#312 – The Expat Files: Life in Latin America, Cultural Nuances, and Political Critiques

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 Okay, just a quick update on my Latin American seminar for January 2014 I'm three-quarters filled now, which means I still have a few spots left So just go to expat wisdom calm click on the Latin American seminar link on the left top of the page for full details

[00:47] We're still about two months from showtime. So there's plenty of time to put your plans together. You won't be disappointed I promise you that now Since we're hitting the holiday season I often get asked by visiting tourists and in emails to if we expats don't truly miss the great family style Get-togethers that happen around Christmas Thanksgiving and New Year's especially those big North American style traditional shindigs with the turkey dinner and all those fixings that you just can't get down in Latin America like pumpkin pie and Cranberries, you know all those traditional little extras and it's true when I first came down here over 20 years ago I'll tell you how hard it was to get a real Thanksgiving dinner I mean real with all the fixings now You might remember I said in the past show that every single Latin American town over about 50,000 people has a gringo Hangout usually a bar often named in honor of the gringo who opened it like Mike's place or with some obvious all-american

[01:38] Title that everybody gets like the Harley Davidson bar or the beetle bar, you know Something any gringo can instantly connect with and back then a couple of decades ago These little American gringo bars were practically the only place in town You could get a Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's dinner as close as possible as to what your mama used to make up in The States in fact all these little gringo bars would advertise weeks in advance for that big upcoming all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving dinner for 10 Or 12 bucks. In fact in most of these gringo joints You'd have to put your name on the list So the owner could work out the amounts of specially food items they'd have to locate and since there were some items You just couldn't get down here for love or money like cherry pie filling bags of seasoned croutons for turkey stuffing Cranberries pumpkin pie filling etc. So how'd they locate that stuff easy?

[02:23] Well, not so easy Actually friends and relatives coming in and out of the country would be Recruited to bring some of that stuff with them back from the States as much as the suitcase weight limits would allow anyway And the owner of the bar being a gringo or gringo would spend weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Organizing that inventory. Oh and here's another thing a lot of us long-term expats remember from way back then in large Latin American Supermarkets every once in a while by hook and crook you'd see a couple of real American products on the shelves pumpkin or minced meat pie Filling for example and believe me when you saw something like that on the shelf if you didn't buy up every single one of them The next expat who passed by probably would since almost always back then those oddball North American products That just aren't on the Latin menu For example cranberries and cherry pie filling would certainly have been a one-off deal and once those 24 cans were gone

[03:14] They wouldn't reappear on the shelves for eight or ten months, or maybe never you couldn't procrastinate You had to make your move and as Murphy's law would have it those scarce American treats like that always came off season Like in May or June go figure right in fact one day about 15 years ago when expat Eddie first came down I remember going into his kitchen and seeing about 50 jars of ragu spaghetti sauce stacked in a corner now I've never seen ragu spaghetti sauce in Latin America Not back then and until then Eddie didn't either and that's when he told me he just happened to stumble into one of the big Salvador grocery stores when some stock boy cracked open a new palette and there they were like nuggets of gold 50 sparkling glass jars of ragu spaghetti sauce and Eddie

[04:00] Bought every one of them and every day after that for the next six months proceeded to have something with ragu sauce on it Anyway, like I said 10 15 20 years ago The only place you could get a real or kind of real Thanksgiving Christmas or New Year's dinner Was that one of those expat gringo bar holiday parties? And you know for those couple times a year when they'd have those 100% gringo events Even expats like me who preferred to stay away from mixing with gringos at gringo bars like that Actually would give in and join the celebration because if you did have a craving for a nice big traditional Thanksgiving dinner For example, you'd never be able to put that thing together on your own But that was then now that Walmart and Costco have landed throughout Latin America with over 4,000 Walmart stores alone

[04:46] You can walk into any one of those places right now and get all those special fixings what used to be rare and special Well, it's everywhere now on top of that in the last five years all the big transnational and international hotels Like for example the Radisson the Cladion the Camino Real even Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson's they advertise in the paper a couple of Days before each holiday like Thanksgiving that they too are having a complete American style Traditional dinner turkey ham and all the fixings for usually around 20 bucks So don't worry if you have those holiday cravings, they're easily satisfied Oh, and there's another way to get one of those nice American style holiday dinners too if you're in a tourist town or on the tourist trail, you can always find a chapter of Democrats abroad or Republicans abroad and they always throw a big shindig like that for Thanksgiving Christmas and New Year's

