#114 – 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, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now here's a nice politically incorrect email, and of course I'm open to all questions regarding Latin America and Latin Americans. Even the politically incorrect questions, which of course I love the most because a lot of people might be thinking to ask a question like that, but if you're embarrassed to ask,

[00:51] then send it anonymously. And you know when I was a lot younger and I actually cared about what other people thought, and don't get me wrong, I do care what other people think once in a while, but not like I did when I was young. And I guess that's true for almost everyone. So go ahead and ask me those politically incorrect questions, fire away, and I'll fire right back with some politically incorrect answers, okay? So let me give you an excerpt of this email that says, Dear Johnny, please don't read my name if you answer my email on the air, but what's up with these Central Americans chasing young girls? I mean really young, like teens and pre-teens. And by the way, we live in a neighborhood that has a high concentration of Central Americans. And of course, folks, she's writing this email from up in the first world. Anyway, she says, even my teenage son notices how these Central American guys chase these

[01:39] young teen and pre-teen girls, and it's offensive to him too. Amigo Perverts is what he calls them. And she asks in this email, is that a cultural thing? Does it have something to do with religion? You are the only person I would dare ask this un-PC question. Well, thanks for that, though I don't know if that's a compliment or a slap in the face. Anyway, glad to answer that question. Now, I bet wherever you live up in the States, you're living in a big city, and those Central Americans that you talk about either nearly all came in illegally to the United States or their parents did. And since I come from Chicago, I know exactly what kind of mixed neighborhood you're talking about. And I'll explain what I saw up in Chicago, and you tell me if it isn't pretty much what you're talking about that's going down in your neighborhood. Now, when you have a pretty large concentration of Latin Americans living in a big first world

[02:27] city, they almost always end up living very close to each other. And in a lot of ways, they prefer to live just like they did back in Central America where they originated from, kind of a little higher class replica of home sweet home. Now, like I said, the vast majority of these people came in illegally or their parents came in illegally, and illegals by definition come up to the United States because they have very little to lose and very little to risk, and everything to gain, even if they get caught and sent back five or ten times, which happens to some of these guys, believe me. And each time they fail to get in or they get in and get deported, they learn a few more tricks, make a few more friends, and learn which coyotes to trust and which ones not to trust. These are people who back in the home country had jobs that paid about $200 or $300 a month

[03:12] if they were lucky, and if they were living out in the boonies as agricultural workers, they earned a lot less, but at least agricultural workers eat well. But the big problem is agricultural workers make minimum wage, which is a worse wage than a prison worker gets in the United States. And in Latin America, that's anywhere between $5 to $8 a day, which is anywhere from $100 to a little less than $200 a month. So these illegals have absolutely nothing to lose. They have no savings at all. And they sneak into the United States with just a little knapsack and the clothes on their backs. The average illegal that slips through their border is so uneducated that he's lucky to have made it through the sixth grade. And up to half of them are functionally illiterates, and that's in their own language, Spanish, which is another thing. They're coming into the United States knowing pretty much zero English,

[04:00] except from the words they picked up in rap songs and music videos. And I'm talking about the average Latin guy here that sneaks in, because the vast majority of illegal aliens are men, because they're more bold and much more willing to take the chance to slip through all those borders and try to fend off all the coyotes that are trying to take advantage of them along the way. And the thing is, these illegal immigrants or mojados, which means wetback in Spanish, they do get taken advantage of because even though they're dead broke and have no savings at all, they're usually carrying a few hundred to a thousand bucks with them, loans and gifts from family members trying to help them out. So as you might imagine, these guys have nothing to lose. They have little or no education. They're functionally illiterate, even in their own language, which means they're culturally illiterate too. Most of them are coming from a terrible ghetto,

[04:47] a ghetto unlike any ghetto that you've ever seen up in the first world. In fact, first world ghettos and projects that we're used to seeing up in Chicago, let's say, are the absolute ritz compared to what these guys came from. Their water is contaminated if they even have water. There's no sewage treatment. And if there's a river nearby, no matter how polluted it is, the women wash their clothes in it and the kids bathe in it. And these are people who just whip it out. Anytime they get the urge to urinate, and I'm talking about the men of course, because the women are infinitely more shy and private about things like that. And as far as these lower class men go, they don't care where they are or who's watching. And as far as taking a dump, if I could be so crude and politically incorrect, about another delicate matter, well, let's just say any morning when you're walking through a ghetto like that, those steaming piles are not all the disgusting byproduct of packs of street dogs.

