#758 – The Expat Files: Cleft Palate Surgeries, Venezuela’s Crisis, and Residency Laws 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 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 Hey, let's start out with a boots on the ground story with a lot of overtones to it I phoned up my favorite Latin dentist the other day for an appointment and the receptionist said is it an emergency? I said no, she said what day would you like to come? I said, how about Friday morning?

[00:45] She said oh, no Friday doctor doesn't work in his office He works at the public hospital and you know immediately the average gringo who hasn't been down in Latin America too long thinking public hospital Hurgles are pretty crappy. What's my dentist doing working at a public hospital something wrong with that guy? I heard you have to bring your own gloves and disposables. That's not right. I got to talk to him about that But you know, I've been down here 27 years plus now And I know lots of good-hearted dentists and physicians donate their time at public hospitals simply because they want to help the disadvantaged They ask for nothing else. They just do it as a public service. Come on How many physicians and dentists do you know donate their time like that up in the States? Totally screws up the golf game, you know However, when I popped in the office, we were just making small talk and I said hey that what do you do at the public hospital?

[01:36] On Fridays, he says I do cleft palate operations on poor people by the way He's a u.s. Trained oral surgeon so he can do surgeries like that. Then I said it's free, huh? Well, isn't there some cost to it? I mean you've got surgical equipment and all that He said there's a worldwide organization of surgeons that people can donate to and we do the surgeries for free and the foundation Takes most of the dough and flies in young kids that could never afford to have the surgery from wherever they are to the nearest Center where those operations are performed then he said, you know In fact last Friday was a really sad kind of day for me and I said sadder than usual I mean little kids born with cleft palates. That's pretty depressing He said oh no that part school because you know, we can make tremendous advances on a tiny little kid

[02:23] That's only two or three months old. That's the best time to get him He said at that age they responded so well Not like when you get him when they're 12 or 13 or 15 years old Then you can almost never get a perfect or even great result But he said when you get him at 10 weeks like the kid he had on Friday and I said what 10 weeks He said yeah, he flew to Guatemala City all the way from Venezuela to get the operation done I said he fly with a nurse or something. He said no with his dad Then I said I assume the foundation pays for the flight and the accommodations and stuff, right? He said yeah, then I said Okay, tell me the sad part besides the fact you had to operate on a 10-week-old kid Well, he said they only come in for a few days to get the operation and leave and the dad He said came with two giant empty suitcases and he said, you know

[03:09] Venezuela is short of everything and I said, yeah Suppose he brought two empty so he could stock up on what toilet paper and he said no It's a lot worse than that turns out as soon as he arrived He'd gone to one of the big supermarkets and bought enough powdered milk to fill those suitcases to maximum capacity Because he said there was just no milk at all that you can buy anyway in Venezuela So let that be a lesson to all you Bernie Sanders Socialists out there. In fact, it's so hard to believe anybody over the age of 40 can even think of buying into that concept You know, you can forgive young kids adolescents and college kids socialism sounds so great, right? By the way, do you ever read the story of Karl Marx? You know, he came from a rich family and lived like a prince in London

[03:55] You know, have you ever heard that before a socialist or a communist expounding on the glories of everyone sharing things equally? Meanwhile he or she lives a privileged life that never happens, right? Hmm, by the way, I might have mentioned this but I've been routinely getting emails from people living in Venezuela But suddenly in the last three or four months the ones were sending me regular emails stopped There could be a number of reasons for that and unfortunately most of them are probably not good Anyway, here's an email from a Venezuelan guy. You just have to hear he says as of my writing five US dollars equals 1,000,319 and 15 Venezuelan Bolivars two months ago five US dollars was worth more than twice as much 545,450 Venezuelan Bolivars then he says like in the US people here are used to buying groceries

[04:47] Once a month or every two weeks not so anymore now he says almost everyone has to buy food by the day and Hopefully enough for that day because no one can afford to buy groceries for longer than that In addition, he says regulations on food now prevents us from buying enough to last a week much less a month That would be illegal. There are so-called basic goods basket La Canasta Báxica, which is the amount of money required to buy basic goods for a month is priced at about eight to ten times More than anyone except people working in government or the black market can make in a month So with the government's minimum wage, you're only able to buy six to ten meals a month

