#1119 – The Expat Files: Organic Farming in Latin America, Coffee Culture, Pandemic Travel, and the State of Music

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 that I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started All right Let's start out with a little more info on organic and non-organic farming here in Latin America Especially here in Guatemala since we have an expert who just chimed in after our last show Talking about the common growing and fertilizing practices here in Central America

[00:47] This time we have none other than the famous Captain Mango chiming in because you know in a past life Captain Mango who's been down here in Latin America. I think now almost 10 years He and his family had a greenhouse and potted plant business on the outskirts of Cleveland Yep, Cleveland He supplied those slabs of seedlings or saplings whatever you want to call them that you see in all those garden centers at Kmart Walmart all those big chain grocery stores and hardware stores, etc He's the guy with the green thumb not me and lately for the last couple of years or so He's been running a coffee plantation in the highlands. That is the healthy planno of Guatemala Located about a half an hour due south of the Guatemala City city limits right off what they call Cara Teta Salvador. That's the Pan American Highway on the road to El Salvador

[01:35] So anyway, let's defer to him about this fertilizer and herbicide biz Oh, and by the way, all you guys and gals coming to the seminar in February Captain Mango will be hanging with us the whole time So you'll get to pick his brain on things like crypto Bitcoin and any kind of farming or gardening You may want to do down here once you plan to plant a foot here in Latin America Anyway, he says in regards to growing papayas here in Guatemala at least I doubt if they apply any herbicides to papaya now He's saying that because I mentioned once in a while when I buy papaya I see there's kind of a residue on them then Captain Mango says and herbicides are a category of pesticide along with Insecticide and fungicides then he says I actually don't see much harm in using commercial fertilizer down here

[02:21] Other than the fact that it needs a lot of natural gas to create nitrogen fertilizer So store-bought fertilizers can be energy hooks. Of course, he says well composted manure is better It's a whole other learning curve though He says and as far as chicken poop, which they use all over the place down here If it's not completely composted, it's way too hot and will burn young seeds and plants And if people are concerned about trace minerals often found in some commercial fertilizer blends Soil testing is necessary to see what you really need. In fact, he says one year in Ohio We had boron to add to our custom blend fertilizer But you never know things like that unless you do soil testing Then he says Pepe Mountain the small coffee plantation I work needs a trace of sulfur for optimum fertilization

[03:12] pH is of a major importance to to acid and it won't matter how much fertilizer you use the plants just won't absorb it The thing is he says if you want to adjust the pH of your soil You can't just do it in a minute. You need to adjust it six months prior to fertilization That's kind of a challenge here in Guatemala with six months of dry and six months of rain Well, thanks for that. Captain Mango, you know, they don't call him Captain Mango for nothing By the way I remember when he first came down and got involved in the coffee growing business it turns out our seminar lawyer Jose bought a couple of small acreage plantations and combined them and Captain Mango would tell me back then that they harvested and grew coffee like they did it probably for hundreds of years

[03:58] Seems like he said they were doing it the same way as they did it back in the 18th century With absolutely zero soil testing In fact, Captain Mango said he's the first guy to do it on that particular piece of land anyway And as it turns out, I remember him saying everyone has access to soil testing services But there are so many hundreds even thousands of small-time coffee farmers Some with just tiny plots of an acre or two They just don't bother because they know year over year about how their crops gonna come in and the critters They have to deal with in other words when Captain Mango came in he threw a little technology at the problem And it's been nothing but good news and good harvests ever since Though I could be wrong about that So as it turns out most of the small-time coffee farmers down here have been doing things the same way

[04:43] Basically by the seat of their pants for hundreds of years and it works for them But they're most definitely not at peak production or peak quality And as you heard me mention on a past show growing coffee is not for the casual gardener It's a quite involved process. Look it up. It'll surprise you. It sure surprised me In fact, one of the very cool things I noticed when I first got down here to Central America many years ago when I'd Be driving through the boonies. Sometimes I'd see a kid with a rake Spreading out coffee beans on a driveway slab in the Sun every once in a while You'd be driving through the boonies and you see these big 30 or 40 or 50 by 50 feet What sort of look like light brown carpets of coffee beans just laying out in the Sun during the harvest season, of course That's how small-time coffee producers dry their beans right out in the Sun and when they're dry they're bagged once again and go to the

