Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller explores the unique experiences of expats living in Latin America, from navigating rough terrain and dealing with local workers to the cultural significance of superstitions and the surprising longevity of the elderly. The episode also touches on the practicalities of car ownership, the dangers of driving on the Pan American highway, and the importance of family support in aging gracefully.
Johnny begins by introducing the podcast, which focuses on life in Latin America, covering work, play, and retirement. He discusses how expats develop personal theories about Latin society, using the example of Eddie's theory about older indigenous people who are still physically active despite their age. Johnny shares his own observations and humor about these theories, and then transitions into a story about Eddie's experience with buying a 4x4 Jeep due to the challenges of navigating rough terrain in Latin America. The segment highlights the cultural and practical aspects of living in the region, including the importance of reliable vehicles and the behavior of local workers.
Next, Johnny discusses the challenges of car ownership for expats in Latin America, focusing on the issues of lending cars to local workers and the prevalence of bulletproof cars. He shares a story about Eddie, an expat, who buys a bulletproof Jeep with level 4 protection, which he later realizes is common among government officials and narcos. Johnny also highlights the cultural and economic context of car ownership, including the tendency for government officials to keep their perks even after being removed from office.
The episode then moves to the challenges of driving on the Pan American highway through Latin America, highlighting frequent detours due to construction, natural disasters, and road obstacles. Johnny warns about the dangers of driving at night and the risk of landslides, referencing a recent incident in Peru where a chicken bus crashed. He also mentions the informal roadside markets where locals sell goods like food and pirated gas, noting the potential risks of using such gas. He shares a story about encountering three elderly men chopping brush with machetes, who were over 80 years old, and how they demonstrated their skill with both hands. Johnny reflects on the encounter, suggesting it supports his theory about higher child mortality rates in Latin America, which may affect overall mortality statistics.
Johnny then discusses the phenomenon of longevity and health in Latin America, particularly focusing on the lack of Alzheimer's and other age-related diseases among the elderly. He attributes this to factors such as living in rural areas, physical activity, family support, and cultural attitudes toward aging. Johnny also touches on the idea that left-handed people may be less prone to Alzheimer's, though this theory is not conclusively supported by the data he presents. He references Eddie's observations and theories, including the idea that ambidexterity and hard work may contribute to longevity. The segment also includes some humor and personal anecdotes, such as Eddie's struggles with a machete and his tendency to drink tequila.
In the final segment, Johnny Mueller discusses Latin American superstitions, particularly in the context of Halloween. He mentions that many Latin Americans are superstitious, adopting first-world superstitions from Western media like cable TV and Hollywood horror movies. He highlights several unique Latin superstitions, such as the belief that sneezing indicates someone is mocking you, the significance of a hot ear (right or left), and the importance of not killing certain insects like wasps or bees in the house. He also mentions the belief that a dead bird in the house is a bad omen, and that certain creatures like bats flying into the house are considered bad signs. Johnny also touches on cultural practices like not placing a woman's purse on the floor, and the superstition surrounding dreaming of eating meat before a bad event. He concludes by emphasizing that these superstitions are deeply ingrained in Latin culture, especially among lower and middle-class families, and that expats and gringos may miss out on these cultural nuances unless they engage with local communities.
The episode ends with a lighthearted and personal reflection on the attention a baby receives from family and neighbors, followed by a brief wrap-up and call to action for listeners. Johnny Mueller humorously acknowledges the focus on the baby's features and then transitions into a sign-off for the podcast, inviting listeners to engage with the show and its associated resources.
