Race Relations

The older I get, the more I am aware that race colors our experience and that my experience is and will be different here than many other girls on our program.

One of the reasons that I specifically chose to come to Argentina because it is a nation where I knew I could blend in. Argentina is fairly silent about it’s indigenous history, and I do not know that much about it (but I am taking a class on it here!) Although there are of course indigenous communities both in and outside of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is populated mainly by the descendants of Spanish and Italian immigrants, with people also coming from Eastern Europe (lots of Jews), the UK, Syria, China, Korea, neighboring nations such as Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, and recently a wave from Senegal. Still, most people are olive skinned and dark haired. Many people here have beautiful light eyes. I am surprised by how much racial diversity I see in this city, as I was expecting something much more homogenous- although it is still notably much less diverse than other Latin American nations, or New York for that matter. Anyway, I knew that being mixed mestizo Colombian and EE Jewish would help me blend in. I’m still kind of surprised that it’s working…and there are definitely ups and downs.

 I wanted to be in a place where I could blend in because I thought that would give me a more authentic (whatever that means) experience, that by melting into the crowd I would see things or experience people in a way that might be changed before a foreigners eyes. I am rethinking this, now that I am here, in a huge city where it does not seem that anyone is going to change their behavior for another. This tactic would be much more useful in a small town where a foreigner was more of an event. This place is crawling with foreigners.

Aside from people who are actually porteños straight out asking me if I am from here (or just straight up asking “sos argentina?”), people asking me for directions, and always getting a Spanish language menu even when others get English, people on my program have also thought I was from here... One girl told me she thought I had already been living in the dorm, another had started speaking to me in Spanish when I first met her and not because she wanted to practice! Kira told me today that a few of the others had told her they were surprised the first day when I started speaking English! I think this is pretty funny. Also another girl in the IES center asked me if I worked there, which was flattering I guess cause I guess I looked like I knew what I was doing! Fake it till you make it. Although I do often feel as though I am disappointing Argentines when I start to speak and my accent/grammar/vocabulary is very American and elementary.

I also get much less aggressive comments in the street. We were warned about street harassment and the overtly-aggressive comments that North American women get on the street here.  I heard about it from IES, from Macalester, and from people who have visited this country/region. However, the comments I have gotten have not been anything worse than what I’ve been getting in NYC since I was thirteen – actually they are a lot nicer! It’s pretty normal to have a daily few “Que linda” or “hola hermosa” or even a "buen día" but nothing more. (Actually, on the contrary last week some man was blowing kisses at me on the subte and it took all the strength control I had from living in NYC for 20 years to keep from laughing, and one day when walking home with 3 friends, a man asked his friend “do you prefer the ones with glasses, or without?” you might be pleased to know that for once the girls with glasses won that little game!) Also people stare at other people here, which is funny coming from NY where we don’t really look at each other. Here it’s normal to stare – everyone stares at everyone. Not always because they think someone is attractive. (Although cab drivers and motocyclists will turn their heads WHILE DRIVING. I’m amazed there aren’t more accidents! )But I’ve over heard other girls on my program talking about the comments they garner which are louder, more physical and sometimes in broken English. I have also heard of girls who have had men follow them, pull over to talk to them, etc. Yesterday I was out with a Czech friend who is very blond with very big blue eyes. The things men said to her when we were together were vulgar and aggressive and made me understand why someone with her coloring would feel uncomfortable on the street. These all sound like extreme, uncomfortable and potentially scary situations that I am glad to be able to avoid by flying under the radar. When you are walking to school, you want to be left alone and not harassed. 

However, there are other situations in which it is nice to be approached or talked to…and I fly under the radar in those situations as well. As Aileen quipped the other night “we aren’t white, we aren’t black, we’re basically irrelevant!” She was joking, but the idea is that we are easy to glaze over in a crowd and we don’t symbolize anything new or exciting at face value.

I think it’s interesting to think about how our culture commodifies certain types of bodies and how the USA’s hegemonic culture have disseminated the idea of the desirable white, blonde woman – an ideal that many of the girls on my program embody. Their physicality has been turned into a commodity and is fetishized here similar to the way that Hispanic, black or Asian bodies are objectified/fetishized at home. The main difference is that their look is preferable at home as well…let’s not get me started on that one. Blending in in the street as a way to avoid gross or obnoxious catcalls is good. However, in other ways it is a bit frustrating.  American girls are fun for Argentines to meet – an American movie come to life. They symbolize an American culture that is fascinating and just out of reach in many other parts of the world.   I do not symbolize that culture, and upon first looking and meeting me (if I haven’t spoken yet) it is not clear that I am from somewhere else (my professor said to me during a class discussion on this topic: “It is interesting, our own prejudices…I look at this room and see so many American faces, but yours, it is not an American face”). This makes it a bit challenging to meet people in a city where people will come up and talk to you if you are a curiosity – and leave you alone if you are not.  I am not a novelty here – which I wanted- but it also means I am, at face value, uninteresting and not going to draw in people just by sitting there. I was excited to come someplace and be the norm, and not feel fetishized – only to find they are seeking a different kind of fetish. This is not a surprise to me intellectually (Latin America is famous for shadeism and preferential treatment of those with light skin, eyes and hair) but how much I feel the difference is a bit of a shock. I have never felt my race more than I do here – in a nation where the vast majority of people are people whose faces and histories look very much like my own.

I do not wish to offend anyone with this post – it is reflective of my own identity, experiences, reflections and ways of critically thinking about and engaging with my surroundings.  I believe our experiences are always racialized and reflective of the way our culture deals with race, whether we are at home or abroad. Since non-white americans are not the neutral, our experiences are inherently different. I also do no not want to seem as though I am saying I can’t make friends cause I blend in, or that others get approached solely because they look foreign – it’s just that I don’t get approached as much, and when I do, it is in a different way because there is sometimes a presumed familiarity (even if this familiarity does not, in reality, exist). I’m just trying to make some friends and it’s rough out here!