Our good friend Alexi has written an article I believe will help many of our economists, Agents in the Field, and Cappy Cappites find a good Plan B when it comes to leaving the US. He tried Mexico, which I have kicked around in my own mind, but he has decided to settle on Portugal and elsewhere. A good entertaining read if you wish to educate yourself at the same time as well.
Academic
Composition (www.academiccomposition.com)
I
have arrived in Mexico last March, at a time when I had previously
lived in Denver. The state of Colorado is known for its brutal cold
and a mercurial weather, where the climate may change nearly a half a
dozen times per day. I was paying $1700 per month for a 500 square
foot apartment in the center of the city. The majority of my
acquaintances and neighbors were hardened Politically Correct
Ideologues and radical leftists. As it happens, my former boxing
instructor from Colorado Springs has recently been found guilty of a
sexual assault that he almost certainly did not commit.
Mexico
is famous for its picturesque beaches, tropical climate and a
hospitable culture. For good reasons, it is the seventh most visited
country in the world, just behind France, Spain, the United States,
China and Italy
(https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-most-visited-countries-in-the-world.html)
.
All of these aforementioned countries boast a highly developed
economy and a significant percentage of visitors arrive for
professional rather than recreational purposes. However, the
overwhelming majority of the visitors in Mexico are tourists and that
much is obvious: few foreigners find Mexico to be enticing place to
conduct their business.
Mexico
is attractive to tourists for obvious reasons: the prices are low,
it’s close to the United States and the weather is ideal in the
winter, just as when the snowbirds seek to escape the brutal cold
that characterizes this season in most of North America. Yet, in
recent years, Mexico witnessed a new phenomenon: a different type of
a “gringo” emerged in this land. Not only are North Americans
visiting Mexico on a short-term basis, many are becoming increasingly
likely to live here for an extended period of time. The status of
permanent residency is easy to acquire here and at one point, I
encountered a crooked government official who was willing to sell
that privilege to me for merely 80,000 Mexican Pesos, which is a
little more than four thousand U.S dollars. For many compelling
reasons, I have politely declined, yet in my place, many would have
gladly jumped on that opportunity.
The
question of why this poverty-stricken nation is flooded by residents
from its affluent neighbor to the north appears counter-intuitive at
first sight, yet, it is only a little interesting and it can be
explained in terms of basic economics. It is evident that the Baby
Boomer generation are approaching their retirement years and in
contrast to their next-elders, the Silent generation, the Boomers are
not known for their ability to accumulate wealth. As the eminent
modern demographers, Neil Howe and William Strauss have concluded
(https://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-Future-1584/dp/0688119123/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Generations&qid=1575710455&sr=8-2),
the Silent generation have reputed themselves as decent, prosperous
and morally upstanding people. While they had their flaws such as
indecision, meekness and a tendency to engage in hands off parenting
which led Gen-Xers to become the “latchkey kids” in youth and
enterprising free agents as adults, the Silent generation are
generally remembered for their deep sense of decency. As such, they
had tended to have their affairs in order, they earned respect from
their children (even if they didn’t approve of their hands off
parenting style) and they had taken care of their financial
circumstances.
With
the Baby Boomers, the story is quite different and they have emerged
as the first generation in American history to be worse off than
their parents at retirement age. The financial insecurity of today’s
senior citizens is hardly the most distinctive point in the glaring
contrast between the Boomers and their next-elders. The difference
becomes the most apparent in light of how the elderly have been
represented in movies and popular culture since approximately 2005.
Since then, no-one thought of old-timers as respectable, discreet and
upstanding senior citizens. Instead, a clip from the “Dirty
Grandpa” or the “Bad Grandpa” paints the whole picture of what
America’s seniors have degenerated into. To be sure, prior to this
generational shift, the Silent Generation senior citizens had retired
in Mexico, yet this phenomenon had been less common and less
corrosive to the well-being of their host country.
