Slackers and Influencers

(I must have been seeing double by the time I posted last night (this morning)… an entire paragraph out of place, since moved)

The last few days, I was on a futile hunt for Bob Brown’s “You Gotta Live” published in 1932¹ … a “roman a clef” on the life and adventures of a wannabe 1920s “influencer” here in Mexico City,. While Brown and others in that post-revolutionary “milleu generally came to Mexico for political reasons, the 1920s and 30s “slackers” and “revolutionaries” wouldn’t have been all that out of place moving among the “digital nomads” and “influencers” of Condesa – and might have lived in the same building – were they to magically return to life.

I’d vaguely heard of Brown before… one of the “slackers” who first showed up mostly evading the US or British draft during the First World War.

The Revolution had not really ended by that point, but there hadn’t been fighting in the Capital since 1915² and the city itself was considered “safe”, the concerns in the popular English speaking media bout “rampant revolutionary violence” in Mexico standing in for today’s worries about “narcos” everywhere EXCEPT the capital. And, anyway, the then new Condesa development was where you found the “right” kind of Mexican.

While there were a few, like Arthur Craven, who — based on having been a postumous nephew of Oscar Wilde (his mother was the sister of Wilde’s wife, Constance Lloyd) — had set out on a career of making himself, if not a celebrity in the contemporary sense, at least famous among the “bohemians”. He tried his hand at a few things… as an “intellectual” boxer (fighting a match in Spain against Jack Johnson, who would later turn up in Mexico City himself, avoiding US legal authorites for the “crime” of having a white wife (who was also underage in some states) and extradition treaties. Then, feeling the ill-winds of the British draft, the marginally known “Dadist poet”, Craven, came to Mexico City where, he presumed, a revolutionary state would welcome with open arms a “revolutionary” poet. Craven DID become famous, but not perhaps in the way he intended.

Finding himself with a pregant girl-friend (the English poet, Myna Loy) and the Mexicans with better things to worry about than the well-being of English Dadist poets, as well as a general indifference among the “expats” to any but their own promotions and projects, set out on a ill-planned scheme to move to Argentina. Setting off from Salina Cruz in a leaky boat, he was never seen again. But, like Elvis Presley or John Kennedy, Jr. was said to occasionally be sighted in various locations around the globe for years after.

Of course, there are Cravens today… except now they push their “unique” or “cutting edge” productions on Instagram or Tic-Toc, or advertise their wares… for foreigners in the city (meaning Condesa and the surrounding area). Dadism is out, but there surely is a demand (within the foreign “community”) for “revolutionary diet plans” or a new musical style or… whatever. There’s nothing wrong in themselves with pushing some new concepts and ideas, but one hopes that finding the expat market rather limited, there’s some better backup plan than building a boat and sailing to Argetina. At least enough money for a return plane ticket.

A century ago, Mexico was emerging from a convulsive revolution and with political change came intellectual ferment. Certainly Mexican intellectuals — both holdovers from the old regime, and the up and coming young poets and artists and writers were active. But, for the most part, ignored as much by the “expats” (a term that didn’t enter the vocabulary until much later) as Craven was. While there was another “revolutionary” capital undergoing a cultural revolution too (Moscow), it was too cold, too far from the United States, and to learn the language, you had to decypher a whole different alphabet. And the political committment was much more flexible than in the Soviet Union.

Those expat pioneers (although the word “expat” wouldn’t come into use until the 1950s or so) were more likely to be impelled by political reasons — generally leftist — to decamp to Mexico.

It is all too easy to idealize a social upheaval which takes place in some other country than one’s own

Edmund Wilson, “To the Finland Station”

The “Great War” was obviously one factor, Mexico being a neutral country, not on good terms with any of the allied (English speaking) countries, but not openly hostile either. Bob Brown and Arthur Craven were hardly the only ones, at least one hotel becoming known to the Engish speakers as “Hotel Slacker”… “slacker” the derisive term of the time for draft evaders. But when I come to think about it — having made a career of iterenent employment as a contract writer, in between bouts of “whatever paid the bills” and bumming round for years … and being vaguely lefty … I guess the more modern use of “slacker” might apply to me as well.

So, I can’t sneer at that earlier generation of foreigners who take up residence here to stay. Not entirely, although when I read about them (my source right now being Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo’s “I Speak of the City: Mexico City at the turn of the twentieth century” [University of Chicago, 2010]) i’m bemused and amused that even with the best motives and willingness to learn and observe, we can get things not quite right.

While there were those later emigres like Victor Serge and Leon Trosky who had already been influential in Mexican political thinking, there was also M.N. Roy. An Indian nationalist, Roy had seen armed resistance to the best path to liberate his country from British colonial oppression. With the Germans, as part of their policy during the “Great War” being to limit the number of troops Britian could field in Europe by creating problems elsewhere in the Empire, naturally — “the enemy of my enemy…” — was a likely source. The British caught on, and Roy had fled to the United States, taking up with a California heiress, Eleanor Trent. As a “colored” man with a white wife, he’d been forced to flee tthe United States, setting up a rather swanky establishement in Condesa-adjacent Roma. Although a dedicated Communist, Roy and Trent lived well, with servants and, outside of a few intellectuals like himself and his friend Deigo Rivera (another high-living leftist) founded the Mexican Communist Party. Roy and Trent later split, Trent remaining for many years in Mexico simply living (and, a shame she never wrote her memoirs), while Roy and his second wife went first to the Soviet Union, then back to India, where he was one of the founders of India’s still relevant Communist Party before turning to the incomprehensible (to me, anyway) “Radical Humanism”.

