Eddie’s Journey Through Latin America

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller provides an unfiltered look at expat life in Latin America, contrasting it with the idealized versions often presented in travel magazines and websites. He introduces Expat Eddie, a recurring character who represents the typical expat with a series of failed business ventures, often due to underestimating costs and lacking capital. Eddie's journey to Latin America is partly driven by personal issues like alimony and a desire for a better lifestyle, rather than political reasons. Johnny highlights how Eddie's experiences reflect the opportunities and challenges expats face in Latin America, emphasizing that success often comes from improving on existing systems rather than introducing new technologies.

The podcast segment discusses the contrast between First World tourists and expats like Eddie in Latin America. Johnny Mueller highlights how First World tourists often enjoy high-volume tourist areas with their amenities and activities, but they also spend a lot of money. Eddie, despite his failures in the First World, found success in Salvador, a place off the typical tourist track. Johnny emphasizes that Eddie's success was due to his ability to notice and capitalize on the lack of business standards in Latin America, where many businesses operate with minimal oversight and often have significant defects that would be unacceptable in the First World. Johnny also notes that while many First Worlders have fantasies about living or starting businesses in Latin America, few actually follow through, making Eddie's success a rare exception.

The podcast segment discusses the character of expat Eddie, a stereotypical first-world expatriate in Latin America, who is described as a 'nice guy and a lot of fun' but also someone who is often in financial trouble and has a tendency to borrow money. Johnny Mueller portrays Eddie as a figure who is often invited to embassy parties due to the 'gringo advantage,' a phenomenon where first-world individuals are seen as desirable in Latin American societies. The segment also touches on the political dynamics in Nicaragua, particularly the recent presidential election, and how the outcome can affect foreign investment and international perceptions. Johnny critiques the idea that Latin Americans aspire to be like first-world individuals, suggesting it is a misconception that leads to exploitation.

In this segment, Johnny Mueller recounts a story about Eddie's experience with a general who was involved in high-level corruption, including discussing the fixing of a presidential election. Eddie, who has seen small-time corruption before, is shocked by the general's admission. The general then becomes Eddie's drinking buddy and invites him to an exclusive military party in the jungle. At the party, Eddie is amazed by the number of attractive young women present, which the general explains are brought in from nearby towns. Eddie's girlfriend reveals that these women were once high-class hookers in Managua who were set up in nearby villages by the military.

The podcast segment discusses the dynamics of prostitution in Latin America, particularly focusing on the relationship between military officers and young women who work as weekend mistresses. Johnny explains that in Latin America, a 'night club' is synonymous with a strip club and is essentially a house of prostitution. He highlights that being a mistress to a military officer is a preferable option for some women compared to a regular prostitution career, as it allows for a more 'normal' life, albeit one that is still rooted in the sex trade. Johnny also touches on the cultural differences between Latin America and the first world, emphasizing that in Latin America, the sex industry is more integrated into the nightlife and is not as regulated or separated from other entertainment venues as in the United States. The segment then transitions to a story about Eddie, an expat, who experiences a series of mishaps, including a hangover, a flight in a poorly maintained French jet, and a leak of hydraulic fluid, which leads to some comedic tension.

Johnny Mueller discusses the lifestyle of a retired general in Managua, highlighting the apparent contradiction between his modest salary and his luxurious living conditions. He questions how a general who earned only $15,000 a year before retiring can afford a $300,000 house, a BMW, and other luxuries. Johnny also touches on the broader issue of how military personnel in Latin America often end up in the upper socioeconomic classes despite their low salaries, suggesting that their wealth may come from illicit or business activities. He concludes by mentioning a friend who lives near a drug trafficker and ex-politicians, illustrating the complex social dynamics in the region.

