#12 – The Expat Files: Navigating Racism, Rivalries, and Crime in 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 one of a kind show that tells you what it's like to live, work, play, and or retire in Latin America. So let's get started. The more time an expat spends in Latin America, the more he or she comes to realize that racism is alive and well, and it's a pretty harsh kind of racism too. Of course, sexism is another big problem, but we'll talk about that in another show. In Latin America, if you happen to be short, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, or indigenous, you'll need a lot more than luck to get ahead or advance up the economic ladder in Latin America. But it doesn't end there. Some Latin American countries, who are direct neighbors, have a natural antagonism against

[00:50] each other. It's kind of a nationalist friction that's been going on in some cases for hundreds of years, and it's not the light-hearted kind of friction, combined with competitiveness, that we have up in the northern states, based on things like professional sports rivalries, real or perceived differences in colleges and universities, or differences in personal habits or idiosyncrasies, like for instance the perpetual rivalries between New Jersey and New York, Illinois and Wisconsin, and we all understand that those state-to-state rivalries are light-hearted, and almost no one takes them too seriously, except maybe between drunks and a bar, when a championship game's going on. Even so, our state-to-state rivalries are nothing compared to the country-to-country rivalries they have in Europe, where on occasion they've actually gone to war.

[01:37] Well in Latin America, they have both kinds of rivalries, serious and light-hearted. For example, there's a natural country antagonism between Belize and Guatemala, and there's a lot of friction between Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Panama and Colombia, well they've had their moments too, and I don't have to tell you about the constant trouble between Colombia and Venezuela. Now, the reasons for these country-to-country frictions are many, but most of them stem from the fact that, a hundred or so years ago, when these countries were fighting and getting their independence from Spain, some of them, like Guatemala and Belize, and Colombian Panama, were actually one country that split apart into two separate independent entities, and there are still some resentments about that, some hundreds of years later. It's probably a bit like how the Mexicans feel about losing California and Texas to

[02:26] the United States. For some, there's still some misplaced resentment there. Anyway, let's talk about a particular case, the case between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, because that's been popping up in the news lately. Now as a rule, the Costa Rican people harbor quite a bit of resentment, and in fact it's been said that a majority of Costa Ricans are actually racists towards Nicaraguans. It's a classic case of a rich country bordering a poor country, where the rich country likes to take advantage of the other country's cheap labor, but doesn't want that labor force to settle down permanently in their country and have the same rights or enjoy the same social services as the local population does. It's a small-scale version of exactly what's been happening between the United States and

[03:12] Mexico and their illegal immigration problems. The fact is, everywhere you go in Costa Rica, you'll find Nicaraguans working illegally off the books and in the lowest paying and dirtiest jobs, and just like with illegal aliens in the first world, they never complain about the pay or the conditions, because they know if someone makes just one phone call, they could lose that job and get deported. Does that sound familiar to all you people in the first world? Now in Costa Rica, illegal immigration is such a problem that they have a free hotline you can call if you want to report anybody working off the books. And because the immigration police are so quick to respond, Nicaraguans working illegally in Costa Rica really toe the line, and they do practically whatever it takes to stay in the good graces of their employers.

[03:59] Now unlike at the border between the United States and Mexico, where a Mexican or other Latin American immigrant needs to apply for and get a visa before he enters the United States, which is also the reason why millions enter illegally, because they can't get that visa. Anyway, it's perfectly legal for a Nicaraguan to enter Costa Rica without any visa whatsoever, in fact all through Central America. With the exception of Mexico, there's a diplomatic agreement between Panama, Costa Rica, Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Belize that all the citizens from those countries can travel freely within each other's borders as long as they're carrying their country passport or their national ID card. But they're only allowed to stay for 90 days and they're not allowed to work.

