#198 – The Expat Files: Media, Crime, and Life 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 as I wonder My thoughts ever straight. Hi everybody. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you what it's really like to live work play and or retire in Latin America I tell it just like it is so Now on my last show I was giving you a preview as to how big-city Latin American newspapers scare the crap out of you or more to the point they scare the crap out of expat wannabes who might happen to pick one up Or download one and subsequently need a change of underwear after they've read through the first eight or ten pages

[00:51] But like I said before the average Latin just skips those first eight or ten pages and heads over to the sports or entertainment Section kind of like what the average person in the first world does too That is if you're one of the few left who reads the paper anymore up there It's certainly a dying art But down here due to the lag time effect newspapers are in fact alive and well and they're gonna stay that way for five or ten Years at least and that's mostly because internet penetration hasn't hurt newspapers yet like it's had up in the first world down here There's only about 15 percent internet penetration in the home So newspapers are still the undisputed marketing and advertising kings. The fact is Latin American newspapers have huge Circulations, they're very inexpensive like 50 cents or less a copy and placing a classified or a want to add in one of those

[01:37] Things is dirt cheap the same with traditional radio stations down here They're alive and well to with no signs at all of them losing ground to the internet again because internet penetration in the home Is so minuscule, but because of that gringo advantage even a dull gringo up in the states knows that newspapers are dying and that Traditional radio and television are on their last legs, too We're not clairvoyant But because of that we know the same thing is gonna happen down here in Latin America in a few years But the people down here they don't see it and if I bring up my predictions in polite conversation People look at me like I'm nuts Everyone down here thinks a radio station or a newspaper is a gold mine and for the moment they are But you and I know in a few years, they'll be as obsolete as VHS video tapes

[02:22] In fact, you'd be dumping your money down the toilet if you invested in one right now, but Latins They don't know that talking to them right now It was like talking to a first world home builder or a guy from century 21 or remax During the first world real estate bubble if you'd have just hinted that the bubble was gonna pop They'd have either laughed at you or thought you were nuts Now that's what our gringo advantage is all about really because we saw the very same thing happen up in the first world some time ago Anyway, let's get back to all that bad news in the Honduran newspaper last week I got through the first three pages of bad news and now let's go on to page 4 in big boldface type We have a report here that says it was just discovered that a building that was bought by the government was paid for twice

[03:08] Three years ago the building was bought for two and a half million dollars and six months ago another check for two and a half million dollars was issued to the same corporation a corporation by the way that happens to be Conveniently outside of the country and offshore corporation Hmm. The article concludes by saying no one seems to know where that duplicate two and a half million dollars went and the politician Who brokered the deal is long gone. There's been a change of administration since then and he is no longer in the country surprise surprise Now on page 5 of the paper We have a full-page ad by Chevrolet with a huge picture of a $50,000 Tahoe SUV Not your ordinary SUV, but more like a super-sized SUV You know the kind I mean like a Ford Suburban a Yukon or a Cadillac Escalade

[03:57] just impossible to maneuver down here between the traffic the narrow streets and the point-sized parking spots an SUV like that down here, especially in the city is the last word in stupidity for anyone who's got a brain But who said Latins with money have brains brains don't seem to come with the package, you know it's hard enough to get around and park when you've got a Nissan Sentra and Here's another big problem. Even if you find a parking spot once you open the door one foot You whack the car door next to you So I ask you who can afford a big $50,000 tugboat like that and who would be stupid enough to buy one? Well a lot of expat gringos can afford them But they don't buy them at least not after they've lived down here for a couple of years the fact is I do know some gringos that came down with money and the first thing they did was buy a big boat like

[04:47] That and they cried a little bit with every parking lot ding and bumper scrape Expats like that who can afford to buy that stuff as soon as they get down here They learn how to downsize in a hurry So if expat gringos who can afford it aren't buying who is medium and high level latin politicians Of course, even the narcos aren't that stupid They don't want to stand out in the crowd And that's one of the points of being a latin politician to show everybody how big and important you are to stand out in The crowd bodyguards in all of course and the god-given right to double park because they know no cops got the balls to give them A ticket and of course those narcos they have all the money in the world and they do have nice cars But nice small cars because if there is an accident or a traffic problem