Topics

Expat Life in Latin America, Expat Eddie as a Character, Business Opportunities and Challenges, Contrast Between Idealized and Real Expat Experiences, First World tourists, Expats in Latin America, Business standards in Latin America, Eddie's success in Salvador, Expat Eddie, Gringo Advantage, Embassy Parties, Nicaraguan Presidential Election

Chapters

00:00:00 Opening
00:00:24 The Real Expat Experience in Latin America
00:00:39 Expat Eddie's Background and Motivation
00:02:06 Eddie's Journey to Latin America
00:03:12 Opportunities for Expats in Latin America
00:04:53 First World Tourists and High-Volume Areas
00:05:31 Eddie's Success in Salvador
00:09:19 Eddie's Success and the Contrast with First World Business Standards
00:09:26 Introducing Expat Eddie's World in Chicago
00:09:27 Eddie's Character Traits and Lifestyle
00:09:31 Eddie's Seedy Lifestyle and Financial Struggles
00:09:37 Eddie's Involvement in Illegal Activities
00:09:39 Eddie's Constant Search for Wealth
00:09:43 Eddie's Relationship with Johnny
00:09:44 Eddie's Innocuous Nature
00:09:46 Eddie's Financial Requests
00:14:38 Eddie's Experience with High-Level Corruption
00:14:45 The General's Admission of Election Fixing
00:14:53 Eddie Becomes Drinking Buddies with the General
00:18:50 The Appeal of Being a Mistress to a Military Officer in Latin America
00:19:03 Cultural Differences in the Nightlife and Sex Industry
00:20:07 The Risks and Realities of Expat Life in Latin America
00:24:04 The General's Retirement and Lifestyle
00:24:43 The Paradox of the General's Wealth
00:26:24 The Drug Trafficker's Influence on Neighborhood Security

Transcript

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. You know, I've been getting a lot of email lately about those stories I've been telling about Expat Eddie. Everybody's clamoring for more Expat Eddie stories, and boy have I got a million of them. And for those of you newbie Expat Files listeners who don't know who Expat Eddie is, well, he's

[00:49] the arch-typical crazy gringo who's always had a million to one ideas. A lot of them just hairbrained schemes, some of them decent, but nothing ever revolutionary, who started a number of shoestring businesses up there in the first world that always failed, usually because he always underestimated his cost and ran short of capital. So half the time Eddie was up, and then he was down, and then he was flush, and then he was broke. And every month or so, he'd end up on a Saturday night knocking on my window at two in the morning. A long, long time ago when I lived on the north shore of Chicago, looking like he was well past the peak of having fun, he'd end up sleeping on my sofa, and when he'd wake up the next day, always with a huge hangover, eventually after a little hair of the dog, he'd end up telling me his story, and how he ended up at my place again.

[01:36] Now I can't take credit for Expat Eddie coming down to Latin America, even though I got down here about 10 or 12 years before he ever did, and he knew how I lived down here and he really envied my lifestyle. The fact is I thought he was just blowing hot air when he said he was coming down, as a permanent expat that is. And when anybody asks Eddie how he ended up in Latin America, he always says it's because the government was too oppressive, the US government and big brother and all that. And it was a little bit of that, but I think it was more his 3x wives and the alimony payments that drove him down here. So anyway, about 5 or 6, or maybe even 8 years ago, Eddie landed in Costa Rica, then Cartagena, worked his way around and ended up in El Salvador, and as an ex-first world businessman with multiple failures under his belt, mostly in the bar and restaurant and entertainment business, in fact Eddie had a few successful video stores up north, when Beta and VHS rentals

[02:26] were big, and at that time he was just rolling in the cash. But as sometimes happens when you hit on a good thing, you get on a roll and you think it's never gonna end, but it does. Eddie spent and spent, along with his ex-wives, whichever one he was with at the time, I don't know, and he just didn't see the DVD thing coming, well he saw it coming but he didn't pay attention to it, like about 95% of all the other VHS rental stores up in the first world. You know, when technology changes, you better be ready to make the next change, or else. It's the exact same thing that happened to Blockbuster up in the first world. They too thought the good times were never gonna end, but now there's Netflix and downloading, and they saw the writing on the wall, but now they're bankrupt. So Expat Eddie is the perfect example of a guy landing in Latin America, a first world

[03:12] guy who just can't help but notice there's a ton of business opportunities down here if you just keep your eyes open. And I know the feeling, you don't have to reinvent the wheel down here, not at all. And you don't have to bring brand new high-tech products down and introduce them to the people down here, that's more for the technical specialists. And it can be a real mistake if the people down here are not used to seeing something brand new. Like Eddie knows so well, you're better off improving on the old. That seems to work almost every time. I'm talking about how Eddie turned his $2000 into millions. He just noticed how god-awful mediocre, well less than mediocre, the restaurant and bar and entertainment businesses were down here. I mean like I said in so many past shows, you walk into a restaurant and you head to the bathroom. Half of the time they don't have running water in the sink, and when it's running, it's brown

