MEXICO CITY — A fierce protest in Mexico City railing against gentrification and mass tourism was fueled by government failures and active promotion to attract “digital nomads,” according to experts, who said tension had been mounting for years.

The criticism comes after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum alleged that the July 4 protest derived from xenophobia, reviving a debate over an influx of Americans in the city.

Many Mexicans say they’ve been priced out of their neighborhoods — in part because of a move made by Sheinbaum in 2022, when she was the Mexico City mayor and signed an agreement with Airbnb and UNESCO to boost tourism and attract digital nomads (remote workers) despite concern over the potential impact of short-term rentals.

Last week, that came to a head. Hundreds of demonstrators, in a largely peaceful manner, marched through tourism centers of the city with signs reading (in Spanish) “Gringo: Stop stealing our home” and “Housing regulations now!”

Near the end of the march, a group of protesters turned violent, breaking the windows of storefronts and looting several businesses. One protester slammed a butter knife against the window of a restaurant where people were hiding, and another person painted “kill a gringo” on a nearby wall.

“The xenophobic displays seen at that protest have to be condemned,” Sheinbaum said on Monday. “No one should be able to say ‘any nationality get out of our country’ even over a legitimate problem like gentrification. We’ve always been open, fraternal.”

The frustrations were built upon years of mass tourism and rising rent prices in large swaths of the city. The influx of foreigners began around 2020, when Americans flooded into the Mexico City to work remotely, dodge coronavirus restrictions and take advantage of cheaper living costs.

In the years since, choice neighborhoods like Roma and Condesa, lush central areas dotted with cafes and markets, have grown increasingly populated by foreign tourists and digital nomads. Temporary housing units are increasingly being rented through companies like Airbnb that cater to tourists.

Rents and living prices have soared, and English has been increasingly common on the streets of those areas. Some groups have described the phenomenon as a sort of “neo-colonialism.”

The Mexico City Anti-Gentrification Front, one of the organizations behind the protest, stated it was “completely against” any acts of physical violence and denied that the protests were xenophobic. Instead, the organization cited failures by the local government to address the root of the problems.

“Gentrification isn’t just foreigners’ fault; it’s the fault of the government and these companies that prioritize the money foreigners bring,” the organization stated. Meanwhile “young people and the working class can’t afford to live here.”

The organization, in its list of demands, called for greater rent controls, mandates that locals have a voice in larger development projects in their area, stricter laws making it harder for landlords to throw out residents, and prioritizing Mexican renters over foreigners.

Mexico’s protest comes on the back of a wave of similar protests across Europe railing against mass tourism. Tensions in Mexico have also been compounded by wider inequalities and the Trump administration targeting Latino communities in the U.S. as it ramps up deportations.

Protesters’ cries against government failures were echoed by experts, who said that surging gentrification is a product of both a shortage of affordable housing in the city and longtime government failures to regulate the housing market.

Antonio Azuela, a lawyer and sociologist, and others said that they do see the protest as a xenophobic backlash to digital nomads arriving in the city, but anger boiled over because of lax housing laws.

“What has made this explode is lack of regulation in the market,” Azuela said.

Mexico City’s government over the course of decades has made few efforts to control development and create affordable housing.

Legislators estimated there are about 2.7 million houses and apartments in the city, but about 800,000 more are needed. New affordable housing developments have arrived at the fringes of the city, said Luis Salinas, a National Autonomous University of Mexico researcher who has studied gentrification in Mexico City for years.

Controls, meanwhile, have been marked by lack of enforcement, and companies such as Airbnb have capitalized, he said.

Today, more than 26,000 properties in Mexico City are listed on Airbnb, according to Inside Airbnb, an advocacy organization that tracks the company’s impact on residential communities through data. For comparison, there are more than 36,000 Airbnb properties in New York City and 19,000 in Barcelona, where protests have also broken out.

“The government has treated housing like it’s merchandise,” Salinas said. The government’s actions “are completely insufficient,” he added. “The federal government needs to be intervening far more nowadays.”

Airbnb said it helped contribute more than a billion dollars in “economic impact” to Mexico City last year and that spending by guests has supported 46,000 jobs in the city. “What’s needed is regulation based not on prohibitions, but on respect for rights and transparency of obligations,” it stated.

Last year, Mexico City’s government approved the most ambitious rent control law since the 1940s to moderate prices and set caps on short-term rentals to 180 nights a year, but Salinas said that enforcement of short-term rental legislation is on pause until after the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

And even then, the country’s government will have to take far greater actions to get the situation under control, Azuela said.

“This isn’t going to end by just reining in Airbnb,” he said. “They’re going to have to do a whole lot more.”

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The cities of Sherwood and Beaverton are bolstering laws in response to actions taken by pro-animal activists outside the homes of Skanska executives.

The seven-member Sherwood City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed two laws – one beefing up the city’s noise ordinance, and the other cracking down on “targeted” residential picketing. And in two weeks Beaverton City Council will consider two similar ordinances, according to assistant city attorney Grace Wong.

Activists with the group No New Animal Lab have picketed at Skanska job sites and offices to protest construction of the $124 million University of Washington animal research lab. But those efforts have spread into neighborhoods too.

