Goodbye, Uncle Sam: My American Cleanse

Banishing the Stars and Stripes from My Life, One Telenovela at a Time

I’m not going back. Not now, not next Christmas, not when “Not Like Us” wins a Pulitzer. Maybe not ever. The U.S. of A.—once the land of Elvis, cosmic diners, and baseline decency—is now a twitching monster of rage, paranoia, and fascist cosplay. As Robert Reich asked, why reward Trump’s America with tourist dollars? I won’t. And to be honest, I wasn’t planning to anyway. The BoycottUSA movement arrived like pozole on a hangover: right on time.

But me? I’m going deeper. Not just avoiding travel to the U.S., but surgically removing every last sliver of Americana from my life. I’m talking cultural exorcism. A great, holy cleanse. No more Netflix. No more Heinz. No more Seinfeld reruns whispering from my devices like corporate ghosts. This is total de-Yankification. I’m swapping cheeseburgers for cochinita pibil, Irving Berlin for Lila Downs, Apple for any damn thing that isn’t designed in Cupertino.

THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (EN INGLES, POR FAVOR)

Rule 1. No American product or service shall enter my life.

Not one. Not Apple. Not Amazon. Not even Ben & Jerry’s. There are “good Americans,” sure—but if they’re so good, why can’t they fix their own country?

Rule 2. Legacy gringo gear can stay ‘til it dies.

I can still use my old iPhone… but once it croaks, that’s it. No more replacements from the land of mass shootings and Super Bowl commercials. And yes, current American friends are allowed. But new American friends? Lo siento, prohibited under the boycott. Make your peace with it.

Rule 3. American culture is now cultural contraband.

Marvin, Aretha, Otis? Into the vault. Streaming a Bruce Springsteen song in 2025 is the same as pouring a Big Gulp on the altar of freedom. Binge-watching Breaking Bad? Treason.

Rule 4. It’s not a real principle unless it hurts.

And baby, this one’s gonna sting.

PHASE ONE: ADIÓS, BIG TECH

The iPhone will die and be reborn as a Mexican Phoenix: a Lanix Ilium, made in Hermosillo. The laptop? Replaced by a Meebox, Mexico’s proudly homegrown line of computers. Say what you will about performance—it’s got heart. For every crash, it offers a little more soul.

My Apple Watch is out. In comes a Xiaomi Band—yes, Chinese, but bought from a street vendor in León after a long chat about AMLO, cactus, and the rising price of tortillas. Local vibes, global survival.

Google and Apple Maps? Dead to me. I’m navigating Guanajuato’s labyrinthine callejones with Karta GPS (made by a Brazilian team and loaded with Mexican offline maps). My emails now run through TutaNota—German-born, Mexican-loved, and fully encrypted so no one knows I’m still writing Coltrane fan mail at 2am.

PHASE TWO: A DIGITAL LIFE, SIN GRINGOS

Forget Zoom and Google Meet. My video calls now happen through Jitsi Meet, hosted locally on a server run by a crypto anarchist in Oaxaca. Gmail? Replaced by Correo Webmail de Telmex. Don’t laugh—it works, most of the time.

Word processing? LibreOffice, sí… but wrapped in a skin of Mexican folk art thanks to a modding forum I found run by a guy named Edgar in Puebla.

My cloud storage is no longer with iCloud. It’s now on a dusty external hard drive I bought in the Mercado Hidalgo, wrapped in a San Judas Tadeo sticker, protected not by encryption, but by faith and duct tape.

PHASE THREE: BYE BYE BINGE CULTURE

Netflix? Gone. Disney+? Exiled. Amazon Prime? Torched like Hernán Cortés’s boats. But I’m not deprived. Oh no.

I’ve got Canal Once, Mexico’s national educational channel, featuring documentaries, telenovelas, and surreal late-night puppetry. I’ve got TV UNAM for brainy content, and Claro Video, which always seems like it’s buffering in 1998 but bless its corazón, it tries.

Music? Spotify (Swedish) survives, but the playlist’s been overhauled. Out: Johnny Cash. In: Chavela Vargas, Caifanes, Natalie Lafourcade, Maldita Vecindad, and the ghost of José José sipping a Tecate in the moonlight. I’ve even blocked Los Tigres del Norte—too many U.S. tours. Principles, people.

PHASE FOUR: KITCHEN CLEANSE

Out go the products of PepsiCo, Kraft, and General Mills like rats from a mole-infested pantry. In come Doña María mole, Herdez salsa verde, and those crumbly bouillon cubes from Knorr Suiza, which despite the name, is practically a Mexican civil servant.

Forget Oreos—give me Galletas Marías and cajeta. Out with peanut butter. In with mazapán. Coca-Cola is a tricky one—but I’ve made peace with the fact that Mexican Coke in glass bottles is a different beast entirely. It’s practically a religious artifact.

PHASE FIVE: LA CASA DESAMERICANIZADA

No more Colgate. I brush with DentoFresh. No Tide. I wash with Foca, the detergent with a smiling seal on the label and a libertarian attitude toward fragrance. Shampoo? A bar of Savia Natural soap bought at a Sunday tianguis from a woman with three teeth and infinite wisdom.

Clothing? No Levi’s. No Nike. No Patagonia fleece vest worn while sipping kombucha. I’m in Coppel denim, Zara knockoffs from Guadalajara, and handwoven huaraches made by a maestro in Michoacán who probably doesn’t own a phone but can tell the time by the sun and the corn.

PHASE SIX: MODERN LIFE’S MEXICAN HACKS

Banking? Banorte and BBVA (even if Spanish-owned) keep me far from Chase. Yes, my credit card runs on Mastercard, and yes, I weep when I see the logo. But I try to pay cash, always in pesos, folded around a handwritten note that says No al imperialismo.

Books? No Amazon. I get mine from Librerías Gandhi, where the staff recommend radical poetry and don’t ask if I want to “bundle with Audible.”

Streaming? I’ve discovered Pulsocinema, an indie platform run by a couple in San Luis Potosí who stream old Mexican noir and surreal arthouse flicks with subtitles in Nahuatl. I’ve never been more confused—or more alive.

THE FINAL SACRIFICES

Yes, my pension still holds U.S. assets. Yes, my baseball team is still owned by some crypto-libertarian hedge fund in Miami. And yes, I still talk to my American family… on WhatsApp. I know. Shameful. One day I’ll switch us all to Bridgefy, the offline Mexican-built mesh-messaging app born in protest.

But for now…this is my stand. This is my hill.

So pour me a Raicilla neat. Hand me a chapulín taco and a copy of La Jornada, and let me stream reruns of El Chavo del Ocho in peace. I’m done with America. I’m building something new. Something with cumbia, street dogs, poetry, and 4am tamales.

Life outside the Empire is messier. But it’s honest. And spicy. And mine.

Until we meet again, let your conscience be your guide.