[03:57] and nasty, and flowing in a stream about half the diameter of a pencil. And of course there's no towels and toilet paper, and the windows haven't been cleaned in six years, and in the corners and crevices, there'll be any number of little creatures caught in spiderwebs that haven't been removed since probably the place has been opened. In other words, when you're outside the high-volume tourist areas like Costa Rica and Cancun and Rio, and various other resort areas like Acapulco and a lot of other places in Mexico, not to mention all the cruise ship stops along the so-called Mexican Riviera, well in all those places First Worlders have landed and put in their franchises and Walmarts and Sears and all that. And in those places the tourist business is how everyone thrives, so naturally the standards are much higher, and nearly First World, with of course near First World prices, a lot of competition for tourist dollars, and therefore big start-up costs, and of course

[04:47] much higher rents, which leaves a guy like Eddie out because he only had two thousand bucks when he first came down. Now here's the thing, most First World tourists just love those high-volume tourist areas, there's so much to do besides laying on the beach and getting yourself fried. There's all those hot bars, discos, and restaurants, and all those day tours, but of course they cost First World money. And Eddie told me he just loves that style of life and he would open a business in a high-volume tourist area in a second, but he only had two thousand bucks, and he'd be competing for those tourist dollars on a near First World level against other First World people who came down a lot earlier and saw those opportunities when things were a lot cheaper and much more laid back, and they saw that the place was not yet overdeveloped and promised to keep on growing, at least for a while. So that's how Eddie ended up in Salvador, which is way off the First World tourist track.

[05:36] Now I ask you, how many First World people do you know when they're sitting around the Sunday table? How many times have you heard someone say, hey, for the next big vacation, let's take the family down to El Salvador. I'll bet you a thousand and a one, you've never heard that. And that's why expat Eddie, with all his failures up north, and with just two thousand bucks in his pocket, was able to clean up down there. And believe me, Eddie's no road scholar. He was the guy that always drank way too much at the frat party, and they had to carry him out and let him sleep it off next to the garbage cans, because Eddie didn't have very good aim when he got too loaded. So Eddie just saw what every expat down here in Latin America sees, but he actually did something about it. So Eddie, the perfectly average American guy, with his eyes wide open, saw a lot of glaring defects in existing Latin businesses, and he noticed even though they were scruffy around

[06:24] the edges, and had tons of other defects, they were still making money hand over fist. And as a first worlder with first world attitudes, you wonder how business can slide so much, and why nobody goes out of their way to fix the simplest of defects, even if they cause the owner next to nothing to fix. The obvious details, like a cracked window pane here and there, or chipped bar glasses, or a bathroom door whose lock doesn't catch anymore, or a huge divot in the parking lot that every car has to go around just to avoid bottoming out. And then there's those electrical boxes without covers. With a rat's nest of wires hanging out, you just see that stuff everywhere, even in government buildings, especially in government buildings. Simple things like that that would get you fined or shut down up in the first world, but no one ever seems to worry about that stuff down here.

[07:11] Since down here once you get a license to open, no inspector will ever come around again and check on things, unless maybe there's a big fire or someone dies of food poisoning, from your food. Down here, nobody cares, not the locals anyway, and still, businesses like that stay afloat and some of them are raking in the money. Now I know every first worlder that comes down here on vacation notices that kind of stuff, and they nudge the first world person they're with and say on the slide, hey, can you believe that? Look at the way that roof leaks and that water coming in right next to the food in the kitchen, and look at the way they pile up those mounds of garbage right behind the door. Man, they'd get their license pulled for that in a second in the first world. And if you are a first worlder on vacation, off the high volume tourist track, like for example in almost every small town, 50,000 or under in population, in El Salvador, where

[07:59] expat Eddie ended up making his fortune, you're thinking, man, if I could just come down here and put in a little restaurant like that and make it to first world standards and run it how a restaurant should really be run, man, I could live the life of Riley down here and retire with a great big smile on my face. Yep, those are the fantasies a lot of first world people get when they come down here and go off the tourist track for a while and see how easy it is to beat the hell out of the competition. And sometimes there really is no competition. But alas, you're on vacation, and when you're on vacation, you can get excited about a lot of things. And you say, hey, I'm going to come down here and do this and do that. How many times have you heard that before? And only one out of a thousand ever does it. Oh, you might come back for another vacation, but you're not going to come down here and open a business. It's just another attack of those pipe dreams we get all the time.