Topics
Life in Latin America, Expat experiences, Cultural observations, Practical challenges of living in Latin America, Vehicle reliability and usage, Car ownership and maintenance in Latin America, Cultural and economic context of expat life, Government corruption and misuse of public resources, Driving in Latin America, Landslides and road hazards, Roadside markets, Child mortality rates in Latin America
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:57 Eddie's Theory About Older Indigenous People 00:03:16 Eddie's Experience with Buying a 4x4 Jeep 00:05:38 Eddie's Car Situation and the Cost of Ownership 00:07:17 Eddie's Shock at the Bulletproof Jeep 00:10:55 Introduction to the Pan American Highway Journey 00:11:19 Landslides and Road Obstacles 00:11:49 Chicken Bus Accidents and Roadside Markets 00:13:26 Encounter with Elderly Machete Choppers 00:15:50 Reflection on Mortality Rates in Latin America 00:16:41 The Impact of Environment on Longevity in Latin America 00:17:48 Why Elderly Latin Americans Are Happier Than Their First-World Counterparts 00:20:37 Ambidexterity and the Mystery of Alzheimer's in Latin America 00:22:25 Halloween in Latin America: A Unique Cultural Experience 00:22:46 The Influence of Western Media on Latin American Superstitions 00:25:41 Cultural Practices: The Significance of a Woman's Purse 00:27:18 Attention on the Baby's Features 00:27:36 Podcast Sign-Off and Call to Action
Transcript
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 Hello there all you expat wannabes I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America the show that tells you just what it's like to live Work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here. So let's get started You know all of us expats after living a while down here in Latin America We start developing our own kind of pet personal theories about Latins and Latin society in general I mean theories you can't actually find in books and nobody's actually written down
[00:47] But nevertheless when we get together we toss our theories around stupid Idiotic poignant or not to see if they stick to the wall and other gringos can relate or not For example about six months ago expat Eddie said to me Johnny You know, I have a theory about older Latins really old lens the tough Wiry little guys you see around that are all wrinkled and shriveled up looking from age with that really leathery skin from the Sun But other than that they got more energy and stamina than gringos and old-timers up north who are 20 and 30 years younger And I know what Eddie's talking about exactly I see these guys around two guys in their 70s 80s 90s even even older that includes equal numbers of women and men Out in the boonies They're all over the place out in the fields chopping brush or hauling bundles of wood or jugs of water on their backs or herding
[01:36] Cows and goats just take a ride through the countryside And you see these guys all the time and a lot of these guys up close look really old even ancient In fact, you just have to go to an art gallery in a big city and you can see these tough old ladies and guys Our favorite subject of cosmopolitan upscale city-bred artists In fact, some of these artists sell these kind of paintings exclusively to gringos and first world tourists It seems in the art world There's somewhat of a market for poor but happy indigenous kids on their native turf and very very old indigenous old-timers Still putting in a good day's work without the use of modern machinery I'm sure you've seen photos and paintings like that You might even own one or two and there's nothing wrong with that Why not take a photo or two of these guys? It really does capture a bit about how the other half lives
[02:23] I mean, come on These guys have 80 or 90 years of tough life written all over their faces yet with all that never-ending hard work They still seem quite happy and that happiness hard work and old age thing was what I thought Eddie was gonna touch on with his new theory But I was wrong and you know six months ago when he first mentioned he had some kind of a new theory I was curious But he still wouldn't tell me because I laughed at his last theory and so he was a bit gun-shy about laying this one On me till he had some more evidence. At least that's what he told me now Eddie like a lot of expats has his unsubstantiated theories half of them being cockeyed in the other half sometimes twisted But with a spark of brilliance So naturally I wanted to know Eddie's new theory so I could have a good laugh or not
[03:08] But he wouldn't tell me he said I'm still putting it together So anyway six months passed and I forgot all about it and so about three weeks ago I was with Eddie when he bought a new car down in Salvador actually not a brand new car It was a three-year-old car actually a four-wheel drive gas guzzling Jeep station wagon And even though I'm not a big fan of Jeeps at all not to mention in consumer reports They almost always get low marks for reliability and maintenance costs and such Latins on the other hand just love Jeeps because they don't read consumer reports And they don't investigate anything like that on the internet And they look cool and Latins who have them think it's a very good gringle car since it is made in America It still is isn't it? Anyway, there's quite a few of them down here, and there are no rarity. That's for sure
