Conversations with Savages

Every time I spend more than a holiday in a foreign country, there comes an inevitable moment when reality finally hits home and the last of the romantic notions that I once harboured about that nation expire quietly, gasping and anaemic like someone suffering through the fatal throws of emphysema. It’s the moment in which my prejudices are laid bare and I’m belted across the face with the realization that I’m neither as smart nor as cosmopolitan as I like to think I am. It feels like rock bottom, bitter like swallowing bile.
My friend Virginia celebrated her 20th birthday in the traditional Uruguayan manner. She and her mother made pizzas and empanadas, then invited friends and family over to pass the afternoon eating, reminiscing and drinking mate. When she’s not studying to become a high school literature teacher or giving classes to underprivileged youths, Virginia lives with her parents, sister and two brothers in a small, three-bedroom house in Toledo, a dormitory city of Montevideo. By Uruguayan standards it’s a working class neighbourhood – dirt roads, small ranch houses, everything is built from either concrete or cinder blocks or a combination of the two; there is no landscaping except periodic lawn maintenance entrusted to grazing animals. By the standards of anyone from the first world, it’s a slum.
The party was full of diverse characters, and most of my close Uruguayan friends were in attendance. These were people who had all but adopted me as their younger, clueless brother even though I had only spent a few months in their country. They showed me around, corrected my Spanish, helped me find an apartment and generally kept me out of trouble. Even though it was Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t easy for everyone to get off work, but they had all managed. Rafael the journalist greeted me with a big hug. Behind him was Hector, who works early morning shifts at a bakery and moonlights as a tattoo artist when he’s not helping to build houses at the co-op where he lives. His girlfriend, Marianella, who came with a big pizza, is studying primary education while teaching dance classes with a local NGO. Sebastian was late as always. He works nights as a systems analyst in order to support his son and be able to study Design during the day. We all sat outside eating, drinking, talking story and enjoying the last rays of mottled, late summer sunlight as it sank behind the eucalyptus grove across the street.
On my way home that night I ran into an American acquaintance named Mike, a Californian in Uruguay on a Fulbright scholarship to study popular music. He was headed out to dinner with a group of young English and Canadian travellers who were on a shoestring tour of Latin America. The two English girls looked perpetually bored and stank of patchouli. Every time they spoke, they squinted wistfully off into the distance, a gesture apparently meant to connote deep meaning. They seemed so intent on appearing worldly that they threatened to float away into pure spiritual transcendence at any moment.
Mike invited me to come. I wasn’t very hungry, but I appreciated their friendliness, plus, there are few greater pleasures than socializing in your own tongue after extended periods of butchering someone else’s. I tagged along with them to restaurant called el Diablito, known for its large selection of empanadas.
As is so often the case at these sorts of traveller’s get-togethers, the group ended up talking about one of the only things we all had in common, travelling – places we had visited, things we had seen and how deeply impacting and life affirming it had all been. As I squinted through the reeking, eye-watering haze of patchouli, and threadbare, backpacker’s clichés, snatches of disjointed conversation drifted across the table.
“Yeaaaa, man, we lived for two months in Receef – you know, Northern Brazil…”
“…Afro rhythms really speak to me…”
“…different pace of life…yea, man…”
I was having trouble making much sense of any of it and entire situation was beginning to have a strangely stupefying effect on me. I felt like I was being sucked into a world where criticism was not aloud and everything was always just groovy, man. Suddenly, a sentence jumped out of the void and roused me from my travel-story induced lethargy.
“The poor people here are so happy, even though they have nothing. I just want to be close to that.”
I had heard that one many, many times before. It is often repeated like some sort of half-cocked mantra by the armies of young backpackers currently infesting every hotel, pension and hostel between Tijuana and Patagonia. They are everywhere – late teens to early thirties, liberal-artsy type people who care about things like carbon footprints, destruction of the rainforests, Tibet, animal rights and any other moral crusade which can easily fit onto a bumper sticker or t-shirt. They are American, Canadian, British or Australian, dressed self-consciously casual in expensive clothes made to look like inexpensive clothes, and usually on some sort of sojourn of self-discovery. Regardless of where they are from or where they have been, 99.9% say the same thing, almost to the word, about the poor people they have come in contact with in the region – “They have so little, but they are so happy.” Then they smile smugly, reflecting on the deep insight that they have bestowed on their less worldly brethren and begin rolling another joint.
