In Search of a Black Utopia - Snap Classic

Adizah Eghan noticed an interesting trend on social media: everyone seemed to be living it up in Tulum, Mexico. Some were flocking there to have a good time, while others were seeking something much deeper: they wanted to escape racism and seek refuge with like-minded people. Adizah traveled to Mexico to experience the vibes of Tulum for herself — and also dig into why Black people are seeking refuge in a small fishing town south of Cancun. This piece comes to us from our friends at VICE News Reports. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vice-news-reports/id1525769448 VICE has so many amazing stories, make sure you check out their podcast! This episode contains explicit language, sensitive listeners please be advised. Special thanks to Nubia Younge, Patricia Talley, and all those in Tulum! This episode was produced by Adizah Eghan and edited by Kate Osborn and James T. Green with help from Annie Aviles and Stephanie Kariuki. The original score is by Kyle Murdock. Snap Classic - Season 17 – Episode 5 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

  What do you get for the person who says, "Oh, I don't need anything"? Nothing? Okay, put a bow on that. Because Shop brings a whole bunch of stores together at shop.com. Cookware, cakes, toys, high-tech. Type in what you're looking for and search across stores at once. Find brands you love. Check out fast and track every order in one spot. Because somewhere in there is the thing that makes them go "That!" That's what it is, "That!" And to celebrate the all-new shop.com, Shop is giving away $1 million in Shop Cash. That's Shop's rewards currency.

• 0:48Glynn Washington?

  1,000 shoppers are each going to win $1,000 in Shop Cash, just in time for the holidays. Get something for the people on your list. And yes, you're allowed to put your own name on there. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com. Today's episode is brought to you by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Americans United has spent the last 80 years defending your right to live as yourself

• 1:32Glynn Washington?

  and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Through film screenings, speaking engagements, and valuable resources like the Know Your Rights and Public School Guides, AU empowers people nationwide to recommit to the separation of church and state, protecting individual freedoms and strengthening our democracy for all. Freedom without favor and equality without exception. Learn more at au.org/tenz.

• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so recently, maybe it's the war on drugs that morphed into a war on black and brown people, or a war on terror that morphed into a war on black and brown people, perhaps locking kids in cages that morphed into... Look, I don't know which straw broke the camel's back, but it felt like, all of a sudden, friends of mine, dear friends from different parts of my life, started looking in earnest to relocate, away from the United States, to take their kids and live somewhere else. Somewhere they didn't have to carry so heavy a burden of racism, of oppression, of fear, of economic insecurity.

• 2:57Glynn Washington?

  And instead of talking a big game about how they were gonna move someday, they just left. Started scattering to foreign shores, sending back cheery Facebook messages and actual postcards. And for a long while, I thought it was just my circle. Because my friends are all strange, wacky people. But it turns out that this thing... This thing is far bigger than my tiny band of misfits. So today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present "In Search of a Black Utopia", a search for a better life, perhaps much closer than you imagined.

• 3:41Glynn Washington?

  Please, make sure your seatbacks and tray tables are in their full, upright positions, and all carry-on luggage is stowed under the seat and firm you. Why? Because you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:19Glynn Washington?

  Now then. Former snapper Adisa Egan. Once a snapper, always a snapper. She's doing big things now. And Adisa, she's been hearing these rumblings about people taking off, leaving the U.S. of they. But instead of simply waving farewell, Adisa, she decided to investigate this moment by taking a trip of her own.

• 4:43Glynn Washington?

  And I want to give a bit of a language warning. This story has black folk talking about their actual experience. The N-word and other real people language does come up. Adisa, take it away.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  So, last summer, over Labor Day weekend, I was minding my business at home when I got a text from my sister. She was in Tulum, Mexico for the weekend, and she sent me a video that her friend recorded.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  It was of Meg the Stallion. They ran into her at a restaurant in Tulum. WAP had just come out. And in the video, Megan is wearing a short blue wig and lime green bikini. She's mouthing the words to her song and twerking.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  After watching that video, I felt like I started to see Tulum everywhere.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  We are international, honey. We are in Mexico. We are on vacation. We are in Tulum.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  I would see vacations in Tulum. Me and my boyfriend are going to Mexico to celebrate our fourth year being together. Birthday trips to Tulum. Sad season, period, it's over. Hi, birthday, girl. Look at the glow. Y'all see? Look at the bag.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  So I'm really having so much fun in Tulum. I'm having a great birthday, guys.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  And Tulum on the Black travel accounts I follow. Good morning, guys. It is time to explore Tulum. I saw people going out at night.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  It's not too good. We drank, we danced off y'all.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  People relaxing at the beach or sitting by the pool.

