#193 – The Expat Files: Real Stories from Latin America

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

[00:03] 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, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, if you stick around a while, you'll find out. So let's get started. By now I'm sure everybody knows I'm giving another Expat Wisdom Seminar in Central America. I'm scheduling the next one to be January 16th through the 19th. That'll be for the main seminar and for those of you who want to stay longer, I'll have a special two day business tour scheduled on the Sunday and Monday right after the main

[00:51] seminar. And on that special business tour, there will be a number of stops. We'll be visiting maquilas, textile factories that some people call sweatshops. We'll be visiting the healthcare sector, some of the big hospitals. So you'll be able to see just how first world they really are. And we'll be visiting some high tech IT businesses too. And there we'll show you how first world companies outsource their IT people down here in Latin America. And we'll show you that down here, the people are every bit as capable, even though their salaries are about a fifth of what they are in the first world. And if time permits, we'll throw in a few surprises on that business tour too. And by the way, some of those businesses we're going to hit are owned and operated by expats who came down with little or no money and little or no Spanish.

[01:38] And yet, because of the gringo advantage, they succeeded like they never could have done up in the first world, and they'll be the first to admit it. So if you elect to go on the business tour after the main seminar, that's what it's going to be all about. And just one more thing. Going to places like this are normally way off limits for the average expat or tourist. For me to take people to places like that is only possible because me and my team have made some really good connections down here over the past 20 years. It's a real inside peek as to how expats do business down here. And to tell you the truth, I don't know of anyone or anyone else's seminar that could pull something like this off. But we did it in the last seminar and we'll do it again. Anyway, by popular demand. I've been asked to interview various people that attended the last seminar.

[02:24] You know, opinions about the last event from the horse's mouth, so to speak. And now I have a few comments from Dave, who attended the expat wisdom seminar I gave down in Central America between the last week in June and the first week of July. My name's Dave. I live in the Midwest. I'm married. Been married for a long, long time. I work at a hospital on the administrative side. Nonclinical, I don't come in contact with any patients or anything. Most of my adult life, I've been self-employed. I've always been interested in the possibility of living someplace else and doing some traveling. How old are you, Dave? I'm 59. So Dave, what doubts and negatives might you have had to overcome to make the decision

[03:09] to come down to the seminar? I've been listening to your podcast for quite a while. I thought it's very interesting. I thought it was accurate and sincerely given, and you weren't trying to sell me anything. And so I thought with the background of the podcast that it would be a good value. And then I wondered about safety, and I found your podcast very reassuring. So I decided to go with that. The other part is my friends, I just lie to them. I didn't tell them the reason I was going down there. If their head's not in that place, to think about that sort of thing. I just said I was going down to Antigo with my brother. We were going to hang out for a week along the locals and just see what it was like and have an adventure. Most people just think that's crazy. I live in the Midwest.

[03:56] The idea of going to Central America for a week for a seminar to see what it's like to live in Central America. I just got that deer in the headlight look. So when you came back, what happened? Did you tell some people about it or did you just kind of keep mum about it too? Mostly, I came back and had to tell my wife. I told her, yeah, I had a great time. It was exactly what you described. I got a lot out of it. It was money well spent. And I said, we've got to go back. We've got to go back as a couple. It's really a great time. It's a beautiful country. The people are friendly. We've got to go back. And then with my friends, I've just got to be really careful, Johnny. It's a quantum leap. I mean, if they're not listening to your podcast now to talk about living outside the

[04:42] United States, it's a lifestyle because they're not even in the same place with the same sort of political philosophy of how I think things are changing and not for the better. And they're kind of all still buying into the system that life is great here. And if we would just change presidents, life would be good. I just don't see it that way. And I had one friend, he thought Central America was just backward and dirty and he'd never been there. But that was his impression from however he gathers his information. So there's no point even telling him when I started to tell him, you could almost see the question mark over his head. It was like, it's just not getting this. So I relay my experiences depending on the person I'm talking to. And I have two grown daughters too.

