The Glories of Mexican Dentistry

I CROSSED THE U.S./Mexico border six times in a month in 2018, an economic refugee in my own way.

- Brian Doherty

While the consumer price index indicates an overall U.S. inflation rate of around 85 percent since 2000, over that same period inflation in dental costs was more like 133 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I needed some extensive and expensive dental work, and so I crossed borders seeking my own version of a better (in my case, more affordable) life, sometimes under the piercing gaze of the federales. I occasionally drove through U.S. border inspection, many dozens of miles from the border on Interstate 8, being ordered via signs to come to a stop while an agent glanced at my car without actually engaging me in any conversation or even making me turn off the vehicle.

Mexico could not have cared less about this border crossing back then; no one asked for your papers, por favor, as you strolled unimpeded from the parking lot on the U.S. side and entered Algodones from Winterhaven, California, at the Andrade border crossing. According to my Mexican dentist, nearly 13,000 tourists enter there on an average winter day. Algodones is a dental and optical retail paradise; the three blocks I walked to my dental destination were all storefronts selling those services, along with some pharmacies.