#168 – The Expat Files: Life, Challenges, and Communities 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 show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well if you stick around a while you'll find out. So, let's get started. Now here's an email I think you'll find interesting. Dear Johnny, I've been meaning to write you to ask about a couple of topics I haven't heard you discuss previously. One is becoming an expat doctor and the other is becoming an expat Orthodox Jew.

[00:49] I've heard you talk about Latin American doctors with attention to Castro's Cuban doctor exports, but I haven't heard you discuss what it's like to practice medicine as an expat. And the email continues. You might not see a lot of doctors leaving the first world, but you talk about how something is going to hit the fan sometime soon in the first world. And for doctors that may be coming sooner than for others. Is there a way for a doctor to make a living practicing independently or is joining a national healthcare system obligatory? And then he goes on to say, are there Orthodox Jewish communities in most Latin American countries? I would imagine most are in the larger cities. And then he asks, is anti-Semitism more or less prevalent in Latin America? I would guess you have met Jewish expats, but I'm not sure there are Orthodox communities.

[01:39] Related to this question, have you heard about last week's feature on Nightline reporting the plight of an expat who is being held in a Bolivian jail awaiting trial for money laundering? The story was certainly presented in a scary manner, as in, see what can happen to you when you move to a Latin American country. Now this contradicts what you presented recently regarding expats rarely going to jail for more than a very short time. Is this a rare case or one that we are hearing about just because his wife is bringing widespread attention to his plight? Also, if it is a rare case, is it coincidence that the jailed suspect is an Orthodox Jew? Could it have something to do with anti-Semitism? I found this story especially relevant because my sister-in-law and her boyfriend are moving

[02:25] to Bolivia this week. I am not worried for them, but the story did catch my eye. Anyway, I know that's a lot of questions for one email, but I've been listening for the past few months, and I really think it's a very cool move that my sister-in-law is making. I'm not planning to move anytime soon because of the battered housing market and my kids are in high school. That's keeping us here for a while. But I wonder if Latin America is a potential destination for an Orthodox Jewish doctor. Signed, Dr. Warren. Thanks for that, Dr. Warren. Anyway, if you want to hear the biggest cliche of all time, here goes. I gotta say that some of my best friends are Jewish guys down here. And it's absolutely true. Because you see, you might not know this, but I've had various radio programs down here

[03:11] all throughout Latin America, syndicated in otherwise, in English. And ever since I first started on those morning and afternoon drive time shows that I used to do, sure enough I'd get phone calls at the show right on the air. And believe it or not, my earliest most ardent fans were Jewish guys from the Makila business. You know, the guys that owned and operated those sweatshop businesses down here that make all the clothes for the big designer labels and stuff up in the first world. And not to say that all the guys that owned and operated the Makilas down here were Jewish guys, but the ones that called in to my show were. And to give you an idea just how big that business is, back some 10 years ago in Guatemala alone where I had a syndicated program, they had over 470 clothing Makilas putting out mass quantities of clothing for the first world.

[03:59] And Honduras had about 300 and Salvador about 150. And the way it usually worked out, one guy didn't own 10 or 20 Makilas, it was one guy or a group of guys that owned one or two. So you have a heck of a lot of first world transplants who'd come down as permanent expats from the New York Garmin district, the Garmin industry, because that industry up north was completely shot about 15 years ago, once all those international free trade agreements were signed. And they could hire factory workers for example down in Latin America here for 10 bucks a day. Yes, I said a day, not an hour. Anyway, so you have all these first world expats, mostly from New York, sitting in a Latin American country, most of them not knowing a lick of Spanish, and they found me, Johnny,

[04:45] on the radio, so I was their connection to the first world, and man, did they bond to my show. So in time, I got to meet a lot of them personally, got invited to a lot of their parties and hung around with them, and I still do. That's why I have to admit that cliche works for me, when I say some of my best friends are Jews, because it's absolutely true. And talk about, is there a big Orthodox Jewish community down here? In certainly every medium to large size city, I'd say from a half a million people up, you're going to find a lot of Jewish synagogues and temples. In fact, a good friend of mine, a very successful Makila owner, from New York of course, who came down here as a single guy, he actually met his wife, a beautiful Latin Jewish woman, at the synagogue, and she was a single Jewish Latin American woman lawyer.

