#143 – The Expat Files: Seminar in Latin America and Cultural Insights

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. I know a lot of you have been waiting for this and I've been planning it for months now, but finally the dates have come together for my insider's guide to Latin America seminar. You know, the one I've been talking about periodically on the show and I've already got quite a few emails from people who are interested in coming on down and I can finally

[00:49] give you some details on it and I'll be sending all of you who've emailed me on it the itinerary and some detailed information. So you might want to jot this down anyway. It's going to be Wednesday, June the 27th, Thursday the 28th and Friday the 29th. So you will be arriving Tuesday, June 26th, the day before the official seminar starts and me and my crew will meet you personally at the airport then pack you off to the first hotel. Yes, I said the first hotel because we're going to be traveling around. This is not going to be one of those seminars where you sit in a hotel all day and see slide after slide of boring PowerPoint presentations. Of course I'll have a formal presentation every day. That's a given. But after that we'll be heading out by bus or on foot every day too and I'm not exactly going to reveal what cities or countries we're going to be in right now. I'm only going to send that and the detailed information to those of you who are really

[01:36] serious about it. The ones who have sent me emails already asking me about it. I advise you go to the following website right away and this is my new website specifically for the seminar. www.xpatwisdom.com That's www.xpatwisdom.com and you'll see above the main toolbar that it says seminar. Just click on that and it'll ask you to enter your email and when you do that I'll have you on my list to send you updates. That's the place you'll find all the details on the seminar. Easy huh? And just one more thing. Of course you know if I'm going to put on a seminar it's not going to be a big hotel convention center style seminar. You know 100 to 200 people stuffed in a Hilton ballroom. It's not going to be like that at all because you see I'm only going to have 24 people at

[02:23] this seminar. That's the limit I set for this. So we can all hang out as a tight little group and I can show you my version of Latin America. The real version. And besides that we'll be at breakfast, lunch and dinner together too. So don't make fun of my middle class eating habits okay? So you might be wondering why did Johnny pick 24 people as his limit for attendees? Well that's not only to keep the crowd manageable and personal while we're walking around, but it's more because one of the fine Spanish colonial hotels that we're staying at, one of my favorites, a tremendous little boutique hotel, only has 27 rooms. So we're booking the whole place. That's 24 of those rooms for the 24 attendees. And if we do have some married or partnered couples that might change the room arrangements a little bit but not much. And of course I'll need one of those rooms. And our gringo expat tax specialist will have a room.

[03:12] And my Latin American attorney, who's a foreign residency banking and corporation specialist, as well as a specialist in international copyrights and patents, well he'll get that last room, number 27. So it'll just be our group at that hotel and nobody else. And by the way if you're wondering if this is my first seminar, not exactly. As a matter of fact, two months ago, after some persistent arm twisting, I did a trial run just to see how it would work out. I was persuaded to take 14 international shakers and movers. These guys were really high powered business and internet guys, marketing and technology specialists from four different first world countries. And when they landed down here in February, I took them on the very same seminar that I'm going to take you guys on. And so you get an idea on what it's really going to be like to go on this seminar.

[03:58] If you go to that website I told you before, www.expatwisdom.com, once you get to that site and you read my upcoming report on the seminar, you'll see six audio buttons that you can press. Some audio testimonials from a half dozen of these guys that went on the trip. And by the way most of these guys have been to dozens of seminars themselves, some of them have written books, and some of these guys are so successful that they've put on their own seminars in their own fields. These are guys with their own businesses, marketing and internet followers themselves. So I want you to hear it from the horse's mouth, from the guys who came down and participated in my very first seminar. That way you know I'm not just blowing hot air. So I'll have that stuff posted up on my new website, okay? And of course since all you listeners know me pretty good by now, it stands to reason that I'm not going to take you to Panama, Costa Rica or Mexico, that's for sure.

