10 Things I Hate About You, Latino Culture!

So I’ve been living among Latinos for almost 20 years now.  I can’t keep track of the exact dates anymore, but I’ve spent the better part of five years in Brazil and 15 years in Mexico.  And of course the last two years solidly living here in retirement.  At some point one’s experiences and opinions can be expressed with a degree of credibility, don’t you think?  Well, I think you can take what I’m about to say as the truth – at the very least, my truth. 

Most ex-pat bloggers chose to ramble on about the food, or the weather, or the lower cost of living, or the warmness of the people in the exotic locale they live. That’s fine. And those positives all apply to my delightful life here in the Riviera Nayarit, that’s a given. However today, I’m going to make a cultural comparison (Latino vs. White American).  Make no mistake, overall I love Latino culture, chose to live here and don’t have a racist bone in my body.  Consider this: if I were a native Mexican blogger living in the United States and writing a blog about the negatives of American culture, the low hanging fruit would be the high cost of living, the political divide, drug addicts and homeless, serial killers and school shootings.  These blights are uniquely American.  Journalistically, I think it’s fair game to discuss a culture’s negatives along with its positives.  What follows is slightly negative on Latino culture, and I freely plead guilty of generalizing and stereotyping.  To be clear, references to “they, them and their” are references to Latinos.  Here we go: 10 things I hate about Latino culture. 

1) Broken promises.  Basically, their word is worthless. Promises to attend your event, promises to hold an event, to return a borrowed item, to follow-up on anything really, are more often than not, promises broken.  They have no sense of honor when it comes to honoring their word.  This has been especially challenging for me as a permanent resident trying to fit in, make new friends, to host a house party, to be a good neighbor.  Have you ever had to give away 10 lbs of cooked ribs and 5 lbs of pasta salad after the confirmed RSVPs failed to show?

2) Tomorrow is actually next week.  No sense of time commitment.  Again, as I built my home over the last year, my frustration was pushed to the limit with contractor tardiness and no shows.  It’s not just minutes and hours, although you can assume that an 8am appointment will commence at 9am or 10am.  The standing joke is to define the word “mañana,” which literally means tomorrow, but in practicality means anytime in the near future.  Worse in Brazil than in Mexico, but mañana is usually NOT tomorrow.  Amusing huh?  Not so much.

3) Loan = gift.  As a policy, I try to not loan money.  But sometimes I have.  When I have, I’d say that 80% of the time I have not been paid back.  And when I have been paid back, it was not easy.  I had to call, ask, beg, drive to them, take payments, etc., etc.  I have been surprised and disappointed how many times a borrowing “friend” has “sold” my friendship by not paying me back and permanently ghosting me.  And for as little as $50.  Is that all I was worth!?

4) Lie, Cheat & Steal (LC&S).  Look, if you are, or ever have been, involved in international business, you know that many other cultures LC&S more than the American culture.  As I learned in business school, Asian cultures in particular are infamous for LC&S as a normal, not immoral, acceptable business practice.  The Chinese do not admonish cheating in their educational system. As early as kindergarten they accept it and encourage students to do it well enough to not get caught.  They believe this “skill” will serve their people well later in life in the competitive international arena.  As an American with some international experience, I’ve had to acknowledge this cultural moral difference and deal with it.  I will also say this about Latinos – they don’t discriminate in their LC&S – they do it to their friends and family equally! But as one who doesn’t LC&S, I usually come out on the short end of the deal and I do not like it.

5) Ungratefulness. I have never known a people so overtly ungrateful for others’ generosity.  In all fairness, they may be internally grateful, but the culture difference is that they don’t express gratitude. They don’t say “thank you” enough or sincerely enough. Maybe Americans are the odd ones on this pet peeve of mine? Nevertheless it’s a very noticeable difference that’s hard to accept. I first experienced this with my girlfriend, Gaby #1.  Over the 7 years we were a couple, I can count on one hand the times she thanked me for my generosity, the list of which included significant money and time for her, her child and her extended family and friends.  One of the earliest Spanish words I learned was “desagradecida,” or ungrateful. Aside from girlfriends, it seems quite common in Latino culture for someone to give generously and not receive a word of thanks.

