#1175 – The Expat Files: Food, Economy, and Dating in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] You've heard me mention before that you could get any kind of junk food and fast food here in Latin America. Any. Plus a hundred or so different kinds of junk and fast food you've never even seen before. Some of it pretty disgusting stuff. To us anyway. Of course you can get used to anything. You might even like something that looks awful and disgusting at first. Though I have to say you have to be pretty adventurous to give it all a try. And sometimes even though it makes you kind of sick to watch other people eat the stuff. Enough to get the gag reflex going. Sometimes as much as you resist you'll be forced to at least take a little nibble. After all you don't want to offend your favorite Latino or Latina better halves grandma or mother when you're invited to that Sunday family dinner and you will be invited and she'll throw a huge spread for you. Especially the first time.

[00:46] Luckily there's usually a dog scavenging around under the dinner table. You just have to be discreet. Now as for me there are three 100% Latin comfort foods I won't touch with a 10 foot pole. I won't even try them. Just watching other people partake gets my gag reflex going. Though that's not to say where I come from Chicago and parts north. We don't have some pretty disgusting comfort foods. Hell I remember when I was on the dead dog crew working for Chicago street department. During summer break we'd pull into a neighborhood bar in the Polish district and they'd have these awful jars on display right over the bar of pickled pigs feet. Man I couldn't even look at those things without gagging. A close second in disgust for me is head cheese then olive loaf. Yuck. Then there's chitlins, stripe and fake yellow Velveeta cheese you spray out of a can. Ew. Man the things Americans put down their cake holes huh? No wonder so many people have f*** up plumbing. Don't get me started on mac and cheese. That stuff is disgusting.

[01:43] Talk about clogging yourself up for a couple days. Oh and I remember in those Polish shot of beer bars and the old days back in Chicago. Along with the pickled pigs feet they had a couple other big glass jars with other gross animal parts and unmentionable things floating in them that I'd never try. I didn't even want to know what that stuff was much less look at it. Reminds me of those deformed embryos and other parts floating into formaldehyde back in my undergrad anatomy and physiology class. So anyway all you guys and gals hanging out in Latin America. Eventually you're going to end up going to a faria at a fariato where you'll get exposed to lots of food you'll never want to try. But you just might get forced into it. A faria is like it sounds a fair. F-A-I-R and a fariato is a holiday or the day everyone goes to the fair. I've been to lots and lots of fairs. Big ones, small ones, national ones too.

[02:35] That's when you'll see with your own eyes all those strange varieties of comfort and junk food. By the way you know how Americans put ketchup on everything? Well in Latin America it seems they only put ketchup on french fries. And a lot of them still don't do that but when they go to the fast food places like McDonald's you know you get free ketchup so they try it and they like it. But it's never really been a tradition so they don't slather it on. Sometimes though you'll notice they'll slather on the mayonnaise. They love mayonnaise like Americans love ketchup on practically everything too. In fact one of the favorite comfort foods you'll see all the time at the fairs is corn on the cob slathered with you guessed it mayonnaise. At least for me it doesn't initiate a gag reflex but I won't eat it. But I'll tell you what does initiate a gag reflex, chicharrones. Otherwise known as the Latin American version of pork rinds. Now up in the states of course you can go to a grocery store and buy processed pork rinds in a package but they are highly processed. Totally uniform, light and crispy, tasty too but deep down you know they ain't good for you. I never eat them, just saying though.

[03:35] Now of course down here in Latin America you could go to the big grocery stores like Walmart they're everywhere and get those highly processed pork rinds in a package too. Though they don't seem to be big sellers, they're not flying off the shelves because the Latin American version of pork rinds called chicharrones are universally loved and consumed. But not much by gringles and I'll tell you why. You see they're the same but quite different too. You get that deep fried outer layer of pig skin just like you might imagine with a nice additional eighth to a quarter inch thick pad of fat attached to it right below the skin layer. And often, quite often I've seen to myself and one of the reasons I'll never touch this stuff there will be a little hair stubble baked in for good measure. Now oddly enough you don't see city folks eating those things right out in the open, not much. But when you're driving on the boonies and pass through these little one horse towns you'll always see a chicharron stand or two or three. By the way when you see when I do advise you to pull over not to eat this stuff but to see how they fry it up. They've got this big metal pan. Looks like they cut the end off of a 55 gallon drum and use that for a pan to cook them in.

