A View From Afar

In Quito, people often sing on the busses for money.  Sometimes they bring a cd to back themselves up and sometimes not – regardless, the songs all sound similar and the singing is usually mediocre.  I try not to listen, because I can’t give money to everyone and this saddens me.  However, one Sunday morning, I listened. 

That morning, a boy got on my bus and started to sing.  He was slight; I placed him at 11- or 12-years-old.  He was easily the youngest singer I had seen.  His voice was pure, clear and perfectly on pitch.  The sound made me stop and listen.  Here is what he sang:

“When I went to New York, I went to find my love.  But on the day I got there, the terrorists killed her.  They killed her when they took the Twin Towers.  Now I am In New York alone; I never got to see my love because the terrorists took her away.”

In a matter of seconds my benign interest evaporated, replaced by feelings much stronger and much more surprising.  “How dare he sing about this?”  I found myself thinking, “How dare he sing about something he can’t possibly understand?”  He had no idea what it was like to live through that day.  No idea what it was like to struggle to comprehend the images of raw destruction, hate, and suffering on the television as a nine-year-old child.  He could not possibly understand taste of fear and anger in the air for weeks afterward, with news and heartbreaking stories ever-present on the television, radio, newspapers, and street-corners, and all the adults on edge (trying and failing to hide it).  These events, the people who were lost, and the families who were hurt were real, yet this 12-year-old kid was singing about them on a bus like they were just another fairy tail from times long past, and it offended me.

I was taken aback that this bothered me so much.  I do not consider myself an especially patriotic person.  On the contrary, I often think that people go a little overboard with their love of America.  Yet here I was, feeling such solidarity with my country and it’s history.  I was very surprised to feel so strongly American.

Part of the reason these feelings surprised me is that while living abroad I have had the opportunity to look at the United States from the outside, and I have not always been pleased by what I have seen.  The US embassy in Quito (2 blocks from my house) is a colossal stone block of a building, surrounded by a whole city block’s worth of empty grounds and an enormous, thick, black metal wall.  The US ambassador lives in a giant house, complete with domestic employees, in one of the most opulent neighborhoods of the city.  What kind of messages do these things send?

  

As a person from the United States (I hesitate to overuse the word, ‘American,’ because, as Ecuadorians have reminded me, South Americans consider themselves American too), I am continually judged.  People assume I cannot speak Spanish.  People assume I am easy.  People assume I have an excess of money (I have had people ask me how much money I make, how much money my parents make, how much money my college costs, if my parents pay for college, how much rent is, if my parents are sending me money while I am here…).  I have had to explain to people that not everyone in the United States agrees with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor are all North Americans against immigration.  It is one thing to hear in the US than many people in the greater world see us as loud, rich people from a self-centered country that will do what it pleases to have its way and maintain power in the world, and another to experience it.

As much as these assumptions bother me, I can hardly fault people for believing in them because we have certainly given the world enough reason to believe they're right.  In many ways the US comes across as self centered and elitist.  While obtaining my Ecuadorian visa was hardly more than filling out some symbolic paperwork, Ecuadorians (and people all over the world) go though an arduous, stressful, and expensive process to attain the right to visit the US.  Just to apply for a visa that is seldom awarded, Ecuadorians must pay and present themselves at the embassy for an interview.  My 27-year-old host-aunt was recently turned down for a short-term visa (as we learned when she came home in tears) because she didn't have "strong enough family ties" here in Ecuador - the country where her parents, her son, and all her siblings live.  Why should I have the right to travel where ever my heart desires, when the friends and family that welcome me into their country and culture have little chance of being able to experience mine?

It bothers me that so many in the US have the attitude that the US is the epitome of human society, and that, as was so often proclaimed in the recent presidential debates, the US is without a doubt the best country in the world.  It bothers me that so many feel that we have the right, or even the obligation, to go in and interfere with other governments, economies, cultures, and lives "to improve" them by making them more like us.  What bothers me the most is that, while the majority of citizens who feel this way are genuinely good hearted in those intentions, all too often the motivation of our government and corporations seems to be, not the good of humanity, but the gain of US political and economic interests, and the financial profit of the few at the very top of American society.  An idealist would refute this, a cynic claim this is always the case.  Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

However, for all the distasteful aspects I see in the United States, living abroad has led me to appreciate many things as well.  A stable political system, ease of international travel, true freedom of speech, female empowerment, LGBT awareness and acceptance – these are all luxuries that I have had the privilege to enjoy as a citizen of the United States, and privileges that I hope never to take for granted again.  There are aspects of US culture that I am not proud of, there are aspects of US culture that disgust me, but I also recognize that it is because I am from the United States that I am able to speak out about these issues, and that my US citizenship gives me the ability to travel and experience the world from another perspective - which is what allowed these issues to come to my attention.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of the value of what we have.  Sandy, my host-mom, recently commented that the US is lucky not to have poverty.  I struck her down immediately - there are plenty of people in the US that struggle to get by, sometimes without adequate clothing or a place to live, I said.

“That may be true,” she replied, “but in the United States those people do not die of hunger.  That kind of poverty only exists in the rest of the world.”

For a wonderful reflection on cultural identity, globalization, and what it means to be a 'gringa', I highly recommend you read Alyssa's most recent blog post.  It is quite eloquent, and sums up many of my own thoughts on the complicated subject nicely.