#279 – The Expat Files: Navigating LGBTQ+ Life and Cultural Sensitivity in Latin America

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

[00:14] 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. I think today we'll get even a little more politically incorrect than usual. First let's refer back to last week's show when I talked about the I-word, the Indio word that you're never supposed to use in mixed company or otherwise. Like I said it's the Latin American version of the N-word, so the word Indio is verboten but also know that the two variations on that word are Indito and Indita which basically translate to little Indio instead of just plain Indio.

[01:01] So there again don't use the words Indio, Indita or Indito which as you probably figured out are the masculine and feminine forms of the word. So anyway keep in mind don't use Indio, Indito or Indita unless of course you don't mind killing your gringle advantage with the indigenous population that is. And remember in some Latin American countries the indigenous population makes up over 50% of the people. Okay enough about that. Now occasionally I get emails from people asking me about what the gay life is like down in Latin America. You know just how people with alternative lifestyles are accepted. What's it like for them down here? Just how uptight are local Latins about for example gays walking hand in hand down the street or just being well different. Now unless you were born under a rock you know that Latin America is a very macho society

[01:50] and always has been. But Latin America has over a half a billion people. So obviously it would stand to reason that millions of locals are practicing the alternative lifestyle too. So how are they dealing with it? But first let's talk about gringos with alternative lifestyles that come down to Latin America on vacation because you know places like Cancun and Costa Rica are fashionable tourist destinations these days. Well let me just say that there have always been a lot of very safe vacation spots for gay couples and gay singles from the states and Europe. What I mean is there are a lot of Latin cities and towns on the tourist trail that are well known as cool laid back and very tolerant vacation spots for folks with alternative lifestyles. In fact I understand there are some gay travel magazines and some websites that have travel

[02:36] agencies that are exclusively for gays. And they'll promote a lot of these Latin American sites because they've heard nothing but good reports about them. And I'll tell you even 20 something years ago when I lived in Costa Rica that place was very gay neutral. No problems at all. As far as I could tell I'd see quite a few gay couples in supermarkets, casinos on the street, hanging around the beaches and restaurants and stuff. And a few of them owned houses in my own beachfront subdivision. So I did pick up a few things about the lifestyle down there. And since I don't mind asking my neighbors a few probing questions here's what I found out. And I heard pretty much the same thing from everyone I talked to. Though the ones that I knew only came down a couple of months a year, each of them wanted to retire permanently down here. I was told that Costa Rica for one is so gay friendly it's almost like a dream come true.

[03:25] And I'll tell you places like Costa Rica, Cancun, Acapulco, Cartagena, Medellin, Cali Colombia and even Antigua Guatemala they've already got a pretty decent size gay expat community. And of course they're entrepreneurial so they've opened up a lot of small businesses. And you know they always add a little artsy class to the neighborhood so that's a good thing. But on the downside the negative stories I've heard from gays and gay couples are that they best not hold hands or cozy up to each other in areas where there are a lot of lower class people and indigenous populations. Like in small towns in Pueblos off the tourist trail. Because in that part of the Latin population the least educated they also tend to be the most macho and intolerant to anything they're not used to in general. And I'm talking about middle and lower class Latin males here not the females.

[04:12] Because you see with the indigenous Latin female populations and lower middle class Latin ladies they're generally very humble, reserved and not outspoken at all. They're not used to making any of the big decisions in the family and don't want to rock the boat. So you'll have no trouble from them. So if it's anyone in that family who's going to say anything or get upset by what would seem very unusual in their community, a first world gay couple moving in for example. Well if it was quite obvious from the onset that they were a couple. At most they might get funny looks and a few snide remarks from the adolescent boys in the neighborhood. But maybe not. Depending if they were flamers or not you know. But what about the old man and the adult macho males in the neighborhood. How are they going to handle it? Well you have to remember that we all have that gringo advantage going for us.

