The Unbearable Politeness of Being
Bogotá is exceedingly polite, but it’s a thin veneer over an enduring fear
BOGOTÁ — My friend Vicki over at Banana Skin Flip Flops has an intriguing post up about the polite passivity of Bogotanos. After a few passive-aggressive encounters, including one in which a guy splashed her on the street with his car, she snaps and calls BS on the good people of Bogotá and their general lack of consideration for others, which is masked by a patina of gentility.
They cannot handle fuss, they cannot accept public scenes. They need everything wrapped in a veneer of politeness, genuine or otherwise, simply to be able to function. That guy drenched me but I am telling you, I ruined his day tenfold. He is probably still inwardly furious about it now.
My friends are the same, they dislike anything that comes close to a breach of decorum and would have been shocked by my behaviour that day (to be honest, since the robbery, I am friends again with my vulnerability and frightened, once again, of confrontation) but that is just it. Our society warns us never to complain. It insists we see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. Calling someone complicated in English makes them interesting, calling them complicada here is an insult. We are all too afraid to fight the good fight.
This is by far the single most befuddling trait I’ve encountered here. My Colombian friends agree that they’re taught not to complain, not to make a fuss, to just put with shit, to just endure. I’ve found that conflict-averse personalities dominate here, which often leads to a lot of sneaky passive-aggresive behavior and, frankly, a fair amount of back-biting and bitchiness — especially in the workplace.
But it’s the everyday interactions that will drive someone like me, a grade-A Type-A (aka “pushy asshole”), into teeth-clenching moments of tearful frustration. When people cut in lines, nick taxis after they’ve been called, shrug resignedly when I suggest calling the Internet company to report a problem, I end up sounding like a raving leftist calling for justice, rule of law and the following of rules. Bogotanos, with characteristic passivity, just shrug and say, “Ah, que pena por usted,” which is about as insincere an expression of regret as exists in any language.
