Through several (ok reasonably two or so) years of traveling through ‘developing’ countries in both Latin America and Africa, I’ve had a reoccurring experience, which many of you may share. It first happened when I went to South Africa and while doing research on ‘slum tours’ I noticed that our all white group dispersed quickly and frantically---not fleeing from a perceived purse bandit or falling piece of corrugated tin but from each other. God, what umlungus (Zulu word for white person) I heard someone exclaim. And then when I was in Sierra Leone it happened again, after weeks of seeing no other foreigners my friend Alaina and I became indignant at seeing other a New Yorker in the market, inventing diabolical missions for them in our minds eye, ultimately leading to a sassy tell off to one white bar prowler who can now only be referred to as the Lion. And I have to tell you the experience has been no different in Latin America. As witnessed by the great penchant for travelers to call themselves and other travelers gringos, with mocking and disgust, and for hostellers to look for unique, traditional experiences (read: nice, clean experience that are required to be devoid of other gringos), the extranjeros of Xela are no exception. Foreigners here in Xela seem to constantly stick to ‘the gringo’ spots while secretly wishing they were somewhere else (exhibited by the bored and longing looks out the door of said establishments). And the golden rule of gringos I’ve observed so far? Never, and I mean never look another gringo in the eye.
So the question arises, exactly why do gringos hate seeing other gringos abroad SO much? I think that ultimately the answer is more complicated than I can unravel in a blogpost, but in my own aversion towards other travelers I’ve found three root causes of this gringo grudge.
The first is a kind of hidden, unconscious finding of oneself-through-a-place-colonialism. Rockwell Gray writes that travel experience arises from the most basic features of our human condition, namely the embodiment of our ‘animalism’ and motility. That travel, like many philosophers have said of God or justice, is a catalyst to make us understand something about our nature, most basic and social, that we did not before. And after all is said and done, this travel (when done right of course), which has prompted some kind of self-realization, takes on almost mythic significance in our lives or we want to think it has. Our adventure becomes our Mecca of sorts. “We convert landscape into sky and legend, lending it much of what we wish to find there, Man the inveterate explorer brings with him the capacity to endow a place with wonder and romance,” Rockwell Gray writes. In order to enlarge our sense of place, our identity among the globalized and terrifyingly fluid nation states, we transverse space not in order to claim or create property but to create place and identity and, let’s face it, other gringos get in the way of that place and identity that we’ve colonized for our self identity. The quest to colonize a country or city as marker of self identity, to make how many hidden business and citizens of said country or city one knows the indicator for how unique and individual one’s life/experience/person is, inherently negates the i
nclusion of other countrymen and foreigners into this narrative. One just can’t feel transformed in the same way when there’s that pesky reminder from home sitting across the café sipping on the SAME DRINK YOU ORDERED.The second is a feeling of absurdness and general out of placeness, i.e. The if-there-are-people-who-look–like-me-it will-draw-attention-to-how-Teva-wearing-awkwardly-out-of-place-I-look syndrome. This comes from feeling generally out of place in a new society, country, and landscape. I think anthropologist Victor Turner describes this phenomenon best with his concept of liminality, a state in which one is neither here nor there, is betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony---in between, displaced and out of bounds. This feeling, of being between cultures, not knowing one’s place can lead (and often does lead) to a rejection of one’s race, roots, class, and peers---and ultimately a rejection of one’s fellow gringos.
And the third is really a self-righteous individualism, the idea that we can’t learn something from everyone, and that every meeting is an experience—not just encounters with people from the culture we’re obsessing about in this moment. But this kind of dismissal of other people is dangerous—it ‘others’ one’s fellow traveler creating a self-assured superiority. As philosopher Cesar explains, “the Other looks at me not as he is ‘in the midst of’ my world but as he comes toward the world and toward me from his transcendence (361).” Folks, when we ‘other’ other gringos the only thing that can result is unfounded and unnecessary snobbery.
If you’ve succumb to the above-mentioned elitism, don’t worry I’m no gringo-hugging saint either. I am as guilty of this gringo aversion as the next backpacker. In my hay-day I could lay the cold, oh-is-THAT-what-you’re-doing-here stare on an umlungu so fast your head would spin.
Lately, though, I’ve been a little more tranquilo and I suppose I’ve realized, fellow gringos, that we have a lot to learn from each other. And more than that, in order to learn anything we must be willing to learn from each other. As Freire writes, “It is impossible to teach or learn without the courage to love, without the courage to try a thousand times before giving up (Teachers as Cultural Workers 5).” And I guess in my quest to embody this philosophy in my daily interactions with students, I’ve come to realize that it’s not a bad pointer for life either.
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