[08:46] It seems like everybody who comes on a vacation down to Latin America ends up saying to himself or to his first world friends, I'm going to retire down here or I'm going to buy a beach house down here or some property or a business or whatever. Now people like expat Eddie, who are quick to notice the defects in the way Latins do business and when guys like Eddie actually do come down, they seem to beat the first world business sides every time. Everybody knows that up in the first world, nine out of 10 restaurants and bars fail within the first year. Well, that might be the case up in the first world, but not down here. And if expat Eddie can do it, anyone can do it. And the fact is I've known a lot of guys like expat Eddie back when I lived up in the first world in Chicago. They were always big talkers with a lot of energy and big ideas, but very short of cash and a little on the seedy side, hanging around pool halls and getting into card games and

[09:37] dealing with loan sharks and pawn shops and all that. Always thinking on the next big deal, they're going to strike it rich. I'm sure you know guys like Eddie. They're really not bad guys at all. It's just that every time he phones you up, the first thing you think is that he either wants to crash at your place or borrow some money from you. Everybody I know has got a high school or college friend like expat Eddie. In short, he's the guy you don't want to lend your card to and if you do lend it to him, you're always a bit nervous until the moment he hands the keys back to you. In short, Eddie's a nice guy and a lot of fun, but I wouldn't want him to marry my sister if you know what I mean. Now, like I said at the beginning of this show, by popular demand, you've been asking for more of the continuous adventures of expat Eddie. Well, here's one for you. Last time I talked to expat Eddie a few weeks ago and knowing all the wild and crazy stuff

[10:22] he gets into, I said, Eddie, what was the very first really wild and crazy out of the ordinary thing that happened to you down here? And he gave me a shifty look and he said, yeah, it was one of those first embassy parties I ever got invited to in Managua Nicaragua. Now just as an aside, I have to say that even guys like Eddie get invited to embassy parties because Eddie too gets those three magic points added to his one to ten point scale just by the virtue that he's a first world guy down here in Latin America. And Latins as a rule love everything and anything first world because they aspire to be just like us. Which I think is a huge mistake, but try telling them that. They're all pretty much addicted to US cable TV. They get every channel and the Hollywood and Vegas version of everything translated,

[11:08] of course, and they all think it's the land of milk and honey and that everything a first world person touches turns to gold. And that even includes guys like expat Eddie. No matter who you are, as long as you're from the first world, you're stereotyped as a high powered first world go getter. And I call that phenomena the gringo advantage. I mean, just think about it. Where in the first world could a guy like Eddie broke and down on his luck with three ex wives and creditors up the yin yang get invited to a party where he's rubbing shoulders and drinking toast and eating hors d'oeuvres with senators and diplomats and generals and cabinet members and people who are so rich they have their own jets and helicopters. Well that's never going to happen to a guy like Eddie up in the first world and it won't happen to a guy like me either. But down here in the third world, if you want, you can ease yourself into a crowd like that

[11:57] because every mover and shaker needs a few gringos at his party to fill in the mix. And if you're off the tourist track like I recommend, you can be that gringo. That is if you feel like riding the wave with those plastic scumbag idiots. They're fun to watch for a while like a bunch of peacocks and heat strutting their feathers. But after a while, at least for me, people like that just start wearing on you. And when I refer to that group as clueless scumbag idiots whose main objective is to find new ways to loot the public treasury, I do include the high level idiots at the American embassies too. Though there are different class of scumbag all together. But I touched a bit on that in a past show. So check it out in the archives if you're interested. So anyway, Eddie gets invited to an embassy party like that in Minagua. And he was sitting at the bar drinking a few free scotches, the very expensive single malt

[12:44] stuff that Eddie would never buy for himself, but when in Rome. So anyway, a general with all his polished shiny metals walks up to the bar with another guy. They're speaking in Spanish. And though there's a fair amount of noise in the place and a little three piece jazz band playing right across the room, Eddie can hear what these two guys are saying. Now this happened about two days after the general presidential election down there in Nicaragua and Eddie could care less about politics and he just went to the embassy party because he's got a hot latin girlfriend that he plucked from the lower middle classes. Well she hadn't seen much of the high life and she wanted to go to that party in a big way to see how the other half lived. And she knew she'd be the hottest looking girl in the place and being a bit of an exhibitionist, she wanted to strut her stuff, which was okay with Eddie.

