The American Dream

I  took this photo on the south side of Chicago back in 2004, just months before I moved to Mexico. When I found this unexpected message, I decided that it was a prescient omen—that the universe was allaying my fears and letting me know that I was making the right decision. I badly needed this, given that the majority of the Americans I knew doubted why I would willingly choose to leave the US for Mexico. Though most refrained from stating it directly, the message was loud and clear: you are lucky to live in the USA and you are giving it up to go and live in the Third World.

While I didn't know it then, growing up in the US had made me just as racist and chauvinist as everybody else in my country of origin. To think that I had somehow been protected from this fate is the ultimate folly. Being racist isn't a personal conscious choice; it's the result of living in a place like the US, whose national culture and institutions uphold white supremacy. Despite being Mexican-American, I had internalized the same negative messaging and arrived in Mexico thinking that everything about this country was second rate: its institutions, its culture, its people. 

Given that I arrived with this toxic attitude, it's no surprise that culture shock hit me hard and for a prolonged period of time. I looked northward with longing during the Obama presidency, when the promise of a fairer, more progressive nation made me question why I was still living in Mexico, a country ensnared in a brutal drug war and that saw endemic corruption at the highest levels of government.

And then, in 2016, Americans made Donald Trump president.

With the arrival of an openly misogynist, racist narcissist in the White House, I finally learned the lesson that had been such a long time coming: there's really nothing exceptional about the US. It's just another country on earth with a legion of intractable problems, from systemic racism to entrenched economic inequality to failed systems of health and public education to mind-numbing levels of violence. I finally saw that the US is not so different from Mexico after all. The principal difference is that many people in the US somehow still believe that they live in the best country on earth.

Now I look north with sadness and disbelief. I see more than 100,000 dead from a contagious disease thanks to the epic failures of the federal administration—and exacerbated by the perverse belief of some Americans that they don't need to follow basic health recommendations because they live in a "free country." I see people out of work and out of hope since financial assistance is almost impossible to access (well, unless you already have sizable assets). I see cities across the country on fire and under curfew as citizens fight back against the persistent racism that has formed the base of the nation’s culture since its founding.

It all makes me so very sad.

Make no mistake, Mexico has many, many problems of its own, which is well known to those of us who live here. I have done my best to navigate the minefields of violence, corruption, extreme inequality and xenophobia that exist here and in learning to do so, Mexico has become my home. I no longer think like someone who lives in the US. I no longer understand why people there think the way they do. And while I may not be a Mexican citizen, I do know that Mexico is where I belong.

Whoever spray painted that message on that wall in Chicago was absolutely right: the American dream is not the only dream.