It
is no secret that the overwhelming majority of American expatriates
in Mexico are Boomer retirees. The reason for this is simple: they
had not saved nearly enough money to afford a proper retirement and
their social security pension allows them to enjoy a decent living in
a third world country from which they can frequently visit their
family. As innocuous as this explanation may seem, when it comes to
the Boomer generation, things are never as they appear to be. Behind
the façade of the convivial senior citizens enjoying their drinks at
a bar on a Puerto Vallarta boardwalk, there lies a much grimmer, more
sinister reality. “Gringo raboverde” is an expression I’ve
heard more than just on a few occasions and literally, it translates
from Spanish as “green tail”. Yet, it actually refers to a
lecherous White man who is obsessed with teenage girls, many of whom
are under-age.
Of
course, nothing is wrong with consensual intercourse between adults,
yet many of these “gringo raboverde” stories border on
pedophilia. It’s not at all uncommon for a 70-year old man who has
been divorced five times to exploit a 13-year old prostitute who has
been shipped to a touristy community from a backward, mafia-infested
Mexican state like Michoacan or Guerrero. Human trafficking and sex
slavery are a burgeoning industry in Mexico and no-one can be
surprised that the victims of such crimes are taken to work in the
lively night-life scene that panders to the appetites of the
hypersexual Baby Boomer foreigners.
The
other day, I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with an elderly
Canadian manager of a restaurant by a popular beach in Puerto
Vallarta “Playa de Los Muertos”. He let me on his personal story
of how he came to PV in order to retire, but rapidly discovered that
his life spun out of control. “I was having too much fun”, he
remarked dejectedly. “So, I went through the trouble of getting a
work visa so I can get my life together again and continue to live in
paradise”. By all accounts, he appeared decent and forthright, I
would have never suspected him of behaving in an ignominious manner
that mars the reputation of Americans in Mexico. Fortunately, I am
yet to discover a reason to think otherwise, but he then showed a
picture of his much younger girlfriend who was certainly old enough
to be considered an adult. Yet, the story had taken a darker twist
when he disclosed that she lives in Guadalajara and works as a
personal trainer. She narrowly managed to avoid being captured by
criminals who almost certainly intended for her to work in the
sex-slave industry. The story-teller was convinced that had she not
been in her peak physical condition, she would have been much less
fortunate.
Just
four months earlier, my girlfriend and I had been robbed at gunpoint
in the same city, just two blocks away from the U.S embassy in
Guadalajara. We never bothered reporting the crime to the police
because it is a simple waste of time
(https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/mexico-impunity-levels-reach-99-study/).
It is a well-documented fact that only a tiny fraction of crimes
committed in Mexico result in a conviction. The exact number as to
this country’s exact impunity rate varies between 93 and 99
percent, but no serious analyst believes that it could be lower than
90 percent. Only about seven percent of all crimes are reported
because it is an extraordinarily arduous and an exceedingly
time-consuming process. On average, the victims report having to
visit between three to five offices in order to report even a
relatively insignificant crime such as petty theft and the entire
ordeal often takes an entire work-day, roughly between 9am and 4pm.
Yet, many of such offices close between noon and 1:30, which means
that if the petitioners have the resolve to continue, they must plan
on turning this endeavor into a two or a three-day affair.
Even
in the best case scenario where the police opt to investigate the
reported crime, there is very little to hope for. Only 4.46 percent
of all reported crimes result in convictions, which means that
regardless of how damning the evidence may be, the overwhelming
majority of crimes will be left completely unaddressed. In other
words, no reasonable Mexican criminal is deterred by a fear of
punishment, which is an essential reason why this country is home to
a myriad of highly sophisticated organized crime syndicates that are
among the most powerful in the entire world.
As
for the white collar criminals and politicians who have bled their
country dry, the chances of a conviction are close to zero. Michoacan
is widely regarded as one of the most corrupt and crime ridden states
in all of Mexico, it also holds the distinction of being the state of
origin to the majority of underage strumpets in Mexico. The incident
that is now known as the “Michoacanazo” is a clear case in point
is to why Mexico is an immitigable failed state. In 2009, a
substantial number of high-profile political figures in Michoacan
were arrested on charged of corruption, abuse of office and collusion
with organized crime. Yet, less than a year later, every single one
of the defendants had been released, despite the mounting evidence
attesting to their guilt.
