#284 – The Expat Files: Hair, Crime, and Culture in Latin America

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

[00:13] 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 light and talk about something that's kind of funny, well not funny to the people that's happening to but to us first worlders with a twisted sense of humor, well it's funny. And I'll tell you the overwhelming majority of long term expats I know do have a twisted view of the world and there's nothing wrong with that and you know you could say a lot of things about us expats that were unpatriotic or that were cowards for abandoning the first world, that were running away from something or even that were skin flints because we prefer

[00:59] to live cheaply and in places that assess their residence next to nothing in taxes. But there's one thing you can't call us, you can't call us chicken shits and you can't say we're boring. All right so that's two things you can't call us so shoot me. Now I've told you many times before that Venezuela is completely falling apart, not a place for expats. The currency is unstable, crime there is about four times as high as anywhere else in South America and all those years with Chavez in power spewing vile hatred against Americans in every speech he made, well after 10 or 12 years of that it has had some negative effects on the way common Venezuelans feel about Americans including expats and gringos and tourists in general. And you see because of constantly slamming Americans in America and Bush Jr. particularly,

[01:46] who by the way was a total ignoramus and really did deserve everything Chavez threw at him. Now who wasn't that said that George Bush Jr. was born with a silver foot in his mouth? That is his legacy and should be on his tombstone don't you think? Anyway I found that Venezuela is practically the only country in Latin America where you'll find the occasional anti-American sentiment even on the street level with the common people. Which is really surprising because you don't see any of that in Cuba. You'd think because of all that's gone down between us over the years the Cubans would really have it in for us but they don't. The common Cubans you meet on the street just love Americans but that's an easy one to explain if you think about it because the thing is every single Cuban you meet if you visit Cuba has a relative up in the states sending back money called remisses so that their poor relatives

[02:34] on the island can hopefully scrape by. So naturally for them the United States where their relatives are prospering is the goose that laid the golden egg and their relatives in Cleveland are always sending back money and good reports. Well I take that back they're probably not in Cleveland more like Miami and New York. I hardly think Cubans are relocating to Cleveland not quite the promised land huh? Anyway that makes Cuba a great place for expats to visit and to live. And Venezuela well that's not a good place to live or visit for expats and the government's in the habit of expropriating land and businesses owned by foreigners. So in the end what's the point of buying real estate there even if it is cheap. Now the fact is in the larger cities anyway like Caracas crime is so rampant and the people

[03:22] so desperate that every day petty thieves and criminals are inventing new ways to steal and get over on someone for the dough. And the latest and greatest hit and run assault type scam has popped up there in the last few months drawing blank stares from everyone who hears about it. And at first when I heard it I thought it was a joke I didn't believe it either but it's absolutely true. Get this a group of young men will scout out certain young women pulling them into a dark secluded or private place and not physically assaulting or raping or stealing their purses but they'll pull out of shears and in 20 or 30 seconds cut off all the girls hair. Why because in Venezuela and the rest of South America there's a very large market for long glistening shining hair.

[04:08] I'm talking about natural hair wigs and hair extensions. And right now if you walk into the right beauty parlor in Venezuela you can sell a two foot long wad of straight hair for around 3000 boulevards. So if you do have a head of hair like that you can make about 450 to 500 bucks. That's the hair without the head of course. So what you've got in cities like Caracas are gangs of hair bandits for lack of a better term secretly scouting out young ladies with long thick beautiful straight hair then they plot out the girls movements the mark for a day or two since as you well know about 90% of people in Venezuela as well as 90% of the middle and lower classes in the rest of Latin America don't drive or have a car which means they're forced to ride Venezuelan

[04:55] public transportation and their version of chicken buses too where everyone's packed in worse than sardines that's elbow to butthole perfect conditions for anyone who wants to get up close and personal and really check out a person's hair so these hair bandits just make note of a young girl's travel habits and they plan where they're going to jump her and shear her locks most likely in a nearby alley or alcove someplace she passes on her daily routine and within about 20 or 30 seconds they can make short work of about 4 or 5 years growth of beautiful hair and because of that hats scarves and headwear are becoming a kind of a necessary fashion statement with lower and middle class young ladies who have to do a lot of walking and riding street transportation with the sweaty masses because lower and middle class

