Tourist? Gentrifier? What's the right way to travel?

On Tuesday, Maarten and I sat at an outdoor bistro along Avenida Amsterdam in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood, sipping wine and people watching. It was about 75F and lightly humid, the kind of air that tells you the world is alive. I’ve never been in such a green urban environment. Like a tropical Paris, colonial era buildings and carless boulevards were engulfed in every shade and texture of vegetation and dotted with massive yellow and orange hibiscus flowers. Across the way I pointed at a luxury apartment building overlooking this lush intersection that based on local apartment prices probably cost about 30% of my bay area rent. I told Maarten: “I think I could live there”.

On Thursday I opened TikTok to see a video I recognized as having been shot from the inside of the apartment I’d idolized two days earlier. It depicted a riotous mob heaving rocks at the building, shattering those floor-to-ceiling windows I’d imagined myself spending my days gazing out of. I stepped outside the hostel to an array of graffiti – “FUCK GRINGOS” had been plastered in thin, sharpie-like scrawl all over the neighborhood.

Maybe this shouldn’t be my dream. Maybe I shouldn’t be here at all

Artur, one of my best friends used to play a lot of this video game called Planet Zoo. He would spend hours and hours crafting and perfecting terrariums for his tapirs, enclosures for his elephants, and pens for his penguins. It was pretty sweet to watch his zoos come alive and the virtual animals become happier with his work. I wouldn’t be surprised if Artur put over 500 hours into zoo-building.

But Artur once told me – “I don’t know if I like zoos”. You see, Artur loves animals. 3 years into our friendship he made the decision to never consume another animal product because he didn’t want to be responsible for the harm of an animal. And so, (with an understanding of the nuance of how each zoo handles animal sourcing), animals being put into captivity for human enjoyment is something he takes issue with.

That said, I get the sense that a part of Artur still likes zoos. He certainly grew up loving them and attributes a lot of his current empathy for animals to his childhood spending a lot of time at the local zoo: “if zoos didn’t exist who knows if I’d be vegan”.

I’ve always wondered why Artur’s value system led to him becoming vegan and not me. At first, I thought it was simply that I value meat eating experiences more than him, making it harder for me to give up. But while there’s some truth to that – I think it’s very real that Artur genuinely holds more empathy for animals than I do. I think it’s really beautiful. Makes me wonder if I’d be a better person if I spent more time at the zoo.

I think about Artur when I travel. As Anthony Bourdain once said: “The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody.” When I go to another country – that’s what it’s all about: connecting with people who aren’t like me and learning from them.

It’s not always easy. Language and cultural barriers are real and thus develops a tourism industry. Entire economies become shaped around making it easy for foreigners to experience culture in bite-size tours and photo-ops. Sometimes when you enter a new country it can feel like you’re in an inescapable bubble where everything you see has been built for you, the tourist. English menus and guided tours. Restaurants serving hamburgers. Cashiers that accept US Dollars. And for a lot of tourists, this bubble is enough and so the bubble grows.

The problem with neighborhoods like Condesa is that the economy defined by wealthy Gringo visitors becomes so large that it replaces the local economy – and this new Condesa can no longer be afforded by anyone in Mexico beyond the uber-wealthy.

In the interest of getting beyond the Gringo bubble, Maarten and I took to dating apps. We figured that anyone who wants to connect with us to get our American money is probably part of the tourist industry, but maybe by offering something else (dashing good looks and charisma) we could find more genuine conversations.

One person we hung out with for drinks was a 28-year-old woman named Nathalie who’d bounced around a multitude of sub-satisfactory jobs for years. She was currently 1 month into a retail operations job and sounded miserable. She’d started her career by graduating from college with a degree in graphic design and worked for a couple years in that field but never made more than the legal minimum wage: $300 US per month.

That’s when Maarten and I realized – the reason we’d been having so much fun in Condesa was that we were living like kings. Nathalie’s entire salary with a college educated job was just 25% of the rent for that luxury apartment. Some of the meals we ate cost more than she would make in 2 full days of work. We weren’t enjoying Mexican culture – we were enjoying being rich. Same as if we lived in NYC and made 7 figures annually. And this is the attitude that sparked the riots.

Another friend we made was doing her masters in gentrification at the local university (yea I’m not sure why she wanted to hang with us). She told us to be careful with the language with which we speak of our trip to Mexico: “Don’t go home and say how cheap everything is”.

When you go visit a country and experience a culture, what are you enjoying? What are you getting from the people who live there? Are you getting good cheap food? Or are you learning to appreciate and respect their way of life? Are you taking pictures from a distance of things that seem crazy to you or are you engaging with people – trying to speak their language? Are you gawking or are you respecting?

What does it actually benefit the people to give you? Of course, in the short term, people will give you anything they can in exchange for your money, but that ultimately might not serve the community well. Long term, the best thing you can get out of visiting a country unlike yours, both for you and for everyone else, is the same thing that elementary school Artur got out of his trip to see the giraffes – a genuine love for those on the other side of the fence.

So, what did I get most out of Mexico, what’s the story I tell? I loved the way each and every street food vendor cares for his diners and makes sure their stomachs are taken care of. I loved the way everyday people find ways to bring color into their homes, their dress, their daily lives. I loved watching people doing whatever it takes to bring food to their families. I loved seeing my favorite parts of myself in those around me. I loved being able to see myself living there – NOT because it was cheap – but because I think Mexican people are wonderful.

I still think being a tourist makes me a better person. But it can be done wrong. Just like zoos.

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