I was told, yet once more, that I don't look Guatemalan. I used to find the remark amusing and "collected" nationalities as people guessed where I was from. It stopped being funny when I realized that while some people were simply ignorant of the different faces of Guatemala, others' comments were attached to questions that went beyond appearance. What do you answer to someone who says you're not a "real" Guatemalan?
For a while I made a point to offer people who brought this up a crash course in Guatemalan political history. I realized most weren't interested. They simply wanted to make me fit into one of their racial slots, I didn't fit, and that bugged them. I appreciate when people simply accept my answer because, after all, I know what I am. I don't appreciate people who feel entitled to ask my "pedigree" as if I were a fine horse or a competition dog.
This last incident happened when I was in the company of friends from three other countries. The commenter was a Latino. The people I was with weren't told they didn't look like nationals of their countries. Yet, I didn't look Guatemalan. One of my friends shook his head regretting the commenter's insistence. This friend ha lived overseas and has been to Latin America so he knew this fellow should have known better. He asked the pedigree question and for the first time ever (I think) I managed to feel less bugged by his questions and more...let's say, "compassionate" of his ignorance. I didn't fall into the genealogy discussion, but told him I was Guatemalan and that maybe he should learn more about my country before commenting on the subject.
This isn't something that makes me lose sleep, but being interested in issues of race and identity myself I do use these encounters to reflect upon what I think makes me Guatemalan. What makes people feel Guatemalan, Belgian, American, Congolese or Timorese? You can be born in a certain country and not feel from that country. You can identify with a country where you have never lived. I've met Belgians whose families have been in the Congo for 5 generations and they still consider themselves Belgians above all, and I've met people who are the first in their families to be born in a country and yet their attachment to the place and their alliances are strong. In my case I know that the insistence of people who feel they know what I am better than I do feels a bit like a threat because I know that feeling Guatemalan defines much of who I am, what I do, and how I see the world. Without my Guatemalanness I'm left in a sort of identity limbo. I never asked myself whether I looked Guatemalan or not until I was told I didn't. I never thought, and still don't think, that appearance should precede the other elements that make a person Guatemalan, Belgian, American, etc.
I've written a bit about identity on my blog in Spanish, where there is also a post written by Brett on adoption and identity and a link to Esme's great post on her experiences fostering in Guate. While thinking about these issues I remembered a great film I saw almost two years ago that touched upon many of these subjects. Sandrine recommended it first and I loved the movie. It's title in French is Va, vis et deviens ("Live and Become") and it is a beautiful story that touches upon identity, race, religion, adoption, history and love from one child's perspective.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
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6 comments:
Great post Ale!
"He asked the pedigree question and for the first time ever (I think) I managed to feel less bugged by his questions and more...let's say, "compassionate" of his ignorance."
Good for you! I find myself doing the exact same when someone asks about my daughter and/or my husband's ethnicity and their history. It is really nobody's business but it's a rare opportunity to educate.
Pues I have been told I look Middle Eastern in Canada... but in my recent 26 hr stay in Brussels I got quite a bit of "holas" so at least I assume people there realized I was a Spanish speaker. A few weeks ago I was "playing" a game with a friend at a hispanic street festival in Toronto to see if we could identify someone who looked "Guatemalan". I needed to listen to their accents, but one irrefutable :-) proof we had was when we came across a lady with a "Gallo" t-shirt (I know someone she knew could have given it to her). In any case, it was a test of our perception of what a Guatemalan looks like. I told my friend, blonde and clear-eyed, that she looked like someone from San Marcos (my grandmother has green eyes and is from that Western department in Guatemala with an interesting Italian influence), but she could also resemble some one from the Verapaces, in central Guatemala, where German people established themselves for decades. Bottom line, everything is relative...
Hi Michelle, ay, I can just imagine the questions you are asked. I agree with you that it is a good opportunity to educate. Manolo's comments includes some of the bits of info one can share with curious people (as long as they're not too intrusive).
Manolo, yes, you can pass as middle eastern. Then again, many Guatemalans could...or as Nepali's, according to Lena, Didier's niece.
Most people don't know about those random enclaves of Europeans (Pachalum is another good example, in their case were Dutch miners), a large Chinese population, and of course Africans that married into the other groups.
I have also played the game of figuring out the chapines. The accent tells us away. I spotted some Guatemalan blue helmets in Kinshasa a few months ago. They were at a bar and as soon as I heard their accent I knew. I used to play it in DC too, when I rode the metro or the public buses. Of course in DC I had far more opportunities than in the Congo :)
Ale and Manolo, funny I came across this post today because I was touching lightly the subject of what makes a Guatemalan while talking about marimba music.
For sure, we don't know what makes a Guatemalan and what a Guatemalan is, but we know we are Guatemalan, whether that is good or bad should be another thread. I don't think we can use looks or phonetics alone to determine what a Guatemalan is.
A mí me encanto este texto de la autora de este blog:
Si ni los mismos guatemaltecos logramos entender la complejidad cultural en la que vivimos...
I saw "Va, vis et deviens" a while ago and I really liked it, and recently I've seen another movie that touches upon similar issues that I found brilliant, "The namesake".
When people told me that I don't look Spanish (which happened very often), it used to bother me because and then, as you said, I just felt a certain compassion for their ignorance. When I was in Congo I never heard the comment from Congolese, then I was simply put in the mundele or muzungu category, although I kept hearing it from other expats. I'm still wondering how a Spaniard is supposed to look like...
Hi Elia, thanks for bringing up "the namesake", will look it up.
Yes, in the Congo you are simply mundele or muzungu, being white comes before everything else in terms of categories here (I recently posted about it in my blog in Spanish).
Thanks for passing by :)
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