[05:31] And believe me, that's kind of a rare thing in itself. There aren't too many Latin American women lawyers, obviously because it is a macho society and women haven't made a lot of strides yet. There is a big lag time in that respect too, as far as women's rights and the enforcement of women's rights, Latin America is about 20 or 30 years behind the first world. So anyway, my friend, the Makila owner, got married to a girl down here. And no matter how politically incorrect this might sound, generally, as a rule, most guys will tell you in a locker room conversation. It's a very bad idea for a man to marry a woman lawyer, because if there's ever a divorce, you can guarantee that the man will be ripped a brand new orifice where the sun don't shine, if you know what I mean. But you see, this is Latin America, where many first world rules do not apply.

[06:20] And lawyers down here, off the tourist trail of course, are not by any means the slick and sleazy ambulance chasers that you often find up in the first world. Think of lawyers back in the 50s and 60s in the states, and that's what they're like down here, off the tourist trail again, because if you happen to be in Costa Rica, Cancun, or Panama, there's so many gringos and gringo dollars down there, that the worst of first world lawyer tactics are catching on, but not in the rest of 98% of Latin America. And my Jewish New York friend down here, who found his Latina love of his life, who just happened to be Jewish and a lawyer, and I tell you, a happier couple you'll never see. And you know, I can still tell that even after 10 years he's madly in love with her, because he drops her name in almost every conversation, he's just so proud of her.

[07:08] And it doesn't hurt that she's a typical Latin beauty either. And he's a typical 5 or 6 on the gringo looker scale like me. But you see, that's another one of those gringo advantages. Like I said, you add three points to your score in the first world, and that's your new score forever after, once you get down here. But I'm not talking about love and romance and the laws of attraction in the third world now, we'll get to that in another show. Now another question in The Good Doctor's email was about anti-Semitism and does it exist down here in the third world? Well I have to say, the Jewish communities down here are very small, but they have a lot of economic power. They own a lot of businesses and hotels and manufacturing plants and stuff, but you almost never see them involved in politics. They keep a pretty low profile and because of that, there's almost zero anti-Semitism.

[07:55] And how do I know that since I'm not Jewish? It's because my friends in the Jewish community tell me that. They come right out and say, anti-Semitism? Forget about it. It's just not an issue. And the question has come up. Does one ever see groups of Orthodox Jews or Hasidic Jews walking around in the big cities of Latin America for example? Like you might see in New York or Chicago. You know, the traditional guys with the black suits and the big hats and the curly cute sideburns and all that. The truth is, that's a rarity down here and I've only seen that once or twice and only a tiny handful of those old world guys. Two or three of them at a time. Though in the really big cities like Buenos Aires, they do have an Orthodox community, but it still is rather small. Basically the Jewish people are spread out all over the place.

[08:42] Generally living in upscale communities with upscale Protestants and Catholics and everybody else with a little bit of money. From what I understand and what I hear, the Jewish people down in Latin America aren't poor. They aren't all rich either, but they're upper middle class to wealthy. Pretty much all living a first world lifestyle. And there are no specific areas of cities that you might call the Jewish district or the Jewish areas. But I tell you what, there's a great business opportunity here for anyone who wants to open up a Jewish kosher deli in any medium to large sized city because I've never seen one. Except in those gringoized tourist areas, where someone already had that idea 10 or 20 years ago. And I'll tell you, I've been all around Latin America and I've yet to find a good Jewish deli that isn't in a tourist area or in a huge city with millions like Buenos Aires.