[05:37] Yuck. Now, when you come from the lowest level of a third world society like that, and you've got absolutely nothing to lose, where families have no concept of sanitation or population control, much less nutrition and basic healthcare, and with that terrifically low cultural IQ, now let's imagine that you're a young kid, age 18, and you've lived under those conditions all your life. You've decided you've had enough, and you're gonna sneak up to the United States. Well, when you finally get there, you head right for the place that you feel most comfortable, to the Latin Quarter in a big US city, where people from your own country and your own background have landed before and have set themselves up. In other words, you connect with more illegal aliens, usually people that you know or are related to, from back in the Central American big city slum that you came from.

[06:23] You get in with people just like you, though they've been in the United States for quite a while and have settled in, but still, they're people like you with about a fourth to sixth grade education, if they're lucky, with only a very rudimentary command of English themselves, and fairly ignorant of first world habits, cultures, and manners, except for what they've picked up in Hollywood martial arts and gangster movies, which, by the way, are the favorites of low-class Latins down here in the third world, dubbed in Spanish, of course. So, one of the main reasons why so many young Latin men up in the United States come off as crude, extremely sexist, classless, and culturally ignorant, is because they're thoroughly versed in the cultures and the manners of the third world ghetto, and they've taken these awful third world habits, and they've brought them back up to the first world cities with them,

[07:09] and a lot of these are horrible habits that are repulsive to first world people. As evidenced by that email I just read, it's the kind of stuff you wouldn't dream of doing if you were a first world kid, and if you did, your parents would wrap your knuckles and whoop your backside every day of the week. But you see, down in these low-class third world big city ghettos, I'm talking about down here in Latin America, you're more than likely to see guys urinating any time they feel like it, compulsive spitting, gangs of adolescent guys and young men, catcalling, bothering, and ogling any girl of any age that walks by, and using a jumble of low-class Latin swear words in every other sentence. Not to mention, nearly all the young men in a poor third world ghetto have a general lack of basic hygiene and a complete disregard for dental care,

[07:54] all of which is just a part of life in a poor third world Latin ghetto. Only now, every year there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of these guys being transplanted up to first world big cities. And it's not like these guys can't be trained to the ways of the first world, because you can teach an old dog new tricks, but only if you take the dog away from the other dogs in the pack. And that rarely happens with illegal immigrants in the states. When you hang around with a bunch of guys that are used to standing around bothering and ogling at every young girl that walks by, there's just absolutely no incentive for these guys to stop and start acting like gentlemen. Since for them, that kind of sexist behavior is normal, and it gets reinforced by hanging around with other guys that believe the same thing. Anyway, to make things worse, much worse. In nearly every Latin family in the lowest strata of society down here in Latin America,

[08:43] they have way too many kids, and there's always trouble keeping food on the table. Not to mention, there always seems to be a stand-up drunk or two in the family. And though there's usually a dad or a man in the house supporting the family, as best he can on 6 or 10 bucks a day, chances are he's a carousing drunk too. Since, believe it or not, it's a point of honor with these low-class Latin American men that they have as many girlfriends and lovers on the side as they can get away with. Which makes for not a lot of harmony in the house, believe me. And I should add that womanizing is a point of honor with all classes of Latin men, not just the lower classes. But with the lower classes, it's hard to figure how a guy making 5 or 10 bucks a day can afford to string along a couple of women. Go figure, but it happens all the time. But still, these families stay together with all the infidelities,

