My friend and the Homeland part 2

by Willem

Plans were made and I rushed around to my parents for their assent. Alex and Tico laid out the itinerary for me: we would be there for two weeks and would travel the county with their family to various places of note. We would also meet Tico’s Salvadoran girlfriend, Heidy, who he met through their familial network. Finally, for the last weekend, their parents would leave early and we would stay exclusively with their uncle Wilmer who, they explained to me, was a party animal that “knew how to have fun” and would let “the boys be boys.” I was both intrigued and perturbed by these phrases, so pregnant with innuendo, but could not bring myself to disturb this ambiguous gentleman’s consensus with questions. The possibilities weaved their way into every train of thought while I counted down the days until graduation and then our trip.

Graduation came and went and I said goodbye to the people who would henceforth remain in the past. New horizons awaited in a new school in a new city where I could reinvent myself as I saw fit. But first, I would see how the Latinos really live in Central America to base my next personality on this data.

Americans might understandably think that Latin America is an alien world of squatty brown people; poverty; and marauding, violent gangs; but the plane tickets are cheaper and the flights shorter than those to Europe. After a three hour flight to Miami and another two hour flight, we finally arrived in San Salvador. I’m not sure if people from other countries have the same experience but when I step on the ground in another country, I really do get a fleeting sense of being in a categorically different place that I don’t get when traveling within the US. I can only compare it to the feeling of leaving the protection of your parents’ home, at once exhilarating and frightening. One wonders at this when considering the manifold possibilities of destruction within the hallowed territory of the Star Spangled Banner. Maybe, despite all my conscious resistance, I really did internalize the patriotic propaganda of the War on Terror that told me that we live on a land separate from the rest that is both envied and hated by those outside it. Regardless, the reality of some degree of separateness does become clear when a local vendor sells you a bottle of water for a dollar and then sells the same bottle to your local friend for twenty five cents; or when the immigration agent at the airport charges you $40 for a visa while letting through your friend with a Spanish-speaking, Salvadoran mother free of charge.

After making our way out of the airport we made our way over to the dwellings of different family members. Mostly these were cramped one bedroom apartments in which a couple and their kids lived. Though small, they were usually as clean and orderly as possible, given the circumstances. Sturdy metal grates guarded the doors for added protection from the street. A small TV provided entertainment and the smell of delicious home cooking, usually consisting of rice and beans and some kind of meat, filled the air.

From these rounds of family visits, we managed to pick up a few that would travel with us including Tío Wilmer. His American children and their mother also came with us from the States. This was the first time the kids were to meet their father and it was as awkward as you might expect. Not much interaction between them and their father stood out to me- I guess it must have been hard with their mother also there- but I remember their mother remarking that it’s only right they should meet their father, if only once in their lives. For Tío Wilmer’s part, he remarked to Tico, Alex and I that his ex lover “used to look good but now she looks like a man” (she had taken up body building as a hobby since last they met). With our spontaneously constructed entourage, which ranged from twelve to eighteen people at various points in the trip, we all piled into a rented passenger van in which we would tour the country.

The truth is that every third world country looks and feels the same. The only things that distinguish them are climate, geography, whatever historical ruins happen to mark the landscape, and maybe some quirky cultural practices that have survived the ages. In the developed nations, a narrative is spun of wise ancient or otherwise earthy cultures that have grasped something about the essence of life that we miss in our decadent, bourgeois way of life. As it turns out, this is all marketing to paper over the fact that there are no more indigenous cultures, only stages of development. Every local “grassroots” marketplace is a strip mall in wait. If Socialism is on the table, this is a hopeful prospect; if not, a bleak cause for despair. From Latin America to Asia you can find the same rundown shacks with corrugated tin roofs; the same modded dirt bikes called “tuktuks” that are as prevalent as cars in the developed world; the same flocks of young, pouty-faced children desperately crowding around you to sell their useless trinkets; the same stiflingly conservative social values; and in the major cities, you can find obscene, hyper-modern development in the city center surrounded by a sea of the aforementioned shacks with tin roofs.