#588 – The Expat Files: Navigating Legal and Cultural Realities in Latin America

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

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now I wonder Hello there all you expat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here So let's get started Like I always try to remind you Latin America in very many ways is still a place that seems like it's back in the 50s 60s and 70s in the States all in a good way too as far as us expats are concerned Especially in the sense of having those kind of freedoms

[00:47] We had way back when the ones that first world kids today will never experience In fact some freedoms down here even go above and beyond that in some cases you might even say anything goes for example, one of the things that really shocked me when I first got down here 27 years ago or so now and something that still exists today is the fact that you can buy or pay for an ad or Announcement in pretty much any Latin newspaper and say or advertise just about anything you want and no matter how outlandish or weird It might sound you can do it as long as you can fork out the money for the ad since there's no FDA and no truth In advertising it's buyer beware, of course all the way down the line But there's also something else that people do down here on occasion that you could never get away with up in the States

[01:33] Even back in the 50s 60s and 70s In fact, I've got a perfect example for you that I cut out of the paper just today And you'll see it if you're watching on YouTube. Let me just read this for you I'll translate it says attention Ricardo Eugenio Bianchi Feina Obviously this announcements trying to get this guy's attention then it gives the full number on his country identification card his DPI or settler It says mr. Bianchi Feina you have a debt that's overdue And if you don't pay up immediately you'll be summoned into court for fraud and passing bad checks Now this little announcement appears in the yellow pages of the biggest newspaper in all of Central America So in this case you got a guy passing bad checks and somebody's really pissed off Surely he ripped off a business because 80% of Latin Americans who get past a bad check would never pay the 10 or 20 bucks

[02:23] Necessary to place an announcement like that in the paper and those aren't the only kind of announcements You'll see in the Latin American newspapers fingering a bad employee a deadbeat or a ripoff artist in another example here You'll see if you're watching the YouTube It's an announcement of a company saying don't hire or do business with our former employee Marco Antonio Coca-la hey, hey great name, huh? Anyway, according to this announcement It appears this guy is going around to clients as a representative of the company He no longer works for and got fired from and collecting debts and keeping the dough So not only are they calling out this guy's a thief in a big ad they have his picture in the announcement too And there's another announcement by Roche Pharmaceuticals it says if you run into this guy Mario Roberto Jose Zetana Lopez who used to work for us

[03:13] He's in no way authorized to do any promotion collections or business in the name of Roche Pharmaceuticals another ripoff scam artist who in this case got fired from a lying cheating transnational pharmaceutical company But I digress as usual anyway You will see these ads and announcements and whether it's pilfering the petty cash or stealing product or whatever They're calling these guys and gals out in ads in the newspaper for everyone to see What they're saying is if this guy comes knocking on your door or looking for a job you better watch out And you know one of the strangest ads along those lines I've ever seen was taken out by a guy who had his car stolen and he knew just exactly who stole it It was his ex-brother-in-law. He had a picture of the car his ex-brother-in-law and his ex-brother-in-law's national ID dads

[04:01] Now in the States you could never get away with doing that much less an employer printing that stuff about an ex-employee Even if the jerk you fired was the biggest crook in a hundred mile radius if you were a business owner He'd find a lawyer alright in fact. They'd be lining up to take his case He'd find one alright, and he'd rip you a new anus, and he'd end up owning your company They'd call it slander libel defamation of character So bottom line in the first world you just could never get away with that stuff But man if they let you wouldn't that feel good wishful thinking huh that could never happen So I might bring this up well just to give you an idea of what kind of freedoms you have down here even freedom to Do some things you never could do up in the States basically you have the freedom to tell it like it is and call Out the bad guys if you want however if you have a lot of freedom especially freedom

[04:50] You're not used to you have to keep reminding yourself that it's buyer beware you have to do your own due diligence Which is why freedom stupidity and ignorance don't go together very well in a free land an idiot can get himself into an awful Lot of trouble which is why the sheep love the nanny state so much that said do note when you come down to Latin America You'll have an awful lot of freedom, but so will everyone else nothing wrong with that in fact I absolutely prefer living under those conditions as I'm sure Almost everyone who listens to alternative news sources and this show too would certainly agree with all right. Let's move on I often get emails from people who have lost their driving privileges up in the states whether it's DUI's or too many moving violations Whatever and they want to know what's going to happen to them when they come down to Latin America

