I cannot adequately express what it is like to be laughed at and despised by your own President when he asks, “Are there any Hispanics in the room?”, to be followed by a “BOO!”, or even as of recently, to have my family members called animals. To constantly be pulled over by the Border Patrol and police at border checkpoints within my own country. Or even abroad, being asked to leave the first class train cabin in France because – obviously – there was no way that I belonged there. Or how about being asked to change someone’s sheets because she was unhappy at a hostel I was staying at. Not wanted in my own country and not wanted abroad. I feel like I’m carrying my own purgatory with me no matter where I go. These stories are only a start.
I wish I could say it doesn’t bother me.
But it does.
I am an American citizen. But not everyone seems to think of me in that light and I’ve had some pretty spectacularly horrible experiences while traveling in my own country and traveling through Latin America. My crime?
Being brown.
You would think with a lot of other people looking like me, that I could fly under the radar.
Does Shaun get bothered with his tattoos and mohawk?
Nope.
When people ask me if I liked my experience in Argentina, I don’t lie.
It was pretty fucking horrible. But only for me.
Shaun loved it. I had been talked to in a condescending manner because I speak Mexican Spanish (a woman literally pat me on the head and gave me a “Bless her heart.” backhanded compliment). It was there that I experienced overt racism at a level I had never had thrown my way before.
It started at the Bolivian/Argentine border checkpoint. Shaun and I were standing in line, and one of the first things done is separate the two of us. I got put in a line with the rest of the Bolivians. Shaun walked through without anyone touching his backpack via his white backpacker line. And when I showed my American passport? They refused to believe it was real, or mine. And then they unpacked everything on the table from my bag. It is only when Shaun came over to explain that I was his wife, that they threw my stuff on another table and mostly on the floor.
Embarrassment. That was the point, right? They looked annoyed.
How is it that I get treated differently in Latin America while traveling? I’m freaking LATINA.
But Latinas traveling? That isn’t a thing right?
It didn’t stop there. After an exhausting day of travel, we hopped on our final bus to Salta from the border, and in the middle of the night, our bus was pulled over. Nothing will cause you to go into a small panic attack thinking you’re getting robbed. Gruff Argentine Army soldiers boarded our bus and made all of us march off of it, holding onto the bags that were ours.
The first thing they did? Separated Shaun and I into separate lines. Except I was pulled for extra screening. I had to place my backpack on the table and they unpacked what took me forever to pack back up at the border. My hands had to be on the small wooden table, my legs forcibly splayed. I shivered in the cool night air and wasn’t allowed to put on a jacket. I had been deemed a criminal and they wanted me to know it. The older lady in front of me had been pulled into a room on her own, and I was next.
A few minutes go by and the door cracks open. A female soldier/officer comes out and looks at me up and down. She carefully slips off her latex gloves to put on new ones and beckoned me over.
And it clicked.
I was in the full cavity search line. They thought I was a mule. They too refused to believe my passport was real. Just as the room had opened and was quickly emptied, Shaun comes running over to me, “That’s my wife!” and they look at me and I nod my head faster than ever before.
“Oh shit. Americans.” she squeaks out under her breath in Spanish. I pretend I don’t understand. At what point will I not need a white male chaperone to ensure that I’m not taken advantage of? I feel incredibly alone, and no one around me understands.
Half my stuff ends up on the floor again, but I get pulled out of the line. Sobbing and shaking, I slowly put what is my life back into my 40L backpack, for the third time that day.
A couple of hours later, multiple drug dogs, and a half disassembling of our bus, we were on our way.
The sky above me is twinkling (laughing?), and all I can feel is anger.