[05:33] That's without figuring in electricity water garbage cable telephone internet school clothing, etc As a result, he says now people spend their days thinking about what line they're gonna be standing in tomorrow Which is gonna be smaller which will be larger what time of day you often hear for example I have to go to so-and-so store tomorrow because they're gonna be selling so-and-so item Tuesday is sugar day. So I better get there early. I understand. That's how it was in Soviet, Russia Before the wall came down then it says it used to be people in my social class The ones that are able to go to college or private schools used to drive to the market But now we can't even drive to the stores that we need to buy these items at Because our cars are without maintenance. They're defunct and cannot be repaired

[06:22] Nobody has the money to buy the parts sure gas petrol and diesel are very cheap We can buy that by the tank full, but if the car doesn't work, oh, well, you walk, but that's dangerous these days Make no mistake about it. Nowhere in Venezuela is safe to walk anymore Then he says due to restrictions in regulations on what you can buy and such a new group of sleazy Entrepreneurs has emerged they come in and make money off the rest of us because they find goods at Regulation maximum buy them all then they resell them to the rest of us at way more expensive prices than originally offered Kind of like ticket scalpers so again almost all families except for the ones who are connected somehow to government or actively trading in the black market are Rationing they're eating. In other words, you don't buy it what you want to eat or what you can afford

[07:12] But what's available whether you like it or not? And when you're hungry, you can't afford to be picky Here's a bit of my history He says I was born in Venezuela and as a 17 year old about eight years ago now through a quite harrowing experience I was smuggled out with my mother and we built a life for ourselves in the United States My father along with my other relatives and siblings stayed behind in Venezuela They didn't want to leave the family but wanted me and my mother to try Perhaps for a better life up in the States Then he says despite the fact that I'm out of Venezuela now The majority of my family lives there and I have a hard time with that I couldn't send money to them nor could I send them a goods because the Venezuelan postman are notorious For going through packages and letters and pocketing whatever they think is valuable. So you can't send money

[08:02] Then somehow I was introduced to Bitcoin Bitcoin was anonymous the Venezuelan government couldn't intercept that mail. It didn't go through mail. It was digital mail Well, I saved up and visited my family in October 2017 and set them up to receive bitcoins from me and taught them how to sell it So whenever they could they would use some of the bitcoins I sent them and sold just enough through a place called local bitcoins calm and bought plenty of goods as much as they could for example 15 US dollars worth of Bitcoin would give them enough to fund food and other goods for an entire month Yes, you heard right 15 bucks and they're a family of eight and don't be confused about the ups and downs of Bitcoin and the other

[08:56] Cryptocurrencies it doesn't matter what price Bitcoin is that it's always readily accepted and highly valued But in order to buy food necessities, they'd have to change their Bitcoin to the local Bolivar And they did through that local bitcoins exchange They'd sell just as much as they needed in a month as inflation made that money lose half of its value in just a few weeks So they'd make the change and immediately by about a month's worth of food So when people talk about Bitcoin being a fad being useless being false and unsubstantiated Unbacked-up fantasy. Well, guess what through the use of Bitcoin? I was able to send money to my family and they could actually use it to survive as middle-class people

[09:42] Meanwhile other neighbors were falling into poverty and now I'm 25 and still living with my mother up in the States We are the lifeline for our family in Venezuela I have a job that allows me have a little extra than I need even though it's not much plus I'm going to school So whatever extra money I have every two weeks I take it along with part of my paycheck and buy more Bitcoin You won't believe it But I've been able to send enough altcoins and bitcoins that way to make my family in Venezuela and six other Families survive all that on about a hundred to three hundred US dollars a month that I convert into cryptocurrencies and send and wouldn't you know it my family the good but frustrating people they are Still don't use most of the money. They've converted from my bitcoins and altcoins

[10:32] They give it to others in need in the neighborhood so they can survive too Then he says one big point of my account here is that you can hate Bitcoin and all the cryptocurrencies all you want You can call it a bubble. Call me stupid for investing in it laugh at me say I'm a fool but the use of Bitcoin and its Decentralized nature has allowed my family and a few others to live survive and not starve So despite a tyrannical government my friends and family can still have a small living and have some control of their lives So I must thank Bitcoin Whoever developed it and all of its users for me being able to do this and pay forward my luck to other members of my family and humanity Wow me Johnny again, you got to admire that guy. He's got a very big heart and it's in the right place

