#896 – The Expat Files: Mexico’s Political Turmoil, Avocado Crisis, and EMF Protection

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 out to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat 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 Alright me Johnny here and finally some good news out of Mexico. Listen to this Date on this article is October 9th. Just what a couple days ago Titled the article mayor in Mexico tied to a truck and dragged through the streets for failing to fulfill campaign promises

[00:48] Now that's something that'll bring a smile to your face, huh did to mine Hey, what's not to like about that? And this article has a mugshot of this guy and does he look like a Slytherin snake? So the article starts off by saying angry farmers in Mexico abducted the mayor of their village and dragged him through the streets After claiming he went back on his key campaign promises surprise surprise Then it says police intervened to free Jorge Luis Escandon Hernandez After a group of protesters armed with clubs and rocks detained the mayor of Las Margaritas and tied him to the back of a pickup Truck and dragged him through the streets according to a local news website El Geraldo de Mexico Even better a number of citizens took video footage of the attack showing the man being dragged along the road with a mob running after him

[01:37] Then it says it was the second attack on him by farmers demanding Fulfill his campaign promise to repair local roads and bring drinking water and electricity to the community of roughly 500 people in an earlier incident four months ago a group of men ransacked his office after turning up there looking for him and finding he wasn't there then it Says eight hours after the most recent incident the mayor appeared in a central square in Las Margaritas and gave a speech Holding leaders in that Santa Rita community responsible and saying he would not be intimidated Into complying with his false promises fan that about says it all huh what a skunk But you know you get the skunks you deserve after all you vote them in right which is why I haven't voted since Ross Perot And the great sucking sound remember that and you know if you're living in Latin America or anywhere else outside the US you can

[02:27] Submit an absentee ballot which in my opinion is a complete waste of time, but you can do it if you want all right I don't want to digress. Let's get back to the article Then it says mayors and local politicians in Mexico are routinely targeted by drug gangs when they've refused to cooperate and accept bribes Now I don't know what that has to do with the story about dragging the mayor behind a pickup truck But well hey, it's in the article so anyway meanwhile the prosecutor General's office said that 10 people were injured in the incident and 11 Were arrested the mayor as it turns out will press charges saying he views the attempt as an abduction and attempted murder So then you might ask what's my opinion well? You know how I feel about politicians But look at it this way when the poor illegal Mexicans who've got nothing to lose slip into the US and bring their bad

[03:17] Habits with them because you know what they say Poe folks have Poe habits well hog-tying politicians and dragging them through the streets behind a pickup truck You know you got to love it and what great theater, too I think Latinos heading to the states should bring that one great tradition along with them I for one would accept that custom with open arms hell I'll lend them the pickup truck You know I probably could name a couple of thousand politicians up in the states that deserve worse Who knows that might be the only way to straighten some of these dickheads out? Or as I always like to say there is a cure for the malignant political system up in the states It's called term limits just two terms. That's it four years in office followed by four years in prison So what do you think are you with me on that? Oh and since we're discussing Mexico

[04:03] Here's something you didn't know for all you agua cate lovers out there That's avocado in English and man. I just love those things I had one last night But here's what you didn't know there are four competing drug cartels extorting avocado producers in Mexico So you wonder why the price of avocados is so high listen to this the extortion of large-scale Avocado producers in Mexico is becoming an increasingly important source of illicit profits Because lately there's been a big shift in the dynamics of the criminal factions in Mexico Primarily it says due to the fact that marijuana is becoming legal up in the states in Canada Wow who'd have thunk making marijuana legal would do exactly what intelligent people have been predicting for 50 years Turns out the pot business is going to pot in Mexico

[04:51] That is so the cartels are shaking the cages of legit businesses to make up the difference now according to this article Which is in Spanish, so I'll translate now remember one of these articles I'm reading to you and getting pieces from you'll never see up in the states because they're in Spanish Anyway, it says the Jalasco cartel new generation cartel Jalisco, Nueva, Geración CJNG and Nueva Famía Michoacana and the telepack a cartel and the zurucan cartel are all involved in this brand new growing criminal Economy of avocado extortion that according to Michoacan's Attorney General So why talk about Michoacana? Well it produces over 80% of all the avocados that are shipped to the US With an export value of around 3 billion just this year earning the fruit the nickname down there green gold

