Los Angeles’ sister city saw its residents protest on Friday as hundreds, many of them young people, took to the streets to protest the gentrification caused by so-called "digital nomads” and other factors in neighborhoods such as Roma and La Condesa in Mexico City.
According to Alfonso Sotelo of El Heraldo, the march began with dozens of people meeting at the Foro Lindbergh in Parque México to work collectively to make protest signs. Dozens became hundreds and they marched through the city towards the Estela de Luz bearing signs demanding gringos, who make up the majority of the foreign gentry, go home in various, colorful ways.
A few dozen people directed their anger at a couple of restaurants and businesses owned by foreign companies or that specifically catered to foreigners and gentrifiers.
VIDEO: 🇲🇽 Shops, restaurants vandalized in Mexico City anti-gentrification protestHundreds turned out in the Colonia Roma neighborhood to denounce rising housing prices and the displacement of long-time Mexican residents from areas increasingly populated by foreigners
— AFP News Agency (@en.afp.com) 2025-07-05T11:42:50.680Z
"We're fed up with foreigners coming in with their euros and dollars and trying to buy our country, because, at the end of the day, we allow this kind of thing to happen. There will be no one left to stop them,” said a speaker during the protest.
When the planet locked down for Covid-19 five years ago, a handful of neighborhoods in CDMX became desirable locations for foreigners who wanted to work remotely in an exotic location while paying cheap rent and raking in more money than the locals. Though quarantine restrictions ended eventually, the “nomads” continued to arrive…and in droves.
Eventually, many neighborhoods became completely overtaken by entitled Americans and Europeans, which leads us to yesterday’s protest.
Animal Político broke down the many factors causing gentrification in Mexico City, two years ago; factors that would eventually lead to the protests on July 4th:
The anger from Friday’s protest wasn’t solely directed at the pinches gringos. There was also plenty of ire directed at the government and politicians for not doing more to protect locals from being priced out of their homes and livelihoods, plus anger at landlords and property management companies that evict people to house foreign tenants with fatter bank accounts.
A video shared by “vlocke_negro” on Instagram shows a protestor raising a sign that reads in Spanish: “The system has abandoned us without pensions, without our own homes, with unaffordable rents and with job insecurity. There is no future if it’s not collective."
The protests are similar to those in Spain where locals have decried and protested for years against the "Airbnb-ification" of cities such as Barcelona and Madrid. Their efforts appear to have worked as the Spanish government recently ordered Airbnb to remove 66,000 units available in the country due to numerous infractions of local regulations. Meanwhile, Barcelona’s regional government will remove all 10,000 listed, short-term rental units by 2028.
