Mexico City Is Learning A Lesson About Assimilation
The article discusses changes in Mexico City’s food scene, as observed by New York Times reporter Priya Krishna, who noted that the city’s culinary culture is increasingly influenced-and altered-by american residents and tastes. Locals complain about the rise of less spicy condiments, New York-style pizzerias, wine bars, and other elements reflecting american culture. While krishna attributes this transformation to gentrification, the article argues that the more accurate term is assimilation-specifically, that Americans moving into Mexico City are not assimilating to local culture but reshaping it in their own image.
The piece further suggests that this phenomenon threatens the preservation of customary culture, not only in Mexico City but also in the United States, where mass migration challenges national identity by weakening shared language, customs, and values. The author cites Alexander Hamilton’s early warning about the importance of a unified national sentiment for the stability of a republic.Ultimately, the article asserts that when outsiders disregard local traditions, they do not blend in but instead impose changes, and that communities have the right to protect their cultural identity from being fundamentally transformed.
“What Happened to Mexico City’s Food Scene?” The New York Times’ Priya Krishna asked on Monday.
Krishna visited Mexico City where she spent “four days reporting and eating … about eight tacos a day.” Locals complained about less spicy condiments, different ethnic cuisines, and expensive coffee shops.
The culprits?
“Americans,” Krishna emphatically declares.
And she’s not wrong.
As Krishna reported, the “number of temporary residents and renewals of temporary-resident cards from the United States nearly doubled, to about 24,000.”
The results are undeniable: “whole swaths of Mexico City’s food scene … have been remade in the American image.” Locals complain about New York style pizzerias, wine bars, natural wines, the list goes on.
“At some point it doesn’t matter if you are in New York or Mexico City,” Rocio Landeta, who runs a food-tour company in Mexico City, told Krishna.
Other residents called it a “form of colonization,” because “foreigners come in with these different types of foods and then Mexicans have a tendency to adopt them as well.”
Krishna goes on to suggest this change is “gentrification.”
But the word she should have used — and doesn’t — is assimilation.
Americans are not assimilating to Mexico City’s culture. Instead, they are fundamentally changing it to something it is not.
But the answer isn’t to downplay what’s happening in Mexico City by labeling it “gentrification.” The truth is far more direct: when outsiders move in without regard for local tradition and culture, they don’t assimilate — they reshape it. But cultures — like Mexicans in Mexico City — have every right to defend their way of life, customs, and even cuisine from being made into something unrecognizable.
Of course that same principle applies in America. A nation is a nation so long as its people have a shared language, culture, and way of life. Millions of aliens — both illegal and legal — don’t strengthen that national identity, they weaken it by making America less American. Assimilation to the degree necessary to preserve the American way of life is not occurring — don’t believe me? Look to Dearborn Heights, Los Angeles, or Springfield, Ohio.
Alexander Hamilton saw this threat more than two centuries ago, warning in 1802, “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
Mass migration disrupts the “uniformity of principles” and severs the deep-rooted ties of tradition and shared identity that bind a republic together.
It’s happening in America — and it’s happening in Mexico City (even if the New York Times wants to downplay it as “gentrification”).
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