Archive - April 17, 2023

  by Bonnie Lee Black (Gabon 1996-98) • There’s a joke (una broma) that Mexicans in other parts of Mexico tell among themselves, I learned this week, that goes something like this: If you want to visit San Miguel de Allende, you’ll need to get a U.S. visa. In other words, Mexicans themselves don’t think of SMA as being in Mexico, it’s so overrun with us Norteamericano gringos. This broma, like most jokes, contains a large grain of truth. In the eight years I’ve lived here, I’ve often heard SMA being referred to as “Mexico Lite” and “Gringolandia.” In fact, in 2010 the director Dennis Lanson made a video titled “Gringolandia” about this very fact. According to the most recent estimates, we expats represent only about 10 percent of the residents of San Miguel, but our presence seems to me to be outsized. We gringos are everywhere, all the time – in all . . .