Before I had even set foot in Latin America, I had heard about the famous Alegría Latina. I used to think that large populations of jolly indigents (between 35% and 40% of Latin Americans live below the poverty line, depending on who you ask) lived out their lives in a state of lazy, ignorant satisfaction in Whoville-esqe ghettos that lined the well-travelled backpacking routes throughout the entire region. The way they were described to me, I imagined noble savages retrofitted for the 21st century with Levis in place of loincloths, and big, toothless grins replacing stoic, painted faces. I used to day dream that, one day in what would undoubtedly be a life full of travel and adventure, I would be able to “meet the natives” and share some of their vibes.
For a long time, this was my idea of the ultimate, authentic travel experience. As a kid who growing up with plenty of material comforts, experiencing other people’s poverty had a strangely life-affirming allure. It was like going to the zoo and jumping in the gorilla enclosure. In my mind, people who dealt with the problems associated with having little or no money lived a more “real” or “legitimate” life than I did in my cushy, white bread utopia. Every young traveller alive knows that in order to really experience the third world, you have to at least make an effort with the Savages. Otherwise, you’re not getting the full, soul searching, life defining, anti-consumerism experience that Latin America offers, nay – owes you.
Suddenly, talking to those English girls, it dawned on me that my friends in Uruguay were the noble savages that everyone loves so much. What’s more, not only did I know these people, I had actually attended one of their primitive poverty parties that very afternoon. My gut reaction was one of smug superiority. I was living the traveller’s dream: the ultimate cultural insider seeing the “real Latin America” through the eyes of the natives. How intrepid, how wonderfully slummy! I would have to tell all of the less worldly people I knew that even though my little Uruguayan buddies were broker than a bad joke, they were still able to take time off from their meagre jobs to celebrate a friend’s birthday over pizza and beer on a Sunday afternoon. It was classic. This kind of person doesn’t mind skipping work, he doesn’t care about money – he doesn’t even need it. He subsists off dignity, happiness, and good vibes.
Smiling inwardly, I sat there and tried to think back to any instances when my friends had demonstrated that magical Alegría. Instead, and to my growing unease, all I could remember was a conversation I had had with Virginia about whether or not she was going to attend a certain function later in the week.
“I can’t,” she said, slightly irritated. “My dad and my sister will be working, my brothers will be at school and my mom will be running errands. I’ll have to stay with the house.”
What did she mean, “stay with the house”?
She looked at me like an idiot. “You know -- stay with the house! Someone always has to be in the house, because otherwise people will rob you! That’s how it is in my neighbourhood.”
No Alegría there, then – no upside to the constant fear of grand larceny.
“Considering how they live, they are so up-beat,” One of the Canadians, gushed. Well, yes, I supposed that was theoretically true, but there was a queasiness in my guts. Considering they live in neighbourhoods overrun by trash, drugs and crime. Considering they can’t get well paying jobs, can’t get good educations and can’t get good health care. Considering that, unless they get caught dealing drugs, robbing or killing they usually can’t even get the rest of their society to admit that they exist. Yes, they are “up-beat”. But in situations like these, how many options do you really have? Existentialism and ennui are the privileges of people who don’t need to worry about their children getting enough to eat.
“They aren’t caught up with materialism,” Insisted one of the English girls, emphasizing the last word like an epithet. “I have friends and family in London with great jobs, posh flats, nice cars, everything. But they’re not happy. They’re lives are still missing something.”
Hector, an unfailing friendly and positive person once showed me around the neighbourhood where he grew up. It’s a mix of small yet sturdy ranch houses and hastily constructed, decidedly less sturdy shanties located a stone’s throw from the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montevideo but separated by imaginary lines that will cut you into pieces should you try to cross them. Depending on how the wind blows, the entire area is filled with the spicy, vaguely sweet odour of putrefying cow carcasses wafting from a large meat processing plant. As we walked, we talked about his life. Among his many skills, he is a classically trained guitarist and has studied music theory. I asked him why he had stopped.
