#509 – The Expat Files: Navigating Life, Law, and Culture in Latin America

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 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, let's get to a few things then now occasionally I get emails from people saying well Johnny You tell us a lot of neat and cool stories about gringo successes down in Latin America and even tell us about the failures But how about gringo criminals and gringos doing bad things down in Latin America?

[00:50] Well, here's a story for you But before I get to that let me mention that every so often you look in one of the big Latin American newspapers and you see a Gringo's been captured and is about to be extradited or maybe he's being arraigned in Latin court now I'm not saying that's common. In fact, it's very rare But when you do see something like that It can be for something really nasty like kiddie porn pedophilia or some kind of sexual perversion You know in most places you get jail time for that But in other places it qualifies you for politics or the priesthood By the way gringos almost never get busted big time for drugs Oh, maybe petty offenses But they usually buy their way out of that stuff and it never hits the courts or makes the papers Which is why down here you just have to have a lawyer that said case in point

[01:37] There was a recent story in the papers about a gringo holed up in San Pedro Sula Honduras who'd been running a kiddie porn operation for some years selling that crap to people up in the first world Of course recruiting and enticing young Honduras street kids Which is surely pretty easy to do since there are so many really crappy neighborhoods in big Latin American cities a lot of young kids On the edge of poverty and bad guys know they can entice these kids with a new pair of shoes or a happy meal That said here's a story along that vein told to me first person from an eyewitness Now a longtime gringle friend of mine is an English teacher in a high-end helicopter school in Managua, Nicaragua After a couple of years of not seeing each other we connected the other day and he told me about something that happened in his 20 unit apartment building in Managua something that really disturbed him now

[02:26] He lives on the fourth floor in that 20 unit building and he said in all the years He's been living there. There have only been three gringo tenants renting those apartments him another gringo teacher friend of his and 50 something gringo doctor and MD now this gringo doctor would only be in his apartment about three months out of the year Rest of time it would be vacant and my friend said he only really met the doc a couple times in the hallway and in the elevator They never did speak much, but he told my friend he was working for a kind of a save the children style NGO You know one of those do-gooder organizations He'd be up in the States eight or nine months out of the year and come down here do the counseling and charity work Wherever for groups of young kids in dire poverty Anyway, some months ago my gringo teacher friend told me the other gringo teacher in the building knocked on his door and said

[03:18] Listen, I think something very screwed up is going on with that gringo doctor on the fifth floor Then he said the next time he comes for his three-month stint I think you should try to keep your ears open for any strange noises you might hear because his apartment's right above yours Then he said what do you know about that guy? Anyway, then he said not much I've only seen him three or four times in the hallway and the elevator Seems nice enough quiet and I really never hear any sounds coming from above from his apartment But you know this building is concrete and block So I doubt if I could hear a shotgun blast if it was in the next room Then the other guy said you ever see him with anybody said no can't say that I have Then his gringo friend said, you know, I'm a couple of apartments down from him But we're on the same floor and you know what?

[04:05] I saw this guy go into his apartment three separate times now With four or five young grade school girls in their school uniforms. They couldn't have been more than 12 or 13 years old He said well, I think he's got something going with underage girls, you know poor underprivileged impressionable young girls from public schools He said look if this doctor perverted creep, he's got the perfect setup He's working at an NGO for underprivileged kids and our apartment abilities got a dozen grade schools within a half a mile radius And you know when he said public school that makes all the difference because those are those free state schools The schools for the poor and the sweaty masses the ones whose parents make, you know Three hundred dollars a month or less and you know as it turns out almost all public grade schools in junior highs in Latin

[04:53] America give the kids breakfast or lunch as part of the plan not much But it is nutritious, which is sometimes the only good meal they get all day So parents send their kids there often just for the meal. It's the incentive Anyway, this guy told my teacher friend on two of those occasions He walked up to the guy's door and put his ear to it He listened for a while, but he said it was very quiet in there way too quiet He said four four or five grade school girls. Anyway, he kept thinking what could they be doing in there? Was it a birthday party some kind of legitimate get-together for the NGO a counseling session maybe but it just didn't smell right So anyway, this guy told my teacher friend to keep his eyes and ears open so my buddy actually went down to the drugstore and bought a stethoscope believe it or not and

