#539 – The Expat Files: Navigating Life, Culture, and Challenges 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 People ask me sometimes Johnny you must get hate mail and people sending you complaints and stuff How come you don't read that stuff on the air? Well, of course, I do get hate mail and complaints after all I'm totally politically incorrect and I do get emails from first world ladies

[00:46] Once while telling me that I'm racist or a bigot or a sexist or a classist I guess I've been called every kind of ist there is and the one I like best Nonconformist and I'll wear that one proudly. I think I'll make a t-shirt out of that someday or maybe not because then I'd be Conforming to the t-shirt norms then wouldn't I you know in the radio business if you don't get complaints That means either no one's listening or you're such a big ass kisser that everyone loves you because you offend no one But that doesn't mean people are tuning in either Let's face it when a scientific study from a big university says that kids have three IQ points less on average When they drink fluoridated water than kids that drink non-fluoridated water and the article only gets 5,000 hits Meanwhile a parrot craps in the toilet and flushes it and gets four million hits

[01:32] But that just shows that the average person is not interested in what's really happening in the world or much less the truth Which reminds me of a saying I once saw in a t-shirt at the gift shop of the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago on the front of the shirt It said the truth is like poetry and on the back of the shirt. It said and everyone hates poetry now I almost bought that t-shirt, but I was in college and broke that said let's hear some complaint mail This one comes from one of our Canadian listeners. We have a lot of those it says hi, Johnny I really do enjoy your informative and educational broadcast and straight from the hip style of reporting and Those Cleveland references I fall into the expat gonna be category I'll be moving from Canada to Latin America or perhaps we should create a new category

[02:21] Considering the ever declining state of affairs here in Canada and that new category How about have to be as someone who's listened to your shows for a while? I've noticed in the last few years you've really started to push the seminar thing When one is scheduled to occur about three months into the future this pitch comes in a form of straight-out reminders or most recently seminar references Strategically woven into the usual humorous anecdotes So being quote Seminared several times a show in a half an hour span is kind of like being given a station ID call every two songs as Played by regular broadcast radio stations I sometimes ponder if station managers think that the audience has Alzheimer's and they have to be reminded every seven minutes with stations They're tuned into for those without memory recollection issues. The repetition becomes annoying now

[03:07] I had not planned not yet Anyway to come to one of your seminars But I do think it's a great service you're providing and I think for the small percentage of your listeners who do make the pilgrimage It's undoubtedly a life-changing experience But for the moment for me It's not relevant and I wondered if there was an option for you to make available a subscription based version of your show For those who wish to hear quote commercial free listening in addition to producing the current product Perhaps split an a B product comparison test to see who picks up the offer on your listeners email list Aren't those who are interested in attending already receiving notifications and updates about it with your experience in radio? I imagine the editing of a show into two very similar versions would be a snap to do Please liken this email my first and probably not my last to you to the customer feedback card filled out at any retail store

[03:58] Thanks for sharing your work Johnny in any case. Thanks Chris Winnipeg, Canada Thanks Chris for that and as usual when Canadians complain they do it in an upbeat kind of nice way Maybe next week I'll read you a real evil email from a flaming feminist who wants to buy a mail-order machete and practice it on yours truly Anyway, Chris. Thanks for the email criticisms are always welcome But you do know by reading your email you inadvertently slipped a few seminar plugs in there yourself Thanks for that. So today I don't have to be creative and try to work one in myself But I must say in my defense a lot of people who've been to my seminars send me emails So I do think I'd be giving them a bit of a short shrift if I didn't mention after reading one of their emails That they were seminar attendees

[04:45] Anyway, you listeners out there are getting a month or so reprieve from seminar blurbs Like Chris says I do start plugging them about three months before they launch I know it might sound to some of you who aren't interested at all that I'm overdoing it and beating the topic to death But five years ago or so when I first started doing them I'd advertise them a month to a month and a half before they started and then I'd get complaint mail from people saying Johnny you're not giving us enough time to make arrangements to get time off to book flights, etc. Etc So it was really under pressure that I stretched it out to three months before the seminars begin if it was up to me I'd send out an email and mention it once and get on with the show So as with everything in life how to find a happy medium, that's the sixty four thousand dollar question And by the way, for those of you who use that term and don't really know where it came from the sixty four

