#401 – The Expat Files: Political Corruption, Indigenous Struggles, and Cultural Insights 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 Okay, before I get rolling on any new topics, whatever they're gonna turn out to be I mean, let's face it one minute I could be talking about colostomy bags in the next minute politicians. Wait a minute. Same thing. That's redundant, right? Anyway, if you remember a few shows ago

[00:46] I was talking about how Monsanto had swept through Latin America with big conventions giving up freebies, etc At big hotels buying off politicians with champagne and limos and dancing girls. You name it I'm not kidding and they did that back door lobbying which is totally legal here with impunity as usual and why is that? Well, there's no law against paying off a politician by the way here in Latin America Anything goes when it comes to scumbag politicians you could hand over a suitcase with a million dollars in it and Even if it was caught right on camera Well, you know what you wouldn't even see it on the 6 o'clock news because well, it's not news So then why was that Monsanto entourage coming down here through Latin America kissing up to every fat ass politician in sight?

[01:35] Well, of course, it was just so they'd vote in that so-called Monsanto law Remember that it was that tiny little addition to that free trade agreement that was successfully voted on in 2006 Now if you remember I mentioned that certain indigenous groups who are local farmers somehow got organized into boycotting and picketing etc and Surprisingly enough with virtually no big money They've made great headway against Monsanto and of course against their own fat ass scumbag politicians And you know, it never really dawns on those indigenous folks that those same guys are the very crooks They keep voting into office and you know, all it takes is a free t-shirt a bag of rice or a free happy meal I've seen it myself busloads coming in from the boonies

[02:21] Just filled with indigenous people at election time and as they get off They're all wearing free t-shirts with a certain party's colors and or toting a happy meal or a box of chicken licken But I digress as usual now one thing us expats have noticed this Activism that's coming out of the indigenous communities against this Monsanto law Seems to be 100% focused on the penalties and the fines in Monsanto's favor You know if you're caught with their genetically engineered seed, for example unknowingly mixed in with a traditional crop and such Etc, etc Then you get hammered with a big fine, but no one's mentioned the fact and you see almost no publicity

[03:08] Mentioning the dangers of ingesting GMO foods now Unfortunately, the fact is when you speak to any Latin person about the dangers of GMOs now This might seem cruel and over simplified But believe me, you're talking way over their heads What you have to remember is that the average Latin person has about a sixth to eighth grade education Even less when you're talking about indigenous farmers and the boonies and believe it or not Practically all farmers down here believe that if you tack a pair of red women's underwear to a tree That's under producing the tree will be embarrassed into producing more the next year So that's what you're dealing with. So believe me trying to explain the health effects of GMOs is to put it mildly

[03:53] Pointless so how it works is like this in order to get simple indigenous people to act It had to be a threat to their meager existence It had to be about the money because you see as one activist told me by the way a university Educated indigenous guy and there are some of those, you know, he says as far as his constituents are concerned You show him a grain of corn that's GMO and you show him a grain of corn that's been grown traditionally They'll pick the GMO one every time because it's often bigger You try to explain to him that it's not a healthy choice And well, it's a pretty hard sell but hit them in their meager pocketbooks and you can rouse them in a hurry Now what you have to remember is that in Latin America, there are about 600 different indigenous tribes. That's right 600

[04:42] And you know, they really don't get along that well Not that they war with each other or behead each other or steal each other's women or anything like that Though that did go on before the Spanish came that is before Columbus and his buddies beat murdered and raped them into becoming civilized Christians Yeah, right that said even in the 21st century indigenous tribes in Latin America do not get along well with each other Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they're hostile towards each other It's just that they're resistant to certain social interminglings like mixed marriages and such and that's why even though indigenous populations in many Latin countries actually have the numbers and the voting power to put in their own presidents vice presidents and

