Startup culture in Latin America, Capybaras in Argentina, an extradition shakes things up with Venezuela, and news about the reggaeton wars.

This week on 4 from the South, Steve and Fab talk about the growing culture of startups in Latin America, then more about capybaras in wealthy neighborhoods in Argentina, the extradition of a businessman connected to the Nicolas Maduro regime, and news about the ongoing wars in the world of reggaeton.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:17):
We are back with four from the South. I'm Steve Healey.
Here's my friend Fabrizio Capano. Up. How are you doing?
But I'm good? How are you? I'm doing great. We've
got four incredible stories for you. As always on this podcast,
we bring you four stories every week from big Latin America.
And this week we're going to be talking about startups,
the startup culture of Latin America. We're going to return

(00:40):
to uh story that's been captivating us, the copy bearers
that have taken over the wealthy neighborhood in Argentina. And
you've got some stories for us to fab something about
talking about Well, there's extradition of at this guy Alex
sab from Venezuelan businessman was connected with Nicholas Madua's government.

(01:03):
And then we have, yeah, another episode of the Reggaeton
Wars or guy Bauban is suffering. So we're gonna we're
gonna say that that'll be dessert. Well, first we have
to eat our vegetables. Um. So this week I was
honored to be a guest at a class at Catholic
University in Washington, d C. Via zoom. The professor there

(01:27):
um invited me to talk about travel and tourism in
Latin America. She's teaching a class and she assigns in
the class by book The Wonder Trail, which is a
travelog about a journey from here in Los Angeles to
the bottom of Chile. You are a character in that book,
fab You were extremely helpful guide to me as I
was navigating Chile. If you haven't bought my book, you

(01:48):
definitely should buy at least three copies because you'll need
one for just you to read, one for to read
in the bathroom, and one to give away. Anyway, it
was a pleasure to be in that class, and um
so all the people in the class where Salvadorans, and
they they were reporting back to me that the bitcoin
business is not going so great. It's not going great expected. Yeah, well,

(02:14):
it's just confused. People don't understand what's happening. And even
even if you sit down with a bitcoin expert for
like an hour, you won't leave knowing more than you
did before. You leave more confused. So why would this
system work when you can't explain it to anybody? I
don't know. I I think money should be simple money

(02:35):
as a piece of paper that you trade it represents
value and you trade it bitcoin is you have to
explain it more than that. It's like, oh, you've got
a lot of work, you know, Like just the idea
of like making money is a lot of work. So
just keep it simple, yes for everyone. Please. Anyways, shout
out to the kids from Catholic University for having me.

(02:57):
It was a real pleasure to talk to them, and
I learned in the old cliche, I learned more from
them than they did for me. And we'll hope to
have some maybe some guests from there will appear on
our show. Um, but fab we got to talk about
everyone's talking about the startup boom in Latin America. I'm
here on the Financial Times website how Latin America became

(03:18):
text next big frontier. That's Michael Stott reporting in the
Financial Times, and The Economist is covering this as well.
The word is out that startups are going off in
Latin America. And I thought this was kind of interesting
because the way the Financial Times phrase the art that
they start off with buying a car, renting an apartment,

(03:39):
or opening a bank account, all recurring nightmares in Latin America. Basically,
they're saying, like to do anything in Latin America sucks.
There's a lot of forms you gotta fill out. It's
a pain in the butt. And that's created an opportunity
for startups because they can do it a better, more
efficient way and knock out these old, laggy competitors. So
talk to me, what do you know about the world
of startups? And yeah, bureaucracy, it's an opportunity for startups

(04:03):
in Latin America. Yeah, I mean I this is the thing.
It's like when when you're in in South America, in
any country like that, you are so I'm gonna say
the word contaminated by American companies that you think most
of the time that these companies are Americans, like even
you know, like I don't know. In Chile, there's a

(04:25):
few Chilean startups that are doing really well. For a
long time, a lot of people thought like, oh, it
must be Green Goes, you know, like them or Europeans like,
but it's actually growing up there, like, um, this one
called it's called the Not Company. Yeah, it's this guy's
who created an algorithm who figure it out the closest

(04:49):
fidget vegetarian version of every food you know. So I
mean you think about like I don't know, probably there's
still not available, like sushi. And they put sushi in
a big machine and the machine like they did the
people they play play it's like so with water and