[05:38] However, if you're like me Just a thought of walking into the Republicans or Democrats abroad would not make you want to eat But make you want to vomit and speaking of Democrats and Republicans abroad I don't get it if you're a person who's so enamored with your twisted political machine Whatever it is. Why in the hell did you ever leave Big Brother land in the first place? I just can't believe anyone who comes down here and becomes an expat would be stupid enough to join a group like that I mean, isn't that what we're trying to get away from? Well the other day I kind of answered that question for myself I actually ran into a card-carrying member of Republicans abroad and it could have been Democrats abroad too or imbeciles abroad Same thing, right? And when I asked him a bit about the membership, you know what he told me which I pretty much suspected already He said the vast majority of the members are either attached to the embassy our military attaches or personnel

[06:28] Attached to the embassy our government contractors attached to the embassy who are receiving contracts out of the embassy and civilian Contractors attached to the military contractors who are attached to the embassy talk about political incest It's almost as if these government slugs once away from home like that have to affiliate with the Democrats or Republicans or get ostracized somehow I don't know and I don't care. That's why I keep far far away from drones like that and I recommend that you do too Oh and one last thing if you didn't know turkeys are native to Latin America and they don't have gigantic turkey factories like they do in the states where turkeys live their Whole miserable lives packed albota asshole here turkeys have their space and most of them are pretty much free-range Now up in the states, you'd have to pay triple for a turkey like that and down here. They all have breathing space

[07:19] That's just the way it is So if you're into turkey meat You can't do better than a turkey from your local Latin farmer And if you're not a meat eater expat Eddie's got a couple of jars of ragu a bit past their expiration date But what's in a number now changing gears a bit sometimes being an engineer in my past life Anyway causes me a bit of anxiety and stress when I'm down here in Latin America since I see so many public Projects like roads and bridges done badly half-ass or even crappy enough to be called dangerous to the public and because of the inefficient lazy slug-ass government folks and the corruption in the graft and the cronyism that go along with each public project like the Construction of an overpass or a turnpike for example, nothing regarding public works projects ever seems to change

[08:05] The fact is I'm always shocked what they get away with not to mention the fact that at least in 80% of the cases When the job is finished and the sign goes up that says thanks for putting up with the BS We're finished now in the first world the job wouldn't be finished It just never would have passed inspection and by the way when you see road crews in Latin America You almost always see a sign that says this road work is courtesy of so-and-so mayor of this municipality as if he's digging into His own pocket to pay for it. It's a case of pure illegal electioneering But no one does a thing about it. So they keep getting away with it even nuttier You'll see a road crew working with a sign next to it that says here's another example of your government working for you But what the sign really should be saying is something like this

[08:51] We're finally here to fix this intersection that was designed badly and now after four years Dozens of accidents and six deaths we're here to do it Right this time we'll try to stick closer to the plan and won't skimp too much on the asphalt Not too much. Now, of course, you'd never see a sign like that But it would be telling it like it is now to give you a concrete example Pun intended of how corrupt twisted and basically loony the whole Latin American road construction process can be let me ask you this question What would you say that if in a large town near you up in the States in the most expensive luxury hotel? There was an international asphalt Conference going on. Yeah, I said asphalt, you know that smelly black stuff on the highway That's been around for maybe a hundred years and whose composition hasn't changed in that long either now. I ask you

[09:39] Why would you need a three-day? Asphalt convention at a four star two hundred dollar a night hotel and who would go to such a dead boring thing like that Why of course, it's a place for all the world's greatest asphalt mines to gather to discuss all the amazing 21st century earth-shattering asphalt breakthroughs, of course now again I ask you if you were to see an event like that at your local Hilton hotel You'd probably think it was a joke some kind of misprint But down here in Latin America these things go on all the time and who sponsors them Why government and all the big asphalt contractors? Of course since these places are where all the backroom side deals are made for the upcoming projects And just to give you another concrete example. Sorry about that