[05:45] neighborhoods and hangouts are pretty much the only place these hair bandits can get away with that oh and another thing it's the very straight hair that the crooks are after in spanish it's called pelo liso liso means straight pelo means hair so lately as you might guess one of the trends with the common folks that is the middle and lower classes is for women to let their hair go wild crazy and curly which believe me is a very difficult thing for the average latin girl to accept because down here curly hair called colocho hair has always been considered common or lower class whereas perfectly straight long hair has always been considered elegant stylish and upper class so that's why when the lower and middle class girls get together for a big night the vast majority of the latina population by the way does have somewhat curly hair anyway

[06:33] when there's a party a big dance or an event coming up they all run out to the beauty parlor and get their hair straightened again that's called pelo liso because if it's a big occasion and they're going to be seen in public they have to look upscale and elegant and all the other girls the competition will too now if you've seen any latin american television at all or happen to see latin american ladies in beauty pageants miss universe miss world and all that i want you to take note that their hair is almost always perfectly straight pelo liso but get this only about five percent of latin women i'm talking about latinas here women with mixed spanish blood have straight hair like that naturally and by the way most pure indigenous people have nice straight thick hair too but for some reason the indigenous ladies are not targeted by hair bandits not yet

[07:23] anyway and the venezuelan beauticians who know hair say that there is a difference and that they much prefer the natural hair from the average latina lady of mixed spanish blood not the shorn locks from an indigenous woman but to me that sounds more like racism and classism talk because many many indigenous ladies have beautiful long thick hair but still the hair bandits have not gone after that class of people yet and i think i've got it figured out but i'll get into that later anyway both latin women and men are absolutely enamored with perfectly straight long hair on women of course it's been a very strong fashion trend throughout latin america in the last 10 or 20 years for latin ladies to have their natural somewhat curly hair that's again colocho in spanish straightened at the beauty parlor or with one of those electric

[08:13] irons that straightens hair and the fact is any night of the week you could see those hair straightening machines on info commercials on latin tv smart marketers have sold millions of those things even though latin ladies like expatiti's girlfriend tells me they're pretty much junk and after a month they end up in the junk drawer with the chia pit and the ginsu knives and down here in latin america women will say i'm gonna go have my hair planchala which means basically ironed the word plancha or planchador among other things is the word for clothes iron so the bottom line is perfectly straight beautiful long hair is the ultimate goal for every latin lady and i do mean every single latin lady at least when she's young and out in the world making her mark and in the

[08:59] mating and dating scene it's just always been the fashion at least since i've been down here now like i said women who have curly or hair that's colocho latin's consider that kind of which means common or low class or just unremarkable and that's why about 95 of all the ladies on tv in ads on billboards and posters and in the media have beautiful straight long hair and that means newscasters and weather ladies as well as all lady reporters and women in those notoriously bad soap operas too and here's something that's always blown my mind all of us expats down here know at least a few latin ladies who have the most beautiful head of curly hair you've ever seen i mean if a girl up in the states had hair like that it would

[09:46] be her mark of distinction and her pride and joy but when you have hair like that down here in latin america it doesn't matter how beautiful exotic or striking it looks that girl is just not happy she wants straight hair and she'll go out and do it that is when she's got a big gig coming up like a festival or a party provided she's got the dough for the beauty parlor yep she'll do it all right i've seen it happen a hundred times myself even at the risk of permanently damaging her hair because as you know especially ladies you know anytime you do something drastic like that there's always a chance that you can really wreck it and a ton of girls down here who get their hair straightened on occasion they do wreck it but it does grow back right now i don't mean to say that latin girls have straight hair all the time like any woman they get bored of their due and they'll

[10:31] go to the beauty salon and have this and that done and experiment a little bit and occasionally you'll even see ladies on tv who've given up on having perfectly straight hair all the time too they'll take a chance on their natural look or a different style since like expat eddie's girlfriend told me keeping your hair straight long and beautiful all the time is a big pain in the ass even so high profile ladies ladies with money and ladies in the media they'll always revert back to that perfectly straight long hair now the average middle and lower class latin ladies making up about 90% of the female population they have very little disposable income so they're pretty much all running around with naturally curly or wavy hair most of the time and they don't like it much that's why they have it straightened for parties events and special occasions and by the

