Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller provides an honest and unfiltered look at the legal and cultural realities of expat life in Latin America. He begins by addressing an email from an anonymous expat who questions the legal implications of killing a mugger in the region. Johnny emphasizes the importance of having a lawyer in such situations, noting that legal representation is crucial in navigating the informal and often unpredictable legal landscape of Latin America. He also references a news story about a bus attack in Honduras, where passengers collectively killed a mugger, which he views as a form of justice that would not be possible in the United States.
Johnny then discusses a case where a delinquent was beaten to death by a crowd, highlighting the lack of effective law enforcement in small towns and the prevalence of self-policing by communities. He touches on the broader issue of lynching in Latin America, citing Honduras as an example where such incidents are common in rural areas. He also recounts a specific case in Guatemala where a Japanese tourist was lynched due to rumors that foreigners were stealing babies, and explains the cultural belief among some indigenous people that taking their pictures steals part of their soul, though this belief has diminished with globalization.
The episode continues with Johnny recounting an incident involving his UN friend, who was involved in a car accident with a drunk, lower-class indigenous man. The friend stopped to assist, which was unusual in the region, and the situation was resolved with minimal paperwork. However, the UN friend was later informed that the police preferred hit-and-run accidents involving lower-class individuals, as they are easier to handle. Johnny highlights the lack of insurance among drivers and the consequences of being caught, including potential jail time and the absence of bail bondsmen in the region.
He also discusses the legal and practical consequences of hitting a pedestrian in Latin America, emphasizing the cultural and legal differences from the first world. Johnny explains the concept of an embargo on a passport, the difficulty of leaving the country, and the options for expats to avoid legal trouble, such as using an anonymous SA corporation to protect personal assets. The episode concludes with a discussion on the 'gringo advantage' and how expats are more likely to be targeted for passport embargoes due to their perceived wealth and formal status, especially in cases involving child support, alimony, and paternity suits.
Topics
Legal systems in Latin America, Expat experiences in Latin America, Cultural and legal differences between Latin America and the United States, The role of lawyers for expats in Latin America, Lynching, Law enforcement, Community policing, Crime in Latin America, Social inequality, Cultural beliefs about taking photos of indigenous people, Legal differences between Latin America and the United States regarding self-defense, Case study of a Japanese tourist lynched in Guatemala
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:24 Exploring the Realities of Life in Latin America 00:00:35 Addressing the Email: Legal Implications of Killing a Mugger 00:01:18 The Email: Legal System and Law Enforcement in Latin America 00:02:53 Exploring the News Story: A Bus Attack in Honduras 00:03:43 The News Story: Five Masked Men Assault a Rural Bus 00:04:57 Reflection on Justice and Legal Systems 00:05:08 The Robber Who Sued His Victim 00:05:13 Reasons to Leave the States 00:10:03 Lynching in Latin America 00:10:14 Contrast Between Urban and Rural Crime Statistics in Latin America 00:10:56 The Case of the Japanese Tourist Lynched in Guatemala 00:12:20 Cultural Beliefs About Taking Photos of Indigenous People 00:12:50 Legal Implications of Killing Someone in Your Home or Yard 00:14:59 Warning about Drunk Pedestrians in Latin America 00:15:15 UN Friend's Experience with Drunk Pedestrians 00:15:57 The Cop's Perspective on Hit-and-Run Accidents 00:17:20 Systemic Bias in Favor of Hit-and-Run Accidents 00:18:53 Opportunity for Expats in the Legal System 00:20:06 The Need to Accelerate and Leave Quickly 00:20:13 The Political Incorrectness of the Advice 00:25:03 The Risk of Being Perceived as Wealthy 00:25:37 Everything is Possible in Latin America 00:25:53 Common Reasons for Passport Embargoes
Transcript
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. It's time I get really politically incorrect when I answer the following email. Let me give you a little excerpt of this email from a guy who doesn't want his name read on the air. And just to let you know, about half the people who do email me with questions do want to
[00:49] remain anonymous. I can completely understand that. They don't want to get on any more Big Brother lists than they're already on. And how do us long term expats feel about that? We know that Big Brother has long tentacles and a big reach. And it's not to say that we don't feel for you guys up north. We do. We see that within US borders Big Brother is the puppet master. But that's not the case at all down here in the third world. Which for some of us expats is reason numero uno to be here. Anyway, the writer of this email says, Dear Johnny, it seems like the state of the law and law enforcement down there is very unlike the first world. What I mean is, down where you are, it appears that crime and punishment issues are a lot more random and informal.