[11:22] So who's laughing at Bitcoin now and now on the same sad theme? There's another article here that a longtime listener just sent me. It's translated out of one of Columbia's biggest newspapers It says the 1998 election of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela led to a radical new structure for the fishing industry Now everybody rightly thinks Venezuela's base industry is oil, but fishing too has always been huge though. It gets almost no press anyway when he got an office Chavez Nationalized it and expropriated hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of ships ports shipyards and canning factories in doing this He promised he'd retrofit the fish processing plants to accommodate small-scale fishermen in 2008 Venezuela then introduced a joint venture with Cuba known as socialist joint venture

[12:13] Industrial fisheries of the Bolivian Alliance. Whoa Chavez promised that this company Loaded up with seized assets would eliminate the chain of intermediaries so that fish products had accessible prices Were available to low-income Populations, but this was not to be the fishing industry soon withered under Chavez and then under Nicolas Maduro who succeeded Chavez in 2013 Soon came the first calamity the giant warehouse in Gorilla burnt down and was never rebuilt Second calamity the ship repair facilities were shuttered after a few years in government hands due to mismanagement and labor problems Oh What a surprise then it says Venezuelan ships not seized by the government work quickly

[12:59] re-flagged in Nicaragua Panama and Ecuador and much of the government fleet that couldn't escape the country in time Sit idle in ports in Venezuela waiting for repairs and parts that will never come then it says from 554,000 tons of fish caught in 2007 the year before Chavez started his so-called socialist fishing revolution Well turns out socializing the fishing industry was so successful insert laugh track here guess what by 2015 that number had dropped to around 40 percent of the previous number to 220,000 tons that's according to the government's own figures that crack is based foundation for sustainable and responsible

[13:45] tuna fisheries then it says in 2015 seven major tuna processing plants declared a state of emergency Citing a chronic shortage of fish and continuous labor and management problems Hey me Johnny again. I guess that calls for more government. How about a law demanding more fish enter the nets? Hey, don't laugh. There probably is a lot like that already Anyway, it says 3,000 workers then lost their jobs according to Jorge Bastardo union leader for La Gaviota canning plant in Cormania. Yeah, if you're listening closely his name is Bastardo that means bastard in Spanish, man. He must really a guy his ass whooped as a kid, but I digress

[14:30] Hey, would you call that a digression? Anyway, even when tuna was brought to shore it says aluminum for all you Brit listeners That would be aluminum wasn't such short supply that the central cannery was converted into what the government dubbed The pouchery because the government decided to switch the canning process from aluminum to plastic bags Well that failed to due to lack of market testing Yep, the public never warmed to the idea of buying their tuna in see-through plastic bags that didn't preserve the tuna all that well either Yuck However now in 2018 with Venezuela in extreme crisis former fishermen are dealing in a new commodity Sailing back and forth to the English speaking country of Trinidad, which is only 10 miles off the Venezuelan coast

[15:18] So believe it or not the hottest commodity today in Venezuela is diapers So every day dozens and dozens of smugglers are dealing in boxes of get this huggies and pampers They barter for the stuff with Venezuelan gas, which they get from five to thirty cents a gallon So in Trinidad, they trade the gas for three times what they paid for it in goods and Demand for the trade is so high in Trinidad. There are waiting lists says Karen cool Working the diaper arbitrage via online sales says I can trade diapers for medicine all day long She says today in Venezuela diapers are like bars of gold Now people are getting paid in dollars diapers gas and cryptocurrency like Bitcoin

[16:04] She says huggies was a diaper brand that never existed in Venezuela before but now it's a household word Turns out she said to be rich All you need is a closet full of toilet paper and diapers But the diaper arbitrage trade does not come without big risks She says you have to be on the lookout for cops who will pull you over and steal your diapers and your boat motors Yeah, me Johnny here now. Can't you just see it guy pulls a gun on you and says this is a stick-up Your diapers are your life. Oh man So she says every night when she pulls your boat in to the dock in Venezuela She unscrews her propellers and removes the outboard making it much harder for cops and thieves Same difference to get away with the goods or the boat

