#436 – The Expat Files: Life, Culture, and Chaos 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 Let's start out today with a bit of fluff but some interesting fluff now you listeners out there Who've been following this show for a long time you know about expat Eddie and his model girlfriend You've heard plenty of stories about the trials and tribulations of that gringo latina match heaven

[00:49] Yeah, now I mentioned before that she's pretty well known as a runway model in El Salvador I'll bet you didn't even know they had runway models or even runways in El Salvador Except maybe at the airport now as small as it is El Salvador is an entire country So you can expect it has some kind of a fashion scene Doesn't every country have an active fashion scene going down with the possible exception of North Korea So anyway Eddie's girlfriend's one of the girls that wriggles down those runways in a high fashion sense though She basically models the clothes that no average Latin American girl could ever afford now I don't know the prices of these things But you can tell that by the crowd of people that shows up at these runway shows It's that stuck up one or two percent of the ladies that bring along their entourage a bodyguard a mate or two

[01:37] You know the type. Yeah, right. I doubt it You just don't see that kind of stuff up in the first word unless of course sure in Hollywood, I guess Anyway, I haven't seen expat Eddie in a long time So recently he invited me to a big fashion show gig at the princess hotel in El Salvador And normally those kind of things are simply dead boring to me that includes Baptisms and confirmations and quinceaños parties and children's birthday parties, etc, etc All those kind of things generally are dead boring after about 20 minutes So I wasn't expecting too much But it was an excuse to catch up with expat Eddie again since every time I run into him He's got about 10 great stories. Anyway, I'm sitting down with Eddie on the sidelines of the runway there

[02:23] And he started telling me that just last week the guard at one of his restaurants discharged his shotgun Accidentally and sprayed Eddie's foot. I shouldn't laugh. Huh? Anyway, he got a few BBs in his left foot and I said Well, did you fire him and Eddie said nah, he's just a klutz. He's an old guy a couple of kids and all that He's been with me a while. So I just moved him to the kitchen Then Eddie admitted that the old guy talked him into hiring his 20 something year old kid as the new guard And then I said Eddie, you know how ridiculous that would sound to a first-world person Think of it only in Latin America. Could you let one of your employees shoot you then after that you give him a promotion and hire his Kid too. So Eddie said Johnny, you know about Latin workers when you find a really good honest one

[03:11] Even if he's a klutz you keep him on and yeah hire his wife and kids, too It does run in families, you know, I see it all the time Hopefully not the klutz II part but the honesty in the work ethic part Oh, and by the way when I said after the guy shot him Eddie gave him a promotion That's because if you have a business down here and you have one of those armed guards with a shotgun That is generally the lowest level lowest paying job on the totem pole because you really just sit around and do absolutely Nothing on your whole shift and you know, I've had enough businesses myself with armed guards, etc That I can vouch for the fact that nearly every one of my own guards, you know with the uniform and the shotgun We're basically just taking up space like a scarecrow or a cigar store Indian standing outside looking thick and clueless

[04:01] The truth is none of my guards had ever even shot a gun Yep, just like scarecrows or cigar store Indians, but I digress back to the fashion show Now Eddie was sitting to my left and the guy sitting next to me the guy on my right was a very short But very well-dressed handsome looking younger version of Antonio banderes Only this guy was about five foot two and by the way I noticed he was sporting what most wealthy young Latin guys seem to be wearing these days By the way, so do all the young studs in those Latin soap operas What I mean is he had that little five-day old beard growth going and with him I noticed he missed a few spots with the black highlight pencil I'm not kidding and it just so happened that this guy and his wife came all the way up from

[04:49] Columbia to be in this show. Actually, it was the guy's wife. Not him in the show Like I said, he was way too short Anyway, since there's a lot of dead and wasted time at heady events like this While everyone else is trying their damn this to look cool and beautiful Except of course yours truly and Eddie We were there by virtue of Eddie's girlfriend and the gringo advantage And I guess the fact that we had absolutely nothing else to do that day now Normally if there's the usual Latin company present I pop in my earbuds and listen to some mp3s Now you might think I'm a pompous jerk for saying that but you haven't been to one of these brain numbing events Have you? Anyway in between I got to talking to this little guy from Columbia And one of the things that I noticed and said to him after I'd met his girlfriend who was in the show that day