[01:35] And dependent on luck and circumstance. And of course, who you know, who your lawyer is and who you're connected with. So my question is this. What would be the first thing that one should do in Latin America if one happens to kill a mugger? What should you do? Call your lawyer, the police, or just walk away if there's no witnesses? Good question. So here's what I've got to say about that. Now here's a good reason why you should always have a lawyer. One guy that does almost all your legal stuff for you. A guy that you'll bond with and might even go out to dinner with sometimes. Because like I said before, lawyers love having gringo clients because we pay our bills, show up for appointments, do what we say we're gonna do, our checks don't bounce, and we're known for referring other good gringo clients like us to our good buddy Latin American lawyer.
[02:24] At least that's what they hope we're gonna do and it usually does work out that way. So if you've got a lawyer that's kind of become your friend already and has bonded with you quite well, if you somehow butt heads with the law, he's gonna pull out all the stops to make sure you don't end up in jail or end up getting the raw end of a deal. That would be very bad for you and very bad for his business. Not a good way to build a good gringo client base, which for Latin lawyers is the best client base of all. Anyway let's look at this thing from a couple of different angles. So bear with me on this next story which directly relates in the end anyway to this email. Now if you're a gringo tourist riding a chicken bus, which I don't recommend as you all know, but a lot of times fresh gringo tourists will ride the chicken bus just for the thrill of
[03:12] it and to get some good photo ops. They'll ride it even if they've heard some stories and read some websites that advise against it. Gringo tourists, especially backpackers, will often think that because they might be traveling in a group that they'll be okay because there's security and strength in numbers. Well that's definitely true in the first world. But let me read you this news story that I just pulled out of one of the big daily Honduran newspapers and I'll translate it the best I can because it's in Spanish. Anyway here's the headline. Five masked men unsuccessfully assault a rural bus. One is killed and four escape. Now let me explain this a little bit. The article starts by saying, yesterday at 6.30 in the morning, 20 bus passengers were
[03:57] assaulted and in a scuffle they managed to kill one of the men. Edwin Orlando Sanchez Hernandez, 33 years old, was beaten to death by an angry mob after he and four other men tried to assault the passengers. It goes on to say, according to the national police, five men with stocking hat masks and one shotgun intercepted and waved a bus down in the middle of the road, made all the passengers get out and empty their wallets, their pockets and their backpacks. Now while that was going on, one of the passengers on that bus took out his own gun and fired it into the air. And as the five delinquents took off running, one tripped and fell and the rest of the passengers grabbed him and proceeded to beat him to death. And according to witnesses, all 20 passengers got in on the act.
[04:48] That even included a few young mothers who were carrying their babies. They all got a piece of them. And you know what, as politically incorrect as this sounds, I kind of think justice was served there. Now you never hear about that kind of stuff happening in the states. Even if you had the chance to beat on a criminal like that yourself, you'd be too worried about the court putting you in jail. We've all heard of cases where a robber actually sues his victim and wins. And to me that's reason 746, why you should leave the states while you still can and become a permanent expat. But there's more to this story, it gets better. It turns out, right on the side of the street, while they're holding this guy and beating him up, another bus pulls up alongside and people jump out. And they start beating on him too.
