Canella+L’s+OpEd+Article

South America exists, so stop acting like it doesn’t. First of all, “Mexican” is not a language. I do not speak “Mexican,” I speak Spanish. Secondly, not all people who speak Spanish are Mexican, so stop assuming that we all are. I don’t know how many times I’ve explained to people that Peru is not a city in Mexico, it is not a state in Mexico, and it is not remotely near Mexico. South America exists, so stop acting like it doesn’t.

This is not an overreaction or a case of “thin skin.” If someone were to make to assumption that you were Canadian, how would you feel? Probably not to great after being mistaken for sharing a birthplace with Justin Bieber. Hell, over half of this class would be offended if someone mistakenly said they were from Oxnard (which is an issue for a different day.)

To call any South American a Mexican is to call a Japanese person Chinese; it’s rude, it’s stupid and it’s just plain racist. Is my country not important enough to acknowledge its existence? Is my continent not relevant enough to your privileged lives to even mention? Did my hemisphere suddenly vanish and no one told me about it? Why do people insist on treating South America like a figment of my imagination?

And if you’re going to be racist can you at least use the correct stereotypes on us? No, I didn’t hop the border; if I did I would be in Bolivia. No, I don’t own a donkey; I have a pet llama. And no, I’m not a drug dealer; if anything, I produced the cocaine they sell, and white privileged Americans enjoy.

I don’t know who made it okay to treat South America like a place to get tan, get drugs, and then get the hell out of. It doesn’t exist to please the United States, nor is it our “backyard,” as Mr.Geib put it. The only time people from the States actually focus hard enough to differentiate the Latin countries, is when they’re planning out their “exotic” vacations in faraway lands, where brown natives are exploited and pose in your stupid pictures that you took to show your friends just how “cultured” you really are.

“Yeah Ray Anne, I loved my trip to [insert country here]. I feel like I really got to experience native life.” Really? Why? Because you put on a poncho and chullo and paid $40 to ride an obese llama? You don’t know anything about my country and hardly acknowledge that it exists every other day of the year. What gives you the right to act like you’re so down with the struggle of my people when you can’t even call us by the correct nationality as soon as you get on the air-conditioned plane ride home? We don’t need your condescending pity and your patronizing comments about “how sad” the third world is, when you don’t know the first thing about the 3rd world.

Want to know why we struggle? We struggle because of America’s apathetic and exploitative policy towards us. We struggle because the United States feels that they can overthrow our governments and replace them with dummy dictatorships whenever they please. We struggle because of the United States and will continue to struggle, so long as its government and citizens continue to ignore us and treat us like monkeys who exist to dance for your amusement. So in other words, I am not being overly sensitive when I get pissed at you for assuming I’m Mexican, I’m simply scorning the apathetic racism you project while doing so.

In my country a “Taco” is the heel of a stiletto, a “Torta” is a cake, and I don’t know what the f**k a tortilla is.