[05:38] I said to him in the most diplomatic way possible after he said, what do you think of my girlfriend? Wink wink. He said that after she'd left and gone back to work, of course So anyway, I said in the most diplomatic way possible, you know She's beautiful and poised everything but she doesn't have that typical Colombian Venezuelan curvy look and Eddie backed me up on that though He was a little less diplomatic and it was true She and all the other 10 or 12 models that day They look just like first world US and European style runway models very tall thin light skin a lot of different shades of blonde and all that the usual carbon copies of what you see up in the first world and some of these girls even look like they bordered on the anorexic at least some were on the

[06:29] Binge and purge diet. I'm sure so now the reason why I'm even including this little bit of fluff in the show is because what he Said to me next was quite interesting Now remember my comment to the Colombian guy was that his girlfriend model didn't have the so-called Sofia Vargara look that in the last few years Seems to be the stereotype according to the rest of the world when it comes to young Colombian and Venezuelan women Then he chuckled a bit and this is what he said the world Stereotype of Colombian and Venezuelan women sometimes even Brazilian women you gringos get from seeing the girls in beauty pageants And the occasional one that breaks out internationally like our Sophia or Shakira But the truth is in the world of fashion and runway models, etc

[07:17] He said when it comes to Colombia and even Venezuela unlike other countries There are two different fashion worlds that exist side by side that not only rarely crossover But they don't even like each other the so-called high-end highly publicized fashion world Like the event we're at right now He said where the models look typically tall and thin like similar competition in the first world But he said if you go to Colombia, you'll see that there are parallel fashion shows models with the exaggerated Hourglass figures that do represent the world's stereotype of our country So he says you've got the high-class model runway types And you've got the so-called common or coriente fashion world that typically showcases clothing for the masses

[08:06] So you've got the high-end high-buck fashion world the one that gets all the media coverage And you've got the common lower and middle-class fashion world that showcases affordable sexy clingy clothes for the masses And never the twain shall meet as my new Colombian buddy said even in the fashion world. It's all about classism Then he went on to say the curvy girls that Latin guys drop their jaws over like Sophia Vergara are not even allowed to Participate in the high fashion world, but he said the common fashion shows for the masses in Colombia The ones that don't get big press coverage are nevertheless Massively popular and heavily attended then of course my next question was how'd that happen? How'd you end up having a split in the fashion industry like that? Then he shocked me and that's hard to do he said

[08:56] Cocaine and at first I thought maybe that was his humor, but no he said it again cocaine I said what he said cocaine and the early days of the cocaine drug culture produced Colombian girls like Sophia Vergara, and that's when I pulled my earbuds out now this guy had my attention He said it all started in the 1980s in Medellin Colombia where Pablo Escobar held court remember him Considered the biggest drug kingpin of all time he came from Medellin Colombia Which has about three million people so it's a pretty big city now before the 80s before the cocaine trade came in Medellin and all the big Colombian cities were very poor and had a lot of ghettos Then in the 80s when the cocaine cartels first formed in the big cities starting with Medellin

[09:46] Where Escobar was located the locals soon began to see just who the drug kingpins were in the neighborhood and back then at first There was really no law enforcement so money poured in like a river So the locals spotted these drug dealers on the streets every day What with all their bling in their new cars and their motorcycles and their houses etc And as it turns out this guy says one of the problems with Colombia in those days and to a degree now Is that girls from the poorer neighborhoods could just never get out of that cycle of poverty? Except by going to school to get some kind of career in higher education Which was virtually impossible because girls normally have to work a meager job to chip in and support the family But my new Colombian buddy told me there was another easier way out of that poverty cycle

[10:33] And that was to either win a beauty pageant or two Which gave you local fame and a leg up or to somehow attract one of these newly wealthy? Narco guys in the neighborhood who naturally like to have any number of beautiful sexy girls hanging around now back Then the Colombian guy said don't underestimate how many of these narco guys with money there were running around Medellin There were literally thousands of them remember Medellin was the region that supplied practically all the cocaine to the US back then So in the 80s every neighborhood in Medellin had a well-to-do high-profile group of narco's working living and playing there Now what these narco guys would do is that they'd pour a bunch of money into a lot of local enterprises including

