Traveling, Living, and Working In Latin America With Dark Black Skin
I was helping out a friend who sells handmade bags to tourists in the walled city of Cartegena, Colombia. When English-speaking tourists asked questions about his handmade colorful bags, I answered their questions in English. I remember one day a woman and her daughter came over with her daughter who looked about 12 years old. They were interested in buying a bag and spoke only English. I saw the young girl looking at me with curiosity and then she started whispering something to her mother. I glared back at them wondering if there was a problem just then the mother looked at me and with a smile on her face she said, “My daughter said your English is really good.” It took me a minute to understand what she thought was a compliment. I snapped at her and said, “I am from the United States.” They looked at me with their mouth halfway open in shock.
This was not the first time that people had a surprised look on their faces when I told them that I was from the United States. I paused for a moment and thought about where I was. On the Caribbean Coast of Colombia, I was in a city where there was a high population of Afro-Colombians. My skin color blended in with the majority of people who were dark-skinned to other variations of brown. This meant that when people just looked at me they, they thought that I was Colombian. While living and working in Ecuador, Brazil, Guatemala, and Colombia, I learned that because of my skin color, I often experienced things as if I were Black from Latin America. I also learned that in most cases, my skin color meant that I was not only discriminated against, but my dark-skin body was also hypersexualized.
While walking down the street in Bolivia, I was easily perceived as a Brazilian prostitute. Cops whistled at me when I walked down the sidewalks. At a Bolivian club one night with my majority white study abroad group, a group of Italian ex-pats grabbed me in an attempt to dance with me. Alarmed by a group of men touching me, I told them to let me go in English. They looked at me with a surprised look on their faces and asked me where I was from. When I said I was from the United States, they apologized and said that they thought I was Afro-Bolivian. It made me sad to think that my body went from being perceived as a playground that could be touched without consent to being associated with power. I wondered if I wasn’t from the United States, how would those Italian ex-pats have treated me?
In an Ecuadorian airport, on my way back to the United States from an environment internship in the Amazon, I was pulled off the line filled with white tourists by airport security officers. They called me into a small room and my bookbag was ripped open. One officer took out all of my things from my bookbag and asked where I was going and why I was in Ecuador. They looked through my passport several times as if they were checking to see if the document was fake. They asked me several times if I was Colombian. Later, a female officer took me into the smaller room and told me to put my hands on the wall. She spaced out my legs while she padded me down. I was trembling at that point and I lost any ability to communicate in Spanish. When they did not find what they were looking for, they closed my bag back and asked me when I was going to visit Ecuador again. I have yet to return to Ecuador since this incident.
Then, I could not understand why all these things were happening to me. I just know that when walking down the street with my white study abroad group, colleagues, and friends they were treated very differently than I was. I knew that if I had white skin people would never question if I was from the United States. They would not assume that the only way that I was able to afford to get on a plane to the United States was because I was a drug trafficker from Colombia. I knew that if I had white skin I would not have people whistling at me when I walked down the streets in Bolivia and Argentina because my skin color would not be automatically associated with being a prostitute.
To learn about Black stories and experiences in the Latin America context check out my podcast called Labyrinth of the First Generation on all podcast platforms.
