I can speak with my thickest Argentine accent, I can wear tight designer jeans and a futból jersey, and I can keep my maps locked away at home, but no matter what I do, it will always be obvious that I am an American.
When I first came to Buenos Aires, my friends and I went to a diner. Tired from orientation, our group of 10 was excited to chow down on some food and relax. It was at this point when an Argentine man at the table next to us, turned to our group and with an eager smile and a condescending voice spoke to us: “Americans??” he asked. “Like you the Lakers? Kobe Bryant!! Caliiifornia!”
We nodded and smiled until he went away. This is just one of the many ways Argentinians treat people from the United States. We’ll call this the “Condescending-you-are-a-stupid-tourist-treatment”. This type of treatment can be initiated by a number of behaviors such as taking pictures of statues in public, holding large maps in the air, asking questions in broken Spanish or by wearing hats, something that I’ve found is very foreign here.
Once you get past this initial condescension though, a very complicated relation develops between United States visitors and Argentine locals. The way Argentineans perceive Americans is very unique because it is drastically different from the anti-western vibe found in some neighboring countries, but it also is far from a fully supportive nation.
When I left for Argentina, I figured that it would be all anti-United States. Afterall, the two countries are far from close allies. Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is a Socialist leader, who openly supports Hugo Chávez. In response, Obama gave her government the cold shoulder on his trip to Latin America. On this trip, he visited every major country in the region, except for Venezuela and Argentina.
This anti-American sentiment didn’t dominate the public opinion though. In fact, one of the first things I noticed about Argentina was that America had a surprisingly large influence on the country. When I got to the Buenos Aires airport, I was welcomed by a chubby chauffer, wearing Levys and holding an IPhone. I stepped into his Ford van, and heard some terrible Katy Perry song, followed by an ad for Coca-Cola. As we drove, we passed 2 McDonalds, 2 Burger Kings, one Fridays and an uncountable amount of Starbucks coffees. That night, my host mother flicked through the channels passing over Los Simpsons, Transporter 2 and various American news stations. I quickly realized that in Argentina, people were far from separated from the United States.
My host mother explained to me in a thick Argentine accent that America’s power was thus a double-edged sword. The typical Argentine was simultaneously aspiring to live the same comfortable lifestyle and hostile towards it at the same time. It was common amongst Argentines to consider people from the United States to be arrogant.
She thought it was arrogant for example, that the majority of Americans could probably not place the countries of Latin America on a map. She credited this to the fact that most U.S. schools teach history in a Western-centric format (United States and Europe). When I thought back at my experience in school, I realized that this is undoubtedly true. For example, I learned about Cuba, when covering the Bay of Pigs. I learned about Argentina, when focusing on the British war over the Falklands. I learned about Panama, in regards to their heavily American influenced canal. Never was the focus completely separated from the American point of view.
As an aspiring journalist, I can’t help but think about how the media might be partially to blame as well. It has been well documented that many countries around the world are conceptualized into a certain script that is hard to break. For example, the news will rarely do a story on an African country that doesn’t have to do with poverty or disease. Similarly, the news will rarely cover a story on Latin America that doesn’t have to do with crazed socialist dictators or violent drug cartels. This leads to an ignorance amongst Americans, that many Latin Americans see as arrogance.
In my first month here though, I’ve never had someone be rude to me. I’ve had Taxi drivers announce how much they wished to travel to the States, I’ve had students in my class tell me how much they loved the NBA and I even met one Bolivian tourist who said that is was our stubborn dedication to freedom that made us so admirable.
No comments:
Post a Comment