Uruguay: Conversations with Savages
By Tetsuhiko Endo

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 harbored about that nation expire quietly, gasping and anemic 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 neighborhood—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, Marianela, 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, telling stories, 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 travelers, who were on a shoestring tour of Latin America.  The two English girls in the group 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; besides, there are few greater pleasures than socializing in your native tongue after extended periods of butchering someone else’s.  I tagged along with them to a restaurant called el Diablito, known for its large selection of empanadas.  

As is so often the case at these types of traveler’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 the 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 allowed, 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 grew 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 traveler 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 traveler’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 meager 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 I was 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 neighborhood.”

No Alegría there, then—no upside to the constant fear of grand larceny.

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