[03:54] That said Eddie did exactly what I recommend expats do never buy a new car unless it's practically the deal of a lifetime And if it's brand new it better be a car or a truck That's so basic and ugly that no one's gonna want to steal it anyway if you're a longtime listener to the show you knew That already now the reason why Eddie wanted a 4x4 was because he was so sick of bottoming out on Tumelos and tearing up the underside of his car since one of his workers had killed one of his earlier Station wagons by tearing out the oil pan while going over one of those massive speed bumps way too fast Anyway after he got it fixed. He decided to sell his old Nissan station wagon Which wasn't a 4x4 which had a regular suspension system of course and after paying for that kind of repair
[04:40] Not once or twice, but three times Eddie decided then and there that from now on he'd buy 4x4 vehicles Exclusively why because they always have heavier duty suspension a little bit bigger tires And they ride a few inches higher than a two-wheel drive vehicle So it's always a better bet if you bottom out on those Tumelos speed bumps once in a while And that's not to say that Eddie's a wild and crazy driver He always slows down at the speed bumps, and I've never been with him when he scraped one It's the fact that sometimes he lets his workers use his vehicles to pick up supplies and stuff and not only do they nearly Always overload the vehicle they also nearly always drive way too fast for conditions Just like a first-world high school kid when dad gives him the keys to the car Latin guys with your keys
[05:27] Pull out of the driveway nice and slow and cautious then when you're no longer in sight They step on the gas and maybe lay a little rubber because remember the average Latin lower or middle-class guy the guy That's working for you for 300 bucks a month now Remember that he can't afford a car and yours is probably the only car he's ever driven thus just like a teenage kid with his dad's car Well just think about what you did under those circumstances So if you have a business and your employees have to use your car once in a while That's another great reason not to have a nice one so Eddie's not the one that keeps trashing his cars It's his employees not to mention as Eddie's learned the hard way and so of all of us ex-pats when you lend your car to A Latin person no matter how well you know him or her they not only drive fast and reckless
[06:14] They completely trash the interior of your car, too So if you lend your car to a worker you can be sure that the coke bottles the candy and McDonald's wrappers and the sticky ice Cream paddles from Dairy Queen will remain on the seat or the floor of your car That is the ones that they didn't toss out the window on the highway and yes I said Dairy Queen they do have franchised out to Latin America. They've invaded here in a big way who to thunk, huh? And believe it or not, you'll find them mostly in upscale shopping malls. Go figure, huh? So if you got the urge you can still get a dilly bar and by the way, man Have those things shrunk when I was a kid. They were as big as my head So either dilly bars shrunk or my head got bigger, right? So bottom line if you have to let a Latin person use your car give them the keys to the oldest piece of junk
[06:59] You've got now that isn't to say there aren't some first-world expats who will treat your car. Just as shabbily I've got a brother like that But as a general rule Latins, well, just think of a gringo You know up north that should never let drive your car. Well, most of us expats think of Latin drivers that way It's gotta be a cultural thing. Anyway, here's something else that Eddie said that kind of shocked me He said when he phoned up about this Jeep That was for sale in the classifieds in the big Salvador newspaper The first thing this guy said was that it was a 2009 Cherokee with level 4 protection and Eddie thought nothing of it And when he went to test drive the thing he asked how many miles it got to the gallon or miles to kilometer down here And the owner said he got about 25 kilometers to the gallon Which is about 16 miles to the gallon which seemed awful low to Eddie till the guy said that's because of the level 4
[07:50] And Eddie was thinking yeah the level 4 what then finally Eddie put two and two together The car had level 4 bulletproofing and actually he should have known because he ended up buying it from an upper-level Government type who had two bodyguards with earbuds that probably didn't work, you know The typical rags to riches government thief and you know, they all have to have bulletproof cars I mean, they're so damn important that everyone wants to take a potshot at him, right? Yuck yuck and actually it's nothing more than a pretentious sign of power. No one shoots at these guys in their cars Oh, they have tons of enemies All right And it's all about dirty money and stuff and since these guys are all tied in with narcos and under-the-counter deals Their enemies do take potshots at them, but never in their cars They usually do the godfather thing and gun them down in a restaurant or a strip club when they're good and drunk
[08:37] So Eddie soon learned that level 4 armored protection is basically the minimum armored package You can get designed to stop nearly all small caliber handgun bullets The problem was for Eddie a car with level 4 protection like that puts about 800 pounds of extra weight on a car and kind Of kills the gas mileage now the extra weight didn't bother Eddie so much But he said he wasn't gonna pay extra for the privilege of having a bulletproof car since he's never had one before and wasn't paranoid enough to ever give a thought to it and the fact is in Latin America the only people who do have Bulletproof cars are narcos and pretentious government ass wipes exactly the kind of people that should be used for target practice Now of course buying a car is a big negotiation and down here veterans often Jack