[05:34] Thousand dollar question was a game show that started in 1955 where you'd win 64,000 bucks if you went all the way and if that show was on the air today, they have to give away five hundred and sixty seven thousand dollars that would buy what sixty four thousand did back in 1955 so u.s. Funny money has eroded nearly 90% since then and that's reason number 3278 to VWYF that is vote with your feet Anyway, if any of you other listeners wants to send me a comment or a complaint free feel to send me an email Yeah, I said free feel as any good dyslexic might even so I'm sure to get some sexist hate mail on that But you know what at least I can say what I want and no one's censoring me. Isn't that cool?

[06:21] Okay, this seems to be the week for Canadian listener emails This one from a Canadian who complains about a previous Canadian who wrote me an email. How about that? It starts hola Johnny by the way, that's hola h-o-l-a It's the informal Spanish term for hi Meaning you don't say hola or hi in Spanish to someone you don't know. It's got to be someone you're familiar with anyway It starts off. Hola Johnny. It's PT Marcos again from Canada I couldn't resist responding to David my Canadian countryman who is offended that Latins find Canadian accents the most difficult to understand that would mean Canadians speaking Spanish with a Canadian accent And by the way writing this email will help pass the time as I overhear the Spanish

[07:07] Conversations in this inner-city Mexican bus. I'm riding on now Johnny as I listen to David's passionate and well-written comments On the email you read on the show. I kept waiting to hear him say hey I've been to Latin America many times and no one has ever had any problem understanding my Spanish But I only heard him reason based on his Canadian bound experiences with Latin's not his personal experiences in Latin America I get it. We Canadians can be parochial at times You know just because we Canadians have an accent in English. It doesn't mean we have one in Spanish or does it? For example a few weeks ago. I met an Australian traveler in a local cantina in Mexico whose accent in English was so thick I almost got out Google Translate and set it to Australian in order to understand him

[07:56] But then he started speaking in Spanish to his friends and his accent was impeccable. Don't ask me how that's possible I'm just relaying my own boots on the ground astonishment Unfortunately, I haven't been so lucky even though I speak Spanish much better than most gringos I know there have been way too many times when Latins have listened to my Spanish with a blank stare and said Okay, Señor, which is their equivalent of whatever in fact Reminds me of the same blank stare that I give when someone's Spanish speed kicks in to overdrive and leaves me simply nodding and smiling and thinking whatever But it's not our fault. It really depends what type of person we're talking with Latins who are educated and read well can understand me without difficulty

[08:42] It's those capacino farmers and small store owners who wonder what language I'm speaking sometimes Perhaps it's because we Canadians tend to over enunciate We will flawlessly sound out phrases like como esta usted So if said to a vaquero in a small beach town, he's liable to give you a look. He's expecting como esta usted Yes on the street and in totally informal situations they like to round off words and cut off letters or Perhaps it's because as Canadians like to use a more schooled vocabulary As a Mexican friend once explained to me the waiters and other service people in small beach towns in the Campo Have grown up speaking in their own version of Spanish So if you happen to use a different verb, even though it has the same meaning in English

[09:29] They ain't gonna understand it But rest assured I'm making progress because I can finally pronounce the word ayuda So to my Canadian paisano, I'd like to say c'est la vie. Don't sweat it. After all, we still have that gringo advantage Signed PT Marcos and then he says thanks Johnny for the show on tips to finding affordable rentals in Latin America Thanks for that PT. You know, there's a kind of a joke going around Central America between not only Latins But long-term expats and gringos too They say the easiest way to tell if the gringos a Canadian is to ask him What country is north of Panama and south of Nicaragua? Turns out no matter how many times the Canadians visited Costa Rica or even lived there. He'll pronounce it

[10:16] Costa Rica and the rest of the American gringos will say Costa Rica. So if someone says to you hey there What do you do on weekends in Costa Rica? They ain't got no hockey. Well, not upset about that Oh, and here's another strange thing concerning gringos and expats trying to learn their Spanish They'll come a time after you've been at it a while that you'll turn on the TV and you'll understand almost everything the newscaster says and the weather lady and all official announcements because they're all informal Spanish and when that moment happens when you Have that epiphany that you finally can understand people speaking Spanish at their speed, too You think man, I finally got it. I've made it. Thank God I won't have to ask people to repeat themselves anymore Well, I hate to be a party pooper