[13:31] And she knew she'd be the center of attention with all the men that is, because all the important people that were there, the diplomats, the generals and such, would be there with their wives and not their mistresses. You get the picture? So anyway, Eddie's listening to these two guys, the general and an extremely well dressed businessman talking away about that recent Nicaraguan presidential election in Spanish. And Eddie said the really well dressed guy said to the general, Guillermo, Guillermo, I knew your guy was going to win, but why'd you let him win by so much? You guys are too anxious, you should never let your guy win by a landslide. The international community, the ones that donate big, the foreign investors, they like to see a horse race. When it's lopsided like that, people ask questions, it doesn't look good. And Eddie said it was for real, the guy was really dressing down the general.

[14:19] And his voice wasn't raised, but it was just nice and stern and controlled. And Eddie said that was his first introduction to really big time corruption. Now Eddie, like me, has seen a lot of small time corruption. The day to day stuff that is. And what you read in the papers. But that's the first time he'd ever heard with his own ears. Guys in the very top level of government and power positions talking about fixing an election. A presidential election. Basically admitting the whole thing. But now, as you might have figured, nothing like that surprises me, nor does it surprise Eddie either. But that's not the end of it. Eddie, by the end of the night, had become drinking buddies with the general. Can you believe that? And the general invited Eddie up to an exclusive party for military guys up in the north of the country for the following weekend.

[15:05] Along with Eddie's hot girlfriend, of course. Now this airbase was a 5 or 6 hour drive from Managua. And the general gave Eddie and his girlfriend a lift in his plane. Turns out, this general was head of the Forza area, the air force. And he had his own nice little compound on this airbase. And though the base was way out in the jungle, it was a complete enclosed military compound like you see in the movies. But built a hundred miles from nowhere right in the middle of a jungle. Now Eddie said there was a thousand to two thousand guys on this base and quite a few helicopters and 20 or 30 jet planes. So it was pretty big. And on the grounds they had a special set of buildings cordoned off for the officers, kind of like an officers club where they had a swimming pool and a big bar and a huge veranda and a bandstand and waitresses and gardeners and tennis courts, all for just the officers

[15:54] of course. And that night at the officers club there was a big party, some colonel or something's birthday. And when Eddie and his girlfriend walked from their cabana over to the officers club and checked in with the guard station, when he got in he couldn't believe his eyes. There were maybe 35 officers there lounging around the pool having a huge party with catered food and open bar and enough good looking girls had been trucked in from the nearest town to make this party way out in the boonies in the jungle a really happening event. And it looked to Eddie like there was exactly one girl for every officer. Everybody had a dancing partner and they were all young, 18 to 25 years old and very hot looking. Now that's the part Eddie couldn't believe. Way out in the boonies in the middle of a jungle on a military base and there was only

[16:40] a couple of very small towns within 10 or 20 miles populated only by a few hundred dirt poor farmers. Eddie just couldn't figure it out. Then Eddie finally asked the general where did they get all these beautiful sexy girls and the general laughed and told Eddie one of the best kept secrets in the world is that some of the most beautiful girls in Latin America come from an area in the country that's only about 10 kilometers from the base. And because it's all farmland around here and the girls have nothing to do, the general said they always invite him over on weekends for parties and he used a swimming pool and a tennis course and all that stuff but only on weekends because on weekdays it would be against the rules. Now Eddie who's the very definition of street smart figured it was all BS but it was the general's shindig so Eddie didn't push it.

[17:26] And later in the night when it got to be about one o'clock in the morning when practically everyone was drunk and things got a little wild, Eddie ditched his girlfriend for a while and fell in with a bunch of hotshot jet pilots. And one of them promised to take Eddie and his girlfriend up in a fighter jet the next morning and Eddie of course agreed because he was more than half in the bag and in that condition he'd agreed to anything. But he had the presence of mind to ask the pilot if it would be okay being that he and his girlfriends were civilians and all that and it was probably against some kind of regulations. And the pilot said no problem, tomorrow is Sunday, I have to make a flight tomorrow anyway and I'm the only one who's going to be out there. And anyway by now Eddie was the general's little gringo buddy and he could do no wrong. Now later on when Eddie met up with his girlfriend by the pool something else happened.