[04:46] We're going to be well off the tourist track, you can bet on that. And we'll be off the gringo dollar trail for two reasons. One is because I want to show everyone on the seminar that nearly everything is half to a third of the price that you pay up in the first world for things of similar value. And secondly, I want to show you what that gringo advantage is all about, because you don't have it when you're on the tourist trail, but it's in full bloom in 95% of the rest of Latin America. And yes, we'll be going to two altiplano regions too, where I can show you first hand that there really is a region of eternal spring, as long as you're 3,000 or 4,000 feet or more above sea level. Oh and another thing, we're going to be off the tourist trail, and when you're off the tourist trail, those are usually places that the US State Department puts out a warning on. So when you come down, I'm going to prove to you that that's mostly BS too. The fact is the United States likes to put out warnings on countries that don't necessarily

[05:35] fall in line with US policies, like for example, on bank secrecy laws, and especially countries that don't sign those banking and IRS mutual information exchange treaties, the kind that Switzerland and Panama just signed. Isn't it funny that as soon as you sign treaties like that with the US, all of a sudden your country drops off the US State Department blacklists regarding tourism and travel. But that's another subject we'll get into later. Oh and by the way, one more thing about the seminar. It's my idea to keep this a real personal, high impact and up close event that you'll remember for a long long time. Just like I did with the first one, back in February. So the seminar will include the hotel for four nights, including the night before the seminar when you arrive, all breakfasts and lunches, and all transportation included once

[06:22] you land at the airport. And of course, I'll be there, and my team too, to pick you up at the airport and after the seminar, the day after, we'll see you off and make sure you're there on time for your plane. So you see, you'll be hanging with me and the other two speakers from morning till night, whether you like it or not. And I guarantee you this, after that seminar, each and every one of you is going to want to live, work, play and or retire down here in Latin America. And think of this for a second, of those 14 high powered guys that came down for the trial run of my seminar in February. After the seminar was done, every single one of them told me they're going to come back down here, either to live, retire, do some business or a mixture of all three. Now it's easy for them to say that to me, because it sounds nice, right? Yeah, I'm going to come back down. Just like when you run into a snaggle toothed old relative up north that you don't like,

[07:07] you're always cordial. And when you part on the street, you always say, yeah, be visiting you soon. I'll give you a call. And of course, that never happens. You're blowing hot air, but you're being polite. Just like when your mom asks you how her hair looks and you tell her it looks beautiful. Sure thing, Ma. You look like Gwyneth Paltrow, only about 50 years older. You know what I mean? It pays to be polite. And when I gave my first seminar in February, which was just two months ago, every one of those 14 guys said, they'll be back. Yeah, I'm going to come back down here for sure. Sure thing, Johnny. And you want to believe it, but you know a lot of it could be just hot air and politeness, right? We'll get this. After those four nights and three days, seven of those 14 stayed on an additional amount of time. Some of them for just a day or two. And one of those guys is still here. In fact, four of the guys have filed paperwork to get a running start on some business opportunities

[07:54] that they spotted in just three or four days of being down here. And that might sound like BSTU, but it's the honest truth. Believe me. And that's not all. In two weeks, one of the guys who took the seminars coming down with his new wife to work on two or three business deals that he spotted when he was down the first three or four days too. And here's a surprising fact. None of these 14 guys was ever even in or near the country that I gave the seminar in before. Yet some of them found enough opportunity and reason to come back down within just a few months to do business here and investigate things further. Not only that, a few months from now, in August, three more of the guys are coming down to work on the business propositions that they spotted. And of course, after meeting my personal lawyer of 18 years, who will be speaking at the seminar too, of course, and my good friend, the tax specialist, who's been an expat down here

[08:42] eight years too, and he's a guy who also jumped off that treadmill up in the first world after spending 20 some years as a highly successful tax specialist CPA up there. And of course, he's on the program too. So as you probably figured out already, this is no ordinary seminar. It's not by any means. The kind of seminar where the ultimate goal is to sell you land or a house or a condo on the beach. There'll be none of that going on on this trip down. And I can guarantee you this too, it'll be the most personalized seminar you've ever been to. And remember, there's only room for 24 attendees. That's the limit. If we even had just one more, 25, that guy would have to sleep in the hotel parking lot. And that wouldn't look good. So here's those dates again. So put them on your calendar. You'll be arriving Tuesday, June 26th, and the seminar itself will be Wednesday, Thursday,

