From my dirt road house, I could see the skyscrapers of San Diego shine like an unreachable world.
I was 10 years old, and the dream among broke kids born in the 90s who lived on the border was simple: go to the United States.
And who could blame us? We had California’s luxuries right under our noses. You could literally see the wealth and excess that gringos considered normal.
On our side, life was very different.
Tijuana is a place of extremes. They are sometimes borderline ridiculous.
In this city, it’s normal to see mansions with pools and three floors standing ten meters away from humble wooden shacks, on a dirt street where kids play soccer barefoot.
This happens because there are first-class citizens. The ones who had an American passport, worked in California, and got paid in C-Notes.
Then there was the rest of us. People doing what they could but never making it to the end of the month.
That was my first contact with the land of McDonald’s.
Today, twenty years later, I see things differently.
I see American society slowly boiling. Things have been deteriorating in such a slow way that nobody notices.
I see it’s more likely for people to end up in prison than to escape poverty. I see most people buried in debt, unable to buy a house, paying a cost of living that doesn’t justify the sacrifice.
It’s depressing to watch the American Dream on its deathbed. Specially because the USA has been so kind to me. Every penny I made so far comes from a business across the pond.
I’m Mexican, but I’m not married to any country. The day Mexico stops serving my interests, I’ll trade it for another place in a blink of an eye.
That’s why I’m betting everything on remote work. When the apocalypse comes, I’ll be on a Thai beach, grateful I didn’t waste my life stuck in traffic or paying off impossible debts.
Until then,
Cesar