[04:59] It doesn't matter if you're straight or gay or if you're a retired government worker from Cleveland with an IQ of 28. We're all still gringos and thankfully with all our defects Latin still love us. So they really look forward to gringos moving into the neighborhood. And the farther we are off the tourist trail the stronger our gringo advantage. But if you do have an alternative lifestyle and you're way off the tourist trail in a small pueblo, well adult males who've had a few drinks at home or have been out drinking with the boys at the cantina. Well they might have some unpleasant things to say but they're not at all likely to get violent or put their words into actions. Now some people who've never been to Latin America and don't know how much it's really been modernized in the last few years. Many people up in the first world think that because there's such a lag time for things

[05:47] to arrive in Latin America from the first world that it would be like back in the 50s and 60s when there was not much tolerance for the gay lifestyle. You know the old story, gangs of hooligans and bullies picking on gays and making their lives miserable. Now when I was a kid that kind of thing was common up in the states. Now of course there are bullies and bad boys down here in Latin America too. You see that everywhere. But you just don't read or hear about gays being picked on or particularly singled out. Not these days anyway. Though you'd think that in big cities down here with the gang violence you hear about that might be a real possibility. But the fact is in all big cities in Latin America they have their share of gay bars and eclectic artsy areas where gays own some businesses. And local middle and lower class Latin guys, no matter how negatively they might feel about

[06:35] having gays in the neighborhood, well these days local macho boys who might have a chip on their shoulder about gays, they still go their separate ways and tend not to hassle them any more than the next guy. Now I admit that's a lot different than it was maybe 15 to 25 years ago when I first got down here. Back then most gays were pretty much in the closet or undercover in general. Because back then a lot of them did get singled out for torture, beatings and abuse. So what happened in the last 20 to 25 years to change things? Did the average Latin guy suddenly get less macho? And how do I know these things and where do I get my info? Well let me tell you, you can learn a lot from those gay hairdressers. Not only are they an absolute goldmine of information on alternative lifestyles, but believe me once you get them talking it's hard to shut them up.

[07:22] Anyway like more than one of these guys has told me, the gay population of today versus 20 or 25 years ago is quite different. Back then you had to really be quite an extrovert and even tough to come out of the closet. And the gays back then in the 70s, 80s and 90s did want to have their own bars and clubs and hangouts which meant they had to come out of the closet to do that. That is out of the closet at least after work and on weekends. Which meant soon enough everyone in your neighborhood would know that you were gay. And if you worked for a company and didn't have your own business, the last thing you wanted was someone from the office to figure out you weren't straight. Which back then would have been the kiss of death for promotions and such. Now you have to remember one of the strangest social things that happens in Latin America is that young men, gay or not, always end up living at home with the parents until they

[08:09] get married. Which means even for the most closeted gay, eventually when a guy hits his 30s and 40s and hasn't been connecting with women in a romantic way and so on, his parents and relatives start to suspect then they figure it out and so do all the neighbors. And of course regarding living at home with your parents, about 95% of Latin women end up living at home with their parents too until they get married. And for that other 5% of women who don't get married yet move out of the house, well that's because of career choices or getting a really good job or getting a job out of town. Though still, an unmarried woman not living with her parents is looked down upon in Latin America. People always seem to gossip about it and wonder why. But just to point out that the vast majority of them do live with their parents until they

[08:54] get married. And the male kids in the family too. Which gives a totally new meaning to mama's boy now doesn't it? Oh and by the way, grandma and grandpa live at the house too. Not to mention, drunken uncle Julio. Oh and here's one thing I should mention about big Latin American households. Once the girls in the family turn about 13, 14 or 15, they always seem to end up putting a passage lock on their bedroom door. Because the boys in the family never respect a young girl's privacy. And they're always rifling through her stuff when she's not there. But I guess that's the same for big families up in the states too. So anyway, back in the 70s and 80s and 90s, the gays that decided to come out of the closet got tough really fast. In other words, they weren't soft mealy-mouthed guys. They could take it and they could dish it out.