[05:28] Even they are like wondering, why did you go? And I came back and it's like, what did you get out of that? They're just not there. Yeah, I see a lot of that too, but people are waking up little by little, at least the ones listening to my show and Richard Martin's show anyway. Okay, Dave, so how would you compare what my expat wisdom seminar offered versus some of the other groups that give seminars down in Latin America? Right. I'm familiar with Sovereign Man and I'm familiar with International Living. I have subscribed to both at other points in time. I don't think there's any comparison. I feel like they're trying to sell me something, definitely trying to sell me something, kind of pushing their own agenda, guiding my experience, guiding what I see and the information I take

[06:14] in. And I really feel like your seminar has a whole different niche, a whole different focus, boots on the ground, what life is like for the average person. You're not trying to sell me anything. You were just trying to give me what we wanted and that was just what is it really like? There's just no comparison. I was really pleased. I just thought it was a terrific experience. I'm sure you realized right away, Dave, that for me, the point is to show people how to live off the tourist trail where there's not a lot of gringos around and not setting up in these first world expensive gringoized communities like the ones you see in Panama and Costa Rica and stuff. The ones that groups like International Living push in their seminars. If I'm just going to go someplace and then just live in a gringo park or in a gringo

[07:04] community, I might as well just stay here. I don't see what the advantage is. If you're going to go to a foreign country, you might as well learn the culture and have that experience. So Dave, for you, what was the best thing about this seminar experience or some of the best things? The part of the best thing for me was actually just the eclectic group of people that were there. I know we're self-selecting and so that we definitely had some things in common and it was really fun getting to hear their stories and what their background and what they were thinking. The next thing was just the culture itself. I have done a lot of reading and I'm familiar with their cultures, but to actually be there and just to have time is to wander around town and to hear the stories from you and hear the stories from Jose. I think the takeaway of the culture was really interesting.

[07:53] I think you gave us a nice glimpse into just the locals and then you also took the time to take us up into the art park, some really nice restaurants and stayed in a really nice hotel, but still it's very much the local influence there. I thought that was really nice. And Dave, you did get to experience what most people don't know anything about in the first world, that Altiplano region I'm talking about where there's eternal spring all the time. You got to experience that firsthand, didn't you? I think the Altiplano is just a fabulous place to live. I mean, the temperatures, there was no heating, there was no air conditioning, there were no bugs. I just found that just a great takeaway. And then the stories that you had and of things that you'd experienced, what actually would

[08:41] save me and my wife, who knows, years of learning, failing learning and just what you have to say that shortens that immensely. You can do all the reading you want, but really it takes boots on the ground to find out what it's like for yourself. So Dave, in the end, would you recommend this seminar to a friend or a colleague? In a heartbeat and without reservation, I would highly recommend it. I think it's money well spent. I thought the whole thing was enjoyable. Yeah, yeah, I would highly recommend it. I just thought it was a terrific experience. Okay, David, thanks a lot for talking about all this with us. Our listeners will appreciate it, I'm sure. And so do I. Now, in the last few shows, I've been talking about volcanoes down in Latin America since

[09:28] I've been getting a lot of emails lately with people wondering about how dangerous they really are. Since when there is a pretty good sized blow-off, there's a lot of good photo ops you see on the 6 o'clock news up in the States. You know, throngs of people running for their lives, wearing masks and moist handkerchiefs around their faces like banditos and stuff. And last time if you remember, I mentioned that if you live 10 miles or so from an active volcano, you'll be perfectly fine. Except, once in a while, and it's happened to me twice, an active volcano will spew a powdery ash up to 25 miles away. And when that happens, you're in for a couple of days of real serious dirt and grime. Because that stuff gets everywhere. And the other thing is, for the next couple of weeks or even months, the streets and sidewalks and gutters and pavement outside your house are gonna look all mucky and sludgy.

[10:17] And you'll have to send your maintenance man or gardener or pay someone to go up on your roof and broom the piles of ash off of the places it's collected up there. In other words, it's just a big damn mess and I'm glad it's only happened to me twice in my life. But it's another one of those Latin American experiences you'll never forget. And when natural disasters like that happen, it makes you very glad that maintenance guys and cleaning ladies go for about 12 bucks a day. Now speaking of cleaning ladies, the other day I was with ex-pat Eddie at one of his sushi restaurants in Salvador. And we sat down for a minute and I said, Eddie, you know what? I got a problem. I got the cleaning lady blues. And he said, what are you talking about? And I said, Eddie, I think my cleaning lady is stealing from me. And after I said that, Eddie smiled, his eyes lit up and he held up his hand and slapped

[11:06] me five. And then he left and said, you know what? Mine's stealing from me too. Now the thing is, guys like Eddie and I, who have been down here a long time, guys like us who've had cleaning ladies for years and years, well, we've all had our bad apples and it's not like they steal TVs or money or radios. In no way do they steal your blind, but still things go missing. And such small things in such little amounts that you barely even notice. A pair of new socks, for example, some underwear, new underwear in the package, that is. Maybe a pliers or a screwdriver or some batteries that have been laying around in your junk drawer for years and years. Little things you knew you had around the house somewhere. Suddenly when you need them, gone missing. And you know, now that Walmart and Costco have invaded us down here, a lot of us expats