[18:13] Eddie kept repeating to her that he couldn't believe how many good looking girls were at this party and that all these hot girls came from little farm towns around the area. And Eddie's girlfriend started laughing she said they do they come from other little farm towns around here except before they relocated here they used to be high class hookers in Managua that these military guys picked up as mistresses, set them up in some of the nearby little villages, paying their expenses and giving them clothes and access to cars and all that. And this is how some of the high placed military guys do it. They make a deal with some of the newer arrivals at the strip clubs in Managua the big city. A lot of them agreed to the deal right away because they really don't want to be there. They know if they end up as regulars at the strip club that after a while the daily grind just wears you out.

[18:59] So being a weekend mistress to a military guy is a much better deal. And by the way in Latin America a night club is not like a night club in the first world. Down here the word night club means strip joint and every strip joint is a house of prostitution no exceptions. It's not like up in the first world especially in the United States where you'll have a strip club and that's all it is a strip club or a topless club or bar. You can't touch the merchandise but down here a night club is where there's pole dancing, lap dances and of course the full monty if you want it. So I guess as a young girl stuck in a prostitution career in the big city if you end up as an officer's mistress it's a pretty good deal. She can almost live a kind of normal life. Normal that is compared to a regular prostitutes life I guess.

[19:45] It's not the dead end life of your normal prostitute. Instead they have the simple life on the country and they come down here on weekends to meet up with the guys that are footing the bill. And it's the perfect set up for these officers, they're 500 miles from nowhere and their real wives and family are in the big city somewhere thinking the head of the household is doing his duty for God and country. Well maybe in his mind he is. And once in a while an officer even ends up marrying one of these girls. And as a rule these girls are very loyal to the officer who's paying the bills. At least that's what expat Eddie's girlfriend told him. Because she'd been spending some time with some of those girls that night and she'd gotten the lowdown from a few young blabbermoths. So anyway after only a few hours sleep Eddie gets a wake up call at 5.30 from the pilot who's promised to take him and his girlfriend up in the jet.

[20:32] Now Eddie said at that moment his hangover was just starting to peak. And by the way down in Latin America they call hangovers gomas G-O-M-A goma. And I'm sure our very own expat Eddie could write a book on gomas. Anyway no matter how Eddie tried to get out of it this guy insisted he was going to take Eddie and his girlfriend up for a ride. They'd made a deal the night before and he wasn't going to get out of it. Now as they got to the field and into the plane Eddie didn't know what kind of jet it was because he's not up on that kind of stuff. But he did recognize that the letters on the dials and gauges were in French. So these guys had French jets which Eddie thought this is a good thing because he couldn't remember reading or hearing about any recent news anyway about any French jets crashing

[21:20] and burning. But as they were sitting on the tarmac ready to take off Eddie noticed that the plane was a little bit distressed a little bit dinged up a little scruffy and not nearly in perfect condition pretty much like everything else in Latin America. And then he noticed that one of the gauges had the date 1982 on it and that was around the year 2002 so Eddie wasn't a 20 year old fighter jet in the middle of a jungle in Nicaragua being flown by a Nicaraguan pilot and he was counting on a plane that was being maintained by Nicaraguan maintenance men who no doubt didn't speak a word of French. That's when Eddie started to worry because he knew if all the lettering was in French the maintenance manuals were probably in French too. But Eddie's a born chance taker and he likes to do things in access.