• 6:30Speaker 03

  And all that good stuff, but we're sitting out here by the pool.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Whatever they were doing, they were having a good time. So my heart is just warmed from being in Tulum. And I started to wonder,

• 6:44Speaker 01

  what did all these people know that maybe I didn't? Why Tulum?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  And so instead of sitting in my house and asking all these questions.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  Why does Tulum feel like it's so hot right now? Why does it feel like that's where I want to go?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I decided to go to Tulum. Low-key, not even low-key, kind of high-key. It's kind of like a Black renaissance right now.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  It is time. It is past time. Justice must be served.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Black Lives Matter movement was a lot. People needed a different environment for their health, their mental health.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  We are saying now that Black Lives Matter. So if you can't own that as your own truth, your voice needs to be silenced. You need to sit down somewhere.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  This is Vice News Reports.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I'm Adisa Ekin.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  What are you doing? I'm cleaning myself.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  I'm cleaning my energies.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  It's so weird to be carrying radio equipment on the beach.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Around the time that I got that video of Meg Thee Stallion in the summer of 2020, I was feeling confined and a little depressed. I was in need of some relief. I had a friend who told me that what I needed was to take a break and escape. She also mentioned Tulum. She said there were lots of Black people moving there. They were working remotely and getting together on the weekends. I pictured some sort of a Black utopia.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  And I was intrigued. So I went to Google.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  And I typed in, "black people, Tulum."

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Right. We are live and we're gonna give people time. I found a website, several Facebook groups and Facebook Lives featuring black people who had moved to Tulum, Playa del Carmen, and Mexico in general. They were people who left, in part because of the political and social climate in the US. And it wasn't the first time that this had happened. I just want people to understand that this is a continuum, right? Mexico has always been a place for black people to seek refuge. Going back as far as the 19th century, I found stories of enslaved Africans seeking refuge in Mexico. I knew of the artists who spent formative years in the country:

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Lorraine Hansberry, Audre Lorde, and Debbie Allen. Audre Lorde wrote about how seeing other brown faces in such great numbers was an affirmation.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  The whole idea of escaping to Tulum was so much bigger than having a drink on the beach, because I knew that Tulum offered well-being. It's a place for self-reflection, good vibes, and healing. All things that I desperately needed. And there was nothing I wanted more than to find a black utopia. And I was still scared of COVID, but by this point, I knew how to protect myself and others.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Cool, I'm in there. I'm here. Okay.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  So we're in Mexico. I have my rental car. I'm just gonna put the recorder on the dashboard and look up some directions.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Tulum is located in the Yucatan Peninsula, on the Caribbean Sea. Yes, the AC's going on because I'm hot. It's a two-hour drive from the airport in Cancun, which, since the 1970s, has been the main hub of tourism in this part of Mexico.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  But it wasn't until the 2010s that people began to flock to Tulum, which had been a sleepy fishing town with dirt roads, ruins, and bad internet.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  So it's Wednesday, and I am in Tulum, Mexico.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Before I came down, I joined a Facebook group for Black people in Tulum, so I could figure out where people were meeting up. And I found out that there was an event that Wednesday. That's that. So off to Welcome Wednesday.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  My name's Adiza. Adiza? Adiza, yeah. So I was just coming here to get some tacos. I was actually going to... The Black in Tulum is having a Welcome Wednesday, and so I wanted to go meet some people there. And then I saw this group of beautiful Black people, and I was like, let me just ask them. I made a quick stop before Welcome Wednesday at a vegan taqueria. While I was eating, I could hear bits and pieces of a conversation from a group of Black people sitting next to me. They were talking about traveling. So I walked over, and I told them that I was working on a story documenting Black people who were coming to Mexico.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  One of the guys told me to pull up a chair. So why don't we just go around really quickly? And you can just say like your name, where you're from, and then maybe one thing that brought you to Tulum.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Most of them were from the States, DC, Maryland, Virginia area. And they were all friends of friends who met down here. I appreciated their vibe. They were all warm and inviting, yet they didn't hold back.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  My name is Gisele. I didn't want to be in America.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  I never wanted to be in America. I don't want to live my life there. I don't want to have my family there. And I was sent here, quite frankly. I didn't necessarily make a choice. I just knew that I wanted to leave and move.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Their reasons for being in Tulum were all different, but they were aligned in a way. They all expressed a pressing desire to get out of the United States ASAP.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  My name is Ferris. I'm coming to Tulum because America is a cult and I want to be anywhere else. And it was also my birthday. Preach, brother.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Happy belated birthday. Tell me more about America being a cult.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  We're lied to about nutrition. We only have two choices between politics. We care about sports. We treat that like a religion. We watch award shows and we just pick a new celebrity to worship every year. Everything is about money.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So how does that tie back into why you're specifically in Tulum?

