#208 – The Expat Files: Politics, Identity, and the Latin Experience

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder My thoughts ever straight 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 so let's get started You know now that the election is over I guess I have to say a little bit about Obama in relation to Latin America now I know I never spoke about this subject before because I don't like talking about politics not individual candidates anyway I'll talk in general about politics especially politics down here in Latin America

[00:49] Because expats and expat wannabes are interested in that I mean if you're gonna become an expat down here You really want to know there's any genocidal dictators in the neighborhood You know, but I have to reassure you no matter what you've heard even Chavez and Evo Morales guys with socialist platforms They're smart enough to know that Castro's brand of socialism is not only unworkable It's absolutely despised by the common man Especially because you see down here in Latin America if you ask the common man in any of the 20 Latin American countries What his goals are for him and his family guess what he says? He wants to number one have a decent job number two own a house number three own a car And all three of those things are like oil and water in a socialist or even a partially socialist system

[01:35] That's why all those socialists and quasi socialist governments have massive black markets even bigger than the regular economy If there's something that you want that's not on the shelves or it's way too expensive There's always a section of town where black market capitalism is absolutely flourishing and the funny thing is authorities generally look the other way Why because they and their families and friends buy what they need there, too It's all such hypocrisy But that's what happens when governments try to manage their economies and slap on currency and price controls Which is what's traditionally done in socialist governments? And even though down here the unwashed masses are tempted by socialist rhetoric you know big promises of land reform and tax the rich and big government giveaways the standard bull that Chavez talks about all the

[02:23] Time and he's practically the only one that can talk like that and actually pull some of it off to a limited degree Because he's got the oil fields. That's why most of the unwashed masses down there by his BS I mean the guys got unlimited amounts of oil money to grease those squeaky wheels down there But even so the natives are restless because look he's been in office like 12 years now Yet the country suffers the worst inflation in all of Latin America 35% a year and on top of that the poor and the very poor about 30 to 40 percent of Venezuela the ones that make 400 bucks a month or less are just as bad off now as when he walked in in 1998 only now they've got very very cheap gas like 15 to 20 cents a gallon and Prison-style public housing where the elevators don't work and the water pressure is so low it only serves the bottom few floors

[03:12] But still it's a cut above living in a dirt floor tin shack, isn't it? Now another question I often get from people is how do Latins feel about Cuba? I mean, we know how North Americans feel about Cuba, but what about the Latins? The fact is all around Latin America. The word is out Over the years a lot of Cubans have found a way to leave and they ended up filtering throughout the rest of Latin America And of course, they tell their new Latin American buddies in the Dominican Republic or Guatemala or Peru or Bolivia Wherever they end up what it's really like in Cuba not the propaganda coming out of Havana some of it We know already First of all, you can't have a decent paying job in a socialist economy like Cuba because everybody gets paid the same The lawyers the doctors and the sugar cane cutters. They all get 20 to 30 bucks a month US

[04:02] So families just can't make ends meet unless they've got a foot firmly planted in the black market Or they're getting US dollar remisses from friends and family in the United States and we already talked about remisses how Latin sent money back Home via Western Union and such and Cubans who've expatriated to other parts of Latin America It's not surprising. They have the same wants and desires as the rest of Latin Americans in the other 19 countries They always wanted to own their own houses and cars which up to now under the Castro regime was never possible But the Cuban government under Raul is starting to bend on that the doors been kicked open and capitalism is coming out of the closet So bottom line down here in Latin America when people ask me Well, aren't you worried about dictators and land and property confiscations and stuff?

[04:50] Well, for one thing the age of the iron-fisted dictator is over and when Castro dies That's the last nail in the coffin for that and though you might think of Fidel's buddy Venezuela's Hugo Chavez as a quasi socialist softball dictator since he has initiated price controls and has tampered Disastrously with the economy and its currency not to mention he's appropriated land from foreigners and nullified international contracts But on that count, he just might be justified and here's why He's only really appropriated land and equipment from giant oil company transnationals who made terribly lopsided Sweetheart deals with past administrations all to the detriment of the Venezuelan public But which made the party in power the president vice president and all his buddies