[09:30] drunken scenes and betrayals and all. Because you can tolerate an awful lot of pain and abuse when you're dirt poor and have few options. However, one of those options is to sneak into the United States. And everybody's got a friend or a family member who's done it. And most of the ones that made it to the United States, and even the ones that have been deported back to their home countries, report that up north there's a strong possibility for a Latin guy to have the American dream. But they're not talking about our version of the American dream. They're talking about their version of the American dream, like maybe working for a drywall company or at McDonald's. Because even if you're making 10 bucks an hour at McDonald's, which to the average American is a pretty depressing wage and could only provide a pretty depressing lifestyle. Anyway, to the Latin American who makes 5 or 10 bucks a day down in Latin America,

[10:20] a job at McDonald's in the US pays 10 times as much, which is a fortune to them and it nicely fits their definition of the American dream. Anyway, every Latin family in the bottom levels of social strata down here in Latin America is more often than not infected with tragic social problems of one kind or another, stemming mostly from sheer poverty. And it's not just drinking and infatality in almost every family. The fact is there's a severe epidemic of child abuse and wife beating down here, not to mention tragically huge, unreported cases of incest. And the fact is, and this'll scare ya, I have four first world gringo friends who came down here as expats and are big successes in business by the way. Anyway, they ended up marrying Latin American girls, beautiful Latin American girls,

[11:05] and every one of these girls told her gringo husband the story of an incest incident somewhere on her side of the family. And in all four cases, no one ever went to the cops or the authorities, because that's just not done down here and it's usually just swept under the carpet. And now for a really unpolitically correct story, if you've ever heard one. So go listen to Lady Gaga if you have sensitive ears. Anyway, a few years back, expat Eddie had a wonderful, beautiful Latin girlfriend down in El Salvador. They were living together and making plans to get married. One late night, there was a knock at the door, and Eddie's girlfriend's 24-year-old sister was standing there crying, asking if she could use the guest room for a few days until she got herself together. But she definitely didn't want to go back home with the parents, where she had been living all her life.

[11:53] Anyway, so Eddie's girlfriend and her sister went into the kitchen and had a little powwow that night. And Eddie went to bed and he woke up the next morning and asked his girlfriend what had happened, why his sister was so upset and why she wouldn't go back home. And that's when Eddie's girlfriend gave him the shock of his life. She told him that their father had been raping all three girls, and there were only three girls in the family, since they were little kids. He had his own car mechanic business, by the way, and wasn't a dirt-poor, low-class guy. The family, in fact, was solidly middle class. Anyway, she told Eddie that her father, sometimes after dinner, would go out, get drunk, come back late at night, slip into the girl's room, and well, you know the rest of the story. And where was the mother at this point? Well, you see, she was up in the United States for 10 years,

[12:40] completely legally, actually, after having answered a newspaper ad for a full-time nanny working for a wealthy family up in New Jersey. And she'd only come back down to Salvador a couple of times a year for holidays, which was a very strange marriage relationship, if you ask me. But I've heard of a lot stranger relationships, so who am I to judge? But I can sure judge this one, all right? And this one was rotten to the core, because Eddie's girlfriend had told him that her dad had been raping the girls for that 10-year period off and on. And Eddie, who'd thought he'd seen and heard everything, was finally speechless that day. And here's the thing that shook Eddie the most. Every Sunday, they'd have dinner over at the parents' house, and Dad would answer the door, how you doing, Eddie? Shake his hands, sit down, tell a few jokes,

[13:27] just like a grand old happy family. And all the while, Eddie was shaking hands with an incestuous criminal pervert. And of course, the three girls were like 20, 22, and 24 years old by now. One married, one living with Eddie, and the other one at home. And that one in tears now asking for asylum at Eddie's house, because Daddy was starting up with his old tricks again. He'd quit drinking some years back and quit bothering her, and she was the only one at home now, by the way, with the other two girls gone and Mommy up in the United States. So here she was at Eddie's asking for asylum, and he absolutely gave it to her, of course. Now Eddie explained to his girlfriend that something had to be done. They had to report that guy, he had to get locked away. And he told the girls that up in the States, a guy like that goes to prison and they throw away the key.