[05:41] So they're calling it a fruit doesn't seem like a fruit seems more like a vegetable, but then again It does grow on trees So then how does the avocado extortion racket work? Well it turns out the cartels charge a monthly protection payment from avocado producers calculated per hectare Cultivated or kilogram exported and those who failed to make the payments get kidnapped or killed though Sometimes they'll abduct a distributor or farmers family member as for example one distributor's daughter was Assassinated right on the front steps of her daddy's business office. Yep, that would be reason 6426 why you don't want to have your plan B in Mexico then it says besides the extortion racket Avocado theft itself is rampant at least four semi truckloads of avocados are stolen every day in the state according to the Michoacan

[06:31] Attorney General and it's getting it so bad that just this August two months ago 19 people from the avocado industry were massacred in Uda pan the center of Michoacan's avocado growing belt But it's not just the fact that the marijuana business is going into the toilet for Mexican producers There's another ominous problem. That's digging into the cartel drug business and profits And that's the fact that Mexico's heroin production Which has been for the last few years the number two profit center for cartels has also taken a big hit Because of the rise of synthetic opioids causing the price of opium to plummet to less than a third of its value Just two years ago in 2017 leaving drug cartels scrambling even panicking for alternative income streams such as

[07:19] extorting agua cate farmers whose business has quadrupled over the last ten years due to its growing popularity in the United States and Europe With avocado exports in the US alone rising 20% year over year with the average price of a Haas Avocado HSS the most common avocado sold in the US at two bucks apiece as of June 2019 about double what they were going for just two years earlier So that's why you're getting a gouge at your local supermarket By the way, when you live down here in Latin America and you go to one of those gigantic outdoor food markets You can generally pick up really nice Haas avocados for two or three for a buck and right at the peak of the growing season A little bit thereafter. You can usually get them five for a buck Meanwhile up in the stage you pay eight to ten times that oh and by the way, it is true

[08:06] Maybe the Haas type avocados are the best tasting ones the most dense and sort of buttery for lack of a better term What you might not have known is that there are lots of other types of avocados grown here in Latin America sometimes in the wild They're always much bigger and more watery inside than the Haas variety and thus a lot cheaper They normally go for about half the price of a Haas and they're about two or three times as big But as mentioned, they're kind of watery inside don't have a real distinct taste They're sort of neutral and though they're great for guacamole They aren't the kind you want to slice up in a salad or put out on a table as a nice party appetizer Because they just don't compare to a Haas but man Let me tell you even in some of the densest parts of big Latin American cities You know how big cities look like asphalt jungles where there's only a tiny scruffy patch of ground in someone's backyard

[08:57] If that you'll often see a scraggly even stunted avocado or mango tree That doesn't look like it could ever survive under those circumstances But when the rainy season hits and they get their cue to start producing man when it rains it pours You'll have hundreds of avocados or mangoes So many that oftentimes you'll see 10 or 20 of them laying on the ground in the morning And I know this will sound strange But after a while you get sick of looking at them and picking them up You might even start to feel guilty after all they're just sitting there every day kind of rotting away I found out firsthand on the property I'm on you can't even eat 10% of them In fact, I've got a couple of lemon trees in the backyard that produce such volumes of lemons More than half of them hit the ground and end up rotting So I always have a couple of five gallon plastic paint cans around to collect them

[09:46] Give them to the gardener maid and neighbors anyone If not, when they start rotting your grounds are going to be a mess If any of you listeners have apple trees, you know what I'm talking about Yep, you guys up in Newark, Milwaukee and Cleveland should have such problems, huh? That's why when people in the news on the internet and in blogs talk about the fact that if there's some kind of national emergency Hurricane flood power outage, whatever up in the states You've only got three days worth of food on the shelves in the supermarket You know that kind of talk makes me laugh. Why well, let's just say my reality living here in Latin America is a hell of a lot different than your reality bottom line my reality as far as survival goes in the case of emergencies is a Hell of a lot better than yours and you know, there's an easy way to prove that come on down to my latin american insider seminar

[10:34] And you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. All right shifting gears a bit I like to mention a personal anecdote here. Wait a minute on this show. Everything's a personal anecdote Anyway, when I lived up in Chicago, I just absolutely hated the weather there except of course the three or four months You might call summer which were rather nice but the rest of the time it was uncomfortable you froze your ass off your lips would get chapped your fingers would get stiff your Nose would run and sometimes it was even painfully cold on top of that I'm one of those guys who was repeatedly plagued every year like clockwork with canker sores I'm not talking about cold sores the kind you get on your lips I was never one to have those but I'd get the white horrible painful ones in the mouth You know that would just sting if you ate or drank anything at all with some acid content in it