[04:46] Now the vast majority of Nicaraguans don't pass through the border checkpoint to pass to Costa Rica, because then their passport or national ID card will be registered in the immigration computers and they'll only be permitted a 90-day stay in Costa Rica. And if they stay one day longer, they'll be forever prohibited from making that trip again. So the vast majority of Nicaraguans do what the Mexicans and other Latins do when they head for the United States. They sneak in illegally. And the reasons why the Nicaraguans are flooding into Costa Rica are very much the same reasons why illegal Latins pass through to the United States. They're looking for work and a better standard of living than in their home country. The Costa Ricans have more than twice the average income of the average Nicaraguan, which

[05:33] is still only about a quarter of a first world person's income, but the Costa Ricans do have a higher standard of living than the other Central American countries. So compared to their neighbors, they do have extra disposable income, which means they have extra money to hire cooks and domestics and gardeners. And when they can get away with it, both large and small businesses in Costa Rica are more than happy to hire Nicaraguans off the books, especially the construction industry. And the Costa Ricans save a lot of money by hiring Nicaraguans because they pay cash. And that way they avoid paying mandatory social security and health care benefits required by law for registered employees. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? And why is it such a big deal to avoid paying social security and health care benefits to

[06:21] someone? I mean, it's the third world, right? How expensive could those benefits be? Well you'd be surprised. In fact, you might have heard that Costa Rica has a pretty high level health care system, and you may have heard it's almost as good as the health care system in the United States. Well I'm telling you right now, it's not. That is, unless you pay privately for private health care. But that's another topic that we'll talk about later. But what really makes the Costa Ricans want to hire Nicaraguans and avoid paying health care and social security benefits is that those benefits end up costing the employer about 30% more on top of a worker's salary itself. Now that sounds familiar too, doesn't it? So as a result, Costa Rica has an immigration problem. Costa Rica has a few hundred thousand Nicaraguans living there illegally.

[07:10] And as I'm about to explain, racism flourishes. And though their racism and prejudice towards the Nicaraguans is not obvious to the average Costa Rican, it's very obvious to expats. For example, every time you hear about an assault or a robbery, if the perpetrator hasn't been caught, Costa Ricans will always assume it's a Nicaraguan. And if there's garbage in the road, or there's a sorry looking shack along the highway, Costa Ricans will jump to the conclusion that it's got to be a Nicaraguan living there. And if you were to ask a Costa Rican to describe the general characteristics of the average Nicaraguan, the words short, dark, and disheveled will almost always creep into the description. And in private, many Costa Ricans will say nasty things about Nicaraguans.

[07:55] They'll tell you that because the Nicaraguans have a severe water shortage in their country, that the people don't take many baths, and that they're dirtier and less sanitary than Costa Ricans. They'll even tell you that the Nicaraguans have lower IQs because they come from a poor country and their children are chronically undernourished. And that's why you can't expect the average Nicaraguan to raise himself out of poverty. At least that's how the average Costa Rican feels about it. Now all around Latin America, the slang word for Nicaraguan is Nika. That makes sense, and it's not necessarily derogatory, except in Costa Rica. There, if you call someone a Nika, it's definitely an insult, pretty much inferring that you're a dark-skinned, low-class, ignorant farmer.

[08:41] Now to add to the racism card. It seems odd to an expat, but Costa Ricans seem to be able to spot a Nicaraguan from a distance, and if they talk to one, they can tell by the accent. Now I've seen that in action, but I don't quite understand it. I mean, the two countries share a common border, so how could they be that different? I mean, to me, it would be as if I was sitting in a restaurant in Chicago, and some stranger walked by and I immediately knew he was from Ohio, or Wisconsin, or Indiana. I mean, by Costa Rica standards, I should be able to tell exactly where he came from just by the way he looked, or by his accent. But there really is something to the notion of picking out an accent, especially in Latin America. I mean, everybody knows that a big country like Canada or the United States, they do

[09:29] have their regional accents, and they're easy to pick out. But did you know that every Latin American country, all 21 of them, not only have their own country-wide accents, but they also have regional accents within the country as well. And of course, the bigger the country, like Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, the more pronounced the regional accents are. Now that's one thing an expat, no matter how long he or she lives in Latin America, and no matter how adept you might get at speaking Spanish, your ear will never be that well-tuned to be able to pick out regional accents like the locals can. Which brings me to another sign that racism is alive and well in Latin America. The Latins themselves have developed a sort of unofficial ranking system for the way Spanish

[10:17] is spoken throughout all the Latin American countries. For example, most Latin Americans believe that Argentina and Colombia speak a higher class of Spanish than, let's say, Mexico, Bolivia, or Peru, and as a corollary to that, they consider people from Argentina to be the most cultured, educated, as well as the most handsome and beautiful examples of Latin American people. And why should that be? Because the Latin Americans prize anyone who's tall, light-skinned, light-haired, and especially anyone who's got blue or green eyes. And what's interesting is that Argentina actually does have a higher percentage of those qualities than its people, because back in the 19th century, they had a huge influx of European