6) Gringo = ATM.  I just cannot get used to being hit-up for a hand-out, constantly.  And it’s not just young women hitting me up for money; it’s everyone from my best friends to complete strangers. True, most gringos are wealthier than most Latinos.  a) that doesn’t mean the wealthier wants to give his money away, b) this particular fixed-income gringo IS NOT wealthier than any other gringo nor wealthier than the average Latino, and c) I wish the Latino culture had more pride and more shame in begging and borrowing.

7) Mandilón not Macho.  I need to explain what is Mandilón to my American readers. This is the Mexican equivalent of being “whipped” in a relationship.  My experience with Mexican men in who are in relationships, is that the woman (wife or girlfriend, the same) runs the household.  She controls the money and the free-time of her man.  My amigos can’t spend or commit without the approval of their significant other.  Forget about meeting for Happy Hour. The Macho Mexican Man is a myth.

8) Needless jealousy and drama.  I am mostly referring to Latinas here.  What makes them awesome is what makes them difficult.  They are a passionate species who feed on spicy Telenovelas and Netflix narco culture.  They know they’re famously desirable and preferable to gringas so they aren’t afraid to push the limits of toxicity.  Finding a hot, one night stand is easy.  Finding a stable, non-bipolar, long-term companion, nearly impossible.  Quite the paradox and the material for many memes!

9) Spanish is an inferior language.  Teaching ESL for the last 10 years, I can say that I know 100% of my own language and half of theirs.  English is a roughly 4X larger language than Spanish with literally a million words in its dictionary.  This allows us to be crystal clear in our communication.  When English is mastered, there is no ambiguity.  In contrast, with Spanish I am fighting up to 15 meanings for the same word.  Que pedo? Ahorita? Learning Spanish takes more time, more Q&A, understanding intonation and localization.  I could argue that it’s harder to learn a condensed, contextually nuanced language such as Spanish, than an extensive, precise and formulaic language such as English. Lastly, I do not live in metro area such as Mexico City, Monterey or Guadalajara.  I live in rural Nayarit.  It’s been called the Alabama of Mexico where even the Spanish language mastery is below average.  I’m immersed in a less-educated area that too often uses street slang and regional words.  

10) Horrible communicators.  This criticism maybe conflated with a generational criticism as I see this problem among our American youth as well.  But comparatively speaking, Latinos are horrible communicators.  Let’s start with websites, which are not updated with accurate information (e.g. hours, contact info).  Websites are not relied on by customers so website owners are lazily neglectful.  Next is email – no one has it and/or no one use it.  They kind of leapfrogged this particular communication channel.  Mexico is a WhatsApp culture, which is the texting platform of choice.  WhatsApp is preferred because it’s a Wifi-first platform that doesn’t rely on a cellular phone plan.  So not only did the United States invent the internet, email and cellular technologies… not only did we create Facebook, Instagram, Tinder and WhatsApp, but we set the gold standard for how to use them all.  We simply respond quicker, we type clearer, and we spell better.  We actually dialogue where a question begets an answer. Not here. Here you will be left wondering??? Here, unlimited monthly cell plans are rare and some people buy data packets of just 10 minutes to carry the day; here Telcel is the monopolistic provider and cell coverage is unreliable and spotty; here they frequently change phone numbers without updating contacts. It’s like a burner phone culture. And Latinos ignore, block and ghost at an unacceptable level.  Don’t even get me started on how a Facebook Marketplace convo usually goes. Pure insanity. I hate communications here!

Yes, a bit of a rant. But while living in paradise checks most of the important boxes, I felt you needed to know the mixed reality.  There are a few downsides and deficiencies.  I’ll be curious how my non-American readers respond to my observations.  Was I unfair?

Salud