Retirement: Down Mexico Way

Where can a man go to get some real living out of a pension check—a place where it’s a sunny 70° all year round, where a five-room house can be had for $40 a month and a live-in maid for $16, where the family food bill may be measured in pennies per day, with beer at 80 a bottle and gin at 98¢ a quart? The answer to this daydreaming question is not nowhere; it’s Mexico.

More and more retired U.S. citizens are discovering a bargain dolce vita across the Rio Grande. And the Mexi can government is doing its best to help the process of discovery. This month speakers from the National Council of Tourism, headed by ex-president Miguel Aleman, are campaigning throughout North America to build up Mexico’s industria de los viejitos—the oldster industry—which the council estimates would be worth $400 million a year if Mexico could attract only 1% of the annual retirees in the U.S. and Canada.

Mexico’s imported gringos include all kinds. At the peak there are the sleek fat cats of Cuernavaca and Acapulco, reading their airmailed New York Times in their white-walled gardens and practicing kitchen-Spanish on the servants, who have servants of their own. At the other end of the scale, and potentially more important to both Mexico and the U.S., are Americans with as little as $150 a month, who have worked out a comfortable design for living in such modest places as Chapala and Ajijic.

Paseos & Tortillas. In these two pretty towns on 48-mile-long Lake Chapala, 30 miles south of Guadalajara, some 900 retired men and women from the U.S. are living with—not away from—the Mexicans. The wife of a retired mining engineer may not invite the wife of a Mexican fisherman for tea, but she lives two doors away, she haggles in the same market for the same kind of food, and when they meet on the street, Doña Margarita greets Doña Margaret as a neighbor.

The Americans of Chapala and Ajijic have adopted many Mexican ways as their own. They look forward to the Thursday and Saturday paseo of boys and girls circling the town plaza in opposite directions to look each other over and flirt their way into marriage. They are careful to cover their mouths against the night air “to avoid catching cold,” and not to gush over a Mexican baby, out of respect for the Indians’ belief that this will give the child the evil eye. They say “This is your home” when guests enter their houses, and they serve frijoles instead of potatoes and tortillas instead of white bread.

On their part, the Mexicans of Lake Chapala have gained far more than the $200,000 their American neighbors spend there each month and the employment they give to maids and house-boys, gardeners and mechanics. The Americans have helped build a road and two schools. Their wants have nudged local markets into a wider range of merchandise.

Happiness with Highballs. Some of the retirees of the area are Korean war veterans living on pensions that are too low to give them the official status of “immigrant retired.” This is a category instituted two years ago by the Mexican government, granting, to those of 55 and over who have in comes of at least $240 a month per man (and $80 for his wife and every child of 15 or over) the privilege of entering Mexico duty-free with their own household furniture and a car and living in the country without the exit and re-entry required every six months for those on tourist visas. After five years’ residence, they may become full residents of Mexico, with permission to take jobs, and most of the privileges of citizenship except voting.

More affluent retirees are Laurence and Helen Hartmus, both 60, who have lived in Ajijic for ten years, where they bought a four-bedroom house with all modern conveniences plus a swimming pool, garden, garage and workshop for $16,000. Mining Engineer George W. Mitchell, 64, and his wife Pauline have some $500 a month, but they find that they spend only about $300 of it living in a comfortable house and employing two housemaids and a gardener. “We retired here because the climate is the best in the world and living is so cheap that you can almost laugh,” says Mitchell.

Even for the country club set. Dues at the Chapala Country Club are $5.60 a month for two, caddie fees 350 for 18 holes, and back at the 19th afterward, a rum highball comes to 160.