[11:23] I would get maybe a dozen of those things a year. So did by the way, most of the girls in my family I was the only guy is so blessed with cold sores top of that I'm the only guy in the family who gets migraines my other brothers don't but my mother and my sisters do So canker sores man, did I get him but almost never in the summer always when it was extremely cold And that made things even worse and I'll tell you and this is anecdotal 30 years I've been here in Latin America and guess what haven't had a single cold sore not a single one So that's just another small but very positive reason to come down here to Latin America get that plan be started Overall your health is bound to improve in so many different ways, too Now I don't have any explanation for that, but I can speculate with a few guesses

[12:10] Probably all of them having to do with climate and better nutrition overall that is fresher Everything and less canned processed and packaged foods in general, of course You can buy any and all of that stuff if you want They've got Walmart's and Costco's everywhere, but they've got one thing down here You'll never ever see up in the states those gigantic massive outdoor food markets Where the little truck farmers are bringing their stuff in daily mostly from within 10 or 20 miles of the market itself now I know you've got farmers markets in every little community up in the states, too But I also know up there. It's a niche market In other words not for the average Joe and most of their produce is labeled organic or grown with few pesticides But that also means you're gonna pay twice as much or more when shopping at a US based farmers market

[12:58] And because it's a niche market as a result You have to be an astute health conscious individual with a little extra dough to shop at those places regularly But down here in Latin America with all those gigantic street markets. It's not a niche That's the meeting and shopping place for almost everyone except that small one to five percent of extreme gringo wannabes Who wouldn't want to be seen walking through one of those big low-class markets because you know They want to appear to be a class removed from the hoi polloi and so-called sweaty masses So I say let them pretend to be gringos and suffer all the consequences thereafter High blood pressure diabetes gastritis obesity heart problems etc etc because that's what you get It's the end result of the all-american diet, but of course you knew that already

[13:47] Alright, so switching gears again Remember the last few shows I've been mentioning that my expat insider seminar for January 2020 It's all set up and ready to go with the early bird discounts in effect for at least another month Then the price for a single person attending and a couple attending with double occupancy goes up 500 bucks to the regular price So if you're coming to the seminar take advantage of signing up soon to get that discount and you know Every time I announce a new seminar I get a slew of emails from people asking me some details about it Mostly about our plan our itinerary what we're gonna do and as mentioned, we'll be doing two countries Guatemala and El Salvador So now I thought I'd take a moment to read one of these emails and answer some of those questions in general for everyone

[14:33] This one's from Mike. He says hi Johnny. Thanks for doing the great podcasts I've been listening to your show but have a few questions. I'm thinking about coming to your January 2020 seminar I was in Guatemala Antigua Guatemala a couple years ago, and I couldn't find any real nice places to run or attract to run on Do you know of any that's question one and I have some other questions, too All right me Johnny here. Let's start with that question You know, I'm a big exercise and nutrition junkie too and about running and finding a track to run on now I'm not a runner, but I power walk I used to run a long time ago But I read lots of articles about how it eventually tears up your knees and your hips So I do the treadmill or power walk So then what if you want to go outdoors and run or walk without having to fight off the obstacles the crowds and the traffic

[15:21] Well, I found there are very few running tracks in Latin America You can kind of rule that out What people do who are into exercise who want to get outside and not do it on a treadmill in the gym Is that they just do their walking or running in a gated community setup now? There's gated guarded communities everywhere in Latin America And if you're talking about Antigua Guatemala, there's probably 50 of them and that's where most gringos and expats end up living or renting In one of these gated guarded communities, you know Where you have to check in with the guard and give them your license when you go through and then they open the gate You're in now Most of these gated guarded communities are huge they maybe have 50 or a hundred different houses and very big lots sometimes and the streets Virtually empty at least during the daytime the average person living in a place like that is upper middle-class Latin style by US

[16:10] Standards solid middle class and people just park their cars on the street or in their garages or in their driveways And there's almost no traffic People just leave for the morning at 7 something like that Go to work and come back at 6 7 8 even 9 at night because usually they're commuting and the traffic's bad out on the Caratetta That's the main highway, but within the subdivision. There's almost no traffic So those are absolutely great places to run or walk and the streets are cement or asphalt the scenery and the greenery and the gardening Usually fantastic. So you've got a great view while you're walking or running and that's the way I do it So why wouldn't you own it? For example, if you don't happen to live in a gated guarded community and you live in a residential tower or in a middle-class Latin