[05:35] They want to get through the bottleneck not be the cause of it and just one more thing about that full-page ad with that chevy Tahoe now why would a Chevy dealership take a full-page ad out if there wasn't a huge demand for that kind of crap and Mercedes and Porsche and Range Rover do exactly the same thing too and on all the busy roads You see giant billboards the latest Mercedes BMW and Audi SUVs too and expats always wonder how could there be a market to justify that kind of advertising? Well, I'm here to tell you there is half of those vehicles are bought by Businessmen who can actually afford them and the other half are bought through the public trough for high-level government parasites who act like Saudi Princes well that just gives you an idea of the extreme nature of the class distinctions in third-world societies

[06:25] When you got 80% of the population making less than 400 bucks a month yet You see full-page ads all the time for high-end SUVs It would take the average Latin American guy at least 20 years of his salary to pay for a car like that But as usual that doesn't faze the politicians. They have no shame. We know that that just comes with the territory Okay, now I'm on page number six now Here's an article with some official data from the Ministadio de Salud, which is the health ministry It says that in the year 2012 the public hospital system. That's the national health system You know the hospitals down here that provide free medieval care. Anyway, they report the statistic that in 2012 1896 babies were born to women under 14 years of age

[07:11] Did you get that to women under 14 and to all you guys without a calculator handy? That means babies born to women 13 and under Whoa, and it says here that 90% of those births were to indigenous women and the other 10% were Latina women You know Latinas, so what they're saying here is that the indigenous poor population? Those are the women that are having these babies ones that are forced to use the public health care system because they can't afford Private hospitals and it also says here the average level of schooling for those 1800 women or I should say child women Was fourth grade so you can draw your own sad conclusions from that Now turning to page six we have a full-page Cellular telephone ad telling us today that the company Mobystar is offering triple the usual minutes if we purchase them for our prepaid

[08:03] Phone today, which by the way is always a very good deal That means for example if you buy a prepaid card today and load it into your phone You can call the United States for about six cents a minute Not bad And if you call locally you're gonna pay about three to four cents a minute and when you think about that for a while You'll see that's not such a good deal because your friend might be a half a kilometer away And you're paying about half to three quarters the rate then if you were talking to someone 2,000 kilometers away in the States like I said not such a good deal for the locals but for expats with connections up in the States It's actually a pretty great deal, but oh well and by the way you might be thinking well Skype is free So why not use that well? Yes, that's true. It is free except Skype has real privacy issues

[08:50] You should read the disclaimer when you sign up for Skype But if you have a cheap prepaid phone down here, and you buy it anonymously you really are anonymous Nobody's keeping track of you at all so yes Skype and Magic Jack are cheaper in fact basically free But just know that if you do use them you should sign up using a fictitious name that way you're indirectly telling them to stick Their privacy policy up where the Sun don't shine and you know these internet services like Skype and your email services Shouldn't call it a privacy policy They should call it a loss of privacy policy because that's what it is really problem is nobody really reads those well Some of us do so how can you stop Skype from using all your data and tracking you? You can do that by signing up for your Skype at one of those internet cafes

[09:35] Just give them fictitious data and let them track that internet computer and not yours. Oh and by the way speaking of special phone company offers Down here every couple of days you'll see in the newspapers phone companies offering three times a minute if you buy the phone card today And that's only for those prepaid phones, but practically everyone down here has those anyway now up in the States I know that's not such a popular item those throw away phones the ones you buy for 15 or 20 bucks The ones you have to keep loading minutes into up in the States It's traditionally been kind of a white trash stigma to have a prepaid phone But down here in Latin America 90% of the cell phones are prepaid so there's no stigma at all and as an aside I advise you to get a prepaid phone or two because you can get the contract without giving them your real name

[10:24] You can go completely anonymous on that phone at least you could start it out that way As long as you don't get sucked into giving out your personal data over the line to someone Anyway, like I always say the first step to becoming a good expat is to get on the road to being anonymous And this is a good first step go ahead and get one of those prepaid phones at a drug store or a convenience store or a gas station and Don't pay for it with a credit card buy it with cash and give fictitious debts. There's no crime in that There's no law that says you got to give your right name You're not signing a federal document and even if the paperwork says you're breaking some kind of law if you give fictitious debts Screw that I guarantee you break an 8 or 10 laws a day. You don't even know about I mean look the IRS code is 77,000 pages now and every time Congress meets they generate another 10,000 pages of laws and regs