[09:24] They're asking price up way beyond what they're willing to take 3040 sometimes even 50% more than they'll settle for now at first Eddie didn't think this guy was gonna budge So he made it clear He wasn't gonna pay extra for any kind of bulletproofing then the guy told him when a car has been bulletproofed and it's four or More years old owners almost always dump them for the latest model in other words in an older car the bulletproofing doesn't add extra value It's like, you know buying a newer version of an iPhone. No one wants to buy the older model It just gets thrown in a drawer and after all when you think about it These guys aren't buying their own bulletproof cars the government is with tax dollars, right? Oh, and by the way, that's another interesting thing about governments in Latin America High-level government Functionaries that get freebies like cars and iPads and the latest technology and stuff when they get voted out of office or get caught red-handed
[10:14] Doing something illegal and get stripped of their job and title. Guess what? They're supposed to give all that stuff back to the government, but they don't they almost always walk out of office Keeping it all the computers the cars the office furniture you name it So anyway in the end Eddie ended up buying the Jeep and didn't pay anything extra for the level four armored stuff In fact the armored thing had some advantage When one of these private bulletproofing companies starts work on a car like that They beef up the frame and a suspension for all that extra weight meaning those things can really take abuse Exactly the kind of thing Eddie had in mind since his workers were gonna drive the thing once in a while So anyway about a month or so ago Eddie and I are driving along in his 2009 Bulletproof Jeep and we're taking a little ride on the Pan American highway south through
[10:59] Salvador then Honduras and Nicaragua on down to Managua and more often than not you hit quite a few detours on the way we did and that's normal and you're forced off the main Pan American highway due to construction or Natural disasters like fallen trees or wash outs in the rainy season or the occasional boulder in the road Oh and speaking of boulders when you drive the Pan American highway You go through a lot of very flat territory and mountainous areas, too Now when you're in those mountainous areas, you've got to really keep your eyes open That's why I advise you never drive at night since they've got road obstacles in Latin America You'll never believe and I don't mean to scare you but expect Landslides and I don't mean you're driving along and it's like in the movies all of a sudden the mountainside Collapses and you're buried alive in your car. The fact is I've never seen or heard of that happening except in Hollywood
[11:49] But I have heard of chicken buses going off cliffs and killing all on board You hear about that all the time In fact just a couple weeks ago 42 people perished in Peru when a drunken chicken bus driver took the plunge like that what I am talking about and what you should Be aware of is the fact that every so often you'll be driving along on a nice two or four lane stretch and suddenly there'll be a Big bottleneck of cars because half the roads been buried in a landslide and the traffic's at a crawl and cops are everywhere and also a Capitalistic society has grown up where all the indigenous locals are trying to sell stuff car-to-car like coke and donuts and tortillas and Mangoes and peanut brittle and even birds. Yep birds people will try to sell you nice beautiful talking parrots endangered species Of course, but hell this is Latin America, right? Oh, and they'll try to sell you pirated gallons of gas, too
[12:40] Yep some of these people are logging around plastic gallons and it's always a little cheaper than at the pump So if you're in need and you don't mind taking a chance on the quality Why not but skip the parrots? You don't want to contribute to that sort of thing and by the way down here in Latin America Landslides are called Derum bees Derum be and it sounds just like it's spelled in fact I can't tell you the hundreds of times I've witnessed half a road covered with rocks Sometimes there'll be a huge bottleneck of traffic with one lane open only for days at a time And that's when these little capitalist clusters grow up around the site So often you do get shunted around the main highway for a half an hour or so Sometimes you'll swing way out into the boonies even on a dirt road somewhere eventually rejoining the main road later
[13:26] So where was I? Oh, yeah back to the story Anyway, Eddie and I are taking a trial run in his new lightly used bulletproof Jeep way out in the boonies in the wide open Spaces Eddie pulls over next to a field where three really old timers wiry leathery skinny guys in dingy white Cowboy hats are chopping away at the brush with huge machetes Eddie pulled over rolled down the window and these three guys stop what they were doing and Eddie called out to the closest guy Who was about 20 feet away? And he said when throw a hose and you're what a pregunta por favor and the guy nodded and Eddie said Quanto zanyos tini and all that meant was good work mister You mind if I asked you a question How old are you and the guy smiled a big grin and he said?