[09:30] And here's another thing. Over the years, I've played a little music in rock, jazz and blues bands. And about seven years ago, I played in a band with a guitar player who was half Jewish. His dad was Jewish and his mom was Catholic. And just as an aside, he was the best guitar player I've ever played with in my life. And I've played with some of the great ones. And playing the guitar was basically a sideline or a hobby for this guy because he really was in the advertising business as his day job. Because as everybody knows down here in Latin America, people in the music business that is, it's almost impossible to make a decent living playing music, even in a city of a million or two or even five million. There's only a small handful of singers, bands and groups that can actually pull it off and live a middle-class lifestyle. Most of them, even the really great ones that I've met,

[10:17] end up having a day job or living at home with their parents. The reason is there are so many great musicians down here that most of them, even the really, really good ones, play at bars for drinks or pass the hat or play for nothing. In fact, the only place a band has a chance of not starving to death is in those tourist destinations like Costa Rica and Cancun. Because there, you notice a lot of gringos that are on vacation and they want to get drunk and hear music. And they're willing to pay a cover charge in five bucks a drink. Whereas the common middle-class Latin population, they love music too, of course, but they're not going to pay a $10 cover charge in $5 a drink. They're going to get in for free and pay two bucks a drink. At those prices, you can't pay the band much. So anyway, this half Jewish guitar player friend of mine, this really tremendous guitar player friend of mine,

[11:03] got engaged to a Catholic girl. And before the wedding, he backed out. Then about a year later, he got engaged to a Jewish Latina girl and they both ended up breaking it off before they got married. Then he took off for a couple of months and went to a kibbutz in Israel. Anyway, when he came back, he hooked up with another Jewish Latina girl and got married to her. And from what he says, there's really no push in Jewish families to marry a Jewish girl simply because the ranks are thin and there's not a lot of eligible partners around. And he was proof of that because his mother was Catholic. And you know, in the email, the doctor also asks, are there Orthodox Jewish communities in most Latin American countries? And I'd have to say yes, but they're not living in specific groups like I mentioned before. And you got to know they exist because when I visited one of my other friends' maquilas one day,

[11:50] I noticed that at one of the machine stations at his maquila, you know, his factory, there were two women running a machine that was spitting out yamakas, you know, those little yamakas skull caps. And my friend, the owner of the maquila, he said, here, Johnny, this is for you. Put it on so we can make your Nazi relatives roll over in their graves. Those guys got a great sense of humor, you know, that's why I like them. Anyway, I found out he's kind of the yamaka king. He's the supplier for all kinds of Jewish organizations. In fact, he is the yamaka supplier for all of Jewish Latin America. And he says it's not a big part of his business, but someone has to do it and he got elected. And to tell you the truth, it's kind of fun going into his maquila because he is also one of the world's largest suppliers of bra cup inserts,

[12:37] you know, for dresses, tops, bras, bikinis, and any kind of women's clothing where she needs that little extra, you know, little extra. So basically, he's in the fantasy business, you know, making illusions look like reality. And when you walk into that factory, you see mountains of those bra insert cups everywhere. It's kind of a sight to see, actually. Kind of an adolescent boy's paradise, if you know what I mean. Enough said about that. Anyway, another thing the doctor asked about in his email, he was wondering if a doctor could come down to Latin America and make a living practicing independently as a private doc. Or does he have to join the national healthcare system, which every country down Latin America seems to have. And by the way, every worker down here that's on the books, working legally, pays in by law to some kind of national healthcare system.