[10:25] I'm looking at a full-color magazine ad now that says and I'm not kidding here It says in huge letters in Spanish, of course Surprising inspiring get involved yourself of the 13th annual Asphalt Congress of Latin America November 17th through 22nd and of course It doesn't surprise me that it's being held at the most expensive luxury hotel in all of Central America And what's even more stupefying is that this thing lasts for a whole week Now being an engineer myself if I was in charge of this conference The presentation would last about three minutes, and this is what I'd say to these guys Okay all you thick-headed corrupt morons buy yourself a $2 tape measure and use it to make sure that your asphalt cap is always four inches

[11:11] Nevertheless, and why is that? well, that's because it's the international thickness standard for asphalt on highways and because anything that's less than four inches becomes the number one reason for premature deterioration and breakage But you know what if I was to say that all hands would go up with one question in mind They'd say but Johnny if we followed international norms, how are we supposed to make any money? Changing gears a bit you might remember a few shows ago I read an email from a lonely nerdy gringo who's gonna come down to Latin America as a last-ditch effort looking for love And after that I got a lot of emails Sympathetic to the guy's plight and if you don't quite remember that email he signed it not fat not ugly not perverted just nerdy

[11:57] So now continuing on a similar social theme like to talk about something else I bet you never heard discussed before in the first world in a dating mating or marriage relationship Us first worlders have pet names for our loved ones You know terms of endearment some of them pretty common like sweetheart or honey or baby for example You know what? I mean, of course, that's true to down here in Latin America only multiply that by about a hundred now down here in Latin America, it's mostly the woman who uses specific terms of endearment for her significant other for example, the most common one is Carino, which means lover or my love and half the time Latins will preface a term of endearment with the word Me am I like me Carino, which means my love but more often than not

[12:47] Latins will just skip that part and leave the me off and say just Carino Which still means my love in that case the my part is inferred though Don't be too concerned about that But the following is important all you expat guys and gals who expect someday to hook up with a Latin Significant other these are the little terms of endearment you're gonna hear over and over and over again But what's different about terms of endearment in Latin America? Is that if you translated the same terms into English you could never get away with that up north? And if you tried your significant other would not be significant for long In fact, you'd likely get a slap in the face But I'm getting ahead of myself and I'll get back to that in a minute so anyway here's just one quirky thing about Latins and their terms of endearment a

[13:33] Term of endearment will often refer to one of your physical attributes For example, a guy will call his girlfriend me more Anita Which means my little tan or dark-skinned girl or a guy might address his girlfriend as me chica Dorada which means my golden girl, of course referring to the color of her skin And if a Latin woman has a significant other who's brown or tan skin, too Kind of halfway between white and black that color called Morena in Spanish for a woman in more I know in Spanish for a man. Anyway, the woman will call her man me more Anita With an O at the end of any word referring to a man and a referring to a woman because you remember down here words have genders but forget about that for a second and let me go through this list of terms of endearment and

[14:24] I know you'll find it amusing because like I said before you could never get away with this stuff up in the States Okay So if you're woman or man is really dark like black a woman might call her man me nigrito And if the woman's very dark the man will call her me nigrita It's that O and A after the word gender thing again But don't let that throw you and I think you know that the word Negro in Spanish is black If you like wine, you probably picked up a gato Negro wine from Chile, which means black cat now admittedly Gato Negro wine kind of sucks, but I digress as usual So anyway in Latin America, you'll hear a lot of couples tossing around that me nigrito me nigrita thing now of course up in the States you could never get away with that except in the ghetto because as you know up north all

[15:11] That can be a very touchy subject Now in a past show I mentioned that the n-word and the use of the n-word does not exist down here in Latin America Black folks are just called negritos. That's it. There is no insulting or pejorative term Though as you well know it depends how you say it too, right? However with indigenous Latin Americans there does exist a version of the n-word that's just as insulting to them For example, if you want to insult a native Latin American Which I never suggest by the way because remember these guys know how to use a machete the ladies too But just hypothetically if you want to insult an indigenous person Just call him an indio or an Indian to his or her face Those are pejoratives and they much prefer the term indigenous you longtime listeners knew that already, right?