[05:37] That is how easy or hard will it be to get a driver's license and can they even get one well? I'm gonna revisit this just for a second even though on a show a long time ago I kind of spelled it out But one thing if you got any kind of license up in the first world It's kind of as good as gold down here that'll work just fine even if it's been expired for a couple of years I personally know of many expat gringos who are doing that right now And I know of some other gringos and expats whose American licenses have expired and instead of going and getting a license down Here or going back to the states and getting renewed They just photoshop a couple of more years on to that license laminate it and voila They've got a license that looks well like it's still valid so is that illegal well if you're up in the US It certainly would be but down here in Latin America

[06:22] It's just one of those unusual licenses from another country that most Latin cops can't make head nor tail of if you're pulled over And have to pull it out. They'll usually gawk at it for a while not to find any fault with it It's just that they probably never seen one like it since if you're off the gringo tourist trail anyway There's so few gringos around chances are they've never seen a license from the particular state yours was issued from yeah They'll look at it a while, but more because to them It's a curious artifact something to break up the monotony of their boring day believe me They're not scrutinizing the numbers and the dates and there's something else that's in your favor to remember up north in the first world We use the day the month and the year when we spell out a date right well down here in Latin America

[07:08] They use month day and year exactly reverse which totally confuses Spanish-speaking 8th or 10th grade Educated cops and bureaucrats so in most cases the cops and bureaucrats to avoid appearing stupid and unworldly In front of a first world gringo they call us by the way extra and heroes Which technically means stranger or foreigner? But it's not used in a derogatory way like we might use it up in the states But it's a very positive connotation down here, but where were we oh? Yeah, when you hand your license to a cop because we write our dates in reverse compared to Latin's They just don't question the numbers and hand it back to you with a smile of course cops on the gringo tourist trail will be Used to gringos and you might not get such a nice reception

[07:54] However when you're on the tourist trail sometimes you'll get a response like this. They'll look at your license and say hmm Nueva Jersey or perhaps California or Nueva, York or watching tone Okay bueno and hand it right back to you so anyway some gringos photoshop their u.s. Licenses endlessly however if you're living in Latin America there does come a time when you actually want to have a local Latin American Country driver's license it will come in handy and the problem there is nearly all Latin American countries will not let you get one of their local licenses unless you are a resident So you'll need temporary or permanent residency to do that so that is the letter of law But for 50 or 100 bucks you can always buy hook and crook find someone who can get you a license

[08:41] That's actually legal even though You can't go down to the Department of Transportation and get a license yourself without legal residency And I know people who've done that too, so how's that possible well? This is Latin America and remember if the average minimum wage is 300 or 350 bucks a month a hundred bucks to them is like $1,000 to you and me seems down here everyone's got their price which is why by the way I think I mentioned this on a previous show I was informed by more than one insider that for 10,000 US dollars you could actually buy off a Supreme Court Justice in most Latin American countries whereas in the states It would probably cost you a million you probably have to throw in a beach house, too Now again, I'm not recommending you do anything illegal I'm just telling you what some gringos and expats do to get by down here in Latin America

[09:29] After all the show is called the expat files living in Latin America, right? So the fact is many people skirt the law down here Latin's are experts at it now I mentioned before they have drivers schools here in Latin America You pay like a hundred bucks, and you get eight one-hour classes, and they guarantee you a license in fact You don't even have to go down to the license bureau and take the test you take it right there at the driver's school on A simulator in most cases which is a big reason why so many Latin's drive like insane crackheads Oh, and another reason why maybe 10% of Latin drivers should be locked up is because they don't even have driver's licenses Especially the motorcyclist and you know expect gonna be some wannabes who've never been down here and had any boots on the ground I'll say how is it possible that these guys aren't caught or put in the lock up well

[10:17] They are caught they get singled out at those roadblocks And if they don't have a license guess what they get fined 25 to 50 bucks, and no one confiscates anything They just drive away and even after they've been caught many Motorcyclists still won't get a license and they won't pay the fine for not having a license when they got pulled over the first time Either because you see at those police roadblocks They've got no way of checking the plates or the person himself to see if he's got unpaid tickets That's how backward it is down here in Latin America the guy's stopping you are not linked to a central database That's the way it is in most Latin countries anyway I believe now the only countries where a cop can actually run your license or your plate while you're standing there is Costa Rica Panama Colombia and Mexico and it's still very very spotty because that kind of equipment has to be maintained