[05:29] entire Congress as well as mayors and governors, etc Unfortunately, you just don't see that except that the local level, you know mayor city councilman dog catcher Well, I take that back. They don't have dog catchers in Latin America, but they should anyway at the national level Indigenous people even though they've got the numbers have almost no representation Except in a very few special cases where the indigenous population is more or less of one or many related tribes Like for example in Bolivia and Ecuador Otherwise when a Latin country has many different indigenous tribes that have been separated Geographically for many dozens of generations then they just can't unite and get it together

[06:14] The fact is they just won't go out and vote for someone from a different tribe Unless of course he or she is handing out free t-shirts happy meals or sacks of rice But alas indigenous candidates just don't have that kind of dough However, in this case the Monsanto situation due to some college educated indigenous folks They actually did manage to roused up many tribes for a common cause So it's good to know that indigenous folks have been able to protect their age-old planting practices And that they're actually winning against big corporate interests like Monsanto Now, of course everyone down here with an IQ larger than George Bush juniors knows That when Monsanto came through and gave away all these freebies and put on these big conventions

[07:00] The word on the street was that they handed out plenty of giveaways and bribes I mean, that's how you do things in Latin America and no one ever gets busted for it ever And if a politician is too blatantly gluttonous and gets called on it They just retire to their million dollar estates and ranches and never give the money back Which is why everyone and his brother down here wants to be a politician or work for government sound familiar? So bribes flew and the Monsanto law got passed at first anyway But the indigenous tribes for once organized and showed their muscle and the first country they did it in was Guatemala Their protests roadblocks and work stoppages throughout the country Resulted in an emergency session in Congress to resend the law and that just happened about two weeks ago

[07:51] So three cheers for Guatemala's indigenous people the first to spit in Monsanto's eye and get away with it Now, you know, I can always count on expat Eddie to throw a twist into any conversation Just the other day we were talking about the indigenous victory over Monsanto and Eddie said well You know the battle is won, but I think the war is lost So what did he mean by that as you know? If you've been listening to this show for any length of time Expat Eddie has a lot of restaurants in Latin America and therefore a lot of employees many who are young hard-working indigenous guys and gals Some right off the farm that have made their way from the boonies to the big city looking for work And you know expat Eddie tells me that if an employee comes to work for a full month

[08:37] Doesn't miss a day and is never late He'll give him a $10 bonus and you know That's like a full day's pay in a country where the average wage is like 250 bucks a month Anyway, Eddie's introduced US business incentives like bonuses for being on time and such since like he says the biggest Headache that he has with the local help down here Is that they just have no concept of being on time and since being on manana time is a Latin American national trade Employees here never feel the stress or the pressure or the guilt when they're late Nope, not like we do us gringos when we're late for something And why should they because Latin bosses in Latin firms are just as lax and late, too Oh, and by the way I know quite a few gringos who teach English at private schools down here and one of them who's been teaching down here

[09:28] Maybe 14 years He told me that one of the big differences between private and public grade schools and high schools For example, is that at wealthy private schools Maybe a quarter to a third of the staff are actual gringo teachers like him and they just don't tolerate tardiness and take no excuse For it so from day one they set the first world example as they should by cracking the whip on people who are late So that very slim percentage about two to five percent of locals who go to wealthy private schools They know all about being on time and they'll comply Why because it was whipped into them when they went to private school by who pissed off and highly annoyed gringo teachers But at those free public universities and junior high schools, etc

[10:16] There's no such urgency or discipline at all So like x-men Eddie said if he's hiring a manager someone who needs a college degree and let's say Accounting or business administration or whatever. He knows right away by looking at their resume That is if they came from a public or a private school whether they're gonna be on manana time or not and like Eddie says a good solid dependable worker can come from a private or A public school, but he'd rather not have to beat the manana time attitude out of a public school kid Owen let me tell you that's not the only bad habit that public school kids have in fact Latin kids in general have one Huge problem. They absolutely do not know how to organize themselves That includes their desks and their closets and their houses and their filing systems