[11:54] buy in bulk, especially those of us that don't live in the city, and only get in once or twice a week. That's when we hit Costco and do a big buy. And if your pantry's always stocked to the brim, if your cleaning ladies got sticky fingers, who knows what's gone missing? Who can keep track of that stuff, you know? And again, it's one thing catching your cleaning lady in the act, and it's one thing being simply suspicious. Now I have to mention that wealthy Latins and Latinas down here go through a lot of cleaning ladies. There seems to be a revolving door in households like that. And us expats know why, for one thing, wealthy Latins treat their help like dirt, or at best second class citizens, because of that obvious class distinction thing going down here. And that has pretty negative secondary effects, because the help are never really treated

[12:43] with much respect and are in fact often abused verbally and otherwise. Not to mention it seems like the wealthier the Latin family is, the crappier the paycheck. And even worse, it's a very common thing down here for Latin heads of household to pay their help late. Sometimes a week or too late. So you can imagine if a maid's making only $250 a month, if that, if you pay her even a day or two late, that could really screw up her life. The poorer classes of people like that don't live from paycheck to paycheck, they live from day to day. And that's why if you talk to any wealthy Latin woman, she'll tell you that as a class all made steel. Because in her experience, that's the way it is. But when it comes to expats and gringos and our maids and cleaning ladies, we talk amongst ourselves and we hear of the occasional case of a maid with sticky fingers, but it's not

[13:32] really that common with us. Basically because we tend to treat our help with a little more respect, we treat them like real people, so there's less incentive for them to steal from us or for them to get even with us for some perceived insult. And though that's not much of a problem with us expats, it does happen. And you have to consider this for a minute. If there's all these cleaning ladies out there, the ones with sticky fingers that got fired when they worked for their pompous Latin bosses, well after they get fired, they're out there pounding the pavement again as cleaning ladies. So there's a pretty good chance that one of them is going to end up at your doorstep applying for a job opening at your place. And here's another thing, if you hire a cleaning lady or a maid, and you gave her the job because one of the neighbors gave her a reference, or for example, she's a sister of the cleaning

[14:18] lady who's working next door, well that's one thing. And that's how a lot of us expats get our cleaning ladies, from a reference from a neighbor. But if you don't have any neighbors with cleaning ladies that can help you out like that, you'll just have to interview cleaning ladies on your own. And guess what, they'll all come knocking on your door with nicely typed glowing references. In Spanish of course. In fact, every cleaning lady that ever came to my door looking for a job had a sterling reference or two from a past employer. Well, no matter how sterling it is, remember this. As it turns out, like in the first world, a lot of times when you want to get rid of a bad employee, often you don't blow your top and fire him on the spot, you give him a decent reference just to get him off your back and out the door. So bottom line, down here, written references don't mean diddly.

[15:06] So back to the point. Things are going missing around the house, and I suspect the cleaning lady of course. Now my cleaning lady is not a live in cleaning lady. Mine only comes in twice a week. And the thing is, it's commonly known amongst expats that live in cleaning ladies, the ones that have their own little maids quarters, have very little need to steal. I mean after all, your house is their house, they're living there. Which means the cleaning ladies that are most likely to have sticky fingers are the ones that live with their husbands and families and come and go regularly from your house. For them, because they make such a low salary and every nickel counts, the temptation to steal from their so-called rich gringo boss must be very great. Especially if they've got a lot of kids or a husband that likes to drink, which is pretty

[15:53] common down here. So that's my situation. There's a greater risk that she'll lift things because she's got another household to support. But in Eddie's case, he's had a long term cleaning lady who's lived in for years. And like I said, normally, living cleaning ladies, especially the older ones, almost never steal. And cleaning ladies, maids and gardeners and general household help just love to work for expat gringos. Because we pay a little more, we give them free stuff all the time, and we're not hard on them at all, and we treat them like real people. But still, everybody's different and you never know. So I asked Eddie what made him suspicious that his long time cleaning lady was stealing from him. Well, he said he had a box of 100 latex gloves in his utility closet in the kitchen, and

[16:39] suddenly there's only eight gloves left in the box. And then he said he swore he had six cans of albacore tuna stashed away in the closet in the pantry, and now there are only three. All kinds of little things like that. And then he said his girlfriend, who's got tons of junk jewelry, started losing earrings. And junk jewelry or not, women know exactly how much of that kind of stuff they've got laying around the house. So anyway, after we traded our cleaning lady stories, we both came to the conclusion that it's just an occupational hazard. As it turns out, both of our cleaning ladies had way too many kids, an ungodly amount of mouths to feed, on a pathetic income. Poor people still have giant families down here. The fact is, in Latin America there's no such thing as Planned Parenthood. That's a 1960s first world concept that hasn't actually reached here yet.