Last
year, a left-wing candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected
president of Mexico and consistently with his left-wing platform, he
advocated for eradicating cartel violence by investing in education
and granting immunity from prosecution to low-level cartel operatives
and farmers who partake in the manufacturing of narcotics. To be
certain, it has never crossed his mind that police officers who earn
less than 10,000 pesos ($500 USD) per month have absolutely no
incentive to do their job when the local cartel will eagerly
quintuple that amount to persuade them to do just the opposite.
“Abrazos,
no balazos!” ,
the Mexican president chanted. “Hugs, not bullets”, is what AMLO
had to say when the military arrested the son of El Chapo Guzman in
Culiacian, Sinaloa, but the cartel decimated the entire city in order
to set him free
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/30/mexico-el-chapo-son-ovidio-guzman-lopez-operation).
Foreign
journalists continue to inquire as to how the Mexican government
could have executed such a poorly planned operation and to be
certain, no-one is willing to take any responsibility for that. Even
more certainly, virtually nobody even began to entertain the obvious
hypothesis that the Sinaloa cartel paid the AMLO administration in
order to stage such an ill-conceived operation that resulted in
windfall profits for the cartels and an unmitigated disaster for
everyone else. In so doing, the Sinaloa cartel have demonstrated
their military might and put pressure on other cartels to concede
territory. However, they have also set a powerful precedent that this
government is entirely ineffectual and it will never stop any
criminal organization, no matter how weak or how small from simply
doing as they please, provided only that they are not stopped by a
superior organized crime unit.
Less
than a month after the infamous Culiacan disaster, it has become
clear that a criminal organization does not need to be as powerful as
the Sinaloa cartel in order to begin making waves
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-03/is-it-safe-to-travel-to-san-miguel-mexico-2019).
A much smaller organization made inroads into San Miguel de Allende
recently, which is a small colonial town that has long been known to
be home to various retirement communities for seniors from the United
States and Canada. They have made their presence known simply by
dropping a large amount of narcotics off at local business and
insisting that they will be collecting the sales revenue in less than
a month. Predictably, the businesses in question have simply shut
down and resumed operations elsewhere.
The
majority of liberal commentators in the U.S and Mexico would say that
this is a fluke, a short-term setback on a long road to success in
the president’s “hugs not bullets” strategy. Yet, the reality
is that Thomas Hobbes had it right. “Life in the state of nature is
solitary, brutish and short” and “Even the worst despot is
preferable to complete anarchy”. For all his flaws, Saddam Hussein
maintained a quasi-coherent regime in Iraq because he crushed the
violent Islamist sects with an iron fist. Yet, when the United States
deposed him, the state of nature broke out, the hardships of which
drastically outweighed the worst abuses of Hussein’s tyranny.
Numerous
Mexican left-wingers would insist that the aggressive interventionist
policy of Felipe Calderon who took office in 2006 and started the
notorious “Mexico’s war on drugs” was a complete disaster. In
many respects, they are correct: Calderon may pride himself on his
capture of the El Chapo and a decisive offensive on various cartels
in his home state of Michoacan, but his exploits have left Mexico
even worse off before he had gained presidency. By undermining the
most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico, the Calderon
administration unwittingly created a mini state of nature in various
parts of Mexico. That is to say that in the absence of the nearly
omnipotent cartels that governed each part of the country, there was
virtually no government presence at all: that’s why there was a
demand for cartels to create order in the first place. In other
words, in an apparent effort to establish the Hobbesian Leviathan,
Calderon inadvertently deprived those regions of the only hope of
having any Leviathan at all in the guise of organized crime
syndicates.
Under
this pretext, AMLO rationalizes his policy of nearly total surrender
to the onslaught of the cartels’ self-righteous sovereignty. The
obvious solution to the problem is that the Mexican government needs
to reclaim the legitimate authority of the state and the sovereignty
over its territory. This can only be done if the state has the
monopoly on violence and that is the only manner in which a genuine
Leviathan can be established, which is the cornerstone of a civilized
society. Mexico will not be able to achieve this objective on its
own: this country is in desperate need of aid from the international
community, especially the United States. Regrettably, the AMLO
administration has absolutely no interest of receiving any foreign
from any nation, the least of all the invidious Trump administration
(https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/amlo-declines-trump-offer-to-help/).
Nonetheless, there are enough decent political and community leaders
with a whiff of common-sense who are more than happy to consider
Trump’s offer, which is desperately needed in this God forsaken
land.
