tysontrips

19 January, 2006

Don’t Call Me ‘Nica, Pinche Gringo: All Things Gringo

Managua, Nicaragua – I have a coconut problem. It’s a rapidly developing addiction which snuck up on my in the last four months or so. Even a few short years ago I could stare an ice cold green coconut and its sweet, inexplicably refreshing, energy-giving, hangover-killing nectar right in its face and scoff. But not anymore. Now I am at the point where – when passing through small Central American villages on a bus – I peer out the windows and into the trees to find out if the city I am traveling to will have an ample supply of cocos frios to satisfy my cravings. My obsession with coconut water has increased to such a level that I found myself in a store in a beach town in Nicaragua last week perusing their machete rack in order to purchase my own personal blade. I was actually considering buying a giant sword with which to open coconuts in order to decrease costs and to be able to open found coconuts anytime anywhere and enjoy both their delicious water and rich meat. Then reality dawned on me. Do I really want to carry around a hardly concealed weapon through the sprawling, gang-plagued Central American capital cities, only to ensure that criminals will have ample weaponry to wield when they find my machete during a backpack heist? I was a couple of beers into my afternoon so I decided to ask the friendly merchant what his opinion was of Operation Coconut.

“Señor, do you think it is okay for me to buy this machete and carry it through Central America with me, as long as I conceal it in my backpack when I am in the cities?”

He provided me a brief and highly definitive answer.

“Amigo, I do NOT recommend that you take that machete into Tegucigalpa [the reputedly extremely violent capital of Honduras].”

Well, that was that. For the next few months I would be stuck paying a whopping 25 cents every time I wanted a coconut. But there was a bigger issue burning in the back of my mind. It wasn’t about coconuts. It was more along the lines of “Why can’t I carry a machete in the streets like everybody else?” As I sat contemplating this issue and scuffing my feet on the store’s tiles like a kid whose mother won’t buy him candy, there was a bright flash. Then, out of nowhere, Juan Valdez and his mule appeared to me outside the door of the store just like it was a dream. However, this was no dream. It was really happening! I was almost speechless.

“Juan, is it really you? The spokesperson for Colombian Coffee? And you even brought your mule?”

“Si, Tyson, yo soy yo.”

juan
Above: Juan Valdez, himself, appearing in the flesh

“Juan, are you here as an apparition to help elucidate my inner subconscious? To psychoanalyze the root of my fixation on such a seemingly insipid dilemma as not being able to carry a large blade in the streets of big cities? To help me rationalize the apparently irrational?”

“No, idiota, I am here to remind you of the rich, mountain-grown flavor of 100% Colombian Coffee. Whether whole bean or ground roast coffee, now is the time to enjoy the flavor of Colombia.”

“I am confused, Juan. Confused and now thirsty. I don’t know exactly what you are trying to tell me. But I think if you just come sit down in the store here with me, talk for a few minutes while we enjoy together a smooth aromatic cup of your choice blend coffee, then I may be able to extract the deeper meaning from your appearance.”

“You fool! I have work to do! Besides, my mule cannot enter the store. Hasta la pasta!”

And just like that he was gone. Vanished without a trace. But it didn’t take me long to understand the more profound significance of his message. In his allegory, Juan was using his mule as a surrogate for me and the store as a surrogate for Central American society. His mule cannot enter the store because he is ‘different.’ And I cannot enter Tegucigalpa with a blade because I am also different. His animal is not a human, it is a mule. Mules shouldn’t go into stores. And me? I am a gringo. And gringos shouldn’t carry machetes into Guatemala City.

The Gringo Treatment

Juan was right. Right about the age-old Colombian roasting. Right about the fresh-ground flavor. And most of all, right about me. I had been thinking about the gringo issue quite a bit. It was a subject which had constantly been on my mind for the last eight months, and even before then. I know I am a gringo and I don’t have a chip on my shoulder per se. Being a gringo isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just something that comes up a lot and distinguishes me from the rest of the crowd no matter how much I try to fit in. I am the minority whichever way I turn. A few ways this has manifested recently:

In Sao Paulo, where I lived and worked for about three months last year, the nickname given to me by my peers – although most were lighter-skinned than me – was ‘gringo.’ The name wasn’t derogatory. In Brazil, gringo is usually just a description of someone from a far off land who speaks a foreign language. And I fit the definition. But my confusion about the word was sparked by the Brazilians because they definitely had a different concept of gringo than do Mexicans. Or Paraguayans. In Asunción a couple of years back, while cruising down the street, a pair of ‘Guayans stopped Andy (of Travel Team lore) and me and seethingly asked, “Are you guys from the US? (effectively, are you gringos?)” “No,” we answered, taken aback. “Good, because if you were from North America we would slit your throats,” one man threatened, drawing his flattened hand across his neck as if to emulate a blade slitting our throats. This incident made me believe that being a gringo has a geographical component to it, not just purely a xenophobic one. And thankfully these men did not know their geography. Just recently, on another jaunt through another dubious part of town in Panama City with my running crew – in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Panama and an area which we had been warned not to enter for fear of repercussion against US citizens for the US military’s burning of the neighborhood in 1989 – a fairly large man confronted us and started yelling, “Gringos! Gringos! Give me some money!” He followed close behind us in a threatening and demanding manner as kids on bikes shadowed us and asked for dollars. “I informed the man, “No somos Gringos. Somos Australianos.” This calmed him down a little, enough to get him off our proverbial backs. But it didn’t solve his problems. “I am hungry,” he continued but let us pass on his street. From this lesson I learned that most people in Central American and Mexico think of gringos as US citizens.

A couple of weeks before this I had already openly started asking the question, “What is a gringo?” to my friends, both travelers and locals, especially if the local had a penchant for calling me ‘gringo.’ I would sit, sipping guanabana juice at juice bars in the street, and propose the question to locals. Without fail I arrived at conversational dead ends. The bottom line for the local folks I discussed this with in Colombia is that you are a gringo if you are white. “So ‘gringo’ is a race?” I would ask. What about a Colombian with white skin? Are they a gringo? What about a dark-skinned African-American? Gringo, si o no? What about an English-speaking US citizen who is a second generation Mestizo from Mexico? I thought these questions were quite profound but the looks I received in response ranged from confusion to boredom. Obviously these folks had never sat down and thought about the real definition of ‘gringo.’ So I figured I would.

Many theories abound over the etymology of the word gringo. I have heard some interesting ones. An example: Some say the word originated during the US-Mexican War in the 1860s. The legend goes that the US soldiers wore green uniforms. When the US were on the march, the Mexicans fled and yelled, “Green, Go!” which became gringo. Of the many problems with this theory, here are a few: First, why would Mexicans yell in English? That just doesn’t make sense. Secondly, the US wore blue uniforms – like the blue in the US flag, Einstein – not green. And finally, the word existed in common usage long before and in literature briefly before this point. There are several other stories that hold even less water than this one but they aren’t worth typing about. The first use of gringo in literature is by John Woodenhouse in an Audubon journal published in 1849, which predates most folkloric origins of the word. Most in the business of etymology now believe that gringo is derived from the Spanish word Griego, which means Greek but also has the connotation of ‘foreigner.’ Just as in English, when we say, “it’s all Greek to me,” when a foreign language is unintelligible to us, the Spanish use Griego in the same instances. This word probably morphed into ‘gringo’ in Latin America after its introduction from Spain, just as gringo’s connotation has become more ambiguous in Latin America over the years.

Across the Western Hemisphere its usage differs according to person and place and even situation, as I learned from my conversations in Brazil and Colombia. The word can be used in any sense from pejoratively to playfully. But often times it is merely descriptive. In Argentina, gringos are commonly those of Italian descent rather than Spanish. In Brazil, basically anyone speaking a foreign language can be considered a gringo. In Mexico and Central America, it’s often just a US citizen, although English and Canadians can never totally be excluded.

Here in Nicaragua, where I am finally starting to pick up the accent, I hear ‘gringo’ used in casual conversation everywhere I go. But the word is usually not used derogatorily towards US citizens. Generally, the Nicaraguans tend to be well educated on political matters. That is, they don’t hate US citizens for Nicaragua’s US forged history, but rather they understand that it’s the US government’s Cold War Era involvement here that helped spur on such a bloody and devastating civil war; a war which still affects all facets of Nicaraguan life, from the economy to the current political situation. But when I hear the word gringo around here I usually think the people are just using the word as reference not being hostile. Still, at least once a day in the street, I get a “Hey, gringo!” shouted at me in a demeaning way. Well, that’s what I am. And I can accept that. Thanks, Juan Valdez, where ever you are. Thanks for showing me the way out of my gringo-based frustrations. Now if I only had a fucking machete to open this coconut.

juan
“I’ll see what I can do, Tyson”