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Because to me, it's like, why not Tulum? It's more so just anywhere but America.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Then, one of the guys asked me why I came to Tulum. Immediately, I thought about how I wanted to experience this black utopia. The police don't bug us, black people, which is awesome.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  It's places like this, because in Colombia, there's a lot of black people going there, too. So it's not just Tulum. I think who are smart enough are kind of wise enough to America and like starting to kind of distance themselves from, or relocate, you know what I mean? But it's not just Tulum. It's South America, Africa for sure, yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Someone at the table mentions repatriation. Members of the African diaspora have been seeking ways to repatriate or just leave the United States for generations. But a lot of people right now are calling it a black sit.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  So why I think black people from the States are coming to Mexico is because they do what they do, so.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  That's my answer for others.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  You can live, I feel like, you could live lavish in Mexico off of, you know what I'm saying, struggling with back home, right?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  I pushed them on a question that comes up for me when I travel and has also been coming up ever since I've been thinking about Tulum as this place of refuge. How could they reconcile their need to leave America with the fact that they were enjoying Mexico because they had an American passport and American dollars?

• 15:39Speaker 04

  But it's like, they treat bad where I'm from too. And then in my home country, incidentally, they kill each other.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Ferris told me that it was give and take.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  So, I don't wanna say I don't care, but I can't not enjoy my life because of it.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  If this was the first conversation that I was having fresh off the plane into Tulum, I knew that these questions were destined to crop back up while I was here. But first, I wanted to go to Welcome Wednesday. I wanted to have some drinks and meet some more people. A few of the people at the table had heard of Welcome Wednesday too, and they decided to come check it out with me. We walked the two or so blocks to a hookah lounge up the street. There was a bunch of black Americans there. A short woman with a shaved head was standing at a table outside greeting people at the door. As soon as we walk up, she starts up a conversation with this guy named Santiago from DC.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Exactly. So, how you enjoying Tulum? I love it here. I might relocate for a couple of months. What do you do? I do e-commerce and I trade cryptocurrency. Oh, you on some whole nother level. All type of stuff. I love it. That's big right now. Crypto? Yeah. For sure, yeah. It's huge. A lot of black people don't know about it.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  So, eventually, the group of people from the taqueria leave, and I find a place to sit at a table outside. And the crowd here is different.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  What brought you all to Tulum?

• 17:21Speaker 04

  Well, I've been here nine months.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. That's when I meet Kendrick. He's a photographer from Atlanta. And he describes his vibe as black luxury, black entertainment. He told me he lost his job in the States because of the pandemic. And he was at home watching a lot of news when he got the idea to look for countries that were accepting American tourists.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  What brought me down here, just being from Atlanta, born and raised there, especially after the whole COVID thing started. Tulum popped up on Airbnb. Never heard of Tulum, didn't know Tulum existed, didn't know what a Tulum was. So I booked to stay here for a whole month. Then the George Floyd thing happened in the States. So I had no desire to leave this tranquility of Mexico to go back voluntarily to madness. They were setting my whole city on fire. Kids were getting tased in cars. Atlanta was on the news every day. If it wasn't the rise in COVID cases, it was the burning of Wendy's down.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  After a couple of weeks, Kendrick said he signed a one-year lease on an apartment.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Wow. How did you feel when you signed the lease?

