Latin
America
Hannah Gill
hgill@email.unc.edu
Institute for the
Study of the
Americas and CGI
Find students and faculty with
international experience
Faculty International Expertise Database
http://cgi.unc.edu/resources/fie
International Internship Database
http://cgi.unc.edu/resources/iid
Library Resources
• Holly Ackerman
Librarian for Latin America and Iberia
holly.ackerman@duke.edu
919.660.5845
• Teresa Chapa
Latin American and Iberian Resources
Bibliographer
tchapa@unc.edu
919.962.3948
Film resources
• Latin American film library at the Global
Education Center on the third floor (in the
Institute for the Study of the Americas)
http://isa.unc.edu/film/films_main.asp
• Up to date info on safety in Mexico: facebook
group:
• http://www.blogdelnarco.com
Thinking about context
• Are you in a rural or urban place?
• What is the ethnic, racial, linguistic and class
background of the people you are hanging out
with?
• What are the expectations for interaction
between people of different genders?
Scenario #1
• Scenario #1: You are staying with a family in an urban,
middle class neighborhood in La Paz, Bolivia. The
family speaks Spanish. You are intent on learning local
idioms and vocabulary and throw yourself into the
learning process. You’ve noticed that the family you
live with frequently uses the word “cholo” to refer to
people living in the country. When you use the word,
however, on a trip to a rural community in the Andes,
people don’t seem to understand you and you get
ambivalent responses. What is going on?
"Colla" or "cholo/a" means somebody from the
Altiplano or someone who identifies strongly with
indigenous heritage. "Cholo" also carries rural
connotations and can be used like a derogatory
word for "campesinos." "Camba" is someone from
the western lowlands, usually from Santa Cruz de la
Sierra (in Bolivia, at least). It's often also associated
with the more European heritage claimed by the
majority of people from that region. They're words
that can be used colloquially, even between ingroups and out-groups, but can easily become as
derogatory, especially if used by a foreigner trying
to be part of one of those in-groups.
It's one of those things that's really difficult to put
into words, but helpful to at least know about
beforehand.
“My advice is especially relevant for the Andean countries
(Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, parts of Argentina above all).
The dynamics between indigenous and Spanish
backgrounds is difficult to conceptualize before
experiencing it, but be sensitive to those dynamics. Be
on the lookout for new words with loaded meanings
and stay away from using them, even if in-country host
family and friends do. Also, be aware of indigenous
languages like Aymara and Quechua. I know I was
super confused the first time I went to the
neighborhood where I worked and only understood
about 50% of the ‘Spanish’ before I was aware of the
rapid code-switching bilingual speakers do all the time,
often without thinking about it.”
Scenario #2
You are staying in a homestay in a rural community
completing an internship in a local organization. The
community experiences high rates of poverty and
many families have migrated to other cities and
countries. Many residents have asked you advice about
how to get visas, and sometimes children will come up
to you and ask for treats or money. You strike up a
friendship with someone in the community who is your
age of the opposite sex, who you like a lot and get
along with well. He/She invites you to take a walk with
you alone one evening. How should you proceed?
“Here at UNC Chapel Hill, we think nothing of
people of the opposite sex hanging out alone
together. It doesn’t mean that you like someone
just because you are alone with them, and here
at UNC I have lots of good friends of the opposite
sex. I found, though, that this gender dynamic
was really different my rural community in central
Mexico, and that hanging out with guys without
other people around can potentially create some
false expectations, since in rural communities like
the one I was in, guys and girls don’t mix a whole
lot, and if they do, it’s in groups.
…A guy and a girl hanging out alone are
perceived as an item. My host mother would
scold me if I ever walked around alone, and it
was unheard of for a female to walk around
alone at night. It just was not seen as proper.
The gender dynamic also made a difference
when wanting to interview someone of the
opposite sex. I learned it was improper to
interview a man without his wife or other
family members present. I later learned that I
was living in a religiously conservative area,
and it was very different from Mexico City. “
Scenario #3
You are completing an internship in a small
community or neighborhood with high rates
of poverty, depression and alcoholism. You
make friends with some neighbors who invite
you to have some beers with them one
evening outside. You’ve noticed that your host
family never consumes alcohol. What should
you do?
• “I was trying to connect with local youth,
particularly young men, who have few
employment options—most leave to work in the
city or migrate to a different country. For those
left behind, there is not much to do, and
alcoholism can be an issue of contention
between men and women in a place where social
codes frown upon women drinking. Frequently, in
the evenings, men would get together in groups
and hang out to drink. Women and children
generally avoided them and stayed inside after
dark. As I got to know some young men better,
they invited me to drink with them in the
evenings. . .
…I was not sure what to do so I checked in with
other interns and also talked to a respected male
elder in my community. He called the kids
“hooligans” and said I would be mixing with the
wrong crowd. In the end I and the group decided
that we would decline drinking while in our very
small internship community, because of the
tensions around alcoholism, and leave libations
to our days off in the larger city when we weren’t
working. I encouraged the young men to join our
soccer league so we could hang out in a more
constructive context. I was glad of this when two
weeks later a knife fight broke out between the
youth one evening while drinking.”
Scenario #4
You are getting along well with your host
family and they are going out of their way to
accommodate you, including preparing special
foods for you. You return home for lunch one
day and see that your host mother has made
fresh-squeezed tamarind juice. You are not
sure you like tamarind juice and you are also
unsure whether it was made with purified
water that won’t make you sick. What do you
do?
Other advice from students…
•
Crime: criminals work in groups and can tell pretty quickly if you're not local. Stay in
groups and don’t get too wasted when you are going out—you are a sitting duck!
•
Don't rent from phone companies. I got scammed. Bring a phone that has a SIM card and
get a card down there, or buy a cell phone and a calling card from a corner store. DON'T
give out your credit information.
•
Banking: ATMs are everywhere in Latin American cities, not so much in rural areas. Check
what it costs to withdraw $$ from your ATM. Some US banks have agreements with LA
banks and won’t charge to withdraw $$. You might consider bringing two atm cards in
case a machine eats one of them.
•
Most definitely try to speak Spanish whenever you get the chance. Most of the people I
met were more than happy to work with my Spanglish and I had a pretty epic
conversations. .
I know hearing catcalls was one big culture shock for the girls on my trip. Also, at boliches
(dance clubs) in Buenos Aires, if a guy comes up to to dance with you, it actually means he
wants to dance with you for a while and then make out with you. So that freaked out
some girls when they're getting their groove on and all of a sudden homeboy starts trying
to make a move.
•