Border Invaders, The Perfect Swarm Heads South

TomDispatch.com ^ | 10/15/2006 | Mike Davis

[Reeses]

The Baby-Boomers Head South

What few people -- at least, outside of Mexico -- have bothered to notice is that while all the nannies, cooks, and maids have been heading north to tend the luxury lifestyles of irate Republicans, the Gringo hordes have been rushing south to enjoy glorious budget retirements and affordable second homes under the Mexican sun.

Yes, in former California Governor Pete Wilson's immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over the last decade, the U.S. State Department estimates that the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million (or one-quarter of all U.S. expatriates). Remittances from the United States to Mexico have risen dramatically from $9 billion to $14.5 billion in just two years. Though initially interpreted as representing a huge spike in illegal workers (who send parts of their salaries across the border to family), it turns out to be mainly money sent by Americans to themselves in order to finance Mexican homes and retirements.

Although some of them are certainly naturalized U.S. citizens returning to towns and villages of their birth after lifetimes of toil al otro lado, the director-general of FONATUR, the official agency for tourism development in Mexico, recently characterized the typical investors in that country's real estate as American "baby boomers who have paid off in good part their initial mortgage and are coming into inheritance money."

Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, "The land rush is occurring at the beginning of a demographic tidal wave. With more than 70 million American baby boomers expected to retire in the next two decades… some experts predict a vast migration to warmer -- and cheaper -- climates. Often such buyers purchase a property 10 to 15 years before retirement, use it as a vacation home, and then eventually move there for most of the year. Developers increasingly are taking advantage of the trend, building gated communities, condominiums, and golf courses."

The extraordinary rise in U.S. Sunbelt property values gives gringos immense economic leverage. Shrewd baby-boomers are not simply feathering nests for eventual retirement, but also increasingly speculating in Mexican resort property, sending up property values to the detriment of locals whose children are consequently driven into slums or forced to emigrate north, only increasing the "invasion" charges. As in Galway, Corsica, or, for that matter, Montana, the global second-home boom is making life in beautiful, natural settings unaffordable for their traditional residents.

Some expatriates are experimenting with exotic places such as the Riviera Maya or Tulum in Quintana Roo, but more prefer such well-established havens as San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta. Here the norteamericanos make themselves at home in more ways than one.

An English-language paper in Puerto Vallarta, for instance, recently applauded the imminent arrival of a new shopping mall that will include Hooters, Burger King, Subway, Chili's and Starbucks. Only Dunkin' Donuts (con salsa?), the paper complained, was still missing.

The gringo footprint is largest (and brings the most significant geopolitical consequences) in Baja California, the 1,000-mile long desert appendage to the gridlocked state-nation governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Indeed, Baja real-estate websites ooze almost as much hyperbole as those devoted to stalking the phantom menace of illegal immigrants -- just in a far more upbeat tone when it comes to the question of immigrant invasions.

In essence, Alta (Upper) California is beginning to overflow into Baja, an epochal process that, if unchecked, will produce intolerable social marginalization and ecological devastation in Mexico's last true frontier region. All the contradictions of post-industrial California -- runaway land inflation in the coastal zone, sprawling suburban development in interior valleys and deserts, freeway congestion and lack of mass transit, and the astronomical growth of motorized recreation -- dictate the invasion of the gorgeous "empty" peninsula to the south. To use a term from a bad but not irrelevant past, Baja is Anglo California's Lebensraum.

Indeed, the first two stages of informal annexation have already occurred. Under the banner of NAFTA, Southern California has exported hundreds of its sweatshops and toxic industries to the maquiladora zones of Tijuana and Mexicali. The Pacific Maritime Association, representing the West Coast's major shipping companies, has joined forces with Korean and Japanese corporations to explore the construction of a vast new container port at Punta Colonel, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which would undercut the power of longshore unionism in San Pedro and San Francisco.

