Racism

While waiting for President Colom to arrive in Tactic last Sunday, I was approached by a reporter from the capital. Noticing that I was obviously a foreigner, she asked, “Did you arrive yesterday or today?”

“Actually I arrived over a year ago. I live here.”

Apparently with my camera inside the roped off area, she assumed I was an international reporter in town to cover the Presidential visit. (A Guatemalan president visiting a rural community within the country isn’t exactly international headline material, unless, sadly, some tragic mob trampling or massacre should occur during the event. But this blog post is not going to be a critic of what the media deems newsworthy in developing countries.)

The reporter asked me where I was from, and I after I said the United States, she took the opportunity to tell me about her trips to New York to visit her siblings and to drop the few poorly pronounced words in English that she knew.

I am not sure how or why the conversation progressed to where it did, but in the midst of talking about upstate New York and the changing seasons in the US, the reporter started on the subject of indigenous people.

Staring out into the crowd of Poqomchi’ women, she mused, “Look at all those inditos [a very offensive term in Guatemala that literally means “little Indians”]. They are like your pieles rojas [redskins].”

Completely flabbergasted by her use of language, I simply sat there with a blank look on my face. She took my expression as a sign that I didn’t understand her, so she continued.

“You know, the pieles rojas, the inditos in the United States that you all killed.”

I was still speechless, and she went on.

“You know these inditos here think they are ancestors of the Mayan, but they aren’t. The Mayan were mathematicians and astronomers, and these people are just lazy and ignorant. They aren’t even a race. They’re a sub-race.”

By this point I had snapped out of my shocked stupor, and I excused myself from her presence to go sit in the shade.

I have heard my fair share of racist comments from Ladinos in Guatemala talking about the indigenous people here but none so offensive and so assuredly stated. There was no spite or malice in her voice. She made her derogatory remarks as if she was commenting on the weather—passionless and matter-of-factly.

I wish I could say this woman’s racist speech was an anomaly in Guatemala, but as I said, it wasn’t the first time someone has belittled indigenous people in front of me. And the reason people feel like they can deride indigenous people in my company is because they don’t think it is racism. To them it is fact: Indigenous people are lazy. Indigenous people are stupid. Indigenous people are untrustworthy. Indigenous people just look for handouts.

In the past I have confronted people who have made comments such as those, but with the reporter I chose just to walk away. I could have said, “Actually ‘we’ didn’t kill all the ‘pieles rojas.’ You are sitting with one right now.” Or, “The indigenous people in Guatemala have been oppressed and discriminated against throughout the history of the country by racist people like yourself and are therefore in the disadvantaged position they are in now.” But I didn’t. There was no point to even engage in a conversation with that woman. I was not going to change her opinions that she so firmly believes to be true—that indigenous people are worthless and ignorant.

But she was partly correct; there are ignorant indigenous people in Guatemala. And there are ignorant Ladinos here too. Just as there are ignorant Americans, and ignorant Europeans, and ignorant Asians, and ignorant Africans. Ignorance is neither exclusive nor inclusive to any race, ethnicity or nationality. But I’ll always use the word “ignorant” to describe anybody who is racist…like that ignorant reporter.