[11:21] Local beauty pageants in fact the Colombian guys said that was one of their favorite things to do finance beauty pageants Which naturally drew all the pretty and not so pretty girls from the poor and lower classes? Mostly schoolgirls and working girls had never had an opportunity to enter anything like that before because you see traditionally poor and middle-class girls were always Excluded from the big national beauty pageants And he said that's when the competition for the curves and the butts and the boobs got really intense Turns out by the mid 80s the narco guys even had their own favorite highly qualified and sometimes not so qualified plastic surgeons in the loop always available to enhance their wives and girlfriends and mistresses and the girls in the beauty pageants, too

[12:07] So like this Colombian guy said none of these girls no matter how beautiful could ever break into haute couture You know the high-end fashion Modeling circuit at the national level so in the end it was Pablo Escobar and his boys that primed the pump for all that plastic surgery and all those curves and now of course those guys are dead And gone, but the beauty pageants and the competition for curves If anything has gotten even more intense and now is spreading to the rest of the world Via ladies like Sofia Vergata who whether you know it or not single-handedly Created a kind of a cottage industry for lonely heart gringos looking to mate and date Colombian girls There are in fact now hundreds of mating and dating hookup sites

[12:54] Specifically to that effect and speaking of Colombian poster girl Sofia Vergara. I hope I'm saying that right I can never get that name straight. Anyway, who's such a big star up in the States now My new Colombian buddy said before any gringo even heard her name before She was in a ton of Colombian soap operas and TV commercials that he said was before she had any curves at all He said look at her now five or ten operations later Meanwhile the rest of the world thinks most Colombian women are born like that Now by then he must have seen that I gave him an incredulous look because he whipped out his iPhone and pulled up a Spanish YouTube video with Sofia Vergata playing a police woman a bit player in a 20 year old soap opera

[13:43] And he was right. Yep. Let's just say that it was her face All right But that's about it and then the guy flipped to another YouTube screen and showed me something a short video That was really a shocker and I suggest you check it out yourself It's 15 minutes that you won't forget and it pretty much reinforces everything that guy said so for Independent verification if you think I've been exaggerating any of these points go to that YouTube video and you'll see I haven't told you the half Of it just plug in the words Colombian fashion week dash ass implants and couture Nope, I'm not making this up and I'm not trying to gross you out either again plug in Colombian fashion week dash ass

[14:31] implants and Couture and don't worry. It's not all in Spanish and it's not crass or gross either In fact, it's an English journalist report of the exaggerated Colombian body styles in the middle-class Colombian fashion world just what we've been talking about right? And again how it came about in the 80s through the Pablo Escobar drug connection now It does show both fashion worlds It takes you into that high fashion world of the skinny tall anorexic types and it takes you to the much more popular But much less publicized world of the runway models who are the curvy Sofia Vergata types Which kind of says it all now believe it or not the most amazing thing on this video is that the woman reporter actually

[15:20] visited Pablo Escobar's brother who's still living and Also in Medellin she goes to and reports on an extremely popular Middle-class fashion runway show and the entire theme of the show cocaine Yep cocaine, and this is now not the 1980s I mean you really have to see it to believe it this fashion show which is open to the public Could never be done up in the first world and you'll see why get this on the fashion runway itself There's a gigantic mountain of simulated cocaine That the models have to navigate and dodge as they walk around showing off the latest fashions really you got to see this This is happening in modern-day middle-class, Columbia. Oh and by the way on this short video

[16:08] She visits one of Columbia's most well-known and well-respected But implant surgeons and when you see this I want you to pay special attention to his clinic You'll notice that the patients are greeted by a Catholic nun in the waiting room and this nun is wearing her habit I don't know what that's all about But the Colombian guy that showed me this video at the Princess Hotel in San Salvador Says it's very common in Colombia for surgeons especially plastic surgeons to have a Catholic nun on staff as a receptionist greeter or helper Which I'm sure goes a long way to impart a very calming effect on the patient since 90-some percent of Columbia's Catholic now you can have your doubts about this

