Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
From the time I got off the plane in Ezeiza International Airport, to when I entered my apartment for lunch today, I have been hit on, whistled at, or flirted with, more than ever before in my life.
And let’s just say the race/gender dynamic is not just about Barack Obama vs. Hilary Clinton. The most common question that men ask a woman is ¿Tenés novio? Do you have a boyfriend? From there, men will leer at you, and the conversation can go from an exchange of lewd comments among a group of young guys on the corner, to old men asking you if you are Brazilian, or even better, the energetic young taxi driver complimenting your hair, your eyes, and telling you that you have made his day.
I have been taught that Latin American societies exhibit macho/male chauvinist attitudes towards women. I have not experienced any malicious or deliberately inferior treatment because I am a woman. However, the treatment of black women is especially aggressive. Sometimes, the offhand compliment implicates the exotic appeal of a woman, simply because she is black, or blonde, or different from the norm in any way.
Buenos Aires has been called a pale city, because over 70% of its inhabitants are Italian or Spanish in ancestry. The largest waves of immigration also included English, German, and French immigrants and a record number of Jewish immigrants during World War II. The extermination campaigns of Juan Manuel Rosas and others have decimated populations of indigenous peoples, as well as the few slaves that were brought to Argentina. Seeing a black woman, a well-dressed, young black woman causes alarm, panic, and a weird kind of urgency in the hearts of men here. In the case of one young gentleman, he stared so hard at me that he hit his bumper against a fire hydrant. When I walk around, men see me as exotic and therefore beloved image: the promiscuous black woman or they look for the opposite: the tall blonde, usually with blue eyes.
While as usual, I preface this with, the men who hit on women the most are usually older, toothless, married men, there is also a significant number of young, attractive, wealthy men, who also see the girl walking by as a chance to hone their flirtation skills. I have been compared to angels falling from heaven, Hola Hermosa, the equivalent of “Hey Beautiful!” being the most polite comment, and Negrita, Linda Morena being the most common. Negrita—while literally translated means little black girl, is a term of endearment, with friends calling each other Negro, and Morena being the term for any person of darker skin, i.e. African descent.
While I have been hit on, flirted with, and whistled at, I think the most disturbing thing is just being stared at. I can be hard to approach, being a foreigner, so people just point and stare at me from wherever they are. But no one has been derogatory, or racist. In fact, it is often the opposite; people compliment me on my Spanish, and ask me where I have learned it, and I talk about the United States. It is only after we speak, and they walk away, that I remember that I was first approached because I was black, and then female, a weird feeling for me. I am from Virginia, and I have been stopped by the police because of my race, and nothing more, and they never saw fit to compliment my hair afterwards.
It is more the cultural adjustment I have had to make—seeing myself as a female, an accessible one, and acting accordingly. When someone says something rude to me, I make it abundantly clear that I disapprove, and being looked at by men is something to ignore, but not to encourage.