[11:21] way right about now i bet a lot of you are thinking what the hell is johnny doing talking about these light and fluffy subjects like that you're thinking what do i care about latin lady hairdos but let me tell you the reason why i'm talking about this right now and why i talk about such things once in a while it's by popular demand if you've noticed about every three or four shows i kind of hit on the mating dating and the love and romance angle or something related to it and there's a good reason for that you see when i get emails and i get a lot of them the top subjects people want me to hit on are these the cost of living safety and security health care for expats and gringos residency banking passports and essay corporations expats doing business down here housing real estate buying building and renting and last but not least the love and romance angle

[12:11] between expats and latins as well as all the social aspects of mating and dating down here and that includes latin family life too and all of their distinct customs and conventions so don't tell me this is fluff even the so-called fluff will help you better understand what's happening in latin society which can be confusing to us expats and gringos so every little bit of information helps in fact like i told you maybe a year or so ago expat eddie's girlfriend is a runway model and for me she's a great source of information regarding everything latina and i pump her for information all the time and she's glad to give it up she's actually a great asset and a bridge between the lower middle and upper middle classes since she was born into a lower middle class family and by the time she was about 10 her dad had worked the family up into solid middle

[13:01] class making maybe 800 bucks a month which down here is solid middle class and then when she hits about 17 she starts working as a model on a pretty regular basis making about 800 to a thousand bucks a month herself which is really good money down here for a lady still living at home and basically all latinas do live at home till they get married then she hooks up with expat eddie and ends up getting engaged to this so-called rich gringo and now she's basically won the lottery and has the life of riley but still she's firmly tied to her middle class family roots so she's got a foot in both worlds and by the way she never listens to this program because her english isn't great she wouldn't understand half of what i'm saying anyway which is a good thing and to relate this

[13:46] back to what i was talking about before naturally she has perfectly straight hair and it's straight almost all of the time but she wasn't born that way but like she said every time there's a casting for a modeling job the modeling agencies always insist that the girls show up with their hair lisado or completely straight it's just a requisite with modeling agencies down here and it's not the modeling agencies themselves that insist on it it's the clients that do like she says there'll be eight or ten girls that show up at the modeling office for a casting and the owner of the publicity agency or department store or beer company or whatever that's hiring the girls will always pick the girls with the straight long hair but get this even if a girl comes in with really beautiful

[14:32] curly hair and she's absolutely stunning in every other way they'll hire her but they'll tell her she has to show up at the job with straight hair and that's why eddie's girlfriend says all the girls she knows in the modeling business have at least three or four long-haired wigs that are absolutely straight just in case they get a call for a last-minute modeling job or a modeling casting session and their hair hasn't been professionally straightened for a while because it doesn't stay perfectly straight for long it only lasts four or five days at the most and one more thing it's not that latin ladies have chemical treatments put in their hair to make their hair relaxed and straight like a lot of american girls up in the states do like eddie's girlfriend says in time that's really destructive and ruins your hair so they go to the beauty parlor and have their hair blanchala meaning ironed with that funky

[15:22] little hair iron which generally costs about 10 or 12 bucks but she says the problem with doing it that way is that as soon as you wash it it rains or you get a little moisture on it it goes back to being curly or wavy again which is why her and her friends all have standby wigs and like she says having your hair ironed about every three or four days is not good for it either in fact there's a very fine line between getting a nice beautiful hair straightening job with an iron and actually burning it the fact is i've walked into a few beauty salons myself and more than once i've been overpowered by the telltale smell of singed hair oh and here's one more thing that i find quite interesting a latin friend of mine in fact two latin friends of mine own advertising agencies and a year or so back one of them said to me johnny you know i don't get gringos

[16:10] he said you know what i have two gringo clients two guys that came down from the states to open up franchises he told me he's got the contract for the billboard publicity for these guys billboards of course that are going up in central america and it turns out when they did a casting at his office with models to be photographed and put into these billboard ads he said these stupid gringos rejected all of the girls they didn't want the usual suspects the light-skinned straight haired girls with extensions and what they call mecha's which are various shades of light blonde and tinted highlights which are so very popular with latin women these days but are completely unnatural because latin hair just does not naturally come in those flavors nobody's born