[14:14] 81 years old and then Eddie asked him the same thing about the other two and the guy answered Saying that the two guys were his cousins and one was 79 and the other guy was 80 or 81 He didn't know for sure and his cousin didn't know for sure either And then Eddie said to the guy and this is the key Are you better right-handed or left-handed with that machete in Spanish? You say mano dorecha Oh mano a scareda and the little guy yelled out low mismo los dos Which means the same and he proceeded to show us by switching hands and chopping like a maniac with the left one Then he switched hands and did another Edward scissor hands for about 10 seconds and said Mira Which means look or see then Eddie asked him what about your cousins?
[14:59] Can they chop equally well with both hands too like you then the little guy laughed and said nope No one can chop as good as I can my cousins over there They can chop equally well with each hand but both of them together can't chop as good or as fast as I can And you got a laugh. I mean it was the typical Latin macho answer, right? So we laughed a bit and Eddie said we won't bother you anymore We'll let you get back to your work Senor. So we smiled and waved and we're on our way Now as we started rolling I turned to Eddie and said Eddie What was that all about besides the fact that I bet we're the first gringos that guy ever spoke to in his whole 80 years Of life then Eddie said 81 81 years of life Johnny and that's just my point Then he said Johnny remember about six months ago when I told you I had a new theory about Latin Americans
[15:46] And I wouldn't tell you back then because I thought you'd laugh as usual Well, I think I really stumbled on something here and I was listening to him Of course looking to punch a hole in anything he came up with after all what our friends for right? He said, you know, there's a lot of different angles to it But you know how statistics always say that Latin's live about five years or so less than North Americans And of course, they're not talking about the quality of life here But the fact is Latin's have a much higher Mortality rate among their children than any first world country So that in particular drags down the total mortality statistics and all the numbers you see from places like the UN and the World Health Organization who monitors such things and nobody's exactly figured out how much but my theory has a number of angles to it
[16:32] One is that once a kid reaches about five years old He has no trouble at all living statistically as long as any first world person does Probably even longer unless of course He lives in the big city and stuck in an overcrowded bad neighborhood with his lot of gang violence air and water pollution Those kind of things now, of course, there's nothing revolutionary about that observation But there was something that Eddie said that had a completely different twist on it Now Eddie and I and a lot of expats have occasionally mentioned that we almost never meet any old-time Latin Americans really old timers guys idiot over let's say with Alzheimer's disease or for that matter You rarely meet anyone who's got a severe or chronic case of arthritis heart disease or cancer either Maybe because down here they're less likely to talk about it or complain
[17:19] Sure, these old guys and gals suffer from various medical conditions I mean when you get old who doesn't but like I've said before Very few of them are on some kind of permanent prescription medication And you know when I meet old people and talk to them and I meet quite a few they don't start telling me about How this and that is bothering them And you just never hear that laundry list of complaints that you hear from first world people of the same age up in Cleveland And the fact is most very old people that I know and many expats will tell you this seem to be much happier than their counterparts up in the first world Probably because they're living at home with the family and not stuck in nursing home eating nursing home food and and kept continuously Medicated so they won't get out of hand. By the way nursing homes are not big businesses down here with lower and middle classes The old ones the Ancienos great-grandma and great-grandpa
[18:07] They live at home with the whole extended family and upper-middle class and wealthy Latins have their own live-in nurses for grandma and grandpa And by the way, like I said, they're called Ancienos down here The word looks just like ancient in English and that's what it means now You don't hear that word ancient tossed around up at the States referring to anyone that's actually still alive Unless of course, you're making fun of someone I mean they talk about ancient Egyptians and ancient Romans and ancient aliens, but they're all dead down here Very old people are simply Ancienos ancient In fact, the nursing homes and old folks homes they do have down here are called Casas the Ancienos Meaning houses of the ancient ones, you know, it kind of sounds like a retreat up in Tibet where the Dalai Lama and his buddies Hang out, huh? Anyway, it has a more respectful tone to it than nursing home. That's for sure