[22:06] In fact Eddie's famous last words are when you're doing things in access you're doing them just right and I really kind of like that saying myself but only as it applies to Eddie not me though I noticed when people hang around with Eddie long enough they start picking up some of his bad habits. I'm sure if Eddie and I had grown up together in the same neighborhood in Chicago my mother would have never let me play with him. Anyway so Eddie and his girlfriend are in the jet. He and the pilot have huge hangovers. Eddie's girlfriend taps him on the shoulder and points to the left wing and out of that left wing was dripping drip drip drip some kind of fluid onto the ground some kind of dark greenish fluid and Eddie stared at it a bit and thought hey this isn't right planes aren't supposed to leak like that now are they then Eddie in a little bit of a panic

[22:54] tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed to the leak and he said to the pilot who hadn't revved up the engines yet have a look at the left wing I think we're leaking some jet fuel over there and the pilot said no that's not jet fuel that's hydraulic fluid hydraulic fluid's a little bit green see and jet fuel is basically kerosene and it's clear and the pilot said it matter of factly like it happens all the time but Eddie was a bit dismayed thinking you know we're losing hydraulic fluid don't all your flaps and wing controls and rudders and all that work on hydraulics and then the pilot said yeah there's usually enough in the reservoir so if there's a small leak it won't matter much the maintenance guy probably topped it off so don't worry but Eddie was worried he was worrying about that word probably because after all this is Latin America and maintenance first world style is just not in their vocabulary so anyway they took off and did

[23:44] a few loops around the jungle and Eddie managed not to vomit into cockpit which was a good thing too because the pilot was sitting directly ahead of him and needless to say Eddie and his girlfriend got back on solid ground in one piece now Eddie's the first to admit things like that don't happen to him all the time but once in a while on weekends now that was six or seven years ago when Eddie first came down so I asked him whatever became of the general because he'd been such good buddies with him and Eddie said the general's been retired for four or five years and then Eddie named a very exclusive residential area in Managua where the general's living out his retirement in basically first world luxury turns out he's living in a house that's worth about three hundred thousand dollars down here which means it's worth closer to a million up in the states and he's got a swimming pool and all that and he's living there with his family and the usual cadre of cleaning

[24:32] ladies and gardeners and all that in line with all the other wealthy and upper middle class people that live in that exclusive subdivision but the only thing is the top salary that that general made before he retired a few years back was fifteen thousand dollars a year you heard me right fifteen thousand dollars a year and he only gets about three quarters of that or ten thousand a year as his retirement package now shouldn't that make you wonder how he can afford a three hundred thousand dollar house and his late model BMW sedan not to mention a late model toyota rav for his wife now here's the thing if you know any of these military people even at the very highest levels like kernels and generals you realize that none of them came from wealthy families some of them went into it as a career because they had a college education and they knew they would advance high

[25:19] into the officer's ranks if they had a degree and even better if they were connected socially or politically which leaves you with a funny quandary how come all the kernels and generals that retire end up in the upper socioeconomic classes with cars and houses they could never possibly afford on their own salaries or pensions and here's the thing if you happen to live next door to one of these guys like the general and you own a three hundred thousand dollar house with a pool and a couple of nice cars and you can only do that if your business is putting out fifty to a hundred thousand dollars a year down here or you'd never be able to make the payment on the house the Mercedes and the Range Rover anyhow if you happen to be living next to the general or a colonel who's got the very same style of living that you have and you make fifty two hundred thousand a year and you know damn well that a general only makes fifteen grand a year and when he's

[26:08] retired he gets about ten in pension well i just wonder how it sits with an next-door neighbor like that who's got a real job working at or owning a real business and who's busting his butt to maintain a lifestyle to live in the upper classes well down here it's don't ask don't tell and nobody bothers to investigate and just as an aside a good gringo friend of mine who's in the oil business lives right across the street from a huge mansion that has two helicopter pads and it's all in a big spread out beachfront subdivision with no fences or guards or walls or any of that stuff that you see in the city in the richer areas of town and yet my friend told me he was living in one of the most secure areas in the whole country practically no robberies or assaults at all and why is that i asked well he said the neighbor with the two helicopters is a big time

[26:55] international drug trafficker and no one would dare mess around in his neighborhood and i got the point all right after all this is the third world under the circumstances then i guess my friend did pick a really good place to live didn't he but what's even more amazing about that neighborhood is that two ex-presidents and an ex-minister of defense have houses right on the beach too only two or three blocks away and occasionally when someone has a big neighborhood backyard barbecue everyone turns out in potluck fashion oilmen ex-presidents ex-military and narcoes and they all have a real good time then it's back to work on monday you've been listening to the expat files living in latin america and don't forget you can email me

[27:43] on anything at all about latin america the expat files at gmail.com that's the expat files at gmail.com see you next time nos vemos