[14:13] But guess what, down here in Latin America, terrible things like that almost never come to light. It's just too damn embarrassing for the wife, the kids, and the scumbag dad, or uncle, or brother, or whoever the pervert is in the family. And it's only the very rare case that ever sees the light of day. And if you think Eddie's is just an odd circumstantial case, I have another very good gringo friend who married a Latin girl, and after they'd been married a year and they had a kid, he noticed she didn't want to leave him in the room alone with the kid who was a girl. His wife was always hovering around quite close when he was changing diapers or feeding the kid, playing with it, or whatever. And finally he said to her, don't you trust me alone with the kid? You think I'm going to drop her on her head or something? And the wife started crying and began to tell him the story

[15:01] of how her uncle raped her when she was a tiny kid. And here's the thing, my friend said that uncle was at a lot of the parties, the 15-year-old parties, the Christmas parties, the New Year's Eve parties, at all the family parties and gatherings, and seemed as likable as could be. And naturally, my ex-bad friend's first thought was that he wanted to kill the guy, strangle him, at one of those parties in front of everyone. And his wife said no, she didn't want the family embarrassment of the secret getting out. She'd never be able to face her friends or the other family members again. And now a few years later, my ex-bad friend's divorced. And he told me that it had absolutely everything to do with that little story his ex-wife told him. He had this built-up rage against the pervert uncle, and everyone else in the family just wanted to let sleeping dogs lie. And as far as ex-bad Eddie goes, well, he never did end up marrying that girl

[15:49] because he couldn't get over the fact that none of the three girls wanted to rat out their father. And in the end, they said, sure, he'd done a bad thing, but he was still their dad. But Eddie told me he could never go over to that house again, ever. And he never wanted to see that guy's face again anywhere. Because if he did, and it was in a public place, he'd probably punch him so hard, Eddie would end up going to jail, not the pervert old man. Now, I know stories like these seem pretty harsh to first world people. And the chances are, if you live up in the first world, especially in a small or medium-sized town, you've probably heard or read about stories like that, but you don't know anyone that something like that has actually happened to. I know I didn't, and I lived in Chicago. And I know that kind of stuff does happen up in the first world too, but when discovered, it's more than likely to get reported. And when it does happen, they prosecute the hell out of them.

[16:36] End of story. But isn't it interesting that I went through my whole life in Chicago, a huge city of millions of people, and I've never met one single person that's ever happened to, or who's ever related a story like that to me. And then I come down to Latin America and hear stories like this from four of my ex-pat friends who were going out with or were married to Latin girls who had that kind of stuff happen in their own families. And guess what? I read the papers every day down here, and you don't see that stuff ever reported. The only time I've ever seen a guy go to jail for anything like that was when a pervert like that has been caught red-handed, ripping multiple kids multiple times. Kids from not just his own family, but from other families in the neighborhood. And when the neighbors find out, they get together and root him out. And by the way, in a past show,

[17:22] I mentioned that they do have lynchings down here in Latin America. In small towns every once in a while, when there's a noted thief or criminal in town and the police don't do anything about it, and the guy just ends up back on the street committing more crimes, oftentimes the crowd will get together in a mob form, just like the old west, grab the guy and lynch him, or stone him to death, or hurt him so badly that he ends up in the hospital for a few weeks. It's like local vigilante justice, and it works. Especially when the police are lazy and ineffective, like they are in so many places down here in Latin America. Anyway, sometimes you see in the local papers that out in the boonies, in some small town, some old pervert who's been molesting kids has been stoned or lynched. And you know what? When I see the odd article like that, I can only say three cheers for the common man.