• 18:33Speaker 04

  It was, honestly, one of the scariest feelings in the world because I feel like where I differ from a lot of people is when I came to Mexico, it made, that was my first time out of the United States. First passport, stay on, first time leaving, period.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Thank you. Cheers, guys. Okay. Thank you. Cheers. Black girl, man. Cheers. I'm sorry, guys.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  In a few short hours, I had walked up to strangers at a taqueria, met a group of people who were down to show up to Welcome Wednesday with me and who also invited me to a party at their hotel that weekend. I sipped fresh passion fruit cocktails and listened to stories of people meeting folks on the street and doing business with them a few weeks later.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  It felt like I didn't know which discovery I was going to make next while I was here, but it was all exciting. And I was at the beach. What?

• 19:34Speaker 04

  I know you lying, they got black spots out here?

• 19:39Speaker 04

  It's your first time here? No, it's my second time, but we didn't do none of this last time. Okay, Black in Tulum? Yes. Wait a minute, so that mean you live here?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  That night, I went back to my hotel room. And I felt really good. It was nice to be out on a warm night, to find my people, and to socialize with Black people who were just happy. People who had found some sort of mental respite in what has been a year of so much grief. I was surprised by how many people I met who were extending their trips or straight up moving to Tulum. People kept saying that Tulum was a vibe, but I just thought, perhaps this is what a Black utopia feels like.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  To be honest, I wish I had discovered this sooner.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Oh, there's two dogs. Hi, doggy.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  So I'm standing in the ocean right now. I have waves coming up and crashing into my ankles. It's about 80 degrees. I'm looking out into the water, and it's like a teal, green, deep blue, a mix of all of those colors. It's gorgeous, and it feels like I'm in a different world.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  But at the same time,

• 21:40Speaker 01

  it seemed like there was a lot more to the vibe here than what was on the surface. And it didn't take too long before my Black utopia started to wash away.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Let's make sure we're not in the colonial mindset. People talk about wanting to come down and, "Oh, the cost of living is so cheap and I live in luxury." Are you giving back in any way? Or are you simply taking advantage of the resources and labor?

• 22:41Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so what is attracting Black people to Tulum in the first place? Right after the break, stay tuned.

• 22:58Glynn Washington?

  Okay, for me, like for a lot of folk, the best part of my morning is the perfect sip of the perfect cup of coffee. Not when it's scalding hot, not when it's cold as ice, that perfect temperature. And you only get a couple of those exquisite sips, right? That magical temperature zone? Until now. Because the Ember 3 mug lets you set the precise temperature you want your coffee, your tea. The Ember 3 mug keeps the temperature right there sip after sip, making your perfect moment your perfect morning. Why did I just find out about this? The Ember 3 mug, your coffee exactly as you left it.

• 23:39Glynn Washington?

  Discover the best deals happening now at ember.com/snap. Go to ember.com right now, and when you're asked where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. That's ember.com/snap.

• 23:58Glynn Washington?

  Did you ever look at your credit card bill and think, "How did that happen? What am I gonna do? I need a plan." Well, I did. Let me tell you something. Having a plan is one thing, but using it, watching that number, that "I owe the credit people" number go to zero, that is something different. And Monarch helped me get there. The debt paydown simulator and visualizer uses your real balances and payments to project your debt-free date. Try different payments. See what gets you there sooner. Watch that date move. And when you hit zero, that's when you get the budget for the celebration. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SNAP at monarch.com

• 24:43Glynn Washington?

  to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SNAP.

• 25:10Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, in search of a black utopia. When we last we left, Adisa Egan was high off the vibes of Tulum, Mexico. She's trying to uncover why so many black folk have been heading there. It seems for some, it's a good time. And for others, it's a much deeper purpose. But has she found her black utopia?