[05:41] One day he got a phone call from his other gringo buddy who said he's in there now with some girls Listen see what you can find out and my gringo teacher friend listened And what he heard was the shower running non-stop for at least a half an hour straight And he heard a lot of tiny footsteps, too Obviously something very strange was going on in that room So a few days later my gringo teacher friend a really good guy who's got a great heart He got a hold of the building maintenance man He told the guy his suspicions But he seemed afraid that if he started something he might lose his job, and he wanted no part of it after all There was no real proof yet But my gringo friend undaunted bribed him give him 15 bucks to open the door with his passkey

[06:28] So the two gringo slipped in for five minutes and took pictures and check things out So what did they find this guy was not a doctor at all now? They didn't find any porn or any real incriminating evidence there was a computer there But they couldn't get in they didn't have the password But they did find out the guy's real name and that he was not a doctor at all now that single medical reference book or Professional journal so the guy wasn't a doctor. He wasn't using his real name not only that they found nothing at all Referencing him to any kind of NGO project with save the children or anything like that So in the end there was a smoking gun, but no bullet nobody's no real proof by the way using an alias is not a crime

[07:14] Unless you use it for fraudulent purposes and that bit about impersonating a doctor well This is Latin America. You know so with no real proof and no one really willing to get involved Except those two gringo school teachers. Here's what happened next my gringo Buddy went to a payphone and the next time the doctor was in he phoned the so-called doctor and addressed him by his real name Saying quote leave those young girls alone or else and then he hung up Two days later he did it again and a few days after that he did it again all the time Disguising his voice then he had a few more gringo teachers at his school do the same thing By the end of the week the guy was packed up and gone

[08:01] So you can draw your own conclusions from that little story bottom line Latin America now is like the US was back in the 50s and 60s and 70s Regarding the cops the courts in the legal system of course I'm talking about off the gringo tourist trail now which in a way is a really fabulous thing however if you're a really bad Sort of person you can come down here to Latin America and do terrible things for a long long time Before you ever arouse suspicion and get caught and possibly you'll never get nabbed at all So yes Latin America can be and is a refuge for some very very bad people because as you probably figured out by now There's no surveillance state, which is excellent for Liberty, but corruption is rampant They say everyone has their price even up in the first world though down here the price is generally so low

[08:48] There's no comparison in fact like I said in the past show a long long time ago down here You can buy off a Supreme Court justice for five or ten thousand bucks whereas up in the states It could take millions or the promise of a future seat on the board of Monsanto But I don't have to tell you that so how do I know that kind of legal corruption occurs here in Latin America? Well because it's reported every single day down here in Latin newspapers not to mention I know a few Latin lawyers and they've told me cases. They've been involved in personally themselves in other words They were actually told by a judge or his toadies that not only would he accept a bribe? But exactly how much was necessary so anyway sad as it sounds these things do happen But no it in my over 25 years down here in Latin America myself I've encountered hundreds if not thousands of good and nice gringos and some gringos

[09:39] Thankfully just a few who gave off a very bad vibe I did not want to be friends or get close to them that said I've never had a personal encounter with a real live gringo Pedophile or pervert, but then again who knows what goes on behind closed doors, right? Not to mention seems like everybody's got their own idea of what really makes a died-in-the-wool pervert like for example these days Where do you draw the line in fact? I remember my mother telling me one set back in the late 50s my dad my uncle and some of their friends We're at a bachelor party and someone brought a nudist colony video in the end the place got rated Everyone had to pay a fine and go to court and all their names appeared in the Chicago paper All that shame and embarrassment for the family back then for a stinking grainy faded old black and white nudist colony video

[10:27] Man how things have changed huh anyway if you remember a famous judge up in the states once was asked to describe his Definition of pornography he said well, it's hard to define in a few words, but I sure know it when I see it Changing gears here. I get a lot of emails from people saying Johnny. Look. I'm a professional. I'm an engineer. I'm a biologist I'm a chemical engineer. I'm a career guy I spent a lot of long tough years at school and maybe I can make some money down there in my chosen field So Johnny, what if I come down to Latin America and try to get a job using those skills? I mean, I'm a real professional trained in the first world, and I've got a first-class university diploma to prove it So with that gringo advantage Why wouldn't the company be glad to hire a first-rate first-world gringo trained biologist for example or civil engineer again?