[05:32] Roaster now, I remember one time quite a while ago I thought you know, I drink a couple of cups of coffee a day and I grind my own beans So why not just cut out the middle man go to one of those little coffee producers? I knew were lots of them were By maybe a 10 pound sack of beans take it to one of the roasting houses in Guatemala City And I'd be set for who knows maybe a year or two By the way There's an area of Guatemala City where if you drive through and just close your eyes and take a breath It smells so great because that's where all the roasting companies are So I did it about a 10 pound sack of what they call green beans for around 20 bucks green meant not roasted yet I took it down to the roasters in Guatemala City cost me another maybe eight bucks to have it roasted and That was my first mistake. They said how do you want it roasted? I thought you mean there's more than one way

[06:23] This was before Starbucks the internet and gourmet coffee options. Anyway, I got it home was so happy It smelled so great But it didn't taste all that great not at all and I had a nice grind or two and one of those Bodum French Pressed coffee makers, so I should have extracted the best out of it But it wasn't so and things went downhill from there because I discovered about a month or two into the process Coffee does spoil or at least go stale after a couple of months Now, I don't know Maybe if you put it in the freezer you could extend the life But I just know I gave away like about eight pounds of that stuff and the local Latinos It was fine coffee for them. They are absolutely not discriminating coffee drinkers Not like so many snobbish Americans including my own sisters who just have to have their Starbucks fix

[07:12] Even today and every Latin home you go into except the very high-end ones they use coffee percolators And you know, that stuff's just boiling and reboiling and reboiling. It's like cowboy campfire coffee Meanwhile, they've got the world's best coffee growing right down the street And that's why when you drop into Starbucks, you know Starbucks is everywhere, right? You don't see any of the common people It's all the upper middle classes and wealthy or I should say a spattering of gringos and expats We don't know any better and the entitled children of the Latin wealthy and the key I found to knowing whether you're gonna get a Great cup of coffee is if they've got a real Italian espresso machine and you know, those things don't come cheap So when you see a little hole in the wall corner restaurant or pastry shop and they've got a machine like that You know that the owner knows coffee and is trained up as employees

[07:59] But still I'd say a good 60 to 80 percent of the little corner Restaurants and lunch counters still serve you percolated coffee. Yeah Yep, even in the land of the best coffee in the world and in the grocery stores They have some real high-end brands, but 90% of this stuff is molito or ground Which is not the way to make the best coffee You have to grind your own the lesson learned here don't buy too much coffee in advance. The stuff does have a shelf life Alright, let's take an email This one comes from mark. He says Johnny unfortunately We're gonna miss your seminar next month as we've already committed to visiting relatives of Virginia. Please no judgments here I know this may be your last seminar, but I'm hoping it's not anyway We've been here in San Salvador the capital of El Salvador since last Thursday

[08:46] And I just want to warn you about the mask thing these people in this country are fanatic about wearing the damn things Even when walking around outdoors and it's not just here in the capital city We rented a car and have been driving to see volcanoes Mayan ruins, etc And I've been barked at in Spanish by security guards waitresses and other well-meaning but tin skis all over the country Coming from Florida. This has been a huge step backwards We ditched the worthless things nearly a year ago and haven't looked back It's been a culture shock to say the least but perhaps your seminar attendees from California, New York, Oregon, etc Will feel right at home Maybe you should hit him with a seminar tax or make him a quarantine in their own hotel rooms for a week To cement home that shit feeling of being up in the States in case they're missing it sign mark By the way, Johnny, my uncle's name is Dave

[09:34] Alright mark, thanks for that boots on the ground report, but I got to tell you this Sounds to me you did not mosey on over to the Pacific side of El Salvador with Bitcoin Beach Elzante and don't go and all those little towns that are getting all that crypto press lately All my friends down there are reporting to me that the mask thing is an absolute non-issue Especially since it's drawing the freedom-loving libertarian crowd visitors tourists and investors And you know what those guys are like some of them are real anarchists In fact lately I've been looking at some very recent youtubes and on the spot Video encounters right in that Bitcoin Beach area and very few people are wearing masks So mark, I believe you a hundred percent in all the big cities in Latin America You see lots more idiotic mask wearing than you ever see as you're rolling out to the boonies

[10:24] Where it does peter out and fade away fast And sadly enough I have to tell you the maskers are out in force in those gringoized areas of Mexico When I was in Puerto Vallarta just a couple of months ago. In fact, that's a very gringoized area Number one giveaway. There are Starbucks every couple of blocks Well, let me tell you right outside the beachfront hotel. I was staying at There was a nice tree line boulevard and a jogging trail right down the middle of it and every day I'd see tons of gringos and gringas jogging on that trail single double masked and double masked with face shields Lemmings all of them and every day or sometimes a couple times a day when I cut through that jogging trail On my way to the mall across the street I being maskless got a heap and helping of dirty looks from mostly middle-aged gringo joggers

