The Gentrification phenomenon is observed when cities expand to the outskirts due to the construction of new housing spaces occupied by younger families.
Gentrification in Mérida, Yucatán, is causing significant socioeconomic shifts. As wealthy expats and developers buy and renovate properties, housing prices and rents skyrocket, displacing long-time, lower-income residents. This influx often leads to a rise in living costs and alters the cultural and social fabric of neighborhoods, sometimes erasing local traditions and identities.
While gentrification brings economic growth and revitalization, it also creates tensions and inequalities, making it difficult for original inhabitants to afford to live in their own communities. The challenge lies in balancing development with the preservation of Mérida’s unique heritage and ensuring equitable benefits for all residents.
Loss of value
The old neighborhoods lose their cultural, commercial, and family support value, being left out of the housing competition due to the creation of new subdivisions.
Mérida has not been an exception to this phenomenon and since the 1970s, new businesses have appeared in traditional neighborhoods, which have displaced the big “Casonas” of the senior citizens who remained living there until their deaths.
The high cost of rebuilding these properties, with strict regulations to respect the traditional architecture, forced the heirs to move to more economical and modern spaces around the city in the new real estate developments.
A large part of them were financed by new banking strategies through mortgages and construction companies supported by public housing policies.
In this way, the old areas lost their commercial and use value, as they stopped being the economic and cultural support of families.
Other municipalities in Yucatan are experiencing gentrification too
The same has happened in municipalities such as Izamal, Valladolid, and Progreso, to mention a few.
Merida expanded rapidly from the 1980s onwards, becoming the most important metropolis in the southeast of the country.
The “White City” offers the most important commercial services in the region, generating new ways of life and consumption and encouraging the immigration of people from other states (and other countries), who seek, above all, security, business opportunities, and a wide range of commercial, educational, financial, health, real estate, and recreational services.
In this context, the Historic Center of Merida represents a great attraction for foreigners, who see in their dollars the opportunity to buy land of sufficient size to build houses with swimming pools, boutique hotels, restaurants, and even exclusive retirement homes for foreign seniors.
This consumption is particularly attractive for retirees from North America who are looking for a pleasant climate, security, and services close to their residences.
With sufficient resources to live in the city, they acquire properties and remodel them while preserving the facades and appropriate the historical heritage that the area represents and the traditional architecture.
As a result of this gentrification process, foreigners have gradually appropriated part of Merida’s architectural culture; a cultural heritage that locals are not taking care of.
At the same time, the new foreign residents have contributed to enriching the local culture. They have incorporated new cultural elements into the local market, such as gastronomy, fashion, furniture, decoration, and socializing styles, different from the type of coexistence of the Yucatecans.
Today, locals and tourists can find bars, cafes, restaurants, boutique hotels, shops, hairdressers, nail salons, fitness centers, antique bazaars, art galleries, etc.
The local culture is enriched by incorporating new ways of life that permeate all social strata since these businesses coexist with the spaces promoted by the Yucatecan entrepreneurs, as well as municipal and state governments.
This means that the city is democratized through new cultural consumption even though the best products are mainly reached by the middle and upper classes.
Dr. Gina Villagómez Valdés holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Iberoamericana. She has been a Senior Research Professor C at the Dr. Hideyo Noguchi Regional Research Center of the Autonomous University of Yucatán since 1982.
Expert Dr. Gina Villagómez declared that she sees a high impact on Mérida society with the arrival of cultures brought by international migrants, mainly Canadians, Americans, Chinese, Colombians, Cubans, Venezuelans, among other nationalities, but also migrants who come from cities in central and northern Mexico.
This migrant population, both foreign and national, has integrated into the local culture with certain resistance from the people of Mérida, but ultimately this migration generates a new Mérida.
Even some cultural spaces are shared and it cannot be denied that other cultural spaces are jealously preserved by each group.
“This means that there are cultural impacts that, although it is sad for us to lose as Yucatecans, we cannot deny that consumption strategies have also diversified at all social levels, which the new generations have internalized as part of their culture,” Villagomez said.
“That is to say, our children and grandchildren do not miss what older people long for.”
The negative phenomenon of gentrification
Dr. Villagómez Valdés highlighted that a negative phenomenon of gentrification is that, as more population is concentrated in these renovated neighborhoods, services become scarce, as has happened in the Santiago neighborhood with the water supply.
The older people of this neighborhood blame foreigners for the lack of water due to the construction of more pools in the area.
Gentrification in Mérida causes expensive housing and other problems
Another aspect that migrants are blamed for is the increase in housing costs, which strangles it or puts businesses in the way of the local population.
She sees and considers that the state and municipal authorities of Mérida have adequately addressed the phenomenon of gentrification and migration, promoting high-impact artistic and cultural activities with programs such as Noche Blanca and more.
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