Secondly, tens of thousands of gringo retirees and winter-residents are now clustered at both ends of the peninsula. Along the northwest coast from Tijuana to Ensenada, a recent advertisement for a real-estate conference at UCLA boasts that "there are presently over 57 real-estate developments… with over 11,000 homes/condos with an inventory value of over $3 billion… all of them geared for the U.S. market."

Meanwhile, at the tropical end of Baja, a gilded gringo enclave has emerged in the twenty-mile strip between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose de Cabo. Los Cabos is part of that global archipelago of real-estate hot spots where continuous double-digit increases in property values suck in speculative capital from all over the world. Ordinary gringos can participate in this glamorous Los Cabos real-estate casino through the purchase and resale of fractional time-shares in condominiums and beach homes.

Although Western Canadian and Arizona speculators have taken large bites out of Baja's southern cape, Los Cabos -- at least judging from the registration of private planes at the local airport -- has essentially become a resort suburb of Orange County, the home of the most vehement Minutemen chapters. (Many wealthy Southern Californians evidently see no contradiction between fuming over the "alien invasion" with one's conservative friends at the Newport Marina one day, and flying down to Cabos the next for some sea-kayaking or celebrity golf.)

Manifest Destiny, the Sequel?

The next step in the late-colonization of Baja is the "Escalera Nautica," a $3 billion "ladder" of marinas and coastal resorts being developed by FONATUR that will open up pristine sections of both Mexican coasts to the yacht club set.

Meanwhile, The Truman Show has arrived in the picturesque little city of Loreto on the Gulf side of the peninsula. There, FONATUR has joined forces with an Arizona company and "New Urbanist" architects from Florida to develop the Villages of Loreto Bay: 6,000 homes for expatriates in colonial-Mexico motif on the Sea of Cortez.

The $3 billion Loreto project boasts that it will be the last word in Green design, exploiting solar power and restricting automobile usage. Yet, at the same time, it will balloon Loreto's population from its current 15,000 to more than 100,000 in a decade, with the social and environmental consequences of a sort that can already be seen in the slum peripheries of Cancun and other mega-resorts.

One of the irresistible attractions of Baja is that it has preserved a primordial wildness that has disappeared elsewhere in the West. Local residents, including a very eloquent indigenous environmental movement, cherish this incomparable landscape as they do the survival of an egalitarian ethos in the peninsula's small towns and fishing villages.

Thanks to the silent invasion of the baby-boomers from the north, however, much of the natural history and frontier culture of Baja could be swept away in the next generation. One of the world's most magnificent wild coastlines could be turned into generic tourist sprawl, waiting for Dunkin' Donuts to open. Locals, accordingly, have every reason to fear that today's mega-resorts and mock-colonial suburbs, like FONATUR's entire tourism-centered strategy of regional development, are merely the latest Trojan horses of Manifest Destiny.

[Reeses]

Although entirely envy-fueled, this Marxist researcher provides some interesting information if you want to consider getting in on the ground floor of a trend, the American invasion of Mexico. I excluded the anti-conservative rhetoric from the beginning of this article but you can follow the link if interested. An edited version of this article is published at www.sfgate.com today.

[TomGuy]

This isn't really anything new.

Even in the 1960s, many business men, doctors and dentists, for example, lived in nice residential suburbs of Juarez, MX and did their daily business/practices on the El Paso, TX side of the border. Those residential areas were comparable to nicer residential suburbs in many US cities, and included modern strip malls.

[Richard Kimball]

As I read the article, I was thinking just what you stated in your post. If you can wade through the sarcasm and self-hatred of all things Anglo in his column, there's a ton of good information in there.

[nralife]

I always thought Norte Americanos were forbidden from purchasing property in Mexico? The way I understood it, is that you could get a 99 year lease or some such. Then, of course, you had to pay all sorts of bribes and taxes to keep the property.

[basil]

Hmmm--wonder how many of these "gringos" are living off the public teat of Mexican taxpayer's money? Wonder how many are showing up at hospitals demanding treatment, and not paying for it. I wonder how many are flooding the Mexican public school system,

You can bet your bottom dollar that if these "gringos" weren't adding a lot of pesos to the Mexican economy, they wouldn't be there.

