Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Thoughts from a Buenos Aires hostel
I was feeling confident. I was feeling stable. My lunch had stayed put. My stomach hadn’t rumbled or flopped all day. I thought I could handle dinner.
I shouldn’t have eaten dinner.
I knew I was in trouble shortly after we’d paid the bill. “Quang,” I said, grabbing his arm, “We need to go back to the hotel.”
“Can we walk?” he asked.
“No,” I blurted. “We need a cab.”
We got a cab. We got back to the hotel. I got to the bathroom in time. Unfortunately, I spent a good portion of the evening there, and consequently, a good portion of today in recovery. Quang and I decided to call off any and all sightseeing in Buenos Aires. We were, we decided, in serious need of R & R, which explains how I ended up in conversation with a fellow hostel-mate, a Mexican from Monterrey, who warned me to guard my identity.
“You can tell me you are American,” he confided in the hostel courtyard this morning, “but do not tell others. I understand. I am your neighbor. I have family in America. But here,” he pointed towards the hostel lobby, “people don´t like America.”
I nodded. I tried to look as if I were taking his warning into consideration. I wasn’t shocked by his words, not really. This is not the first time someone has told me that “people don’t like Americans”. We hear it all the time in the media back home: terrorists hate Americans, hate our freedom-loving ways. Now, in Buenos Aires, it was understandable that this fellow traveler was warning me. Current events have aligned Argentina’s President Kirchner with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, a Castro ally who is very vocal about his belief that the CIA is trying to kill him.
But we’ve yet to come across someone who has acted against us because we are Americans, someone who’s said something threatening or rude to our face about the United States. Quang and I have surely paid a peso more here or there for a cab ride or a bottle of water or a trinket on the street than the going local rate, but that’s because we’re tourists, not because we’re Americans.
We have noticed, however, our share of anti-American propaganda. In Uruapan, Mexico, just a block from our hostel, one complete side of a school building was painted in an anti-war mural. President Bush was there; the pupils of his eyes were swastikas. We saw plenty of graffiti sprayed throughout Mexico equating Bush to evil. In a Buenos Aires cab, a talk radio station proclaimed Bush an assassin. Yesterday, on the side of a building I spied a scrawling message decrying America’s embargo against Cuba. But the anti-American stuff we’ve come across has been aimed either at Bush or American policies, not the people.
And so far, many people we’ve come across seem genuinely curious about our nationality. The sight of Quang threw people for a loop in Mexico. In Valle de Bravo, on two different occasions, people boldly asked us to our face whether Quang was Hispanic or Asian. Waiters, taxi drivers, hotel clerks, and shop girls all across Mexico often looked shocked when we told them we were Americans. “But he has Asian features,” they’d say to me in Spanish while pointing at Quang.
“He was born in Vietnam,” I would explain.
To that, they would nod. A few even leaned in to clarify Quang’s change in citizenship, “Because you had the war, right?”
Now, after five days in Buenos Aires, we haven’t noticed any negativity here, despite the recent protests at the Summit of the Americas right here in Argentina, and despite Kirshner’s friendship with Chavez.
Perhaps it helps that Quang doesn’t look like the stereotypical “American”. Perhaps it helps that I speak Spanish. Perhaps it helps that we are not traveling in a group. Perhaps it helps that we are low-key: we aren’t rowdy, flashy or demanding. Perhaps it helps (and here I let my politics slip) that we weren’t Bush fans to begin with; the Bush = Evil signs hardly feel like a personal attack when we didn’t vote for the guy.
Who knows? Perhaps this will all change when we leave Latin America behind. Or, perhaps we’d notice it more in Buenos Aires if we weren’t holed up in our hostel staying close to the bathroom.
I shouldn’t have eaten dinner.
I knew I was in trouble shortly after we’d paid the bill. “Quang,” I said, grabbing his arm, “We need to go back to the hotel.”
“Can we walk?” he asked.
“No,” I blurted. “We need a cab.”
We got a cab. We got back to the hotel. I got to the bathroom in time. Unfortunately, I spent a good portion of the evening there, and consequently, a good portion of today in recovery. Quang and I decided to call off any and all sightseeing in Buenos Aires. We were, we decided, in serious need of R & R, which explains how I ended up in conversation with a fellow hostel-mate, a Mexican from Monterrey, who warned me to guard my identity.
“You can tell me you are American,” he confided in the hostel courtyard this morning, “but do not tell others. I understand. I am your neighbor. I have family in America. But here,” he pointed towards the hostel lobby, “people don´t like America.”
I nodded. I tried to look as if I were taking his warning into consideration. I wasn’t shocked by his words, not really. This is not the first time someone has told me that “people don’t like Americans”. We hear it all the time in the media back home: terrorists hate Americans, hate our freedom-loving ways. Now, in Buenos Aires, it was understandable that this fellow traveler was warning me. Current events have aligned Argentina’s President Kirchner with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, a Castro ally who is very vocal about his belief that the CIA is trying to kill him.
But we’ve yet to come across someone who has acted against us because we are Americans, someone who’s said something threatening or rude to our face about the United States. Quang and I have surely paid a peso more here or there for a cab ride or a bottle of water or a trinket on the street than the going local rate, but that’s because we’re tourists, not because we’re Americans.
We have noticed, however, our share of anti-American propaganda. In Uruapan, Mexico, just a block from our hostel, one complete side of a school building was painted in an anti-war mural. President Bush was there; the pupils of his eyes were swastikas. We saw plenty of graffiti sprayed throughout Mexico equating Bush to evil. In a Buenos Aires cab, a talk radio station proclaimed Bush an assassin. Yesterday, on the side of a building I spied a scrawling message decrying America’s embargo against Cuba. But the anti-American stuff we’ve come across has been aimed either at Bush or American policies, not the people.
And so far, many people we’ve come across seem genuinely curious about our nationality. The sight of Quang threw people for a loop in Mexico. In Valle de Bravo, on two different occasions, people boldly asked us to our face whether Quang was Hispanic or Asian. Waiters, taxi drivers, hotel clerks, and shop girls all across Mexico often looked shocked when we told them we were Americans. “But he has Asian features,” they’d say to me in Spanish while pointing at Quang.
“He was born in Vietnam,” I would explain.
To that, they would nod. A few even leaned in to clarify Quang’s change in citizenship, “Because you had the war, right?”
Now, after five days in Buenos Aires, we haven’t noticed any negativity here, despite the recent protests at the Summit of the Americas right here in Argentina, and despite Kirshner’s friendship with Chavez.
Perhaps it helps that Quang doesn’t look like the stereotypical “American”. Perhaps it helps that I speak Spanish. Perhaps it helps that we are not traveling in a group. Perhaps it helps that we are low-key: we aren’t rowdy, flashy or demanding. Perhaps it helps (and here I let my politics slip) that we weren’t Bush fans to begin with; the Bush = Evil signs hardly feel like a personal attack when we didn’t vote for the guy.
Who knows? Perhaps this will all change when we leave Latin America behind. Or, perhaps we’d notice it more in Buenos Aires if we weren’t holed up in our hostel staying close to the bathroom.
