More than 50 years after “The Ugly American” novel was published, news items about protests in Mexico City paint a similar picture about American expatriates.
“Speak Spanish or Get Out,” some of the signs say, but language is just a small symbol of a whole gaggle of complaints against Americans, primarily the “digital nomads” who work from home and are perceived to contribute to rising rents and housing shortages in the city. In spite of the fact that these migrants—totally legal—-spend a lot of U.S. dollars down there, protesters are trashing restaurants and businesses that cater to them, crashing whole streetside glass windows.
Stateside, it irritates us when migrants don’t speak English, not only when they arrive, but after they have been here for some time. But those from south of the border are among the least likely migrants to lack English skills, and it’s quite common to be the other way round.
First off, we are spoiled in the U.S. when it comes to languages. Most foreigners in America for any length of time already know English. And not just know it, but speak fluently enough to work through most circumstances in daily life. Pretty much around the world, the education system requires English. Ours doesn’t make other languages a big deal; it’s often an option that we don’t take.
Looking at practicality, we are a huge country and some people will never need to know anything else, but English-speaking countries have historically had an attitude. Rightly or wrongly, they feel superior, with a domination incentive. Just my opinion, but prove me wrong.
A long time ago I visited a friend who had moved to the Netherlands for his job. I was to be there for a week and then we were going to make our way through Northern Europe. He worked during the day and left me to wander around at will. Probably needless to say, I didn’t speak Dutch, but I also wasn’t at all familiar with any other language that might have helped me out if English failed.
English didn’t fail, and I had no trouble at all getting to a Rotterdam department store to buy a raincoat (I discovered pretty early in the trip I was going to need one). Checking out, the clerk behind the counter said, “You’re from Texas, right?” I was dumbfounded, and later on somewhat embarrassed. I had always thought I didn’t have a Texas accent, tried to avoid it actually, but it betrayed me!
So prior to moving to Mexico by myself in 2009, it was obvious to me that I’d need a big improvement in my Spanish. Spoken language doesn’t come easy to me; I can read and write basic Spanish but am an awkward speaker in any language.
So I planned an itinerary of several towns that had Spanish schools for gringos, starting with Zacatecas, where we’d visited before. In each town I planned to spend about a month in school, and then move on to the next one. That plan lasted for three towns, until I fell in love with Queretaro, a city of two million about three hours southeast of Mexico City. I got to “Q” as expatriates call it, enrolled in a school, and then just stayed.
In Queretaro I did encounter a little slice of English-only, but unlike what’s happening in Mexico City, never detected any ill feeling. There was “Sunny’s All English Cafe,” painted in big letters on the side of a downtown building. People from Spanish school told me about it, and I met the owner, a very cute lady from Ontario, Canada, married to a Queretaro man. She ran a land-office business on the third floor, accessible only by stairs. Most of us expats were older, but we made it up there anyway, as her menu was worth it.
Sunny’s customer base was about 80 percent expat because the food was distinctly North American in a way I didn’t find anywhere else in Mexico. In addition to Tim Horton Canadian coffee, really good and hard to find even in Texas, Sunny’s breakfasts included things like ham and eggs and cheese omelets. For lunch and dinner, she served great chicken-fried steak as well as southern fried chicken worthy of any American diner. And there was a room that had Spanish classes and, on some nights, English classes.
The English speaker ex-pat community in Q were mostly retirees, lots of teachers, not overwhelming in numbers. Most chose to live in the town center, where the buildings dated from the 17th century and you could walk to just about anything needed to sustain life. For everything else, buses and taxis were cheap. A few people I knew owned a car; for them, parking on narrow cobbled streets was horrible, hidden auto parks were everywhere and had to be factored into the monthly budget. But nobody was living large in Queretaro.
As opposed to Mexico City. Comparable to New York, glamorous restaurants and people, incredible museums and galleries and parks. Visiting is expensive; even as an ex-pat spending American dollars, you would have to be more than well-heeled to live there.
And now, your favorite coffee shop, right on the street, has broken windows.
Marilyn Stokes was a public school teacher in Fort Worth for 15 years and subsequently worked at KERA public television for four years. She retired after 15 years at Ford Motor Company, Southwest Region.