#972 – Expat Life in Latin America: Cultural Observations, Gun Culture, and Expatriate Scams

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 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 Let's talk about lemmings for a second Like for example when you're driving down the street or taking a cab lemmings lemmings everywhere You know what drives me nuts when I see people wearing a mask while driving their cars Isn't that like wearing a condom alone in your bed?

[00:48] Meanwhile, especially if you take a taxi and uber whatever you're sitting in a seat That's never been cleaned a seat. That's surely graced more dirty butts than a bus station toilet I mean look you see lemming stupidity everywhere seems like every solo driver in an otherwise empty car is wearing a mask While playing with a cell phone and touching the buttons on his radio Scratching his head then his crotch then fingering the steering wheel. That's more contaminated than a garbage can then you pay him And he digs around in his pocket and gives you change But thankfully he's covered Einstein's wearing a mask is everyone a lemming and then I'm in a bank the other day I walk up to the window asked to tell her to change some us funny money into the local funny money She takes the dollars put some in a drawer pulls out a big stack of local funny money

[01:37] Licks her finger and starts doing a count then she stops for a second looks at me and tells me to back off a bit I have to be six foot from the window when just a few seconds earlier I handed her some money. That's as dirty as toilet paper Never mind bad. Oh and during all that she answered the bank landline phone Cradled it between her chin and her shoulder while she relicked her finger and counted that stack of bills one more time That's the rule, you know count and recount three different times I guess that means make sure those fingers are well licked to then surprise surprise with the other free hand She shushed me back because I was way too close for that day's social distancing policy as she saw it now Of course, everyone's got their limit. I'm talking about when you blow your fuse, man

[02:24] I tell you in the last couple months. I've had to douse water on my fuse many times How about you and believe me? I know how to fire back when necessary and it can feel good, but sometimes it's just not worth it But you know to expend all that effort You know reaming someone you don't even know a brand new coal Well, let me ask you this how many times have you been thoroughly pissed off in the age of kovat? How many times have you been completely outraged but you held back you let it simmer inside now If you're like me and your boycott social media you lead a much calmer life I don't do fake book titter or instant trash and that new social piece of crap tick tock all the kiddies and teenagers Are using I've only heard about it I don't even know what it is and I plan on keeping it that way only as these new social media platforms come out

[03:11] They're supposed to be better or have more functions than the previous ones, right? So then I imagine tick tock just makes you more of a whiny spineless Fucking moron because it seems to me and I'm sure it does to you too that people say things on social media that they would Never say to your face because it would just be rude and upsetting plus There'd be a lot more broken noses in hospital emergency rooms So in my mind social media provides only two functions and they're not good number one to show all your friends neighbors and everyone That you're just a little bit smarter hipper and cooler than they are Number two social media gives you a buffer so you can blow up and say stupid things and battle with people Without needing the necessary balls to say it to them in person For example the bank teller if I was one of her 2,000 fake social media friends

[03:57] I could have explained to her what a lemming was and why she was absolutely perfectly suited to a bank teller's job where you only need an IQ of about 80 but in light of the fact that I don't use Social media I could have if I felt like standing up for myself quoted my favorite biblical passage God must really love idiots. He made so many of them. Yeah, I know I know some of you are saying Johnny That's not in the Bible. Well, I could be wrong. Maybe it was in the Quran or Confucius said it or maybe it was a fortune Anyway, I like that saying a lot and my second favorite saying is strictly mathematical It's the fact that and it is a fact that every other person you meet is below average I know at first it sounds depressing. But remember according to statistics, the less you know about the real world the happier

[04:44] You are so ignorant people have that going for him. Anyway Take for example what happened to me yesterday at a local pharmacy now I don't know if they do this up in the States, but pharmacies here in Latin America Most of them have a reticop with a shotgun standing around in the parking lot Of course, no one ever gets killed or even shot In fact, most of those guys don't even have shells for their guns and most of them have never even shot a gun But still it seems every pharmacy here in Latin America In fact, most medium and large stores and supermarkets have shotgun reticops, too Oh and next time you're down here in Latin America and you're standing close to one of these guys observe their weapon now if they're Sporting a shotgun, which is the most common thing you see down here If you're a gun owner yourself and you know something about guns chances are you'd be thinking even if the gun he's toting had shells in it

