Hola, ¿hablas español? Hola, ¿hablan español? No speak Spanish? No. Where are you from?
What's that? ¿De dónde eres? Couple streets over.
Ah, you're living here in Mexico? Yeah. I love Mexico. I don't like the United States.
Okay. It's much calmer than New York. It's still...
very natural. I've had a little bit of Mexican always in my family but not by blood but now I basically do internet marketing, remote work, things like that. The Mexican capital is now considered one of the top five cities in the world for remote work.
of workers. Nothing is stopping me from working remotely as long as I'm not earning wages here in Mexico. Yeah, what would you do if you had that opportunity? You know, I grew up in the States.
My family's only been there for one or two generations also. So, you know, obviously I'm from there, but I feel more comfortable here to be honest. This country is more chill.
In Russia, everybody is on the rush. Everybody is running. Here is more chill. Okay.
Thanks, bro. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too. Thank you. Thank you.
Joe, this is Josue for Channel 5, Latin America. The gentrification in Mexico City is a big problem. What do you think of the gentrification in Mexico? Terrible.
The rents are shooting us in an unreachable way. We won't be able to pay rent in Rome. From $12,000 to $25,000. They are suffering a lot.
What do you think about the prices in this town? The prices here, pretty comparable to Seattle prices. Yeah, very expensive.
Rent in Seattle is back on the rise. Average rent, still more than $2,100 a month for a 700 square foot apartment. Did you taste some tacos? Yes, yes.
Is it spicy or not? It's spicy. A lot or not? In the middle, yes.
Hey, Alvinero. Si. Gracias. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you as well.
As some of you may have seen, much of our previous coverage has focused on the issues along the US-Mexico border, particularly surrounding undocumented migrants coming from developing nations in Latin America who've crossed our border illegally in search of economic opportunity in the States. Many Americans have complained that this mass influx of migrants is taking away job opportunities and working class Americans, lowering the bottom line for coal miners and veterans, flooding the streets with crime and violence, and leading to a canine genocide of epic proportions. They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the pets. But what if I told you there's a reverse border crisis going on?
That's right, rent and cost of living in Mexico's largest city has doubled and now tripled as a result of Americans. This all really began after the COVID pandemic of 2020. during which tens of millions of Americans working in the tech sector switched to a work-from-home model and no longer had to report to the office in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, where tech companies like Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and beyond are headquartered. So where'd they go? The answer is simple.
They went somewhere where their paycheck stretches a lot further. Some chose cities like Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee. But 800,000 Americans have moved to the country of Mexico in the past four years, and almost nowhere has their presence felt more than in Mexico's capital. You see graffiti like this that says, Fuera Gringo, which means, get out.
Gringo. Much like the current situation at our border, if done right, this wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, tourism accounts for 17% of Mexico's GDP. Much like immigrant labor, documented or undocumented, accounts for 19% of the American workforce.
But this rapid, mass influx of what are called digital nomads to Mexico City has overwhelmed the housing market there to such a degree that native-born Mexicans cannot feasibly live there on a standard salary. Look past the charming cafes, flashy apartments, And you'll see this capital city for what it's becoming, a refuge for migrants. I grew up in New York. L.A. Atlanta.
Georgia. Perhaps not the border crossing you expected. Americans leaving pricey U.S. cities, heading south to work from home. In this episode, our Latin American correspondent, Josue, will investigate the ongoing situation in Mexico City through the perspectives of locals, Americans, other foreigners, and local activists doing their best to bring awareness to the problem. Perfecto.
We are here with Fernando Bustos, who is a philosophy professor, among other things. First of all, I would like you to explain to me in colloquial words what gentrification is for people who are not used to this term. To put it in quite easy terms, gentrification is a phenomenon in which people who have the greatest purchasing power come to live in certain areas and then begin to change the way of life that that colony, that city, that street had. At the same time, just because they have greater purchasing power and they have other types of tastes and others, they begin to open, I don't know, like French bakeries, a place that is a little bit more beautiful, so to speak, like the United States, Europe, things like that. And this, at the same time, then, begins to make stores close and people who already live there start going to other places because prices are low.
Activists say the formula is simple. As Mexico has sought to attract remote workers, With higher purchasing power, it's created more inequality for Mexicans. Nowadays you can go to classes, there are many yoga classes here and now the classes are sometimes given in English, that is, if there is a person who speaks English and the rest speaks Spanish, suddenly the classes are given in English.
