#175 – The Expat Files: Life, Beauty Pageants, and Cultural Nuances 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. Today I'd like to start by reading a little email to you from one of the folks that came to my seminar and decided to shoot off on his own after the seminar was over. He traveled a few hundred kilometers north and tried along the way to learn some more

[00:48] Spanish. He's a real adventurous type, kind of halfway backpacking it, but fully capable of switching gears and going first world all the way. He's a great guy and we had some very cool conversations, specifically about lag time down here and the gringo advantage. After he took off to do his own thing, he sent me an email talking about some observations he made on his own. He made a few neat social commentaries, specifically concerning machoism and sexism. And here's what he writes, Dear Johnny, Yesterday they had a contest here in Shella, Guatemala. Shella spelt X-E-L-A, a Mayan word of course. And by the way, Shella is a beautiful little colonial town about 4 to 5 hour drive north

[01:33] of Guatemala City, which puts it about 4 or 5 hours north also of the Guatemalan International Airport. Shella is a great inexpensive place to visit, way off the regular tourist trail, though it does have its first world low budget backpacker crowd because it offers quite a few inexpensive Spanish language schools. And it's in the Altiplano elevations too, so it has that perpetual spring weather that I talk about so much. In fact, often times it gets cold enough there to wear a jacket. But it's such great weather that when expats finally do stumble on it, many actually decide to live there all year round. Anyway, John says that they had a contest in Shella to select the most beautiful, get this, municipal employee.

[02:20] Girls of course, not guys. That's where the sexism creeps in here. Now he says girls from different government departments arrived in the back of little pickup trucks festooned with flowers and ribbons and the like on the street. And this happened between the government and the bank buildings on the big central park. Then they all climbed to the top step of a bank building and some guy, probably the president of the bank I think, presented all the candidates while they sort of politely strutted their stuff for the small crowd that had gathered. There were candidates from the regular police department, the transit police, the budget office, the zoological park and a couple of other government departments. And the girls from the two police departments were in uniform, including hats and visors.

[03:10] The girl from the transit police had shortened her skirt so that it was a couple of inches higher than all the other girls, just to show off her great legs. Then John finishes with this. He says imagine anything even close to that going on in Los Estados Unidos, the United States. And here's what I have to say about that. John is absolutely right. In the states, not only would the government never put on a show like that, because they'd get hammered so much by women's activist groups that they'd never get away with it, they'd probably be in for a class action lawsuit or two. Not to mention, no first world woman would ever think to enter a contest like that, it would be too demeaning. So in reality, a contest like that really is a perfect example of lag time down here.

[03:58] Because I can think that back in the 40s or 50s or even 60s, a contest like that might very well have gone down in a small US town without a problem. Women would have entered it in the spirit of the thing and not taken it too seriously, no problem, but in today's first world, you could never get away with it. Why I could just see it now would be like a gigantic version of Jerry Springer, TV cameras everywhere, women's activist groups picketing, yelling and throwing stuff at the contestants. Actually it would probably be quite fun to watch, but you're never going to see anything like that up in Cleveland. Maybe if they were picking Ms. Hooters or Ms. Harley Davidson, but not Ms. Municipal Employee of 2012, no way. Anyway John, thanks for the email and the shrewd observations, a perfect example of

[04:46] social lag time. And by the way, on that same note, I'd like to say that beauty pageants of all kinds are hugely popular down here in Latin America, and of course because it is Latin America, the sexism and the obvious macho slant simply pervades these things, but nobody seems to care so the tradition goes on and on. And talking about beauty pageants and competitions, I know they're not much of anything up in the first world anymore except for maybe the Ms. America and the Ms. Universe pageant, and even in those cases most people don't really take them seriously anymore. I mean think about it, even if you're in a big city like Atlanta or Detroit or Cleveland, how many times do you pick up the paper or see in the news that there's some kind of beauty pageant going on? Almost never.

