Convicciones

Elisa me ha devuelto la carta siguiente que por error envié a su piso en Madrid cuando en realidad debió haber terminado en Chico, Wyoming. Se dice insultada, quizá con razón, pues, agrega “pensé que teníamos una conexión especial que trascendía lo meramente político o didáctico”… ¡tan europea ella! No he entendido nada de lo que ha querido decirme, pero tampoco le he dado demasiada importancia (¡tan americano yo!), sobre todo porque su disgusto puede deberse a sus dificultades con el inglés –con el mío, naturalmente- más que con el contenido de la misiva...

Dear Juanito,

Still among the French I have to tell you how exhilarating an experience the election of President Obama was. Well, rephrased in European terms, may it be the first Afro-American, black-colored, ethnically especial or simply non-white man raised to the Presidency of the United States. As old Professor Ithaca said several times –and surely you remember that for obvious reasons- when expounding his well-known term lecture about World War Second “since 1945 Europe is always waiting for America to take the first step in any direction, not just to criticize it, but mainly to avoid it; and certainly the best way to elude certain things is to burden them with lip-service”. We’re witnessing every word of that boring speech; well, you don’t, but everyone here in Europe is: flying to Madrid I was nearly congratulated (!) by an old French couple who envisaged une très, très bonne chose pour le monde avec ce choix, whatever it is; my chief at work couldn’t help noticing that it is always good when someone else do the things you should, especially dirty work; an unconcerned Mexican friend living in Madrid said it was nice to finally see the Hispanic conviviality model triumphing in such a blatant way, and last but not least, even my sweet blonde friend back in Paris told me she was excited with such a handsome new President. “He’s not yours, but theirs” I replied. She couldn’t be more representative responding “Non, monsieur, he’s ours”.
It would be worthless to remind Europeans –at least those who happen to be around me- how they called Americans when George W. Bush was elected or, even worse, reelected. Memory, history, societies are not scientific matters and therefore contradiction and non-trivial twists plague them. It is human nature to blame anyone else when things go wrong and to take credit for anything worthy, to change their minds in unpredictable ways and without notice or explanation, so they can actually defend behind scenes what they adamantly fight against in broad daylight. So here you have it: joyful Europeans celebrating in every possible way the European Constitution authorizes them, the election of a non-white guy as the far-neighbors’ President… so far, actually, that they cannot conceive of doing anything slightly similar in their own countries! But certainly this is not admitted, quite on the contrary: they are always ahead of America in every possible matter, from social security to ecological issues, from culture to politics… Evidence? What for? Once I tried to show figures and numbers to my cultivated ignorant colleagues and their favorite explanation is that Americans live on brute force, so statistics are an invalid way of comparison…
“Look closely because things are rarely the way they look” said Professor Ithaca every time somebody expressed a point of view about contemporary affairs. What a shame he couldn’t see these times, I think, but on the other hand he was blessed for not dealing with such an unbearable load of demeaning hypocrisy: Europe is full of laws protecting homosexuals while in most of the States they cannot even marry; gay couples are so respected in European societies as are Arabs, Blacks and Jewish, i.e., they live apart! On the other hand, in the United States gay people are so discriminated that they actually share time and space with straight people! Isn’t that amazing, Juanito?
I don’t want to go further with this old, very old discussion, considering we’re two expatriated Mexican-born malgré tout, so I’ll finish laughing with a historical remark: Mexico had pure (whatever that means) Indian presidents, black ones (Vicente Guerrero), white ones and even mixed brownies at the Presidency. But Gonzalo N. Santos found our ethnical limitations in his Memorias: “Por mandato constitucional ningún cacarizo puede ser Presidente de México”.
Gonzalo was white and smooth, of course!
Yours,

M.B. & A.Z. (el inglés).