When I first arrived here in Buenos Aires, it was the height of the Olympics. In fact, the United States had just surpassed China and became the country with the most gold medals in this year's Games. I went to a bar with a fellow American student on the IBUS in Argentina program to watch the USA vs. Argentina basketball game. I asked the waiter if he could put the game on and if we could sit down and watch it. He could tell we were gringos from my accent and replied jokingly in Spanish,
"Sure! You guys are rooting for Argentina, right?"
"Claro!" We laughed with him and ordered a drink. After half-time USA pulled away form Argentina with a ten point lead. We said to the waiter,
"If we win the drinks are on the house, right?" He wasn't super amused.
We ended up winning by almost thirty points (and paid for our drinks). However, I didn't feel awesome about it. It was just a game that we tend to be really good at and usually win anyways. I was used to us winning, I didn't see why we wouldn't. It made sense.
Before coming to Argentina I paid a visit to a friend who's family lives in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. It was a trip of many firsts: the first time I had been to a "third world" country, the first time I held a monkey in a rainforest (highly recommend this activity if given the chance), the first time I had been in an bulletproof car, the first time I saw a gas station security guard with a rifle, etc... And then I realized that it was the first time I really felt patriotism for America. I am not a huge fan of apple pie, you would have to pay me to watch baseball on television, I had Thanksgiving dinner at Ming's in Chinatown last year, I don't always agree with all of American's foreign policy, and I struggle to understand the importance of fried chicken in our recent political debates. "Heck", I figured, "We're a nation of foreigners anyways, my father was born in Italy and my grandmother in Germany. I don't know anyone who has more than 3 generations of American ancestry, let alone any real Native American people." I didn't really have a strong sense of an American identity. But while visiting Honduras, I really developed a deeper understanding about what it means to be an American and feel patriotic about it.
It's not the kind of patriotism you feel when you win a basketball game. Or even when the President comes on the television while you study for finals and he announces that a special forces unit in Pakistan killed Osama bin Laden and you run to the White House to chant "USA" with your friends. It's the kind when you just feel purely grateful to live in a place where you don't have to worry about being kidnapped and held for ransom by your local police department, or where you can find clean water to drink no matter where you are, and where you always feel like you have some degree of control over the direction of your life and your ability to persevere and win a few rounds, no matter the hand you're dealt (speculating a bit here, as a GW student). It's also about being part of a country that strives for the best in everything we do and often achieve it, even if it is just basketball.
To some Argentines this comes off as arrogance. It's easy for them to paint a picture of what all Americans are like, which can tend to be a blur of a "Jersey Shore" type, loud McFlurry-wielding overweight wealthy and ignorant sort of individual. We tend to just seem excessive to many people, especially anyone that has ever seen an MTV program on TV. Those who subscribe to this view of Americans tend to be the ones who purposefully don't understand your Spanish when you mispronounce a single syllable. But I would say that this only accounts for a tiny fraction of the people here. Most people are friendly, helpful, polite, and can even understand me when I try to speak Spanish.
Younger people jump at the opportunity to practice their english. They ask about where I am from and some even ask if I know any celebrities because I grew up in Los Angeles (I know them all, duh!). Some forget that America is a huge country with all sorts of people that speak english with all sorts of accents and have different backgrounds, income levels, and outlooks on life. It's hard to answer questions like: What do Americans think of Obama? But that's okay, because I love to have these mini cultural exchanges in conversation. Guys at bars often want to know about the girls in America. I tell them that everyone looks like Marilyn Monroe, except of course for the cast of Jersey Shore. I don't want to be the one to break their hearts.
For the most part, people in Buenos Aires are very well acquainted with American culture. I've met people who learned to speak English by watching Friends and the Simpsons on television growing up. I've seen a 3-story Wendy's fast food restaurant packed to the brim with people having bacon cheeseburgers for dinner. I've heard the Beach Boys and 80's rock play on the radio in a taxi cab. There are even "gringo" comedy nights and other events targeted toward the significant ex-pat crowd here. My favorite english speaking indulgence thus far is a great little english language bookstore on a street called Los Estados Unidos run by a British guy who has lived in BA for 12 years.
American culture is really all around, and most people embrace it willingly. Argentina however, is very similar to America in that it is composed of a mix of people from all over. There are very few purely native people here, whereas some countries in Central America are composed of almost 50% indigenous people. Because Argentina was colonized by Spain, the culture is a mix of Spanish and other European cultures (mainly Italian and German), as many Europeans immigrated here in the late 1800's and again after WWII. Many people who live in Buenos Aires have family in Europe, go there for vacations, and study abroad there much more often than they go to the US. They are very accepting of other cultures and languages, so to be a foreigner in a land of foreigners feels quite like being home.
In 1982 Tyson Chandler was born in America, to a single mother and raised in part by his grandfather on a farm in Central Valley, California. After 10 years of farm work, he moved to Compton (not the most charming of LA neighborhoods) but went on to play basketball in the NBA after years of hard work and practice. He is now an Olympic gold medalist, multimillionaire, celebrity, and helps others strive to achieve their own American Dreams via the charity he organized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is storys like Tyson's that make me proud to be an American and remind me to be grateful for some of the wonderful freedoms and opportunities we enjoy, such as the safety, access to education, and attempts for greatness, rather than the excesses of our culture often portrayed in the media. Unfortunately, more Argentines know who Snooki is than people like Tyson Chandler or other great Americans who contribute positively to our culture. If you are asking yourself who Snooki is right now, congratulations. You've made it.
Until next week!
-Giordano Sordoni