[17:28] Another example of that lag time that we always talk about. Now like I said, Eddie's cleaning lady lives in, but she does have a family and kids in some small town in the boonies. She gets a few days off a month and then she hops on a bus for three or four hours and visits her family. That's a pretty common scenario for living maids and cleaning ladies. It's like this. They come from the boonies, usually off the farm, and migrate to the big city and that's the only kind of work they can get, because they've only got about a third grade education and some of them can't read and write at all. In fact the other day I was looking at the help wanted ads in the newspaper and under domestics quite a few ads for cleaning ladies said the applicant must know how to read. Didn't say anything about knowing how to write, but they had to know how to read. Which gives you an idea of the social class of people we're dealing with here.

[18:17] We're talking very nice people, but simple and uneducated. And the fact that these live in cleaning ladies do take a trip back to the boonies at the end of the month for a few days to see their kids and husbands. That does sound like a recipe for a dysfunctional family now doesn't it? But that's not really the case. Actually the great majority of these long distance family units are somewhat intact. That's a far cry from poor families up in the first world. In the boonies down here divorce is fairly rare. That in contrast to poor families in the first world where these days there's almost never a complete family unit. Up there we're looking at about 95% unwed single mothers. Does that sound redundant? Oh and there's another thing I should explain about family units in the boonies.

[19:05] And in fact this goes for poor families all throughout Latin America. About 40 to 50% of the population. Did you know that within that poor population more than half of the people who call themselves husband and wife are not legally married at all? More than half of the poor parents with families do call themselves husband and wife but the thing is they make so little money that when they fall in love they just move in together and have kids and start a family. They don't bother to go down to the public registry and take out papers. No marriage license fees and stuff that cost too much money. Besides that there's no extra money for a wedding or a party much less a honeymoon. So what you've got throughout Latin America within that 40 to 50% of the very poor at

[19:51] least half of those married couples, the ones that call themselves husband and wife aren't really married legally but after a few years they are considered married by common law. So the thing is when you meet a poor person and they introduce you to their husband or wife you never really know if they went through the legal paces or not. In fact some years ago ex-pat Eddie went to a wedding, the wedding of his then girlfriend's parents who had been together 25 years and had 6 kids yet they never were legally married. Of course after living together for 5 years or so they were considered married by common law. There was actually no paperwork or anything written to prove it and the real proof of that common law marriage was the fact that they had so many kids. So after 25 years why did they decide to make it legal with the paperwork and all?

[20:41] Well that's because when they first got together they were dirt poor but over the years they became more and more prosperous even middle to upper middle class so they thought it was a good idea to get married legally and have a party and all that. Only in Latin America huh? And the flip side of that is, like I said, in the boonies divorce is rare. Unlike in the first world most of these people do not get divorced they stay together for better for worse and it's usually for worse since husbands in that socioeconomic class usually beat their wives, drink and have affairs with the women at the local cantina. So unfortunately in a lot of these cases it turns out that the husband goes out every night and gets drunk on the little money that they have. Which means naturally the kids suffer. So when stuff like that happens how can you prevent your cleaning lady, however loyal

[21:27] she is in every other respect, how can you stop her from stealing food and toilet paper for her own kids? Well you know that's a question that's puzzled a lot of us long term ex-fats because many of us have caught our cleaning ladies stealing too. In 20 plus years I've lived in a lot of places and I've had a lot of cleaning ladies and I've caught two of them stealing myself. Two out of ten cleaning ladies I guess that's not bad. So what are you supposed to do about it? I know up in the first world the rule is if you catch somebody stealing man they're out of there they're fired on the spot and many times you call the cops on them right? Well that just doesn't happen down here. If you called the cops on the phone you'd be lucky to get through and if you did they wouldn't come anyway they'd just laugh at you. Unless it was a homicide, a bomb threat or a VIP politician calling and even then they