(05:11):
with like these seeds from the ocean, and they bring
this together and make you this impossible sushi. So uh
once again, I mean that's not an accurate description how
you work, but it's quite amazing. It's quite amazing. So
that's like an app on your phone and you type
in I want vegetarian sushi and they make it for you,

(05:31):
or they just tell you where there's a restaurant was
making it. No, in this case, they're they're not. They're
no more like an app. They work more like like
a company that's start up, and you know, they get
international funds to develop this algorithm. You know, the algorithm
is the machine and they create products. Um, they come
up with products all the time like new not will milk,

(05:53):
not this, not that. Okay, So they're like a big
food company that's making vegetarian products. Yes, yes, and I
think that yes, the key is the algorithm. Have you
had these products? Are they good? They're quite good? I mean,
say they like them um. Once again, it's like how

(06:15):
far are we from like the h and we're all
going to get that there, Like the hunt. You can
even tell the difference between vegetarian meat and a real meat.
There's we're gonna get there at some point. I don't know,
I think so maybe I don't know. I don't know either.
I mean the like impossible burger and that kind of thing. Um,
they're good, but the increasingly I've been like, well, this

(06:39):
isn't healthy either. This is a pile of oil and
like mushed up peas and processed. It's not good for you.
Like it's good. It's good that it's not a cow.
I guess if you don't want to eat a cow,
it's good for the cows. It's great for gas. Once again,
is still like very impressive idea. Then do you have

(07:03):
the people from corner Shop. There's something that people have
to know before, Like in Latin America, Amazon, it's not
it's trying, but it's not there. Well, there's a lot
of opportunities because they're not a big Amazon eating all
the other companies, you know, right, So it's not the

(07:26):
corner exactly. So corner Shop it's kind of um uh,
it's kind of an Amazon, but like it goes to
every store that is available in the app. But if
for example, like I don't know, I need a toothbrush,
I need um chicken meat, and I need ah, I
don't know, um uh a screwdriver and uh, just put

(07:50):
all of this in this toothbresh, chicken meat, screwdriver. Every
That's like in my head, I'm always there. There's everyone.
Even if you related to this and and this, this, this,
people in the app are like, okay, I'll get that
for you. So someone kick a car, go to three
different stores, get all this in one package, and boom,

(08:12):
delivered to your house. Okay. So that's like this is
a corner Shop is an app that gets you a
guy to do your errand for you. Basically, yeah, and
Uber bought it. Oh wow, okay cool and it works
pretty well. People people like it very effective, very friendly
and fun and kind of fun. You know anybody, Okay, wait,

(08:34):
I want to hear about my card. I mean, I'm
wondering if you know anybody who works for a corner
Shop who does the job of going again, screw drivers
and chicken meet for people. I don't know that people
who work in that level. I know someone who works
in another level of the corners. Okay, I know the
corporation people, but not the card working typical driver's seekers,

(08:55):
the screw driver's seekers. Okay, cool, we'll tell me if
i'm card libre it Um. It's kind of like eBay,
but it was, it was there from the beginning. I remember,
like the first time I got internet access in my life,
Mercalaliar was already there, you while. It was kind of
like a craig list and it's an Argentinian company and

(09:16):
they always been there for you, you know. Um, and
when when eBay and all these other companies start growing,
just still relay more in Mercaliliberty because it's like it's
been there for you forever and they growing so much,
like they're doing so so well. Uh now it's a
huge company and they work once again like an e

(09:37):
base lute Amazon version of trading. I'm looking at people.
Their logo is really like it seems like they didn't
spend a lot of time working on it. It's like
two hands shaking hands, but it's kind of nice. It's
like twenty years ago they started so Google like two

(09:57):
hands shaking and that's their logo for two guys shaking
hands as the logans or two people shacken hands. We
don't know, well cool, I mean it's great that, um,
that there are all these wonderful solutions to annoying problems
in life. I did think it was funny that, like
the way that startups work is you find the most
annoying bother some problem and people's lives and attack it.

