July Fourth and I have an uneasy friendship that I find strikingly similar to the feelings of many other Americans living in Mexico. And this weekend’s 250th anniversary of America’s founding only brings that complicated relationship into high relief.

In a newspaper serving a mixed U.S./Canadian readership, the question of how to spell certain words can put an editor in a real bind.

The first Spanish-language copies of “Vecinos distantes” arrived at Librerías Gandhi in Mexico City on a Tuesday morning in late January 1986. By Thursday, they were sold out. By the following week, the face of its author, Alan Riding, stared from every newspaper kiosk in the capital.

Not that he was being celebrated.

Protests by Mexicans against a rapid rise in the number of foreign residents have been going on for years, documented in this newspaper since at least 2022, and in media worldwide. Unaffordable housing caused by “gentrification” is a frequent complaint, as well as a rapid change in local culture, and rude foreigners.

A recent driver of anti-American sentiment, as seen in vituperative graffiti covering the former U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara’s Colonia Americana — “Afuera Yanqui pedofila” — appears to be violent sweeps by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and disdain for U.S. President Donald Trump, which feed into criticism of gentrification.

But some experts and foreign residents here are gently pushing back against vilification of their presence in Mexico.

Reaction to a satirical Daily Show video in February that explains both sides of the issue, yet makes light of the problem irritated one 50-year-old Mexican resident of Guadalajara: “The way she describes it is funny, but it’s offensive because she’s describing abuse … a month ago I went to Mexico City and the Condesa and Roma neighborhoods. They’re very traditional, stylish neighborhoods ... but now they’re full of foreigners living there, and rent and food prices [have] displaced many Mexicans.”

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Maxwell Anderson is known as simply Gibbons to friends and associates. Although he came to Guadalajara five years before his Cerveceria Gibbons finally opened its doors, the Gibbons name has long been integral to his identity. His father, although adopted, had the Gibbons surname by birth and knew it originated with the Gibbons family and brand of beer, produced in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, starting after the repeal of Prohibition in the mid-1930s.

Longtime lakeside resident Pete Johanson first installed a dozen solar panels on his home some 15 years ago. He continued adding panels in subsequent years, and each solar array was connected to its own inverter and eight large car-battery-sized storage units to back up his solar-generated power.