[18:56] So anyway, what's up with the fact that there's practically no Alzheimer's down here in Latin America except with certain sedentary old folks in the big cities In fact out in the boonies where you see a lot of 80 and even 90 year old folks out there in a fields chopping away There's practically no Alzheimer's to speak of and here's where we come back full circle to those three old Ancienos that were chopping the brush in the fields where Eddie stopped his car now I didn't know this but it turns out that every so often Eddie would stop an old-timer Working away in the fields or carrying some load on his back and he'd ask basically two things the guys age and if he was Left or right-handed and the surprising thing that Eddie found out was that nearly all the old men and ladies that he spoke to
[19:41] Most of them by the way, he interviewed in the act of chopping brush with a big machete It seems like everyone who's brought up in the boonies can wield one of those things like Zorro by the time he's 10 years old That includes boys and girls now originally Eddie said he was curious if more of these old ancient guys were Left-handed than right-handed because Eddie's been checking out some journals from up in the states that say Left-handed people are less likely to get Alzheimer's now his aunt in Texas has Alzheimer's and she's right-handed and both Eddie and his mother Are lefties so naturally Eddie has some interest in the subject Anyway, he did not get the answer He was looking for instead what he found out by interviewing some of these old-timers in Latin America Was that nearly all these ancient old-timers in the field were ambidextrous with a machete and actually they wouldn't be out there all day
[20:33] In the first place chopping and hauling if they had Alzheimer's so the fact that most of them were ambidextrous adds another layer and a question mark to the whole thing about old age hard work mortality in the onset of Alzheimer's now I have to mention here that Eddie likes to point out that left-handed people are superior to guys like me And I like to point out to Eddie that he's no good at all with a machete and actually pretty dangerous Especially when he's had a few tequilas if you ever meet him go ahead and ask him how he got that big scar on His left leg. It's Eddie's machete equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot So what about Eddie's theories about old guys lefties Alzheimer's and machetes? Well, who knows but it sure would make for a nice interesting master's thesis or two now Wouldn't it only if you're going into the field to interview these guys?
[21:21] You'll have to sit down and drink some tequila with them And I mean a lot of tequila because it seems that that just might be the other half of the longevity equation down here Oh and by the way back to Eddie's level 4 bulletproof Jeep for just a second this I forgot to tell you a couple of days after he picked it up Eddie had the upholstery Professionally steam clean for sanitary reasons because after all this was a fat lazy government slug that he was buying it from Okay enough about that But before I move on I just want to remind all you expat wannabes and gone a bees who are thinking about coming down to my January 2014 seminar in Central America off the gringle tourist trail, of course Just go to expat wisdom calm and on the main page very near the top
[22:07] You'll see it says Latin American seminar. Just click on that and you'll get all the info Alright now here's something. I never knew about Latin Americans when I first got down the fact that they're extremely superstitious And now that's Halloween's coming I think you ought to know some of this stuff and by the way They do celebrate Halloween down here though only in somewhat upscale neighborhoods to kids actually go door-to-door trick-or-treating That kind of stuff takes place mainly in gated guarded subdivisions Anyway the stuff about breaking a mirror and getting seven years bad luck or a black cat walking across your path We're walking under a ladder all that first world superstition stuff They picked up from us from watching all that first world cable TV Of course and all our Hollywood horror movies, too