[05:39] Filthy rich and you know all us expats when we get together and talk about such things down here None of us is pissed off about that at all We're thinking screw those big oil companies Even if it's Chavez doing the screwing because let's face it. We all hate big oil now, don't we? It's like the man said the enemy of my enemy is my friend at least temporarily Anyway, none of this new wave of quasi socialist indigenous presidents like Evo Morales our Saints Believe me, you know how at press conferences those guys give you the impression that they're the man of the people You know wearing sandals and the indigenous get-up serving indigenous food at state banquets and stuff Arriving in Toyotas instead of big black Mercedes SUVs, you know

[06:24] Don't be fooled by that crap The fact is behind the scenes all their cronies friends and family are working for the government now with big salaries And some of them are gonna walk out with millions, too That's what politics is all about right one getting reelected and to enriching your friends family and cronies And after that if there's any money left over in the public trough Well, then you can fix a few roads and build some low-income housing and stuff Politics is really no different up in the first world Except that there's vastly bigger numbers of dollars and million and even billion dollar contracts involved now in my own case I do get emails occasionally asking me what party I belong to even who I voted for for president The fact is when I left 20 some years ago, I gave up on politics

[07:10] I quit voting a long long time ago And when I did I had my own little catchphrase which didn't make me too popular with people who still believe Naively that voting actually makes a difference. Look what happened with the only real viable candidate Ron Paul They made a joke out of them cut him out of the debates and basically threw him in the cellar and locked the door and when People tell me my vote counts. I wish I had one of those novelty fart cushions Why waste words when that's really the best response? Anyway way back when when I used to vote more than 20 years ago when people asked me who I voted for or what party I belong to I'd say I belong to the vote I party. That's v.o.t. I vote I rhymes with bow tie which stands for vote out the incumbent

[07:55] In other words, if you recognize the guy's name on the ballot at all, he's probably the incumbent So vote for the other guy, but it never caught on and some people thought I was nuts But at parties and get-togethers, I did have a good argument. I'd say, you know when a new politician gets in office That's never been there before. He doesn't know anybody. He's a greenhorn other politicians who've been there a long time Don't throw him any bones. He's the new kid on the block. He's got no power no coalition or voting block Anyway with vote I voting out the incumbent you immediately cut your losses because you get greenhorns in there all the time You've actually minimized the damage that politicians can do because newbies don't know their way around They usually sit back and watch for a couple of years since they've got no clout to get a bill pushed through anyway

[08:41] so voting out the incumbent basically minimizes the damage that Congress can do because all they're really in office for is for their egos to perpetuate themselves spend more money and Grow government like a cancer. I mean listen to this economic statistic right out of that jerk Alan Greenspan's mouth And he said this at a banking conference in Mexico last week And by the way, this jerk gets a hundred grand or more for a speech and here's what he said We're at the precipice of a fiscal cliff, and we're about to fall over basically government has spent just too much He says in 1965 the federal government had expenditures of just 2% of GNP that was in 1965 now he says the government has grown so fat and big that in 2012 government expenditures were

[09:31] 15% of GNP up 750 percent from 1965 everyone why he never mentioned any of that when he was chairman of the Fed When he and his buddies had their snouts in the public trough. It was always full steam ahead But let's get back to the election and Obama now I never really spoke about Obama and his relevance to Latin American politics before because I didn't want to throw a cloud over What you might think of the Latin people. I mean, I like Latin people a lot. They're fun-loving happy accepting and forgiving industrious hard-working and they have an infinite amount of patience just look at all the hundreds of hours They waste standing in government lines every year and still they don't complain Like I said their patience is infinite in general all around good people not to mention

[10:20] They love gringos and everything in anything first world Which is at the root of that great gringo advantage? We have and of course they have their faults and shortcomings which I've pointed out in so many shows before Which are also indirectly tied to that great gringo advantage We have to like for example their public education system for the masses is a disaster Books are expensive and way beyond the reach of the masses So people don't read and in general Latins are followers not leaders They're definitely not into maintenance and though capable of very fine work They're just not into details unless you push them They don't invent or create they copy and because generally they're so gullible They believe most anything a voice of authority tells them and that includes what they see on the 6 o'clock news