[09:30] and Friday. That's the 27th, 28th, and 29th of June. And I imagine most people will want to leave on Saturday, the 30th. But who knows, because with my last group, a lot of people, more than half of them, stayed on some extra days. And though Friday the 29th will be the last day of the formal seminar, for those of you who want to come along with me on an extra tour or two, I'm arranging some personalized side tours that I'll let you know about in a week or two that I promise you will be something else you've never experienced before. For example, I might take you on a coffee or a sugar or cocoa plantation tour. That's cocoa as in chocolate, not coca. I can take you on a real estate tour that you won't believe, which would be nothing like those real estate tours in Costa Rica and Panama, for example, where they try to get you to buy into their own inflated pet projects. We'll have none of that on this tour. And I might take you on one of those famous Makila sweatshop tours, where they make all

[10:19] the designer label stuff, Nikes, Guess Jeans, you name it. They got them down here, and we can get inside. Though it sounds a little testy, it's actually a lot of fun. Or I could take you on a grand tour of some gold, silver, and jade mines, too. I have my contacts so we can get right down in the thick of things. Or of course I could take you on an archeological tour and show you some Mayan ruins and tombs and cities that the average green goat never gets to see. Oh, and did I tell you it's going to be in Central America, not South America, so your plane flights are going to be cheap. And if you didn't know this already, if we went to South America, my choice would probably be Colombia, Ecuador, or Bolivia. But you see, the round trip airfare from the usual places in the United States, if we were going to South America, run anywhere from 1000 to 1500 bucks, whereas the flights to

[11:05] most Central American cities can run typically a half to a third of those prices. I just checked a few minutes ago on a flight from Chicago to El Salvador, for example. The round trip is about 500 bucks, you know, if you check one of those cheap flight websites on the internet. Then I checked flights from Tucson to Cartagena, Colombia, which is a flight from a common city in the States to South America, and I was looking at 1300 or 1400 bucks round trip. And here's the other thing, it's usually a 2 or 3 hour flight to Central America from anywhere in the States. But you start talking about South America, we're talking 5 to 7 or even 8 hours. And those are just some of the reasons why this seminar is going to be in Central America. It's just easier all around and less fatiguing when you're just coming in for a 3 or 4 day seminar. Oh, and before I forget, there will be a very nice discount for those of you who sign up

[11:53] early. A discount that in all probability will cover your airfare. So you early birds be sure to get in on that. Once again, this very special seminar is for 24 people only, okay? But enough of my bloviating on that, it's time to get down to business. You know, I get a lot of emails from you guys, and I try to answer all of them, I do get to them one way or another. And as you might imagine, I do occasionally get nasty emails. If you do any kind of show like this, a fact based show with a lot of opinions thrown in, you always end up stirring up a bit of controversy, and people don't necessarily like what you say. And it doesn't matter that it's the truth, they just don't like to hear the truth. For some people it's better to live in that state of denial, it's more comfortable for them. Hey, look at all the first-worlders who still trust their government. And they think that Congress, the bankers, and the Federal Reserve are going to clean

[12:38] up the economy, and cure the cancer, or resurrect the corpse. Well as it turns out for me, 99% of all the negative emails that I get, people who attack and hammer on me for what I've got to say, well guess what? That 99% have Latin American names. So here's what's really happening. You've got these kids of wealthy Latins, whose parents have enough money to send them to private bilingual schools all their lives, you know, that 2% of Latins with the money. The ones that have the SUVs, the multiple maids and gardeners and bodyguards. Remember those people? I talk about folks like that a lot. And those kind of Latins, the wealthy ones, don't like to hear about themselves in that light. You know, the ones that keep the lower classes in their places. And they want that minimum wage to be 5 or 10 bucks a day. That way they can have bodyguards and gardeners and maids for 3 or 400 bucks a month.

