During the last 12 months, Renée and I traveled through Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay. People nearly everywhere have been heartbreakingly generous, welcoming, and patient with us. And while we tried to travel with open minds and hearts, I apparently arrived here with a backpack full of misconceptions, because I’ve encountered more than a few surprises. Maybe some of these won’t be revelations to you, but here are four of my main takeaways.
1. Many cities in South American are far older than those in the US. For example, in 1535, a scant 43 years after Columbus landed in the “New World,” Francisco Pizarro founded Lima, Peru. Why? In large part because the Spanish wanted to conquer the resident Incas and steal their gold and silver. Hernán Cortés had successfully conducted a similar campaign in Mexico 15 years earlier. By contrast, the colony of Jamestown, Virginia wouldn’t be founded for another 72 years, in 1607. The main export from Jamestown was, eventually, tobacco. Lucrative maybe, but hardly comparable to the estimated 180 tons of gold and jaw dropping 16,000 tons of silver the Spanish looted from the locals.
2. Pre-Columbian culture is integrated into modern South America. This shouldn’t be surprising since 60% of Bolivians identify as indigenous, as do more than 45% of Peruvians; in the US the figure is less than 2%. It is common in many parts of South America to see people wearing traditionally-styled clothing, or celebrating pre-Columbian holidays or speaking pre-Columbian languages. For example, Quechua, the official language of the Inca Empire, is still widely used in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, the Amazon basin, and parts of Argentina. And although indigenous people in both the US and South America have lost vast tracts of land, in South America, many indigenous communities still live in their ancestral areas and not on federally-defined reservations as in the US. Pre-Columbian religious themes, iconography, mythology, and music are integral to modern South American culture and are not relegated to boutique shops and performances for tourists.
3. The US exerts a huge influence on South America. For better and worse, South Americans are highly aware of and influenced by the US in many areas, such as:
Technology and Fashion: Every day South Americans interact with US technology: the Internet, Uber, Airbnb, Google, Netflix, Facebook, the Amazon model of online ordering and delivery, Windows, Apple, Twitter, and Instagram. People here also consume US movies, music, and clothing. Although we see local soccer jerseys everywhere, we see much more US-branded apparel than local designs: Hurley, Hollister, Pink, Abercrombie & Fitch, Levi’s, New York t-shirts, LA Lakers and Golden State jerseys, and St. Louis Cardinal baseball caps. The majority of messages on t-shirts are in English, rather than Spanish or Portugese.
Fast Food: Chains from the US are so ubiquitous in South American cities that most locals apparently have no idea that we ever eat decently prepared meals. We were in a hostel in Colombia chatting with a college student from Berkeley about what he missed most from home, and several fellow travelers collapsed in hysterics when he said “the food.”
The Seasons: For most of the world’s popular movies, songs, literature, and language idioms, the definition of summer, for example, is the season that runs from June through August. South Americans mostly ignore the bias, but we find it astonishing that there is any serious discussion of the coronavirus going away in “the summer” when the entire southern half of the planet already watched the pandemic’s expansion during the summer here!
The Dollar of Power: Many people in the US are aware that the world commonly trades commodities, like oil, in US dollars, but what surprised me was that prices for South American real estate and even new cars are sometimes listed in US dollars. Why? Because inflation in the US is much lower than in many South American countries, and by pricing in dollars, the value of real estate and big ticket imported items remains more stable. People in cities can often quote the local exchange rate to US dollars to the nearest decimal point. Interesting fact: Ecuador’s official currency has been the US dollar since 2000.
ATMs in some large cities dispense money in the host country’s currency or in US dollars. Why dollars? Because, even though locals receive no interest from holding dollars, if their country’s inflation rate is higher than the US rate, their spending power increases, sometimes dramatically. For example, when we first arrived in Argentina in June of 2019, the exchange rate was 40 pesos to one US dollar. When we returned six months later, the exchange rate was 60 pesos to the dollar, a 50% increase. We rented a car for a month and got a huge discount by using US dollars to pay for it rather than the local currency.
Politics: Of the 12 countries in South America, the US has actively undermined the sovereignty of at least eight of them: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Many South Americans can rattle off the list of recent US presidents; they can name the two main political parties, and know when our elections are and what’s at stake. There’s currently a story about Trump in the newspapers nearly every day in Argentina. It is seldom flattering, by the way.
4. Most South Americans have zero interest in moving to the US. In the US, we’re bombarded with the message that we live in the greatest country on earth, and even though we know, rationally, that this isn’t true, a part of us still believes that everyone wants to move there. In all our travels and for all the South Americans we talked with, including many who had studied, worked, or traveled extensively in the US, we met exactly one person who actually wanted to live there permanently. And, really, why would they want to live in the US? These days, South Americans can access US technology, enjoy our arts and entertainment, hold our currency, even work remotely for a US company, all without having to leave the comforts of home, friends, family, and their favorite soccer team. Many would love to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there.