The wit of the porteño catches up to my long absence from Argentina: I feel that I am from this country but not of this country
My stunted castellano (and I remind myself that it always takes me a few days to get into the groove of speaking the language here) symbolizes how fractured and at times disconnected I feel from this country. Can I even call myself argentino? I realize that identity is what I make of it in conjunction with what the society I’m ensconced in makes of me, but I feel a longing to belong to this place. Where does this longing come from and can I ever call myself argentino?
Can I call myself argentino if I was spared from the horrors and pains that this country suffered over the past 30 years, safe within my privileged place in Canada? Can I call myself argentino when I am, in fact, an émigré protected from the brutal realities of Argentina’s recent history? Can I call myself argentinoif I didn’t live through the brutal military repressions of the mid- to-late 1970s, if I missed the period of its fledgling democracy in the ‘80s, if I was absent from the the hyperinflation years of the late ‘80s, if I saw from afar the giddy neoliberal experiment of the ‘90s? Can I call myself argentino if I only witnessed the massive protests on the streets during the argentinazo of Dec. 19/20, 2001 on television, if the corralito was something I read in the online version of the Clarín and learned of from my family’s email messages to me. Can I ever call myself argentino if I can never really feel that uncertainty towards the future that most Argentineans feel?
And, now, I’m back here in Buenos Aires, the city I claim to love so much. Can I ever call myself argentino when speaking in castellano porteño takes so much effort at times. I want to speak freely with my compañeros here but the exact word in castellano – that word or phrase that would tip off to the other that I am one of them - so often eludes me. Will I ever be able to speak like a porteño speaks? If identity is a construct, a political quagmire of complexity, why do I want to be called an argentino? Why do I want so much to be able to call myself argentino? What I have I lost in my absence from this place, and what have a gained from my life in Canada?
Can I call myself argentino if I was spared from the horrors and pains that this country suffered over the past 30 years, safe within my privileged place in Canada? Can I call myself argentino when I am, in fact, an émigré protected from the brutal realities of Argentina’s recent history? Can I call myself argentinoif I didn’t live through the brutal military repressions of the mid- to-late 1970s, if I missed the period of its fledgling democracy in the ‘80s, if I was absent from the the hyperinflation years of the late ‘80s, if I saw from afar the giddy neoliberal experiment of the ‘90s? Can I call myself argentino if I only witnessed the massive protests on the streets during the argentinazo of Dec. 19/20, 2001 on television, if the corralito was something I read in the online version of the Clarín and learned of from my family’s email messages to me. Can I ever call myself argentino if I can never really feel that uncertainty towards the future that most Argentineans feel?
And, now, I’m back here in Buenos Aires, the city I claim to love so much. Can I ever call myself argentino when speaking in castellano porteño takes so much effort at times. I want to speak freely with my compañeros here but the exact word in castellano – that word or phrase that would tip off to the other that I am one of them - so often eludes me. Will I ever be able to speak like a porteño speaks? If identity is a construct, a political quagmire of complexity, why do I want to be called an argentino? Why do I want so much to be able to call myself argentino? What I have I lost in my absence from this place, and what have a gained from my life in Canada?
posted by Marcelo Vieta at
2:10 AM
