Manifest Destiny

This is a couple months old, and don't recall if it's been posted. No stopping progress.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/15/...

Gringos turn tide crossing border
Boomer retirees invading Mexico
Mike Davis
Sunday, October 15, 2006


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The visitor crossing from Tijuana to San Diego these days is immediately slapped in the face by a huge billboard screaming, "Stop the Border Invasion!" Sponsored by Grassfire.com, the same truculent slogan reportedly insults the public at other border crossings in Arizona and Texas.

The Minutemen, once caricatured in the press as gun-toting clowns, are now haughty celebrities of grassroots conservatism, dominating AM hate radio as well as the even more hysterical ether of the right-wing blogosphere. In the heartland as well as in border states, Republican candidates vie desperately for their endorsement. With the electorate alienated by the dual catastrophes of Baghdad and New Orleans, the Brown Peril has suddenly become the Republican deus ex machina for retaining control of Congress in next month's elections.

A faltering GOP hegemony, too long sustained by the scraps of 9/11 and the imaginary weaponry of Saddam Hussein, now has a new urgency in its appeal to the suburbs. Not since Kofi Annan conspired to send his black helicopters to terrorize Wyoming has such a clear-and-present danger threatened the republic as the sinister armies of would-be busboys and gardeners gathered at the Rio Grande.

To listen to some of these demagogues, one would assume that the twin towers had been blown up by followers of the Virgin of Guadalupe or that Spanish had recently been decreed the official language of Connecticut. Having failed to cleanse the world of evil by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Republicans, supported by some Democrats, now propose that we invade ourselves: sending the Marines and Green Berets, along with the National Guard, into the hostile deserts of California and New Mexico where national sovereignty is supposedly under siege.

As in the past, nativism today is bigotry as surreal caricature, reality stood on its head. The ultimate irony, however, is that there really is something that might be called a "border invasion," but the Minutemen's billboards are on the wrong side of the freeway.

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 Gov. Pete Wilson's immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over the past decade, the 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. Although initially interpreted as representing a huge increase 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 to finance Mexican homes and retirements.

Although some of them are naturalized U.S. citizens returning to towns and villages of their birth after lifetimes of toil on the other side, 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."

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, increasing the "invasion" charges. As in Galway, Corsica, or, for that matter, Montaña, 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 the state of Quintana Roo on the Gulf of Mexico, but more prefer such well-established havens as San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico and the coastal resort town of Puerto Vallarta. Here the norteamericanos make themselves at home in more ways than one.

An English-language newspaper in Puerto Vallarta, for instance, recently applauded the imminent arrival of a 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 presence is largest (and brings the most significant geopolitical consequences) in Baja California. Indeed, Baja real estate Web sites ooze almost as much hyperbole as those devoted to stalking the phantom menace of illegal immigrants -- 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 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 clustered at both ends of the peninsula. Along the northwest coast from Tijuana to Ensenada, an advertisement for a real estate conference at UCLA boasts, "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 20-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 time-shares in condominiums and beach homes.

Although 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 Cabo the next for some sea-kayaking or celebrity golf.

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 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. 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. 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.

Editor's note: A correction has been made to the above column.


Mike Davis is the author, most recently, of "Planet of Slums" and, with Justin Chacon Akers, "No One is Illegal." A version of this story appeared on www.tomdispatch.com. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

.....remember it, was posted!

marooonic Leftist Rambling

Lee, I especially like...

...the part of Davis' Dibble that talks about 'Gringos',

"sending up property values to the detriment of locals whose children are consequently driven into slums or forced to emigrate north"

Now, I'm supposed to believe that foreign investors in Mexico are to be blamed for driving people into life in the slums? Get a real grip on life, Mr. Davis, don't you think that Mexico's own economic policies (and politics) over the years have had more that a little bit to do with keeping many of their own citizens down and into the poverty!

Sure, lets blame Mexico's homeland conditions on all the big, fat, foreigners from the North! Mr Davis makes it sound like a Mall in PV is a bad thing! I'll bet if you ask the 'people on the street', many will welcome a small slice of Norte Americano life in their town - in the right place, under the right conditions. I see an awful lot of 'Hispanic' types in our malls up here in the states - could be they'd like somewhere to shop beside the 'flea markets', too!

I also enjoy the way Davis tosses around the 'Eco' card when talking about development in Baja. Again, it's the 'fat cats' from the north that are buying property and destroying the local environment. From what I've been reading, it's not an easy thing to get all one's ducks in a row to be able to 'invade' Mexico and build your 'dream home'...The regulations are many, and one must be up-to-date on all the fee's or you may see that 'casa' become someone else's 'dream home'! It just ain't that easy to become a baby boomer land baron in Mexico. If Mexico didn't want foreign investments, it would change it's laws accordingly!

We are all neighbors on one border, and it's true that the 'lines' are becoming blurred, so-to-speak, with many moving north, and more moving south each year.

There will always be the differences between the 'haves' and the 'have-littles', and the future will probably not change much in that respect. How we treat each other is what really matters, in my opinion. Calling one group the 'bad guys' and lobbing stink bombs at each other doesn't help the situation.