[11:13] I thought is this an updated episode of the twilight zone or something? And now a report on even more covid at lunacy. Here's an email from upcoming seminar attendee. Mr W he says johnny i'm somewhat of a covet travel testing victim having traveled to hawaii last march And they were probably the most restrictive state there is and they required to use specific pcr testing vendors Problem is and we all know about the pcr inaccuracies You can be positive something like 12 weeks after having gotten the covet because it takes residual pieces of the viruses though you're still infected but you're not My advice to anyone who's traveling is to take the rapid antigen test if they have a choice Although it's highly inaccurate unless you really want to be sure you don't have covet

[12:01] The thing is you could test positive on the rapid antigen test Then take it again on the same day and there's a good chance you'll test negative Both i've found out are accepted by the guatemalan government Anyway, he says if you try to game the system that insurance companies have set up to get them to pay for it If you tell them you have symptoms or we're exposed to someone with covet in order to get insurance coverage You're likely to get the pcr test The problem is with the omicron variant so easily transmissible and it's everywhere There's a good chance you're going to test positive if you use the pcr test even with no symptoms My advice keep waving that pcr test at all possible You should take the rapid antigen test and if it's negative you're good That said he says not sure if you're aware of some of the covet testing craziness going on here in the states

[12:49] I can understand that it would admit it to a hospital. They want to test you for covet But now we're finding out that half the people hospitalized for anything at all are testing positive That's the latest scare tactic The thing is everyone's tested when admitted yet at least half who tested positive were asymptomatic For sure testing is being driven by fear And there are long lines at the free testing sites now A couple of hours or more standing in line is not uncommon just to get a test many sites won't even book a reservation anymore By the way, if you're flying no sense to get tested the day before because the results might come back far too late And you might be a false positive I found it's best to get tested close to the 72 hour limit Then if you test positive it could be false you can test again Then he says you could be asymptomatic and test again at the airport because you might have turned negative in those two or three days

[13:39] You don't want to risk that he says there are lots of major airports that have testing sites But they're more expensive than they need to be of course But you can get the results within 15 minutes if you take the rapid antigen one All right me johnny here. I always say take the rapid antigen test. Don't take the pcr That's garbage and you get results a day or two later. Forget about it. Do the rapid antigen test I do that one when I travel it's never taken more than a half hour to get the results Then mr. W says by the way guadamala and other latin american countries say the test needs to be lab certified Well, that just means any old lab and not a home-based test because you know, there are lots of home tests out there now He says that probably means that a printed document in your hand is necessary and not on a smartphone

[14:24] All right me johnny here. Yep. Have that paper handy, but it's good to have a copy on your phone Then he says I wonder if I download my negative test result and did a little photoshopping opens up lots of possibilities Then he says by me there's a rapid antigen testing at my airport, but it's 250 bucks Whereas the same test done at a nearby urgent care clinic is something like 75 bucks All right me johnny here Yeah, i've been getting those tests because i've been traveling all over and i'm paying around 35 to 40 bucks Rapid antigen test only obviously i've never done it at an airport just at one of those local corner clinics And finally, mr. W says even local lame stream media outlets are predicting a statistical end to omakron variant at the end of this month

[15:13] Maybe the u.s. State department will stop its meddling by the time It's necessary for me to leave the us and come to the seminar The cdc is starting to soften its hard line out of necessity, too I guess the gig is up All right. Thanks for that. Mr. W Yep, the gig is up and I think even the average american Zombie is starting to notice one or two of his own brain cells are waking up And with this next email, we've got our listener peter sending me a compliment. He says johnny Heard you call anthony falsie an idiot on your podcast today. I say calling falsie an idiot's an insult to idiots Meanwhile, he says many thanks as usual for your oasis of intelligence and sanity All the best peter You know what peter i'm not too good with compliments Probably because I know it's so many people who are smarter than I am

[16:02] And now the absolute topper email of the day maybe the week or month or year This one's from horse Hmm. How do you go through life with a name like horse? No offense horse. Just saying I think it's time to slap your mom He says dear johnny i've written to you before a long long time ago On the topic of the fast track degradation of the music business today I'm writing to you in response to your last show about the terrible state of latino raggaeton music Anyway, here goes. I understand you're a musician yourself johnny, but you don't talk much about it on your show I think it's time for another go at it though, especially about that raggaeton music music is a dead corpse But the kids don't know it and raggaeton leads the way following in the dirty and talentless footsteps of rap and hip-hop