It
is high-time that we set aside the vociferous partisan rhetoric
characterizing our polity in the modern times across the world. No,
the Donald Trump phenomenon is not unique to the United States. The
zeitgeist of the modern era demands urgent solutions in response to
the ongoing problems that have been neglected for decades. The Trump
administration represents a neo-populist movement which embodies the
citizenry’s ire at decades of institutional abuse, corruption and
the government’s utter disregard for the public good. Victor Orban
of Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Vladimir Putin of
Russia and even the Kirchners of Argentina are also similar cases in
point. In his own way, AMLO is this type of a populist, but he is a
misguided idealist, in the vein of the Old Major in George Orwell’s
Animal Farm, which portrays the irresolvable failures of the
archetypal leftist.
The
practical solutions to Mexico’s ongoing crisis are as follows.
-Welcome
all foreign aid and military intervention that serves the purpose of
affirming the authority of the Mexican state and destroying the
pseudo-Leviathans that the cartels intend to establish.
-Collaborate
with the organized crime syndicates who are willing to align
themselves with the Mexican state and their foreign allies. For
example, if the Nuevo Generacion de Jalisco cartel that controls the
Puerto Vallarta area intends to cooperate with the government in
order to keep the piece in the tourist-centered areas of Mexico, they
should be given preferential treatment over other organized crime
syndicates.
-Instead
of investing an exorbitant sum of money in Mexico’s education
system when only 40% of the citizenry have a bank account, it makes
much more sense to invest in law enforcement. Maslow’s hierarchy is
predicated on a simple truism that before one can pursue lofty goals
such as self-actualization that manifests in the guise of
intellectual achievement, creative pursuits or spiritual
enlightenment, one must first secure the most basic needs with regard
to personal safety and creation of a community where talent may
flourish. There is no way around it: it’s impossible to have
security in a state where police officers depend on the criminals’
“tips” in order to survive.
-Legalize
all narcotics. As controversial as this decision may be, it works: it
is as simple as that. When the government legalizes narcotics, these
dangerous substances are provided to the public by reputable business
rather than the organized crime elements. Even if this course of
action does not ameliorate Mexico’s problems with regard to drug
addiction, it will certainly lead to a marked reduction in violent
crime. Moreover, it is evident that this approach helped Portugal to
not only reduce the incidence of drug-related violence, but also to
empower their drug addicts to diminish their dependency on narcotics
(https://transformdrugs.org/drug-decriminalisation-in-portugal-setting-the-record-straight/)
As
for Americans who may be considering relocating to Mexico, I have the
following advice.
-There
are just two safe communities in Mexico: that’s the Vallarta area
(including a few villages south of Puerto Vallarta and Rivera
Nayarit, several small towns north of Vallarta in the neighboring
state of Nayarit) and the Cancun area (That is Merida in the Yucatan
Peninsula, Playa del Carmen and the smaller towns that are known to
profit from tourism from the United States).
-When
you arrive in Mexico, you will enjoy a much lower cost of living, but
also a lower standard of living. Just imagine when you need to pay
your electricity bill, you need to scour the entire city for what’s
called the “CFE” office. There, you will find a machine that is
almost certainly defunct and even if you get one to work, it will not
accept a 500 peso bill, which is worth roughly $25 USD. Most Mexicans
in your area will earn less than 5000 pesos per month (less than $250
dollars), so why on earth would they have a 500 peso bill and who in
their right mind would install a machine that accepts such bills? If
you want to exchange your 500 peso bill at a local business, good
luck with that. Nobody carries that kind of change and even if they
do, they won’t take your 500 peso bill because they know it will be
a colossal pain in the ass to try to buy something with that. Just
imagine someone coming to a small town in Wisconsin and asking local
mom and pop shop operatives if they have change for a $1000 dollar
bill. You will be frowned upon as if you were from another planet, I
can guarantee you that. You should also get used to walking into a
popular bank, which may even be from Spain (such as Santander or
BBVA) where not a single ATM machine works. If one of them works,
count yourself lucky to stand in line for 20 minutes in order to be
able to withdraw just five dollars of your hard-earned money.