[05:33] Now as two buses full of people have beaten the crap out of this guy, a couple of kids ran up to the crowd yelling that they'd found the masks and the shotgun of the other delinquents. The other four guys had ditched their masks and their weapon in a nearby alley. Now when these kids handed that stuff over to the crowd, one guy took the butt end of the shotgun and started pummeling the face of the guy they'd caught. In the paper it says his face was nearly destroyed, but not quite destroyed enough so that his own mother couldn't identify him later in the day when the cops finally showed up. Anyway she recognized him enough to make a positive ID. Now the press did get a statement from his mother, who wasn't all that upset that her son had just died. She said, I know that my son ran with bad guys, I'm not denying it, but it wasn't
[06:23] just him, I think the police should go after the rest of the band of thieves that he hung around with. Then she said she knew for sure that her son was running with the same band of delinquents that were responsible for robbing a lot of public schools and assaulting teachers and students. And remember she's talking about public schools now. You know, the guaranteed pre-education for the poor kids. Those government funded schools that are lacking in just about everything. Including dependable water, electricity and security. Now in private schools where kids' parents pay for their education, robberies and assaults like that just never happen. Stuff like that only happens in schools where the poor kids go, and even though the kids that go to those schools don't have much worth stealing at all, it's easy pickings
[07:08] for petty thieves because there's zero security. Now when the police finally did arrive, the neighbors and some teachers identified the dead kid as one of the gangs that recently assaulted them, the teachers, and some of the kids at their school. And one school teacher was there who preferred to be anonymous, and he said, here the police do absolutely nothing. That's why these so called extrajudicial lynchings occur. He went on to say that the police are pathetic. There are a few police substations in town he said, but they might as well not exist. They haven't done anything. They haven't captured one delinquent in all the years I've taught at this school. Anyway the story goes on to say, when the police showed up and were interviewed later in the day, they said they thoroughly searched the neighborhood and town in the area.
[07:56] Yeah, right. But they didn't encounter any of the other four delinquents, and they don't have any clues. So basically the case is closed. Now you and I with our first world mentality, we know there's something wrong with this story. There's some gaping holes in it. Namely, that the police didn't seem to care much that there was a dead delinquent on the ground. Nor did they charge anyone for any crime. They just treated it like a robbery that had gone bad, where one of the criminals had the bad luck to perish in the process. End of story. That's what I mean when I talk about how these smaller neighborhoods are self policing. They all have a nominal police presence that does absolutely nothing, as seen in this case. And when the people have had enough, they take matters into their own hands. Though I don't understand why the people of this little town put up with their delinquent
[08:44] problem for so long. But I bet from now on, their petty crime problems are pretty much over. Anyone can make that mental leap based on what the teacher said next. He said, some of the passengers recognize those four guys that got away, and if they show their faces again, they'll get the same thing. Then the teacher said, that's what happens. Now that they know they've been spotted and the residents are fighting mad, these guys are going to just leave for good and go to the big city. So there you have it. If you're in a small town or out in the boonies, and you happen to kill a mugger, or someone who breaks into your house, the neighbors will probably throw you a party afterwards. You can probably depend on a neighborhood round robin in fact. And by the way, we Americans have seen way too many John Wayne movies.
[09:30] We think of lynching as hanging, the old rope necktie bit. But that's not how people usually get lynched in the rest of the world. The fact is, the definition of a lynching is, an extrajudicial execution or attempt at execution carried out by a mob. So how often does this go on in Latin America? Well last year in Honduras, about 200 people were lynched and about 50 of them actually died and the rest of them will never step foot back in the town where they committed their crimes. And not just because a lot of them don't have too good feet to walk with anymore. Lynchings are a fact of life down in Latin America, but you don't see them in the big cities, only in the rural areas. And isn't it funny that it's those big cities in Latin America that have the high crime statistics, not in those small towns where they do have occasional lynchings.
[10:19] And don't get me wrong, it's not like lynching is an everyday thing, it's not. Though you do see the odd case highlighted in the paper every couple of weeks. So if you're in a small town in the boonies, and they do have a once a year lynching, that seems to be enough to scare young boys intent on a life of crime. At least it has the effect of scaring them enough to lay low or get out of dodge. Now you might ask, do they ever lynch tourists or gringos or expats? Well it's never happened, or at least I've never heard of it in my over 20 years down here. But I do know that 12 or 13 years ago, in Guatemala, they lynched a Japanese tourist and they killed them for the damnedest reason. You see, in these rural districts, where it's mostly indigenous people, there have been these strange rumors going around for years and years, that certain foreigners come into
[11:08] the country just to steal their babies for adoption or for black market transplant organ donors. Who knows? In fact, I heard that rumor when I first got down here 20 years ago. But here's the thing, the odd indigenous local who does believe that rumor, the nervous ones that clutch their baby tight at the sight of foreigners, well guess what? They don't believe it's the gringos and Europeans that would steal their babies, they're inclined to believe Asian tourists are the ones responsible. And this guy that got lynched back in 2000 was a Japanese tourist. And it happened because some local lady incited a mob by yelling, baby stealer, baby stealer, those people are here to steal babies. Though she yelled it out in a strange language only the locals could understand. So that's the only case that I know of, of a foreigner who's ever been lynched.