[16:56] like that but you see the marketing clients and the ad agencies want women models who look kind of gringoized those are the kind of models all the other ad agencies and clients for ad agencies always select but not these two gringo guys they wanted to use morena's very tan looking latin girls with a big head of natural curly hair sure they wanted physically beautiful models too but they wanted the typical natural latin american look the very look that my friend who owns the doesn't find attractive himself even though get this he's a typical male version of a moreno he's dark skinned and has dark naturally curly hair himself but he doesn't like his women like that which is so typical for latin men down here in fact they're attracted to just the opposite and

[17:45] that's why they're enamored with north american gringas in fact he's married to a very light-skinned mexican girl with absolutely straight hair she gets it straightened at the beauty salon of course so anyway these two gringo guys with their franchises they wanted beautiful dark skin latina models with big hair big curly hair and he said it took him a long while to round up a few models like that since like he said down here anyway girls with that look don't get much work enough said about that now where was i oh yeah we were talking about those venezuelan hair bandits oh and by the way there are no real good statistics on just how many women are having this weird kind of bodily assault since women who actually report the incident to the police are usually not taken

[18:32] seriously at all or even laughed at and the real irony is the beauty salons that sell wigs have had a huge upsurge in sales lately and most likely a lot of the women buying those wigs are doing so because they had a recent back alley haircut themselves so in some cases are they buying back their own hair well anything's possible this is the third world i mean look years ago when i was stupid enough to drive a nice car down here i had my side window busted in my radio stolen three times and when i went down to that wild and crazy section of town the central market where they sell everything and anything and it looks like Beirut so it scares off a lot of gringos and newbie expats and it really shouldn't but that's a subject for another show anyway i'm sure at least one of the times i had to replace my radio i actually bought my very own stolen radio back could happen to

[19:22] anyone right and by the way for all you expat wannabe gringas out there who have nice straight beautiful long hair i'm talking about you north american gringle ladies coming down to visit or coming down as expats not to worry not if you listen to this show if you do come down to latin america you're not going to be walking in those crappy chaotic sections of town or riding those chicken buses where you can get singled out at least i hope you don't i absolutely don't advise women or any expats to go wandering on their own whether it's on public transportation or in the lower class more chaotic sections of big cities it can be perfectly fine if you got a friend along with you but if you're alone in those wild and crazy sections of town you're going to stand out like a sore thumb especially if you're white blonde and taller than five foot six but if there's

[20:10] one definite truth about all expats we're all just a little bit stubborn and we walk our own path we like to explore where few gringos have gone before at least we like to think that and we're adventurous which means we're willing to listen to other people's advice and process it but we don't necessarily follow it that's why when you're down here and you get a group of expats together at a party or whatever when we get to talking about our former lives up in the states you find a lot of us were constant trouble as kids and real burdens to our parents and teachers especially in junior high and high school and those of us that weren't we just never got caught but back to the point oh and one more thing according to owners of some of those beauty parlors in Caracas Venezuela nearly all of their natural hair extensions were being imported from

[20:55] asia and that was what it was like up to about a year ago before the hair bandits arrived on the scene and the salon owners who buy these things and the people that assemble wigs and extensions they really don't care where the hair comes from as long as the price is right and the quality's good and when a vendor comes in with a suitcase full of well product of course the owners of those salons don't ask any questions but they know they can tell when some of that hair hasn't been given up voluntarily but they'll still buy it if the price is right simply because a lot of poor Venezuelan young women with long pretty hair actually do grow their hair long just to sell it and believe it or not some mothers who have young daughters with fine long pretty hair well they'll give it up for a good cause like feeding the family or paying the electric bill so the

[21:42] market is mixed with both kinds donors both willing and unwilling though i can tell you this i actually know one young latina about 26 years old who told me when she was about 13 her mother actually did sell her hair and she was not a willing donor in fact she skipped school for a couple of days and cried every night for about a month talk about childhood trauma if that happened in the states i guarantee the kid would be taken from her parents end up in a foster home have a baby in a crack house sue her parents for damages find jesus and get on oprah but down here in latin america the family's gotta eat and if that's what it takes so be it you get over it it'll always grow back and here's the thing words getting around in some of the big cities like caracas and these days naturally with all the rumors and the reports ladies with long straight hair who

