David English relocation to Argentina after September 11, Digi Mart USA News (Mendoza, Argentina): In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, David English was forced to alter his life plans before he could finalize a business deal that would have changed his career. Less than a year after the attacks, the American businessman left New York and settled in Argentina, seeking a life away from the tension surrounding those events.
According to a CNN report, he has since established himself, raised a son and gained a new sense of identity in the South American nation.
English had been working in Lower Manhattan and regarded September 11, 2001, as a crucial day for his career, since he had planned to sign an important agreement with a prominent bank. The terrorist attacks changed those plans.
In the weeks that followed, he saw military planes over his New York apartment and experienced a series of security alerts and concerns about smoke rising from the World Trade Center site.
English told CNN that the atmosphere of fear in America after the attacks led him to reevaluate where he wanted to live. He had visited Argentina in 1998 and fallen in love with its culture and people, and a later trip convinced him that another future was possible.
According to CNN, he moved to Argentina more than a year later and settled in Mendoza.
Argentina was not entirely unfamiliar to him. He had enjoyed the social culture during his first visit.
Mendoza, a city near the Andes and known for its vineyards, offered a setting far different from the pace of New York City. The country was also undergoing severe economic turmoil in 2001, but English saw entrepreneurial opportunity in Mendoza, and CNN reported that many people were visiting the country for similar purposes.
His move was not supported by unlimited savings. According to an earlier CNN report, English relied on money he had saved, financial aid from the American Red Cross and a September 11th victim compensation fund to pay for his relocation.
Moving abroad gave English a new professional path. He launched a consultancy that assisted foreign investors and became a co-founder of an organization that creates customized study abroad programs for U.S.
universities. He had learned Spanish before moving and ultimately earned an MBA entirely in Spanish.
According to CNN, adapting to another culture takes years of work, patience and a willingness to change.
His personal life also changed. In 2010, English and his Argentine partner had a son, Benjamin, in Argentina.
English valued Mendoza’s focus on relationships and its slower pace of life, and he appreciated that most daily needs could be met on foot and that he could get to know the owners of neighborhood stores. He did not present Argentina as an ideal place to live, however.
According to CNN, the country has become less affordable than before, and adapting to cultural differences is not easy.
English returned to New York for the first time in nearly two decades in 2019, bringing his son with him. He also made a short film, My Father’s Lessons, about the emotional visit, which offered a chance to revisit the city he had left and show his son part of his family history.
By 2026, his son had enrolled at a boarding school in New York and was living in the city, linking the two places that have shaped English’s life. One emotional moment came when his son sent him a photograph taken at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, beside the name of English’s late friend.
English’s story is not one in which leaving the country is presented as a solution for everyone who has faced misfortune. He did not build the career he had envisioned on September 11, but he created a new career and family far from the life he had left.
As his experience shows, starting over does not mean erasing the past; it may mean learning to live with it.