[11:18] Remember if you have a very valuable Scientific or technical degree from the states it is quite valuable down here too And you can get a job companies advertise for people like that all the time of course You'll have to know decent Spanish and suppose you do then what well for example If let's say you're a civil engineer up in the states, what can you expect to make up in the first row well? Anywhere from 50 to start to 100 grand a year depending on experience However up in the states right now there are virtually zero jobs for new civil engineers The economy is shot and even though the US infrastructure is in dire need of repair You're pretty much out of luck in fact when I went to engineering school way back before the age of cell phones It was common knowledge on the engineering campus that the two easiest engineering degrees to take that is the two

[12:08] Engineering degrees back then anyway that were not ballbusters well Can you guess what the two most lightweight undergrad engineering degrees were back then anyway by the way starting salaries for these two engineering degrees? We're the lowest two how about this civil engineering and engineering management? Yes, that's a degree an engineering management guy is the liaison between the techno nerd engineers designing stuff and the client buying the service Or the package or whatever anyway that said what if you have a pretty valuable degree up in the first world like for example Civil engineering and you knew some Spanish and you wanted to come down here and try your luck at that career Especially now that you know full well the American dream has died because your civil engineering degree is well toilet paper

[12:57] So then why mention civil engineering because I have in front of me in the yellow pages classified ads it says in Spanish of course wanted graduate civil engineer Yes, civil engineering is booming down here in Latin America because well You've got nothing but crap roads down here not to mention road projects that have been on the books for 20 years or more and Haven't even been started yet. So anyway a starting salary for a real graduate civil engineer down here in Latin America a cool $625 a month Now surely if a first world gringo came down and applied for that job You probably could squeeze another 100 maybe 200 a month out of them And even if you could manage a grand a month, well, you can see where I'm going with this

[13:44] So don't count on taking your first world degree and transferring down here and making decent bucks That's not gonna happen. I mean, let's face it when you can actually hire a medical doctor an MD for 800 or a thousand bucks a month Meaning for virtual first world slave wages, you could have your own private MD live in well That kind of says it all doesn't it which is why the vast majority of gringos and expats who come down here either Start their own businesses or they come down and live on their pensions or Social Security Whatever possibly their accumulated savings and the rest maybe three to five percent end up working at least for a while Anyway as English teachers in high-end private helicopter schools, or they work in call centers Nope, not as you're regular on the phone grunt workers

[14:31] But as call center trainers because you're the guy with the perfect English certainly at the call center You're the person everyone else wants to emulate and yes as a call center trainer or teacher You could make 600 to a thousand bucks a month I know I know poverty wages up in the states But at least down here the cost of living is so low if you come down with a very limited amount of cash Let's say only five or ten grand a call center or teaching job will get you started and maintain you for a long long time And surely within a half year or so you'll find your nation You'll start your own business most all of us do unless of course You're a very laid-back backpacker type and then a lot of times you end up staying at one of those helicopter schools for Ever and ever I know a few guys like that and to me It's kind of like being trapped in another system

[15:18] But they seem to like it at least down here You know you've got that lag time thing going and it's like being a teacher back in the states in the 60s and 70s Where the kids and the parents really did appreciate the teachers and they actually had respect and were held in high esteem Meanwhile up in the states the teachers are so burnt out all they care about is that underfunded retirement package That'll probably never come. Okay. Can you stand another story? Well as it turns out I'm doing a little electrical installation job at one of my places now And so as usual just like with any big project you have find yourself running back and forth to the hardware store and the electrical Supply store and since I started on this thing maybe three weeks ago I've been back and forth to the same electrical supply store about six times now I'm talking about a big warehouse style electrical supply store

[16:05] They've got everything from switches cables and wires to those gigantic power poles and transformers Just about everything now as in most retail outfits in Latin America You go to a sales desk and you talk to a guy and you make your orders And he gives you a slip of paper and you go to another part of the store pay for it You get three carbon copies. Yep. There goes the rainforest Then finally you take those carbon copies go to another part of the store to pick up your items there You'll see five or ten guys screwing around with slips of paper going through that chaotic maze of junk and picking out your items hopefully that only takes about ten more minutes, so I've been back and forth to this place five or six times in the past three weeks and Remember, I'm way off the grango tourist trail. So no one speaks English Generally now when I finally get my supplies in hand