[11:01] But don't be too confident because you see all you have to do to wipe out that euphoric moment Completely is to turn the channel to a Spanish telenovela, which is a soap opera or any movie That's in Spanish and you'll find once again that you're longing for people to repeat themselves Yep, two steps forward one step back get used to it So then why is it the first people we understand clearly are newscasters and weather ladies because it's your more formal Spanish Spoken clearly concisely and a little bit slower than conversational Spanish on the street Oh and one more thing just for a second. I'd like to mention the name Bill Gates now I don't like Bill Gates at all In fact, I think he and his wife should be shipped to the Congo stripped naked and put in line with all those poor

[11:47] Barefoot Africans that are getting his free vaccines then he should go back for seconds However, I did catch a bit of an interview with him the other day and he did say something rather interesting And you know when Bill Gates talks, it's always news, right? What do you think he said when the interviewer asked him what the biggest mistake he'd made in his life? He said get this Not learning a second language So as much as I'd like to see Bill Gates drink a couple of roundup cocktails or get kidnapped by the Zetas He sure hit the nail on the head with that second language answer But as for everything else he stands for his buddy buddy relationships with the Bushes the Clintons the old vomits as Well as his frequent pajama party stayovers at the Lincoln bedroom at the White House

[12:33] All I have to say is Bill Gates. You're a flaccid two-faced piece of And again, I mean that in the kindest way and in the true spirit of the season, okay on that joyous note Let's move on now for all you listeners out there who thought I was finished with that Continuous saga about that Latin buddy of mine who lost his identification card called the DPI in some Latin countries Then if you remember I told the story of how we both went down to immigration and watched him go through the nightmare Process of applying for a new one Anyway, in a short recap, he lost that identity card, which is like the Latin Social Security card turns out for Latin citizens It's the most important document they could have even more important than a passport Each country issues them to their citizens and they have that little gold RFID chip that by the way

[13:23] Doesn't work. Yep. You gotta love it here in Latin America, huh? Anyway, you use that card to withdraw or deposit money in banks cash checks identify yourself at government offices You need to produce it to get electric telephone or cable service and when you get pulled over by the cops They'll ask you for it too And of all things you need to produce it to get a Costco membership card too How about that? And of course gringos and expats get cards like that too when they get their permanent residency Anyway in two recent expat files shows we went through step by step all the crap You got to go through to get a replacement card That is if your original is stolen or you lost it By the way one thing I forgot to mention is that when you go in to get a replacement card when they ask you Why you don't have the original anymore?

[14:09] It's best not to say it was stolen even if it was In fact your own latin lawyer will advise you to tell that little white lie In this case being an honest gringo does not pay and here's why if you check the box on the form that says it was stolen Then you vastly complicated things you'll have to go down to the nearest police department file a police report Bring that paper in then you'll have to go to the public ministry That's the ministerial public and file a complaint there too and bring that paperwork to the immigration office And believe me both of those steps will involve more lines more waiting around and could set you back two more days So the better answer all around is I lost it then you skip the police station and the ministerial public Anyway, you recall my latin friend jumped through all the hoops and finally got his replacement national id card or dpi

[15:00] Well, not quite after he was completely done with the paperwork Stood in all the lines did all the running around and brought in all the forms He still had to wait 20 days for them to make up the card Then surprise surprise just a few days after he'd filled out all the forms. He recovered his original card Turns out he left it at one of the drive-up bank windows And they never told him it ended up in the banks lost and found along with about 200 or so misplaced ids again Great latin customer service, right? Anyway after those two shows explaining all that I got a phone call from one of my very good expat gringle friends Who's been down here in latin america for a long time 18 years or so He said johnny you think that's a good story Did you know that I lost my dpi my personal identification card?