[13:24] Anyway, you've got these children of the rich kids, who go to school at bilingual private schools and then they get sent off to private bilingual universities. And if their parents really have the kind of dough that matters, they send their kids up to first world universities and pay the out of state fee, which could be 40 or 50 grand a year. And here's my point. People like that are deluded into thinking that they're almost gringos, because they can afford to send their kids to bilingual schools, shop in Miami once or twice a year, and some can even afford to send their kids to stateside universities. It's just a fact that Latin Americans love everything in anything first world. And they like nothing better to be just like us. Which is why if you ask any common or average Latin American, the 70% of the population that makes 300 bucks a month or less, where they would go on vacation if the sky was the

[14:12] limit and money was no object, well, to a person, they'll say Disneyland. They don't want to visit the Mayan or Aztec ruins, or the islands of Belize or Honduras where they have that great barrier reef, the second biggest in the world, and the most beautiful white sand and clear water that you've ever seen. No, they don't want to go there. They don't want to see the Eiffel Tower or the Roman Coliseum, or the 3,000 year old Buddhist temples of the Orient, or the Great Wall of China, or even the Pyramids of Egypt. They want to go to Disneyland. After that, their life is complete. That's why when a gringo comes to Latin America with a bag of cheap Disneyland souvenirs, Mickey Mouse t-shirts and Donald Duck erasers and that crap, if you hand them out to the cleaning lady, gardener, or neighborhood kids, you just became the local hero. You're the man.

[14:58] You just brought them one step closer to their dream of going to Disneyland. But you see, 90% of Latin America will never make it to Disneyland. That's just a dream that'll never come true. But that small percentage of Latin Americans with money. Well, they have been there and with their kids multiple times. It turns out, so many wealthy Latins try to mimic so intently what they think is the proper gringo lifestyle that some of them actually think they're gringos. Kinda like I guess some of the white kids in the first world ghettos, who wear gangsta clothes, buttcrack showing and all that, and they got the walk down so they think they're black. Anyway, you got a certain percentage of wealthy Latin people who try to buy what they think is the gringo lifestyle too. They've been to the bilingual schools and their parents are privileged, so they think by proximity and osmosis that they're gringos.

[15:45] Now of course these kids and young adults, in order to keep up the pretext that they are virtual gringos in their own minds, they even watch gringo shows and sitcoms on cable. In English, not Spanish. Like American Idol and Two and a Half Men and E Entertainment and all that. And like I said, in English, not Spanish. And they like to listen to morning drive time DJs in English too. And guess what? Some of them have picked up on my show now. And sometimes I get some awful nasty emails from these gringo wannabe types. And when I call them out on the things that I notice about them, like for example their bigotry, their classism, their racism, their love for Miami shopping, that Disneyland fetish, those bodyguard status symbols I talk about, their superficiality and general lack of knowledge

[16:31] about all things first world. Well you gotta figure when I listen to a show like mine, they're gonna get upset. And they do. And here's the thing, they always write me emails in nice English. So I know they've been to an expensive bilingual school. They're giving me their calling card, you know? You don't learn to write proper English like that after six months or a year at your local community college night school. That's for sure. But here's one common thread that they seem to resort to. At the end of their email, after they've bashed me about something I've spoken about, like that ridiculous bodyguard business, or the way they treat their cleaning ladies for example. Anyway after they're done bashing me at the beginning of an email, at the end they always say we don't want you gringos down here exploiting our people and our natural resources and our mineral wealth. You're gonna ruin Latin America like you ruined your own country.

[17:18] Which always makes me laugh because they're the ones with two maids, two gardeners and a couple of bodyguards. And I get emails like that from guys whose parents made their money in coffee and sugar and cocoa and pineapple where they pay their help five or ten bucks a day. But we gringos are the exploiters, right? So here you got wealthy Latins writing me emails like that. But I know the real truth about these guys. The reason why the guy who wrote the letter got to go to bilingual schools and bilingual colleges and gets to shop in Miami and has bodyguards is because his family's got a monopoly on cement, sugar, coffee or whatever and they made their millions by paying slave wages and they want to keep it that way. So here's how it breaks down. It's okay for rich Latin people to exploit the masses in their own country. But they really resent when gringos come down here and take advantage of a system that they

[18:04] created. Then they take their money and buy everything and anything they can that's first world. Jet skis and Audis and Mercedes Benz's and Yachts and helicopters, jacuzzis and first world designer clothes and Rolexes and blackberries and androids and iPads. Things that first world people invented, designed, got patents on and manufactured. Though we probably don't manufacture 90% of that stuff anymore. But still, we were the ones with the technology and the brain power to make it all possible. So wealthy Latin Americans don't want us to come down to Latin America and drag them kicking and screaming into the first world. That's the theme I seem to be getting from Latins who write me these nasty emails. And to tell you the truth, in the 140 or so shows that I've done on PRN, I haven't received even a half a dozen emails slamming me from regular first world all American folks.