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, the United States in 1865. So we had the Underground Railroad to the South. Black folks in the South crossed over the Rio Grande and were able to be free in Mexico. And then, when the oil companies and railroads and all kinds of industries were being built in Mexico in the 19th century, early 20th century, black folks came down to work.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I met Patricia Tally right around the time of my trip to Mexico.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Even back in Marcus Garvey days, he had a big contingency here in Mexico. So yes, historically, folks have come down and found a comfort level.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  And now you're seeing this big movement today

• 26:41Speaker 03

  to find a sense of freedom, a greater sense of freedom.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Patricia has been living in Mexico for 24 years. She's in Guerrero, where a lot of Afro-Mexicans live. And like me, she also started to notice that there were a lot of Black Americans moving to Mexico and coming down to Tulum during the pandemic. And she had a request.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  I'm asking these African-American communities, wherever they are, to be supportive of the Afro-Mexican movement.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Patricia writes about the diaspora in Mexico for a publication called Imagine Mexico. She focuses on how African descendants are the third root of the country's indigenous and European heritage.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  A one-drop rule? If you applied that to Mexico, I bet everybody'd be Black, or just about. All right?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  If I could bring it back to Tulum, there is something here that many Black Americans are connecting to.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Tulum's history dates back to the Maya and their descendants, who've lived on this land for about 800 years. Back then, Tulum was used as a major trading port. People say the Mayan ruins are one of the few energy vortexes in the world, meaning that there's so much energy in and around the ruins that you might say it's on a higher vibrational plane. That's why people sometimes say they've been called to Tulum.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Where we at, Nip? Man, we in Tulum, at the Mayan ruins. Just climbed off the mountain, I mean, a pyramid, got to the top.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  A couple of years ago, Nipsey Hussle came down here and filmed his video for Victory Lap at the Mayan ruins.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  And in a way, Nipsey fits well into the story of Tulum's tourism ascent.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  The story of Tulum reflects the story of many tourism spots before it. The exclusivity, the word of mouth, the boom, the overexposure. I heard from people who lived here that back in the early 2010s, Tulum was a vacation spot populated by mostly Mexicans, some Europeans, and Argentinians. Lots of models, photographers, and restaurateurs. Then, the boho chic Americans started coming.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  The Coachella crowd.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  From that point forward, Tulum was on the map.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  In 2015, New York Magazine's "The Cut" called Tulum "the Williamsburg of Mexico." To me, that means there were a lot of white people there. And even if there weren't a lot of us, I can almost guarantee that there were some black people in the mix. There always are.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  When I first got to Tulum, I was one of maybe five black people. So I didn't know any black people that actually lived in Tulum at the time.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Nubia Young was the woman with the shaved head greeting people at Welcome Wednesday. She's lived in Mexico since 2019, a year or so after Nipsey's video dropped. And right around the time when "The Cut" pretty much declared Tulum dead. That same year, French Vogue stated Holbach, an island just a few miles northwest of Cancun, was the new Tulum. But, according to the New York Times, the new Tulum was Laguna Bacalar, a lake south of Tulum, Cancun, and Holbach.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  They needed a new Tulum because climate change, greed, and waste were starting to destroy the original one. So it's interesting to me that the pandemic supercharged Tulum's tourism ascent for Americans. The number of American tourists to the state where Tulum is located increased 23% in one year.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Back in June, Tulum was quiet. It was beautiful. It was peaceful.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Mexico and Tulum went into lockdown in the spring of 2020.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  You didn't hear any construction. There was nothing going on. And it was just, it felt good for a little while. It felt good.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Nubia began meeting up with friends. She was working as a travel writer and what she calls an expat coach at the time.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  And I was like, let's do brunch.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  And her brunches grew fast. So she created a Facebook group, Black in Tulum.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Hey, everybody, what's going on? This is Nubia, the creator of Black in Tulum. And that group started with 25 people on July 27 of 2020. You guys, this has been an amazing two months, less than two months, and we are over 4,000 people in the group. And it is just amazing. And here we are in March, right? We're in March, March of 2021. And the group is over 13.5,000 people.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Black in Tulum now has 16,000 members. And Nubia and the group she created have become a major factor in drawing more Black Americans to visit Tulum.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  It has grown organically through word of mouth.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  But then, things started to change.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  And I will say the unfortunate truth is that some people came for the right reasons and some people came for their own reasons.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  In August, you know, the town was starting to smile a little bit more.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Ryan arrived in Tulum in the summer of 2020, just in time for one of Nubia's early branches.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  And then the seasons did change and so did the individuals.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  I honestly attribute the change to the celebrities, to be honest with you.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  The opening of Tulum out of lockdown coincided with the moment last summer during Labor Day weekend, when my sister sent me that video of Meg Thee Stallion.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Turns out that lots of videos of Meg were taken when she was in Tulum.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  That video is circulating everywhere and that's the representation that they're seeing of Black people in Tulum. And that's not the representation of Black people in Tulum.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  And they really had an impact in certain circles.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Please do not come down here trying to just turn up because Tulum is a real chill vibe. It's a bohemian, real like cultural, I would say, earthy crunchy vibe. It really is.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  I just want to interject and say, by this point, Tulum was known for its party scene. People would go to parties on the beach, parties in cenotes, and dance to trancey electronic music.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  It is a jungle, period. It's a jungle.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  But from what I could gather, there wasn't much hip hop or twerking. But when the Meg Thee Stallion video went viral, that seemed to indicate to people that Tulum was close, Tulum was open, and Tulum was a good time. But Tulum was about to be overexposed.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  And then it just seemed like a flood of celebrities. Next thing you know, Cardi B was in Tulum, Trey Songz, Chris Brown spent like a month or so in Tulum.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  He saw like Meek Mill tweeted about it and said, "Tulum is the way that like this." I was like, "Oh, Meek Mill? Oh, man.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  Damn, I'm Meek Mill, but damn."

