I suppose some of you, Gentle Reader, must intermittently wonder just why I seem so fixated on Latin America, especially in the whole area of collective trauma. I have to admit that I have come across a lot of this developing field of interest rather blindly. It all began when I was a boy of fourteen. I had a brother (still living, I think) who was probably the coolest dude in the suburb where we grew up, older than me by three years. We did not get along and have been mutually estranged for many years. However, because he was so cool, as well as being my older sibling, I had what for him anyway, was a very annoying tendency of wanting to emulate him. This could stretch only so far, given that we had markedly different personalities and interests. But, so it goes.
After my brother endured one year of French in grade eight he got the brilliant idea of dropping it for Spanish in grade nine. Three years later, I did the same thing, but I think more because of the horrible woman who was teaching French in grade eight. She was very young, in her twenties, with a very thick French-Canadian accent and a face like a stuck-up prizefighter. She favoured very short miniskirts and, had she worn a paper bag over her head, might easily have provided fantasy material for quite a lot of pubescent boys. By the time June rolled around I had already had quite enough of that nasty woman so, like my super-cool big brother, I switched to Spanish in grade nine, not because he did, but because the option was there.
I did well in Spanish through grade eleven, forgot a lot of it, but still remembered some basic grammar and vocabulary. I also think that it might have been actually my grade three teacher who really got the Spanish ball rolling. I believe she was Mexican and she took great pleasure in teaching us Spanish words and phrases. I quite enjoyed it. My mother, not so much, and I suspect that she phoned in a complaint to the principal, which is the only reason I believe that our teacher suddenly stopped encouraging us to learn Spanish. She was quite an eccentric piece of work by the way, and delighted in trying to convince us that she was a witch, lived in a treehouse and was one hundred fifty years old.
Of course, my interest in Spanish revived during my first trip to Costa Rica in 1994. When, in 1997, that complete stranger gave me a Spanish-English dictionary (not knowing that I would ever be needing one) I felt fairly certain that this was the direction that God was sending me in. Three years later, applying myself to meticulous study and self-education and conversation practice with others, I already began to pick up an impressive early fluency in the language. Then, I was working again and doing well in PTSD recovery and before I knew it had decent housing and money in the bank. A few years later, in 2008, I returned to Costa Rica. The following year I spent a month in Mexico City, followed by another six weeks the next year in Costa Rica again. Then I began to visit Mexico again, followed by Bogota, Colombia in 2015 and 2016 where I first became aware of the phenomena of collective trauma from fifty years of civil war with the FARC, the drug-traffickers, the government troops and paramilitaries.
A friend has told me that in many ways I have a Latino personality, I who am four generations Canadian, of German and Scottish extraction, having grown up speaking only English, and not a drop of Latin blood in my veins. If I am like the Latinos then it is with the Mestizaje that I identify. I've never had much in the way of contact with indigenous, nor with white Latinos. I find interesting too that generally I like Latin Americans, but not the Spanish, whom I have always found to be arrogant, judgmental and unreliable.
I am beginning to believe that my experiences of trauma, resulting illness and recovery have parallels with the ontological Latino historical experience. Latino culture is an interesting concoction, an olla podrida, if you will, of centuries of Spanish and African influence along with millennia of the indigenous presence. The culture of Latin America, and the real Latinos, the Mestizaje, were all forged out of trauma, from the ravages of conquest, slaughter, rape, epidemics,slavery and cultural obliteration. As people of trauma the Latinos opted to rise above it, forming and forging a culture of joy and celebration, a searing love of life and a mocking of death as shown every year in the Mexican Day of the Dead. In my small way, this has been also my experience. A survivor of abuse and trauma I entered my recovery learning the Spanish language, not the Spanish of Spain the oppressor, but of Mexico, Central and South America, the lands of the oppressed. I attended in those days many Flamenco performances, not to celebrate Spanish culture but to absorb the resistance of rage, joy and celebration of the Gypsies of Spain as they coped with and raised the middle finger to their Spanish overlords.
Out of great darkness, death, sorrow and rage, the Latino people have risen in joy, resistance and celebration. Who hasn't been entranced and inebriated by the sounds of Latin music and the vibrant and bold colours of the art of the Spanish New World? My own art and painting has often been compared with the painting styles of Latin America.
I am fused with Latin America. Having never had a solid cultural identity of my own (my parents did absolutely nothing to inculcate me into the cultures of our Scottish-German heritage) and feeling Canadian merely by courtesy of having been born and raised in this country, I have gone through life as a blank canvas and now the vibrant cultures of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and Peru and the wonderful friends I know from those countries, have been painting me with their bold and living colours.
Latin America is still and likely will be always recovering from the ravages of its traumatic past. Many of the countries are still fraught with incredible poverty, social inequality and violence. The quality of life is also rapidly improving for many Latin Americans as democratic political and social institutions become more strongly imbedded and abided. Even so, I have seen my own quality of life improve exponentially. I am still poor, but better off than I've ever been. I don't always feel strong, but like my Latino brothers and sisters I am lurching forward. Individually, of course I can't paint everyone in those countries with the same brush. Many enjoy a quality of life and mental and emotional wellness such as I could only dream of enjoying. Others are trapped in cycles of poverty, crime, trauma, and violence.
Still, the incredibly rich and diverse Latino cultures, and the strength of character and integrity that has risen in the people from the ashes of conquest, war and trauma, is making of the Latin countries what I believe is going to become a formidable global force, not in the military sense, but culturally, economically, politically and spiritually. Even with the horrible developments in Venezuela and Mexico and the poverty and violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and other and similar problems in other countries, I look at Costa Rica where the military was abolished in 1948, at Uruguay, where democratic and human rights are enviably honoured and celebrated, in Chile where they have bounced back from the Pinochet nightmare and Colombia where reconciliation has now been ratified, concluding fifty years of violence and terror.
Recovery is never going to be an even or linear process. But together we struggle forward, celebrating our small victories and recovering from our many falls.
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