[16:00] But let's get back to our terms of endearment now this one I liked and I mentioned it a long time ago and it's one of the most commonly used ones to go figure Now if a Latin guy or gal is fat Which by the way is generally the case these days thanks to the influx of cheap junk food But you knew that too and the word fat referring to a person not the oil grease or fat in foods In Spanish is gordo or gorda for a woman Then the term of endearment is me gordito for a guy and me gordita for a woman In other words, your wife husband boyfriend or girlfriend just called you my little fatty Now I ask you how many North American women would take that from a guy for more than a millisecond Worse yet, the word for pig is Serdo in Spanish

[16:49] So if you're a fat guy your wife might call you me gordito But she also might call you my serdito Which means my little piggy or a guy might call his fat wife or girlfriend me serdita Which means my fat little pig not a very good conversation starter up in Cleveland. I might say yep They're both huge insults up in the states, but terms of endearment down here Now if a girl has light colored or blonde hair It's called concha and her significant other will call her can cheetah In fact, it's actually a name down here. A lot of women are just called plainly can cheetah Which literally means my little light-haired one And if someone's as skinny as a bone and since bones are called was so is down here Then the term of endearment is me wessito for a guy and me wessita for a woman

[17:39] Which you could never get away with in English. You couldn't say to your woman What would you like to do tonight? My little bone or worse yet a woman referring to her man is my little bone up in the states A woman could say that but only behind closed doors talk about ego shattering insults, right? And here's a few more common terms of endearment like for example me Luna Which means my moon or me vida? Which means my life or me either a which means my air or me chocolate day Which means my chocolate not hard to pick up on that one, right or me? Alegria which means my happy one or me princessa, which means my princess or me Reina Which means my queen or me mujer cita, which means my little woman or me pigeon cito Which means my little baby bird or meet tortuguita?

[18:26] Which means my little turtle and all of those terms are innocent pet names that latin's use for each other but there are some that you just could never get away with up in the first world and I named a few but here Are some more and even though the following terms are used to all the time down here by lovey-dovey couples Don't try this up in the states or you're sure to get a slap or end up in the doghouse For example, if a woman has a big butt and the crude word for butt down here is culo like in the Italian language too, anyway, the term of endearment for that is me culona, which means my fat-ass girlfriend wife or significant other Yes, up north you could get a kick in the balls for that But down here it's a term of endearment and if your significant other has a big belly The term of endearment for that is me panzone or me panzone cito

[19:13] Which means my fat-bellied husband wife girlfriend or significant other now, here's a term of endearment. I've never quite figured out me Gusanito now a Gusano in Spanish is a worm So when you hear a guy or gal referring to his significant other as a Gusanito in our part of the world That would be a huge insult you little worm admit it no matter how nice you say it it comes out pretty crass But here a term of endearment and of course you've seen movies in the states that take place in the Latin ghettos LA New York Chicago or wherever and you hear the street slang word cabron and cabrona all the time and normally in the Latin culture Just say it to someone you don't know It's an insult meaning coward or bastard or jerk and when you say it to your friends

[19:59] It means buddy or dude expat Eddie explains it like this. He says it's like saying to a good buddy of yours You just ran into Hey Kid, how's it going and you know you can only get away with that with your best buddies If you say it to someone you don't know them is fighting words, right? However, if you call your significant other me cabrona or me cabron, there you go It's a term of endearment again And finally down here in Latin America if you have a significant other Who's a bit of a slob or a sloppy messy eater kind of like pig pen in the Charlie Brown comic strip? well The term of endearment for that is me pork eat though or me pork eat though for a woman and word of that word Come from pork as in porky pig no less now

[20:44] I wonder how far you'll get with your girlfriend if you call her porky up in the first world I hardly think romance will be on the menu that night now What are the weirdest terms of endearment of all is this one me? Tell you to be now listen to that again me tell you to be now, of course 99.9% of you guys will have no idea what that word is and I didn't either I heard it dozens of times and didn't know what it was at all until I saw it spelled out Then I finally got it and guess what it spells those old passé kids cartoons Teletubbies Remember those Teletubbies though, they're dead up in the States They're still in heavy reruns down here due to lag time in Spanish, of course So because of their round cushy squeezable lovable shapes, yes, they're now a term of endearment

[21:32] So down here calling someone a Teletubie just might get you to second base. Who knows go figure and yes as for me I've been called a lot of things in my life, but never a Teletubie though I suppose it's only a matter of time So anyway, you expect guys and gals gonna bees and wannabes get ready for all that in the onslaught of pet names, too Because believe me if you get involved with a Latin person, you can't avoid it get used to it Though I admit guys especially you'll never get used to being called a little bone or little worm in public and yes public or private your Significant other will use the same terms of endearment. So you'll have to get used to that, too So all you little worms out there take note and though the object is to learn as much Spanish as you can Of course, you'll find the more you learn the more embarrassing certain things can get