• 35:09Speaker 02

  So of course, if you're seeing your favorite celebrities in this place.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  What happens?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  The wannabe celebrities start coming.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Honey, the wannabe Instagrammers start coming.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  A guy named Rashid from Oakland, who's been living in the area for the last eight years, told me he had never seen anything like this in Tulum.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  That's when the Miami, you know, the All-Star Weekend kind of vibe. And what is that vibe? Take me back to the point. I'll just give you an example. And it's no, you know, I got durags at the house. You know, I wear durags. But I never seen he had like all, you know, all white linen. He looked like he just came from the South Beach All-White Cruise with a durag on, with the, you know, he had the Uncle sandals on, you know, barbecue sandals. I was like, OK, oh, yeah, Tulum's on the map. But Tulum is not. It is not the new Miami, OK?

• 36:09Speaker 01

  I found all of this pretty amusing and kind of absurd. But there was also something that was precarious about this conversation.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  What I feel like is being implied is that some of these tourists lack respectability. Now, I'm not saying that if some racism went down, nobody would be out there marching. But what I am saying is that I often feel like Black people, we can be most critical of our own.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  It was Ryan who said something that got me thinking more deeply about the implications and assumptions that were being made here.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  I see a lot of people trying to find something when they come here. Like, they're trying to find either love. They're trying to find happiness. They're trying to find clarity. They're trying to find comfort. The people that are coming here are trying to escape. They're trying to release, just like we were.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  We all need to escape. We need freedom. We need to release. And when you start to judge how people who are coming here to escape, release, then who are you saying is worthy of being free in the first place? Who defines what freedom looks like?

• 37:48Glynn Washington?

  When we return, we explore whether freedom looks a little bit different depending on where you're situated. When Snap Judgment: The Search for a Black Utopia continues. Stay tuned.

• 38:20Glynn Washington?

  Have you ever started doom scrolling and then looked up and an hour has passed? And you think, "Never again, never again. I'm gonna actually employ my mind and read books." And then you find yourself doom scrolling again the next day? Wow. Break the chain. ElevenReader is an award-winning audio app from Eleven Labs. It gives you access to more than 200,000 audiobooks and ebooks. But here's the cool part: You can bring your own stuff. PDFs, articles, documents, whatever, and ElevenReader turns it into remarkably natural audio. Yesterday, I was stuck in purgatory hell at the airport. But instead of the scroll of doom, I was deep inside the world of a gritty, hard-boiled sci-fi

• 39:04Glynn Washington?

  mystery. I almost didn't care when the plane got delayed again. Almost. And right now, ElevenReader has a special offer for Snap Judgment listeners: Your first two months for only $1. Download the ElevenReader app or sign up on the web today and use promo code PODCAST at checkout to get your first two months for only $1. ElevenReader promo code PODCAST.

• 39:31Glynn Washington?

  Here's the thing. The weather is turning, getting a little bit cooler. And there's nothing better than cozying into a super comfortable bed at the end of the day. It's that time where great sheets, soft duvet, an extra layer or two really make a difference. And Quince has become one of my go-tos to create that perfect sleep environment. That's right, Quince. Because Quince makes hotel-quality bedding using premium, natural materials designed for lasting comfort. My European linen sheet set is woven from premium flax and gets softer with each and every wash.