So also in many restaurants, in many coffee shops, now the letters are also more than anything in English, or they have the announcements outside in English. I live here in Mexico, I wouldn't need it, in the end. When I go to the United States, France, Japan, I don't expect to have a class in my language just because I'm there.
I try to adapt to the place I go to. If I go to the United States, the easiest way, I try to know a little bit of English to be able to enter that class. Do you speak Spanish? Yes.
Your favorite words in Spanish? Favorite words? My favorite words? Throw back and don't fuck.
Okay, bad words. Nice. I don't know, I even feel like it's a bit of a sense of community. And suddenly every day there were different gringos and gringos and gringos that made me feel like a foreigner in my own country, in my own colony. Let's pause for a moment and talk about gentrification.
It's a polarizing buzzword that often divides people into two camps. On one side, you have people who see it as a great across-the-board thing. The neighborhood gets cleaned up, crime goes down, and home values rise. For millions of people my age, that is a dream. Then on the other side, you have those who view it as a form of colonization and cultural erasure.
Gentrification is genocide. But it's important to understand that gentrification doesn't begin maliciously. Let's use the U.S. as an example.
Hipsterism, as we know it today, began in New York City in the early 2000s. The first hipsters were suburban-raised millennials who adapted grunge and lumberjack fashion forms that were popular in Minneapolis and the Pacific Northwest in the late 90s. Most of the original hipsters were the grandchildren of white Americans who fled the inner cities in the mid-1960s during desegregation in a mass exodus known as White Flight. The construction of newly built all-white suburbs and Levittowns in the early 90s was a big hit.
in the farmlands outside cities like Philadelphia was more than a geographic resettlement. It was essentially a mass divestment from the cities, which resulted in a near total transferring of what Josué's interviewee calls purchasing power away from the urban centers into these private redlined communities. This in turn created half a century of economic apartheid in which you basically had two parallel societies, the cities and the suburbs existing in complete isolation from each other.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, cities like Philadelphia Baltimore and New York City spiraled into chaos and disrepair, while suburbia and its sprawl became larger and larger, even connecting metro areas like Chicago and Milwaukee. But there was one problem that the architects of white flight didn't consider, which is the mass loss of what's called cultural capital that came as a result of isolation. The first generation born into a post white flight reality were the boomers.
It should come as no surprise that they loved it and appreciated it. After all, most of their parents were hardscrabble World War II vets who grew up in a world with no suburb. So a white picket fence in a big backyard was like a utopia. The children of the boomers, Gen Xers, kind of liked the suburbs, but were showing some signs of angst.
But the generation after them, the millennials, they envisioned a vibrant new life. A world beyond cul-de-sacs and strip malls. Put simply, they wanted to be around culture, eat interesting food, hear different languages, and just not be bored. And so a migration called reverse white flight began. It's generally acknowledged that the first hipster neighborhood in America was Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
a historically Jewish, black, and Dominican area where Vice moved their headquarters in 2001. The complete cycle of turning parts of the neighborhood from diverse cultural corridors to flat corporate business parks took about 15 years. And there's actually a science to how gentrification works. Tulane University professor Richard Campanella broke it down into a four-phase model. Phase one is the arrival of starving artist types, legitimate penniless, as he calls them, gutter punks, because he's from the ones who are looking for a cheap place to live that's a reasonable commuting distance from upscale cultural centers. These types are often troubled.
They use drugs and drink heavily, and for certain, never open any businesses, and so don't actively displace anyone. What they do, though, is signal safety that makes way for the arrival of Phase 2. Phase 2 is hipsters, but Campanella calls them the creative class. Those in the creative class fetishize the starving artist types, and are often semi-transient, meaning they kind of follow cool around the country. Unlike the broke bohemians, hipsters are typically college-educated, hyper-liberal. and usually open businesses like coffee shops, organic food stores, juice bars, yoga studios, barber shops with exposed brick inside, vegan co-ops, and essentially introduce oat milk to the hood.
Gradually, the area becomes a colony of the greater hipster network and begins seeing cross-traffic from cities like Portland, Oregon, who begin imposing their aesthetics and cultural customs onto the area. However, rent and cost of living itself does not actually rise until the third phase begins, which Campanella calls the bourgeoisie bohemian phase. This is marked by the arrival of art collectors, people who refer to themselves as socialites, burning man camp leaders, cultural investors, and most of all, Most importantly, real estate developers with a taste for the hip who are aware of the area's skyrocketing cultural capital and see a massive business opportunity, which often takes the form of a city-sponsored arts district.
