Proud to be an “Ugly American”

Driving through the cen­ter of town in order to get to the edge of La Cancha can be try­ing on any day, but when that day is a Saturday… which is a feria / Great Big Stinkin’ Shopping day… dri­ving is an adven­ture. A very slow adventure.

I went to the edge of La Cancha, 25 de Mayo and Brasil, in order to get small fire­works. I was caught at one inter­sec­tion in par­tic­u­lar for about five min­utes, sit­ting behind a bus. After a bit I heard loud talk­ing to my left, so I looked:

A young woman hold­ing an infant on the side­walk was being poked and prod­ded in the shoul­der by an older woman wear­ing indige­nous dress. The older woman was clearly try­ing to help — the girl’s baby-holding-sling was dig­ging deep into her shoul­der because her sweater had come out from the edge. The woman was try­ing to tweak it to fit the prob­lem while the girl kept shrug­ging her off.

At first I thought that the older woman was a stranger just being very help­ful, but then I noticed that the inter­ac­tion was much more that of mother and daugh­ter. The mother saw a prob­lem and kept try­ing to Fix Seen Problem while the daugh­ter very much just wanted to be Left Alone, Thank You. The scene was sweet and amus­ing; some inter­ac­tions tran­scend mere cul­ture because they are fun­da­men­tally human.

The women were accom­pa­nied by a man the approx­i­mate age of the mother, and I pre­sume that he was the husband/father. He kept star­ing at me in my car a few feet away. I wasn’t star­ing back, but I did look at them repeat­edly over the course of the cou­ple min­utes it took them to rearrange them­selves. I was enjoy­ing the scene, and not much else was in my vicin­ity except the back of a big, ugly city bus right in front of me. I had my Friendly Face on; it’s the sort of non-committal but gen­uine face that peo­ple use when eye con­tact is made with strangers in the States. The Friendly Face is very much a cul­tural face, I think. I don’t see it often here in Bolivia.

The man said some­thing that included “encan­tada”, or enchanted. His tone was not, how­ever, thrilled. I wasn’t pay­ing much atten­tion. He said it again, and I looked at them. They were all star­ing at me! He was clearly angry, the daugh­ter was wide-eyed and baf­fled, and the mother was stern.

“Pardon?” I asked.

He shook his fist at me.

I repeated, “Pardon?”

“Why are you so amused? Why do you smile because she has a prob­lem with her clothes and baby? [insert another cou­ple of very angry, loudly yelled sen­tences that I didn’t catch in time]”

Naturally, this is just when traf­fic began to move. Also nat­u­rally, I didn’t have a clue how to phrase a response.

I had to move slowly for­ward with traf­fic, but I leaned out my win­dow and ges­tured as my pid­gin Spanish came out some­thing like, “I don’t have a prob­lem with you all! I only have happy for you! Only happy!”

Oh yeah. I’m artic­u­late. The Spanish profs should be proud.

The daugh­ter stayed wide-eyed, the mother looked wounded, and he was doing some com­bi­na­tion of a grumble-snarl (grarl?). It took them another 30 sec­onds for them to walk past me again. My mind was work­ing on the dou­ble, try­ing some­how to scrounge up the words:

“Your inter­ac­tions make me happy!” Right. That sounds like a supe­rior gringa response.

“I just think your fam­ily is sweet!” How can I explain that to some­one who is snarling at me?

“You’re just like every other fam­ily in the world!” Um. That’ll be less offen­sive to him, sure.

None of this came out, though, when they walked past. They were ignor­ing me staunchly, although he was still mut­ter­ing. I des­per­ately tried to come up with some non-offensive, polit­i­cally cor­rect way of saying,

“Hi! I was peo­ple watch­ing! You were two feet away from me! I have much respect for you and other mem­bers in your com­mu­ni­ties here in Cochabamba. Your fam­ily is adorable because you’re just like every­one else in the world, not that you should be unlike any­one else, and not that you’re triv­i­al­ized or belit­tled in any way by my obser­va­tion, it’s just hum­bling to see that every­one is so inher­ently alike while being so unique, and, and, and…”

It can’t be done. Especially not to some­one intent on tak­ing offense at a small, idi­otic thing by which no con­de­scen­sion or rude­ness was intended. Especially not with my lin­guis­tic skills. Especially not in a 15 sec­ond snip­pet with them on foot and me in car.

Minutes later, I real­ized what more com­pletely I wanted to express.

“Get over it! I took joy in your family’s expres­sion of care, love, and help for one another. You’re in pub­lic! Cope! Would you rather that I were as vit­ri­olic and hate­ful as you? Wouldn’t your life be hap­pier, fun­da­men­tally bet­ter, if you lived in a com­mu­nity that was accus­tomed to smil­ing and enjoy­ing one another instead of assum­ing that oth­ers are mocking?”

Strangely, that much more direct approach could actu­ally be said here. I didn’t, of course, and couldn’t even if I had been willing.

Just one more man con­vinced that there’s another ugly, mock­ing gringa in town… and all because that’s what he wanted and expected to see.

I have seen racism in Cochabamba, albeit rarely. I’ve seen it on three sides of the community:

The middle-class Bolivian push­ing the indige­nous woman aside like trash (a few times).

The gringo mis­sion­ar­ies telling racist jokes, using racist lan­guage, and/or being gen­er­ally racist pigs (three families/individuals, although one fam­ily has since left country).

The indige­nous Bolivian treat­ing grin­gos or more urban Bolivians with scorn.

Frankly, though, I haven’t seen it often. Cochabamba isn’t like that. Even if that man has expe­ri­enced the hate of oth­ers, he has no excuse to assume that it is the norm.

There are moments when I long to be back in some parts of the States, in an envi­ron­ment which is com­fort­able. A cul­tural envi­ron­ment where smil­ing at oth­ers and greet­ing strangers kindly, or stop­ping to have a chat or help some­one rearrange a heavy, awk­ward bun­dle is the norm, not the aber­ra­tion. I have those moments of home­sick­ness, but then I snap back to the present and am more deter­mined to smile even more openly and to greet strangers more assuredly.

I am an American Gringa. Face it, I will foist my cul­ture upon you:

I will smile and wish you a good morning.

Beware.