9 Reasons Locals Hate Tourists in Mexico City

Nobody is expecting Cervantes, but ordering your tacos al pastor in loud, slow English like you’re talking to a toddler is likely to irritate people. Locals don’t mind helping, but they do mind the arrogance of tourists who assume the whole city should accommodate them. Not everyone speaks English in Mexico City, nor should they have to. Yelling won’t make “una cerveza, please” any clearer. Learn a few Spanish words and always show some humility.

Yes, Mexico’s capital used to be called Distrito Federal, but that changed in 2016. Today, it’s officially Ciudad de México or CDMX. Locals who grew up there still call it DF out of habit and nostalgia, but when a tourist does it, it reeks of performative localism, much like wearing a football jersey of a team you just Googled.

Roma and Condesa are beautiful neighborhoods historically filled with families, corner torta shops, and pulquerías passed down through generations. Now, they are overrun with overpriced matcha lattes, wellness hubs, and English-speaking travelers taking Zoom calls loudly in cafés. If you want to be liked in CDMX, try exploring any of the other hundreds of colonias (neighborhoods). See the city, not just the most Instagrammable blocks.

Holders of burgundy and blue passports can decide to move to Mexico City on a whim because of power dynamics. Passports, favorable currency exchange, lenient visa policies, and the like. That same ease does not exist in reverse. Most Mexicans can’t just pop over to the U.S. for six months of remote work. That is not because they don’t want to. It’s because they’re not allowed to.

Neighborhoods like Roma and Condesa now feel like an extension of Brooklyn. Foreigners come with their dollars, landlords hike the rent, and over time, the people who were born there can’t afford to stay. Entire apartment buildings are now run like hotels, leaving fewer options for people who actually reside in the city year-round. Landlords kick out tenants mid-lease, and rooms that once housed students now host foreigners for $100/night, which they view as a steal.

“I could live like a king here for a fraction of what I pay back home” is the sales pitch that many expats bought into when deciding to move to Mexico City, and many influencers still rant and rave about how marvelous CDMX is due to its cheapness. However, boasting on social media about the affordability of your $2000-a-month Condesa apartment reminds people who actually live there how expensive their city has become. Bragging about how little you spend in a place where many locals can barely make rent is a tad tone-deaf.

Nobody wants to think of their home as a curated vibe, a cinematic escape hatch from someone else’s burnout, or a stage made for brunch selfies and reels of colorful murals. Many tourists roll into Roma, then take a street art tour, pose at the Frida Kahlo Museum, sample mole at a “reimagined” cocina, and wax poetic about how authentic it all feels without ever having an authentic conversation with a local who doesn’t work in the service industry. Some residents in Mexico City harbor resentment towards tourists who come to escape, not to belong, and people who want to “discover” the culture without actually engaging with it.

You tipped double at the market, bought a handwoven bracelet for a few bucks, and walked away like you, and your savior complex just funded a scholarship. If your presence comes with arrogance, with the belief that your money, your citizenship, or your mere existence here is a blessing, then you probably won’t be welcomed with open arms. When you act like every peso you spend is a favor, it stops being hospitality and starts being condescending. You’re not revitalizing the economy one taco at a time.

As tourism flourishes and more long-term expats move in, locals are increasingly concerned about the dilution of Mexico City’s rich cultural identity. Some feel that traditions are morphing into performances, stripped of meaning and tailored for cameras, where today’s family-run taquería may become tomorrow’s candle-lit mezcal bar marketing “ancestral vibes” to travelers who don’t speak Spanish and don’t care to.