-Gringo
prices are a fact of life. If you are of Caucasian descent, almost
every Mexican will assume you are Bill Gates. Those folks don’t
like to read much and as deplorable as America’s system of
education may be, Mexico somehow managed to provide one that is even
worse. A good one-third of the folks you’ll meet here will be
functionally illiterate and they will automatically assume that
simply because you’re White, you must be absolutely loaded. That
means they need to charge you ten times the local price and if you
don’t know the language, they will get away with it. As for the
police, they will exploit you for as long as they can get away with
it.
-The
average IQ in Mexico is about 88
(https://new-iq-test.com/iq-by-country/)
and police officers across the world are known to be less intelligent
than the average person. It is also worth noting that the average IQ
of a criminal in the United States is 85. No-one should be surprised
that in Mexico, the police are notoriously complicit in crime and are
widely regarded as the mafioso’s handmaiden’s. If you happen to
be driving outside of the tourist trap zone and you are pulled over
for a minor traffic violation, expect to pay a “gringo price” for
your bribe. Of course, you may decline to pay, in which case the
officer will probably restrain himself from exercising the state of
nature’s right to shoot you on sight, but he will then write a
formal citation (if he happens to be functionally literate) and he
will also confiscate your U.S driver’s license, along with your
license plate. That’s right, the traffic cops (la policia vial)
have the prerogative to confiscate the driver’s license and license
plate and store them in a local police office as collateral to ensure
that the offending driver pays their dues. If you’d prefer to visit
five to ten different offices in God knows which municipality of
Mexico instead of paying a $100-200 USD bribe, you may opt to do so.
-The
majority of expatriates you will meet will be senior citizens. That’s
inevitable: the younger folks visit Mexico if they are on vacation
with their parents (as is the case with Millennials and the
Post-Millennials) and Gen Xers tend to be too pragmatic to experiment
living in a shithole country, as President Trump would describe
Mexico.
-Your
dating life will improve, but you will meet your fair share of
gold-diggers. Make no mistake about it, there is no overblown
entitlement complex in Mexico, the Dunning-Kruger effect is almost
exclusively an Anglo-American phenomenon. Yes, Mexico may have been
influenced by radical feminism, but not to the extent that the U.S
has been. Nonetheless, there is no shortage of young women who will
look at to take advantage of you because they tend to assume that
since you are from the U.S, you must be stupendously wealthy and as
naïve as they come.
-While
Mexico is known to be a traditional and a family friendly society,
single motherhood is also nearly the norm. You will be rolling your
dice and if you happen to draw the short end of the stick, you will
find yourself in a hopeless situation where your prospective partner
simply has no concept of what purpose a man serves in a family. To
her mind, a man is a little more than a violent intruder whose
persona is characterized by drug lords, habitual wife beaters who are
arrested weekly and released from prison a day later and an entire
type of people who represent an illiterate man who is good for
nothing but abusing any woman he meets in every possible way his tiny
brain allows him to imagine. On the other hand, if you happen to win
the lottery, your rewards will grow exponentially.
As
for me, I have just about had enough. If you are looking for a golden
mean between the exorbitant costs of living in the U.S, the cultural
degeneration that the PC left represents and Mexico’s utter
lawlessness, I’d recommend Spain. That is where I’ll be heading
very shortly. With regard to climate and the costs of living, it is
certainly a golden mean as well. You can live just as cheaply as you
would in a prosperous Mexican expatriate community, but you will
enjoy a much higher standard of living in all ways imaginable. If
Spain happens to be too expensive for you, try Portugal. If you can
prove that you earn just $18,000 USD per year, you will be eligible
for receiving the privileges of permanent residency in Portugal and
by extension, the entire European Union. The climate in the Iberian
Peninsula is also quite temperate, which stands in sharp contrast to
Mexico’s tropical, hot and dry climate where heavy rains induce
flood-like conditions for a good five to six months of the year. The
climate in the Iberian Peninsula is known as the Mediterranean
climate, which is quite similar to much of southern Europe of Italy,
southern France, the Balkans and Greece. Costa Del Sol of Spain (the
sunny coast) enjoys 320 days of sunshine per year and even in the
heat of summer, the scorch is not nearly as oppressive as it is in
Mexico and the winters are fairly mild. In many respects, the Iberian
climate is identical with that of Southern California, but the ocean
is much warmer.