[11:59] And here's another thing. Some 20 years ago when I first came down here, on occasion I'd run into the odd tourist who would report back to me that certain indigenous people got really pissed off when you'd take their pictures. And to this day, some of them still don't like it when you snap a photo. And the truth is, among some indigenous tribes, they believe if you take their picture, you're stealing part of their soul. I'm not kidding ya. But nowadays, with globalization and all that, when you snap an indigenous person's picture, more often than not they'll just ask you for a couple of bucks. They'll expect to get paid. But anyway, if you end up killing somebody in your own house or yard, the very first thing you have to do is call your lawyer and nobody else. And you should follow that age old rule like we have in the states.
[12:46] If you kill somebody in your house, the law is generally on your side if he's carrying a lethal weapon. So I guess the idea there is, before you kill him, make sure he has a lethal weapon. Which begs the question, what is a lethal weapon? A knife? A gun? A pot? A big pen? Just know this, in Latin America, you don't have to worry about any of that nonsense at all, since things are a lot simpler down here. But in the states, you'll still go to jail if you kill someone in your yard, even if he does have a lethal weapon. In the first world, the yard and the inside of your house are two completely different animals. But down here in Latin America, I've asked a lot of lawyers and there doesn't seem to be any distinction between killing someone in your yard, your garage, your car, your boat or your house, as long as the deceased had a weapon of some sort and was obviously
[13:34] up to no good. Like for example, he was making off with your stereo or your TV. And the fact is, because you're a gringo, your lawyer will do anything to keep you as a client in good standing. And often, it's your gringo advantage alone that kicks in that saves you from some dire consequences. In fact, I knew one gringo who really liked to party, who got himself into a real pickle for a bit more than just inattentive driving. And by the way, down here there's no such thing as inattentive driving. Just thought that all you guys and gals out there who are really crappy drivers might like to know that. Anyway, the guy I'm talking about, get this, he was a mid-level executive for the United Nations mission down here. And believe me, when you think of the United Nations, you think straight and narrow, but
[14:20] these guys really like to party. All the more so, because local law enforcement and government in general cut them a lot of slack. Since when the UN is in your country, a lot of UN support money and jobs start flowing right on into your country too. And in his case, one late Saturday night, or I should say early Sunday morning, after the discos and bars and strip clubs were closed, anyway, he was driving his UN-issued white Toyota pickup truck. And when he rounded the bend in a dark subdivision on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua, he nailed a drunk pedestrian who was staggering down the road. And I have to warn you, the odd drunk local wandering down the road is a very common occurrence especially in middle and lower middle class neighborhoods, a definite road hazard.
[15:10] Over the years I nearly ran over a few wandering drunks myself, especially on Friday and Saturday nights, and when they have these middle of the week holidays called Fediatos. Anyway, my UN friend hit one of these guys, he thought he'd kill them. So he stopped, got out of the car and tried to get a bearing on the situation. The guy was laying in a gutter and my friend didn't want to touch him because you're always told not to touch a guy when he's been in an accident, in case he's got a broken neck, you know? Now within five minutes, as luck would have it, a cop actually did drive by, of course he stopped, and when he saw that my friend was from the UN, and when he saw that the guy on the side of the road was pissed out of his mind, the cop figured the situation out exactly. And you don't know how surprised my friend was when the cop told him not to worry about
[15:56] it. And then the cop went on to tell him that in this section of the road, people get hit like that all the time, and sure enough on both sides of the road there were little crosses planted in the dirt. Little memorial markers put there by the families of guys just like this drunk guy who were staggering home from the cantina. And the fact of the matter was, the cop was a bit surprised that my friend, the UN guy, stopped at the scene of the accident at all, since the majority of Latin drivers who hit pedestrians just keep on trucking. So the cop proceeded to fill out some paperwork, and about a half an hour later an ambulance came. Then the paramedics pronounced that the guy was probably gonna live. Truth be told, the guy wasn't in that bad a shape, aside from being extremely drunk
[16:43] and quite bruised up. So after they settled that, and the ambulance took the guy away, the cop told my friend from the UN to go home and not to worry about it, and if they needed a statement from him or anything else they'd give him a call. Well, guess what? He never got that call. And of course, my friend followed protocol and made a report at work to the legal reps from the UN. They're a huge bureaucracy, so they've got everything covered, right? And my friend told me that when he spoke to the UN's Information and Legal Services Department, they told him, off the record of course, that the Latin cops would much prefer an accident like that be a hit and run, especially when the person who was hit was a lower class indigenous person with no resources. Because you see, with a hit and run, the paperwork is ridiculously easy for a cop.