It's between phase two and three that you find the most tension because that's when the displacement happens. In this phase, entire neighborhoods are often bulldozed to make room for luxury hotels, trendy fine dining restaurants, and hip corporate storefronts, resulting in unaffordability for both locals who are totally out of this coolness matrix and... the hipsters and bohemians that made the area cool in the first place. After the shiny new apartments are built and the landlord raises the rent, the fourth phase begins, which is the arrival of the rich. The young professional class, like tech bros and finance guys, who have absolutely no interest in anything cool and view cultural capital as basically meaningless.
By the time phase four is complete and yuppies have taken over, you're left with a sterile, metallic ghost town full of empty apartments that basically nobody wants to live in. The developers who banked on the cool factor are bumped, and the cycle of gentrification has now restarted on the outer radius of where it began, spreading like a nuclear bomb in all directions, destroying everything in its wake. In New York, you could say the bomb was dropped in Williamsburg. The blast radius is currently incinerating Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, Ridgewood, and further out into the boroughs.
In Mexico City, it's safe to say the G-bomb was dropped in a neighborhood called Roma Norte, a historic district just southwest of the center of town. I'm not sure if you know this, but Mexico City is unbelievably large in size, and has a higher population than New York. So there was a ton of neighborhoods for transplants to choose from.
But Roma Norte's primary cultural appeal was its food. It's been a hotspot for Mexican cuisine since the 1950s. Dude, I mean, you can get, you know, some chilaquiles or some tacos for four pesos and it's like fucking good, you know?
I love it. It's great. The prices are great here.
Do you feel they upgrade the prices? No, yeah, I feel like in some places the prices are going up. I mean, Roma Norte is ridiculous. Condesa is so expensive now.
I looked out because I feel like Juarez is like It's still a little local, but it's like the Brooklyn of New York. In the center. Yeah, in the center. It feels like it's like an old New York, you know? Beyond cultural appeal, another factor that makes cities ripe for gentrification are natural disasters.
One example would be New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the city, killing 1,800 people and displacing half of New Orleans'population. One of the hardest-hit neighborhoods was the Ninth Ward.
Because of the city's levees breaking, the lower Ninth Ward was almost totally flattened by floodwaters. However. in the Upper Ninth Ward, a neighborhood now heavily rebranded as the Bywater District.
Homes remained intact, despite all of these homeowners having been relocated elsewhere, to cities like Houston and Atlanta, where many of them lived in FEMA trailers, awaiting insurance checks and government aid. In this desperate state, and amid an uncertain future for a broken New Orleans, real estate agents swooped in and began buying entire blocks of Bywater homes, in cash, from their recently displaced owners, setting a foundation for a hipster enclave that would thrive about ten years later. According to many Mexico City locals, the story of what happened in Roma Norte is actually quite similar to what happened in the Bywater.
Roma was the epicenter of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which killed 5,000 and displaced 2 million residents, many of whom would never return. A lot of gentrification. So the prices obviously went up a lot.
And it changed an avenue, right? I suppose that from this avenue to here are more cheap prices than from the avenue to there, right? Yes, although also with that gentrification, a lot of people who lived in Rome... The doctors moved in, so prices have gone up, rents have gone up. So it's moving and it's going up.
Because I remember the doctors were a dangerous colony, right? It was said that not everyone wanted to live there, right? It's a neighborhood, as a result of being moving.
Now the doctors are like a new Rome, right? Exactly, yes, yes. If you realize, the neighborhoods are still there, but you already see a...
There's a different type of people living in La Doctores right now. It's been there for a while. tough for foreigners too because I mean it's there's a lot of um I don't know exploitation of the market I think from local Mexicans who own the apartments no regulations from the government and there's just been kind of this free-for-all but I think things are kind of settling down a little bit but yeah I mean I've been here for 10 years I'm a permanent resident pay my taxes Mexican brother yeah I don't have any plans to go back like I said a permanent residence I pay my taxes here I bought my apartment 10 years ago here and it's It's probably where I'll die.
To pay taxes, I... Hey, Texas is crazy, bro. No one likes to do that.