“Because I…well…” To this day, this is the only time I have ever seen him look embarrassed. “Because I had to start working – we needed the money.”
That’s how it is.
I guess even Savages need money. Music theory …that took me off guard. I couldn’t imagine there being much mindless grinning involved.
Back at dinner, in the company of more worldly young people, conversation drifted to which beaches in Brazil were the best for travellers, especially in the state of “Receef” as one of the girls insisted on calling it. My mind was on other things. Disillusion mixed with a strong dose of guilt had begun to set in and a dark thought occurred to me:
What if Virgina or Rafael or Hector or Sebastian were each born with lots of money, but without legs? Would wealthy foreigners still smile at them as if they were little children and say: “Oh, look at you! Even though you’re disabled, you’re still so up-beat.”? Would people still want to be close to their semi-divine, Legless Alegría? These were not easy, or comfortable questions for anyone, especially me. I decided not to mention them.
When the food came, everyone had their own plate, which is rare in Uruguay. To generalize a bit, Uruguayans are an intensely social people who like to share food as a matter of custom. Many cherish the tradition of taking a hunk of meat straight off the barbecue and cutting it into bite-sized pieces or passing around a big bottle of beer and drinking it communally. Personally, it drives me nuts.
One day I mentioned this to Sebastian, a man who will literally offer you a bite of anything he is eating – including sandwiches, ice cream cones, and tiny pieces of gum that he will break into two or three even tinier pieces.
“I never share food,” I said.
“Why not?” he looked at me like something was growing out of my head.
“I don’t know, its just not something I like to do…” I was about to go on to explain how my older brother and father had always tortured me by taking food off my plate in the interest of “tasting” something when he stopped me with four words.
“You’ve never gone hungry.”
“…”
That’s the way it is.
“How many countries have you been to?” asked someone at the table in a way that reminded me of excited boy scouts discussing merit badges. I had to stop and make a mental list, and even then forgot a couple. Everyone at the table had lists bigger than mine. If we combined our frequent flyer miles, we could have flown to Mars.
Can’t say the same for my company earlier that day. Savages don’t travel. They love their homes and their communities; which is to say nothing for their deep, sometimes spiritual connection to the land. Or so the stories go.
“I would leave tomorrow and travel the world if I had the chance,” Rafael told me once. “Yea, I love Uruguay, but who wouldn’t want to see other places?”
He had lived in the United States for two years with an uncle, but despite intelligence, work ethic and education, was unable to stay legally. Many times, when Savages go to countries in the first world, they lose their “Noble” status and turn into plain old Wet-Backs, Dirty Mexicans or Sudacas, as the Spanish like to call them. Uruguay doesn’t have many exchange courses, or scholarships, or volunteer organizations like the ones that send young, bright-eyed first world college graduates to South America. Opportunities for travel tend to run just one direction. Backpacking trails lead many people into Latin America, but very rarely lead them out.
That’s the way it is.
For them at least. As for me and the rest of the young people who sat at that table eating dinner: we’ll always have our own plates, locks on our doors, and enough money to allow us to study or travel or be most anything we put our minds to. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that when we are confronted with poverty, sometimes we see what we want to see despite, or perhaps because of all our good intentions.
I dropped some pesos on the table and made some sort of excuse to get out of there. When I got outside, my first instinct was to call Virginia and say, I didn’t know what. I’m sorry? For what? For being able to return to my warm, safe, upper-middle class suburban American home while you can’t leave your house for fear of it being robbed? I had my phone in my hand, I was mashing in sappy, nonsensical text confessions, I was apologizing for everything I could think of…but in the end, I didn’t pressed “send”. Instead, I put my phone in my pocket and began the long walk back to my apartment through the deserted, tree-lined streets of Montevideo. My guilt wasn’t worth a damned thing to any of my friends, I realized. They didn’t need my pity and they definitely didn’t need my condescension. They had more important things to worry about trying to make their way in a world that often isn’t very interested in letting them be more than just grinning, happy Savages.

Article published in the august issue of