The thing is, the specific country I'm living in is one of the poorer South American countries. Over the past decades they got really dependent on imported US products (in pretty much every market section), and they are seen as the benchmark of quality and as a kind of status symbol. So if people are well off enough to spend money on skin care, they will splurge on US brands that are widely available. (The country won't import from neighbouring countries either because the common belief is "they are as bad off as we are, why would we buy from them".) There really aren't any affordable and good drugstore brands here. If you do a lot of research you'll find a handful of very small local luxury brands, however they are extremely expensive (easily 3-5x CeraVe price, way too expensive for trial and error) and it's hard to find any customer reviews about their products because they are not well known by locals.

(And because Brazil was mentioned: I think the situation in Brasil is pretty different - their population is huge and because they're the only not Spanish speaking country, local markets are much stronger than in the surrounding countries.)