[11:10] Hey, wait a minute that also describes some of my own friends and relatives up in the States now, man Who would have thunk? Anyway, I'm here to tell you that Latins just love Obama and I mean dirt poor Latins middle-class Latins rich and educated Latins Latins who've escaped to the state says he legal immigrants Latins who've been caught and deported from the states and Latins So ignorant they don't even know his party or how to pronounce his name correctly. They still love him They think he's the greatest president since Kennedy or Lincoln even though Latins don't know anything about those two presidents either Except maybe that they got shot now The funny thing is if you ask a Latin down here who he wants for president of the United States He'd say Obama every time and when you ask him who he's running against. They don't know

[11:59] I've been in that conversation myself at least 25 times and I get 25 blank stares when I ask who's running against Obama I take that back. I've had five or six Latins. Tell me it was George Bush. Talk about the lag time effect, huh? And here's another thing when I ask people down here What's Obama done that makes him so popular with Latins? Not a single one of them has a concrete answer They can't tell me anything. He's actually done for them or anyone or in any way He's helped anyone at all though a couple of Latins have told me he's pro Latino He's pro Latin whatever that means and when I ask for more details I get that deer in the headlights look now I know up in the states the Democrats and the Republicans are always trying to kiss Latin ass to get the votes and the Democrats have

[12:45] Been traditionally way more successful in the Republicans But when it comes to actually trying to get a concrete answer as to what the guy has done Well, the most you ever get is well He's better than a Republican because Republicans are big business war mongers And I'm not even gonna go there except to say that the Democrats have been in for the last four years And how many wars are we in right now? Is it two or is it three? Counting the unofficial ones and the disastrous war on drugs could be up to a dozen depends who you talk to and What about Homeland Security and the Patriot Act and the NSA and the FBI who have basically declared war on your privacy Which sad to say is the only war that uncle Sam is really winning right now. Well, we won't go there either Anyway back to that Latin love affair with Obama

[13:31] You know when I asked Latins Educated Latins with degrees to tell me what Obama has actually done and they scratched their head and give me that deer in the Headlight look or say well, he's better than George Bush when that happens I try to help out these so-called educated Latins with an answer I tell them here's a little taste of what Obama has done or hasn't done in the last four years I say, you know the day that Obama first got elected in 2008 Did you know back then gasoline was a buck 70 a gallon now? It's 4 to 450, right? Muchas gracias Obama, then I just get another deer in the headlight Look you can't win no matter what I say They still love Obama and it's all reinforced by the fact that in all the Latin

[14:19] Newspapers in the entertainment section, they show these Latin Hollywood stars that have made it big You know huge successes that the common Latin can only dream about, you know the names Sofia Vergara, Selma Hayek, Michelle Rodriguez Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, Eva Longoria, Benicio del Toro, J Lo, Jessica Alba, Cameron Diaz, even that Latin Berry Manolo Ricky Martin just gushes about Obama I bet he'd love to spend a night in the Lincoln bedroom Anyway, what I'm trying to tell you is all the well-known stars with Latin blood They've all come out strong for Obama And even if you haven't seen these Latin blooded stars come out in the papers up north They've been showing up in all the Spanish language rags the ones in the big cities up north and the ones down here in Latin America

[15:08] And of course the vast unwashed masses down here. They just eat that stuff right up I mean if J Lo or Ricky Martin are Obama lovers then to the common Latin Obama just must be the king of the feces pile So basically it's doubly impossible to discuss religion or politics with Latins unless you enjoy banging your head against the wall With religion well, that's a lost cause It's a society that has very little knowledge of mathematics and science and almost no knowledge of the way the physical world works So you can't go there with your argument I mean there's a half a billion people in Latin America and last year in all of Latin America Scientific types filed as many patents as were filed in the state of Idaho Talk about embarrassing and when you talk politics well judging by who they've elected and reelected over the years

[15:59] Glittering personalities like Hugo Chavez and nor Yaga Evita Peron Daniel Ortega and Castro even compared to the generally politically retired Americans Latins are beyond clueless about politics. So when you're at a party you're better off leaving that one alone, too In fact because us expats can easily penetrate the higher levels of society here Sometimes you'll get invited to parties and you'll actually be sitting at the bar with an ex Genocidal dictator or his son or his brother-in-law or his mistress or all of the above don't laugh It's happened to me and expat Eddie or you'll be sharing an umbrella drink with some other corrupt malignant Latin politician and your brain will be bursting with things to say but you know