[05:33] There's a very good chance if you pull the trigger nothing would happen and why is that well It goes back to the issue of maintenance a word that actually exists in the Spanish dictionary It's Montanemiento maintenance Montanemiento though almost never applied in practice Except when first world franchises gringos and expats come down and enforce it even so Latin America is a reactive Society, they only maintain and fix things when things break down or are falling apart But we were talking about shotgun reticops, right? What I mean is as a gun owner myself having had quite a few shotguns and pistols myself There are such things as gun cleaning kits every American gun owner knows that which obviously means you have to clean your gun Sometimes and you're supposed to clean it right after you've been shooting it and you know

[06:22] I've been living here in Latin America some 30 years now, and I've met many Latino gun owners I've been in many gun shops too and at quite a few shooting ranges I've had all kinds of Latinos show me their guns and their gun collections But never once have I ever seen sitting on a shelf or propped up with those guns a real honest-to-goodness Gun cleaning kit and I'll tell you 90% or more of the rent-a-cops sporting shotguns don't have one either again I suggest if you're ever next to one of those guys have a look at the gun and let me pretend to be a clairvoyant here I don't even have to be there and I can tell you right now what that gun looks like It's all gouged dinged and scratched up the finish the bluing Completely worn off the thing if it's got a plastic stock It's all chipped and gouged if it's wooden it's chipped and cracked with chunks missing if you get really close to the thing

[07:10] Look where the screws are you'll see them on the site and on the stock Every gun's got a few small but noticeable screws now with the guns the rent-a-cops have It's just a fact that 90% of those guns have rusted and missing screws Not a good sign now. It's not to say the guns that rent-a-cops have don't work It's just that there's a pretty good chance if they actually have to use the thing it won't But I digress where we oh yeah back at the pharmacy So yesterday I was standing outside a cut rate pharmacy because pharmacies these days with Covid will only let a couple of people in At a time, you know to maintain that false sense of security that crazy-ass social distancing is supposed to provide so anyway I'm in the line outside of the building stepping on the marker There's a marker painted on the cement walkway every meter and why the markers aren't every two meters

[07:59] Like they are in so many other places like grocery stores Walmart's etc. Well, that's part of the lunacy of it anyway suddenly a brand new $100,000 jet black window tinted Range Rover pulls up with diplomatic plates on it Aha turns out all of us line standards we're getting graced with the presence of one of those guys you just love to hate a Pustulant carbuckler politician so he pulls up in a no parking zone right in front of the pharmacy And then this big fat whale of a guy gets out and takes cuts right up to the front of the line I couldn't hear what he said to the reticop at the door who was holding one of those pistol shaped temperature sensors You know, but to the guard's credit. He told the guy to get in line He didn't give a rip who he was or what corrupt government agency he worked for though

[08:47] I could see the fat guy was burning up giving him the apparently you don't know who I am kind of treatment But again, it didn't work and I thought that quite admirable on a part of the reticot So the guy grumbled a bit under his breath and sauntered over behind me in the line Of course, even outside everyone's wearing a mask as for me I have a mask but I carry it in my hand when I'm outside though I understand in this particular Latin country It's a hundred dollar fine if you don't wear a mask in public though I don't know of anyone who's ever been tagged yet and I walk around a lot without one But I always have one in my hand or my pocket just in case Anyway, this fat political turd behind me takes off his mask and lights up a cigarette. I mean this guy's really obese He's wheezing and panting puffing away and finally after 10 or 15 minutes the line moves on up

[09:34] We get past the reticop he shoots that little temperature sensor gun at us and both of us are finally in the pharmacy I'm talking about me in that huff and puff and sweaty ass political the shotgun reticop Let us both in at the same time and it figures as for Covid virus mania The pharmacy had installed a plexiglass barrier all around the checkout stations So I walked up to the teller put in my order and as is usual in Latin America You don't pay the person that attends you unless it's a very small shop And there's only one or two people working there you see Latin American accounting systems are triple redundant Which makes them terribly inefficient? It's something we gringos and expats see all the time, but they just don't know it nor do they get it That means practically every hardware store tien to clients out that you name it you order whatever at the counter

[10:20] And you have to go to a separate window and pay the cashier then the lady It's usually a lady gives you a couple of receipts you bring them both back to the original guy You bought it from you give them one of those receipts, and then he gives you the product It's totally stupid inefficient and redundant, but this is Latin America So anyway I went to the cashier window to Andy up and that fat sweaty wheezing turd that political scumbag Was at that same window in front of me then wouldn't you know it he turns around and says to me and halfway decent English Gringo you're too close to me keep your distance now remember what I said before about Douncing water on a burning fuse on this case. I guess I didn't put enough water on it because I couldn't help but say something I said oh Thank you for being so considerate. I appreciate you don't want to give me what you have

[11:09] Then he gave me the evil eye and waddled on out like I said I couldn't resist ha ha oh And I said in Spanish which was much better than his English Yeah, you know some days depending on the circumstances you find your skins a little bit thinner than it was the day before Depending on how many dickheads you happen to run into and now for something completely different You know you accumulate a lot of really good and some really useless information the more you read right now when I was a kid And there was no internet and all that I used to hear my mom say you guys watch way too much TV You ought to read a book And she'd say for every hour of TV you got to read a book for an hour And she enforced that law and of course today you hear parents say all the time to their kids You're on that smartphone way too much, but they never say you ought to read a book that explains our society doesn't it?