[16:54] It seems the same guy always waits on me a guy with a beat-up I love New York t-shirt even though there are eight or ten guys working back there in that warehouse It's always that I love New York guy who takes my slips and gets my stuff Then he walks in out to the parking lot and puts it in my car for me normal procedure for this electrical store Anyway, the second time that guy helped me. He started speaking to me in English pretty crappy English I'm talking about your normal big-city deported illegal alien low-class English down here Eventually your ear gets attuned to things like that. So this guy's story deported from the states American Dream crushed Now working at an electrical supply store in Central America Now remember at nearly every visit he'd helped me bring my tubes and cable and connectors out to the car each time

[17:41] He'd try to impress me with his terribly incomplete knowledge of the US But he was a nice enough guy so I'd let him babble on now at my last visit just two days ago He cornered me in the parking lot and said, you know, I learned a lot of stuff up in the states I can do some electrical some plumbing. I can paint cars do bodywork gardening drywall. You name it I can do it just like the gringos up in the first world wanted I know the difference. I know what a Americanos won. They care about the details He said you come here a lot you buy a lot of stuff. Could you use another worker? I'm available That's when I asked him the million dollar question. I said what happened? How come you're down here and not in the states right now? Then he looked down and stared at his shoes for a while and said, you know, I got deported but it wasn't my fault I didn't do anything wrong. I've got no record. I promise and I said well what happened get this

[18:31] He said when he got to Laredo, Texas, he went with a bunch of mojados That's slang for illegal wetback, which is common term down here not derogatory by the way his group immediately went to a little meeting at the house of what he called a facilitator a Connected Latin lady in Texas who knew all the ropes legal and otherwise She was a kind of a placement service and she helped him get social security numbers fake IDs driver's licenses And she explained exactly how to go down to social services and sign up for all the numerous programs including old vomit care How's that? Anyway, he said he'd had a couple appointments with this lady after that and the place got raided while he was there And he and about 15 others were deported So then I asked him if he was in Laredo How'd he end up in New York because he told me he got his t-shirt in New York and in the end

[19:19] He came clean with me and told me he'd been deported five different times and in the end I told him I didn't need any help and it didn't matter really if he spoke English or not What matters to me? I said was that you've been back and forth to the states five different times by your own account Why would I want to hire someone who obviously has his heart set on staying in the states? The truth was he just didn't have a very encouraging resume, which brings me to a related story the other day I was talking to a new expat a very smart nice guy who came to one of my recent Latin insider seminars after that He decided to move his whole family down a wife and three kids So anyway, they've been down a couple months now And he was telling me that he'd bought most of his new furniture from a certain furniture Shop and that there was a very nice English speaking sales person who attended to him every time he came in the store now

[20:10] My gringo friend made the comment that a lot of gringos make he said customer service in Latin America really sucks Except that this store and with this guy he's a gem He said not only did the guy speak English But he went well above and beyond the call of duty on a customer service scale of one attend This guy was a nine which is pretty much unheard of down here in Latin America Anyway after my gringo friend had done his deals and bought all his furniture a couple of weeks later He has a phone call from that guy So then you might ask how to get his phone number That's because when you buy furniture you get it delivered to your house and you got to give your house address your telephone all that To coordinate the trip right and being that this English-speaking Latin guy was the salesperson. He had all that info anyway He phoned up my gringo friend my friend thinking he was just calling to see if the furniture was okay

[21:01] You know giving a follow-up call whatever as certain salespeople do up in the United States You know you always remember a nice follow-up call like that anyway That's what he was thinking but instead the guy phoned him up to ask him for a job So folks that is gonna happen to you too. Remember what I've said in shows in the past Everybody wants to work for a gringo. I've seen that phenomena over and over again But beware when hiring Latin's who already speak pretty good English Okay changing gears to show you the depth in the intellectual capacity of newspaper readers here in Latin America there just happens to be in one of Columbia's biggest daily newspapers a Full-page article with the deep and profound title quote how to take the perfect selfie

