#1375 – The Expat Files: Navigating Cultural and Migration Complexities in Latin America

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 I wonder Hello there all you ex-pad 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 I got a lot of email responses regarding what we talked about on the last show that Latino ladies may be good at a lot of things, but they're not good at decorating now that might seem like a small Insignificant thing to some people but it does run deep and have its tentacles based on those email responses

[00:49] I must have hit a nerve a big stack of those emails came from gringo and expats guys who have latino Wives are a girlfriend. So they're speaking from experience For example Henley from Panama City Panama says Johnny have been down here in Latin America 12 years in that time I've had three long-term steady latina girlfriends. Not all at once that would be suicide You're right latinas can be rabidly jealous. By the way, my latest latina girlfriend of two years is now my wife He says Johnny you're absolutely right. They can't decorate with a shit though It would be unkind to make them aware of it Not to mention it would be unkind not to let them decorate because that's what women do and they revel in it So if you've got bad taste all is good

[01:37] However, if you don't you end up having to live with a mashup of styles Then Henley says I'm wondering though how is it possible that three latina girlfriends in a row could all be so colorblind and They're so proud of their results to like fourth graders showing you their stick man drawings I say don't rock the boat. Let him decorate. What's the harm? He says though when my brother and his wife came down from Detroit last year to visit his wife being a real interior decorator I knew there just might be a clash of sorts When she first walked in and looked around and said Henley, I think I can help you out here I had a sneaky feeling my wife was not gonna warm up to a woman who pointed out her decorating errors

[02:22] Let's just say they did not become best of friends. So anyway, that's what Henley in Panama wrote Then of course came those emails from guys who said to me Johnny you're nuts for even bringing it up There's so many great and positive things about having a latina girlfriend. Who cares how they decorate and why would you even notice? Like for example this email from expat Pete in Guatemala City He said Johnny until you mentioned it on your show. I never gave a single thought to how latinas decorate. I couldn't care less Here's a few things. I have noticed though a latina girlfriend her wife Will never let you go hungry and her mother and aunts and all the women in her family will do their best to try To stuff you too when you're at home with her She'll insist on making you food three meals a day. Even if you're not hungry, she won't take no for an answer

[03:13] Oh, and if you do say no, you don't have to do that They'll often argue with you about it because they feel it's their role to keep you fat and happy and they'll always make too much food Here's what else I have noticed if you have to go to the dentist or the doctor your girlfriend will insist on going with you She'll insist on being with you in your times of anxiety She will also nurse you like a baby if you're sick or moping around the house or stuck in bed Oh, and this might be the best part. They'll greet you at the door like an old fifties TV show Like leave it to be for our father's knows best The man of the house will come home from a hard day's work His wife will open the door fresh smiling and happy dinner ready and on the table the works

[04:01] Pete says it's certainly something for an American guy to get used to in my case having been married once up in the states and never ever receiving that kind of treatment before I Almost forgot another thing that caught me completely off guard is when I noticed that if I'm going out of the house and my shirt Happens to be a bit too wrinkly my Latina girlfriend will take it off for me right there and iron it the last time I saw anything like that was in an old black and white movie and a Few times when my mom ironed shirts for my dad not wanting him to go out of the house scruffy. So Johnny I don't know why you're going on about how latinas can't decorate. Nobody cares certainly not me All right, so there was an email from Pete who thought it was nuts for bringing up the subject

[04:48] Changing gears a bit. How about we serve a little shit on the internet right now. Let's do it I'm sure you're all aware in the last couple of weeks on social media There's been all kinds of noise about whether illegals are eating dogs or cats We're talking about Haitians now. I'm referring to those specific cases up in that little town of Springfield, Ohio Well, let me set you straight, you know, I go back and forth to the DR a lot In fact just last week I was in the Dominican Republic and I went to visit my girlfriend's mother who lives on the compo, which is out the boonies She has a farm pigs chickens avocados lots of fruit Cocos lemon trees the whole bit. She's pretty much completely food self-sufficient

