This. I'm from Argentina, what worked for me was to start a blog about the problems I was solving back then for my current job, worked in opensource stuff, responded questions for an opensource tool in a forum (there was no stackoverflow back then) and somehow built a "personal brand" for some niche technologies. It all happened like 10 years ago in the span of 3 months. I got my first remote job offer for an small software firm in Europe because they read a blogpost I wrote about solving a problem they had. I've worked since then for 3 different companies from Europe and the US.

I wasn't looking for a remote job to be honest, but it happened. I honestly didn't know I could work for a company remotely back then, I was very young and had not idea about the paperwork, transactions, etc.

There are a lot of players in this, some are just looking for cheap labor, but there are also companies that understand that talent is everywhere and they are looking for that.