[05:33] Well down here in Latin America, every business, every corporation, every school and believe it or not, every church and municipality have their own beauty pageants, often much more than once a year. It's as if every Latin country is simply saturated with them. And of course it's all about pretty women and there's no male equivalent to it at all. Why would there be? No one's interested in watching a guy strut his stuff on a runway, especially not in these Latin American macho societies. I mean all you have to do is pick up any local newspaper in a medium or large town and you'll see there's at least three beauty pageants a week, with the photo ops of the girls in their formal dresses or bikinis of course. And not only is there absolutely no shame or embarrassment for girls to enter these

[06:20] things or for their mothers and aunts and grandmas to give them every helping hand along the way, but in the end you see competitions like that are kind of a way of jump-starting yourself out of a life of poverty. Because the runner-ups and the winners do win things like scholarships, clothes and money and they get local attention and some admiration and they're 15 minutes of fame. And the prettier ones with refined manners often end up getting jobs in modeling or product promotion. And they actually have a name for pretty girls who end up promoting products at different events and stores all over Latin America. They call them EDICANs, E-D-C-A-N, EDICAN. So if you ever run into a pretty Latin girl and she says she's an EDICAN, that means she works for a company like for example Pepsi or Coca-Cola or a beer company or a sugar

[07:09] or a tobacco company. And all her job entails is to wear a skimpy tight outfit and hand out flyers and promotional samples at events and fairs and popular discos, sports stadiums, political conventions and shopping centers. And for this they make about three times the average wage down here in Latin America. They make from $800 to $1,000 a month. But you see that doesn't last too long, maybe just a couple of years. But the girls don't know that. They think it's going to last forever. Or that they're going to hook up with a rich guy with a nice car, the kind of guys they often see at some of these parties and events. Suddenly they're rubbing elbows with people who wouldn't even give them the time of day if they knew what social class they came from, what neighborhood they grew up in. So because these girls are beautiful and they've won a few contests, they've made a great social

[08:00] leap for the time being. So suddenly these girls, 90% of them who lived in cold water flats with tin roofs with their entire extended families, now they're going to dinners and dates and parties in places they never could afford and being taken around to these places by guys with cars. And nice cars too, at least kind of late model cars. In fact as ex-pat Eddie tells me, he's dated a lot of these girls by the way. He says that many of them won't let you take them back to their houses or neighborhoods after a date. Instead they insist that you get a cab for them to take them the rest of the way or they insist that you drop them off at a McDonald's or a Burger King. Where they'll find their own way home or they say they're meeting their girlfriends or something because they really don't want you to see the house or the neighborhood that they live

[08:46] in. Eddie says this happened with so many Latin girlfriends he's had over the years, that he pretty much expects it from a girl on the first few dates. And Eddie says, after a few dates when he finally gets invited over the house to meet the parents or to have dinner or whatever, the houses are almost never as bad as he imagines them to be. And it's a funny thing he says, the house is always pretty clean and put in order and sometimes even freshly painted. The inside of the house that is, never the outside. And here's the catch, Eddie told me when he's had a girlfriend like that for a while, eventually she spills the beans and admits, that she didn't want him to come over the house until she cleaned it all up, spic and span and painted her own room, the kitchen and the living room to look very nice. All that work just to impress a guy like Eddie, so that he didn't think she lived in a dump.

[09:37] Now it turns out if she'd had a regular Latin boyfriend, she never would have gone through that. Because Latin guys, especially guys from the Latin middle class, live in the same kind of houses that we in the first world would consider dumps. So it turns out the way Eddie tells it and so many expats tell me, Latin girls do not go on a cleaning frenzy at all, unless they happen to be dating a first world gringo or European. In that case, they pull out all the stops and try to give their house a makeover. Because they know, that we come from a different world completely. They see how we live up in the states and in Europe, from cable TV. Shows like Two and a Half Men, Desperate Housewives, CSI, Modern Family. They see these so called squeaky clean spic and span American houses, and are absolutely

[10:24] embarrassed at the state of their little places. And they think it's going to reflect badly on them, so they go into a panic cleaning mode. The fact is, you're never going to know that unless she tells you some time in the future. And by the way, if you know, she went through that effort. It's a very good sign that she likes you for more than your car and your blue eyes. She might really like you in a passionate kind of way. Now I know, that's not just one of expat Eddie's stories, because it's happened to me too. I've had more than one girlfriend tell me, that she personally put a fresh coat of paint on her room, and scrubbed down the bathroom for what that's worth, since only a hand grenade could get the built up crud off of most Latin American bathrooms. At least they try it, it's the thought that counts. Anyway, you'd never want to judge a Latin girl by her bathroom, or you'd never have

[11:10] another date. Now I ask you, not to be mean here, but do you think a first world woman would ever do that before a guy came over to pick her up on a date? I doubt it. And I really want some of you female listeners out there, to give me a heads up if you've ever done that. Now, I'll give you a little more insight on some of these beauty contest winners, the ones that end up promoting products. And believe me, they're everywhere, in every Walmart and every shopping center. Now like I said, 90% of these girls come from the middle or lower middle classes, which means their parents make 250 to 400 a month. That means no car, no private school, only a few nice clothes in the closet, and only a couple of pairs of shoes. All of the sudden they've got a job in a skimpy outfit, pushing Pepsi or Coca Cola. Suddenly they're making three times as much as daddy's making.

