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San Miguel de Allende is in Mexico. Many residents of this town don’t realize that. They see Texas license plates, buy a local newspaper in English, see Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts and Subway and soon WalMart and assume they are in a dirty part of the United States that has no minimum wages.
When Stirling Dickenson founded San Miguel in 1937 he had no idea that people who moved there would form Gangs and change San Miguel over the years. As Gangs bought up almost all the houses in Centro and all the land with a view (LWV), this pushed Mexicans further and further away from Centro and the VIEW. But moving further didn’t give Mexicans a sense of safety because they would find members of the Cheap Gang looking for Cheaper and Cheaper Accommodation, next door. So they were forced to create Gringo Free Zones. Signs alert you when you approach one.
Tourists in SMA know nothing of this and this post is to alert them to the dangers in these Gringo Free Zones.
If you are a tourist and see this sign on the outskirts, DO NOT enter a Gringo Free Zone.
Gringo Free Zones have no lattes, no art, no wines, no maids, no dried flowers, no pretty painted houses, no one who speaks English and no cable TV. It is a scary part of Mexico and not at all like the United States. It is almost like a foreign country – so unSan Miguel. You will get no service there. So watch for the signs and KNOW.
Mexicans Find Ways to Use Gringas
Little is written or said about what Mexicans think of Gangs and Gringras. The closest analogy is the spread of milfoil or zebra mussels in North America. Once introduced they are difficult to eliminate. But the Tuesday Market has found a use for Gringas. They are a bit tough and utterly tasteless but with some salsa rojo o verde they aren’t bad.
People have little choice about where they will be born. They don’t have much choice about getting old either. Getting fat is their choice, and maybe you can tell something about them from that? FOG? I can excuse the OG part. I have lived in several countries, and the ‘auslander’ always has a load to carry. Some gringos are fine, others, especially those who want to carry their imagined privileges with them when they come, are more problematic. Rich people everywhere are a blessing and a bane upon those with less or much less. The problem with many of the rich is that they think having money makes them special. Mexican, NorteAmericano, Rusos, o Chinos, es normal. Malo, pero normal. SMdA has a larger concentration, so one has to witness more boorishness than one ordinarily would have to.
Recently I was reading the Civil List and apparently there is this horrible problem here in SMA with horse meat. Are you suggesting that there is now something called Gringo meat at the Tuesday market? This concerns me on many levels and I wonder if others are concerned so that we might form a group and stop this sort of thing.
Elsewhere on this site I remarked on the high level of FOG in San Miguel and how unpleasant I found it. This stirred a rather predictable, aggressive response from an individual who didn’t see it my way.
SM is not a ‘dirty part of the US’, rather a nice Mexican city which has been the subject of neo-colonialisation.
FOG – fat, old gringos – with unearned income, patronizing attitudes (at best) and arrogant self-absorbtion.
A textbook example of what it takes to make Americans unpopular around the world.
Many are those who expect some kind of medal for venturing into the Gringo Free Zone. Going there is akin to doing the ropes at Outward Bound or spending a Harvard junior year abroad living in a favela in Brazil. Affluent neighborhoods don’t make the cut; only raw, grueling poverty qualifies as a Gringo Free Zone.
I hope you were sitting near someone from the househeld item wearing gangs so you had something to wipe your nose on. The Where’s Waldo Gang always has a dishrag available.
Reading…laughing…and literally snorting coffee out my nose. Thanks for defining Gringo Free Zones, oh one dripping with luscious sarcasm.