Thursday, August 6, 2009
Bad (North) America
I am furious with Ronald Reagan, with Oliver North, with both George Bushes, and, yes, with Bill Clinton. US intervention in Central America and all over the world is perceived here in Nicaragua as imperial arrogance.
It doesn’t matter that I tried to educate my schoolmates about the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, that I marched against the first Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq, that I have worked and voted in favor of greater democracy and self-determination. It doesn’t matter that there are thousands of Americans here working in public service, and that some of them have been here since the Sandinista revolution.
When something bad happens I’m immediately swept into the Ugly American category, no questions asked. Jessica doesn’t exist as an individual person, she’s just another one of those selfish gringos who thinks she can get away with anything, who thinks that brown people don’t matter. Decades of poison.
And this is only Nicaragua – think about Pakistan.
This experience of being treated with derision and hate gives me some idea of how much work President Obama, the US government, and the American people have ahead of us before people in other countries start to think well of us again.
(my photo of a Spanish-speaking worker preparing to cover a Shepard Fairey mural of President Obama on a wall in Washington DC.)
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