Officials say residents have registered their displeasure with the regular protests taking place outside the homes of Sherwood resident Tim Baugus and Beaverton resident David Schmidt; both work out of Skanska’s office in downtown Portland. That office is not involved with the University of Washington project, according to Skanska spokeswoman Dianne Danowski-Smith.

Upset Sherwood residents came to the Jan. 5 city council meeting to discuss the protests that had been taking place irregularly outside Baugus’ house since April 2015. The city attorney returned Feb. 2 with an update to an ordinance prohibiting “unreasonably loud or raucous” behavior, and an ordinance prohibiting protests “outside or about” a residence. The new rules contained emergency clauses; therefore they were effective immediately upon passage and did not require a second public hearing.

Beaverton City Council will hear proposed similar changes at its Feb. 16 meeting. Like Sherwood’s noise ordinance, Beaverton’s will be based on a model nuisance rule provided by the League of Oregon Cities. It specifies the “time, manner and place” that protests may occur, Wong said. The residential picketing ordinance will differ slightly from Sherwood’s in that it will allow picketing outside a 250-foot buffer.

“If your intent is to disrupt, you won’t be able to do that,” Wong said. “(The law) is focused not on what they say, but how they say it.”

Danowski-Smith called the residential protests “frightening and unprecedented.”

“The ordinances are trying to respect their First Amendment rights,” she said.

In a news release, the group took issue with the new laws, and notably, the emergency provision.

“It is a privileged view of the world to believe that a public protest outside of wealthy home to hold corporate executives accountable for their desire to profit off the suffering of animals constitutes a state of emergency,” the statement reads.

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Representatives of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters marched outside the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland Wednesday in protest of work being performed there by . According to union representative Ben Basom, the group is focusing on R&H because the company “doesn’t meet area labor standards on all their projects. Anywhere they have work being performed, we are out with some sort of public information campaign.”

John Ward, president of R&H Construction, responded to the union’s grievances, saying, “Obviously, they have something that they are very passionate about and they have decided that our company doesn’t do something they believe in. We are an open shop contractor that pay people great wages and full benefits, some just under what the unions pay and some more. We’ve got a full workforce that has been with us for an average of 12 years, some over 20. They choose to show their beliefs in a way that I don’t necessarily agree with, and they have every right to do so.”

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Demonstrators plan to line the Steel Bridge Thursday morning in order to raise awareness about its “structurally deficient” status and recent cuts to the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s discretionary budget. Meanwhile, a group from the Oregon chapter of the is preparing to put a plaque on the 99-year-old bridge to recognize it as an “important piece of infrastructure.”

Both actions aim to increase awareness of what activists perceive as a problem in Oregon and the nation as a whole: Bridges, roads and highway are in danger of falling into disrepair because a traditional funding source for maintenance – the gas tax – is failing to keep pace with demand.

A solution, however, isn’t evident. A different funding mechanism would take a long time to establish, and an infrastructure funding package proposed as part of President Barack Obama’s jobs bill was rejected in Congress recently.

The Steel Bridge is only one of several downtown bridges rated either “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete” by infrastructure advocacy group Transportation for America. A group of union representatives and employment advocates plan to demonstrate at the bridge under the banner of “” – an organization that fights unemployment and foreclosures. The protest was planned in tandem with an “Occupy Portland” protest regarding foreclosures scheduled for the same day.

“While this is a day of action around the country about jobs and infrastructure, it’s also day of action for the Occupy movement, so it made sense to coordinate with them,” Laborers Local 483 spokeswoman Megan Hise said.

“The idea is to use the bridge as a symbol of a disconnect: We have work that needs doing and we have unemployed people,” We Are Oregon communications director Angus Maguire said.

The Laborers Local 483 union will be represented at the event. The union has 300 members in PBOT, which recently announced upcoming budget cuts of $16 million.

“This will inevitably lead to a contraction in the department and significant layoffs for our members,” Hise said. “This is the first public event we’re doing to raise community awareness.”

We Are Oregon is not targeting a specific piece of legislation or even a specific agency. Hise said the group acknowledges that PBOT, for example, simply lacks gas tax revenue.

“We’re just getting started with the ‘solutions’ part of the campaign,” Hise said. “The first step is recognizing that there’s a problem.”

Transportation agencies, however, have long known that a problem exists.

“The problem at hand is that transportation (maintenance) is funded by an unsustainable and unstable source of money,” PBOT spokesman Dan Anderson said. “We’ve known this for years, and we’re forecasting that things will only get worse.”

Replacement of the “structurally deficient” Sellwood Bridge has been a high priority for years. Prep work is set to begin next month, but Multnomah County lacks money to tackle any similar efforts anytime soon, spokesman Mike Pullen said.

“The Sellwood Bridge (replacement) is what we call a ‘mega-project,’ ” he said. “We won’t really have other important bridge projects for the next few years.”

One bright spot is the increase in grant money being landed by agencies such as PBOT and the Oregon Department of Transportation. The eastside streetcar loop project was paid for primarily by a federal grant for more than $100 million, and the Moody Avenue construction project was paid for with federal stimulus money.