[13:26] There's a certain small percentage withheld from your pay every month, which means basically that everyone that works for a living legally in Latin America is covered by that system, including their family members. And even though the national healthcare systems in Latin America are completely broken and cannot be fixed, strangely enough, they do have very good doctors working at them. And as it turns out, some doctors are forced into working for that wreck of a system. It's all about how the doctor achieved his medical education, whether he went to a private or public medical school. Now the private medical schools, with that terribly high tuition of about $5,000 a year, are completely up to date and nearly first world in every way. And the public medical schools, funded by the government,

[14:11] where you pay maybe $500 a year to go to medical school, well, they're understaffed, underfunded, and under supported, and basically a pathetic disaster like everything else the government does in Latin America. So you can imagine that doctors coming out of those public schools aren't quite as good as the ones coming out of the private school, but the truth of the matter is a lot of them are just as good, if not better, because the ones in the public schools have to do their residencies and training at those rotten, horribly funded national healthcare hospitals, where there's people lined up three deep in the emergency room, where half the equipment doesn't work, there's weekly power outages. They're always out of gloves and disposables. And on top of that, they have water shortages in those hospitals all the time too. So in effect, for doctors working at those hospitals, it's a trial by fire.

[14:57] They're forced into being creative under very crappy conditions. And the fact is, if you graduate from one of the public medical schools, you're obliged to put in a day or two a week at one of those very crappy public hospitals, as a condition for receiving that cheap education at taxpayers expense. So most doctors that graduate from a public university like that, they do have private practices for two or three or even four days a week, but they have to put in a day or two at the public hospital, treating the poor and sweaty masses making a few hundred bucks a month. Those people who can't afford the 15 bucks it takes for a doctor's visit at a private office. Yep, you heard me, 15 bucks for an office visit, even a specialist charges that. And on top of that, a good percentage of the specialists receive their advanced degrees at first world medical schools.

[15:44] On the other hand, if you graduate from a private medical school, you don't have to deal with any of that. You can open up a private practice and work in a private hospital. You're not obliged to work in the broken down public system at all. And how bad is the national healthcare system in Latin America? Well, no matter if you've heard positive things about it or not, just look at it this way. Think of the VA system in the United States, the Veterans Administration hospital system, then add a few weekly power outages, take away some of the water, eliminate about half of the disposables, and eliminate about three quarters of the medicine and throw in a few broken windows. And voila, you have the Latin American national healthcare system. And here's even more proof of how bad it is. If you look at the op-ed pages in any of the city newspapers, you'll find the opinion pages where people write in and they talk about things political

[16:33] and what's happening locally. And you'll find the complaints about the national healthcare system running about 30 or 40 to one against. In other words, for every 30 or 40 complaints, there'll be someone praising the system. And the odd thing is that there never seems to be a complaint about one of the private hospitals. In fact, a day doesn't go by on the opinion page when somebody isn't slamming the national healthcare system, which is why I never ever recommend a public hospital to an expat, unless of course you were unlucky enough to break a leg or have a car accident right in front of their emergency room. Then you're stuck. Now, in that email, the question came up, how can a first world doctor who feels like chucking it in up in the States, come down to Latin American practice? There's only two ways you can do that.

[17:19] One is if you come down with a group like Doctors Without Borders, then you're going to do work for free. You're donating your time to a charitable organization and you're not going to be in a big city. You're going to be out in the boonies working with the poor and the extreme poor, where local doctors don't like to practice because they don't want to get paid in driveway, chickens, mangoes, and bananas. Because you see, that's the thing. When you graduate from medical school down here in Latin America, you want the things that doctors in the first world want. You want to have a nice practice. You want to have a car and a house. And if you open up a practice out in the compo, you're never going to be able to have the creature comforts that a doctor in the big city can have. And the second way you could practice as a doctor down in Latin America is to take the medical board exam. And every doctor in every Latin American country has to pass the exam that's set up for that country,

[18:07] by that country's medical establishment, before he gets a license and is able to practice. And the fact is, except for Doctors Without Borders and charitable organizations like that, I've never once seen or run into a first world doctor down here that was trained solely in the first world, a gringo or a European, who chucked it in up north and came down and opened a practice down here on his own. And there's two reasons for that. One is you have to take the medical board exam down here in the country of your choice in Spanish, because it's only given in Spanish, not English. And the second reason why gringo medical doctors up in the first world don't come down here to practice, because down here they're only going to make about 20% of what a medical doctor makes up in the first world. And sure, things are very cheap down here off the tourist trail.