[11:06] I should really say what filing systems and that by the way is why the word Maintenance is not in your average latin's vocabulary and it's not that they can't learn They learn in a hurry as long as you give them some incentive and crack the whip But when left to their own devices You can see right away why we talk about the gringo advantage and why when the only competition we have in business is Latin Competition we simply clean up. Oh and while we're on that subject of hiring Eddie says when he hires a manager or someone for an office or clerical position and he sees that they've Graduated from an expensive private school He tells me he finds they really are more organized and have much less of the manana time mentality Because a good percentage of their teachers were gringos

[11:53] However, he said he's always got another problem on his hands one He doesn't have with public school graduates That is private school kids have an attitude and uppity attitude Towards the so-called lower classes the poor the middle class and the indigenous and that attitude extends to people who live in certain undesirable areas people who ride public transportation therefore do not have cars and They look down a bit on people who don't have high-end cell phones Believe it or not. In fact when middle class upper middle class and wealthy latin's notice a gringo like myself Who's got a 15 or 20 dollar throwaway cell phone instead of the latest? $500 piece of eye crap the locals just don't get it They don't understand because you know

[12:40] They think that every one of us gringos is wealthy at least by their standards and by that measure I guess we are actually that said they believe we can afford the latest and greatest of everything Including designer clothes bling bling and smartphones and get this I've often overheard local latins talking to themselves In Spanish, of course Commenting about a gringo like me for example or other low-key expats who don't fit their stereotype Wondering to themselves why we're not driving luxury SUVs I mean hell we're rich gringos we can afford it Right so you can see the vast majority of my thinking on a very superficial level All they can think is that either we're eccentric or we're gringos down on our luck and I say good

[13:26] Let them think that and after a while when you make friends with certain local latins Often their curiosity will get the better of them and you just might get this question How come you're not driving a Beamer or a Porsche or an upscale SUV? I've had this posed to me a number of times and if I'm in the mood I'll say something like what an expensive car an SUV. Well, that's a stupid choice for a vehicle in Latin America No, thanks. I got over my materialistic phase back in the 80s in Chicago And I like to think I'm not that stupid anymore and typically they don't like or understand my answer again They just don't get it because this is an exceedingly materialistic society The fact is no matter how many times a Latin gets robbed or hijacked because he's a target in his standout upscale car or SUV

[14:15] When they get their replacement vehicle if they have the money or the credit they'll always buy up not down Like I said, they just never learn down here. You are what you drive so get used to it the exception being if you're a gringo and you're driving a small car or a beater you're still Considered by the locals to be at the top of the heap a fortunate Sun though a little eccentric and that's okay with me But where was I? Oh, yeah I was mentioning that expat Eddie said that when he hires private school graduates They always eventually turn out to be a bit classist and racist He can see how they look down on public school graduates indigenous people and people from the middle and lower classes Like Eddie said even in a tiny mall restaurant with only a handful of workers

[15:05] There's a definite social and class hierarchy and Eddie says even if you think there isn't one just hire one of these guys from a private school and see what happens and that phenomena Eddie says Unfortunately cannot be trained or beaten out of them and for proof of that Eddie says that these private school Manager type kids always seem to have a car and he's noticed that these guys will almost never give lower-class people a ride home Or even give them a lift to the nearest bus stop Whereas Eddie's got those gringo sensibilities no matter where he's driving if he happens to spot One of his employees walking down the street. He'll always offer a ride He like most gringos would feel guilty if he just whipped right by and I know Eddie He'll often go far out of his way to give a guy a ride

[15:53] Just so that person doesn't have to hop on a chicken bus. You'll find that's kind of a gringo trait You know Latins with cars are not likely to do that So as it turns out this embedded classist and racist thing, that's a personality defect. That's heavily reinforced in Latin private schools And it's the expat gringo teachers at these schools that are reporting that but don't think for one second that gringo teachers are to blame They're not if anything. They're the ones that are trying to undo it But no matter what kind of lip service is paid to it It seems the whole private school system is set up to not so suddenly let those kids know that they are Superior and they are quite different from the huddled masses on the street who don't have maids and bodyguards and have to take The chicken bus so as it turns out the entitled kids at those private schools