[11:56] And guess what they do? They don't save their money, they go out and buy more clothes and more shoes, and of course they always help out their family. They chip in about a third of their salary to help the living standard for everyone in the household. You gotta admire them for that. And remember, 90% of these girls still live at home. Now suddenly the family's got a few little extras. Like a nice late model microwave and a plasma TV, her income definitely raises the standard for the family, and sometimes these girls even end up getting their own cars. Not late model cars by any means, maybe a 10 or 12 year old model. But a car's a car. And these girls are saved from that terrible fate of riding the chicken bus. Now like I said before, no young lady ever wants to ride the chicken bus, but she's forced into it if she's one of the 60 or 70% of the girls in Latin America whose family

[12:46] are middle class or lower. Because you see, even most middle class families don't have cars, they just can't afford it. And the ones that can afford a 10 or 15 year old junk, well that's dad's car and he's gotta take that to work. The rest of the family takes the chicken bus. And as you might imagine, these prettier girls who have won beauty contests and things, when they ride the chicken bus, they have to really dress down. Or every guy on that bus with two hairs on his chin will try to mess with her. Which reinforces what I've said so many times. That middle and lower class Latin girls, beautiful or not, have three simple objectives in life. Number one is to get a decent job. Number two, to eventually get married to a guy who has a job himself, who doesn't drink too much, who doesn't hit her too often, and who doesn't screw around on her with

[13:33] other women. By the way, they call men like that mujeriegos. It just means womanizer. If you notice, it has the Spanish word mujer in it, which means woman. And the third big thing that the average Latin woman wants is to never ride that chicken bus again. She wants to have a car. Now of course you have to realize that for 90% of the middle and lower class women in Latin America, those really are impossible dreams. Sure, they'll be able to get married, most girls do. But to find a husband that doesn't cheat, doesn't drink too much, and doesn't beat his woman, that's nearly impossible. And as you might imagine, having a car is almost always out of the realm of possibility too. But we all have dreams now, don't we? Which brings me back to these pretty girls. Girls that make enough money to buy a car.

[14:19] Well it turns out the picture is not so rosy for them either, and I'll tell you why. Like I said before, almost none of them save any money. And one reason is, Latins are not a society of savers. Sound familiar? It seems like in all socioeconomic classes of Latins, they don't look too far ahead into the future. They kind of live for the present. And I know that some people in the first world say that's a good thing. You know, live for today. You might have seen in those self-help books where they say, the most important day in your life is today, not yesterday or tomorrow. Well that may be true if you don't have any credit card debt and you have some money in the bank. But that's not reality in the first or the third world. Anyway, over the years I've seen a lot of my ex pet friends go out with girls like this. Those beautiful girls, those models and eticons that promote those products.

[15:08] Like I said before, latin girls love gringos. And of course latin guys love gringas. But there's so few of us gringos off the tourist trail that scant few latin girls ever get to have a date with us. So when it comes to dating down here, we gringos, even us dead average ones, are like minor rock stars. And as unfair and sexist as that might sound, that's the reality, that's the truth. And that's what this show is all about. What it's really like for expats to live in latin America. Unfortunately about 80% of those beautiful girls end up as sorry cases in the end. And it really has nothing to do with us gringos. We're not involved in that at all. When these girls are in their prime, they're working a lot, and you see them around at various events and promotional gigs, and naturally where there's beautiful girls.

[15:54] There's always a group of entitled latin rich boys with cars, nice cars, supported of course by their rich mommies and daddies. They don't have any long term plans for these girls, and they never really intend to make a serious thing out of it, nor do they ever really want to bring these girls back home to meet their parents, because these girls are out of their social class and not the marrying kind, not for them. Oh of course these girls are the marrying kind of course. Every girl in latin America wants to get married. And you see these young girls, the pretty ones, the eddy cans, they really have the power to get what they want, but they almost always screw it up. Sure all the latin guys flock around them, and every young guy wants them as a girlfriend. And many times as these middle class girls get sucked temporarily into the rich life, a good percentage of these girls slip into the party scene.