[16:55] Neighborhood on the cheap in time you're bound to meet some people who live in gated guarded communities and just ask them if you can Have permission to come in and run and all they got to do is tell the guard that you're allowed in and you're in Any time in fact, if you've got a Latin lawyer for sure He's living in a gated guarded community and you just make the deal with him. Why not? You're his client your lawyer here Anyways, your friend and he'll let you do it. But as far as actually finding running tracks now Not gonna find those unless you belong. Let's say to a country club. They've got some really wide open spaces there Alright next question Mike has how will 5g affect Guatemala? What can be done to protect yourself? Then he says you mentioned this Johnny on one of your shows you also mentioned countries like Chile will have it soon Then he says where are the best places to live or travel for now? Well, let's talk about 5g in Guatemala

[17:44] Well, it ain't gonna get to Guatemala for a long long time It's coming to Chile first and then it'll go to Costa Rica and then Panama Argentina and Colombia the more developed the Latin country the faster they'll get 5g and as for Guatemala now I live out in the boonies and I took an EMF meter It measures the amount of electromagnetic Strength coming from cell towers radios and power coming into your house TVs microwave ovens as well as anything hooked up to Wi-Fi And routers and I found at least where I live on the boonies and I don't really live out in the desolate boonies I live about five miles from the pan-american highway and that's where all the action is and the biggest mall in all of Central America It's only around 15 minutes drive from where I live. Anyway walking that EMF meter around the house I get almost no signals until I get really close to the router or my smartphone when it's on and

[18:33] Really where you don't want a lot of EMF is in your bedroom where you're gonna sleep and the kitchen where most people hang out So then how do you protect yourself? Well, you don't walk around your cell phone in your pocket You have your router a room or two away from where you hang You don't have any of that stuff in your bedroom and you turn your cell phone off at night Or you put it in another room and you don't want to live within a couple of blocks of a cell tower And that brings up a little problem if you're gonna live in a residential tower a lot of gringles and expats choose that option Because it's so convenient. You got generally a little exercise room or health club Excellent security underground parking and you could just lock it up and leave for weeks even months at a time No problem But there's another kind of problem because many of those residential towers have up on the roof some cell antennas

[19:18] Because you see throughout Latin America and the big cities anyway, there aren't many traditional looking cell towers They just put the cell antennas and such on top of the taller buildings So for example, if you live in the upper floors or residential tower or even in the penthouse You could be getting blasted from the unit on top the roof. So how to protect yourself from that? It's always recommended you have one of those little EMF meters You can buy them on Amazon at least 200 bucks for a decent one And if you want I can advise you on which models to pick up because you know I am an electrical engineer at least I wasn't a past life. So I know more than most about those things I'm not just regurgitating someone else's blogs or YouTube's anyway to protect yourself Get yourself an EMF meter when you decide to buy a rent and take a walk around and see where the hot spots are And usually 90% of the time you can attenuate those easily by moving stuff around as mentioned before

[20:08] But if you've got a cell tower on top the roof of your building or within a couple of blocks of the place You can't very well fight that unless you decide to make a Faraday cage out of your bedroom kitchen Whatever and that's a lot of hassle and it looks like crap, too But then again, you'll find many companies are gonna come out with a paint and some have already that'll actually shield your walls from EMF Oh and another good way to protect yourself from local EMF is to use an ethernet connection That is a wired connection to your computer instead of using the Wi-Fi Method with your router. In fact, you'll find if you look in the back of any router There's always an ethernet port or two There's even an adapter you can buy believe it or not that allow you to hook your smartphone Your Samsung Android iPhone, whatever through an ethernet port to your router It'll be kind of clunky looking, you know

[20:55] And you have to drag that cord around with you when you're talking in the house, but you'll get no EMF then I think that would be kind of awkward and you really wouldn't need to do that if you take precautions everywhere else in Your house, but to answer your question, Mike 5g in Guatemala Not likely to come for quite a while a couple years anyway easy to overcome Unless you live very close to a 5g transmitter receiver and they say there's going to be one on every block or two That's when the system finally rolls out completely But I wouldn't worry too much because there'll be ways to defeat it as mentioned But it is true high levels of EMF are everywhere, especially if you're in a residential tower I mean just turn on your cell phone to find out how many Wi-Fi signals are in the immediate area Sometimes you'll get 10 or 15 on the list and they're all pushing out enough EMF through your walls

[21:41] To register at least some signal strength coming to your phone But really none of that is a problem unless you have a device close to you That's picking it up because then the circuitry in your phone or computer Whatever is amplifying and enhancing the signal tremendously That's why if you've noticed your phone gets very hot after you've been on it a while So it's really your seller smartphone when it's close to your body That's the biggest danger and one really easy solution to eliminate most of the EMF around your phone is to have one of those EMF and RFI proof passport pouches In fact, I have a couple of those and I think there's something like 10 or 15 bucks I mean really who needs to have their cell phone on all the time Especially when you're only using it a couple of minutes a day Well, maybe a couple of hours for some of you Anyway, if you've got one of those little pouches about the size of your cell phone that blocks EMF and RFI