[11:58] You know the longer you live here in Latin America the more you realize and you see it up front and personal that since they've got No OSHA workers here take the craziest chances on the job and no one says thing Stuff you could never in a million years get away with while on the job in the states now when I say there's no OSHA Of course every Latin country has environmental safety laws They always copy the US But they never set aside the funding for the manpower or equipment to really enforce any of that stuff in other words the rules are There but no one's out there Forcing you to wear the hard hats the helmets the steel-toed shoes safety harnesses the eye protection the masks You know the common safety gear you see construction workers use up in the states I know I know a lot of you will disagree with me when I say I think it's a good thing that they don't

[12:45] Enforce that stuff. I just think that you're responsible for your own life, and the government really has no business telling you what to do They can make guidelines no problem But you should be the one to decide if you're gonna wear leather gloves and chaps if you're gonna chop down a tree By the way when you're at home insulating the attic or drilling a hole to mount a picture Do you wear the required gloves mask and safety goggles as required on a real construction job? I doubt it problem is of course since every other person you meet on the street. It's below average That means if the government has laws But I'm not gonna enforce that stuff your employer the business or the man you work for would be the guy to hand out the safety Equipment and enforce those rules because he doesn't want to get sued and he definitely doesn't want worker downtime Hey, you know in a perfect world It would be nice if the government made logical rules and enforce them equally but governments are illogical and corrupt

[13:35] Anyway after being down here in Latin America all these years and knowing a bit about the construction business Meaning the right and the wrong way to do things just surprises the hell out of me Why more people aren't dead or injured on the job then again Latinos are fatalistic guys. They always say it's in Los Manos de Dios it's in the hands of God. So here's the dilemma at my place in Guatemala. I have a giant cistern It's a reservoir to collect rainwater and such and every year or so I would drain it and have my maintenance guy go inside the thing and scrape it down wash it with Clorox and give it Another coat of a special epoxy based water barrier and man this that stuff stinking is it toxic? So I bought a nice industrial mask with charcoal filters on it and I even hooked up my air compressor in a fan To recirculate the air going in and out of that thing so my maintenance guy wouldn't keel over

[14:24] So anyway, I told him what to do about the mask in the air compressor And I took off for a couple hours when I came back It was all done and I also noticed he didn't even take the mask out of its package I said you didn't use the mask. He said I don't need a mask No big deal and that's the general attitude amongst workers here in Latin America You see guys shimmying up trees and poles with no safety ropes guys hot wiring electric meter boxes with no gloves People disconnecting the seat belt buzzers because they just don't want to use their seat belt But still you rarely hear of people getting fatally injured on the job So then I got to thinking about dangerous jobs and careers and I looked up and found the usual suspects You know, the most dangerous job in the world is logging turns out every year 97 out of a hundred thousand people die second most dangerous fishermen

[15:11] 77 out of a hundred thousand die number three air pilots and flight engineers 59 out of a hundred thousand die that's yearly number four roofers 51 out of a hundred thousand die each year Number five garbage men or is it garbage ladies or garbage people which begs the question? How many garbage women come around your neighborhood for that matter lady roofers? Where are those feminists when you need them? So anyway, I checked the top ten most dangerous jobs But here's something no one and I mean no one ever talks about and believe me you heard it here first Do you know what the most dangerous job in the world really is I'm talking about a real job Not a stunt like rocketing yourself over the Grand Canyon with a motorcycle get this it's being president of the United States Did you know that four out of forty five presidents have been killed in the line of duty?