[22:17] might not show up for a half a day. But finally after 20 years of dealing with the odd thieving little cleaning lady technology now allows us to keep our cleaning ladies pretty much in line. What Eddie found out recently by hook and crook is that cleaning ladies seem to be deathly afraid of surveillance cameras. So Eddie told me that a couple of weeks ago when he realized that his cleaning lady was probably stealing from him, though he hadn't accused her of anything yet, he was still highly suspicious. Anyway now what Eddie did was he went down to Walmart and bought a four camera surveillance system kit with a built in hard drive that records for a week with internet capability so he could monitor any one of those four cameras in real time on his smartphone or

[23:02] on any computer. And the whole setup only cost him a little more than 300 bucks. And you might wonder, just what words he used when he told his cleaning lady he was having surveillance cameras installed inside the house. Because you see the thing is, Eddie's got a real soft spot for his cleaning lady, she's been with him a long time and he didn't want to make it seem like he was installing the things to keep tabs on her. After all he never caught her dead in the act. He just had a sneaking suspicion. Anyway it was no big deal to break the news to her and the gardener that the system was being installed because all the people in Eddie's subdivision have money and most of them have a few cameras themselves. Cameras of course that used to work when they were installed, but this is Latin America you know and the word maintenance isn't in the dictionary, remember? But as we know it is in the dictionary for gringos.

[23:50] Anyway to our cleaning ladies, maintenance men and the rest of our help who, remember, still cook with firewood and don't have hot running water. A gringo's are strange and mysterious creatures don't you know. We're just full of surprises and apt to do the weirdest things. And I mentioned that because of what Eddie told me next. He says now he suspects she's been stealing little things from him for over a year. And only just recently has he become totally pissed off about it. Why? Because Eddie discovered something important missing from his bedroom closet. Something important to Eddie but not important to anyone else. He didn't mind losing a few cans of tuna and some toilet paper. But Eddie has a personal collection of things and one of his favorite things went missing. And I'm sure the cleaning lady thinks Eddie's a little nuts because they're in that closet.

[24:40] Eddie keeps his vast collection of vinyl records which he never plays. And every once in a while Eddie puts on a pair of cotton gloves, takes out his records and just looks at him. Not only that he doesn't even have a record player which really freaks out the cleaning lady. And if that's not weird enough, in that closet he's also got his pristine collection of tops baseball bubblegum cards from the 60s. Each one filed cataloged and numbered in its own hermetically sealed clear plastic envelope. Yup, to Latin cleaning ladies, gardeners and maintenance men, we gringos must sure seem nuts. Anyway, Eddie said two of his Beach Boys records were missing. Vinyl records of course. And for Eddie, that was the last straw. He had the surveillance cameras installed.

[25:26] And all that happened a couple of weeks ago. And since then, I talked to Eddie and guess what? He told me that a few days after he installed the system, his cleaning lady gave notice. And Eddie figured she'd quit because she was camera shy. If you know what I mean. And naturally, being that Eddie's a gringo, it didn't take him long at all to get a new maid. Like I told you on a past show, because of the gringo advantage, locals are just dying to work for gringos. And soon enough, the young girls were lining up at Eddie's front door to apply for the job. But in the end, it was his gardener's daughter that became his new cleaning lady. He wanted to keep it in the family, you know? But in reality, as it turns out, Eddie's girlfriend had the last word in the maid selection process. It turns out Eddie's girlfriend was A-OK with the gardener's daughter, since she was

[26:14] the homeliest of the bunch. That was an all-round good move for Eddie, because like I said in a previous show, one of the worst mistakes an expat gringo can make is to hire a good looking cleaning lady. When you do that, you're just asking for trouble. And about my suspicions about my cleaning lady, well next week, I get my security system installed. And I'll let you know how that turns out. Now in the last few shows, I've talked about a new project that I put together called the Five Flags. It's a six hour video that I put together, my content and my voice, of course, that's specifically aimed at serious expats and expat wannabes. So if you're interested in what it's all about, just head on over immediately to expatwisdom.com and get all the details.

[26:59] I promise you won't be disappointed. And to give you a little taste of what it's like, if you go to expatwisdom.com, you'll be able to get three free videos that I've done. Have a look at those and you'll see what the whole thing's all about. Oh yeah, and don't forget about my upcoming seminar. I guarantee you it's the only adventure of its kind off the gringo tourist trail. That's where the gringo advantage is alive and well and where all the opportunities are. Write me at the expatfiles at gmail.com or johnny at expatwisdom.com and I'll send you the info on it. 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, theexpatfiles

[27:49] at gmail.com. Once again, theexpatfiles at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.