[15:48] Of course, he's had one for a long long time because he's been a permanent resident for years Anyway, he said he lost his and when he went down to get a replacement it took him a year and a half to get a replacement card And he said he and his latin wife tried and tried and tried to straighten it out And after multiple visits and screwing around and filling out tons of forms No dice Turns out his problem was that someone errored along the way in processing his first card They switched around two numbers on his card So in his case, the whole problem was some government workers dyslexia And for a year and a half no one in the immigration department seemed to know what to do about it So he just could not get his card processed Finally, he said after about a year and a half of all that crap

[16:36] He and his latin wife went down to the office He stood up in the waiting room in front of all those people And yelled at the top of his voice and remember he's been down here a long time. So he speaks spanish I'm not leaving this goddamn Place until I have my new dpi I've been waiting a year and a Half and then he said everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at him And the head of the department came over with three guards with shotguns and he yelled out again That's all you got it's going to take a lot more than three guys with Shotguns to get me out of this place without my dpi in my hand And he said the manager was so embarrassed and flummoxed. He said calm down calm down We'll have your id card for you tomorrow. That's a promise. I swear it'll be done. But under one condition

[17:28] He said you send your wife down tomorrow to get it because we're never letting you in the building again And guess what the next day? She went down and got it now Let me point out that all gringos and expats in latin america have those moments where we get so pissed off and frustrated That we just blow up and in fact scream at people Now if you've been down just a short time your spanish probably sucks and if you have an episode like that You'll be so stressed out You probably won't be able to put together the correct words in spanish So you'll probably blow up in english and the locals won't understand but it'll scare the hell out of them Though a few gringos. I know and a lot of gringos won't blow up instead They'll do a long slow burn and internalize it and the end result Unpleasant things like high blood pressure diarrhea and hemorrhoids, which is why some people advise you to just

[18:16] Let it blow I plead guilty myself, but it's been a lot of years since i've ripped a latin person a new anus But even I realized early on in a polite culture like this. It doesn't do much good So try to avoid blowing your top in public In fact latins who like gringos in most every way will often tell you we have really bad tempers Still they like us anyway Now we all know that latins are happy nice polite and cordial and they never seem to get overly pissed off at anything Not in public. Anyway, of course irrespective of gang violence in bad neighborhoods and ghettos Places by the way that we always avoid So I repeat it's very very rare that you'll see a latin person blow up in public or even get pissed off

[19:03] Which could account for the fact that there are a slew of various hemorrhoid cream commercials on tv With one of those commercials citing a study that says that one out of three latin adults suffers from that condition So could that be because latins are overly polite and are internalizing their stress or might it be the new 21st century latin diet? McDonald's burger king kentucky fried coca-cola and chicharrones Hey, now there's a home run for a first world do-gooder Smells like a master's thesis and a big fat grant to me But I digress as usual boy, did I digress? Where were we? Oh, yeah When my longtime gringle friend told me the story of how he blew up at the immigration office The whole time I couldn't help but think wait a minute. He didn't have his personal identification card for a year and a half

[19:53] How did he get things done down here? Sure. He could haul his passport around with him everywhere, which is inconvenient But believe it or not some banks won't even let you withdraw your money with a passport. It's got to be that dpi I know i've seen it in action and you're thinking that can't be right your passport is your ultimate id document Well, try telling that to a bank teller where right above her head is a sign that says for identification purposes We only accept your national dpi card. I'm not kidding you you see signs like that everywhere And that's because only five to ten percent of latin americans have a passport Why because 80 percent of them make around 300 a month And for latin citizens to get a passport, it's going to cost from 50 to 100 bucks and that national id card

[20:43] It's only about 12 bucks now note that passports aren't mandatory, but those dpi id cards are In fact when latin countries started changing over probably five or ten years ago from a booklet form of identification That was not computerized to these computerized national id cards with the rf id chip They would have big notices in the paper that you had to do it by a certain date or Banks and government offices weren't going to accept that little paper booklet saddler card anymore So I would say 95 to maybe 99 percent of all latins have that national id card While only five or ten percent have passports, which is somewhat similar to the us where 99 percent of adults have a social security card or social security number and only perhaps 20 percent have passports