[09:41] In fact, I was told that in the 70s and 80s, all of the sudden in areas where hookers and street walking prostitutes would usually hang out, suddenly a small group of male transvestites would appear walking the streets along those same corners. And the girls didn't care because these guys weren't cutting into their business. They had their own particular clientele. Almost always, I understand, your nice, average, upper middle class, married guy. Well, maybe not so average. Anyway, obviously these guys did not look like female prostitutes. They looked, well, like transvestite drag queens, you know? And soon enough, in all the cities in Latin America where street walkers would hang, you'd see groups of fully decked out transvestites, plying their version of the hooker trade.

[10:26] And in the past, of course, before the 1980s, there were transvestites, but they never hung out on the streets. It would have been a bold move and just too risky. Because one or two of them dressed like drag queens would certainly get a bottle or two thrown at them, or even get the crap kicked out of them by local macho hooligans. Talk about a target. So basically, what happened was, these early groups of transvestites were tough, and they could kick ass when necessary. And when the occasion came that they did get picked on, they gave as good as they got. So after a while, when the local gay-hating macho rowdies realized these guys were big and tough and we're gonna fight back hard. Well, after a while, a kind of an uneasy truce pervaded all the medium and big cities in Latin America. And these days, if you're ever driving at night through a medium or large-sized Latin

[11:14] city, and you do find yourself in an area where there are some street walkers and hookers, I guarantee you're gonna see some transvestites too. But they won't be the rough and tough, hard-looking types that used to walk the streets in the past. Nowadays, they're looking sharp. With all that cheap cosmetic surgery that you can get down here in Latin America, often the only way you can tell the guys from the girls is by height and general broadness of the shoulders. And like expat Eddie says, he swears the boys dressed as girls are almost always hotter than the real girls on the corners out there. And at night, from a distance, I can't argue with that. So anyway, in the past dozen or so years, one rarely reads in the paper about any kind of problems happening with the gay community at all, not in the medium and larger sized cities anyway. However, I do understand that in the small pueblos, the towns from maybe 500 people to

[12:02] 10 or 12,000, there's just not enough people who've come out of the closet. And unfortunately, since everyone knows everyone and possibly could be related, the rumor mills run wild. There, it's very difficult to be anonymous. And the problem is small towns like that don't have any kind of gay social community to speak of. So people with alternative lifestyles there could be pretty isolated. So what generally happens is that most gay guys and gals who grow up in small towns like that, they end up leaving their small towns for the nearest big city, and you can hardly blame them. And of course, the internet has made it 100 times easier to hook up with a group of like-minded individuals in the local big town. Now one guy at the hair salon told me, gone are those crazy days where you'd just pack your suitcase, get on the bus and show up in downtown Minagua, Nicaragua, not knowing

[12:50] a soul or where to go. Like he said back then, that was the scariest part of the whole journey. So the question comes up. When an expat or gringo like me or Eddie walks around in one of the high-end or media men shopping malls in a big city in Latin America, will we see obvious gay couples window-shomping and holding hands and playing lovey-dovey? Well the answer is no, but you'll see plenty of straight Latin couples doing it, that's for sure. Latin America is a touchy-feely society, you know. And there's nothing wrong with that, unless you happen to be gay. Then no matter where you are, you're gonna catch some looks. It doesn't matter if you're in Lima, Tegucigalpa, Chicago or Cleveland, you're gonna get some looks. But like I said, when you're walking around down here, sure you'll see singles and couples

[13:36] that you'll suspect are gay, but that's not because they're holding hands or kissing or acting more feminine than the next guy. It's just like with gay men up in the first world, we're kind of stuck with the stereotype, you know. They just seem to dress a little sharper and are groomed a little bit nicer than the average guy. I mean, compared to guys like me and Expat Eddie, you know what I mean. The hair, the nails, the shoes, always just to cut above local Latins and gringos for that matter. But then again, it's not hard to outclass the average Expat gringo, because we tend to dress down, which is, you know, the smartest thing to do down here. Now, like I said, in the medium and larger cities, the gay crowd and the people with alternative lifestyles, they have their bars and districts and hangouts, where they let loose at night and on weekends, just like the straight Latin crowd have their places