[16:43] Learn from their jaded parents that they're the chosen ones then that stereotype gets reinforced at school in spades But back to expat Eddie's dilemma He says that the average kid from public school who worked at another company or another place before he worked for Eddie Will almost always be on manana time unless he worked for a first-world franchise beforehand or Get this if he or she was a previously deported illegal alien because you see in that case When they were up in the states before they got caught there's a very good chance They punched a time card or were on a u.s. Time schedule now You see painting cars are doing drywall or gardening up in the states if your boss sees you're late one too many times

[17:29] You're simply fired so deported illegal aliens Well, they know from experience that gringo bosses Just don't tolerate manana time and neither do workers who are coming from a gringo franchise operation like McDonald's or Burger King They too know that you must be on time which brings us to Latin workers who previously worked for a Latin company or a Latin Boss. Well, what can you expect when in Latin companies even the bosses and the owners are on manana time Which is why Eddie ended up installing that bonus program Like I said at the end of the month, he gives out a $10 bonus for perfect attendance and no tardiness He says it's a good system and it works like a charm But unfortunately 90% of the time right after work The bonus winners will run across the street with their friends and blow it all guess where at

[18:21] McDonald's which is why in an under educated society It does no good to preach the evils of GMOs in Monsanto. There's gonna be a long lag time on that one Enough said about that which brings me to some of the emails. I've been getting lately mostly questions about Ebola and that new one That's on everyone's tongue chicken. Good. Yeah. Well, maybe it's not on everyone's tongue You try saying it Chicken guna or chicken guna which comes from the bite of a regular mosquito believe it or not Now the thing is what's very important to remember is that down here in Latin America any disease? That's mosquito-borne is what you'd call a disease of the poor because you know If you walk around the poor and the lower middle class neighborhoods, you'll find standing water everywhere

[19:07] Just like in the ghettos you have up in the big cities in the states There's all kind of junk and garbage and abandoned tires and cans and just a million breeding grounds for mosquitoes But worse yet, why do you think that there's over? 200,000 cases of chicken guna right now here in Latin America. Well, I'll tell you It's the fact that the poor and lower middle classes here in Latin America Don't even have a glass in their windows if you've ever seen the kind of tin roof shacks that close to 200 million Latin American people live in you'll quickly notice that there's no weather stripping at all I mean, why would they have it if they don't have a glass in the windows, right? Now when you see these little shacks you can't help but notice that the corrugated tin roof sits on the wall and where those

[19:56] Corrugations rest there are dozens of spaces wide open to the outside You can see daylight through those big gaps In fact, you could stick your hand through in a hundred places and any one of these little dwellings So what's that mean? Well for something like 200 million people? There's no way to keep those mosquitoes out of the house So then what happens when you get chicken guna? Well, you're laid up in bed for usually a week and it can be accompanied by terrible joint pain Which in rare cases can last a month or so, but do note almost no one ever dies from it 99% of people recover completely. So then let's get some perspective on this now generally I Personally hang in the Altiplano

[20:41] That's you know anywhere from four to maybe eight or ten thousand feet above sea level and unless you live by a lake or a river There's hardly any mosquitoes up here So that said in my 20 something years down here I've never met a single person who said chicken guna now You should know that expat Eddie who lives in El Salvador does not live in the Altiplano In fact, he lives a little outside the capital city of San Salvador at about 2,000 feet above sea level So he's pretty much got tropical weather all year round, but he's high enough up So it's not terribly sweltering all the time, but still too hot for me Anyway, I asked his gardener who of course lives in one of those tin shack laminated houses If he's seen a lot of chicken guna and yes, he said he's seen a few cases

[21:29] In fact, his uncle and his nephew had it then I asked him this I said about how many mosquito bites Do you get in a week? I mean he is a full-time gardener so that is an occupational hazard You know and he said maybe a dozen and he said he manages to kill a couple dozen more a week before they ever Draw blood then he laughed and said they liked me, but they love my wife. She's got he said Sangre dulce, that's sweet blood Anyway, do remember one thing these grunt working Latin guys. They never use any insect repellent It's way too expensive and like Eddie's gardener said some kudos, which are mosquitoes are a fact of life No big deal So here's why I asked him that question Think of it if this guy a gardener gets a dozen bites a week. That means he gets over