[16:54] Maybe she's just an older lady in a nun's costume hired to impersonate one or give that impression But I doubt it. This is Latin America, you know, and I understand that if you impersonate a priest or a nun Well, let's just say when you die, you're gonna be hanging with Jimi Hendrix instead of Mother Teresa Now I gotta say if someone would have just come up and told me that I would have thought yeah, right But no pun intended you'll see it for yourself on this video So believe me take a look now, does that mean that the Catholic Church in any way endorses butt implants? Don't ask me. I won't touch that one with a 10-foot scalpel Oh and by the way about Medellin Colombia and Pablo Escobar and all that do you know that Pablo Escobar's house the family home has been turned into a shrine slash museum a

[17:43] Tourist attraction that you got to pay to get in and the curator says they get a couple of hundred visitors a week Mostly I bet wearing vintage Pacino Scarface t-shirts and if not you can buy one right there at the gift shop for 10 bucks So you can see for yourself how the guy lived his wardrobe his bad taste hot cars his Harleys his statues His saunas his gold-plated bathtub and jacuzzi Oh and by the way speaking of nuns his big house had a chapel with pews and candles and an altar and life-sized Statues of the Virgin Mary and all that you try to figure that one out as one visitor said it's kind of Columbia's version Of Graceland and do note at least among Columbia's middle and lower middle classes Escobar was considered kind of a Robin Hood and was and is still as popular as Elvis

[18:33] Who says you're never a hero in your hometown, huh? Anyway, I promise next time I'm down that way I'm gonna stop at that museum. Oh and by the way on that latest trip to Salvador I couldn't help notice that it's getting around election time again and down here in Latin America You can always tell when that happens because suddenly as you're driving on a desolate span of highway There are ugly gaudy political slogans painted everywhere in bright putrid colors, too And where do they paint this garbage? Why on pristine cliffs rocks and mountainsides Anything hard and solid that'll hold paint and as it turns out It's the lower middle classes that come out in force to despoil their own neighborhoods and countrysides because they're the only ones besides the poor

[19:18] that'll accept a couple of bucks to do that kind of work and when the elections over all that crap will remain until the Sun and the rain slowly fade peel and degrade the paint Then after a couple of years of weathering thankfully most of it's gone But by then it's usually election time again, and it's more the same So be prepared if you're down here during election time There'll be more than occasional hideous splotches of ugliness But I must say I did see a tiny light at the end of that tunnel as I was driving through El Salvador Every once in a while, I'd see a big billboard sign that said get this No fertile is auntie for photo, which means in a roundabout way in English Don't trade fertilizer for your vote

[20:04] So what's that all about? Well, you might remember on a couple of shows a long time ago I mentioned that politicians outright by votes down here They do that by first announcing that the buses will be free on voting day Then as the people get on or off the bus They'll give them a free t-shirt or a hat or a little box lunch with chicken licking in it all with political party graffiti plastered all over it just remember since maybe 70 or 80 percent of the population makes 300 or 400 bucks a month most people more than half the population don't get the opportunity to go to chicken licking and have a junk food dinner and For most people bussing into the big city from the boonies that day is a big event

[20:50] They get a free new t-shirt and a hat a happy meal in free fare on the bus Now isn't that worth a vote or two or three? Yep There's a lot of that going around to a lot of dead people voting down here. Just like in Chicago Did I say Chicago guess I've been down here way too long, huh? Oh, and by the way, most of the poor and lower middle-class segments of Latin society Making up about 40% of the population are not inclined to go out and buy brand new clothes Oh, they might do it once in a while on Christmas and birthdays But they most often overwhelmingly go to a store called a paka store P-A-C-A now these are stores that sell used clothing from the first world You know the stuff that you donate to places like Goodwill Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul

[21:37] Now I know I mentioned this once in a long past show I hope you do know that a good percentage of your donations probably more than half are getting bundled up up in the States and being sent down here to Latin America and being sold and People are making money off it and it's not the poor people either They're the ones that are buying the stuff because like I said, they rarely buy new sure Pakas sell that stuff dirt cheap for maybe a buck or two for a t-shirt or a hat But nevertheless the discarded stuff you're giving away is being sold down here and making the wrong people wealthy So you might say so what at the Salvation Army and Goodwill etc up in the States They sell that stuff too But come on Don't you think there's something just a bit cockeyed about repackaging this stuff and selling it to the really poor people down here instead of giving