[22:21] Again, like expat Eddie says it was all good and well when his Spanish sucked and his girlfriend's pet named for him was not His son, but when he found out later, it meant big nose. He had kind of a hard time dealing with it Sure. He knows he's got a classic honker, but it's a lot different having your girlfriend remind you about it ten times a day Now said about that. Let's change gears again Now, you know I've mentioned before that do gooder gringos and first world governments are always donating stuff down here to the third world And I've also mentioned that maybe only about 20% of what they donate actually gets to the people the rest gets skimmed off By middlemen government intermediaries or just plain stolen and that just keeps going on I see it all the time and I see the happy eyes of the do-gooder gringos that come down here for a week or two

[23:09] Thinking they've done their great deed for humanity only to see what they've done crash or burn some months later I see the crash, but they don't they're back up at church in Cleveland singing in the choir again Now I'm talking about massive fraud and misdirection in Humanitarian aid, but what about stupid first world governments that actually sell or give away arms to third world countries? Which is about one of the stupidest things in the world a government could do and the US does it all the time It's a nice balance, huh? 20,000 sacks of rice along with 10,000 Berettas I tell you I just don't get it, but I don't get a lot of things so I'm not gonna let that worry me Anyway, if there's anything more stupid than a first world government giving away military hardware or giving anything to another third world country

[23:56] It's when third world countries whose own people are starving to death Give away freebies to other poor third world countries whose population is also starving now That's completely beyond understanding now get this article. That's been all over the Latin American press lately It says here the Indian ambassador to Guatemala. That's India. His name is subitara Botachari has just announced a donation of solar panels made in India Worth an estimated one million US dollars. That's one million now it blows my mind that a country like India who if you look up the statistics has 26 times the number of desperately poor people than the country of Guatemala. That's

[24:43] 26 times as many desperately starving people according to the UN So what the hell they doing giving away a million dollars and free solar panels to Guatemala for man I'll tell you every government just deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth, don't they? Well, actually I take that back. Who was it that said that people get the government they deserve? I think it was Thomas Jefferson or and Rand or somebody but I know that HL Menken said it best He said people deserve the government they get and they deserve to get it good and hard Now I have to mention that Indian solar panel donation to Guatemala is not the end of it Turns out they're doing the same thing with Honduras and Nicaragua and Salvador and you have to wonder who's the idiot in the Indian Government that's behind all that whoever he is with brainpower like that

[25:31] He'd be a shoo-in for Congress in the States, wouldn't he? And now I'd like to address some email questions I've been getting about smart meters people want to know if they have smart meters in Latin America Since we all know up in the first world the conversion to a hundred percent smart meters is well on its way And I'm sure all of you know that once a smart meter is in place the utility company and the government they send their data to Know just about everything you're doing in the house for one thing They know when you're home based on your usage and they know when and how long you use your various appliances So whether you agree with that or not, which I don't Specifically the bit about them knowing when you're home or not now that obviously leaves you vulnerable to burglaries and such since Anyone who gets a hold of your information will know when you're not home

[26:16] So if you liked smart meters before just think about that one for a while. However, if you trust your government, you won't worry Hmm. So do they have smart meters in Latin America? Well, the answer is yes in all the latest greatest newest subdivisions and brand new malls and commercial centers They are installing smart meters, which means about one 100th of one percent of Latin America is wired with a smart meter and how long will it take them to wear the rest? I'll bet you a Bitcoin 50 years at least in fact I know a guy who works at the utility company down here and he told me there are more people Stealing electricity in just the country of Honduras then there are total smart meters installed in all of Latin America And when I mentioned my concerns about smart meters in general, he just laughed and rolled his eyes and he said yeah

[27:06] Sure, we're installing them all right because that's what we're supplied with but they're really stupid meters Because we have no way to monitor all the information that comes from those things like you do up in the first world We're installing the meters, but we're not installing the associated computers and networks to catalog and document all that information That's phase two and that should come in about five years He said and then he winked and said, you know, we'll get the hardware, but we'll never use it You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America coming to you twice a week from somewhere south of the border Email me the expat files at gmail.com and don't forget to check out expat wisdom comm to sign up for your free

[27:51] Reports on Latin America. See you next time. No spamos