[04:40] It's heated over a fire and there's about two or three inches of pig fat in it boiling away with around 10 pounds of pig parts sizzling and turning brown along with any hair follicles that got mixed in by mistake or not. All those pig parts diced into nice bite sized chunks. Generally they've got a bunch of picnic tables and chairs scattered around and they serve beer. Yeah, beer and chicharrones. It's the thing. Now I personally know a lot of long term gringles and expats who do eat those things on occasion. They like them. Of course we're talking about people that aren't very diet or health conscious at all and they're not in the greatest of shape. But lots of gringles and expats come down after living their whole life in New York, Milwaukee and Cleveland eating the great American diet. So anything deep fried like chicharrones is not so foreign to them. It takes some effort to wean yourself off that. Though once you've been to a few big produce markets down here you'll see it gets easier and easier.

[05:33] Though I have to say all my gringo expat friends who occasionally imbibe chicharrones, they also on occasion get a visit from Old King Montezuma. Somehow they and most backpackers I've met never seem to put two and two together. Oh and here's a comfort food that's pretty sickening, well to me at least. Eventually you're going to see this and someone's going to try to offer it to you. Whether you bite or not it's up to you. But I sure won't. Now if you've got a better half Latino or Latino boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, don't be shocked if you're sitting at home on the sofa watching the tube and he or she pulls out a bag of Cheetos and one of those little jars of Nutella. You know that artificial chocolate stuff from Italy? Latinos just love that stuff too. And because it's kind of expensive because well it's imported, they only seem to splurge on it for special occasions.

[06:23] But when they do they like to eat it with Cheetos. You gotta wonder how that started. Who's the first guy to try that? Man he was brave. Anyway, they take a Cheeto, dip it in the Nutella jar. Like it was some kind of fondue or something. Fondue, huh? Remember that craze? I think every gringo in the States has a fondue kit hidden up in the attic somewhere. Along with that ab cruncher and regimatic. Anyway, don't be surprised if you're Latino or Latina, better half. It starts dipping the Cheetos into the Nutella jar on movie night. It's not something that'll turn your stomach, but no thanks. Which begs the question, what else will Latinos put in their cake hole? Alright, moving on, you've heard the old saying, buy when there's blood in the streets, right? But very few do. Or we'd all be winners, right?

[07:11] Unfortunately, when it comes to markets and such, most of us panic when the shit hits the fan and we sell to cut our losses. The only one who makes money on that is your broker, right? They just love to churn those accounts. Anyway, I've been getting quite a few emails lately from expat file show listeners living in Argentina saying there is blood in the streets. They're telling me it's a great time to buy land and property. But you have to have cash because lending and borrowing infrastructure has been decimated because they've got 90% inflation. Yeah, you heard right. 90% inflation this year, much worse than the past few years where inflation has only been 40 to 50% year over year. So the real estate bubble is popping in Argentina right now, as it will surely be doing in the upcoming months in many places throughout the world.

[07:58] So is it really a golden opportunity to buy real estate there? Well, let's dive into this a little bit deeper. Hey, I'm all for scouting out good deals. But should expats dive in or not? The thing is, you know, listeners who are living in Argentina are telling me it's a great time to buy, but it's not a great time to live there. That seems rather strange, doesn't it? So then what do you do? Buy a nice single family or a penthouse and just lock it up and come back in a couple of years when things have stabilized? To me, it's not a good idea. If you lock anything up after a couple of months, the neighbors catch on and eventually the neighborhood bad guys find out too. I don't care what country you're living in, unless you buy something in a residential tower and it's a latch key kind of operation, you shut the door, turn off the electric and all the utilities and you can take off for months at a time or even years.

