A nightclub in Mexico City has announced it will charge American s a $300 cover charge to compensate for the years of insults its country has suffered from President Donald Trump.
The Japan nightclub announced the fee in a post on Instagram that read: “It’s not that ‘we charge gringos more’ it’s that we offer discounts to people that need it.
“The cover charge is 5,000 pesos. Citizens of the USA don’t get a discount.”
The post went on to explain that tourists from any other country who show up will get a 93 percent discount, Mexicans and Latin Americans will get 95 percent off, and students and teachers will receive a 97 percent concession, meaning they will pay just 150 pesos to enter, equivalent to $8.69.
Federico Crespo, the venue’s owner, told The Guardian: “This is a response to a year of insults directed at us – as a country – by the United States. It’s very much a response to the many attacks against Mexico from Trump.”
Crespo said it was also a response to the “gentrification and touristification” of the city, complaining that Americans and other visitors were taking over the fashionable Roma and Condesa neighborhoods to the detriment of the locals.
“It’s a way to give that money to the people most affected by this issue,” he said. “Rising rents, the soaring cost of living and the need to commute longer distances to get to work. By giving the workers the money collected from cover charges, we help them out a little bit.”
The problem inspired a protest last year that saw demonstrators dress in black, vandalize local businesses and daub graffiti on walls that read: “Get out of Mexico!”
Mexico City experienced a particularly high influx of Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic when people chose to capitalize on “work from home” directives to move south and enjoy cheaper rents, so much so that English was reportedly heard spoken in the streets almost as frequently as Spanish.
Equivalent backlashes have been seen in popular European tourist destinations like Barcelona and Lisbon, where visiting “digital nomads” and influencers have been accused of snatching up property, driving price rises and killing off the traditional character of given areas.
Mexico has been a target for Trump since entering politics, not least when he first announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination at Trump Tower in June 2015. He infamously addressed immigration by saying: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
He subsequently used the phrase “bad hombres” as a slur in a debate against Hillary Clinton and claimed he would force the U.S.’s southern neighbor to pay for his border wall.
More recently, Trump has rebuked Mexico for not doing enough to tackle the drug cartels, hit it with steep tariffs, and infuriated President Claudia Sheinbaum by issuing an executive order dictating that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed “the Gulf of America.”
Sheinbaum retaliated by suggesting her counterpart did not know his own history, joking that North America should be renamed “America Mexicana,” and going on to sue Google for adopting Trump’s name change on its maps.
The two countries will co-host the FIFA World Cup this summer, along with Canada.
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