[16:49] But that's obvious to anyone with an iq over 80 I guess it's a kind of music if that's what you want to call it as you might call dogs barking at night I get that it's reflecting nothing But the downsides of living an unmotivated pointless life in big cities like la or miami like it or not And I f-ing hate it raggaeton is a soundtrack to the latino lifestyle talk about vacant and hollow now johnny I'm a music producer. I've got a file here with more than 11 million midi files along with all the chord progressions and the drum beats to go with it We've also got eight hundred thousand midi midi drum patterns from every genre of music possible You can find them all on we are the music makers calm. They're no secret They're open source files

[17:35] What I and so many other quote computer musicians do is steal entire sections of songs apply some synthesizers And some good drum samples and presto you have a track that nobody in this world is ever going to notice is not original People just wouldn't believe how common doing all this is It's no different cutting sampling and pasting audio files us long-timers call it disposable music the opposite of timeless classic music So then how did all this happen in the whole music system degrade to what it is today? Well, it started in the mid-70s something unforeseen happened aids A true black swan event in the music industry That is what in my opinion killed disco and motown and rock but brought us back into producing truly great music again But that creative peak was a very short lived maybe five years and something called rap and hip-hop was born

[18:27] When they really should have been aborted Unfortunately, it resonated with every ignorant No talent want to be blood and crip living in every ghetto in the country and that contagion spread to latin america and they call it ragathon Where's yet ragathon practically erased the land of talent in latin america formerly the land of salsa? Mambo rumba bighorn in percussion sections tito pointe and cool ass latin rhythm beats No one else could do However nowadays, you don't need any musical talent to succeed beyond your wildest dreams at least for a year or two Then it's back to oblivion In fact, it isn't music at all only speaking in rhyme to other people's electronic beats Otherwise known as sampling which my dad in his day would call stealing You could go to jail for plagiarism back then nowadays you get paid in all my years in the music industry

[19:17] I've seen elvis Take rockability to something called rock and roll then witness the british invasion with the beetles and the stones But never in my entire life have I witnessed something so negative as the incursion of rap and ragathon I'd say ragathon is even more pointless than a name than rap but equally socially damaging to young people It's just amazing how these forms of so-called music have single-handedly destroyed every single thing that makes music a thing of lasting beauty and joy If you want a snapshot of what's really wrong with the world today Just take the most popular ragathon and rap lyrics The initials you'll recognize are mf the n word and the word ho not a firearm implement Those words are repeated over and over in all the rap and ragathon songs It's just a running commentary about disaffected uneducated jobless cretin inner city gangsters fantasies and fairy tales

[20:08] Just listen to one hit song dissected then wonder why the educated black and latino communities aren't up in arms about it Conclusion they're just spineless I'm only glad that I finally found this forum to voice my total disgust of this so-called art form But believe me, I'm not the only one my many sound engineer friends and buddies, especially the old timers are right there with me But they have to eat don't they? So how can I prove this as to not sound like an old fool just running off at the mouth? Well consider this how many songs from the 60s and 70s have stood the test of time? That's 50 years now. How many songs from those errors are considered classics now answer A metric ton the songs from those errors are timeless and people still listen to them today

[20:54] Moreover, people will listen to those songs Years and years from now and enjoy them as much as people did back in the day Now ask yourself how many songs can you remember from just the past 10 years ago five even three years ago? The macarena maybe how many songs over the past 30 years? Do you think will be remembered in 50 years time as compared to the 60s and 70s answered almost none? It's not even a fair fight The songs of today are written to hit the sweet spot Provide a few empty calories of an enjoyment and make that few quick bucks and then disappear down the ghetto nursery rhyme sewer hole And that's why johnny music of today is complete and utter shit Me and my cronies are not just a bunch of old fogey recording engineers turn into knobs saying oh god The kids of today and their music. Uh, what crap?