However, grants are not feasible ways to pay for system maintenance, which is what concerns Hise and the laborers’ union. Those grants tend to fund more progressive projects involving light-rail or bicycle-related improvements, or individual major freeway projects, Anderson said.

Maintenance projects are dependent on gas tax revenues, and Anderson said that despite support from diverse industry groups, the political will to raise the gas tax “just isn’t there.”

That may be old news to some industry professionals, but Maguire and his group believe that it’s now time to start increasing awareness.

“Specific changes have to happen; new funding sources have to happen,” Maguire said.

We Are Oregon’s demonstration will be timed to coincide with other protests in other states, he said.

The goal, once awareness is raised, is to generate an “emergency measure,” Hise said.

“If these cuts happen, the maintenance backlog will increase,” she said. “The quality of roads will be eroded. We need to start now to plan for the long term.”

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Have you heard them? Carpenters with drums and whistles are picketing outside the Multnomah County Central Library on Southwest 10th Avenue this morning. And… why?

The picketers are members of the . The group is there to protest general contractor , according to union representative Joshua Montero. R&H is the contractor on a renovation project currently happening at the library.

“They hire non-area standard companies,” Montero said. “We’re letting the community know we’re here.”

While the library project is a public job, others R&H works on may not be, Montero said. Though he had no current examples, he said the group was aiming to raise awareness about the importance of using sub-contractors that provide area-standard wages and benefits.

For one example, Montero referenced R&H’s prior use of subcontractor , whose owner Steve Nagy pled guilty earlier this year to a host of charges, including rigging bids and forcing workers to return parts of their paychecks to him. Montero said that the union keeps an eye out for other companies likes Nagy’s.

R&H Construction President John Ward said he wasn’t comfortable commenting on what the union was saying this morning, because he hasn’t been down to the site to find out what they are protesting. In response to the charge about S&S Drywall, he had this to say:

“I think everyone has well-documented the story (of Steve Nagy),” Ward said. “They aren’t in business anymore. I don’t know why (the union) would be using them as an example of anything they’re doing.”

Update, 10:35 a.m.: Ward has made it down to the site, and has a new response to what the protesters are doing. Here’s his statement:

We solicit and hire subcontractors based who is the most qualified for the project.

Whether they are union or non union is not a factor in the decision. We pre-qualify all of our subcontractors to make sure they are in good standing with the construction community.

I visited the Library project to assess the situation and their sign state that R&H does not pay area standard wages. It doesn’t appear to have anything to do with our subcontractor base. The Library is a Public project that requires everyone to pay BOLI prevailing wage.

The definition of an “Area Standard Wage” is the BOLI prevailing wage rate as published in the “Prevailing Wage Rates for Public Works Contracts in Oregon”. The source for determining this rate structure is the union.

R&H is a merit shop contractor with a labor force of approximately 85 craft people. We hire our own employees and subcontractors based on who is the most qualified for the job.

R&H pay is extremely fair and competitive within our industry. Some wage rates are higher than the union and some are slightly lower. R&H provides full benefits for its employees and families.

Our workforce has been with us and average of 12 years with many over 20 years R&H is a very family oriented company that is socially responsible and very active in giving back to the communities.

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A fight is brewing this summer against a proposed pipeline that would carry oil from Alberta, Canada tar sands down to the Gulf Coast in Texas for processing.

President Obama will decide this fall if he wants to approve the 1,700 mile-long Keystone XL pipeline.

, Bill McKibben and L.D. Gussin make a plea for the 2.7 million people working in the clean economy to join the protest. They call out to people working in wind, solar and biofuel; in smart power grids; in green building; in electric vehicles.

McKibben and Gussin cite the oil industry’s past slights against the clean economy, hoping to motivate people working in the industries to fight back this time. They ask you to remember when fossil energy interests stonewalled the “Cash for Caulkers” bill, fought renewables, fought offshore wind and blocked the 2009 energy bill, leading to layoffs and reduced investments in the clean economy.

The American Petroleum Institute, the only national trade association representing the oil and natural gas industries, says the Keystone XL pipeline could alone support close to and would boost the GDP by close to $210 billion.

But when you talk about destruction of this magnitude, McKibben and Gussin envision a bleak future despite the immediate boost in construction jobs:

Once the big investments are made and the junk has its market, well, fait accompli. The price at the pump is kept low, for another half-decade, anyway, and then forget about investments in electric cars, or in infrastructure to power transportation with renewable energy.

And so they have issued their most urgent calls to arms to the power utilities and high tech industries, hoping that the vast amounts of money coming from the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel lobbies won’t win out.

A bunch of prominent scientists have also come out in protest of the pipeline – they sent on Wednesday:

When other huge oil fields or coal mines were opened in the past, we knew much less about the damage that the carbon they contained would do to the Earth’s climate system and to its oceans. Now that we do know, it’s imperative that we move quickly to alternate forms of energy—and that we leave the tar sands in the ground.

In what McKibben and Gussin call the broadest act of civil disobedience in the history of climate action, will be held at the White House Aug. 20 to  Sept. 3.

You can follow the #tarsands hashtag on Twitter to see more debate from both sides of the issue.

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