[21:50] Now I don't care what this Latin reporter says. I know how to take the perfect selfie first You'll need two smart phones Step one attach one cell phone very solidly to the end of a selfie stick push the non-business end the end you hold Deep into a soft section of ground so your selfie stick is Perpendicular to the earth like a pin on a putting green make sure it's sticking out of the ground from one and a half to two Feet then you take a generous dab of vacuous celebrity endorsed facial cream slather your cell phone generously Being careful not to get any on the lens set the automatic photo timer for about five seconds Pull down your pants spread your cheeks and sit on it Meanwhile make sure that one of your favorite Facebook friends is standing by to take a shot of your face

[22:37] While the whole event is going down Literally, then take the better of the two selfie shots and post it on your Facebook page again That's for informational purposes only which gets me thinking about that old cliche. God must really love morons and idiots He made so many of them. Of course. I know none of you listeners out there fall into those categories We're talking about the rest of the world now You all know Halloween just ended right and for those of you who really know your holidays You know the day after Halloween is all Saints Day, right and November 2nd all souls day now Latin America being extremely Christian they celebrate November 1st as the day of the dead children and November 2nd the day of the dead adults and get this on those two days

[23:24] You can actually go to the bakery and buy dead bread. It's called pan de Muerto that translates literally to Bread for the dead dead bread. That's not all on that day You're supposed to eat part of that bread and leave the rest out overnight And that's supposed to be for the person or persons in your family who have died So you set that bread out overnight with a lit candle on a table So it really is regular bread with a particular shape for the holiday. Yeah, it's safe to eat There's no dead bits in it except for maybe a few insect holes and cockroach wings. You never know, huh? This is Latin America. Anyway, that said remember I've got my January 2016 expat insider seminar coming up as usual I'll be limiting it to only 25 people and by the way

[24:11] It's way over half filled now with two months left to sign up before the seminar begins I've got 17 people in already now, of course, you know the early bird sign-up discount of $100 a person expired on November 1st, and that was about six days ago since this show is going out on Friday, November 6th However, there's still a chance for a few people to get in that early bird discount I'll tell you how that happened turns out my good friend and webmaster John Galt is a pretty clever guy as any good Entrepreneur worth his salt might do he managed to con me out of five seminar tickets a while back at The early bird discount initially he was holding some of those spots for his special friends coming in from Panama and points north But now schedules have shifted and plans have changed and of course

[24:59] I've agreed to hold to our original agreement with the early bird discount So if you want to get in on that deal, send him a personal email. That's John Galt at start mail calm That's John Galt G-a-l-t at start mail calm and at least for a while. He'll be passing on that early bird discount So send him an email and take advantage of my moment of weakness Send him an email and get in on it while you can oh and by the way for those of you who already signed up For the seminar and those of you who will be signing up Remember, there's a new pre and post seminar trip being offered by none other than John Galt himself So if you can arrange your schedule for a couple of days either before or after the seminar You can sign up and have John Galt as your personal guide and those excursions again are being scheduled

[25:47] For three days before the seminar and three days after the seminar. So then what's that gonna be like? Well first you'll get to see the place that's considered to be the most beautiful lake in the world I know I know everybody thinks the most beautiful lake in the world is an hour's drive from wherever they live in Cleveland, Milwaukee Whatever, but I'm telling you you ain't seen nothing yet But most of all for all you guys and gals who like to go on that little trip You'll get to grill a guy that came down to one of my seminars three years ago and who's been living here ever since and the Value of that is he's had so many experiences that most all new gringos must go through at one time or another That means he's a fountain of information for any new expat. He's done the residency thing banking internet land real estate

[26:35] Shopping utility hookups dealing with helicopter schools buying cars dealing with traffic and the cops and lawyers you name it He's done it sometimes with a lot of frustration, but mostly with great success and best of all He's an international traveler himself and a real live personal security expert, too So you some in our attendees do try to work in an extra three days either before or after the seminar So you can tag along with John Galt and hear what it's really like to Transition from being a frustrated first-world gringo to an expat living happily ever after off the gringo tourist trail Remember John Galt did all that with a whole 40 words of bad Spanish under his belt Okay, that said last week. I mentioned I've got my own YouTube channel now

[27:21] Just go to YouTube plug in the expat files or expat files and get my commentary along with the slideshow And please when you go there, don't forget to subscribe to my channel. That's important south of the border 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 if you want me to help you sort out your own Latin American plans schedule a one-on-one consult with me Just send an email and let me know at the expat files at gmail.com. No spamos