[18:55] Routinely, 30% or even 20% of what you'd pay for the same thing up in the first world. So relatively speaking, you can live a very good upper middle class life as a doctor down here. But those wages would be laughable for a doctor up in the first world. I mean, take for example a doctor making 125,000 a year up in the first world. Well, a doctor in a similar position down here will probably be only making about 25 to 30,000 a year. But living basically a similar lifestyle as that 125,000 a year doctor in the first world. Except down here the doctor, instead of driving a Mercedes, a Porsche, or an Audi, would be driving a Toyota, which is just fine with him. And there's another little point. It's very difficult to get a work permit down here in Latin America if you're a foreigner, unless you have your permanent residency,

[19:42] which could take a year or two. And once you have that permanent residency, which isn't very difficult to get at all really. In fact, most lawyers can help you get through that process quite easily. All it takes to qualify for residency is to make an investment in the country. And that might be buying a house or an office building. Even an investment in house property or land of $50,000 or less would do just fine. Another way to qualify for permanent residency is if you can prove you have a steady monthly income from a foreign source. For example, a social security check, a monthly pension check, or rents coming in from income property that you own in the States, for example. And you only need to show an income of about $800 a month, as long as it's coming from a foreign source

[20:28] and you can prove that that income is coming monthly. And basically, you only have to show bank income statements for about a year. After that, nobody cares. Once you've got your residency, it's over. You've got it and you're in. And after you have that permanent residency, after about three years or so, you qualify for citizenship, which means a second passport. And that's a very nice thing to have. And we'll be talking about that on another show. So stay tuned. And by the way, the United States does not prohibit you from having a second passport. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to renounce your citizenship or anything to get another passport. A lot of people have them. You think all those foreign immigrants that come to the United States, hang around, learn English, pass the citizenship test, and then renounce their own country's citizenship? No way.

[21:14] They keep that too, whether it's Mexican, Chinese, Italian, German, whatever. A lot of my best friends have two passports. And a great many expats do too. And there's a lot of good reasons for it, which we'll go into sometime later. But let's get back to our doctor's original email, where he talked about a nightline television program reporting the plight of an expat who was held in a Bolivian jail awaiting trial for money laundering. Well, first of all, I don't think it has a thing to do with the fact that the guy was Jewish. Like I said before, antisemitism just doesn't seem to exist down here. In fact, I've been down here over 20 years now, and I can't think of a single time when anyone made an antisemitic remark or even told a joke they had an antisemitic punchline. That kind of stuff just never comes up. However, there's a terrific amount of color prejudice down here.

[22:02] I'm talking about the black and white and color gradients down here in Latin America. But there's no prejudice against gringos coming down of any color from the States. Because you see, as far as the average Latin's concerned, anyone who comes down from the first world, looking, acting, and talking like your average first world person, Latin's just say, there goes a gringo or a gringa. Though they do have negative stereotypes when gringos come down and turn into hippies and lax out at the beach and do nothing. What I mean is there are a certain number of first world people that come down here and eventually revert into a kind of a greasy, stinky, woodstock hippie. And the locals naturally frown on it and keep away from those kind of people. And us regular expats that live like first world people, we just like to make fun of them, you know? And there's the other kind of American visitor that comes down

[22:48] that Latin's have a certain amount of prejudice towards, and that's the adolescent big city boys that come down looking like the gangsta type, you know? Gold teeth, sideways baseball cap, triple x shorts, underwear shown, crack of the ass hanging out, you know what I mean. Otherwise, if you don't fit those two stereotypes, if you're black, white, yellow, red, you're just a gringo to everybody else down here, and that's a very good thing, believe me. But about that guy who spent some time in a Bolivian jail for money laundering, well, here's the story on that. You see, there's a lot of guys down here in Latin America that are down here escaping things. And one of the many things they escaped from is the IRS and taxes. Now the IRS has no legal recourse at all once you're out of the country. And do remember this, the United States is the only country in the world

