becoming the thing we ran away from?