[11:03] immigrants from Germany and Italy, and Argentina is one of the few Latin American countries that has practically no indigenous Indian population. So it's actually true that a large percentage of Argentinos look very European. And on the opposite end of the scale, that puts Latin countries like Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, countries with large indigenous populations, in some cases more than half of the total population. Well those countries are considered at the bottom of the economic, cultural, and beauty scale, according to polls taken by Latin Americans themselves. In other words, everybody wishes he was from Argentina. Take for example Bolivia, with its large indigenous population. Well according to Latin American perceptions, the people that live there are considered

[11:53] to be quite a few rungs down on the social ladder, and that's because you're not likely to see too many blonde-haired, blue-eyed, light-skinned, tall Bolivians. And if you do see what looks like a typical European specimen, if he's not an expat or a tourist, you can bet that he's probably a member of the elite ruling class or in a well-placed wealthy family. And that seems to be how it goes. The 80% of the Latin population that are the working poor are typically dark, small, and uneducated. Whereas the upper 5%, the ruling class and the rich, they seem to look quite European. And that's what every young Latin boy aspires to when he's looking for a wife or a mate. He's looking for a light-skinned, tall, blue or green-eyed, gringa or European-looking

[12:39] woman. And of course in Latin America, the odds are so far against finding a woman like that. For most guys, any girl with one or more of those qualities will do quite nicely. If I were to make one big generalization about racism in Latin America, I'd have to say that it's color that means everything. Throughout Latin America, as you move closer to the Caribbean side, you'll start to see people's skin color get darker and darker until you finally hit the Caribbean coast or the South Atlantic coast. And there, you'll find there are some cities that are almost exclusively black. And usually the people there speak Spanish and English, except in Brazil of course where it's Portuguese. Anyway, on the Caribbean side, you'll find that in Costa Rica, there's a city that's

[13:24] almost exclusively black and it's called Limón. In Guatemala, you'll find one that's almost exclusively black called Livingston. In Belize, it's Belize City. And there's also a handful of small cities like that in Honduras. And of course, all the black people in these cities are descendants of the black slaves that were brought over from Africa to work the sugar, tobacco and fruit plantations on the Caribbean coast. But what an expat quickly notices is that if he goes a few miles inland, the black population quickly thins out and the population turns from black to Latino in a hurry. Now you wonder why that might be, why the black population stays concentrated in these small little areas. Well, the truth of the matter is, not so long ago, in some cases, not even 50 years ago,

[14:11] the black people were not permitted to migrate out of these towns to the big cities. In other words, they weren't allowed to migrate inland to the bigger cities to look for work or whatever. Even though all Latin American constitutions provided citizens with freedom of movement within the country. One old black man from Limon, Costa Rica, explained to me that until not so many years ago, right outside the city limits of Limon, on the only road to San Jose, the largest city in Costa Rica, there used to be a guard station with a movable metal barrier across the road. And it was put there to stop the black residents of Limon from migrating inland. And it was there for so many years, and it had such a great effect on the population of Limon, that if you travel inland in Costa Rica, to San Jose, or to the Pacific side,

[15:00] you'll rarely see native black people. And if you do see blacks in any numbers at all, you can bet that they're tourists from the United States or Europe. Now in Honduras, Belize, and Guatemala, there are scores of little villages with populations of blacks at 90% or more. Now these people speak Spanish, English, and another language called Garifuna. And even though they have good roads and access to any place on the mainland, they've been isolated so long in their little towns that they have their own culture, language, and customs, completely different from anything Latin. And in the last few years, cultural anthropologists have taken notice, articles have been written and published, and now the little Garifuno towns have become somewhat of a tourist attraction.

[15:45] Though not by any means in a big commercial way. Not yet, anyhow. But the point is, the only way the Garifuno society has been able to maintain its purity was that for so many years they were prohibited from leaving their little towns and colonies and migrating inland. In fact, any expat will tell you there's something about those Garifuno towns that's very interesting. First of all, they have very little crime. In fact, the crime rate's almost zero compared to some of the bigger cities in Latin America. Another thing that you'll notice is that the people seem genuinely friendly, unpretentious, and very nice. What more could you ask for? And even though you'll notice that they're poor, even worse off than the average minimum-wage Latino, they aren't jaded and they never seem to pester tourists. I mean like the locals do in so many other poor areas.