While Roy was probably the best known, there were plenty of other foreigners who, were less looking to change the world (or at least Mexico), from their vantage point of the “gringo ghetto” of Condesa ³ … and are very much in the spirit of today’s “podcasters” and “influencers”. I know, hard to believe, but there was a time when the internet didn’t exist, and to get “your truth” out there, you had to publish in a magazine. Those who stayed into the 1930s or 40s (or made their lives here, like Anita Brenner (technically a Mexican, since she was born in Aguascalientes but taken to the US as a baby) turned to writing tourist guide books, or otherwise simply marketing the Mexican stereotypes… “Sunny Mexico”, full of exotic friendly “natives”, and a leisurely pace of life. And the excitement of “uncovering” little known interesting sites… you know, the same stuff put on on podcasts today. And, with, as then, excusions into the deepest, darkest corners of the (not Condesa) parts of the city. Occasionally, although then as now, there’s the warnings that Condesa-Roma are the “safe” areas, maybe Coyoacán and a few other places, but if you see a podcast on any other part of the city, it’s in the form of some derring-do safari into unknown territory.

Those 20s and 30s writers did the same, and perhaps worse, created (naively or unintentionally one hopes) stereotypes that linger to this day. Tenorio-Trillo gives several examples up through the 1940s of what he calls modern “casta” paintings… showcasing Mexican racial “types” although as he points out, that “pure Indian” may not be so pure but looked to the photographer like an “Indian” should look. Or presented those wearing more traditional clothing styles (which traditon’s style?) as “authentic” as opposed to Mexicans wearing more what’s available at the department store as “modern” Mexicans.

If, that is, the Mexico our “foreign community” seeks is “México profundo” and not– ironically perhaps — the Mexico our “white lens”⁴ brings into focus. Not to belabor the point, but Oscar Lewis (“Children of Sanchez”, etc.) who ventured out from Condesa, and explored those hinterlands of the city more than any other gringo, never went in Mexican drag.

As to the final poinr: then as now, you had the “expats” who flaunted”natifve dress” to signal some sort of idenification with the people. While yes, of couse, some people just like the clothes, or find some particular item fits their needs. but then, as now, it’s ofen seen as seriously as it is to see any adult playing dress-up.. Even Frida Kahlo was understood by her peers to be in “costume”, and her style (appropriated from the Zapotecas) was more a way of self-promotion. What seems different with the 21st century “influencers” is that whereas a century ago, the rationale was to be “one with the people”, it seems today to be to market either one’s self, or one’s product, to the other foreigners as “more Mexican”.

I don’t see that either the leftists of the post-Revolution or the “digital nomads” and “influencers” of today really mean to impose “gringolandia” on Mexico, but view the country and its cultures (not culture) through a “white lens”⁴ Even the hardest mercenary minded AirBnB gentrifying realtor doesn’t want to turn the country into USA-lite. Not consciously, anyway. Instead, what seems to happen, then, as now, that in order to make a living, or at least to justify one’s continued existence in the country, our options are limited to selling whatever skill set we bring here, which aren’t all that useful, or things that can’t be met by the local market or expanding the market for “Mexico” to other gringos — bringing in yet more gringos to “share the experience” which, while bringing in the tourist dollars, is based on successfully selling not Mexico as it is, but the Mexico of our expectations.

Even those who are only here because the rents are lower here than wherever it was they came from (and consquently drive up the rents in their favored haunts) will claim contributing something to Mexico… if only some sales taxes, or, more selfishly, to claim it broadens their experience, and makes them better citizens of the world. Otherwise, its pretty much teaching English, working for a US based business whose management can’t (or won’t) adjust to other cultural expectations and language, or selling gringos on the coutnry. in the past turning out magazine articles and travel books, today making podcasts (or writing a blog). Having done a bit of all three over the last 20+ years, it’s understandable, but if we are “teachable” we can, at least, not fall into trying to re-invent the stereorypes of the past (so many podcasts just cover the same sites, and often with exactly the same language, as travel writers were using back in the 1930s), or expect Mexico to follow “our” expectations, or focus on what “our” media tells us what Mexico is or isn’t (migrants and narcos are part of the story, but only part), try to impart what know, not be surprised when we don’t or that our assumptions are wrong, and hope we get most things right.

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1 Brown died in 1970, and his British copyright (Hammsonworth, London, 1932) runs until 2040. The isn’t any PDF or Kindle version available, it’s not in the UNAM library catalog and the neasrest one I can find is at the University of Houston. I suppose some piratacal minded scholar could check it out, copy the 300 or so pages and send it down my way, but I would never suggest such a thing.

2 Rosa King, from an earier generation of foreigners in Mexico… a Curenavaca hotelier who had come to Mexico in 1907… wrote a eye-witness account of the fighting in the city (or it’s aftermath) in her 1935 “Tempest Over Mexico”. It IS available as a PDF and/or Kindle.

3 I lived not in Condesa, but in Condesa-adjecent Roma Sur for a three years. Not swanky by any means (carved out on the rooftop from a maid’s quarter) and only a cleaning woman that the landlandy dumped on me.

4 A term coined by the Mexican-american artist, Joaquin Ramón Herrera, to suggest the biases of one’s cuture imposed on our view of another culture.