Negro/Moreno, what am I here again???

Spanish culture is cool. It’s the only place you can get away with calling a woman “Little fat” (Gordita) to her face and she actually answers and is alright with it. With that being said I have had some really interesting conversations with the people in my community. In Costa Rica there is a very large Afro-Caribbean population and most of it is concentrated in Limon. I haven’t been yet, well, the province of Limon I have, (does Guapiles count?) but to actual Limon Limon, naw not yet. In talking to a teacher yesterday I brought up a conversation that I had with a Tico earlier in the week when he asked me about my nationality in the States. I have never shied away from these conversations for a few reasons that I will discuss a little later on in the blog.

Well the tall and short of the conversation was that I was Moreno and that one of my parents had to have been white. I told him that here I am Moreno, I have no problem with that, but in the States I am considered Negro. A look of shock came on his face. I didn’t get into the details of the past generations with him, but it was definitely something that hung around in my mind. There is one other black person in my community and she is considered Negro because her skin is darker than everyone else. She also can understand why I consider myself to be black. It’s funny what the difference between North and South makes, During my first PCV visit (big shout to Sykes out in Fila Guinea) my first night there we were going to the Pulperia and a little girl looks at me and then runs inside yelling, “Mommy, Mommy, el Negro, el Negro!!!” Needless to say that I was surprised to the point of laughing about it, but it was so funny that here, in my site, people will actually deny the fact that I am black and somewhat encourage me to not associate myself with my race.

In having this conversation with the teacher yesterday he put me on to something called the “Code of the Village”. Where anything that is outside of the village is, at first not even understood, nor do people even try to understand what this new thing is. Then, as people start to feel comfortable, they start to open up to the new thing, not saying that the new thing is part of the community, but just that people are starting to talk to it. The new thing goes through experiences and becomes human to the people in the village. That does not mean that the new thing has fully integrated into the community, it just means that people look at the new thing as human just like them and that the new thing is there for the community. It feels more as a novelty than an actual job sometimes, but I am sure that will change in the coming months.

Now remember the first part, anything outside of the village will not be understood, and this goes for people in other provinces, such as people from Limon. I don’t know many Afro-Caribbean people here yet, but the ones that I do know are some of the hardest working people that I know. They are also some of the nicest people that I have ever met, but while people don’t want to understand, they also want to create images and generalizations of these groups to make them feel better about themselves. This goes for Nicaraguans, Panamanians, and other cultures, that the village may not know anything about.

Just food for thought I guess, but it is funny to try to share a culture with people that is not only American but also African American (Black, Negro, whatever you wanna call it), and not be considered to be the latter of the two. So, I tell people that I am Negro, but I answer to Moreno also… Thanks to Dex Digital and www.mixtapeshow.net episode 117 podcast. Listen to it, definitely something that will make you think, may even change your life…