[11:07] Which is a word that doesn't exist in the Spanish dictionary not to mention the cops out in the boonies are about as well equipped As Barney Fife now, it's not to say Latin cops don't have up-to-date equipment Stupid first world countries like the US and Holland and South Korea are donating that stuff all the time though after a year So the stuff almost always ends up in the junk heap In fact, I was just reading a Panama news story the other day It said in that country fully 30% of all police cars. That's one in three are in the shop Permanently or in the police car boneyard So bottom line if you get pulled over don't ever think they're gonna run your plate or your license They just can't oh and by the way, there are lots and lots of driving schools here in Latin America

[11:52] where you pay your hundred bucks and You could make a deal with them to maybe only go on the road for an hour and you'll still get your driver's license They prefer it that way because then they don't have to use their car or pay a guy to go out for seven more lessons You get one lesson one hour and you get your license. How about that? So then what should you do when you get down here and your license up in the States is expired or you don't have one Well, I always suggest you go on the internet and get an international driver's license That always seems to work like a charm down here, too Many gringos and expats have those things they look really high-tech and professional in fact They look a lot nicer and more professional than your standard Latin drivers license So the cops are always impressed with them now gringos who've looked those things up on the internet have told me that they can't get an

[12:41] International driver's license unless they send them a scan of their driver's license from up in the States or Canada. That's still valid Yeah, right. Like they really give a damn about that. They just want your 50 bucks or whatever And like expat Eddie says a guy who's been driving on one of those for 14 or 15 years now He says if you're gonna be snookered by that Then obviously you're not much of a creative thinker or one for thinking out of the box as for expat Eddie when his International driver's license expires. He just photoshops an old Texas license of his and applies for another one again Is that illegal? Well, you might think so, but it's really not you Just have to look at the disclaimer on those international drivers license websites And you'll see that it says it's not an actual valid license It's not regulated or enforced by any particular country

[13:29] But has some kind of United Nations seal of approval So then how can any step you take to get that license be illegal or illegal if that? International driver's license itself isn't exactly legal Although it is accepted and passes just fine in most all countries throughout the world again I'm throwing in my disclaimer that I'm not suggesting you do anything illegal Although in many cases illegality depends on which country I happen to be in I'm just mentioning what some gringos and expats do to get around certain bureaucratic snafus now Of course speaking of strictly legal driver's licenses the best and easiest way to get a legal driver's license in Latin America is to get Your residency then go down to the driver's testing station with your US or Canadian driver's license in hand and it could be expired

[14:14] Too by the way, and that'll be enough You just fill out some paperwork and you'll get that country's version of a driver's license Of course, you'll have to take a mandatory eye exam, which will be right down the block That'll cost you five or six bucks And you'll get your license whether you pass it or not because that's just a scam to put money in the pockets of some of The senators and congressmen who own the franchises on those little eye test stations that are so conveniently located right next to the driver's license bureau So in effect, they are testing your eyes if you have eyes you pass. Yes, it's true Nearly everything and anything that has to do with government is a big scam down here It's a den of corrupt lard ass vipers and thieves But thankfully they are so lazy and loaded down by mountains of paperwork that they generally can cause very little or even no damage

[15:00] To a screen goes and expats. That's why when we have to interface with the government for anything at all We usually have our lawyer do that or he'll send an assistant along to hold your hand now Here's something that'll blow your mind or not Did you know that up to half of the guys who are driving those rusted twisted junk buckets do have driver's licenses? But they're unregistered fakes and funny enough They're so common and easy to get you can pick one up with ease by just asking one of the street vendors Around the big government buildings and the cost 20 to 35 bucks This is Latin America. So everyone seems to know a guy that can get things done under the table again I'm not suggesting you do that but a lot of gringos do oh And speaking of lard ass corrupt maggot-brained politicians. We were speaking about them, right?

