Culture Shock

Sam Smith has had a tough time with women. At the age of 17 he married his high school sweetheart because she got pregnant and he was a churchgoing man. They were together for ten miserable years before she started seeing a psychologist — you know, “where they teach you not to care about anybody but yourself.” So she left Sam for another man from their congregation.

His second go-round with marriage wasn’t much more successful. This time he tried an older woman, but just days after their honeymoon, Sam discovered that she hated kids — of which he had two. Worse yet, she turned out to be a corporate ladder climber and a clubgoer, neglecting him at all hours of the day and night.

All Sam ever wanted was a marriage like his parents and grandparents had, with a wife who stayed at home the way God intended. It’s not that he’s against women’s lib, in principle, but he knows feminism has undermined traditional family values. He quotes Ronald Reagan: “The way of the country goes the way of the family.”

So what’s an ultraconservative, middle-aged, unlucky-in-love American man to do? Graze the greener pastures south of the border, of course. There, according to literature from The Latina Connection introductory service, a “woman would rather complement her man than compete with him.”

The Houston-based company helps men like Sam meet “lovely Latin ladies” in three different ways: You can put your photo in a brochure distributed to select Latin women and hope for a response. You can send out a flurry of letters after flipping through a catalog full of beautiful babes in bikinis. (Sam says there’s some great new translation software on the market.) Or you can take a six-day vacation with T.L.C. to a Latin American city. After all, love develops a lot more quickly in person — especially when you’re attending social functions with ten to 15 Latinas for every American man. Sam made the most of his trip to Barranquilla, Colombia, by selling himself shamelessly, handing out pictures of himself labeled with his address. “I felt like a short version of Mattress Mac,” he remembers.

But his hard work paid off. Last October Sam and a lovely Latin lady named Sandra were wed at Houston’s Harmony Wedding Chapel. (Once you’ve selected your bride-to-be, the Latin Connection, a full-service company if there ever was one, will even help you with the immigration papers.) He’s so happy now that he works part-time for T.L.C. answering phones — just so he can tell others his story.

He tells the men who call that T.L.C. is not about exploitation or green cards or mail-order brides but about filling mutually beneficial cross-cultural needs. He tells them it’s okay to want helpmates. He tells them that they’re saving women like Sandra from the fate of an unhappy marriage to a macho Latin man who runs around on them. Then he brings home the sale: He tells them his wife’s great joy is “making a good dinner, and seeing the smile on my face.”