[22:53] You should also know that Latin's have their own very strange brand of superstitions to strange stuff We never heard about up in the States That's for sure to tell you the truth even long-term expats like me never truly know the full extent of all these Superstitions and how certain Latin's especially the lower and middle classes cling to them because as time goes on Once you think you've seen it all you just haven't for example. Here's a couple of strange Latin superstitions I just found out about recently now get this if someone sneezes and a sneeze is called a Distornoodle here Distornoodle man is that a tongue twister anyway Latin's think if they sneeze Somewhere someone they know at that moment is making fun of them in other words laughing at them behind their back
[23:39] So naturally Latin's don't like to sneeze much How about this one now if a Latin's right ear gets hot or turns red? And you know that can happen sometimes right anyway that means someone somewhere is talking badly about them Not just making a joke. They're saying something evil. What about the left ear? Well if the left ear gets hot or red that means just the opposite that at that moment Someone somewhere is talking quite highly of them giving them a compliment or two behind their backs But that's not all of course if you get a wasp or a bee in your house You're not supposed to kill it You're supposed to shoo it out somehow because if you have a dead wasp or a bee in your house That means in the next couple days. You'll have very bad luck Though I never could figure out if it was the person who found the dead wasp or bee who gets the bad luck or the
[24:29] Whole house gets bad luck you get varying opinions on that even worse if a black butterfly or a moth gets in your house Dead or alive that means someone close to you is gonna die quite soon Now if a bird somehow gets into your house That's a very good sign as long as it gets out alive, but if it dies look out That's very bad news, and you might as well put your house up for sale But don't tell anyone especially the realtor that the bird died now if you have your own pet bird in a cage And it dies that doesn't count it has to be a wild bird that got in somehow now There are hundreds of Latin American superstitions And I'm just gonna touch on a few because it's Halloween and these are the ones that are Particularly amusing to gringos and expats And that's why if you just hang around with gringos or live work and play in high-volume tourist areas like Cancun and such
[25:16] You're missing out on all this crazy stuff But if you have a Latin boyfriend girlfriend husband wife or cleaning lady after a while you'll catch on But like religion don't tell him you don't believe because it's like being the bad guy who has to tell the kid There's no Santa Claus now Here's one that ladies always observe and I got caught in the middle of this one once or twice myself And I instantly got yelled at for it, so I don't do it anymore. That's for sure anyway Latin ladies Never put their purses on the floor They always put it on a chair or a bed or a countertop Because if you put it on the ground or on the floor in the next few days You're guaranteed to lose money latinas all believe that so guys if your latin wife or girlfriend Asks you to get her purse out of the car when you bring it into the house if you want to get yelled at
[26:02] Put it on the floor and by the way if you're wondering why so many creatures fly into latin homes so often birds Moths bees wasps even the occasional bat and by the way if a bat flies in the house You might as well make a deal with the priest and the undertaker because the whole house is going to hell Unless again you can chew it out of the house before it gets decapitated by the ceiling fan So why do so many outdoor flying creatures get into latin homes? Well, that's because lower and middle class latin families Don't have screens at all even homes of the upper middle classes in the wealthy Leak like sieves and no one uses weather stripping either so that answers that Anyway, here's another one if a latin person goes to sleep at night and dreams of eating meat That means you might as well not go to work the next day and stay in bed because something bad is going to happen
[26:51] Now here's one that'll throw you it's my second favorite latin superstition And it goes like this if a woman's pregnant And there's an eclipse of the moon or the sun that happens during her pregnancy She's got to take a small yellow ribbon tie it into a cross and clip it to an undergarment During that eclipse or else her baby will be born with some kind of a defect Is it that weird or what and here's my favorite after a child is born? Soon enough family friends and neighbors are gonna come by and focus in on the cutest part of the baby Whether it's his hair or his ears or his face or his eyes oops. I'm at the end again. Sorry about that I'll pick this up right away on the next show You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border
[27:43] Email me the expat files at gmail.com and don't forget to check out expat wisdom calm to sign up for your free Reports on Latin America. See you next time nos vemos