[11:13] Then there's all those laws and regs your state and local governments are passing anyway Just take it from me you're breaking 8 or 10 laws every day whether you know it or not So let those young fools on Twitter and Facebook and all those social networks open their private lives to the world You don't have to do that Make yourself a couple of brand new email addresses with some glitzy name You always wanted to use then go ahead and sign up for all those free reports You always wanted, but you thought might be a bit too edgy I mean who knows what kind of list you get on these days for downloading things Especially if they're counter to the standard government line of BS So go ahead and get on some government lists with your pseudonym You know and if you're worried that it's illegal to create an entirely different name for yourself and a new set of dads

[11:59] Don't fret movie stars and porn stars do it all the time don't they and you don't see them getting prosecuted or put in jail For it that just never happens. So go ahead if they can do it you can too But remember the name Johnny Mueller's already taken Bottom line quit giving out your real name, or you're never gonna be the least bit free I'll tell you what if you want to see how big your footprint is just Google yourself then after that Don't ever use Google again use start page calm because they don't track you record you or keep any of your dad at all Start page calm is Google without the snooping, but where was I? Oh, yeah, those Latin daily newspapers and all the bad news that's fit to print Okay, now we're on page six and we have a story that says that five military guys including two

[12:48] Colonels have just gone in front of a judge and they're accused of robbing 1.2 million dollars from the Ministry of Defense and that crime goes back to seven years ago These guys took the money and didn't leave the country They were caught living in luxury homes with a fleet of late model cars and SUVs hmm again with the SUVs Anyway late model cars and SUVs packed into garages and lining the driveways of these guys luxury homes Typical huh and yes, they caught these guys after living the life of Riley for about eight years in their own home towns But as is usual in Latin America nobody seems to be able to recover the money. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

[13:34] Now on the next page they have photos of a big drug bust and this is the level of brain power They have written for this paper. It says police discovered 419 pounds of cocaine and then it says in parentheses that's five hundred ninety eight point five kilos now for any of us Who took fourth grade math you'd know that five hundred ninety eight point five kilos of cocaine or of anything is about? 1300 pounds not anywhere near 419 pounds the But I doubt anyone but me actually made the conversion You know and on the same page they show a picture of a marijuana crop It says that they just destroyed eight thousand matas of marijuana in the northeastern part of the country now this I like the definition of a mata is a plot and

[14:22] How big a plot is is anyone's guess which means there's an awful lot of wiggle room there now, isn't there? Anyway on the next page page eight of the paper we see a bunch of police carrying away plastic bags It says here two women's cadavers have been found in a shallow grave and the police say it's believed to have been part of a revenge Killing between rival drug gangs now That's the kind of stuff that really scares expat wannabes But believe me us expats do not go anywhere near the places that stuff happens But it is news especially when women are the victims so they print it. Let's read on And then on the next page page nine We've got this story which seems to show up about every three or four days in every Latin American paper it says Jose Angel Ramirez

[15:08] 67 years old was killed while driving his chicken bus. Of course. I'm translating there The fact is only gringos expats and wannabes use the term chicken bus if you say chicken bus down here The locals don't know what the hell you're talking about to them. It's just a bus It doesn't matter how many chickens goats or iguanas are on board chickens and animals are bona fide passengers, too Although they do ride for free anyway in this story It seems that two guys with masks tried to board the bus and the driver floored it before they could get on Some shots were fired and a stray bullet caught the driver in a head and the lesson here is don't ride the chicken bus Go ahead and take some pictures from out on the curb, but don't ride the chicken bus Now a little farther down page nine

[15:56] It says here that six agents from the Policia National Civil Which is the civil police were caught with two stolen late model trucks and a bodega a garage full of stolen merchandise And I'm telling you guys right now Every single paper every single day has a story like this in it It really seems that three-quarters of all the crimes in Latin America are perpetrated by either politicians the police the military or ex-police and ex-military and it seems that the other 25% of the crimes seem to be split between Your normal big-city delinquents and crooked rent-a-cops and bodyguards who steal from their own bosses And if you really analyze those statistics, you'll see why it's pretty safe to be a gringo or an expat down here We don't have bodyguards