[22:28] use public transportation are a bit jumpy and not flashing those long beautiful locks much and the sales of hats and scarves are up too so just a warning here ladies if you're in a middle class or low class public area and some guy you don't know is paying undue attention to your long straight beautiful hair or if you're standing at a crowded corner at a bus stop or even in a bus and you get the feeling that someone's just touched your hair and that someone could be sizing you up meaning it could be a prelude to having it whacked off so ladies if you're lucky that bulge in that snaky looking guy's pants might only be a scissors and while we're at it let's talk about certain idiosyncrasies peculiar to latin women now for those of you who've been listening to this program

[23:13] for a while you know that my buddy expat eddie is a restaurant owner in fact he owns a lot of little restaurants and when you are a restaurant owner you want the cheapest freshest produce possible right and you'll always find that at the chaotic central market in any latin city big or small it's no secret it's gigantic and everyone knows where it is and it is the place i always recommend it or gringos buy their fresh produce too however i always recommend that you dress down way down with no watches or cameras or bling of any kind and the thing is not only will you get the greatest deals of your life there but it's a real great experience and a hell of a lot of fun anyway the other day i was in salvador with expat eddie and he had to go to the central market for a quick vegetable run and i always like to tag along since that's one place that's full of

[24:02] surprises and there's never a dull moment and by the way they often call the central market the terminal terminal means terminal in english and that's just short for central bus terminal because it's logical for the biggest bus terminal in town where all the buses gather and go to sleep at night that should be and is the natural place for a market like that to start when a city is small and as time goes on keep pace and grow huge along with the population if you've never been to one it's kind of like this picture the world's biggest greyhound bus station where instead of seeing nice shiny greyhound buses all you see for blocks and blocks are dented trashed and broken down chicken buses and mixed in with that every street within a 10 block radius is thick with people hawking everything and anything under the sun so needless to say you can

[24:53] get everything and anything there including all the cloned and pirated goods you can think of too anyway you just got to see it for yourself but back to my story about a week ago i was with eddie and his girlfriend in salvador heading for that big central market la terminar the central chicken bus terminal and by the way you'll see throngs of low-class people there a lot of them looking like vagabonds bums and ragpickers all of them selling or hawking something too so they're not looking for a handout they're just looking to make a living and by the way nobody and i mean no one no matter how down and out he looks ever starves when he works or lives at or near the terminal or central market because every night after the market closes there are literally tons of nearly spoiled fruit and vegetables that won't be good enough to sell the next day so there's more than

[25:42] enough food for everyone albeit often a little soggy and overripe but food it is and remember this no matter how dirty disheveled revolting or even dangerous some of these people might look you shouldn't judge a book by its cover because most of these people i'd say 99.9 of them are all very friendly happy-go-lucky and not only pleased but even excited to see the occasional gringo since if you're off the tourist trail you're probably the only gringo they've seen in weeks so you're gonna be a kind of a rarity there and you'll be about a foot taller than everyone too so you're gonna garner some looks curious looks not evil looks anyway there's no need to be frightened or nervous around these guys they're just doing their thing and they want to sell you something and you know at first glance when you see all the food and the produce and the utensils

[26:31] and the tools the stuff piled all over the place and all the precarious stacks and mountains of things you have to step around duck under and even dodge not to mention all the puddles of unknown murky liquid you just don't want to step in oh and don't forget about the people bumping into you with their wheel barrels and their two-wheeled carts and rusty ancient wagons now you might wonder with all these low-class seemingly dirt poor people all around why aren't some of these rough and ragged looking guys stealing from each other all the time it would be easy especially since there's almost zero police presence i mean you're talking in some cases thousands of people all bunched together and no cops the only cops you occasionally see are ones directing chicken bus traffic because those bus drivers obey no laws and they're known for stopping

[27:20] their pieces of junk in the middle of a busy intersection and just jump out and disappear for a while to buy a lottery ticket or take a pee oops sorry i'm getting to the end of the show now i'll finish this story next week so stay tuned south of the border down mexico 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.com to sign up for your free reports on latin america see you next time nos vemos