Monday, October 16, 2006
Whiteness in Guatemala
My disclaimer to this post is that racial issues everywhere are complicated and often very ugly. But it's so much more interesting when the racism you're witnessing is not in your country and you're not a part of it.
With that behind me, here's a little background: The white-looking people here are white because of the Spaniards who arrived hundreds of years ago and the Germans who arrived about a hundred years ago. The white people are, generally speaking, the richer people (the president's last name is Berger, and his VP is named Stein) and the browner people are, almost as a rule, the poor. By brown, I don't just mean moreno, Spanish for dark-skinned and dark-haired. I mean the indigenous people, who are mostly of Mayan descent. The indigenous people here are proud of their culture -- they wear brightly colored reds and yellows, speak indigenous languages and are said to be more shy than the Ladinos, though I haven't found that to be true.
What I've described above is what little I know about Guatemala's race issues, based on what I've heard from my teachers, the guidebooks and the national newspaper, Prense Libre. But then I got talking about race with my host family. I had just learned the word moreno and it came up in conversation. My host mom, as a sort of teaching lesson, grabbed her husband's arm and said, He's as dark as an indigenous person.
So I asked her husband, whose name is Reuben but whom my host mom calls Gordo, Are you part indigenous? The whole family guffawed. Absolutely not, my host mother replied. His mother is El Salvadorean, which is why he is as dark as he is. Ha ha ha, she said. You think we're indigenous. ¡Dios! I looked at Levi nervously and tried to change the subject. Well, we're both so white here, I said, poking fun at our lingering Seattle palor. My host mother looked at me apologetically. You're not very white, she said. Levi, he is true white. And my sons, they are muy blanco.
I couldn't believe it. Based entirely on who she liked at that table, she had categorized who was pure white (she likes Levi more than me) to very white (she was annoyed with her sons that day) to not very white (me, the student who impolitely says hola instead of buenos dias and keeps her light on too late at night).
There have been other racial conversations with Berta, a bossy evangelical church lady who stands about 4'9. Last week, she told me about the 130 other students she's hosted, including several black students. They smell bad, she said. I nearly choked on the dry tea cake she was feeding me. Oh? Yeah, she replied, I had to scrub down their rooms after they left. I didn't know how to reply, so I thanked her for the tea and left the comedor. Later, I remembered a former college roommate of mine named Alvedo, who swore that white girls smell funny after they've been in the rain. He said that to me one day after I'd walked in from a New York downpour. Damn, he said. You white girls smell strange when it rains.
With that behind me, here's a little background: The white-looking people here are white because of the Spaniards who arrived hundreds of years ago and the Germans who arrived about a hundred years ago. The white people are, generally speaking, the richer people (the president's last name is Berger, and his VP is named Stein) and the browner people are, almost as a rule, the poor. By brown, I don't just mean moreno, Spanish for dark-skinned and dark-haired. I mean the indigenous people, who are mostly of Mayan descent. The indigenous people here are proud of their culture -- they wear brightly colored reds and yellows, speak indigenous languages and are said to be more shy than the Ladinos, though I haven't found that to be true.
What I've described above is what little I know about Guatemala's race issues, based on what I've heard from my teachers, the guidebooks and the national newspaper, Prense Libre. But then I got talking about race with my host family. I had just learned the word moreno and it came up in conversation. My host mom, as a sort of teaching lesson, grabbed her husband's arm and said, He's as dark as an indigenous person.
So I asked her husband, whose name is Reuben but whom my host mom calls Gordo, Are you part indigenous? The whole family guffawed. Absolutely not, my host mother replied. His mother is El Salvadorean, which is why he is as dark as he is. Ha ha ha, she said. You think we're indigenous. ¡Dios! I looked at Levi nervously and tried to change the subject. Well, we're both so white here, I said, poking fun at our lingering Seattle palor. My host mother looked at me apologetically. You're not very white, she said. Levi, he is true white. And my sons, they are muy blanco.
I couldn't believe it. Based entirely on who she liked at that table, she had categorized who was pure white (she likes Levi more than me) to very white (she was annoyed with her sons that day) to not very white (me, the student who impolitely says hola instead of buenos dias and keeps her light on too late at night).
There have been other racial conversations with Berta, a bossy evangelical church lady who stands about 4'9. Last week, she told me about the 130 other students she's hosted, including several black students. They smell bad, she said. I nearly choked on the dry tea cake she was feeding me. Oh? Yeah, she replied, I had to scrub down their rooms after they left. I didn't know how to reply, so I thanked her for the tea and left the comedor. Later, I remembered a former college roommate of mine named Alvedo, who swore that white girls smell funny after they've been in the rain. He said that to me one day after I'd walked in from a New York downpour. Damn, he said. You white girls smell strange when it rains.