[22:32] You just slip your phone in there and it'll never get a signal in or out and you can't carry that thing in Your pocket then no problem and every couple of hours or so when you feel like checking your cell phone You just pull it out of the pouch and check all the messages that it missed while it was dormant Then do what you got to do slip it back in the pouch and you're good to go again No problem with the EMF concentrating around that phone. What could be an easier solution than that? The only downside is that you'll be cut off from your phone and for some people that's their lifeline For how many hours you keep it inside that little pouch and you know Everyone's got a different sense of urgency when it comes to checking their messages and talking on the phone, etc So in a word, it's about discipline You don't want to be addicted to that thing and so many people are so anyway when you pull your phone out of the pouch

[23:18] Sure, it'll be EMF all over the place But getting blasted for an hour a day is a hell of a lot better than getting blasted 24 hours a day You know everything in life is about concentration too much water too much oxygen too much sex too much ice cream Too many tokes on the crack pipe will kill you though everything in life taken in the right Concentrations or range of concentration and life is good Well, maybe not with the crack pipe But you get the point though as they say God must really love idiots and morons because he made so many of them Oh when you longtime listeners know my take on God, I'm not sure he exists I doubt it, but I know there's a devil but you know on the outside chance there is a God She's a hell of a trickster though I do believe in luck because man I've had more than my share

[24:04] But as old Benjamin Franklin said in poor Richard's almanac, isn't it funny the harder I work the luckier I get Gotta love that guy, huh? Oh speaking of Ben Franklin. You're gonna love this story I've read a few biographies on him and guess what turns out later in life and he lived to be a very old guy He had some severe urinary tract problems. Maybe it was prostatitis Maybe it was because of some sexually transmitted diseases because he was a real ladies man, you know But in the last five years of his life He had a terrible time peeing some medical historians think it was a combination of STDs and kidney stones Anyway get this for the last five years of his life in order for Benji Franklin to take a good pee He had to stick a hollow silver rod up his penis far enough to get past that blockage. Oh

[24:53] Don't even want to think about that. Imagine he had to do it a couple of times a day So in fact the urinary catheter was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin It's one of those inventions you never hear about though Some medical historians will say he invented it for his brother who had kidney stone problems But the latest evidence reveals old Benny had to use the thing too. I hope they didn't use the same one So really you guys out there listening to this podcast are way above average I know that but how many of you knew that Ben Franklin invented the urinary catheter and He got the patent on it, which brings us back to luck and why I believe in it Aren't we lucky we're living in this day and age sure many parts of modern medicine are still pretty medieval like for example Radiation treatments and chemotherapy and such but still we're all

[25:40] Unbelievably lucky to be born in this day and age aren't we? Alright, let's look at Mike's next question. He says Johnny your seminar covers El Salvador How does that differ from Guatemala? Well Mike for one thing Guatemala has got that amazing Altiplano region where if you have a house or rent there you have no need for air conditioning or heating It's perfectly spring-like all year round and El Salvador does not have that though in a couple of regions close to Guatemala There are some highlands where they grow coffee It's a couple thousand feet up but not really comparable to the five or six thousand feet of the Guatemalan So El Salvador is hot all the time. So for the seminar we go to the beaches of El Salvador It's also a smaller country than Guatemala Less industry and manufacturing and the land and housing prices are even cheaper than Guatemala then Mike asks

[26:30] What are the documents necessary to be authenticated for residency in Guatemala? Well, you need your local sheriff's report and an FBI report now which requires fingerprints and you have to get those Apostoles up in the states and you need to prove an income of at least fifteen hundred bucks a month recurring like from a pension Trust fund or rental income and that's about it unless you're coming down with your spouse or children then you have to have an Apostle marriage certificate and birth certificates for the kids and finally Mike asks What are the best places to live and travel for now? Well Mike, that's why I do phone consults because everyone's got their own list Of wants desires and needs there are a thousand and one great places to live and travel to in Latin America And what's best for you depends on a lot of different things Do you like heat cold mountains water hiking biking city or country living on or off the grid?

[27:21] That's why I do phone consults and have you fill out a wish list on my consultation form Then we can narrow things down apart from that. I can't give you a good solid one-size-fits-all answer You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat Insider seminar in Central America where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com. No spamos