[17:33] He just fills out a report, waits for the ambulance, and that's it. But when the driver who hits the guy hangs around, the process is much more complicated and could take the better part of a day. And let me remind you, it seems that only good citizens who have car insurance stop at the scene of an accident like that. Like any good first world citizen would. And that's only about 5 or 10% of the entire Latin driving population. About 90% of the drivers don't carry insurance at all. And people who don't carry insurance routinely leave the scene of an accident. Because you see, if they stick around and wait for the cops, they'll usually get their car impounded and no matter what kind of piece of crap it is, it's still the guy's wheels and maybe a necessary part of the way he makes a living. So he definitely does not want that thing impounded.
[18:21] And the thing is, if it was a good hit and someone was really hurt severely and had to go to the hospital, generally the guy without insurance is going to spend a couple of nights in jail and maybe even a week or two. If he has a real junk of a car and can't afford insurance, then he's certainly not going to have the money to post bail. The fact is, down here in Latin America, there are no bail bondsmen either. You can't put up some collateral and pay 10% to a bondsman after a judge sets bail. Nobody's quite yet figured out how to set up a business like that and make it work. Though I think it's another one of those golden opportunities for expats. A business like that needs only to be organized along first world lines to succeed. And so far, nobody's even tried it. And although down here in Latin America, bail could be ridiculously low, it's still all
[19:10] relative. And what we first worlders might call ridiculously low, like 500 bucks, that might turn out to be a month's salary or even more for some of these guys with these horribly junky cars. And no one in that socioeconomic class has a nickel in the bank or even a relative to go to that has that kind of ready cash available. Now of course my UN buddy got some off the record advice from a Latin lawyer friend of his. He said if that would have happened to him, if there weren't too many people around, he'd take off like a bat out of hell. And the fact is, if you're talking to a lawyer on a professional basis, he'll always tell you to obey the law, stop, call the police, call the insurance company and get an ambulance. But if you know a lawyer personally, you'll get a completely different story.
[19:58] The fact is, every lawyer in Latin America that I've known quite well has told me the very same thing, take off. But not just take off. Don't slow down, accelerate. Get the hell out of there and don't look back. Now as politically incorrect as that might sound to you, these are the facts. If you hit a pedestrian, he most likely won't end up in the hospital. And as good first-worlders, we'll stop the car and get out and see what happened, and exchange information. But later on, when word gets out in his family that he was hit by a gringo, even if he was blind drunk and it was 150% his fault, chances are his family will talk him into getting a lawyer to try to squeeze you after the fact. But on the plus side, like one of my lawyer friends always says, the more money you have,
[20:45] the more justice you get. And everyone knows it. 80% of the people in Latin America have very few assets. That's why there are so few lawsuits filed down here compared to the first world. I've heard statistics like for every 15 lawsuits filed in the states, there's only one filed in Latin America. So anyway, even if you and your lawyer can prove in court that the other guy was 100% at fault, and you've got witnesses to prove he just got up, brushed himself off and walked away with a smile, it doesn't matter. His deadbeat lawyer can drag that case on for a year or more. And even if you were charged with reckless driving or even vehicular homicide if you happen to have killed a guy, the good news is, your bail probably won't even be a thousand bucks, so you'll walk that day.
[21:31] However, the judge will put an embargo on your passport until the case is settled. Now an embargo means you won't be able to fly out of the country, for any reason. Well that's why a lot of lawyers for expats advise that if you're unlucky enough to hit a pedestrian or a motorcycle, or a guy with a really crummy car, you just step on the gas and keep on going. Now I'm not for one minute recommending that you do that. I'm just telling you how things are done down here. That's my job, to give you the heads up on all this stuff. But let me just give you a little advice. These lawyers that tell you things like that in confidence and at parties and stuff, they're not hypocrites. If caught in that situation themselves, they make a run for it too.