(10:20):
And that's kind of good. I mean, maybe we're not.
It's impossible we're not appreciating enough how good things are going.
Like there are people out there working to solve our problems.
I know that in the mood in general seems to
be like everything's going terribly and things are worse than
ever before, and everything's on fire, and there's all these
horrible politicians emerging and no one seems to know what
the future is going to be like. But maybe things

(10:40):
are going better than we expected. I mean maybe because
we're on the side of the people who are getting
the screwdrivers, because when you know suits instead of the
screwdriver covers. Meanwhile, people are kidding me. My job is
driving around getting chicken meat and screwdrivers for them to
figure out where to get a cheek in and its

(11:03):
crew driver. If you're out there, if you're out there
driving for Corner Shop or trading on Mercado Libre, we
want to hear from you. Hit us up for from
the South, Gmail, Twitter, anyway you can find us. We
want to know your stories because that's what we do here.
We report on the trends and that's what's going on. Okay, fab,

(11:35):
I've got another one for you. We talked in the
past about the Coppy Bearers, the Coppy Bearers that have
taken over the Argentine neighborhood of nor Delta. So basically
they're these little the cutest most they're animals for our time,
truly characters there. They look like a dog, cat, furry

(11:58):
little thing, and their I is there's something about their
faces that's just totally indifferent to our problems and they
look like they don't. You can just look at them
and they don't care about whatever you care about. They're
just chill. They look chill. They're winning cool animals, so

(12:19):
and they disturbing a reach neighborhood. So it's like, yes, yes, Well,
we talked about the story made it all the way
to the Wall Street Journal where you know, I think
the first time we talked about the story, it was like,
you know, Cappa baris takeover Argentine neighborhood, which is great.
The Wall Street Journal h this is uh October ten.
Sylvina fried Luski and Kavas are the reporters here, and

(12:42):
the headline is Rodents the size of St. Bernard's swarm
and exclusive gated community, which I thought was sort of
a different framing than you know, we've heard in the
past because rodents, Yeah, people don't like the idea of rodents.
I guess they are technically rodents. Swarm the swarms ugly
employe an word you don't like being swarmed. But then
the picture is that it's just these It's the same

(13:05):
as the every picture you see when you look at
this story. Some chilled out, adorable looking animals just eating
uh like some vines or something. Yeah, just whatever. They
either vegetarians or not, like dangerous, They're just chilling out there.
It seems like this would be a blessing to have
in your community, but everyone's piste off, and in fact,

(13:25):
in this article, they're saying that what they want to
do is castrate the males to limit the population, which
seems awfully brutal to me. I mean, these guys are
just they're showing up their part of nature to can't
we co exist here? What's going on? Yeah? They were here,
We were there before, these humans, these rich Argentineans. So
I mean, once again you're using their land. They should

(13:47):
be in charge. They should be castrating the humans community.
I was thinking the same thing. Have anybody's getting castrated here?
It's the rich assholes, not the common arras. We want
more of them. But I mean, at it, it's annoying.
They're everywhere and you know, you bought an expensive house.
Are they destroying something? Like they're doing riots that they're

(14:08):
so angry about them being I don't think so. Yeah.
I mean I guess there's just a lot of them
and the poop that seems like a real problem that's
always buried in the article that there's a lot of
poop and there's a lot of them, and um, they
breed a lot. Let's combine these two stories and like
someone should develop a technology of like people picking up
the poop of the capybaras and problem solved. You know,

(14:32):
it's like, if the poop is the big deal, you
just have someone cleaning the poop all the time. You're rich,
hire community, hire the guy from corner shop to clean
up the poop of cappy bears and just like clean
the ship. I mean, it's okay, it's not. I mean,
once again, it's just animals having fun. It's like squirrels

(14:53):
in in l a or in New York, or they're
just out there making the place a little bit more Disney.
It has a little fun to life. I'm looking at
the article. I'm trying to find what the problem is.
They site residents, site traffic accidents. Okay, I mean, yeah,
just drive a little slower and damage from the copy
bears chewing up lawns and palm trees. Again, that seems

(15:13):
like a solvable problem. And there's one quote here. We
can't have a wild animal living here running around the
main streets, said a forty seven year old teacher named Romina,
who declined to give her last name. Wise to decline
to give your last name. If you're complaining about wonderful animals,
you're a teacher, Yeah, come on, let me. Teacher is
supposed to like love animals and like, you know, you

(15:35):
should be bringing these cappy bars to school and caps
should be maybe they should be educated, there should be
a school for them. I don't know. I know I
definitely have a side. It's not always that I have
a side in a news story, and in this one,
I definitely am on the side of the cuppy bears
and not the rich jerks who just for some reason