[23:33] that makes its citizens pay taxes on foreign source income. So let's say you make money in a country like Bolivia and you don't report it, or you own more than 10% of a foreign corporation. You're supposed to report that too. The IRS has a form for that, you know. And suppose you have more than $10,000 in a bank account in a foreign country. You're supposed to report that to the IRS too. If not, you could get jail time in a huge fine. So there you have three big crimes that you could get jailed for and find heavily. Suppose you tripped up on one of those three things and the IRS finds out about it by hook or crook. Well, since the United States doesn't have IRS agents in Latin America, nor can they use strong-arm tactics like they use in the United States, like breaking down doors and locking up bank accounts, what they'll do then is contact Interpol and put you on their wanted list.

[24:23] And Interpol, even though it doesn't have police powers and doesn't have a police force, what they're very good at is watching and monitoring people as they go through airports and borders. They're linked in to most every computer airport system in the world. And if you're on Interpol's wanted list, then as soon as you cross a border or get on a plane, they'll know exactly where you are and they'll make a phone call to the local police in whatever country you're in and they'll hold you for trial or deportation or whatever. However, if the crime or crimes that you're wanted for are not crimes on the books in the country that you're in, then Interpol doesn't get involved. They don't want to get involved. Like for example, tax cases. They don't get involved in tax cases because not only are they very low on the priority list, most countries in the world don't have the tax

[25:09] crimes that the US has. For example, in Bolivia, they don't care how much money you have in a foreign bank, you don't have to report it. They don't care how many foreign corporations you have, you don't have to report those either. And best of all, they don't tax foreign source income. Those three things are not crimes in Bolivia, yet they're crimes in the United States. So Bolivia and Interpol don't give a damn if you're breaking US rules, as long as they're not a crime in Bolivia. And those three big tax crimes in the United States are not a crime in Bolivia. But the United States has a tricky way of getting a person extradited if they deem he's too big of a player and has too big of a back tax bill, or has too many foreign corporations or too much money in foreign bank accounts, let's say millions, that the IRS thinks he's not reporting

[25:55] or paying taxes on. What they'll do then, if they think you're a big enough fish and they really want to nab you, is they'll tell Interpol that you're under indictment for money laundering. And all they have to do is file charges against you up in a court in the States for money laundering, and all of a sudden it's an international crime because money laundering is a crime in almost every country now. And that's one of Interpol's jobs. They'll keep track of a money launderer if he's on their wanted list. And if a guy like that shows up at a Bolivian airport, for example, they'll put him in a holding tank, take his passport, call the national police and they'll throw him in a federal jail, then they'll notify the US through the embassy, and the US will institute extradition procedures. For money laundering of course, not any tax crimes because those crimes don't exist in Bolivia, the country the guy was nabbed in, for example. Now as far as

[26:41] extradition goes, that can take months and months, sometimes even a year. It's a very slow long process that's dragged out in the courts. So in effect, if you get picked up for money laundering, you just might spend a year in jail before your case even gets to trial. So the bottom line is this. When you hear about an American rotting away in a Bolivian or an Ecuadorian jail somewhere, it's usually for big time, not small, drug charges or money laundering. And you have to suspect that anytime you hear about some first world guy in jail for money laundering, it's because he was a part of a narco group or he's wanted by the IRS for tax charges and he's a pretty big fish in that arena and they couldn't get him any other way but to slap money laundering charges on him. And I promise to talk a lot more about that and how to avoid those problems

[27:29] in upcoming shows, so stay tuned. South of the border, down Mexico way. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, 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.