[21:33] By the way, if you don't have a us passport I suggest you go out and get one right away Because the longer you wait the more sophisticated the rf id chips and the more sophisticated electronic tracking devices They'll have built into that passport. So go out and get one before you become a human gps device So anyway when my gringo friend who has his residency in latin country told me he hadn't had his card for a year and a half I asked him how he went about getting certain things done without it He said he had a very high resolution copy of his id card He had both sides printed out on very high resolution glossy paper He pasted them together meticulously and then had them laminated and sealed in plastic at a place like office depot He said he carried that around with him and he still does and it works

[22:21] 99 percent of the time people don't even realize it's not the real thing And now he said of course he keeps his real one at home And he only carries around the laminated version which he said he's rarely been questioned on Which comes down again to the gringo advantage? We can get away with a lot because you see if a latin person were to try to pull that one off It just wouldn't be the same certainly red flags would fly Why because latins just do not laminate their cards and gringo as well They're not born here and don't know the ropes. So they might just pull anything So anyway, my friend's experience should make us all want to do the same thing Get a nice scan of your own identity card and get it laminated and carry that Meanwhile, the real one is in a nice safe place

[23:07] Okay changing gears a bit. How's real estate doing up in the states? Except for a few markets mostly supported by big government infrastructure in the crapper, right? I mean really in the crap Well, remember how i'm always talking about lag time in latin america and how they love everything gringo and how seminars coming down from the first world They're just cleaning it up Even seminars we gringos know our absolute scams like for example How to be a wall street trader in four hours and make real money like the big boy us stock trader professionals do Come on. What idiot would pay 50 or 100 bucks to take a course like that? That's a rhetorical question Well, here's a new twist that's gonna make a ton of money a seminar from the states has just landed. That's even nuttier

[23:53] Get this there's a company called brickel Realty group out of my jammy and they're putting full page ads in all the big latin american newspapers As they ramble on through all the countries down here and the name of the seminar My jammy real estate visions for 2020 then it states in huge letters miami is the city of the future and of course This is in spanish. So let me translate even more of this bull Come to the seminar and meet our professional miami real estate team who will reveal to you Why my jammy is the city of the future and how you can get in on the ground floor What the ground floor in miami Okay, then it goes on to say we'll be presenting our luxury biscayne bay apartment where we've created a new standard of luxury and

[24:46] Refinement and you can reserve your unit for just 10 down and here's the real kicker It says if you have resources You can live in my jammy as a permanent us resident both you and your whole family It's called program eb five approved by the united states immigration service As long as you invest five hundred thousand dollars or more and with your 10 down and loan approval You will qualify So basically this is a seminar aimed at wealthy latins to allow them to get residency based on capital investment By the way, did you know that you get automatic residency if you're a foreigner who invests a half a million dollars or more?

[25:34] Now I knew the program existed, but I didn't know the amount was so low But there's more it says at the seminar We will be teaching you how to acquire a loan in the us And how to use your properties offshore as collateral to buy the home or condo of your dreams in my jammy Oh, and you should go to the website www.miamicityoftheworld.com And you'll see this rather gringa looking latina real estate agent with property listings that start at over a million bucks So the question is does anybody in latin america know that us real estate isn't a dumper and poised for another crash the answer I doubt it. Well, like i've said so many times in latin america There's a huge real estate bubble and no one except in argentina has ever seen real estate crash before

[26:23] Besides that i've never met a latin american educated or not who knew that in 2007 and 8 The u.s real estate market had its biggest blowout in history So then why is this real estate seminar from the states making the rounds and why is it selling out? Because living in the u.s Especially my jammy is every latin american's dream But to combine a my jammy property purchase along with permanent residency in the u.s Now that's brilliant. Remember now we're talking about legal u.s residency That's not a 10 year tourist visa like almost all Upper middle class and wealthy latins can get by virtue of the fact that they have credit cards and a stable job And a bank account etc And by the way only about one in 200 latins has a legal visa to the u.s

[27:11] That means they went down to the u.s embassy and filled out the paperwork showed the credit cards showed their bank statements Got their references from work, etc That's to prove to u.s immigration officials that they're not going to go to the u.s and disappear Now did you get that only about one in 200 latins qualify, which is why of course, they take the easy way out They pay a coyote and sneak in 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, su bemos