[16:50] Alright, so there you have it another very grim story coming out of Venezuela. We're under socialism. It's true. Everyone's equal equally miserable Unless of course you're working for the government into cryptocurrencies working for the black market or in diaper Arbitrage which brings us full circle back to part two of the rant I started last week on what's happening in Nicaragua So far in street protests more than 60 people have died at the hands of the military and Nicaraguan police Most of the dead and injured college students who started protesting last month after President Daniel Ortega Ordered cuts and pensions and Social Security. You see the students know he's become a billionaire One of the richest men on the continent and they also know that in 2014. He scrapped

[17:36] Presidential term limits so that he can remain president forever They also know his government stacked with relatives and friends who are also millionaires hmm. How'd that happen? And why didn't anybody notice that before well, that's because as you might remember Five or so years ago, but nobody really cared much what was happening in little Nicaragua Just a poor Banana Republic north of Costa Rica, right crappy internet bad infrastructure terrible roads Well, then if you remember the Chinese came in and said they were gonna build an alternative to the Panama Canal They estimated it would cost around 50 billion dollars. So they came in they mapped out the roots went into the Municipalities and check out the owners and the evaluations of the land They'd have to buy and of course along the way They had to grease or tag us palms to the tune of tens of millions that kept him his wife his family his friends in major doe

[18:27] They didn't even have to steal from the tax coffers However, just in the last two years things have changed drastically You know the Chinese plan wasn't gonna cost 50 billion after all was gonna cost about twice that and the Chinese guy with all the money Well, his investments kind of petered out and he no longer could get the 50 billion together Even if that's what it would have cost the big mistake was they assumed property values as they were stated in the municipalities What the Chinese didn't know was that property values in Latin America are always registered at a tiny fraction of their real worth for tax purposes Now suppose you had a factory and you want to buy some land to get access to a river or whatever You've singled out a piece of land you go down to the land registry find out who the owner is make him an offer But he'd laugh at you if you offered him the price the land was registered at in the county records

[19:19] So the Chinese when they came through to map out to canal they based their estimates on the land They'd have to buy up on fair market value in the municipality, which like I said, isn't fair value It's more like a land valuation from back in the 1930s or 40s All right, so long story short the canal will never be built So in the last year or two the Chinese have been pulling back meaning Ortega's palms are no longer being greased But his princely lifestyle and all the family and friends and parasites feeding off him must go on which is why some months ago He announced he was cutting pensions and so security. Yep belt tightening You know not his belt, of course Which drove the students into the streets to protest not only those actions But also demanding freedom of expression the lifting of censorship, etc

[20:04] After all everyone there knows he controls the press completely now I gotta tell you I've been to Nicaragua a number of times when I'd ask people rich middle-class poor Shoe shine boys what they thought of Ortega None of them would say a bad word about him But they also had that look in their eyes that they'd better not say anything bad about him because the guy does rule with an Iron fist and talking dirt about Ortega is no way to advance in that country And it seems the populations finally had enough and are taken to the streets Oh, and if you heard the last show you heard me mentioned He's a sociopath probably a psychopath, which is why I never gave the complete thumbs up for expats living in Nicaragua Listen to this according to the Miami Herald It says Ortega's stepdaughter

[20:50] Zola America Narvaez stunned the country in the late 1990s when she announced that the head of the Sandinista National Liberation Front president Daniel Ortega sexually abused her for almost 20 years Starting when she was age 11 However, a Nicaraguan judge ruled that her claim came too late for criminal charges because of Nicaragua's Statute of limitation it had run out then it says Narvaez Now in her late 50s daughter of Ortega's longtime partner Rosario Murillo says she was molested and raped Repeatedly by Ortega who dragged her along on diplomatic trips and forced sex on her that says Narvaez's accusations had been Continuously stalled by higher courts because as the president and member of Congress Ortega enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution

[21:43] And it says in a final move Ortega gave up his congressional immunity to face charges Only to be dismissed by first district judge Buena Mendez barely a week after receiving it anyway meet Johnny again You know that happened a long time ago back in the late 1990s. So people forget I just want to remind you what a pustulent scumbag He really is though. Some might say that actually qualifies him as presidential material And for those of you who don't know your Central American history, you remember Reagan and the Contra scandal, right? Well after that debacle Daniel Ortega continued governing the country without being president then in 2008 Suddenly there were cases of dead farmers and peasants in the countryside Meanwhile in the cities people knew an ex nothing about the extra judicial killings that were going on bottom line