[15:48] I don't know if you'll pick this story up up north But all over the press and the media here in Latin America The big news is revolving around the president of Mexico Enrique Pena Nieto It's been discovered that he plagiarized his 1991 law school thesis that allowed him to graduate as a lawyer So now the media is calling him out as a liar and a plagiarist In fact a couple of journalists went through his an entire thesis and they've come up with this 197 paragraphs were found to have been plagiarized directly word for word from another legal thesis that was written in 1977 so then you might ask what are they gonna do about it? Nothing The guys are dirty lying so be heavily involved with Mexican narcos

[16:34] But you know if he ran for president again tomorrow He'd win in a landslide because the women down here believe he's the handsomest politician. They've ever seen He's sort of got the Mexican version of the Bill Clinton effect going for him including the drug connections But you see this kind of stuff happens in every Latin country in fact if you do read the local Spanish language newspapers down here You'll see that every couple of months a congressman or a vice president or president or some member of a cabinet is called out on The very same offense plagiarizing a master's or a doctoral thesis and with some there's no proof They ever matriculated the universities at all shades of Obama, huh? So there you have it the president of Mexico who's in bed with the narcos plagiarizes his law school thesis Nevertheless like any good modern president. He'll leave office a billionaire and after that

[17:24] They'll try to nail them for this or that but it probably won't stick just like the Clintons in the bushes and a few years The O'Vomits. Oh and while we're looking at the Spanish language newspapers. You have to see this ad You'll see it if you're watching this on YouTube. It's directed at guys and it says are you losing your hair? Now you can get quote art as a Artas the capillary Microtransplantation system done by robotics. There'll be no pain. No scars and the results are permanent and natural It's an ambulatory procedure that's minimally invasive. But wait, here's the kicker There are before and after shots of a happy smiling gringo With get this an official u.s. Food and Drug Administration

[18:13] Stampin label on it. Yep. It says FDA approved Obviously a big part of their gringo wannabe marketing plan hundred percent gringo hundred percent FDA approved Now it is true there isn't one in a thousand latinists who even knows what the FDA is and the ones that do think it's an all-good all-knowing altruistic almost godly organization Whose mission is looking out for the lives and safety of innocent Americans They have no idea that big pharma and the FDA are two sides of the same coin Not to mention not one in a thousand Latins even knows what big pharma is Which is probably a very good thing because big pharma has not penetrated down here yet. Oh, they're here All right, but not in any meaningful way, but we were talking about robotic hair transplants for men, right?

[19:03] So then why would they advertise here in Latin America if there weren't a lot of wealthy Latins that would go for this kind of procedure So yes, just more proof that everything up in the first world makes it down here Eventually the good the bad the ugly and the ridiculous Okay. Are you up for a story? Sure? Yeah, you remember last week? I mentioned there's a common technical degree down here called Perito Contador basically a bookkeeper Well some years ago. I had a Latina girlfriend who was a Perita Contador And she also graduated with a useless bachelor's degree in journalism from one of those big crappy horrible free public universities And of course down here and up in the states a journalism degree will get you a job at McDonald's maybe Now I might not have mentioned before but along with a stifling bureaucracy at these free public schools

[19:52] They overtly teach Socialism in fact getting a teaching job at one of those public universities is all about who you know Who you screw who you helped get elected and who you're related to and because of that almost everyone who graduates from those universities Believes a heavy bureaucracy and gigantic government is necessary in the modern world They're all totally against privatization and capitalism in general though down here like the US no one's ever experienced real free market non-interventionist Capitalism before but that's another topic. I take that back. I have met a few creative free thinkers, but they're always from the science campus Unfortunately the hard sciences make up only about five to ten percent of public campuses here

[20:38] The rest is all that fun and easy liberal arts stuff hey I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the liberal arts But in a third world so-called developing country those kind of degrees will not help to develop that country or move it forward That said let me read parts of this article from a big Latin business journal It says between 2014 and 2016 Nine out of ten college professionals and graduates hired or contracted by latin american private businesses were for engineers software and computer specialists and people in the hard sciences like chemistry However, it says the trend is not good large numbers of professionals are graduating in other disciplines such as Social work in psychology which are fast losing ground as the use of information

[21:27] Technologies in latin america advances, and there's a quote here It says there are many professions in which the market is completely saturated like psychology business administration Human resources and political science meanwhile. There's a vast shortage of workers in technical areas for example right now in Costa Rica There's a shortage of 8,000 people to fill technical positions and throughout latin america There are four jobs waiting for every person who graduates from a technical career whereas there's only one job for every four graduates in the arts and social sciences and This from the latin american information technology center its initials are camtixe amtic it says only 3% of the graduate professionals that private companies were willing to hire in