[16:42] We don't show off our wealth and we don't go anywhere near those neighborhoods where all that kind of crime is happening and the crooks That are in the police and the military. They certainly don't pick on us. They go after the real obvious big scores They don't go after low-profile expats like us and when I say they go after the obvious big scores I'm talking about warehouses and businesses that have a lot of cash on hand and banks Especially banks because down here unlike in the first world just looking strictly at the odds bank robbery absolutely pays Though it's not quite so lucrative in the big cities Where about one in four bank robbers are actually caught still those are pretty good odds Wouldn't you say but out in the smaller towns in the boonies at the branch banks? less than one out of eight bank robbers is ever caught and

[17:28] when they are caught it's often months and years after the crime because like I said a little earlier these guys are so Confident about not getting caught or they're so stupid that they end up getting recognized somewhere close by Most often going back to the old poor neighborhood and suddenly to the surprise of their poor or lower middle-class neighbors There's a new car or SUV in the driveway Yep, most of the time that's the way it happens and these guys are never caught by crack police work They're caught because they're turned in by a jealous family member or neighbor often because they didn't quite share the wealth enough if you Know what I mean? So down here in Latin America, especially in the boonies with all that first world technology and cameras and stuff You'd think they'd catch the robber 95% of the time like they do up in the first world up there for sure bank robbery doesn't pay in fact

[18:18] The odds are terribly against you like 20 to 1 but down here especially in the boonies robbing a bank is practically a sure thing Because you see after a while the cameras and the technology just doesn't work like it did when it was first installed Remember, they've got big-time maintenance issues here Let's read on Okay, now here's a full-page ad from another cell phone company showing there's a sale on six different kinds of blackberries Now everybody up north knows that blackberries are passe But down here somehow people have the idea that their very first world and very cool and also down here There's a huge black market for stolen blackberries They just switch the chips and reprogram them and you can buy them for a half to a third the price of a new one You know in every medium to large-sized Latin City

[19:05] There are specific places you can go to buy stolen stuff like that You ask a taxi driver where you could buy a quote used unquote blackberry and he'll know exactly where to take you I'm telling you I've never ever met a Latin richer poor who thinks that pirating is a sin or a crime down here It's not about morality or justice. It's about the price In fact just a few weeks ago a Latin business friend of mine bought four Legitimate blackberries in a package deal on a deal that the cell phone company was offering That's four blackberries one for him one for his wife and one for each of his two spoiled teenage kids Exactly what I don't recommend and just four days after he gave his wife her new blackberry She was driving her late model Toyota SUV a Ford tuner. You've seen those right which is another purchase

[19:55] I never recommend for expats Anyway, she was driving in a busy section of town at noon while on her blackberry when a motorcycle with two guys on it And no plates weaved through the traffic pulled right up to the driver's side tapped on her window with his gun and motion to hand it Over so in the end she ended up handing it over and calling her husband on an old cheap throwaway phone that she paid 20 bucks For that was in the glove compartment the one she never should have retired in the first place But with Latins, it's all about the show, right? So in this example, I guess you can see exactly who thieves like to target women in late model SUVs and people gabbing away in the car on high-end cell phones now The funny thing is Latins always ask me Johnny Why don't you have a blackberry or an iPhone or some kind of a smartphone when they see the old throwaway job?

[20:44] I'm using they just can't believe that me a gringo wouldn't have something cool with all those bells and whistles on it and get this One of my wealthier Latin buddies even offered to give me his old blackberry because he'd trade it up to a newer model I said no Thanks, of course The thing is I can't go through the analysis with these Latin guys that I go through with you guys They just don't get it I mean after all we are using those guys as the example not to follow now aren't we but it doesn't matter Even if I did go through the whole spiel, they wouldn't listen to me. Anyway, that's how strong the desire is to be first world These guys with a little money think they got to have those things and they can't really understand why us Expats who come down don't really crave that stuff. We sure don't fit the mold They're used to seeing on US cable TV, you know, and for us, that's the point, right?

