Quick summary:
American’s have emigrated to parts of the world with lower costs of living or different politics for decades — but who leaves and where they go has changed over time. This weekend, we’re unpacking the experience of Black Americans who pulled the plug on life in America and went to a Mexican city, featuring reporting from Capital B and The Haitian Times.
Hey, y’all,
Yearning to jump ship and live in another country is not an uncommon thing to hear in the United States.
For some, this is just a dream, a fantasy that helps make what is difficult about life in America easier to manage. Yet others have actually gone and done the thing — including Black Americans heading to Mexico.
Why did they choose to migrate? What’s it been like for them south of the border? And how has Mexico responded? To find out, Capital B reporter Adam Mahoney spoke with a dozen Black Americans now living in Mexico.
The primary reason driving many of their decisions to leave U.S. soil was the uniquely pervasive American brand of racism. Life in Mexico is not perfect by comparison, but everyday facts of life in the U.S. — such as police violence, mass shootings, poor economic opportunity, and segregation — are just not as prevalent in Mexico, people told Mahoney.
“Here, there’s a sense of being able to breathe a little bit easier,” Tiara Darnell, a D.C.-area native who opened the first Black soul food restaurant in Mexico City, told Capital B.
Plus, the U.S. dollar goes significantly further in Mexico, giving many a fresh chance to own a home, start a business, or live more stably. Some focus on the chance to travel, while others are putting down real roots, from starting hip-hop and R&B nights to organizing family playdates around cities with other expats, Capital B reported.
You might be wondering, though: How good can it really get? Mexico has a settler-colonial past and present just like the U.S., and a history of slavery to boot. In fact, many Africans were enslaved in Mexico before they were brought to the U.S. colonies.
Yet the wish of Black Americans to leave the U.S. for Mexico has as much precedence as racism in the region.
Post-Civil War, many Black Southerners migrated to Mexico, despite racist pushback at the time. There was even a thriving Black agricultural settlement near Enseñada, coined Little Liberia, that expanded to 20,000 acres before a crackdown on Black migration slowed the project until it was no more, Capital B explained.
Today, Black American expats do report experiencing anti-Black and xenophobic sentiment throughout the country, from discrimination to fetishizing. Plus, Afro-Latino people, who make up at least 2% of the country’s population, are routinely made to feel like they are not Mexican, according to the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan U.S. foreign policy agency.
The opposite direction of migration in the region, flowing north to the U.S. from Latin America, also plays a role here.
Mexico’s position is inevitably a staging ground for migrants on their way to the U.S. A growing number of those migrants either traveling or waiting in Mexico are Haitians, The Haitian Times reports.
For Black Americans now living in Mexico, this heightened migrant presence seems to have fueled additional anti-Black sentiment. For one, it has led to a surge in racial profiling by Mexican police. This raises a new set of ethics to work through, as often the simple flash of a blue American passport is all it takes to resolve a police stop, Capital B explains.
However, the majority of Black American migrants seem content with their choice to leave home and start fresh in a Mexican city. While the realities of the Black experience in America are not gone entirely, the context is different enough to live life with more ease and peace.
The same cannot quite be said for Mexican nationals, who are beginning to protest the southbound migration of Americans with money. The impact of their wallets is raising costs and driving gentrification, while the growing short-term rental market is fueling a housing and water crisis, Capital B reports.
“People are rightfully angry,” Adalia Aborisade, who has lived in Mexico since 2017, told Capital B.
How should these complexities be reconciled? It’s a tricky line to walk, that’s for sure.
Moving south for an American is a markedly different set of circumstances than the political and economic strife that pushes Latino migrants to make the journey toward the United States. This group reaches for America out of necessity, where they are attacked and vilified while lifting up entire industries. Black Americans reach for Mexico for relief and refuge, where similar tensions are at play while they try to put down positive roots in communities.
Not to mention, migrating from America to Mexico — and having the chance to be racially safer and more financially free — has a deeper value to a Black American than a white American. Yet the effect of an American passport and wallet may contribute to destabilizing Mexican neighborhoods all the same.
“I know there’s some people who will never be pleased by this answer, and especially because many Mexicans are not aware of Afro-Mexican history and the history of slavery here, but there is a difference between a Black person from the U.S. coming down here versus a more privileged white American,” Darnell told Capital B.
As Darnell’s response suggests, the best guidance may be a balancing act of understanding historical context and mitigating harm in the present — which, at the very least, seems all the more possible to strive toward for Black Americans in Mexico than in the U.S.
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