Thank you for this intersting question!

What advice to myself before heading to Mexico? That would be: Don’t be so darn naive! Do not believe those “very reasonable” proposals only because the guy you get them from is wearing a nice suit (and I only a T-Shirt) and “looks honest and competent” !

I was 28 back then, and Northern Mexico was wide open “Frontier territory”. The place was going to take off with NAFTA coming along. Jobs were plentiful and reasonably well-paid. My wife just had finished her degree in international trade and logistics and was working in one of those assembly plants Trump is ranting so much nowadays. Nothing could have prepared that young provincial Swiss for any of this. Coming from Switzerland, one does not doubt about Government, Institutions, Employers, even used cars dealers! I had to really really get into a crash course! Language was already taken care of, my young wife had me covered there, since we exclusively spoke Spanish right from the first minute having known each other. But all in all, it was the time of my life and I will be eternally grateful to my love to have put up with this. But truth to be told: She did not like living in Switzerland. We gave it a try for three months, and gleefully headed back to roam free for 21 years.

In Mexico, I had quickly to adapt to the age old adage of “In Rome do as the Romans do”. Meaning this: Our car had no valid license plates, my first employment was as a consultant, where the employer used a loophole in Labor law to get around paying health insurance. You learn to pay bribes without feeling bad. Then I learned to get away from traffic fines (or bribes) only by feigning authority. How that works? Never show any fear, but remain friendly and easygoing, showing that you have not a care in the world. It was nearly impossible to get my daughters properly registered at first, having no immigration documents. Back then, very few Europeans other than Spaniards would ever emigrate to Mexico and the Immigration Law did not take this possibility into account at all. So no papers, even when everybody assumed that my wife could “fix” my residency just like it is done in the U.S. So I got a tourist permit and the judge in charge would register my Firstborn to my last name and my wife’s last name as it is local custom. This lady has helped us before with marriage, since this was not possible in Mexico either. However, 1994 all this came to change thanks to President Salinas de Gortari and I finally had proper documentation. The system he introduced is still on the books today and is working very well. It is strict but fair in my opinion. Worth a try over here in Europe!

In all these 21 years I had to learn a ton of other things! Doing my own plumbing work! Electicity? Check! Learning how to prepare and pour concrete. Done! Designing a drop irrigation system for our garden and a solar water heater? Works like Swiss clockwork. Swamp cooler maintenance and indoor painting was basic. Basic car repair up to break pads as well. But not how to change flat tires! That I already knew from thousands of miles on the desert dirt roads. In Northern Mexico, you do that also in the city quite often. Still remember the doubting look in my girl’s face when I attempted my first wheel change with her looking! “Need some help with this, maybe?” I was reading there! No one of my extensive in-law family would bet a rat’s ass on me being able to pull this whole deal of living in Mexico off! Some would either consider me being a tenderfoot or somebody easily duped for some dicey investment schemes. They mostly were farmers, ranchers and construction workers. But soon, we had built ourselves a little paradise out in the desert and a reputation for being a bunch of stingy money hoarders! But if anyone of our critics needed some helping hand, they never would leave empty handed.

We never planned to ever go back to Switzerland and jokingly already had plots at the local cemetery reserved. But alas, it was not to be! That cemetery quickly filled up and was closed down between 2008 and 2011, at the height of that infamous drug war. The city was coming apart at its seams, everybody having something to lose and able to move out did so. Including us. So these are the last bits of advice for any expat who plans to live abroad “for good”: Do not give up your home-country’s citizenship, and do not water it down with dual citizenship, In some European countries, nationalism is quickly becoming quite fashionable again, and double citizenship is increasingly seen as disloyal. Then, try to keep paying into your home country’s pension plan, if you come from a place considered stable. Even if you do not go back, you still will be able to collect the pension. But if you do, you are going to enjoy full benefits. Not like “Yours truly” who though getting buried into the dry soil of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I probably will have to do with only half a pension! Or working until dropping dead. But no complaints here. I do not wait for retirement for life to start, like so many of my countrymen do. There would be many many stories like these to be told, and maybe I should get myself some ghostwriter to put it down. Not for publishing, but for my daughters to enjoy. Not much of anything else coming their way as inheritance, I am afraid!