[22:28] It away. Oh and I forgot the real reason I brought this up now I pop in and out of those pakas once in a while just to check the merchandise and just to see the kind of high Priced name brand stuff you guys give away because you're porked out And as you might expect you never see the upper one or two percent of the wealthy classes in places like that They're way too classes and stuck up What would people think huh and even though vintage clothing has been in in the States for quite some time now Try like almost 40 years since the 80s You still won't see the kids of the filthy rich shopping at those pakas But still you see him wearing vintage clothes all the time. So what's up with that? Well, that's because as you know already every first world clothing outlet now sells distressed clothes and clothes that look like they're used

[23:15] Right, and that's usually pretty high buck stuff, isn't it? Now on that same subject once in a while I'll pop into one of these really big pakas that looks like a warehouse store and I'll spot a lone gringo or gringa in there as Captain Kirk would say boldly going where no rich stuck-up Latin has gone before or something like that Because you know us gringos and gringas as a rule us world travelers and expats Anyway, really don't give a damn what other people think or we wouldn't be down here now, would we? I mean really most of the people up in the States told us we were nuts to come down here So if we cared what other people thought we wouldn't be here I know I know I just said that but I digress as usual. Oh, yeah, we were talking about elections So as far as buying votes

[24:02] the second most common way to do that down here is to give away sacks of flour and rice and beans a Week or two before elections. So the giver of the gift is burned into people's minds So what you've got is freebies to the unwashed masses with party slogans plastered all over them Even though probably all of those sacks of food were given as freebies from the UN and a thousand first world charitable Organizations not to mention those Girl Scout Boy Scout Cub Scout brownie charitable drives So what happens then? Well, the stuff gets delivered and shoved into huge warehouses and held there by the politicians sometimes for years until a week or two before voting time then they painted up with their logos and they sent out a bunch of

[24:52] Trucks also painted up with political slogans and there's always a guy in the back with a bullhorn announcing free beans free rice free flour whatever come and get it courtesy of the political powers that be and the guy with the bullhorn keeps on Repeating who the gift came from. Nope. Not from the original sender though Sometimes you can see a faint imprint of that logo on the bag of beans Anyway, that's how certain Latin political parties have stayed in power for sometimes more than 50 years That's what you call Latin American style democracy It's like an English letter t-shirt. I once saw down here. There was a picture of Uncle Sam and below it. It said Keep them stupid and simple Which I guess is really an international slogan for government now, isn't it? That said let's change gears a bit here now

[25:44] About a week ago. I was at one of these gigantic Latin food markets, you know where there's so big you could get lost in them Anyway, as I angled my way through a bunch of blind corners people everywhere chickens squawking goats bleeding and all that No, not bleeding bleeding when suddenly I came upon a dead end and there were about 10 or 15 people standing in line Everyone pretty much lower middle class and indigenous types. Every last one of them was a woman, too Some holding little kids and some balancing baskets and stuff on their heads all waiting patiently in line for Something so what was it some kind of giveaway the restroom? Maybe nope It was the local loan shark

[26:30] So anyway by hanging around a little while I found out that's where you go to get a quick loan for a day or two or ten or up to 30 days and that's where you line up every day or every week or so to pay your vig if you've taken out one of these loans and As it turned out all of the ladies in line work somewhere another near the marketplace or in it So there were well-known ladies and had good enough Reputations that they could get a quick small loan without any collateral So then you might well ask what kind of terms were these ladies getting and what were the average loan amounts? Whoops, sorry. We'll have to wait till next week on the loan shark business now before we go I'd like to mention once again If you're interested in coming to one of my expat wisdom seminars in Latin America if there's enough interest

[27:20] I'll put one on again in June or July Anyway to get in on the early bird rate Just send me an email at the expat files at gmail.com or Johnny at expat wisdom calm 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 don't forget to check out expat wisdom calm to sign up for your free Reports on Latin America. See you next time nos vemos