[05:34] Man, that's the kind of place you want to be if the grid goes down Now her like lots of little farmers in the Dominican Republic have seasonal work for migrants those migrants being Haitians There are only two kinds of migrants in the DR Haitians and Venezuelans, you know, the DR is loaded with illegal Haitians There's no official figures, but they estimate about 1 in 10 people about 10% of all the people in the Dominican Republic are illegal Haitians In fact, if you ever visit Santo Domingo, which is a really big city the capital city of Dominican Republic's got about 6 million people I've seen police many times at night set up roadblocks and bring in people carriers They're rounding up Haitians who don't have documents most don't and they deport them back to Haiti

[06:21] In fact, they've been building a secure wall for at least a year and a half now I'm the border of the DR in Haiti because as Haiti gets worse and worse, you know, it's complete chaos there now There's no way to physically stop the flow of Haitians. So where am I going with this? Well, I think they'll find this pretty interesting At that big Sunday family get together last week. Guess what they were discussing the people around me in Spanish, of course They were discussing the news coming out of the States on social media. They get that news down here, too They're all hooked into tick-tock and what's up and insta-craft all the social media channels And they've been translated into Spanish everything you get up there They get down here too and the big news in the last couple of weeks is those 20,000 Haitians that have been shipped to that little town of Springfield, Ohio

[07:08] Where there's only about 60,000 inhabitants. That means one out of three people in that town is Haitian I'm sure you've heard about it where there have been reports of Haitians eating dogs and cats and catching geese in parks, etc And of course the lame Street media says it's all fake news. Well, guess what? It ain't fake Now, of course, the Dominicans are super interested in that story because they've been inundated with tons of Haitians, too It's almost as if Springfield, Ohio is like a sister city get this Turns out my girlfriend's aunt is married to a Haitian man He was there at the gig at this little Sunday get-together By the way, one big whale Haitians become legal in the DR is to marry a DR citizen

[07:55] Just like in the States when any legal marries a US citizen They automatically get on the fast track to residency and citizenship and can't be deported Unless of course, they're a convicted felon But then again, we're talking about the Biden administration and they need the votes any way they can get him anyway, it turns out my girlfriend's aunt is married to a Haitian man and he was there at the gig and The subject of the conversation was Haitians eating cats and dogs and stuff up in that little town in the States The thing is they were laughing about it all of them knowing that Haitians eat cats and dogs They were saying things like what's all the fuss? No big deal Haitians eat cats and dogs and whatever that can get their hands on the Haitian guy at this party was laughing about it, too

[08:40] Now here's the thing I know some people will not want to believe this but I swear to you if you send a journalist down I will get you a personal interview with this guy and my girlfriend's mother to verify this story I'm about to tell you now you longtime listeners have heard me say I'm not big on eating homemade food when getting invited to people's houses So I look for stealthy ways to get around it I certainly don't want to offend the lady of the house since she went through a lot of trouble It's rude not to finish everything on your plate Generally, the plan is I'll toss the meat scraps or whatever to the dog That's patiently waiting under the table here in Latin America, especially on the Campo. Normally there's a dog under every table They're not stupid

[09:25] But in this case no dog, but there was a cat a big old cat gobbling up Whatever food I dropped when no one was looking oddly enough the cat had one eye The other one was completely sealed over looked like a terrible traumatic accident of some kind And I said to the lady in the house my girlfriend's mother Wow, what happened to that cat? I've never seen a one-eyed cat before now remember This is all going down in Spanish. No one there speaks English She said oh that happened last harvest season. She said yes, it was terrible. I heard him crying outside I went out and got him She said there was a fish hook a treble hook stuck in his eye socket with a length of nylon fishing line still attached She said his paws were all caught up in the string

[10:11] So evidently he did a lot of the damage himself trying to get that hook out turns out She said here's the part that's so weird One of the workers fessed up one of the Haitian seasonal workers tried to catch him By putting some bait on a fish hook he went for the bait and the hook popped up and got him in the eye He managed to get away though with the hook embedded and part of the line still attached to it anyway One of her Haitian migrant workers fessed up, but promised never to do it again So bottom line is every Dominican citizen living out in the campo on the boonies knows that Haitians eat cats and dogs Haitians themselves will admit it and with all that chaos going down in Haiti Is it any wonder that there's no Wild Street cats or dogs left in that country? I've heard many people mention that