[22:16] 2013 through 2016 we're in the areas of marketing and sales human resources sociology psychology and public relations Wait a minute they're saying that the 97% of latin university graduates That would be in the arts and social sciences will never find a job in their chosen career So our latin universities students naive and clueless you bet hmm doesn't that sound familiar, but where was it? Oh, yeah, talking about her next girlfriend who was not only a perito Contador that would be a bookkeeper, but she had a completely useless journalism degree from a socialistic latin public university Which believe me did not go down very well with me when we had any kind of political conversations That's for sure anyway her dad had a successful business and some land and such he had a car and even a personal driver

[23:05] But get this he was completely illiterate And you know there are many examples in lower middle class and middle class latin america where one or more of the parents are Illiterate and one or more the kids ends up going to the university talk about a social and educational gap man That's weird, huh in fact here It's a lot like it was in the middle classes in the 60s man back then when a kid graduated from college He was the star of the family the difference was back then there were plenty of jobs and here in latin america very few college Graduates get a job in their chosen career Anyway, this frustrated young journalist would prepare the tax forms and her dad would put his ex on them He trusted her so he'd sign anything she'd put in front of him anyway one day She told me there was a pounding at the front door of the house. It was a lady frantic

[23:51] She was looking for Rafi the father of her kids Well, it turns out old Rafi like so many latin guys had a double life He had two families which believe me caused the feces to rain down on that happy home Fast forward a couple years Rafi's on his deathbed has lung cancer smoke like a chimney That's when some of his kids from his illegitimate family started coming around well feeling benevolent He gave a couple of pieces of land away to his illegitimate kids which thoroughly pissed off his daughter the bookkeeper But she had an evil plan She got a lawyer She had a will drawn up that superseded his old will so that none of his other family got anything and one day a couple of Months before he died. She slipped that paperwork in with the text statements and he signed it and nobody was the wiser except me

[24:39] I knew it was a nasty thing to do, but it was also none of my business So bottom line you think your family is dysfunctional Well, I can't tell you how many stories I've heard and how many people I've run into who have half brothers and sisters because they're dead Had a double life with two or even more families Most of the time those kind of things can't be kept a secret forever Too many kids too many loose ends and that's why there's so many dirty stories of legal shenanigans here in Latin America especially since at least 30% of the parents of the generation of kids that are in high school and college right now are Functionally illiterate which is why if you read the papers down here, you'll see every week or so There's some property dispute or land grab often out in the boonies where the older folks are illiterate yet

[25:28] They have a lot of land if you're illiterate and are a farmer with no dough and a lot of land How do you fight something like that? So there are nefarious lawyers that can pull dodgy legal maneuvers Not just with greedy family members either sometimes con man and scheming lawyers especially on the boonies will transfer the title to the land without the real owners even knowing about it and a real owner Finds out he's screwed when he tries to sell it or subdivide it which could be years and years down the road and they get Away with it sometime because of the general chaos in those land registries Especially if they were registered and titled before 1960 So you read about cases like that all the time and sometimes whole blocks of land Fincas and farms are taken this way right out from under families who've been on that land for generations

[26:16] Which is all the more reason you have to have a trusted honest lawyer in your corner if you're looking for land or property it's all about the title in the land registry and that's one of the first things he'll check and One big reason why my expat insiders seminars are so valuable You'll meet honest trustworthy professionals who've been vetted Oh and just a word about my January 2017 expat insider seminar the sign-up links been open for two weeks now And it's already two-thirds full So you better act fast plus if you sign up before November 1st you get the early bird discount go to www.thenewexpat.com and click on Johnny's January 2017 seminar link at the top of the page So if you're on the fence about your plan B, it's time to jump off

[27:03] I know you can see that things are going down the toilet fast up in the States So come on be bold make a move and remember if you want to do a Skype or a phone Consult with me to discuss the particulars of your own plan B I do charge for that But if you do come down to the seminar that call will be free and finally don't forget to check out my youtube channel It's getting better and crazier all the time. Just go to youtube.com The expat files all one word south of the border You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border Email me the expat files at gmail.com And if you want me to help you sort out your own Latin American plans schedule a one-on-one

[27:50] Consult with me just send an email and let me know at the expat files at gmail.com. Nos vemos