[18:53] In fact, I get them so rarely I remember practically all of them. Like the one I got a few days ago right after the show I did, when I talked about people who got useless degrees up in the first world like art and history and drama, psychology and film study degrees. But even then the guy that slammed me on that, must not have listened to the whole show. He got it all wrong. Because if he was listening, he would have heard me say, if you have an overwhelming desire to go into art history or if you're born with an outstanding musical talent, go ahead and by all means go for a career in it. But you better be damn good, you better be a cut way above the guys in your class. Because 95% of them are never going to get a job in their career. Like the radio and television business, 95% of the people in the business that I know did not come from a radio or TV or communications college background.

[19:41] They kind of stumbled into it like I did. The fact is I don't know what kids are thinking these days when they go into these careers that don't have a job prospect. Especially these days when the unemployment numbers are so high that the government changes the parameters to make them look better than they really are. In fact they're lying about it. These days you'd be cutting off your own foot. If you took 4 years out of your life to get a degree in drama studies, unless you were spouting off Shakespeare when you were 8 years old like Orson Welles, then you might actually have a chance at a career in theater. My point was this, if you're going to go to university for 4 years, try for a career you think you might like that actually has some job opportunity potential in the market today. Like engineering or medicine or electronics or nursing or dental hygiene, there's tons of careers like that where you can actually get a job that pays more than 15 bucks an

[20:29] hour and has some benefits. These aren't the good old days back in the 60's, 70's and 80's when you went to college because you had nothing else to do and your parents were paying for it. And those are the days of the very cheap student loans. Not like today when you're saddled with them the rest of your life. And here's what I did say, I said, if you're going to go to college, get yourself a degree in a career that actually has some job opportunity and if you really want to be an opera singer or ballet dancer or go into film studies, you won't be waiting tables at Starbucks till you get that big break if ever. Instead you'll have a fall back position, a job that makes you some real money where you can live like a decent human being. And remember most people start college at about 18 years old so when you're 22 it's over you got your degree right? You still got your whole life ahead of you to go to film school and find out you're

[21:15] no Martin Scorsese. So in a nutshell that's what I said in a recent show and one guy hammered on me for it, which is okay. But let me tell you a little secret, I went to engineering school and I didn't like it. I did well because I was one of those guys that's fortunate enough to know how to take a test. There's a trick to taking tests you know? Anyway I graduated in the top 5 of my class though some of the guys I went to school with who had a lot lower GPA than I had absolutely blew me off the map with their engineering skills. And when I graduated from engineering school there were plenty of jobs out there and you know the life I'm living today couldn't have happened at all without that fall back position as an engineer. Cause back then even a mediocre engineer like me could make 80 grand a year. That was just the going rate. Anyway keep those cards and letters coming folks, at least I'm rattling some cages.

[22:02] Oh and speaking of emails, here's a good one. I got an email from a guy asking me if Latin Americans make only 3 or 400 bucks a month and he's talking about the average ones you come into contact with day to day, not the rich pompous ones. And then he asks, if a gringle goes down to Latin America to live, isn't there such a drastic divide between you and your lifestyle and the people that work for you that there's some secret resentment going on? If they see how you live with the dishwashers and garbage disposals and SUVs and all that, well if you choose to live like that anyway. So he says if there's such a big gulf between you and the average Latin guy, who most certainly lives in a cold water flat with a tin roof, well he's asking how do wealthy gringos, wealthy by Latin standards that is, get along with dirt poor Latins? Well you know I talked to expat Eddie about this question because he has a lot of common

[22:52] Latin employees and he said he learned something a long time ago when he first came down and started a business, he learned that as long as you just laugh along with the locals instead of laughing at them, like a lot of the pompous rich Latins do to their help, well if you treat them with a little dignity, you can be friends with them and get their respect too. Because here's what happens when you first start with a business down here in Latin America, you don't speak much Spanish at all and it takes you months even years sometimes to understand what your workers are laughing and giggling about behind closed doors in the kitchen and the garden and out in the back room. Because even out on the factory floor, where the workers are so busy, it doesn't seem they have any time to talk or socialize, they still find time to tell jokes and laugh and giggle between themselves, Latin Americans are some of the happiest people on the planet and it shows.