[16:35] Another thing that's highly unusual is that because they're so poor, you won't see many cars or motorcycles at all. In fact, it reminds me a little bit of Cuba. No money, no crime, no cars, but a high happiness factor. And though you might not see many cars or motorcycles, or wealth of any kind basically, they're not disconnected from the world. They do have their cell phones and cable TV, like everybody else, rich or poor. Anyway, those little Garifuna towns are favorite hideaways for expats. Old-time expats have told me it's like walking back in time. They say it's like the Bahamas and Jamaica used to be 50 years ago, before crime on tourists became the number one business in Kingston. And even though to us, it seems like the people in these little Caribbean towns don't have

[17:22] a chance to get ahead, in some respects they have it a lot better than many so-called successful people in the first world. That is, at least according to some of the expats I know who've seen both sides of it. So what's the real bottom line on racism in Latin America? Well, if you come down as an infrequent visitor or as a vacationing tourist, the chances are, as bad as it is, you'll probably still not notice it. That's because tourists are out to have fun, and they're not down here to analyze the sociological aspects of the culture. But believe me, if you're down here for a half a year or more, you'll soon understand what I'm talking about. And what's worse, you'll soon realize that the racism problem here goes much deeper and is more ingrained, and in some ways more subtle, than any examples of racism that you

[18:10] may have experienced up in the United States. And I'm sure if I was at a party up in the United States right now, I'd get in trouble in some quarters for saying that racism is worse in Latin America than it is in the United States. But it is, and I can prove it. And it's not going to change, not in my lifetime, and that's because Latin America is very short on political and social organizations to oppose and fight these kinds of things. The United States had a great history of civil rights activists like Martin Luther King and W.E.D. Boyes, and that was more than a half century ago, and there's really no such strong and powerful movement like that in Latin America. But they do have some human rights organizations, and every Latin country has passed all kinds of equal opportunity legislation, just like in the first world, but just like so many

[19:00] other things in Latin America, it's either not enforced or it's way on the back burner. The people with the time and the money to organize and protest have not selected racism as a leading issue, and until they do, nothing's going to change. But at least expats know better, and they do what they can. Every expat businessman I know hires bright and diligent employees, no matter what color they are, how tall they are, or who they know. And in small part, I think that's why expats have overwhelming success in setting up business in Latin America. It's always better to hire the brightest, most diligent, and best qualified, and not some politician's son or brother-in-law, because you owe him a favor. Now it's time to advise you about a clever little robbery scam that's going around Latin

[19:51] America. And it's so simple, you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. And how did I find out about it? Well, it happened to me. At the end of last month, I went down to the local electric company to pay my electric bill. The electric company billing office is located in a big commercial center with a lot of retail businesses all surrounded by a big guarded parking lot with plenty of guys in uniform and official looking guys with guns patrolling the lot walking around making sure everybody is safe and secure. So far so good. So I parked my car, went in, stood in line for about 45 minutes, paid my bill, and walked back out to the parking lot. And just as I got into my car and closed the door, a guy started tapping on my car window and he held up an electric company receipt.

[20:37] He pointed at it and motioned for me to roll my window down. And when I did, he stepped back a few steps and said in broken English, you dropped this receipt on the ground. And you know, in that second, I thought, yeah, I probably did. I've done things like that. We all have. Then I opened the door and stepped out, looked at the receipt and saw that it wasn't mine. And I explained to the guy that it wasn't mine and that it must have been somebody else that dropped it. But for about 30 seconds, he kept on insisting that he saw me drop it until I finally seemed to convince him that it wasn't mine. And when I hopped back into my car, I noticed that my briefcase that I'd put on the passenger seat was gone. And I don't have to tell you that when I went to the guard shack and quizzed the guards, none of them saw anything. They just pointed me to the usual sign that said, we are not responsible for damage to

[21:26] your car or anything left inside. Now what was so clever about this scam? Well, I'll tell you. First of all, everybody dropped something on the ground once in a while. So you fall for that right away. Second, it was a real electric company receipt that the guy showed me. So from a distance, I thought it was mine. But the real clever part was that he got me to step out of my car just a little bit so that the door was slightly open. That way, he had an accomplice that could open any one of the other doors in my car because the buzzer that signals when your door is open was already buzzing since I had the door open a bit and was talking to the guy with the receipt. And another thing, if I'd had a burglar alarm in that car, it wouldn't have gone off either. Again, because I had the driver's side door partly open and was talking to the guy with