• 40:10Glynn Washington?

  It's like going home to a fancy hotel without having to go home to a fancy hotel. Nighty night. Make your bed your favorite place to be this season with Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. It's the best way to support the show.

• 41:01Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, in the search of a black utopia. My name is Ben Washington. Producer Adisa Egan, she was just getting into what freedom looks like in Tulum, Mexico.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Hey. How are you? I'm good, how are you? Good. Thanks for coming by. Good to see you. No problem. Good to see you, too. That Saturday that I was in Tulum, I went to a party on a rooftop at a place called Hotel Macarena. So, we're on a rooftop right now. I don't know, there's probably like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It was the same party that the folks at the taqueria invited me to. I won't lie, I feel a little awkward.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  I'm the girl with the microphone. And at first, it was beautiful. What's the odds of me being caught with a celebrity like in Tulum? That's gold, Link. The other day... But while I was there, I also walked over to the perimeter of the roof that we were on, just to look at the view. I saw the road that I drove in on. It was an unpaved dirt road with buildings on the left and jungle as far as I could see on the right. And across the street from me is just all jungle. But I'm sure if I were to come back here in a year or two, this would be developed, there would be construction, the road would be paved, there'd be another hotel here.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Because one thing I've noticed since being here is that... The longer I stayed, the more I understood the hold that tourism had on the land and the people who live here.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  We don't have a good infrastructure in Tulum. There's actually none, sadly. They're keep on selling and building big buildings. And do we know where that dirty water is going? No.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  I heard often about how the infrastructure in Tulum was being pushed to its limits.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Sometimes when there is big storms and stuff like that, all of their...

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Their poop?

• 43:19Speaker 02

  It's floating.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  One business owner told me that the problem wasn't just the tourists, but the greed of those who are letting this happen.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  More money, more money, more money. But more money will not...

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Preserve your heritage.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Tulum's population in 2010 was 28,000 people. It has more than doubled, not counting temporary residents and the millions of tourists coming in. Last year, the president of Mexico announced that they're building an airport in Tulum, a city that's expected to have over 200,000 people within a decade. And while all of this development has pulled in all kinds of immigration to Tulum, the city hasn't been a place of refuge for all.

• 44:19Speaker 05

  Victoria Esperanza Salazar was a refugee from El Salvador, a mother of two teenage girls, working in hotels in Mexico's resort town of Tulum. Now she's the face of protests against violence towards women and police brutality.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  The murder of Victoria Salazar made it very clear that we couldn't say there was no racism or xenophobia in Mexico. The local police in Tulum were constantly abusing their authority. Things got so bad that the state government decided to step in and remove the local police, leaving the state authorities in charge. Having a US passport and US dollars protected you in a place like Tulum. It helped make the vibes good.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  But it turned out that the vibes weren't even that good all the time. I discovered some fissures, stories of people not supporting each other's businesses, friendships ending, and toxic relationships. I listened, but ultimately, I felt like regardless of where these people went, their problems were going to follow.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  I didn't feel like it was my place to make the call if they were better off here or in the States. But what did seem clear to me was that there's no one-size-fits-all for self-determination. I wanted a black utopia. I feel like I discovered a bunch of people who were kind of struggling along on their own twisted path.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  And that's where talking to Patricia really clarified things for me.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  There was a woman, her name is Patricia Tally, and she did reach out to me at one point and she said, "Nubia, I would love to bring you and some of the Afro-Mexican community to their table because they're angry at the fact of Black Americans coming here and exuding their privilege." So I politely declined, right, because I'm not an activist, nor am I an advocate for, you know, all Black Americans. So I was very careful to not get and cross those lines when I don't know enough.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Patricia has positioned herself as a source of information and a bridge between Black people in America, Black people traveling to Mexico, and Afro-Mexicans. And even though she's halfway across the country, she went to Nubia because as the founder of Black in Tulum and as an expat coach, she felt like Nubia was a leader.