[23:38] Now here's the thing, because you as a gringo don't speak Spanish very well and you won't for a long time probably, you'll screw up a lot with phrases and syntax and sometimes when you do they'll smile and laugh at you, but it's nothing derogatory, they just find it funny that you screwed up. Like we do up north when a drunk slurs his words and says something funny at a party, it's not a slam or a cut down of any kind, it's just we're having a good laugh. So I'm telling you, when your help or your neighbors are whispering something in Spanish and it seems like they're talking about you behind your back, they just might be but they're not mean or vindictive about it at all. And it just might be that they're saying something nice about you, giving you a compliment, but since you don't know your Spanish very well, you'll never pick up on it. And here's a funny thing, Latins do pick up on your idiosyncrasies. We do have our gringo ways and some of them they're just not used to.

[24:26] For example a lot of times expat Eddie eats his lunch right along with the help and you know the average latin boss or head of the household will never lower him or herself to that. But here's the thing that makes Eddie's cleaning ladies laugh. Now in one of the drawers in Eddie's kitchen, he's got a half a dozen of those little things you stick in the end of an era corn. You know they're little holders or handles, they look like tiny little plastic ears themselves. You stick them in the ends of the corn so you don't get your hands all full of grease and stuff right? You know what I'm talking about, corn on the cob pokers. And you know Eddie having been used to those things up in the states, uses them every time his cook makes corn on the cob. And anytime me or Eddie or anyone else uses those things, his cooking cleaning lady always turn to each other, make up face and laugh just a little bit. They think it's so damn funny that gringos would buy little tiny things just so we can

[25:13] keep our fingers nice and clean so we don't have to touch the corn kernels themselves. Which is something a latin american would never dream of doing. Spending a few bucks on something so superfluous like that. It's one of our idiosyncrasies, only gringos do that down in Latin America, you get what I mean? And the latins think it's funny. And it's obvious they don't mean anything by it at all, it's just another weird thing that gringos do that makes them laugh. And another thing about us that latins chuckle about is when we wash and wax our own cars or upscale motorcycles like Harley Davison's or BMW's. They just can't get over the fact that we'd spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon doing a dirty thankless job like that when quite a few of us have cleaning ladies, gardeners and maintenance men to do that kind of stuff. In fact one day when Eddie was out on his driveway washing and waxing his BMW, when

[26:00] he finally looked up for a second he saw there was a half dozen 8 or 9 year old boys stand in there just looking at him, they stopped their street soccer game because Eddie was more interesting. They were just amazed that this tall gringle guy was sweating away wearing himself out when you could get your car washed for 2 bucks anywhere in town. But you see latins just don't understand a gringle guy and his relationship with his car and things like that make latins chuckle. Oh and here's another thing that endears common latin people to their gringo bosses. When your cook or cleaning lady comes to work in the morning, if you let her in through the front door, which she'll never come to on her own, she'll always come to the back door, anyway you let her in the front door and she'll feel kind of special and I'm not lying here. Because your average uppity latin woman, the female head of the household, will insist that the cleaning lady and cook come through the back way or the servants entrance.

[26:49] And here's the other thing, when you go shopping in latin america, you'll see all those pompous rich latin women with their cleaning ladies pushing the carts. And get this, the cleaning lady will be in her maids uniform, not in her street clothes and the uppity boss lady does that so everybody knows her superior status. Which is another reason why latins love working for gringos, because we prefer to do our own shopping and we'd never haul the maid out with us. And we don't encourage the class system by sticking them with tacky maids uniforms either. And just one more reminder, for those of you who want to come down and join me at my central american seminar, just click on that website I told you about, www the latin americansolution.com slash blog slash seminar. You've been listening to the expat files, living in latin america, coming to you each

[27:42] 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. Once again, the expat files at gmail.com. See you next time, nos vemos.