[14:23] to hang, too. However, when you're on the gringo tourist trail, like in Cancun or Panama or Acapulco, Costa Rica, for one thing, you'll see more gay couples in general and more open displays of affection in public. And that's because most of these folks are on vacation, letting loose and really having a good time. But it's a lot like up in the States, where you'll see occasionally affection between gay male couples. But you rarely see that with lesbian couples, because they seem to be a lot more discreet about it. But that's not to say you won't see lesbian couples at all, they're down here alright. You will, but off the tourist trail, they're almost invisible. Obviously, because off the tourist trail, there's a larger lag time in the acceptance of two women together like that. But for example, there are quite a few Latin American towns that are way off the main gringo

[15:11] tourist trail, but are locally known as tourist spots for Latins. Now, these are some of the off the radar places that have become quite popular with the gay and lesbian crowd. In fact, they've long been touted as favorite spots for people with alternative lifestyles on gay and lesbian travel websites. Yup, and when I started investigating a few things to do today's show, I just couldn't believe how many gay and lesbian travel websites there are. It's obvious it's an absolutely huge market because, face it, the majority of gays and lesbians don't have kids and never will, so that means they have huge levels of disposable income for things like traveling and partying that the average family with kids could never dream of. Anyway, for the last dozen or so years, they've been coming down repeatedly to a lot of these

[15:58] little off the radar, really low volume tourist towns. I personally know of a dozen or so little towns like that, that are kind of on the tourist trail for Latins, and yet have a small trickle of gringos, mostly backpackers coming through, that have been on the first world gay and lesbian radar for a long time. Anyway, in a lot of these small Latin tourist town gems, like for example in Copan Honduras or Panachal Guatemala, you'll see more than a few lesbian couples walking around and taking in the sights. But as is the usual case, they are not holding hands in public or being lovey dovey in any way. So I know, right now, some of you just might want to ask me, Johnny, how do you know that they're lesbians? Well, I use the phrase that a federal judge once used when asked for a definition of pornography,

[16:48] to which he said it's hard to explain, but I know it when I see it. So basically, if you've been to more than 50 countries like I have, all I can say is you know it when you see it. Alright, and what about lesbian and lesbian couples who aren't gringos or expats, but are local Latins? Well, of course, like I said before, in every medium to large city, they have their own social community and clubs and events, and of course in the larger cities, there's nothing gray market or underground about it at all. You can look up their bars and discos and clubs and organizations on the internet, and if you're so inclined, visit them yourself. In fact, some years ago, when I was playing in a rather excellent American style rock and roll and blues band, and we spent a year or two playing up and down the Caribbean side

[17:33] of Latin America at all the cool beach bars and places from Cancun to Cartagena. Now let me qualify that by saying I'm not blowing my own horn here. In fact, I was the worst guy in the band, so there you have it. In fact, I was riding on the gringo advantage again, because I was the only 100% gringo in the band, and they needed me or some halfway decent gringo musician for legitimacy, for authenticity. I mean, we weren't playing American rock and roll and blues, you know. Well, once we had a very strange gig. We were hired to play a five-year anniversary party at a lesbian bar in San Jose, Costa Rica. That was some time ago, and I don't know if the place is there anymore, but it was a hell of a wild time. And get this, at midnight, a beautiful girl in a Playboy bunny outfit jumped out of a

[18:21] big cake on stage, and it didn't take long to realize that her Playboy bunny costume was nothing but a thin coat of body paint. And the four beautiful ladies who were bartending? You guessed it, body paint, too. And back then, that was when those Mike Myers' Austin Powers movies were all the rage. So the theme of that party was the psychedelic 60s. They had cages hanging from the ceiling with bikini-clad girls dancing in them, body paint again, all that 60s shindig and hullabaloo stuff, you know. And if that wasn't enough, the highlight of the evening was when one of those bikini-clad girls tried to hit on Eddie. Yep, when he heard we were playing at a lesbian bar, Eddie volunteered to be our roadie for the night. Anyway, one of the girls hit on Eddie, which eventually turned into a big cat fight, and