[21:32] my Latin friends are no different from other Latins they want to appear to be first world in every way and Nothing's gonna stop them. Not even a few robberies or assaults now and then so what happened to my friend's wife? Well after she got that four-day old blackberry stolen at gunpoint now She has another one, but guess what this time they bought theft insurance on the damn thing And yes it was hard for me to believe at first but those blackberries and other smartphones get stolen so often that now when you buy a Legitimate one from the dealer they'll offer you theft insurance. Oh the insanity of it all, huh? Why not buy a $20 job? That's its own best insurance, right? And by the way with the average salary down here of 300 bucks a month who else but wealthy Businessmen can afford to pay two three or four hundred bucks for a blackberry. Well, it's not just businessmen

[22:21] You should see what I see when I drive past government buildings during a workday every single government suit Even the bodyguards and the drivers are talking on blackberries Which means the wives the friends and family members of politicians are using blackberries, too That's nothing more than a combination of the gringo wannabe and the lag time effect. It's par for the course, you know Now turning to page 12. I think you're gonna enjoy this it says here that 500 families are blocking the Central Historic district in the city of coke on Protesting to the municipality that they haven't had water service for the last two months Think about it two months without a drop coming out of your faucet That means they have to haul water from the lake or the river or a public well or buy it from one of the local

[23:08] Water companies on a tanker truck and I'm sure there's a connection between those private water delivery companies like that and local Politicians like the mayor and the aldermen if you know what I mean So anyway for two months no water in Hong Kong now Of course, this is way out in the boonies where they don't get much government service at all That kind of stuff never happens in the big city Sure in the big city the water may not be on the whole day You might only get eight or ten hours, but you do get water every day And that's why everyone's got a cistern they've learned to live with it But out in the sticks far away from the powers of government in the big city things like this happen all the time and of course what they're talking about here is the public municipal water supply and like I've said many times before Expanse and gringos we never want to be on the public water supply

[23:56] We always want to be in a colony or a subdivision with our own Well and in the case that you happen to be located in an older part of a big city Where you're forced to be on municipal water because you don't have any place to put a well The next best thing is to put in a big cistern on your roof or underground And I emphasize put in the biggest one you possibly can That way if you have very little volume and very low pressure in the house at least when you're sleeping at night Your cistern will slowly fill up over the next few hours And you'll have a big old water reserve for the next day when the demand is high and everybody's being rationed again So anyway nothing new these guys haven't had water for two months And you can see by the photo that they're all indigenous people nothing new there either They've got no political power and they pull no weight at all

[24:44] These guys are too far from the center of power in the capital city to get any attention at all except when voting time Comes and you can bet your life by then that water problem will be fixed and the incumbents will brag about that success And their political platform. It's all so predictable And you wonder why you read sometimes that the mayor's been lynched or his house has been burned down That might happen in an awful election year when the politicians don't need anyone's votes You know that's when political greed and corruption can backfire when the poor classes rise up and really get pissed off That's when the occasional politician gets smoked out After all he's the guy with the nicest house the Range Rover and the private well something his constituents could never dream Of having okay, what else have we got on the same page of the paper next to that news item about water

[25:32] There's a picture of a chicken bus. That's rolled off a cliff leaving seven dead and 13 injured need I say more about chicken buses So anyway going through these articles in the first ten or so pages of the daily newspaper You get an idea that things are awfully bad down here in Honduras I mean in the first 11 or 12 pages there wasn't a single positive article nothing But corruption and disaster and dead bodies right well That's the case with all the daily newspapers down here No wonder first-world people who can understand a little bit of Spanish often at the last minute change their minds about coming down to Latin America, but let me just point out that there wasn't a single article that mentioned a gringo or an expat in any way at all Did you notice that for some reason nobody's singling us out now?

[26:18] Are they and I'd like to point out just one last thing right after page 12? That's when all the happy and positive articles started to appear I didn't read you any those because good news is boring right and believe it or not even after all that bad news There's page after page after page of good news Happy smiling people at festivals and malls and amusement parks and church gatherings They really do know how to have fun and on the cheap you certainly don't see anything like that up in the first world newspapers Sure, there's the appearance of good news up there, but people just don't seem to be all that happy about things In fact even when they look like they're having fun. They seem to be slightly worried about something You know so what's the bottom line about reading a Latin newspaper and seeing all that bad news well

[27:04] I view it like this When you come down to Latin America you can look for the bad and you'll find it But if you look for the good you're gonna find that too now. I'm not telling you you shouldn't believe what's in the papers There's no doubt the articles. I read to you today are true, so go ahead and read the Latin papers I recommend it Just don't get caught up in all that bad news like expat Eddie says we expats don't live in that world We live in the other part of Latin America the part that comes after page 12 You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America Coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America the expat files at gmail.com

[27:51] See you next time