[22:12] the receipt. So I lost my briefcase and its contents. But having been robbed before and knowing some expat tricks, from me, they only got a cheap $20 cell phone, some unimportant paperwork, some cheap pens, and a Naugahide briefcase. Total value, maybe $35. But it taught me another good lesson. Whatever commotions or distractions are happening outside your car, always stay in your car, keep your doors locked, and stick with a bargain basement briefcase and a cheap and basic cell phone. Let's talk about crime and punishment in Latin America. Well, let's forget about the punishment because there's not much of that. Let's talk about the crime. Now, when you think of crime, especially murders, you think about Mexico.

[23:00] And if there's one strong message you should get out of this show called the Expat Files, is that we really don't recommend living, working, and or retiring in Mexico. In the past, it may have been good for a lot of expats. And yes, there's thousands of expat success stories in Mexico. But these days with the narcos and the cartels and the kidnappings, the murders and the violence, well the big cities are pretty much out of the question for expats. Because in so many cases, the gangs and the cartels are in control. And though there are a lot of small towns in Pueblos that seem like nice places to settle down, the fact is, once in a while you'll have to do some traveling in and out of your small town, and that's when you'll be in trouble. So you guys out there who are sending me emails asking about Mexico, I'll say again, it's not recommended.

[23:46] Although of course I'll touch on Mexico from time to time, because it's a huge country and there's more than a half a million expats down there right now. So there'll be a lot to talk about. So let's talk about getting away with murder in Latin America, and that's just about the size of it. Because according to Latin American police statistics, less than 5% of homicides are actually solved. Which means you've got about a 95% chance of getting away with murder. Whereas up in the United States a homicide case is solved about 70% of the time, and the statistics are even better in Canada and Western Europe. But let's talk about specifics. Now normally people like to talk about how many murders there are per 100,000 people because it makes it easy to correlate from country to country. It doesn't mean anything if you say 147 people were murdered this year in Monterrey, Mexico.

[24:37] It's much better to say that last year there were 16 murders for every 100,000 residents. Now according to recent homicide statistics, El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, and Guatemala have the highest murder rates at about 50 to 70 people killed per year for every 100,000 population. The next is Brazil which comes in around 25 to 30 people killed for every 100,000 people. Now to put this in perspective in the first world, you have to realize that Detroit has 40 killings per 100,000 population per year, and New Orleans, which has the worst first world statistic, has 50 killed for every 100,000 population. Which puts those two first world cities square in the ballpark of the five murder capitals

[25:24] in Latin America. Now those are murder statistics for every age group across the board. But what should be of real interest to anyone considering coming down and living in Latin America is that the murder rates that I just quoted you would change drastically. If you subtracted the mature adult population, people 25 or older, out of those statistics, then suddenly you find that the vast majority of those murders are in the 15 to 24 year old age group, and they're almost exclusively young, poor, and male. Does that ring a bell? Sounds just about like the breakdown of most big city homicides that happen up in the first world. You know the typical perpetrator type, from CSI. Young, arrogant, pissed off, uneducated, and a lot of testosterone. However, there's a very strange crime statistic that happens in South America, as opposed

[26:14] to the Central American countries. The Central American countries include Panama, up through Mexico. Anyway, in South America, if you don't include Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia, the other ten countries in South America, like Ecuador, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Chile, to name a few. Anyway, they have very little crime compared to Central America. In fact, most of the other ten South American countries have annual murder rates in low single digits per 100,000, as compared to the double digit figures we've been talking about with a lot of the other countries. And you might be surprised to know that the United States has a rate of about five murders per 100,000 per year. And that means it's actually more dangerous than most of the South American countries, statistically speaking.

[27:00] So next time you think of Latin America as a horribly dangerous place, just remember that there are more than ten countries that have lower crime statistics than the United States. And when you talk about the worst and most outrageous Latin American crime statistics, you'll find those high crime rates almost always occur in the big cities, and that a vast majority of victims are young men between the ages of 15 and 24. And that's not just for homicides, but for all types of crime. You've been listening to The Exped Files, living in Latin America, a one-of-a-kind show produced and compiled deep in the heart of Latin America. And of course, you can always email me with any of your questions about Latin America. Exped Files at progressiveradionetwork.com.

[27:48] See you next time. Nos vemos.