[16:42] Drugs and all nighters as part of the rich kids scene, expensive restaurants and all night discos, rave parties and stuff, a completely different world than these girls came from. And in the end after a few years of that, they often end up jaded a bit hard and world weary, especially when the new group of fresher new young models comes on the scene. And the fact is a lot of them end up getting pregnant, and almost none of them end up marrying those rich young entitled boys. The ones they really wanted to hook up with. So what happens to these girls when they get pregnant? The kid ends up being taken care of at home, not by her, but by mother, auntie or grandma. Then she usually ends up marrying some guy, not her first choice, but the kid needs a

[17:27] father and all that, and she needs someone to support her. So she does at least end up marrying a guy that's a little better off socioeconomically than where she came from. Because in that hard partying group of good looking girls and entitled young rich boys on their daddy's dime, there are always some young guys on the fringes of that group, second and third stringers, who aren't so entitled and don't have that much money, but still would love to have one of those women as his girlfriend, or wife, kid or not. So when the right circumstances come along and things look a little bleak to the girl, these second and third string guys start looking pretty good to some of these girls. So the bottom line is this, a certain very small percentage of lower and middle class girls who have the opportunity to leapfrog way ahead in life simply because they were

[18:15] born beautiful. Well unfortunately only a very small percentage of those ever really pull themselves up and out of it in a big way. And as crass as this might sound to you right now, I'm being completely honest when I say this is one particular area in life that the gringo advantage is really alive and well. And I can use Eddie as a good example of this. Like I said before, Eddie's a sucker for a pretty face, and he often sets his sights on girls like that. And I know Eddie, it's because girls that beautiful would never have given him the time of day back in the states, back in the day when he lived there. And Eddie's a gringo, so he's got that gringo advantage going for him. So he really has no trouble getting dates with beautiful girls. Because you see, Latin girls really like gringos and that's just the way it is.

[19:02] But like I said, you gotta look out because some of these girls are very jaded, they're used to being treated like queens and having the disco lifestyle. With wealthy young Latin guys picking up the tab. So guys, here's a little advice for you. Definitely these beautiful girls like gringos, and they like us a real lot, believe me. So don't be shocked when you approach a girl who could be Miss Venezuela and you say, Excuse me Miss, I'm a gringo and my Spanish really stinks. Can I buy you a cup of coffee or a cappuccino in the food court so I can practice my Spanish with you? And by the way, I know it sounds like a stupid line. I didn't make it up. Eddie uses it all the time, or at least he did. But now that he's got a steady girlfriend, he doesn't need it. And by the way, that's the same line he used to pick her up.

[19:48] Anyway, here's my advice. Do not look to find a nice, beautiful girl in a disco. Oh, you'll find a lot of beautiful ones there. But if they're hanging around the discos, or the high-end expensive shopping malls, you're starting off on the wrong foot to begin with. And I tell you, Eddie learned that lesson the hard way himself. But finally, Eddie hit the jackpot. He's had the same beautiful girlfriend for the past year and a half. But thankfully, he met her early in her career, only after she'd been modeling a couple of months. So she wasn't tainted by these young rich punks with her daddy's charge cards. Though they still bother her all the time when she's out on the job, naturally. Oh, and by the way, here's another little pointer. You can't be the jealous type if you're going to go out with one of these girls. Even if you found the perfect, loyal Latina absolutely in love with you, it doesn't matter

[20:36] when she's in that tight, skimpy outfit and she's working an event handing out shots of Jack Daniels. Again, every guy with two hairs on his chin is going to give her his undivided attention. So the fact is, you can't be the insecure type if a girl like her is your permanent girlfriend. Because if you're the jealous type, you're always going to be a nervous wreck. And by the way, Eddie's really laid back, he's not the jealous type at all. Which leads me to another very strange romantic tip. And I do get a lot of emails asking me about just this kind of stuff. You see, the Latin macho society is so pervaded with jealous husbands and boyfriends that Latin women have actually come to believe that if their men don't occasionally go into a jealous rage, that somehow the love is gone.

[21:24] And their guy is probably already out there cheating. Now I know this has got to sound strange to you, but every expat guy I know who's had a Latin girlfriend or a wife has told me that at some time or another, if a guy pays a little extra attention to her, if her gringo man doesn't get jealous, at least a little bit, she'll call him on that and accuse him of not loving her anymore. And you know, that puts a lot of gringos I know, including me, into a strange situation because many of us aren't prone to get jealous, at least not outwardly, like the Latin guys do. They can really blow their tops and go into a huge rant. And that's why there's so much spousal abuse and women battering down here. So many of these Latin guys get violent when they get jealous.