[16:45] You just better keep your mouth shut at least back in the states If you run into a politician in a grocery store You can call him a corrupt asshole to his face and he'll just ignore it and walk right by though truthfully I know Americans are way too chicken to ever do that. They'd rather shake his hand kiss up to him and have a photo op but Down here in Latin America if you're at a party with a few of these guys It's better to just blend in and have another scotch because one thing you should always remember as an expat no matter How disgusting these guys are you're just a visitor. It's not your country and the expat mantra is Keep a low profile So you want a piece up there you have four more years of Obama But it really didn't matter who won did it as you continue your slide into oblivion up there

[17:31] The real question is when you're coming down Okay enough said about that now Here's an email question from Robert that may seem simple on the surface when actually he's trying to clear up some general confusion here Here's what he says. Hi Johnny. I've been wondering for some time just who the Latins are I mean it seems that it might be a broader than useful category But it obviously just doesn't mean mestizo mixed race and even if it does what proportions of mixture are we talking about 50 30 70 percent It doesn't just mean fluent speakers of Latin American Spanish. Does it or does it are the rich gringo looking types Latins, too? Argentines of a hundred percent European descent are they lens middle class of whatever racial background are they Latins, too

[18:22] You see the problem seems to me without even having visited that there's a world of variations cloaked by the term Latin I couldn't care less about political correctness I'm interested only in getting a picture of the social and economic terrain signs Robert Well good question Robert and there is a simple answer now If you look up any of the 20 Latin American countries in Wikipedia on the right side of the main page is a column that talks About the population and the demographics and the geography and a list of the main ethnic groups in the country And you'll see that some of the Latin American countries have 50% indigenous people and each of those can be further broken down into tribes With separate languages and at last count I think the indigenous people of Bolivia have something like 37 different tribes and 37 different languages

[19:11] and Guatemala has about 25 indigenous groups with 25 separate languages, too And though everyone with some Spanish blood likes to lump the indigenous into one population Just like people do with American Indians Anyway, if you ask an American Indian what nationality is he'll tell you his tribe and he'll say he's a Native American Well the same thing happens down in Latin America every indigenous person if you ask him their nationality They'll tell you their tribe and call themselves American Latino Even if they're pure indigenous people and don't have a drop of European Latin blood and the only place you'll find that that's not true Is in the Amazon basin where they still have some very isolated tribes that don't see much Contact with the modern world at all a lot of them don't even speak Spanish

[19:59] They speak their tribal language and the actual latinos that they come into contact with every once in a while are to them pretty much Foreigners instead of Yankee go home. It's Latino go home By the way, you might have heard this Latino term thrown around Latino with a D not Latino with a T now that refers to indigenous people with at least a tiny bit of Latin European Spanish blood a term mostly used in Central America, which is the same as a mestizo Which is a person with mixed European and indigenous blood, too No matter what the proportions now in my 21 years down here I've only heard that term Latino used about three times period and the word mestizo used almost never

[20:44] These are terms you see in history and geography and sociology books people don't use them on a regular basis They use the word Latino or Latina Bottom line everyone down here even pure indigenous people call themselves Latinos. I take that back There are some militant groups of pure indigenous people who refused to call themselves Latinos because they're of pure indigenous race that were here first They look at Columbus and the Spanish conquistadores as invaders that basically stole their land Took away their rights and made them second-class citizens, which is absolutely true But the fact is even though the indigenous population is huge that militant group. That's very anti-latino is so small. It's practically Insignificant, but they are out there They usually come out of the woodwork around election time to put up a candidate or two who get no traction at all

[21:35] And they also come out of the woodwork on Columbus Day to picket the presidential palace They're a lot like that small group of militant American Indians who feel the same way about Columbus and the founding fathers like Jefferson Adams and George Washington But back to Latinos in Latin America now on the other end of the spectrum are those pure-blooded Europeans that came here at the turn of the century or even earlier mostly from Germany and Italy That's why Latin American countries have such great beer The Germans came in a hundred or so years ago and set up the breweries They found their expat niche right away and in some countries like Argentina You can find whole towns of blonde red-headed blue and green eyed people something that's very very rare in the rest of Latin America in a lot of the small towns like that people actually speak German as a second language and since these guys have been here for