Okay. Perfecto. That's it? That's it. Hey guys, this is not an advertisement.
If you speak Spanish or you want to learn Spanish, I have a great suggestion for you. Good work. Spanish language channel, Canal Cinco. We've gone through the process of overdubbing all of our classic videos in Spanish using real human voice actors. So if you want to go check out classics like Oblock.
Oh, J Money, bro. Le tenian miedo ese loco, bro. Hoff Twins.
Dos chicas negras en el Benz. San Francisco streets, Trabajo todos los días y camino entre mierda. and beyond. Un coaster es un buster con una C de mi maldito barrio.
Go to Canal 5. I'm gonna put the link in the description and the pinned comment. We're gonna be posting there every single week with new overdubs of all the classics, as well as new content filmed all across Latin America. So if you want to support, head on over.
The Americans, Russians, and French transplants Josué interviewed possess a genuine love for the place, and they aren't the ones raising the rent. It's the landlords, developers, real estate tycoons, and city government that make these calls, seeing an opportunity to capitalize on hyperinflated foreign currencies. If properly regulated, taxed, and accommodated, the influx of digital nomads could be a great thing for the city. This isn't something that neighborhood natives are totally blind to. It does affect us, it affects us economically a lot, but I think that in general, it benefits the city.
It benefits you because you are forced to improve your response. And the truth is, I think that's good. You can't see trash, there are more cops walking.
In Iztapalapa you don't see a fucking pig walking in the streets. Never. And trash everywhere. Here you don't see a fucking dog.
It's not cool. I don't know, I think I'm in the middle, because it's something you can't stop. It's just the evolution of life and people.
It's a country that everyone accepts, so you can't stop them. It's good because it gives us something to talk about, because good things are happening. Mexico City's Central Boulevard is undergoing a full-fledged renaissance as wealthy Mexican and international firms stake ever-bigger claims on the landmark promenade.
La primera palabra que aprendí en español fue la cuenta. La cuenta, por favor. Ah, la cuenta for the restaurant.
Una caña, una cerveza. Ah, okay, okay, okay. So, it's creating tourism and money for the city.
for small businesses. But that doesn't stop us from doing other bad things. And in fact, my two friends are foreigners.
I mean, the truth is that I've already changed my social circle. I left it behind where my friends with whom I was there. Why?
Well, there was no progress. I didn't see progress. Besides, they didn't like what I liked.
And the most important thing is that we are all involved in this. I came here because of the war in Russia. Russians are fleeing the country. Flights from Moscow to all visa-free destinations selling out quickly. Okay.
Yeah, I'm afraid of my life. Okay. Yeah You working in DJ? Yeah, I'm DJing me and my friend Lane.
We're making our project it calls Zond And also I'm working as a waiter in a restaurant. Okay. Yeah. Lane, nice to meet you.
Where are you from? I'm from the United States, Los Angeles. And what do you like more, Mexico or the United States? Both have their cool things, but right now I like Mexico a little more. What is the reason why you like Mexico more right now?
The reason is because I met good friends like that and I always liked DJing. No hurry, no shit. I think that, at the end of the day, the positive thing is that you can meet more people. The majority of us who live in Mexico City, as it has always been a cosmopolitan city, where there have always been people from different countries, right?
And we all have friends who are from other countries, and the truth is that there are people who are very cool, right? And you learn from their culture. When you really get to Mexico City, when you stay in these places, when you meet random cool artists on the street, you realize, bro, it's a beautiful place.
A beautiful place that will... likely continue to grow at an exponential rate in the coming years as inflation in the US, as well as the rising cost of living, make things like home ownership nearly unattainable for the millions of young professionals entering the white-collar workforce. A recent study conducted by MBO business partners suggested that 70 million Americans are currently expressing interest in adapting the digital nomad lifestyle, and of those 70 million, 9% are already putting their plans into motion.
So what's been seen in Mexico City? since COVID is just the beginning. In preparation for this mass migration, a number of countries like Japan have already introduced digital nomad visas, which require remote workers to file taxes in Japan, regardless of where their paycheck is coming from.
Something similar was advocated for by Mexico City Councilwoman Frida Guillen, who proposed something called a digital nomad tax that would charge them all a flat fee of roughly 3,000 pesos or 155 US dollars per month. But this idea was shot down by her constituents and never really came to fruition, because after all, this was an inside job in the first place. Airbnb recently struck a deal with local authorities to make this place one of 20 global destinations for so-called digital nomads.