[21:41] Nope, it's about the commercialization and assembly line construction of music Over the past 20 or 30 years us. Oh geez and the music production business Will tell you that yesteryear was really a thousand percent better than the music of today No comparison. In fact, most of us agree that music today is not really music It's just a callous representation of music a soulless vapid vacuous black hole of infinite shite masquerading as music no subtly no soul no heart No, nothing just a bunch of little ego shouting look at me my tattoos my piercings My horrific dental appliances and mutilated body parts There is another huge factor here too music that became classic long ago was written and performed by people who grew up before the age of tv Before iphones and the internet people from that era actually spent vast amounts of time in the basement studying how to play

[22:31] learning from other great musicians and literature that provided inspiration for meaningful lyrics that told the story lyrics are the other part of the music equation Real talents are educated or auto didex as opposed to today's typical pop star who's grossly ignorant and talentless by comparison Take away the flash hollywood production video values and you have mediocre high school talent show quality at best Have you ever considered that we have electronic voice changers auto tuners tone modulators in every studio now? That can make anyone sound powerful and edgy even make a drunk sound on key In fact, I suggest anyone who wants to seriously learn about music as it should be played and sang by real talent should listen to the rick beto podcast rikk beato he's a music teacher and producer of

[23:18] exceptional range talent and ingenuity His podcast is listened to by the likes of brian may sting and the best jazz artists of the world He's always talking about how real talent has been degraded since rap and hip-hop came along and bemoans The dumbing down of the grammys and virtually all the so-called music award shows too It's all theatrics bombs and glitter at live shows To distract the audience from the thin sound quality of the singer though auto tune and tone modulators clean that up, too But the audience doesn't know that yes, you don't even have to be on key in the studio anymore or on stage screw talent That's why so many bands are terrible live but their show and pyrotechnics are great unless they're singing through a voice decoder They're almost never on key Think about that next time you tune into a music show like the grammys and see snoop dog

[24:06] Doetting with an even less talented pearston tattooed rapper or regga tonero arm waving finger pointing and doing a spastic colon dance yet every Entertainment interview has tomorrow soon to be bankrupt one hit wonder gushing about how the next forgettable act on the card Is a golden ghetto bread musical genius with street and prison cred Even a studio engineers have to be pc and suck it up If a recording engineer producer would dare to say the truth that the latest ghetto discoveries a no talent prick The entourage ass kissers and hangers-on will call you racist and actually try to get you fired pulled off the project or canceled Even though it's precisely your job to make him or her sound like the professional he isn't

[24:51] In fact, that's why they hire you because you can tweak the electronics to make a pig's oink sound like a beyonce contender johnny a final word about regga ton music It's a huge industry now employing thousands along with millions of hideously tattooed pierced and disfigured wannabes But I have to admit the ladies absolutely love and dancing and bumping and grinding to it Admittedly, they're not in it for the inane and repetitively insane lyrics that any mentally challenged fourth grader could pen Did I say pen I meant utter or belch Since half of them can't even say or construct a normal coherent sentence or could pass a fourth grade english test Nor a urine test for that matter Funny how music lyrics used to involve a bit of poetry some songs lyrics could stand alone as a well thought out story

[25:37] But nowadays if you separate the lyrics from the so-called music even an anthropologist couldn't tell if a real live human or kyoko the gorilla wrote him Meanwhile my music industry lawyer brother tells me all the time that 90 percent of rappers and regga toneros who had a number one song Or even multiple hits are dead broke or bankrupt by the time they're 35 They have their 15 minutes then they hole up in miami or the hollywood hills Soon enough there eight rent payments behind on the lambo sitting on their gold plated crappers with zero talent or aptitude to do Anything else but flip burgers and guzzle crystal champagne. Sorry johnny for the rant Just had to get that off my chest. There are so few of us old school guys left We remember what good music was really like we're dying off and some of us are looking forward to meeting some of our heroes Who had real talent in the afterlife signed?

[26:25] rsk PS best music movie in the last 20 years called whiplash and from 2014. It's a must-see every musician I know real musician raves about it Did you know johnny has of about 2005 all major studios have metal detectors since rappers and regga toneros have that small penis Big gun fourth grade ghetto macho sickness seared into their peanut brains. Yes. There are actual murders in the studio Sure, it was kind of a joke back when elvis keith richards johnny casher phil specter would bring a gun into the studio But they're almost never loaded though specter would fire a few shots into the ceiling when things weren't going well But it's a real rapper and regga tonero threat now popping each other off even in the studio Guns and roses never even brought guns funny thing though

[27:10] Sometimes s engineers would joke about leaving a few loaded guns around on purpose and not show up ourselves Certainly fewer rappers and regga ton rats would be good for the music industry. Every clogged toilet is in dire need of a flush Unfortunately the loss of a few key a-holes like kanye and bad bunny the lost revenue would put lots of good engineers out of work You've been listening to the expat files living in latin. America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail dot com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week long expat insider seminar in central america Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com