Source: US News. Every week there are more of us, because post-NAFTA global capitalism has put us in a strange position.
A glitch in the system has created the conditions to sustain life for working-class artists from the global North in places like Mexico City. Here, we can churn out advertising copy only 15 hours a week instead of 60; we can have dinner parties; we can do art projects that no one pays us for.
We call ourselves writers instead of content creators. But we remain part of one ecosystem. And that allows us to forget that we, too, are capable of exploitation.
The lack of COVID regulations and the continued devaluation of the peso has made Mexico City more appealing than ever for professionals from the US looking to relocate. Here, a Brooklyn creative can dine out three times a week on the salary that at home afforded them rice and beans. And they can hire someone to clean their home each week for less than a monthly metro pass.
Middle-management professionals, released by their multinational companies from their offices in mid-sized US cities, rent sprawling mansions with manicured gardens. We can pay dollars a month. A former Cambridge Analytica executive recently posted looking to buy an apartment in Polanco, the elite Mexico City neighborhood where residents move in Escalades and their workers line up each afternoon to board the first of a series of packed busses back to the city's periphery.