[10:59] So for all of you non-believers and fake journalists out there. I invite you to send someone down a real journalist I know I know they're as rare as hen's teeth But if you send one I'll get you an interview you can talk to the Dominican and Haitian Witnesses the owner of the one-eyed cat you can even meet the lucky cat himself That is if he's not already stewing in someone soup Oh and just one more thing about Haitians and the Dominican Republic because it has such Relevancy when you get overrun by him up in the States Like I said the DR is loaded with illegal Haitians But they certainly want to work and thus they do all the dirty work for cash They really do work too. I've seen them. They work their asses off I know some Dominican architects and contract bosses and they've got crews that are nothing but Haitian

[11:48] I know a Dominican who's a very good finished carpenter when he comes in to do a job It's him and three Haitian helpers. None of them legal around the books. They're just getting paid cash Are they being taken advantage of you bet but they're illegal They've really got no workers rights and they know it but they accept the work at least there's a job and they're getting paid And they're eating there's none of that in Haiti So in the DR the labors beyond cheap compared to labor class up in the states But it's also created a problem when it comes to the young male Dominican workforce Turns out young male Dominicans who are not skilled or educated. They've just got let's say a high school education That's about 90% of young adult Dominican males. They don't want to do the necessary typical grunt work

[12:33] They've come to believe that kind of work is lowly work work for Haitians And thus that attitude has created a generation of lazy young Dominican guys who won't do any grunt work Even though they're not skilled enough to do anything else If you talk to the average Dominican lady on the street, the ladies really do support the country They work their asses off They say that because of all the cheap Haitian labor around there's a lost generation of young unskilled Dominican guys who believe they're too good to start at the bottom of the ladder So they just won't take those jobs Hmm sound familiar Another bad secondary effect of so many Haitians piling into the DR is that crime is definitely up specifically Haitian crime Of course that was bound to happen right and with so many Haitians pouring in and such an effort to deport them

[13:24] There is definitely kind of a serious racism problem going on in the DR the locals versus the Haitians Poe folks have poe habits, right? And so Haitian stereotypes do prevail even down to the nitty gritty fact that almost all Dominicans will tell you that Haitians Smell different if you talk to any Dominican, they'll tell you you can spot a Haitian a mile away They just look different to different body style different facial features as one Dominican girl told me She said Haitians are almost always super skinny and the Haitian men do not have potbellies or body guys Like Dominican men do and that's a good thing now if you were to ask me Johnny Can I spot a Haitian in a mixed crowd of Haitians and Dominicans?

[14:10] Well, I can 100% of time when they're speaking because Haitians speak sort of French Creole and when they do speak Spanish Some of them do they speak it with a French accent. So close up when they speak Yes, but at a distance, I'm not great at picking them out I guess it's like when I was young up in the States almost all Latinos We thought were Mexicans even today with that mass illegal migration into the States if you're a born and bred American citizen and you can tell the difference between a Mexican a Peruvian a Venezuelan a Colombian or a Dominican my hats off to you very few of us generational Americans have Discriminatory powers like that, but Latinos themselves they always know the difference. Oh and here's something that Can be quite unsettling for some people when a person comes from China or Japan or the Philippines or Indonesia

[15:02] In the eyes of almost every Latin American I've ever met all of those people are considered chinos translation Chinese That's impossible you and me know how the Chinese and the Japanese have so much animosity towards each other They've been enemies on and off for what a thousand years Let me tell you if you know anyone who's Japanese and you call him Chinese or vice versa Get ready for the evil eye, but Latinos man They make that fatal error constantly and if corrected they just forget about it and do it again to them There's no distinction chinos are chinos. We they're Japanese Indonesian Filipino Chinese Vietnamese Cambodian to them. They're all Chinese chinos We all know that up in the states mislabeling a culture or a society like that

[15:47] It'll get you canceled in a sec, but not down here in Latin America, man. It's just not a concern No big deal. Nobody's feelings are her except the chinos whatever nationality. They really are now I'm sure that could all be changed if the schools got on it parents started teaching their kids if it was somehow explained to Every Latino that there's a difference and it matters to those chinos that could happen Latinos are kind generous and forgiving so they'd be willing to make the change they'd use the proper terms They'd adapt the only problem is and this is a problem Latinos are forever telling me that all Asians look alike Which we know is not true, but that's what they claim and that's what they believe Oh, well, by the way speaking of racism that I ever tell you by the time I got accused of racism in a big way even before the woke stirs arrived on the scene