[22:27] Generations they to call themselves Latinos. They don't say they're European Latinos. They're just Latinos Even though they might not have a single drop of indigenous blood Here like in the rest of the world for better for worse the lighter your hair and the whiter your skin The higher up you are on the social ladder to use a crude term white is right Well, that's been a mantra in Latin America since Columbus landed now if you do happen to have European or nearly pure European blood you really have some bragging rights throughout Latin America and People like that never let you forget about it You sit down with one of these guys or gals for even 10 minutes and you won't have to bring it up You won't have to ask him at all. They'll slip it in the conversation All right Because you see you're a gringo and Europeans and gringos carry the same high status in the minds of Latin's

[23:15] so they'll want to let you know right away that they're loaded with European blood and by inference a cut above everybody else who's Shorter and browner and I know how pompous this sounds, but I am telling it like it is these people by the way have a name too, they're called Creole's c-r-i-o-l-l-o and they're extremely proud of that term and these guys carry such chips on their shoulders that they just have to let you know that they're in the Latin upper class and They are and they stick together and they intermarry and generally they're the richest one to two percent of all Latin American families the ones whose families have owned all the traditional low-tech industries like farming tobacco coffee sugar mining and cement and Who in the 20th century moved into television radio car dealerships beer coca-cola shopping malls and McDonald's and Burger King?

[24:05] Franchises that's how they diversified all that big tobacco sugar and coffee money that they made off the backs of the dirt poor peasants That worked for them. Anyway, these guys are Creole's and guess what all other Latin's that have mixed indigenous blood They would just love to be a Creole. Oh, don't get me wrong They don't like the Creole's and resent them tremendously But they'd rather be a Creole because they're rich and tall and white and good-looking Sometimes but remember this the average Latino with mixed blood would love to marry into a Creole family But in reality as Gringo's top the bill because unlike Creole's who common latinos referred to as crayidos or crayidas Which means stuck up or pompous? Unlike the Creole's who a lot of us look like as Gringo's have that instant likability factor that Creole's just don't have

[24:55] Bottom line, there's definitely a subtle class warfare thing going on down here That tiny percentage of Creole's that own everything are trying to maintain their wealth land and power base and the indigenous masses are waking Up and getting really pissed off about it And you can see how that happened first in Cuba, then Venezuela, then Bolivia, then Ecuador But we're talking about the term Latino and now is a good time to talk about the absolute poorest Segment of the Latin population and that's the group of Latinos with almost pure African blood with a little mix of indigenous and another group of black Africans with some indigenous blood called Garifunas now of course the vast majority of these people are the descendants of slaves and they're found in Populations up and down the Caribbean and Atlantic coast they never really made it to the western side the Pacific coast

[25:47] Mostly because of discrimination now these are the very poor and even more Discriminated against than the indigenous people because in Latin America It's all about the color if you think the u.s. Harbors color prejudice you ain't seen nothing yet Anyway black Latins all speak perfect Spanish, and why wouldn't they they've been living in Latin America for hundreds of years though? Quite a few of these groups do speak some English like in Belize which was a former British colony So they speak perfect Spanish and English well not exactly our kind of English, but it's a Caribbean style English Anyway, if you get a chance to talk to one of these guys or gals and you ask them their nationality They say Latino they don't say African Nicaraguan or African Panamanian They say Latino or Latina or they might say Garifuna because everybody in Latin America knows what that is anyway

[26:37] One of the neat things about the Garifunas is they're trilingual they speak perfect Spanish pretty good English and a very strange Garifuna dialect which they slip into when they don't want you to know what they're talking about and here's another funny thing if you Go to a town that has a lot of Garifunas in it like for example la seva honduras or Livingston Guatemala They're living there side-by-side with your regular mixed-blooded Latinos But the Latinos even though they've been living in that town for ages for generations They still don't know or pick up any Garifuna words because they don't teach that in school That's a language that's handed down in the home from parent to kid So the blacks when they don't want their Latin neighbors to know what they're talking about just break into Garifuna So to end this discussion the bottom line is no matter if you're pure 100% European blood or you're pure

[27:27] 100% indigenous or anything in between you're still a Latino or Latina 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 see you next time