(15:56):
are mad because they're eating their palm trees or whatever. Yeah,
Cappy Barrus, We're on your side. Were pro Capybara here
on fourth from the South. Okay, Bob, what else have
you got for us? What's going on down in um
Latin America? So this is actually happening here in the
US is um. This guy is Venezuelan. He's actually Colombian,

(16:19):
but he worked for the Venezuelan government. He's like a
shady businessman called Alex sab and was finally arrested. I mean, listen,
this guy has been connected to the Maduro government for
many years. He's always been the one who just create
a fake company and it's like, oh, we need I

(16:40):
don't know this kind of food. He's like, yeah, well
we'll do give us the money. The government give the
money to get I don't know oil or whatever. I
am I mean olive oil and uh didn't do anything
and they just get the money and then they probably
pay the government like by the world or his crew knees.
I mean, it's just a shady, h shady business fake

(17:00):
shady businessman alexab And but he's really connected to the government.
So it's like really close to Maduro And and he
had a lot of information about this guy. So he
was taking a flight and he stopped in I think
it's called Capo birda um and they yeah, he was like, um,

(17:23):
he's gonna he's gonna be extra extra extraded what was
called name extradition, extradition exp to the US uh for yeah,
charges of money laundering uh and yeah, schemes linked to bribery.
So once again it's like, let's go back to the

(17:44):
face of this guy. And I know people are not
watching this, but if you google Alex to have he
looks like someone that should be at least in a
no fly list. Yeah, I'm looking at him. He looks
like trouble. So he was in Cape He's landed in
Cape Verde after why did he go there? That was
a mistake. I think the reason why it is because

(18:05):
Maduro in a way to try to save him was like,
oh he's now uh an ambassador, you're the ambassador, col
he goes over there therest. So now now he like
Madura is saying, he's not arrested, he's kidnapped. Government got it,

(18:27):
and uh this is a big fight against yeah and
uh yeah, he said, like the government because the United
States of kidnapping. Sab couldn't describe it as a diplomatic
envoy who was in route to Iran to Negotia supplies
for fuel and food that has been interrupted by the
U S sanctions. That's Madura's version of this um. But

(18:48):
there's a couple of interesting things once It's like all
these uh Venezuelan people in the US who were like
Trump is gonna like give his freedom. Now they're getting
some some something for real, you know, because this is
this can open like a lot of investigations from Joe Biden,
from the from the administrations. It's just like, you know what,

(19:11):
we're not doing it cool, but like look, we're arresting
some of his croonies. You know, things are moving in
that direction. So I saw a lot of like Venezuelans happy.
We try, but we we we'd Buyden for the first time. Uh.
And in Twitter, in Venezuelan and Twitter. Uh so that
was interesting, that was new. And Uh. On the other side,

(19:33):
I don't know. I feel like, um, it's just like,
if you have this guy and and and he can
open the door he want to save his ass, Yeah,
he can open the door to really figure out how
the how dark is that regime? And maybe that would
bring some change. Every headline or a bit of the
story that I see here seems to suggest like, yeah,
this guy knows a lot of stuff, so he could

(19:56):
he could blow it all open if he wants. Wow. Yeah, Okay, Well,
I guess the lesson here is like, if you get
appointed ambassador somewhere but your country is kind of on
the United States ship list, you can, uh, that could
be a problem for you. Dawn't take flies with layovers, no,
probably yeah, be smart layover. Yeah that was an error.

(20:22):
No layover if you're direct. Yeah. Apparently he stole three
and fifty million dollars through a government housing scheme. I mean,
this guy's operating at high level, should probably take a
private plane, I think. I I I feel the same. Well,
no layovers for criminals, that's dues for him and for Venezuela,

(20:43):
and for Venezuela's relationship with Cape Verde now, which will
suffer because they don't have an ambassador. I know, what
are you going to do? Uh, let's go for the

(21:03):
final story. I love the final story. You always say
the best for last, which is one of the great
things about this podcast. We talked about Ja Valbim. I
think our audience knows about this dude. Um he's named
his real name is Jose Yeah, and he's he's a
reggaeton artist that he's doing really really well for the

(21:25):
last couple of years with Bad Bunny. Are both like
the more famous reggaeton trapped Latino artists right now. And
the thing with Balvim is like he's being we talked
about this before, he's being a little bit of trouble
because the more uh how to say this, the other

