Dear Mexican: I’m wondering how Mexicans feel about the communities of American expats springing up all over Mexico? Also, are there places in Mexico where it doesn’t get so hot that Americans are generally pretty comfortable year round? Could you name a couple of regions or areas? You know there may come a time when hordes of Americans start moving to rural Mexico seeking a lifestyle with less stress, less air pollution, fresh locally grown food, etc. | Listo Pa’ Jubilarme


Dear Ready to Retire: Hombre, not all of Mexico is the Sonoran Desert, you know? The great thing about the Empire of the Sun is that there are climates for everyone. Like the Caribbean experience? Veracruz is for you. Prefer something a bit cooler, but just as colonial? San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato es para ti! Love more of a surfer lifestyle. Baja, baby! Or love the mysticism that is massive rainstorms in an urban area? Mexico City! All the places I mentioned, by the way have robust gabacho communities, just some of the estimated half-million Yankees estimated by the State Department that live south of the border year round, and the mucho more who pop in for a couple of months. Mexicans tolerate those gabachos, although we can’t stand that many of them don’t assimilate, are loud, and don’t bother to learn the native language. But we don’t worry too much – we’ve ensured they can’t amass too much power by banning foreign ownership of land and making it fiendishly difficult for them to find work.


Will I ever be able to tame my spicy ecuatoriana? She keeps talking mucho basura about Mexico and talks about Ecuador like it was the Estados Unidos! Shut my spicy up once and for all! | Bicho Raro


Dear Oddball: Ecuador? We gave the country its greatest achievement in its two-century existence by allowing them to play our soccer squad to a 1-1 draw earlier this year, and have fed information to Ecuadorian officials in our respectively Pyrrhic drug wars – and that’s how she pays us back? Your chica has no reason to hate on Mexico, and definitely has no reason to wistfully reminisce about a country whose greatest contribution to human society is teaching us that guinea pigs make a tasty dinner. Ecuador is so forgettable that Colombians make fun of their own citizens for sounding like Ecuadorians.