[19:10] the bouncers kicked Eddie out of the bar. Now you see, the thing is, there were no male civilians allowed at that party that night. And the only males in the bar were the band Us, Eddie, who we said was our roadie, and the two sumo bouncers with no necks. Now outside the entrance door on the street, there was almost a riot. There was a throng of people waiting to get in. And most of them were guys, straight guys, mostly gringo tourists, who heard the American rock and roll and blues music and wanted to get in. They had no idea this was strictly a lesbian bar. They were just gringo tourists out on the town, out for a good time. Anyway, the cops came around midnight and shut the music down, because apparently the place was just licensed as a bar and restaurant and didn't have a cabaret permit. In other words, no permission for live music.

[19:57] And I guess they figured they could get away with it just one night a year, during their anniversary. And up to midnight anyway, everybody was having such a great time that the owner tried to pay off the cops, which normally would have worked. This is the third world, you know. But here's where middle and lower class machoism reared its ugly head. You see, the cops, it turns out, the owner told me after the bar closed, always headed in for her, because obviously, they didn't like the fact that there was a lesbian bar in the neighborhood. Turns out, she said, the male gay bars in the vicinity, the cops would hassle them too, but they'd accept their bribes, and they'd hit them up as often as they could get away with. Now, the cops, being from the lower classes themselves, don't have any love at all for gay men, but they took some perverted justification in the fact that all those good looking gay

[20:45] men, at least, weren't competition to their masculinity. They weren't out picking up ladies. But lesbian women, they didn't understand at all, especially since the owner said, these macho cops were always hitting on the prostitutes and the street walkers in the area. And they pretty much put lesbian women in the same category, but man, were they mistaken about that. Anyway, when these cops dealt with the local prostitutes, they'd get certain favors, of course, for permitting them to hang around on their corners. Now, even though prostitution is quasi-legal throughout Latin America, the cops could make it rough for anybody who walked the streets. Anyway, the bar owner said the cops headed in for her in her bar from day one and never failed to hassle some of her more attractive clients as they left the bar at the end of the night. Because she said, you see, when the bars close at two, there was always a cop patrol car

[21:34] parked right outside the front door, watching as the ladies filed out. The cops were ready to pounce on the owner if one drink was sold a second after bar time. Because if they could catch her doing that, they could close a place and slap her with a big fine. And not only that, she said, at least twice a month, the cops would walk in and check everyone's ID, just hoping to find someone under 18 so they could shut the place down for the night too. And apparently, from what the owner said, the cops will never do that in a gay bar because they're loathe to walk into a place like that where there's a bunch of guys in very tight pants and wife-beater t-shirts kissing and holding hands. Hey, I told you this was going to be the farthest thing from PC. Now bear with me a bit because this really is in the same vein.

[22:21] Anyway, for all you expat wannabes who want to start businesses down here, please keep this in mind. If you think the US has way too many non-working holidays, well, listen to this. Down here in Latin America, they've got double the amount of holidays people up north have. Oh, they get Christmas and Easter and Independence Day like you get up in the States. But they get a dozen or so odd and special days off that you've never heard of before. Luckily, most of them aren't paid holidays, but nevertheless, they get the day off. But the real reason I'm mentioning that now is because on most of these holidays, they have parades. Huge gigantic parades sometimes where practically the whole town or city shows up, often lining the main parade routes for a couple of miles. I mean, look at it this way. It's free entertainment for the poor. And in those parades, just like every parade up in the first world, they've got bad marching