[16:00] That's Lincoln McKinley Kennedy and Garfield That means if you're president you have a one out of eleven chance of getting murdered in office and get this 11 out of the 45 presidents have been shot at and wounded meaning if you're president You've got a one in four chance of taking a bullet Believe me anyone who wants to be president and doesn't know those facts Is a complete moron or is such a complete sociopath and is so in love with power that he'll risk Worse odds than playing a game of Russian roulette because you know with Russian roulette There's only five or six chambers in the revolver. That's a one in five or six chance of getting the job done Meanwhile as president you've got a one in four shot of taking a bullet

[16:46] In fact even being an astronaut is twice as safe as being a president as an astronaut You got a one in twenty five chance of dying So the question again is who but a delusional sociopath would ever want to be president? Oh, and here's a fun fact Did you know that Abraham Lincoln's first vice president name was Hannibal Hamlin? Imagine if Lincoln would have got shot in his first term Then we'd have had a Hannibal for a president though I don't think the name would have caught on with moms and their kids I want to add another crazy fact, you know when Lincoln got shot in his second term and vice president Andrew Johnson became president Fun fact about that guy. He lived the frontier life till he was 18 then married a 16 year old shoemaker's daughter Who taught him at age 18 how to read and write so we once had a president who was illiterate till he was 18

[17:34] Though I'm sure he did wear nice shoes. Sorry about the digression there. Oh and do let me know if I digress too much I wouldn't want you guys and gals out there to think I'm straying way too much from the Latin American topic Do let me know. All right. Now, here's a topic near and dear to my heart Gringos getting ripped off by Gringos. Hey, it happened to me The first thing you have to know when you delve into that subject I'd say by my own estimates 80% of the Gringos who get ripped off Maybe even 90% get gouged and scammed mainly because they don't know any Spanish and that means of course that many many Gringos and expats who've been ripped off or gouged don't even know it and Some of them never will like for example when buying a car renting a house buying food and just doing business with street vendors

[18:22] Fact is if you don't speak at least a little bit of Spanish You're most likely gonna get hit with gringo prices and astute gringos and Latinos No, as long as you get hit up with a price that's noticeably lower than what you're used to up in the States Well gringos especially new fresh green gringos are completely satisfied with the deal And then only after they've bent down a while and see what the real local pricing is might they get upset? Or pissed off so then I guess a better title for this topic is not the truth about gringo is ripping off gringos But how to wise up and not be a target for gringo prices or worse? First off there is a sliding scale of being ripped off and it's in the eye of the beholder for example Suppose someone sold you a one-ounce silver coin for five bucks And you looked it up a couple days later, and it was only worth 250 you got ripped off, right?

[19:10] But suppose you paid twice the price for that silver in 1995 and now In 2020 it's worth 20 bucks. Can you really look back and say you got ripped off? Well considering you quadrupled your money by today's prices No, even with inflation you made out great, but strictly speaking back in 95 you got ripped off So who's complaining I found the easiest way to get nailed for gringo prices is to listen to gringos and expat bars Or to put faith in those English journals and rags that you'll find on the tourist trail in any Latin country By the way, that's one way to know you're completely off the gringo tourist trail if you walk into a bar coffee shop or restaurant And you don't see a local English language rag or two in a rack or stand or stacked on the counter So the more English language rags you find the more you're on the tourist trail thing is when fresh green gringos and expats first

[19:59] Come down to Latin America English rags and journals are the first thing they grab and start reading and if that's where you get most of your information You're gonna get the idea the prices you see for the services and things they sell are the real and true going rates for the area Though in many cases you'd be wrong. For example, I'm looking at one of the English language rags that comes out of Cuenca, Ecuador I'm in the classified ad section right now. I see a post on July 6th 2020 couple days ago in English Of course, everything's in English here and the headline says BMI insurance company reduces deductibles to half at no cost to you Wow, you're thinking ain't that great You're thinking everyone needs health insurance and if you haven't got it already, that'd be a great company to go to right BMI insurance Let me read the rest of it

[20:45] It says BMI announced that for all current clients in any new client who signs up for health insurance in 2020 will have their deductible halved for the first year term For example, if you sign up for the $2,000 deductible plan You will automatically get the $1,000 deductible plan This also applies to current clients if you need more details Then they give a phone number and then at the bottom of the posting There's a nice picture of four people two of them looking 100% gringo into Latinas All right, so then what's wrong with this picture this insurance company ad well I'll tell you for anyone who's done some Investigation into the various insurance plans here in Latin America for gringos and expats soon enough You'll discover that is if you speak Spanish and look at the Spanish language policies You'll find almost all good private health care plans have the tiniest of deductibles