[22:10] So what's a gringo to do? Most of us feel if we're getting outwardly jealous, we're making big fools of ourselves. That's our cold northern culture. But if you're with a Latin woman, if you don't get jealous at least once in a while, she'll call you on it and think you don't love her. And when she starts that, you're in for a big time irrational argument that you're never going to win. So just be aware of that. And I really can't give you that much advice on this subject. You'll have to wade through that patch of quicksand when you get to it. And if you do have a Latin girlfriend or wife, it's only a matter of time before you start sinking in that muck, cause you will. And as far as Eddie and his model girlfriend, she's from a slightly lower middle class background too. And of course being with Eddie, a gringo, she's partially in the first world now.

[22:55] And of course Eddie, like every expat who comes down here, continues to live like a first worlder. That's the point now, isn't it? And of course she leapfrogged from middle class Latin style, which is basically below the poverty line in the states, to having and doing everything first world people do. And she really hasn't been jaded too much by that at all. And though by Latin American standards, you'd have to say she was high maintenance, but if you measured her by first world gringo standards, she'd be considered very low maintenance. Because like I said, if Eddie gives her $100 and says, go to one of the malls and get some clothes and shoes and stuff, she comes back 4 hours later with 10 different items. Which breaks down to about $10 a piece for every clothing item. And she's got a huge smile on her face and wants to give Eddie a personal fashion show.

[23:43] He's just made her the happiest girl in the world. Now do you know any female or male that could come even close to doing that with $100 in Denver or Seattle or Cleveland? Unless you shop at Goodwill. Now Eddie tells me there's only one real negative thing when it comes to his relationship with his girlfriend. Now of course Eddie gets invited to her folks for dinner once in a while, that's normal. And since Eddie himself has a Texas trailer court upbringing, he's pretty damn laid back when it comes to the way other people live. He can overlook a lot of things that I can't. Like real chicken feet marinating in the Sunday soup, flies camping out on the silverware, and iPod sized cockroaches running across the dinner table. That kind of stuff doesn't bother Eddie at all.

[24:31] However what bothers Eddie is that his girlfriend's brother, the skinhead with a metal stud through his lip, has been asking Eddie for a job. Now Eddie's girlfriend, being that it's her brother, has been pushing Eddie to give him a job too. And Eddie's the type of guy to give him a job, but only a menial job, so the guy doesn't have too much responsibility. Now Eddie doesn't want the guy to have the keys to any one of his restaurants, and he doesn't want the guy to have the keys to any of his company vehicles either. Because who knows what could happen. Eddie's seen some of his friends, and they all look kind of like he does. Now when the guy out of the blue asked Eddie if he could give him a delivery job, which involves driving one of Eddie's company cars or motorcycles. Well the fact is, Eddie knows about his girlfriend's brother, and he doesn't feel good about that

[25:19] at all. First, the guy asked for a counter job at one of Eddie's restaurants. And when Eddie told him he'd have to wear a uniform and get rid of the lip stud, because he might scare old ladies, he wouldn't go for it and ask for a delivery job instead. Eddie fumbled around a bit for words, not wanting to piss the guy off, and asked him if he had a driver's license. And to Eddie's relief, he said no. So Eddie said okay, we'll talk about it when you get your license. Which left Eddie off the hook for a while. Until about a week later, he showed up at Eddie's house one morning and flashed his new driver's license in his face. The scariest part though, was that he somehow got past the guard station. Now here's how it works at Eddie's subdivision. You go to the guard, you drive up, or you walk up or wherever, and you give the guard

[26:06] your ID, or your driver's license, or your sedula, that's your national ID, and the guard asks you who you're there to see, and you give the house number or the person's name. Then the guard calls you at your house and says there's a person, or a truck, or a delivery to your house. That's one of the ways these guarded communities stay secure. But in this case, his girlfriend's brother, who'd never been to Eddie's house before, somehow got past the guard shack. And now he was flashing a driver's license in Eddie's face. So now Eddie was stuck. And what could he do but tell a guy when he had an opening he'd give him a job. After all, he told him to get a license, right? And when the guy left, Eddie right away called the guard shack, and asked him why they let the skinhead guy through without calling him. And they said they thought it was alright because he said he was Eddie's brother-in-law.

[26:55] Conveniently showing the guards a picture on his cell phone of Eddie, his girlfriend, and her skinhead brother, taken one Sunday at Eddie's girlfriend's parents' house. Eddie did not want this guy working for him. And he didn't want him pissed off at him either. And that's when Eddie called me and said, Johnny, let's have a little dinner tonight. I'm buying. And don't say no because I have to talk to you about something. I have this little problem. It's about my girlfriend's skinhead brother. Oops, I'm running a bit late to give you the end of that story. But stay tuned next week and I'll tell you in, okay? You've been listening to The Exped Files, living in Latin America, coming to you each

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