[23:09] bands and stupid floats with the local homecoming queen on them and clowns that aren't funny and always, I mean always, because Latin America is so Catholic. They've got some floats with priests and nuns and saints and bishops and cardinals and of course all the biblical big wigs like Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Moses and the Easter Bunny. No, my bad, he's not in the regular Bible. I think he's in the Mormon Bible, isn't he? But the real irony here is that nowadays, there's usually a gay contingent in the big parade. That means if you're standing there watching that parade long enough, you'll see gay guys, almost no women, with gay pride banners and stuff. Now you and I are very used to seeing that kind of thing. I mean, up in Chicago and Cleveland, the gays in fact have their own gay pride day and their

[23:54] own parade. And when that first started happening in the States, back in the 70s and 80s, I guess, I remember there were a lot of comments and grumblings in the straight and blue collar community. It took some getting used to, but now it's old hat and just as boring as the rest of the stuff in the parade. But anyway, even seeing a small gay contingent in the local parade, you gotta know that the tolerance towards alternative lifestyles has taken a big turn for the positive. Because I can tell you, 20 or 25 years ago, they would have gotten tomatoes or bottles or worse thrown at them. But nowadays, well, that just shows how far things have come. Now of course the extreme example of that is Carnival in Rio, which has always been the one place in Latin America where you can have alternative lifestyles shoved right in your face 30 or 40 years ago and nobody cared. Anyway, to show you just how extreme some of the gay marchers in these local parades

[24:42] have become. A year or so ago, I was in a tiny little town on the Latin Caribbean coast, a town of maybe 5,000. And I happened to be stuck there during one of those labor holidays and of course they had their parade and I was sitting in a restaurant and that parade started up going right past me and sure enough, they had their gay contingency and there were only maybe 7 or 8 of them holding up a sign and they had the most outrageous, colorful, tight clothes you ever saw. I mean they were dressed in typical 70's disco glitz. And I'll tell you, instead of being pissed off and irritated by it, like they would have been 5, 10 or 15 years ago, the crowd just loved them and in fact applauded big time as they walked past. Now I'm not gonna say it's all fine and dandy if you're gay down here in Latin America, but I will say this.

[25:27] If you're gay or straight, it shouldn't stop you from making Latin America your destination. So no matter what your persuasion, just be smart and get out of the states while you still can with your ass and your assets intact. Because me and thousands of other people in the know believe that you've still got some time, maybe a year or two to get your ass out. But your assets, well that's another thing altogether. But you know, I'm afraid a lot of you wannabes up there are like birds in a gilded cage. You know the story. One day the owner decides to let the bird free, so he opens the door and the bird looks outside at the big wide open world and decides he likes his little cage, his gilded prison, better than the alternative, which is freedom. And that changed the subject a little bit because this really cracks me up.

[26:13] You know, I often mention that Latins just love t-shirts that have American sayings on them, any kind of American lettering, a sports t-shirt, a bar, a restaurant, an Aussie or a heavy metal t-shirt, you name it, if it's in English, they love it. And you know, 99% of the time, Latins with those t-shirts don't speak English, so they don't have a clue as to the slogan or what it really means. Now the other day when I was at Expat Eddie's house, I saw a t-shirt that just about made me wet myself and have a heart attack. And Eddie's maintenance guy was the one wearing it. Before I tell you what it said, I have to point out there are tons of do-gooder church groups that come down to try to help Latin Americans and they give out t-shirts too. Always Jesus t-shirts with appropriate sayings, like for example, Jesus is my pastor or Jesus is my shepherd, things like that.

[26:59] Now you have to remember that the word Jesus and Jesus are the same thing down here. And remember, a lot of male Latins are named Jesus. Down here it's normal, even though Gringos up north would never name a kid Jesus or Jesus. That would just be way too weird. Anyway, Eddie's maintenance guy had a t-shirt on that said, Jesus is my gardener. And I said, Eddie, where did he get that t-shirt? Then Eddie said, I don't know, but I think I'll have a couple of thousand made up and have Walmart sell them in California. 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, theexpatfiles at gmail.com.

[27:47] And don't forget to check out expatwisdom.com to sign up for your free reports on Latin America. See you next time. Nos vemos.