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I'm reminded again of the saying "denial ain't just a river in Egypt" here in Montevideo by the River Plate because of an invitation to tea I just got.
Being from the post Dirty War generation of South America's Southern Cone (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina in the 70s), being back now in democracy in a reconciled land stirs something inside of me. We're survivors of a mini-holocaust, like survivors of the Holocaust, the world ended for us already, you know?
That's the best part of being down in this part of the world. The kids today don't know it from their own experience, and that's good. But they know that the gray haired people now among them lived through the mini-holocaust and that we're trauma survivors and they give us due respect. It's nice.
Of course, that goes for most Uruguayans, not all. Today I was invited to "tea" on Sunday with an old school friend. My parents' missionary board kept us in poverty when I was growing up here except for fulfilling one recruitment promise. They made good on the promise that as a missionary kid I would get to be educated in an English speaking school here, no matter the cost.
That's how I got to go to a British prep school down here. I got a world class education no one in my family had ever gotten. I loved it and it made me the college instructor I am today. But I was a charity case at a high school where the rich lived above everyone the way whites lived above everyone during South Africa's apartheid.
Still do. That's whose house I've been invited to visit for "tea" on Sunday. I already went to lunch there since coming here and did fine, but it's odd. These are the rich, Beautiful People whose photos show up in the Social section of the Montevideo newspaper every week the way the Kardashians show up on TV and in magazines in the US all the time. The old guard, rich elite who actually look down on the Kennedy and Bush families in the USA from down here, believe it or not. I know, how dare they? But they do.
It's interesting to know what you and I know from DS PTSD about life, and then spend time with these old school friends and see how blissfully ignorant they remain. I'd love to have their money. They have the best new European SUVs and huge houses and they fly to Miami 8,000 miles away just to shop.
But they're still back in high school competing with each other for most Beautiful Prom King and Queen after the age of 50. And they know nothing, nothing at all, about what happened here to me and tens of thousands of others right around them during the Dirty War. Just like lots of whites under South Africa's apartheid knew nothing of life in the black townships all around them back then. It's an amazing case study in observing powerful group denial every time I see these folks and here them repeat old Marie Antoinette's line with straight faces, "let them eat cake."
So I shall remember to curl my pinkie at "tea" on Sunday as I eat my slice of cake.
If you're interested, I'll keep you posted. These people kill me.
Being from the post Dirty War generation of South America's Southern Cone (Chile, Uruguay, Argentina in the 70s), being back now in democracy in a reconciled land stirs something inside of me. We're survivors of a mini-holocaust, like survivors of the Holocaust, the world ended for us already, you know?
That's the best part of being down in this part of the world. The kids today don't know it from their own experience, and that's good. But they know that the gray haired people now among them lived through the mini-holocaust and that we're trauma survivors and they give us due respect. It's nice.
Of course, that goes for most Uruguayans, not all. Today I was invited to "tea" on Sunday with an old school friend. My parents' missionary board kept us in poverty when I was growing up here except for fulfilling one recruitment promise. They made good on the promise that as a missionary kid I would get to be educated in an English speaking school here, no matter the cost.
That's how I got to go to a British prep school down here. I got a world class education no one in my family had ever gotten. I loved it and it made me the college instructor I am today. But I was a charity case at a high school where the rich lived above everyone the way whites lived above everyone during South Africa's apartheid.
Still do. That's whose house I've been invited to visit for "tea" on Sunday. I already went to lunch there since coming here and did fine, but it's odd. These are the rich, Beautiful People whose photos show up in the Social section of the Montevideo newspaper every week the way the Kardashians show up on TV and in magazines in the US all the time. The old guard, rich elite who actually look down on the Kennedy and Bush families in the USA from down here, believe it or not. I know, how dare they? But they do.
It's interesting to know what you and I know from DS PTSD about life, and then spend time with these old school friends and see how blissfully ignorant they remain. I'd love to have their money. They have the best new European SUVs and huge houses and they fly to Miami 8,000 miles away just to shop.
But they're still back in high school competing with each other for most Beautiful Prom King and Queen after the age of 50. And they know nothing, nothing at all, about what happened here to me and tens of thousands of others right around them during the Dirty War. Just like lots of whites under South Africa's apartheid knew nothing of life in the black townships all around them back then. It's an amazing case study in observing powerful group denial every time I see these folks and here them repeat old Marie Antoinette's line with straight faces, "let them eat cake."
So I shall remember to curl my pinkie at "tea" on Sunday as I eat my slice of cake.
If you're interested, I'll keep you posted. These people kill me.
I'm glad that you got such a great education. I managed one despite my circumstances back in the day, partly because even a PhD would work for a public high school, just to have a job. Had some goooood teachers--as you are for us, Muji!
I'd ask how do you miss out on a whole freaking war, but then, money makes for great insulation. Or so I'm told. Wouldn't know myself!
Reminds me of my SIL. Lalalalalala, oh, here let me write a check to your charity, lalalalalala, what, bad things happen? lalalalala..... And about that point, I start imagining my dear SIL near a guillotine asking for a slice of cake....
And from our perspective and where we come from, that could have the effect of rubbing us raw if we let it. It seems that they have their innocence and will probably hold onto it for their lifetime. Ours was gone a long time ago. And we are not getting it back.
It's kind of the way I feel when I see the happy couples hand in hand. The loving families having a picnic at the park. During my brief cheerleading career, I was happy to see these things. Now I am back to reality and it kind of ticks me off now. Why? Because I know my innocence is gone forever.
They were so very soft. I wasn't sure who belonged and who was just visiting, but they were so soft...I felt like a piranha swimming with goldfish.
Leo, yeah, it's that British post-colonial thing, to be sure, something that's left me with a true love/hate relationship with things British. I absolutely LOVE Monty Python's Flying Circus with all of my being. On the other hand, I understood how foolishly brutal the British colonial powers were to their subjects in India when I watched the movie Gandhi.
I have a blast with my Uruguayan British rich friends when we get to riff on Monty Python-like stuff. That's fun. But when they get all post-colonial British upper crusty on me, I could die of boredom, truly.
It's a real shame that some of the coolest growth beyond PTSD since the resurrection of Jesus himself has happened all around them in Uruguay in this generation and yet they missed it. In my humble opinion, God's gonna be ticked about that. Ironically, tonight I just came back from seeing a play downtown based on a book by WH Hudson about Uruguay called The Purple Land. In that book Hudson, an Englishman, DOES get Uruguay's struggle and its value, and says so. He says about wealth that the English who come to Uruguay and don't get what it's been through don't understand that man does not live by bread alone.
My DS PTSD friends here, though, get it, and you didn't need to travel to do so. Money can't buy that kind of insight; it's been earned in our blood, in our sweat, and in our tears wherever we are. No naivete here. I am SO grateful.