[16:36] Well many years ago in a different life in Chicago when I was going to engineering school at night I'd worked at a high-end bar and restaurant a singles place I was the lone guy behind the bar there were two other very good-looking girls with me But I was the lone guy kind of watching over the register and stuff The girls had short sexy outfits and I had black pants white shirt a tie and a black vest It was a fairly classy high-end cocktail joint lots of professional guys and gals lawyers accountants Anyway, the owner of the bar nice guy very classy guy had an office in the back This was well before cameras and surveillance and stuff The owner had a lot of rules one of his rules was you walk into that bar with a hat on you got to take It off or you don't get served. He just didn't allow people to wear hats in the bar

[17:23] Why he wanted to keep a high-end clientele and back in those days a lot of people wore hats cubs white socks Chicago Bulls Worst of all the bar across the street was a cowboy themed bar with one of those mechanical bulls You know it was back in the achy breaky heart days the urban Cowboys They'd had the line dance thing going on weekends at that cowboy bar and the classy owner of the bar that I worked in man He disliked those Cowboys didn't want them spilling over into his bar He wanted a high-end singles crowd the suits and all that that's why he had hot well-dressed girls working there I was the only guy by the way anyway that no hat rule worked lots of times Someone would come on in with a hat on I'd say can serve you with a hat on that's the rules and it was fine They'd take the hat off anyway one day or one night a famous baseball star walks in a black guy

[18:15] I knew he was famous, but I didn't follow sports So I didn't even know his name saw his face on TV and stuff He was wearing a cowboy hat now remember This was back in the days of breaker breaker and smoky in the bandit and all that for a while back Then it was a fad for almost all city guys to have a cowboy hat some guys had an expensive Stetson Doesn't mean they wore it more than once or twice though. They still had one in the closet. Do you I do somewhere? Now of course this is before celebrities walked around with an entourage or bodyguards This baseball guy with the Stetson hat was big. He did not need a bodyguard He was alone walked up to me at the bar And I said can't serve you unless you take your head off house rules And he just stood there kind of stared me down put his hands on the bar rail

[19:03] He said you serious man. I said house rules not mine then he said kid You know who I am and I said yep. You're a guy with a hat That's not getting a drink till he takes it off He said well they ain't gonna happen in the meantime I pressed a little buzzer that was under the bar that went directly to the office where the owner was He came out asked what's the problem the baseball guy said your bartender won't serve me a drink and the owner said He will if you take your hat off Now I know the owner meant business that rule was hard and fast He was an ex-marine, and I watched him throw people out of the bar late at night I watched him toss out cowboy posers who spilled over from the other bar So anyway the owner told the baseball guy lose the hat and I'll serve you he said I don't take my hat off for anyone

[19:52] By then everyone in the bar stopped talking and was looking our way Meanwhile the doorman slash parking lot attendant had called the cops within about five minutes Cop car pulled out in front no lights two guys got out came in asked what was going on they soon recognized this baseball hero and started kissing his ass a bit and Immediately the big guy said they won't serve me that guy's a racist and he pointed to me He said look you see any other black guys in here And he was right there were no other black guys in the bar Except one of the cops was black now as the guy was talking I recognized he was a little bit drunker on something Then one of the cops said to me tell me what happened I said look he came in he's wearing a hat We don't want to allow hats in this place And the baseball guy butted in and said I don't see no sign you just don't allow black guys in here

[20:42] Then one of the cops said to the owner so you don't allow anyone in the bar with a hat I have a hat Then the owner said take it off, and I'll buy you a drink Then one of the cops said is there a sign that says no hats allowed and the owner said no, but that's our rule And then the cops said to me is it true is that really the rule I said yep It's always been that way Then the cop looked down the bar at the other two girls working there And he said tell me about this no hat thing is that for real or did he just make that up and both girls Answered the same they said yep. That's the rule it's been like that since the first day We worked here, and then the cops said to the big guy if that's the rule that's the rule take your hat off And they'll serve you or don't drink then the big guy turned to the owner and me and said f you