Personally, I plan to never set foot in Mexico again.

[mugs99]

I excluded the anti-conservative rhetoric from the beginning of this article but you can follow the link if interested
Lol...
The majority of Americans in Mexico are conservative. For many who are land rich but dollar poor here in California, Mexico is very inviting. Several of my friends have sold out and moved to Baja and I'm considering doing the same.
.

[mugs99]

I always thought Norte Americanos were forbidden from purchasing property in Mexico?

That has changed. Mexico's dual-nationality law allows Americans to become Mexican citizens while retaining American citizenship.
.

[G-Man 1]

I think you can buy land in mex. but it has to be so many miles inland from the ocean, in case you help invaders come ashore. You can have your land confiscated as per the 1930's also. I wouldn't invest any where out of the USA especially in south america.

[Reeses]

You can own property in central Mexico. They have a law against Americans buying near the coast, but you can lease long term and resell. Without this law the beautiful coast would turn into a thin strip of America pretty quick. There are some ways around this, such as marrying a Mexican or getting dual citizenship.

For those currently living in LA, living in Mexico is not much of a transition, just cheaper, less socialism, and fewer lawyers, for now.

[dalereed]

"The way I understood it, is that you could get a 99 year lease or some such"

Within 25 miles of the ocean, that includes mexicans.

Between marlin fishing 2 weeks for 2 decades, racing, and flying scallops out of there 2 days a week for over a year you couldn't pay me to live there.

[Wuli]

And what are the rights or these "norte Americano" transplants in Mexico, versus the rights illegal immigrants demand in the U.S.???

[Gorzaloon]

As if I would condsider living in, and moving my money to a corrupt Kleptocracy!

Well, wait a minute, I DO live in Massachusetts, and lately even the language is becoming similar- But at least this state has a PUBLISHED RATE SCHEDULE for the bribes and graft.

[upchuck]

Check out this atrticle from the WaPo, Feb 5, 2001:

About 7,500 people from the United States have taken that sign to heart and carved out a little America in and around this fishing village on Lake Chapala, so now there are about as many Chryslers with Virginia license plates as there are burros hauling hay. And this is just one of the gringo-heavy towns around here. About 50,000 Americans live in the Guadalajara region, which includes the resort city of Puerta Vallarta.

Enticed by sweet weather and less expensive living -- taxes on a $150,000 house here run about $60 a year, and the same house would cost double in Washington -- year-round residents from the United States have filled the towns around Lake Chapala, trading life up North for the easy rhythms of central Mexico and making up one of the world's most concentrated colonies of U.S. citizens living abroad.

Link.

Personally, I wouldn't live there. The Mexican government is too corrupt for me. And there appears to be a lot of violence there.

[ClaireSolt]

Is this another Marxist who doesn't have a clue about economics? The idea that an influx of people with money forces illegals out instead of providing jobs for many is laughable.

[Syncro]

Ditto that basil. Me neither.

You'd think turn-about would be fair play.

Grown in your honor:

:>)

[litehaus]

"some experts predict a vast migration to warmer -- and cheaper -- climates."

Just as in Popular Mechanics of 50? years ago----Retire In Mexico on $300 a Month!

[Shuttle Shucker]

Relatively few people realize, yet, that Mexico's immigration laws are FAR more strict than the USA's (as this documents):

http://www.directory.com.mx/immigration

[Shuttle Shucker]

Dual nationality is only possible in Mexico if one has Latino genes. Seriously! Mexico's immigration laws are FAR more strict (and racist) than the USA's (as this documents):

http://www.directory.com.mx/immigration

[Shuttle Shucker]

Your property law question's addressed here:

http://www.directory.com.mx/immigration

[Shuttle Shucker]

There is title insurance available for Mexican property now, from the major U.S. carriers:

http://www.directory.com.mx/real-estate