[08:48] That's about the only time you can assure yourself when you come back, things will be pretty much as you left them except for the dust bunnies. Anyway, on that subject, I'm going to read a few excerpts, I'll paraphrase to keep out the boring parts, from a Boots on the Ground first person account that just came out August 12th, around two weeks ago, with the subject line that says, you think 9% inflation's bad, try 90%. All right, let me read some of this. It says, Eduardo Rabufetti is an Argentine who's been to the United States just once in 1999 for his honeymoon in Miami, yet he knows the $100 bill by touch more than most Americans will ever know. He can explain exactly what $100,000 looks like too. 10 half inch stacks, he says, small enough to hold in one hand. He says on numerous occasions, he walks down the streets of Buenos Aires with tens of thousands of US dollars tucked into his jacket.

[09:45] Why? Because Rabufetti is a property developer who's built two office towers and a house in Buenos Aires, and he bought the land for each of those buildings, not with a loan or a wire transfer or a mortgage, but in cash with crisp $100 bills. He says it's fairly safe to carry that kind of money around as long as it's well hidden. He says the banks and the government aren't in on any of it because nobody signs anything. So they've got no record, and the local Argentines want to keep it that way. He says after the number of crises we've been through in Argentina, let's just say you get used to doing business that way. Strictly cash, strictly US dollars. He says it's not just property you buy with cash, $100 bills. Nearly every big purchase in Argentina these days, landhouses, cars, art, appliances, rent, is done in tall stacks of US dollars.

[10:35] He said that's how Argentines save. They either buy things that will appreciate, or they stuff bundles of American bills into old clothes beneath floorboards and in bomb-proof safe deposit boxes. Those kind of secure vaults are everywhere, he says. In fact, he knows of one that goes five stories beneath the ground, and it's all full up, too. You have to get on a waiting list if you want to rent space there. Officially, Argentina runs on the Argentine peso. But experts, that is, financial experts, say there are more US dollars stashed in Argentina than any other country outside the United States. In fact, there are always stories of people who sometimes throw some away by mistake. That's why there are money scavengers who continuously dig through the city dumps.

[11:20] Why? Well, for example, just last month, in July 2022, passerby's found tens of thousands of dollars just blowing around during a windstorm at one of the dumps. No digging through rubbish was necessary. Not that time. Hmm. Alright, me, John, here. Now, as mentioned, I've been getting lots of emails from people living there telling me, man, it's the time to buy it if you've got extra US dollars, because inflation's just destroying the place. They're saying that it's the worst economic crisis in decades, and that's saying something for Argentina, because every 20 years or so, the economy crashes and burns, the government defaults, and the peso is hugely devaluated or ditched completely. And you're forced to turn in your old peso funny money for the new peso funny money, with working class people always taking a huge loss in the process. One thing is certain though, Argentines have developed a highly unusual relationship with their own funny money. They spend their pesos as quickly as they get them, the same day usually.

[12:16] Because it's nuts to save pesos that are worth less the following day, they buy everything from TVs to potato peelers on the installment plan. The installment plan is huge. They don't trust banks at all, how could they? They use almost none of the traditional credit mechanisms, and because of the constant price increases, they're left with little idea of how much things actually cost in their own national currency, the peso. But they certainly know what things cost in US dollars. Anyway, so far, things have remained largely calm, because Argentines are used to it. And of course, the government's useless, therefore powerless to do anything about it. In fact, on July 2, just two months ago, then President Alberto Fernandez fired the new economic minister.

[13:08] And in the next 26 days, the peso's value dropped 26%, a quarter of its value lost in just one month. Get this, it was the 21st time that an Argentine economic minister lasted less than two months on the job. So then what's the problem and why don't they learn? Well, economists say Argentina's inflation is self-inflicted. In short, its bureaucracy is massive. It spends way too much on doling out freebies to the public, on subsidized healthcare, university, energy, public transportation, etc. So it always has a huge shortfall and prints more pesos. Sound familiar? Again, for Argentines, this is the same old, same old. In 2017, for example, prices had risen so much that Argentina doubled the size of its largest banknote to 1,000 pesos.