[21:32] You're racist then as he walked out the owner said that the cop you better follow him to his car Make sure he doesn't fall down. I think he's on something so that's my story happened a long long time ago before anyone was woke The reason why I even remembered it why I'm even bringing it up is because the other day I saw this documentary maker Matt Walsh on Joe Rogan He just came out with a documentary called am I racist and as I was watching that interview they were talking about how some people automatically attribute anything negative that happens to them as product of Institutional or cultural racism and those extremely woke people live in a bubble and only communicate with others who feel as they do That white racism taints everything and when Matt Walsh showed an excerpt of his film

[22:20] Am I racist on Joe Rogan a scene where a bunch of upscale white women were sitting around a conference table? practically weeping and Flagellating themselves when talking about instances in their lives where they thought they were being racist well I instantly flashed back to that time the baseball guy called me racist to my face in front of the whole bar of course He was completely delusional, but now I can see how social media idiots can whip gullible fools into a frenzy Has that ever happened to you speaking of being accused of racism? Let's take this email from Antonio in Argentina He says dear Johnny. I'm in Argentine and you are right. We're almost all exclusively white-skinned here in South America in the US us Argentinos are considered white Latinos other Hispanics call us racist

[23:12] Also because of the color of our skin They say we are uppity and snobbish and think we are better than other darker-skinned Latino the word in Spanish is prepotente But here's some facts number one We certainly are much more educated per capita than any other Latin American country But unfortunately we are vastly over educated in the humanities and the soft sciences like art drama Sociology and economics practically every Argentine family has an economist lurking in it somewhere yet We are one of the most bankrupt and fiscally irresponsible countries in the world So being overrepresented in the field of economics has done us no good. Here's another fact We are not the most wealthy per capita, but we should be but that's because we excel in all measures of government

[23:58] Bureaucracy and have the most government employees per capita in all of Latin America another dubious honor Combined with the lowest qualifying retirement pension age as well all of that adds up to the biggest International debt load per person in all of Latin America fact number three We also have by far the most people in therapy per capita of any Latin American country All these things you can look up online We're by far the most woke country in Latin America to fact number four Until the Venezuelans started flooding into our country right after the covet we had almost no gang problems But now as you mentioned in one of your earlier shows, there is gang graffiti everywhere Yet crime is still fairly low, but that is changing more immigrants more crime a very simple equation

[24:50] You see being played out across the world But politicians are too stupid to see that or could it be they know exactly what they're doing About our new president Malay who's been in office over a half year now We voted for him because we knew things couldn't go on like that for much longer. We knew we needed change We knew there'd be pain. Malay is that change that change is happening. I just hope he has some top-notch bodyguards Sign Antonio buenos Aires Alright Antonio, thanks for that Just one last email today and this is a good one Remember in the last show a guy named Sven from Sweden sent me an email saying Johnny Here's a warning to the US and Canada if you don't kick out your illegals

[25:36] This will happen to you and he talked about how his country is not even Sweden anymore that when he goes on public Transportation he doesn't hear anybody speaking Swedish Well just an hour or so ago and other Swedish guys sent a link to the following article Just came out on Tuesday the 17th on the AP wires the headline Sweden offers to pay migrants from third world countries $34,000 to self-deport Hey, what a great idea. Let me paraphrase here It says Sweden is radically changing its migrant policies and what the government is calling a paradigm shift To reverse the course of decades of leniency for immigrants The minister of migration announced it would pay migrants to return to their home countries up to

[26:24] $34,000 cash Apparently the immigrant alien problem in Sweden has become so bad regular Swedish people in the streets are calling the aliens a completely different shadow society According to a Swedish parliamentary report It says it was a major political shift in the Scandinavian country that had decades-long history of welcoming refugees But it's now grappling with a heavy crime wave directly linked with immigration Anyway, the guy who sent the link to this article says the following the adults in the room tried to tell you all it Was a terrible idea to let them all in Pointing to the overwhelming evidence that they refused to integrate in countries like France, etc But all the Swedes who pointed that out were denounced as racist xenophobes

[27:11] It really is exhausting having to clean up the mess caused by a bunch of liberal fools Hmm. He doesn't give his name. But anyway, what do you think pay him to leave? Well, that's a good idea Problem is up in the States. Anyway, some have been deported for five and six times So what's stopping them from sneaking right back in? 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.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. No spamos