09.24.08
We have many colors
Walking past stall after stall in the mercados of Peru, your eyes wander from amazing woven blankets to detailed carved gourdes to myriads of ceramic sculptures and pre-Columbian replicas.
“We have many colors,” Cusco, Peru
Colorful woven blankets were stacked
floor to ceiling in nearly every market
stall in Peru.
Enthusiastic stall owners watch your focus and point out each of their wares in turn. “Baby Alpaca…very soft…” “Huy un Compromiso” (Good price today). Catch a glimpse of the woven blankets stacked giant in piles from floor to ceiling and they say “You like blankets? We have many colors.” Um, yeah, I guess I can see that. Still, Peruvians seemed to me a very polite people and even outside of the markets, several we’re willing to strike up a conversation.
“Obama or Bush?” he asked. I thought it was an odd choice from a drunk man riding on a collectivo through the Peruvian Andes. “Given that choice, Obama,” I said. It’s unlikely he got the nuance but that doesn’t explain his quizzical response: “But he’s black…”
I think this raises an unusual question. Was he surprised I would prefer Obama to Bush because U.S. Americans have a stereotype as being somewhat racist? Or is he the racist, finding it difficult to conceive of why someone would select a black president? “We have many colors,” applies to blankets, but less so to people: there aren’t many black people in the Andes, so it wouldn’t surprise me if some Peruvians sometimes felt this way. After all, deep feelings often come to the surface of drunk people. I just don’t have enough experience to even guess? Anyone reading have an idea?
aaron said,
September 28, 2008 at 9:36
With prime ministers
in the recent past
with names such as
Efrain Goldenberg Schreiber
and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski
(half Polish/half French)
and president of 10 years
Alberto Fujimori
(who as his last name might suggest
is full-blooded Japanese)
I wouldn’t think Peruvians
would be overly racist.
(unless they put him in charge
because all Asian people
are such hard-workers)
But then again
it’s not like some drunk dude
has any more say
in who runs his country
then I do.
I’m not sure how similar
Peru is to Thailand,
but I have noticed that there
is a class association
with darker skin to manual labor
(working in the fields gets you a tan).
This could also be reinforced
by genetic differences between
Chinese vs. ethnic Thais
or even Burmese and Cambodian people
who provide much of the cheaper labor.
But darker skin
is definitely seen as a negative
which doesn’t just go away
when they look at someone
from another country