(21:48):
artists are questioning the quality of his work. Yes, so
he have a fight with Residente Uh. They Supperto Rican
uh Rapper also like kind of raid an artist that
makes reggaeton and wrap. I mean, pretty cool guy, but
he's more of a high level artist than Jay Valvin.
So he compared balvin work to a hot dog stand,

(22:11):
got it. He's like, everybody loves hot dogs. It's fine,
don't be ashamed of being a hot dog guy, but
don't act like your Michelin Star restaurant exactly. So that's
why I was going back and forth. Then we talked
about how Javalin posts the picture of of the hot
dog stand and resident it was like, oh, now you're
trying to make money and sailing merch to the hot

(22:35):
dog stands and like blah blah blah. So that that
fight kind of like fade away, and it was like, okay,
back to normal in the reggaeton in the land of reggaeton.
Please just returned to peace and normal reggaeton exactly. And
now ja valvins again against in trouble because he posts
the video called Parra that I mean, I don't I

(22:58):
don't know how to make the translation and without being
offensive because it's kind of an offensive slang with woman,
got it. Uh, it's yeah, it's kind of sex term
for a woman. Yeah. And so he he makes a
song called Perra and he was singing with tokishas that

(23:19):
I don't know who's tukisha, but uh, it was a
featuring Tokisha, and the video was him with I mean
like woman on the leash, uh and singing about like
having sex and you know, being crazy at night and oh,
I mean, let's be honest, every reggaeton have a lot

(23:42):
of this um. But I think the video was very graphic.
So the video was removed on YouTube. The audio is
still available, but the video was and and uh, Martha,
the vice president of Colo, yeah calloud this song. So

(24:03):
the vice president of your country is saying like, hey,
this is a messages messagist, misogynistic. The vice president was
weighing in, this is too much. You've gone too far.
So now not only Residente is against you. Now the
vice president ramdes Uh, she's also angry with you. She
was tweeting about this. And yeah, Colombian tweeter went crazy

(24:27):
against this song and they have to take it down.
He's still not making any comments in this, but it
is a matter of time that he's going to have
to say something. So well, Valvin, you're in trouble again.
What's going on? Another bad week for this guy? He
got he went from he when last we took it
on him, Resident Dente was lampooning him. And winning the

(24:50):
war of making fun of him. And now the vice
president weighs and and you know, I remember when I
was a kid um the vice president's wife, Ripper Gore,
al Gore's wife, she used to talk about like one
of her issues was like filthy wrap and stuff and
and people thought it was a little ridiculous that this
was her issue. But it sounds like people are siding
with the vice president here, like they're like, this song

(25:12):
is too filthy for for even for us. Yeah, it's
crazy because when when I used to think about like that,
my mind was like conservative people criticizing songs, you know,
or musicians, And now it's, uh, it sounds like the
liberal size also like a calm down with that lyric.

(25:32):
So it's a very thin line where they these guys
can move. But at the same time, to be honest,
I think the video was wrong. And I think all
these reggaeton songs are sexy in a way. You know,
they're all about like, uh, most of them, I really like,

(25:53):
just about having sex and and and and and leave
the woman right away the most gotcha. Well, maybe this
will lead to a revolution in the world of reggaeton.
I don't know maybe this is like but I think
it's in the basics of reggaeton, right. Yeah. I don't

(26:13):
know if there's going to be any change to change that,
but uh yeah, Dave album against again in trouble, Um,
I mean, Josse, what's going on? Well, you know, hopefully
by next week we'll have a story of him having
turned it around, uh and fixed everything. But it doesn't
seem like he's on a winning trajectory at the moment,
so we'll be reading for him. He's got to do

(26:36):
something here. You can't keep you have to do something.
But well, that's it for this week on four from
the South, we have covered, um four pretty interesting stories.
I think there's a lot going on as usual in
Big Latin America. As always, please hit us up on
Twitter or Gmail because we'd love to hear from you
and get you guys involved and um let us know
what's going on in your corner of Big Latin America.

(26:57):
Thanks so much, fab always entertaining to talk with you,
and goodbye bye Steve, bye everyone, good bye. Four from
the South is hosted by Me, Steve Healey and Fabrizio Capano.
Robert O'Shaughnessy is our producer. Original theme song by Amy Stolsenbach.
Four from the South is a production of Exile Content
Studio in partnership with I Heart Radio's Michael Toura podcast Network.

(27:18):
For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
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