[13:56] Then worth 58 bucks. Now, that same note's worth $3.45, about the price of a Big Mac. An iPhone now costs more than a million pesos. Meanwhile, in the markets and in the malls, prices change every few days, so most have largely abandoned price tags. You have to ask one of the attendants or get your price by going up to the cashier. Chances are it won't be the same as it was yesterday. Prices have fluctuated so much in the past few weeks that many companies have halted sales to see where prices are going to settle, making it very difficult to find certain items like car parts, cooking oil, and anything imported. Then it says people are seeing the price of toilet paper going up 50% month over month, forcing a run on the sale of bidets. Previously, few people knew what a bidet was for. Now everybody knows.

[14:46] For common folk, buying stuff on the installment plan is how they beat inflation. All the stores offer installment plans now. And the favorite thing Argentines like to buy when they have a few extra pesos? Dollars. And that extreme dependence on the dollar is bad for the peso, so the government restricts Argentines from buying more than $200 of US currency each month. For that amount, Argentines can use an official government exchange rate, which says each dollar is worth about 130 pesos. But the gray market rate used for Western Union wires, certain corporate transactions, and the black market values the peso at less than half of that. So each dollar is now worth around 300 pesos. So here's the scam to get over on the government, and everyone uses it. You get your salary in pesos. You go to the bank, change it to $200 at the government rate. 130 pesos to the dollar.

[15:33] Remember, you can change $200 a month. You take your $200, walk out of the bank, and change it on the gray market for 300 pesos to the dollar. Now you've more than doubled the amount of pesos you have. So then how do you do it? How do you exchange money on the illegal gray market? Well, in downtown Buenos Aires, men and women dubbed arbolitos, or little trees, stand on street corners hawking dollars. They lead you then to so-called caves to change the money in private. It's all illegal, of course, but the cops do nothing about it. They're standing all around, and they don't seem to mind. They use the market themselves. It's a racket. Everyone's trying to get over on the government, using dollars. In another common example, Anita Idas, a Buenos Aires real estate agent, says she's completed hundreds of real estate deals over her 10-year career,

[16:20] but not a single one in pesos, all in US dollars. And sellers require dollar bills without stains, rips, or smears that are so-called big-face dollars. Small-faced bills are not accepted. So what's that all about? Well, look at Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill. The old ones have him with a small head or a small face. They're a much lighter green color, too. The newer ones, with the mylar strips and such, they're more bluish in color, and much harder to counterfeit. Though some stores and realtors will take small-faced Franklin $100 bills, but at a 3% discount. It's not unusual, she says, to go to a closing at a bank, where someone will bring a duffel bag full of $10,100 bills. That's a million dollars. Later, she said, when she bought her own apartment,

[17:08] she put $100,000 of the cash into the pockets of an oversized coat and hustled to the seller's home. The seller's and older couple insisted on counting each bill by hand. Why not? By the way, if you've got some extra cash and you're thinking about buying property in Argentina, the problem is how to get your U.S. dollars there through the banking system. You certainly can't pack it in a suitcase and fly it over. TSA would grab it from you in a New York second. Anyway, I'm not 100% sure how Argentine banks are handling wire transfers coming from outside the country to buy real estate. After all, the government only lets you change $200 worth of U.S. dollars a month. Imagine, just imagine, if they forced you to change your dollars into pesos when it lands in their country. That would be a disaster. Now, I'm sure you could do a U.S. dollar wire transfer to buy a property,

