At least Costa Rica doesn’t have the same problem with retirees as Mexico
Like Mexico Costa Rica is a haven for American and Canadian retirees. Mexico has more American retirees and expats due to its more size. However, Costa Rica has more American residents (estimated unofficially at 50,000) proportionately than any other country outside of the United States. We do have had our share of “Ugly American” expats , but fortunately nothing has happened here like is going on in Mexico at present. In general we are getting a more high quality type of retiree.
No, this blog isn’t about the drug wars but a bunch of gringos misbehaving on Mexican soil. An invasion of misguided foreigners is creating problems for Mexican citizens and authorities who, without warning, are confronting an invasion that resembles a plague of locusts. Consider recent developments in Merida, a peaceful and sophisticated city of a million people in the Yucatan peninsula, far removed from the drama of the border region. Hundreds of thousands of Spring Breakers who descend on Cancun each year, flashing their breasts Mardi Gras style for beads, or licking whipped cream off each others’ bodies on stages set up on beaches and broadcast on MTV. But adolescent misbehavior is one thing, and adult criminal behavior is another.
Mexicans here are stunned at the disclosure that:
• Accused scam artists from Texas have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars through Brazos Abiertos, Inc., an AIDS charity that apparently has never been authorized by Mexican officials to do business in Mexico, according to records provided by the country’s tax authority,
* An “unofficial” library has operated for years, soliciting donations. The so-called Merida English Library has boasted that it is a member of the prestigious American Library Association, when its membership lapsed in 2007. It has presented itself as bona fide “Mexican nonprofit organization” — but it has never met the requirements established by Mexico’s tax authority to solicit donations from the public or issue tax-deductible receipts.
• Gringo Zapatistas running amok have unnerved residents. Of equal concern has been the disclosure that a husband-and-wife team of aging Gringo Zapatistas have been aiding and abetting the Zapatistas uprising and their supporters
• More ominously, U.S. authorities has identified two Americans — Mario E. Lopez and Jose Auais Dogre — as the masterminds of an international ring trafficking in stolen luxury boats and yachts.
* To compound these scams are two alarming trends: Americans fleeing “Obamanomics” and the beginnings of “doomsday” expats who believe that the world will end in 2012 — or that there’s money to be made from those who believe the world will end then. A growing number of Americans in Mexico are disaffected with the U.S. and life under Barack Obama. Some, now labeled “Refugiados de Obamanomics,” are intent on escaping to a country where there is the sense of greater personal freedoms. “I can smoke in restaurants and no femi-Nazi take umbrage if I call someone a babe,” an Old Gringo, who wanted to remain anonymous, said.
* As if the local authorities don’t have enough to deal with on their hands, more doomsday-believing Americans are flocking to the Yucatan as 2012 approaches. Recently, two groups of these expats have arrived — one has bought up extensive tracts of land in the Yucatan near the Maya town of Oxkutzcab, where members have gone about building “bunker-style” strongholds. These “settlers” claim to be building a new “Noah’s Ark,” but Mexican authorities fear this could be the scene of a Jim Jones-style mass suicide.
One expat, originally from Seattle and a Mexican resident for a quarter century, has been so taken aback by the influx of these unsavory and unbalanced Americans, she wrote a novel about them, 2012: Deadly Awakening. “Thousands of spiritual tourists have descended upon this once-peaceful city, creating chaos.”
Gracias a dios (Thank god!) we are not being overrun by these types of ugly American retirees in Costa Rica.
* Excerpts from New American Media