The mass buyouts of apartments in these neighborhoods to convert them into Airbnbs and market them to wealthy foreigners was directly facilitated by the city government, who pulled no punches in evicting tenants without warning. This woman has asked us not to reveal her identity. After her apartment building signed a deal with the home share company Airbnb, she was given five days to move out.
Without proper restrictions in place, the only group of people that could collectively stop gentrification right now are landlords, local landlords, which makes things even more complicated. It's a bit difficult, I think, because the owners have the decision, right? But as such, they should put a little more support on the same people, right?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if there's one thing that landlords don't do, it would be supporting the people by way of voluntarily reducing rent costs. So many locals feel that the only possible solution moving forward is to impose government-mandated regulations on both what landlords can charge and immigration itself. Well, on the one hand, I consider that it is important that countries open their borders to receive people who come from other places.
However, it seems to me that there should be limits, because if the massive entry of foreigners is allowed, they start buying properties, putting up businesses, and that displaces the national market. So it seems to me that what should happen is a balance. Thank you.
Mexico City, one of the world's most populated cities at nearly 22 million people, could run out of water in just months. It's being referred to as day zero, and experts warn that the water level is going to drop. It could happen in June. Tourism plays into this water shortage.
A tourist uses between three to four times more water than a resident. And the lack of certain guidelines that don't apply equally to everyone, right? Shortly after these interviews were conducted, like actually 24 hours later, Mexico's city government unanimously approved the largest rent freeze in their country's history since 1946, prohibiting Airbnb landlords in Roma Norte from raising the prices any higher and ensuring Mexican tenants who make less than digital nomads make a reduced-rate rent, as well as government housing loans in an effort to combat displacement.
The rent freeze will also require all landlords to register their rental contracts with the city and establish a straight-to-life relationship with the city. strict fines and penalties for any of them caught overcharging foreign tenants, or evicting Mexican renters without proper notice, which overall is great news. Back to Josue.
Hola. Hoy en Hola. ¿Hablas español? Hola. ¿Hablan español?
Sí. ¿Sí? Where are you from? Aquí.
Okay. Bueno. Muchas gracias. Salud.
Bye. Pues bueno, se resuelve un misterio más. As Josue wrapped up his report, we decided to send another bilingual friend of ours to a very different part of the country, yet a place where the influence of America and particularly American dollars, has been felt just as hard. It's the greatest border in the world. Tijuana, TJ, a historic border town with the highest number of homicides in Mexico, but otherwise a great city.
They make us stronger. Yes, they make us stronger to stand out. However, Tijuana, like Mexico City, has an Americans problem. Specifically, a horny Americans problem. Every night, thousands of Americans cross the US-Mexico border, typically on foot, coming from cities like San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Yuma, Arizona to engage in commercial sex acts with oftentimes trafficked women at a full-service flat fee of 100 US dollars.
Hola, buenos dias, guys. John here. In this video, we're gonna speak to sex workers in TJ, recently divorced dads looking for love, carefree locals dressed as Nazis for Halloween, and most importantly, American dudes paying for sex. Mexico! Everybody come to fucking Mexico!
This is the place to be! The bitches here are wild. Anything you want to do has a price, bro. Anything. Dude, it's fucking lit.
It's so free. Picked up some stuff off a random street dealer and probably got skimped, but it was lit. I've already done some, you know, blow on some titties and shit, but like, I'm not trying to get too fucked up or else I'm gonna start eating strippers'ass up out of Hong Kong, bro.
Oh my god, you can't get better than this, doggie. OC, baby. For obvious reasons, it'll be difficult for this video to ever be posted on YouTube due to the content it contains. So if you'd like to see this episode, go to our Patreon, www.patreon.com slash channel5. As many of you know, we are a completely independent, 95% crowdfunded operation.
And it's your $5 monthly subscriptions that keep the train rolling and keep us on the road. We've also introduced a Patreon-exclusive show called Channel 5 Newsroom. that gives our subscribers a behind-the-scenes look at our life in the office, in the field, and out on the town. So if you like this episode and want to see more, please consider supporting us. Have a good day.
Channel 5. Fuck the authority. Channel 5 News. Channel 55. We don't fuck with Custers. And 5 is the best number.
Next question.