[17:56] but selling it's another thing. Suppose you sold a property for $200,000. Where are you going to deposit that check? And what if the banks or the government says you have to immediately transfer it to pesos in a local Argentine bank? Then you're screwed again. Well, one way to do that, of course, without the least bit of red tape is to do it with crypto, specifically Bitcoin or Ethereum. Because of Argentina's U.S. dollar restrictions, crypto currency markets and methods to use them are exploding. So, without a doubt, it looks like there's some great investment opportunities in land and property in Argentina. The only question is how to get your dollars down there to do those kind of transactions. The other thing is carrying gigantic watts of cash around with you is not for the faint of heart. In any event, if you're going to live in Argentina or buy any kind of property or real estate,

[18:44] you better know a lot more Spanish than just the Taco Bell menu. Alright, and now, an interesting rebuttal from listener Yudie, YUD wife and American gringa living in Panama. She says, Johnny, in the last few shows when you were talking about mating and dating and love and romance, you failed to give us American ladies equal time. You didn't mention the elephant in the room. Hmm, did she really say that? Wait a minute, wait a minute, Yudie. I know when you say the elephant in the room, that's a cliche. You don't mean gringas are the elephant in the room. Well, metaphorically, maybe, but not always. I don't think you thought that through. Alright, let's drop that. Anyway, she says, so let's talk about it. Yudie says, specifically, no matter how curvy and sexy those Colombian, Venezuelan,

[19:35] Panama and other Latinas may appear, us gringa expats have the upper hand at all times in our own version of the Latino mating and dating scene. In my experience and my gringa friends too, every Latin guy, single or otherwise, much prefers a gringa, a maticana, girlfriend, to a Latin girlfriend or wife. You could call it the unobtainable or forbidden fruit syndrome. Call it anything you like, but it's absolutely a fact. And we don't need surgical enhancements either. Whether we're short, fat, skinny, anemic, anorexic, or even sickly translucent white. In any event, the only trouble will be that you'll get too much attention. It's like a candy store. You have to see it to believe it. Latino men are so attentive, they can get on your nerves. Once, she says, I counted seven times I got propositioned in one day,

[20:23] just while out shopping at the mall. No lie, you'll have your pics of dozens of Antonio Banderas, Latin lovers and everything in between, but it comes at a price. We all love attention, but it can be ridiculous. My immediate advice is to raise your bar very high. From the get-go. If you plan to stay in the dating game, you should, for one, keep away from the middle-class discos and events, then up your standards by frequenting high-end restaurants and malls in the wealthier neighborhoods or business districts. If you stick to that plan, you'll find they always have the nicest bars and clubs with dancing at night and educated, well-mannered crowd. As opposed to hanging out at middle-class restaurants, discos, malls and clubs, where often, by midnight, people are getting exuberant and yell and sing wildly out of tune, where a jealous macho outbreak can happen any time.

[21:14] However, if you stick to going out and partying in good neighborhoods and districts, you can be assured that most Latin men will treat you with due respect, though be prepared to hear the same pickup lines over and over again. As for me, I'm sick of hearing about my beautiful eyes. They're too small and there's nothing special about them. Another tip, ladies, stick with educated Latinos. I've found that educated Latinos and ones from wealthier families are not so crass as to sponge off a gringa girlfriend. It would be too embarrassing and contrary to the upper-class macho code. Yes, there definitely is a different macho code for wealthy Latinos versus men from the middle classes. My second warning is to beware of middle-class Latino men in general, even if they seem like gentlemen and have great manners and treat you exceptionally well. They've got some bad habits they'll keep under wraps until you know them for a while,

[22:03] like drinking too much. Unfortunately, with middle-class guys, there will come a time when you will end up paying their car payments or you'll end up as a co-signer on that loan. They might look like a million, but they're always broke. And, Johnny, I heard you talk about Colombian girls and their multiple surgeries on a previous show. It's like that in Panama, too, although on a lighter scale due to the fact that most regular working-class girls here make less than Colombian girls. There is that monthly payment plan, though. Now, John, are you ready for a little gringa gossip? Chismes? When I'm in a restaurant cafe or the health club with my two best gringa friends and we notice a highly curvaceous Latina walk-in in her yoga pants, we look at each other and smirk and say under our breath, oparada, which means operated on, surgically enhanced.