[22:19] And they advise their family members and friends the same way. Now here's another thing you should know. If you do happen to get an embargo on your passport, that's not the end of the world either. There are ways of getting out of the country. Though you'll not be able to do it the traditional way. That is, fly out of an international airport. Your blacklisted name will pop up on those computers in a second, and you'll never make it through the immigration line. But you see, in Latin America, the land borders are very porous. How do you think a few million illegal Latins make it into the US every year? Now I'm not suggesting at all that you drive out to the boonies and wade across a river into another country. Though that would work. And by the way, rare expats who do have passport problems have been known to do that.
[23:08] But since you slipped into that new country illegally, you won't have an entrance stamp on your passport. So you'll have a little trouble flying out of that country too. But your new lawyer in that country can generally fix that problem for less than 100 bucks. And don't ask me how lawyers do that, but they do. Like I said, this is the third world where very small amounts of money to us can move mountains down here. Now again, I'm not recommending you do any of this stuff. I'm just telling you what some people in these little predicaments do. Now the vast majority of long-term expats never get themselves into any trouble like that. Because first off, they get their lawyer to create a company for them. An anonymous SA corporation, which I've spoken about on this show many times before. Now you put your cars in your house and your properties in this SA corporation, then if
[23:58] you do happen to hit somebody in the road and the guy you hit, injured or not, decides to sue you, the first thing his lawyer will do is to check and see if you have any assets to get by looking up your name in the municipal property registry. And if you have everything in an SA corporation, he'll see that you personally don't own anything like a car. You don't own a house, you don't own a boat, you don't have land, you don't have a business, and you don't even have a bank account. Not that anyone can actually check your bank records, since they have heavy banking secrecy laws throughout Latin America. But even if a lawyer could get a court order to do that, which by the way I've never ever heard has happened, anyway, if you're a wise expat with a good lawyer, you won't have substantial cash or assets in your name in that country.
[24:46] Then the worst that could happen is that you might have to come up with a little cash settlement, you know, to pay the guy off. And even though your car insurance will pay his hospital bills, sometimes though not regularly, you'll have to give the guy a little walking money to make him and his lawyer go away completely. So there is that risk if you do hit someone, that they'll be looking at you like the deep pocket gringo that you are compared to them. Which by the way is one of the very few downsides to the gringo advantage, i.e. everybody thinks you're rich. Oh and I was saying you don't want to cross a river if you don't have to, if your passport has been embargoed by a judge and you can't get out of the country. So how do you get out of a mess like that? Well believe it or not for a few dollars more, there are ways to get you out of the country.
[25:32] And it's not something that I'd like to go into right now. You'll have to talk that over with your own lawyer. Just remember one thing, in Latin America, everything is possible. Even things that would be absolutely impossible for the common man to accomplish up in the first world. Oh and by the way down here, the most common reason an expat might get his passport embargoed by a judge, has to do with wives and child support and paternity suits and stuff. Passport embargoes for expats almost always involve civil not criminal suits. For example if you marry a latina and somehow later get divorced, if during the divorce settlement you sign a paper in court agreeing to pay alimony or child support, you'd think that because this is the third world and the bureaucracy is terribly chaotic and slow,
[26:20] things would slip through the cracks as usual and there'd be no enforcement at all. Well that's what happens to the locals alright, no one goes after them, you can't get blood out of a stone. I mean the average guy down here only makes 300 bucks a month. Not to mention 40% of the men down here are working off the books. Which means they're not in the system at all. So the court can't garnish their wages even if they wanted to. You can't garnish a guy unless he gets a payroll check and these guys work for cash. But it's us rich gringos they can go after by putting an embargo on our passports. And because government and legal systems are so chaotic, you probably won't even find out about it till the day you want to take a routine trip out of the country. Then to have that embargo removed, it's not a simple matter of just paying that back child
[27:07] support. You'll have to go to court and appear in front of the judge with your ex-wife. But as usual with legal cases down here, it could take months just to get on the court docket. So until then, you're not leaving, at least by air you're not. So the bottom line is this, no one's gonna come knocking on your door. But like expat Eddie says, nothing will get you to whip out your checkbook faster than when you're at the airport and they won't let you fly. 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.
[27:55] See you next time. Nos vemos.