Black Americans Are Moving to Mexico to Escape Racism, But Some Locals Don’t Like It

A new PBS documentary is pulling back the curtain on a growing movement: Black Americans fleeing the U.S. for Mexico to find solace and refuge from racism. The transplants—now dubbed “Mexpats”—open up about why they made the leap, whether accusations of gentrification apply to them, and if the controversial move was truly worth it as a growing wave of others follows their lead.

One Black San Diego native, Kamara, recalls in the PBS documentary “The Afro Mexpats” how soaring rent in her hometown, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, pushed her to seek a more affordable life south of the border—with no plans to move back.

“Crossing into America—just thinking about it gives me anxiety. I have to worry about police. I have to worry about being a Black person in general in America, where here it’s like I don’t have to worry about a lot of things,” she said.

But while she lives comfortably in Mexico, it comes at a price. Locals have grown increasingly frustrated as the influx of Black Americans drives up the cost of living at their expense—a tension Kamara acknowledges in the documentary. She notes that those locals are “probably the most marginalized people in this country of all people,” admitting that her move was born of privilege and the fact that she could afford to do so, making her an expat by definition.

But she pushes back on the label’s deeper meaning.

“That word in itself, expatriate, it kind of means that I was once a patriot to America; and as a Black person, the majority of us are not necessarily patriots,” she said.

RELATED: Racism is the New Normal, and These Real-Life Examples Prove It

Yet, even as Mexpats navigate privilege, they often trade one form of alienation for another. Jene, a music curator originally from Portland, Oregon— where the population is 68% white, according to the U.S. Census—moved to Mexico City nearly three years ago. The DJ described “feeling othered” after her move, which she said happens almost every day with no signs of slowing down. She recalled greeting natives on the street who didn’t respond.

“I think it’s been harder to integrate into Mexico, because…no one thinks I’m Mexican, so they assume that I am a foreigner—which I am,” she said. “I’m always going to be seen as a foreigner just because I navigate the world as a Black woman, even if I’m Mexican.”

Kamara agreed.

“I’ve been stared at before—but I have always taken it as curiosity because there aren’t a lot of Black people in the area who aren’t Haitian or Jamaican,” she said.

She detailed instances when strangers approached her daughters to take pictures and constantly wanted to touch her hair.

“They don’t know that it’s a no-no, don’t touch me,” Kamara added, noting that the hair-touching stems from a cultural difference and is something she doesn’t take personally.

While a modern exodus of Black Americans is making headlines now, the migration actually started decades earlier, entirely by accident. Patricia Ann-Talley, a peace activist who became a Mexican citizen in 2018, recalled in the film that she was born in Detroit in 1951, at a time when segregation was heavily prevalent.

Desiring to continue her graduate research in Mexico, she found peace in Zihuatanejo—a landing port for Africans coming into Mexico. After getting to know her community over the course of thirty years, Patricia now considers Mexico home.

“Once you have experienced a greater level of freedom, here I’m defined by what I can do, not what I cannot do,” Patricia said. “I see the Afro-Mexican movement to be very similar to the civil rights movement. […] When you have an experience like that, it shows the actual connection between our peoples.”

But trading American oppression for Mexican liberation doesn’t erase privilege. Patricia’s fellow Mexpat Jene admitted that for some Black Americans, moving to Mexico is a luxury, recalling how her U.S. friends marvel at cheap rent that leaves locals with sticker shock.

Exact numbers on the modern Black Mexpat migration are impossible to pin down, as neither U.S. nor Mexican authorities track the race of cross-border movers. Still, according to The Nation, Black residents make up roughly 10 percent of San Miguel’s population of 174,000.

Mexpat Noi Brooks, 62, says he’s enjoying life in Mexico, but warns others that nothing is perfect.

“I feel that it is a better way of life for me,” he told The Nation about his move to Mexico. “But I think if people are leaving America in the hopes of finding a utopia, they need to let me know where they go. Because San Miguel has its own issues, and Mexico has its own issues.”