[22:17] 600 mosquito bites a year Which as it turns out seems to be par for the course for any Latin that works outside and doesn't use any kind of repellent So after the gardener mentioned that expat Eddie and I thought about how many times we'd been nailed by a mosquito in the last week As it turns out we both had a grand total of zero mosquito bites for the week Then Eddie said you know what I don't think I get two in a month and as for me I think last month. I had a total of one mosquito bite myself So you've got two gringos like expat Eddie and I we get maybe 10 to 20 mosquito bites a year if that and your local gardener who gets 50 to 60 times as many or more in his

[23:02] Case over 600 a year. So now I ask you What do you think your chances are of picking up something like chicken guinea or any other mosquito-borne illness like dengue fever? Not likely I wouldn't bet on it And by the way as far as dengue fever, which is much more severe you may have heard of it Well again in my over 20 years of living down here in Latin America I've only known one person who's had it and it was no gringo not even a backpacker It was a local in fact It was a girl who happened to be a Hawaiian Tropic model whose job it was to walk around in a bikini all day on a beach handing out little sample bottles of Hawaiian Tropic tough job, huh? Well, it turned out pretty tough for her because she said in the end she had so many mosquito bites

[23:49] She couldn't even count them all again. No repellent. Just Hawaiian Tropic that said what about Ebola in Latin America? Here's what the head of US Southern Command a branch of the US military responsible for all US military activities in South American Central America says Quote if it breaks out in Central America, there will be a mass migration into the United States People will run away from Ebola and if they suspect they are infected They'll try to sneak into the US for treatment Then he says I saw how easy it is for illegals to enter the US In fact while visiting the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua with US Embassy personnel I saw a group of black men waiting in line to pass into

[24:37] Nicaragua making their way north to the US the embassy person walked over and asked who they were and They told him they were from Liberia and they had been on the road about a week It turns out they met up with a network in Trinidad and now they were on their way to the US illegally, of course And then he said the Liberian men could have made it to New York City and still be within the Incubation period for Ebola. This he said is a nightmare situation for the US Alright, so the question is should you be worried about Ebola in Latin America? well The fact is every night on the news and you see in the papers every day down here that just like up in the first world They're screening passengers arriving at the international airports with temperature sensors for what good that's gonna do

[25:27] Anyway, bottom line here is I think now as of today There is one Ebola case in Latin America and it's in Brazil and it might not even truly be Ebola now remember Latin America has over a half a billion people and as one US doctor a guy on a Charity mission down here told me he said if Ebola makes it here down to Latin America The only people that are gonna die from it are gonna be the undernourished people with compromised immunity Systems again. He said it's a disease of the poor and uneducated In fact, he's the guy that told me that in Africa where Ebola is hit and it's become an epidemic when uneducated superstitious Africans have a funeral in those countries They hang around with the body and actually kiss it and touch it as part of the funeral ritual

[26:18] In fact, he said sometimes they stay in the same room with the body for a couple of days Yep, that was a new one on me made me squirm a bit You know, so anyway as for us expats gonna bees and wannabes no matter where we are We should be paying more attention to personal hygiene and one suggestion here skip the handshake Instead do the ghetto fist bump. That'll work that said in the end Maybe God really does protect idiots drunks and children and to that maybe we should add backpackers For all their bad habits and dozens of mosquito bites still somehow Backpackers rarely come down with anything worse than fleas Montezuma's revenge and long-range BO. Okay now that we're near the end of the show

[27:04] My question to you is do you have a plan B to fall back on when the next big crisis? Financial or otherwise rocks the first world and scares the living crap out of everyone Well, if you don't have a concrete plan yet You need to get your boots on the ground and come down to my week-long Expat wisdom seminar in Central America, January 2015 just go to expat wisdom comm click on the seminar link and get the full details 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 comm to sign up for your free

[27:51] Reports on Latin America. See you next time. Nos vemos