As there are more of us on this continent, the areas with smaller populations will become larger populations, and economic development, however we might deplore it, marches onward.

Our favorite isolated beach of a few years ago will, in time, become many other's favorite, as well...they'll build homes, then stores, then marinas, then pave the streets, then malls, and such - how can you stop 'progress', or maybe the question should be, 'why' should you wish to stop it?

I don't profess to have any real 'answers', and it's hard to stop 'progress' if you wish to call it that. A smile and a kind word sometimes helps us get through these discussions - let's leave the 'crap tossing' to those that are unlucky enough to have to clean out the barn....

Why do I do this????????

Lee-----

Calm down Bernie

Sorry Bernie. I've already lost interest in this thread. It's become silly. And perhaps I"ll answer your questions sometime when I'm in the mood. It does seem like you like to discuss things with me in public. Curious.



Barry: I never said the insults were personal. Being called Lee Helm might be considered a personal insult but I didn't even mention it. If you don't see insults in what I've quoted, then that's the way it is. Too much time has been wasted on this topic already.

Quote:

Originally posted by Mexray ...the part of Davis' Dibble that talks about 'Gringos', "sending up property values to the detriment of locals whose children are consequently driven into slums or forced to emigrate north" Now, I'm supposed to believe that foreign investors in Mexico are to be blamed for driving people into life in the slums? Get a real grip on life, Mr. Davis, don't you think that Mexico's own economic policies (and politics) over the years have had more that a little bit to do with keeping many of their own citizens down and into the poverty! Sure, lets blame Mexico's homeland conditions on all the big, fat, foreigners from the North! Mr Davis makes it sound like a Mall in PV is a bad thing! I'll bet if you ask the 'people on the street', many will welcome a small slice of Norte Americano life in their town - in the right place, under the right conditions. I see an awful lot of 'Hispanic' types in our malls up here in the states - could be they'd like somewhere to shop beside the 'flea markets', too! I also enjoy the way Davis tosses around the 'Eco' card when talking about development in Baja. Again, it's the 'fat cats' from the north that are buying property and destroying the local environment. From what I've been reading, it's not an easy thing to get all one's ducks in a row to be able to 'invade' Mexico and build your 'dream home'...The regulations are many, and one must be up-to-date on all the fee's or you may see that 'casa' become someone else's 'dream home'! It just ain't that easy to become a baby boomer land baron in Mexico. If Mexico didn't want foreign investments, it would change it's laws accordingly! We are all neighbors on one border, and it's true that the 'lines' are becoming blurred, so-to-speak, with many moving north, and more moving south each year. There will always be the differences between the 'haves' and the 'have-littles', and the future will probably not change much in that respect. How we treat each other is what really matters, in my opinion. Calling one group the 'bad guys' and lobbing stink bombs at each other doesn't help the situation. As there are more of us on this continent, the areas with smaller populations will become larger populations, and economic development, however we might deplore it, marches onward. Our favorite isolated beach of a few years ago will, in time, become many other's favorite, as well...they'll build homes, then stores, then marinas, then pave the streets, then malls, and such - how can you stop 'progress', or maybe the question should be, 'why' should you wish to stop it? I don't profess to have any real 'answers', and it's hard to stop 'progress' if you wish to call it that. A smile and a kind word sometimes helps us get through these discussions - let's leave the 'crap tossing' to those that are unlucky enough to have to clean out the barn....

I think you have more answers than me. Refreshing sensibility to this post. Thanks.

Quote:

Originally posted by Lee Anyone wanting to come down to Todos to discuss any of this over a drink (my dime), come on down. I'm easy to find. It's a small town

Lee,

Follow me into the Off Topic forum. Their insults do not belong in this string. They deserve to be ignored here.

Personal apology to Mr.BillM

I do go off on a rant, don't I Bill? And even get testy and serious. For whatever offense I threw your way, accept my apology.

I'd also ask that you not judge me on my past political beliefs. I was young and disallusioned back then -- maybe I've come full circle now. I didn't have to go to Vietnam. It was all voluntary and I wanted to go. I believed it was the honorable thing to do -- to serve this country.

Just for the record here, please know that the name calling and mud slinging doesn't effect me personally. I take no personal insult at anything you write.

That aside, maybe I need to reread the article I posted. Maybe it was a mistake to post it here. I really did just scan the article and didn't feel connected to anything that was written. I'll read more carefully next time so I don't insult anyone here with nonsense.

Let's start over. We're family here -- that's the way I see it -- regardless of political persuasion and leanings.

I'm apolitical. I've given up on politics. My views range from conservative to radical. I'm open to what works. I don't need to be boxed into all or nothing viewpoints.

I'm also a believer in the bigger man stepping forward. I might not be the bigger man, sometimes, but I'm always willing to step forward.

I'm still having fun. I keep letting go too.

OK

Warm and Fuzzy Feelings

Quote:

Originally posted by MrBillM Being "Liked" is pretty much overrated. Being feared is often preferable and more useful. Actually, I think being liked and feared might be the preferable quality. Respect falls in there somewhere.

Give me a liberal dose of those holiday spirits, but be conservative with the snacks.