[21:34] So just a mention of a 2,000 or $1,000 deductible man That's a red flag for me right away In fact the private insurance plan that I have that I pay something like 80 bucks a month for has a zero deductible Most private plans in Latin America don't even have them What they have is a clause that says they're gonna pay 80 percent or 90 or 100 percent depending on plan you buy With a yearly or a lifetime maximum So what I'm saying is if you're non-spanish-speaking gringo or expat and you read this article you think hell in the United States I got a $5,000 deductible. This is great. It's only two or one thousand So obviously in your mind, you're not thinking you're getting gouged or ripped off It's much cheaper and much better than what you've got up in the States But in reality you see plans like these have gringo middlemen in charge

[22:22] They know when fresh green gringles and expats end up in a very gringoized area One of the first things they're gonna do is go to an insurance broker that speaks English Now, of course, if you want to know the ins and outs and the dos and don'ts of getting private health care insurance here In Latin America, I suggest you go to expatplanb.com to get my hundred plus page Latin American health care report Bottom line if you can avoid English speaking insurance brokers though admittedly if you get on one of their plans for the first year So at least you have coverage though You paid way too much for it though It really amazes me to see that gringles and expats who've been living in a gringoized area for a while They continue to pay way too much for certain things Especially rent health and car insurance. I'd say there's an epidemic of gringles that pay

[23:08] Twice as much for their car insurance as they have to simply because they're buying it from an English speaking broker In fact, I've personally looked over a couple of car insurance policies for gringo expat friends of mine Guys who spoke no Spanish and I pointed out to him that I could get him the exact same coverage for half the price The only thing is I told him they'd have to go down to the main insurance office and no one there speaks English So guess who got roped in to help in them with it. Yep. No good deed goes unpunished, huh? Oh and speaking of English magazines rags and publications on the gringo tourist trail Beware of woo-woo peddlers and bullshit artists for example on that same English language Ecuadorian rag We've got this wonderful woo-woo promotion in English Targeted at clueless new age gringos post-id July 7th 2020. Let me paraphrase this advertisement here

[23:57] It says in the age of Covid you need an approach to strengthen and improve your immune system You can let Ivana do it. She offers a treatment for an improved and maintained immune system And here's the scientific part. Yuck. Yuck Electing to have an osteopathic treatment Utilizes the ability of our body to rediscover its physical mental and biochemical balance then she says to state the fourth Osteopathic principle quote the rule of the artery is absolute Andrew still the creator of osteopathies says that if blood circulation is adequate Disease cannot develop the blood carries all the nutrients necessary for the disease not to settle and our immune system is Strengthened she says our treatment system activates the circulation of body fluids thus regulating and balancing your body's

[24:48] Biochemistry then she gives her credentials will omit her name here She says I graduated from the University of Cuenca with a bachelor's degree in physical therapy Hmm impressive and then I specialized and got my osteopathic Certification in Madrid Spain now here's the thing she posts her contact information and she's not a doctor If she was she'd be shouting it off the rooftops because the title doctor is huge in Latin America yet It's never mentioned which probably means she went to a seminar in Madrid, Spain and got herself a little diploma I see that there's a lot of those week and two week diplomas going around anyway, now she lays claim to some special immunological treatments as spelled out by this guy Andrew still who by the way died in 1917 not 70

[25:35] 2017 stating this ridiculous idea to me anyway of the rule of the artery Stating that if the blood circulation is adequate disease cannot develop. Have you ever heard of any medical explanation? That's so simplistic and stupid again. If blood circulation is adequate disease cannot develop and this amigos Is the kind of crap that sucks in fresh green gringos usually in the first few weeks or months they arrive They pick up all those English language rags They're free, you know Though I have to admit I read them once in a while myself because they do have some amusing articles and I get a kick out Of the ads. It's not to say those English rags are bad. They're good for something They highlight places to go things to do restaurant reviews and such but it's fire beware and that's as it should be

[26:22] But the deals are far and few in between and the target of course gringos who don't speak Spanish and they know gringos especially newly arrived gringos wear rose-colored glasses for quite a long time and That they're rather trusting and gullible So advertisers as a rule know you need products services and stuff to get yourself set up and settled in so in a way They know if you don't speak Spanish, they got you over a barrel Alright, we're getting towards the end of the show now And I'd like to mention once again that I've canceled my August expat insider seminar. It's been rescheduled for January 2021 I'm certain that one's gonna be a full house So sign up as soon as you can and get it under the early bird discounts Just go to expat plan be calm for full info Oh, and if you want further details on that 60-day passport program, I told you about that's a passport

[27:09] You get by investing in a particular country Remember this passport plan came out as a response to the covid thing which just destroyed tourism in Latin America and the Caribbean And the real amazing thing about this plan is you can do it all online Not having to go back and forth to the country You only go once to pick up the passport for complete details. Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan be 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 Insiders 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