How Returning Home to Mexico Gets Complicated After Years in the US Monica Ortiz Uribe - PRI's The World
go to original March 27, 2015

Fernando Buenfil Góngora owns the Hotel Clásico in Oxkutzcab, Mexico. He built the hotel with 15 years worth of remittance money he earned working in San Francisco. (Mónica Ortiz Uribe)

Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula juts into the Caribbean like a defiant fist and, 3,000 miles away, the San Francisco Bay Area looks like a miniature version of it.

The two may be separated by distance, but they depend on each other. The Yucatán needs the work and San Francisco needs the workers. Their decades-long relationship has developed into something of a love affair, which returning migrants find hard to forget.

But for the migrants' relatives who've stayed behind, the benefits of immigration have begun to lose their luster.

In the city of Oxkutzcab, in the heart of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, many locals associate Fernando Buenfil Góngora with the ultimate immigrant success story. He owns the Hotel Clásico, built with 15 years worth of money earned by working as a busboy and bartender at an upscale Asian restaurant in San Francisco.

"I have the Golden Gate Bridge and I have another cable car here," Buenfil said pointing to murals inside his 11-room hotel, which is like a shrine to San Francisco. The top floor is painted canary yellow and features rooms with bay windows.

Today, the hotel keeps most of his family employed.

Buenfil said he’s okay financially. "I can survive,” he said. “I'm not making much, like in San Francisco, but I'm happy to be here with my family."

But Buenfil confesses leaving San Francisco was like swearing off a mistress. He misses the city. So much so, that he’s cut off all contact with his friends there. He fears being pulled back.

Read the rest at PRI's The World

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