[18:07] Although I know it's completely politically incorrect to take the lawn to your own hands. But I've been down here in Latin America long enough to know, sometimes that's the only way justice prevails. And that's one big reason why so many small cities in Latin America are safer than first world cities, safer than even Canada. And there's great safety, even in small cities and towns, in so-called dangerous countries, that the US State Department has put on their blacklist and don't recommend people from the United States visit or even step foot in. How's that for irony? So I guess in regards to that email, pointing out that in big cities up in the United States, in areas where so many Central Americans congregate and live, and in regards to the question as to why so many of these Latin American young men make a point of bothering and pursuing young teenage girls and even pre-teen girls.

[18:56] And though I did get a little off the point here and there, like I always do. Anyway, I hope you understand a little bit now why it's completely a culturally based thing. In fact, down here in Latin America, I've seen it myself. If I'm walking through a busy part of town alone and there are a bunch of adolescents or young men standing around, having lunch or working at a construction site or whatever, if they're from the low or lower middle class segment of society, it just never fails. When a young girl or any group of girls walks by, the guys will stop what they're doing for a moment, hone in on the girls, make a few sexual comments, along with some whistles and not so pleasant guttural noises. And when the girls are out of range, they'll get back to their lunch or their work or whatever, until the next girl or group of girls walks by and gets with an earshot.

[19:42] And if it's a group of low class guys working on a construction site, even the bosses will chime in. And you know what? It's just those kind of guys from that lower end of the social class, making three to 400 bucks a month, that end up a lot of times going to the United States illegally. And they carry that sexist and low culture baggage to those Latin barrios in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, and every big city up there. And if you happen to live in or near one of those neighborhoods, that's the kind of behavior you can expect from them. But on the other side of the coin, if you're down here in Latin America in a big city, and there are some professional looking guys standing around, guys dressed up kind of nice, maybe in suits or white shirts, or dressed clean and casual with a tie,

[20:28] you're just not going to see that kind of behavior, no matter how many women walk by or how sexy or good looking they are. Because you see, just like in the States, middle and upper middle class guys like that, guys with a little education and a little culture will definitely sneak a look. But you won't hear shrill whistles or rude remarks. But those kind of guys, educated guys, well, you're not going to see those kind of people migrating up to the first world. Those guys have just too much to lose. Guys like that would never think of dropping everything and slipping into the United States as an illegal alien. Even if they only make 500 to 1000 bucks a month, unlike a low class Latin guy, they have some resources, a good family, a decent job, maybe even a car, a skill and some upward mobility. And sure, a lot of these guys might even get up to the United States sometime.

[21:16] It's every Latin's goal to see Disneyland, New York or Las Vegas. But when they can afford it and get all their papers in order, they're going to go there legally on a visa, take a small vacation and come back home. And though some of those guys might end up in the Latin quarter up in New York, just to visit some of their long lost relatives while on vacation, they're not going to be the ones chasing down teen and pre-teen girls. Now you might be thinking, up there in the first world in Latin quarter and in those mixed Latin communities, it just can't all be illegal aliens. There have to be some citizens up there and people with visas. Well, of course there are. But if you talk to some of the older folks, you'll notice that nearly all of them still have Spanish accents, which means that 20 or even 30 years ago, a great majority of those older folks came in as illegals

[22:03] before all that terrorist stuff in 9-11. When the immigration rules and laws in the United States were much more relaxed and spotty enforced. And back then there were a lot of amnesty programs for illegals that had been living in the States for a long time, had jobs and good work records and didn't have police files. So 20, 30 and even 40 years ago, a lot of illegal aliens became citizens and their kids, many of them born in the United States, were automatically citizens, of course. But here's the thing, a great many of these families never ended up moving out of the Latin Quarter or those mixed transitional neighborhoods. Again, because it's just more comfortable to live with people from your own country and from your own status and class. But if you and your kids never get out of that barrio, even if your kids were born there,