[22:52] We say it like it's a bad thing. It can be deceiving, though. Most gringas I know would go under the knife, but we don't admit it. We've all got something or other we don't like about ourselves that could be altered, nipped, or tucked. Though some of us get work done, we don't go extreme, even if we want to, because of the pushback we'd get from American friends and family on those holiday trips back home. It best not be too noticeable or we'll get that disapproving eye. It's also a fact that the strip clubs, the nightclubs here, the majority are Venezuelans and Colombians. We've all been extremely surgically sculpted. It's part of the deal for a ship and a mover, and they pay for it forever. By contrast, the strip clubs in Colombia have girls from Panama and Venezuela. They don't want to be strippers in their own countries in case one of their brothers, uncles, or father walks in.

[23:38] Speaking of getting sculpted, even my cleaning lady wants a BBL. Brazilian butt lift. She gets it from watching telenovelas, seeing the girls on the street, and watching the Kardashians. Yes, it's dubbed in Spanish, no subtitles. Speaking of the Kardashians, as much as I hate talking about them seriously, still, when I get together with my gringo lady friends for coffee or hanging out at the gym, it can't be helped, since they're all over social media and the news. Sometimes they get brought up for some ridiculously stupid reason or other. And seriously, just a little shoid and fried, I guess. Life ain't going so good for Kim lately. There are cracks developing in that silicone facade of hers. She's over 40 now, has bad-tasted men, and when she gets them, she can't keep them. She has a flock of homely, intellectually unimpressive kids, and just keeps failing that bar exam.

[24:24] I wouldn't doubt in the next 5 or 10 years when she's no longer relevant and supplanted by the next curvy airhead, she'll rant and rave about how she was a feminist all along, abused and exploited by the white patriarchal sex-driven system. Seriously, though, I'm surprised she hasn't been cancelled a thousand times already by feminists. I'm so confused. The feminist media tells us it's a cancerless offense to sexualized women. Yet music videos in the Kardashians tell me it's fine to celebrate women who are ultra-sexualized. Anyone else perplexed? Then Yudhi says, can somebody tell me what she does for a living? I forgot, but I know what the other Kardashians do. They're the entourage that always shows up when someone in the family becomes a cash machine. That's it, Jon. Love the show. Signed, Yudhi.

[25:10] Alright, thanks for that, Yudhi. You never mentioned your age, did you? I'm guessing maybe earlier mid-30s. You never told us what brought you down to Panama, either. Well, you can save that for your next email. By the way, Yudhi, you're being a little harsh on Kim, aren't you? She has a job living off her laurels. As far as I can remember, when she got started in the 90s, she was the most successful amateur porn star ever. And about her losing social media relevancy. Even when she's pushing, let's say, 60 or 70, when gravity takes its toll and there ain't no more nips or hips or tucks, perhaps she can hitch a ride with Elon to Mars. He makes poor mating choices, too. And gravity there is a third that of Earth, so that means a third less extended warranty repairs on those replacement parts.

[25:57] Just a thought experiment. What do you think? By the way, I need to remind you that you've got till September 15th, about two weeks away, to sign up for my November 2022 Expat Insider Seminar and still get in on the early bird discounts. $500 off if you sign up before September 15th. Just go to expatplanb.com for all the sign-up info and details. And finally, we have a joke from long-time listener Caleb, a Canadian listener who was stuck for about two years in Canada's horrific lockdown. He says he's in the last stages of applying for residency in Guatemala. He says he just cannot stomach living in Canada anymore. And he has a joke for us. He says, Johnny, question, why do so many Canadian expats end up returning home? Answer, because a dog always returns to its vomit.

[26:47] Hmm, Caleb, that's true. Anyone who's had a dog can vouch for that. You know, Caleb, I have a number of Canadian friends who say a moose will do that too. I think you ought to switch up your punchline.