[22:35] There's no way this guy is gonna let go of power until he croaks and the one thing I got admit He's been able to keep the crime rate really low It's the lowest in all of Central America because you know if you're a gang member with a neck tat in Managua Nicaragua You know if you get caught doing anything wrong, you'll just disappear Which is why so many Nicaraguan gangbangers migrate to the US But there's another thing that bothers me about Nicaragua Citizens and residents are not allowed to own guns and I don't know about you But a country that does not allow you to defend yourself. Well, it might be a very nice vacation spot But I wouldn't want to live there Alright moving on to some disappointing news from Panama. It says here in this article I just got yesterday in the first three months of 2018 new construction in Panama fell by

[23:23] 40% compared to the same period in 2017 the biggest quarterly drop in construction ever recorded Then it says added to this discouraging data is the problem of the strike in the sector which has halted Construction works since April 18 on major projects affecting the expansion of the Tucoman International Airport in Panama City and line 2 of the new Panama Metro All right Me Johnny here again as far as that huge drop in construction starts in the last few month Panama has also had an unprecedented drop in the sales of new cars Now do you think that this bad economic news has something to do with the fact that in the last four years The amount spent on government workers and government bureaucracy

[24:09] Has almost doubled in other words the growth of cancerous government bureaucracy in Panama has been growing at the rate of 25% a year and the only way to pay for that Increased taxes and borrowing now news like that the unbridled growth of government tends to scare the hell out of investors But you knew that already, right? Yep, as for my opinion of Panama a nice place to visit but wouldn't want to live there either besides It's dead hot all the time. They've got no altiplinal. All right, speaking of disappointing news You've heard me say many times that you really must try to get your permanent or temporary Residency going in a Latin country soon because laws are changing and they're always making things harder. Of course It's the US leveraging these countries because they don't want the sheep to leave the barn

[24:55] Why would they you know, I've always been big on getting your temporary or permanent residency in Guatemala Whether you live there or not because then it leads in five years to a passport nationality Well, as it turns out Guatemala is not immune from tightening up their laws And they just made it a little more difficult to get permanent residency right away now you've always been able to get permanent residency by having social security income over a thousand dollars a month or a disability or Pension payment over a thousand bucks a month then you could apply for permanent residency and achieve it No problem But there also were a few other options a few more little known ways to get on board with permanent residency in Guatemala right away And one was to show you a monthly trust income payment of a thousand dollars or more a month or even a recurring

[25:41] Monthly income rental payment of a thousand dollars or more a month would qualify you for permanent residency Well, the new ruling says for permanent residency They'll only accept social security payments and pension and disability payments No more trusts or continuous rental income so then what do you do if you're not getting social security a pension income or a Disability income check and you want to get permanent residency in Guatemala so you can get that passport nationality in five years Well, not to worry. All that means is you'll have to apply first for temporary residency Which is dead easy, by the way And after a year you apply for permanent residency and you're in so all it does really is add an extra year or so On your way to getting Guatemala nationality and a passport because the way it works You have to have five years of permanent residency before you can apply for that passport

[26:28] So if you're interested do apply for temporary residency You don't have to show any proof of income at all All you need is that police report marriage certificate if you're married They have to be apostilled in your state, of course And you do that through your State Department then you hook up with a Latin lawyer in Guatemala and he becomes your sponsor and facilitator He does all the rest of the work and you just go in sign some papers photos fingerprints. That's it So as mentioned little by little they're tightening the requirements for permanent and temporary residency in most all Latin countries Meaning you better act now Oh, and by the way, you can still get in on the early bird discounts for my expat insider seminar coming up in July 2018 You know, you can kill two birds with one stone there too You can apply for a permanent or temporary residency, whichever suits your circumstances

[27:15] So for all the details and info just go to www.thenewexpat.com and click on Johnny's seminar link And remember I'll be running those early bird discounts until June 1st Then the price goes back up to normal around $500 more per person Most famous