[22:49] even if you are a 100% bona fide US citizen, you're never really going to culturally adapt to a genuine first world middle class lifestyle. Which is not to say there's anything wrong with living in that part of town to each his own. But I guarantee if you're a young girl walking through one of those sections of town alone, or even with your girlfriends, you're going to get sexually harassed. Now imagine a girl walking down the street with her girlfriends in a solid middle class suburb in Raleigh, North Carolina. There all you get from the guys in the street is a quick look and a smile. Okay, now to change the subject a little bit. I'll bet you didn't know, if you go to a big fruit and produce market down here in Latin America, sometimes you're better off being a man when you buy stuff. And for once, there's nothing sexist about the phenomena at all. It just turns out that a lot of small fruits, vegetables, and nuts,

[23:38] things that are the size of a plum, let's say, or smaller, are often sold not by unit weight number or volume, but sold a mano, a mano, which means by the handful in Spanish. For example, if you're going to buy some plums, or some cherries, or some raspberries, often they'll be sold a mano, which means if you're a guy, depending on your hand size, you just might get double for your money. Obviously, you have a bigger hand than a woman, so you could get more fruit, vegetables, or nuts in that hand than any woman could. And believe me, they sell a lot of stuff that way. And I always make out like a bandit, because not only do I have a big hand, but I have a big nose too, and big feet, but we won't go into what all that is supposed to add up to now, will we? So anyway, suffice it to say, all you lady expat wannabes,

[24:27] forget the coupons when you go shopping, they really haven't hit down here anyway. Instead, just bring a guy with big hands. And speaking of food, the other day I was looking at the help wanted ads, and I see that the IHOP restaurants in the first world are making a big push to franchise in certain big cities down here in Latin America, and they've already opened a few stores. But here's something you didn't know. Talk about equal opportunity employers. You know that in the United States and Europe, and all throughout the first world, when a big corporation runs a help wanted ad, they always have, in small letters usually, a statement saying that they're an equal opportunity employer, and they don't discriminate on the basis of age, sex, race, color, and all that. But that's in the first world. And I guess you don't have to follow those same rules,

[25:13] even if you are a first world transnational corporation, as long as you're advertising for help down in the third world. Now listen to this. Here's a big full colored job wanted ad from the IHOP. It says, in Spanish of course, we are looking for help at our international IHOP restaurants, and then it lists the prerequisites for the job, and what you're supposed to put on your application. Listen to this. Sex, feminine, age, 18 to 28 years old. Height, 1.7 meters or taller. Complexion, light skinned. Figure, thin, personality, extroverted and dynamic. And then it says, please send your resume and complete paperwork, along with a recent close up and full body photograph in color. And finally it says, we will not take into consideration

[26:01] the candidates that do not include their photographs. Now it sounds to me that they're breaking every equal opportunity law in the book, in the first world book that is. But down here, like I said, anything goes. So according to this IHOP want ad, they don't want any full figured girls and no short or dark skin girls allowed. So I ask you, whatever happened to women's lib? Where are those powerful first world women organizations when you need them? Well, I guess they just don't care about those 250 million women down here in the third world now, do they? I guess they're too busy up in the first world, shaking down companies for in-house daycare centers and maternity benefits. Okay, we're done with that. Now here's another funny thing I've noticed while shopping lately. Since it's Christmas time down here in Latin America and everybody's out.

[26:47] In fact, it's the height of Christmas time. Well, I've noticed there's some strange trend going on down here. It seems like every major supermarket has some kind of Jesus shopping bag or nativity scene or some kind of a religious scenario embossed on the bag. And even at a popular Chinese restaurant where they have little Buddha shrines everywhere, they wrap my food in a baby Jesus carryout bag. Talk about sucking up to the public. And get this, a gun shop put Eddie's new Glock in a nativity scene shopping bag. How's that for mixed signals? And then a few days later, I was at a popular Italian restaurant and they gave me my carryout in a bag with the three wise men on it. Or was it the three wise guys? I forget, in an Italian restaurant, three wise guys? Why not? You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America,

[27:42] coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, The Expat Files at gmail.com. Once again, The Expat Files at gmail.com. See you next time.