• 47:04Speaker 03

  Maybe you don't want to be an activist, okay? But guess what? Had we not been activists in the United States, you wouldn't even have the opportunity to be coming here.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  She's part of the civil rights organization, Mexico Negro A.C. They were the group behind the movement to count Afro-Mexicans in the 2020 census.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  And after the census, Patricia says she learned that African-Americans are the largest number of foreign-born African descendants in Mexico.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  I liked that Patricia wasn't just judging these folks from across the country. She'd lived that life. Patricia is a generation or two ahead of all these Black Americans moving to Mexico. She seemed to have some insight, so I came to her with all my big questions.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  We've been talking kind of about African Americans specifically, but you just said that your goal is to lift people up. So what does that look like for the diaspora?

• 48:14Speaker 03

  I do know in terms of globalization

• 48:19Speaker 03

  that we would have to change our USA mindset, philosophical mindset, to truly be partnering.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Patricia was in corporate banking and then the food and beverage industry. But in both careers, she hit what she called the cement ceiling. So she turned to academia and traveled to Mexico to do her research.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  She decided to move to Mexico indefinitely with her husband.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  And ended up opening up a Chick's Fried Chicken restaurant.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  It was called Chick's Fried Chicken?

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Uh huh. I can fry some chicken. My daddy was vice president of the operating company for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  So you have the recipe?

• 49:12Speaker 03

  I got the recipe.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  She says it was the first time she ever felt a sense of freedom as a black woman, which reminded me of what Audre Lorde said about finding it exciting and affirming to be around so many brown faces.

• 49:30Speaker 03

  And I was sitting up in a bikini with a apron on frying chicken and making apple pies.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Patricia went on to teach English in Mexico and she became a dual citizen in 2018. So, you know, I have this question, why is everybody moving to Tulum? But it's really this greater question of why people are moving to Mexico. And they're moving to Mexico and they're starting businesses. And this is really your experience.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Somebody told me for African Americans, the American dream is a nightmare.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Whoa. That's a powerful statement.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I'd imagine too, it might feel good to exercise a little bit of that privilege and that exceptionism somewhere else.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. Oh, huh. I am professora, maestra Patty. I can't get people to call me by my first name Patricia. Forget that. I'm teacher. I'm maestra. Okay. So it feels good.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  It it truly does to be respected and and honored. And and I'm, once again, that's the privilege of having had an education um that many don't have access to. It's a privilege of having had US dollars that people don't have access to. So, yeah, to be able to sit back in my backyard and sit at the pool and watch the mountains and listen to the birds and I don't have to worry about things.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  There are marketing companies who research Black travelers. And according to them, the intent for African Americans to move and travel abroad is only going up. I think our ancestors were on to something when they decided to leave the US. But what I gather was the most important from those journeys was the unlocking of a new state of mind.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  I think every generation is still searching for that freedom. Okay. There's still the quest for that. And so wherever it may be, the commonality is that people are looking for a better life for themselves, for the kids, for the grandkids. And historically, that has not been our experience in the United States.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  So if folks can find an easier path, then that seems like that's what they want to do.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Let me ask you, so you've been in Mexico for 24 years, and you've been upfront about the benefits, the happiness and the freedom and the privilege. But do you feel free?

• 52:42Speaker 03

  I feel freer. Okay. I will never be free from the memories.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  But I have a pathway for me to live a more comfortable

• 53:05Speaker 03

  and satisfactory life.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  I've got extended family here. I have a community here. I'm respected here. So freedom is a state of mind and being able to do things without

• 53:24Speaker 03

  barriers and to be able to be judged by your character versus your color of your skin. So I am closer to that freedom than I've ever been before.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Closer?

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Closer is good. Closer is good.

• 54:00Glynn Washington?

  Big, big thanks to Nubia Young, Patricia Tally, and all those in Tulum. This episode was produced by Edisa Egan and edited by Kate Osborne and James T. Green with help from Annie Aviles and Stephanie Kariuki. The original score was by Kyle Murdock.

• 54:28Glynn Washington?

  There and back again. You've done it. And the good news, if you want to be the sexiest person you know, there's only one last thing that must be done. Subscribe to the Snap Judgment Podcast, then look at yourself in the mirror. What did I tell you? SnapJudgment.org. And no, this is not the news. No way this is the news. In fact, to get away from all those crazies in your town, you could pack up and move to Tulum, only to discover all those crazies had exactly the same idea at exactly the same time, and you would still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.

• 55:41Glynn Washington?

  This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at O D O O dot com. That's O D O O dot com.