Oh boy did this week kick my bum. I started taking Spanish class for four hours a day Monday-Friday. After being away from a school environment for about ten years, it has been a pretty rough adjustment to force my brain to do that type of focusing again. Oof! I also have some hefty baggage when it comes to learning Spanish. I should be fluent ten times over by now but for the…5th? 6th? time I am starting at a beginners level. The last time I studied Spanish was when I was in college and lived here for a year. My learning was so slow that they had to create a special one-on-one class for me. My brain does not work well with languages, I have an auditory processing disorder and short term memory deficit that makes it a real struggle. I was in the top of my class in all other areas, but Spanish has been my Achilles heel since I first started classes in kindergarten. It makes me feel stupid and small. It’s rough.
BUT, I am determined. It’s a matter of integrity for me and living in alignment with my values. After traveling and meeting people from all over the world, it is noticeable how travelers from the United States are uniquely monolingual. Travelers from basically any other country are at least bilingual, at least. This is one of many ways the history of colonization still shapes our world today. Despite Chinese and Spanish having the most native speakers, the most commonly learned second language is English. Native English speakers tend to have a sense of entitlement around the rest of the world learning our language.
There is also of course a socioeconomic element to be acknowledged here in terms of access to education. However, that is not as simple as saying, ‘it’s only people who can afford a higher level of education that are bilingual.’ That kind of thinking reflects how it is in the States, but let’s remember that the US is also unique in its extremely unaffordable higher education costs. College is completely free in over 40 countries (https://www.valuecolleges.com/collegecosts/ ), here in Costa Rica university is MUCH more affordable and accessible. Also, all students in public school in Costa Rica start learning English in kinder! It’s part of their standard education for elementary students. So while people with greater wealth have access to better language programs and are able to study longer than people who need to stop their studies and start working at a younger age, it is just as much an issue of what is valued and prioritized as it is an issue of access. If the US valued bilingualism we could include it in our primary education and dramatically increase the number of bilingual North Americans.
Of course, we do have millions of bilingual folks in the US in our immigrant communities, but in a fucked up twist of white supremacy instead of their bilingual skills being praised and encouraged, it is often discouraged. People get yelled at and even physically harmed for speaking languages other than English in the United States. It is appalling and an area where we have completely gotten it wrong.
My Spanish teacher told me a story today about how she went into a small pulperia and saw an irate, red-faced, Gringo yelling at a young female cashier because she did not speak English. This is in Costa Rica. There are thousands of expats that live here that don’t even try to learn Spanish. I don’t want anything to do with the arrogance and xenophobia that is at the root of the assumption that everyone should speak English. No way. I see learning another language as part of my Resistance and Reparations Plan. As someone of European decent, I know my ancestors were part of the colonization that brutally stripped people of their native languages. Learning another language is a small way in which I can show my respect of other cultures and restore a teeny, tiny piece of the balance of power.
So yeah, I’m learning Spanish. But I am struuuuggling.
There were two other significant happenings this week, a trip to ZooAve and the Women’s March.
ZooAve:
ZooAve is a nonprofit organization that takes in injured animals, rehabilitates them, and releases them back in the wild (if the animals are able). This should be the model for all zoos! The enclosures animals live in are natural and spacious, none of the concrete, tiny areas you see in the States. There are numerous tropical birds, primates, a sloth, reptiles, deer, emus, big cats… lots of different types of animals. It’s also a great place to geek out on plants!
It was easy to get to ZooAve by taking a bus to the nearby town and then a taxi the rest of the way. It’s a little expensive but all the money goes towards the care of the animals so it feels good to support them. It is also much less expensive for Costa Ricans, which is something I totally agree with as a key part of ethical tourism. It’s really not okay for wealthy tourists from other countries to drive up the costs of local attractions for the people that live there. For a little bit extra, you can also go zip-lining there. You could probably get through the entire park in an hour but we enjoyed walking the loop twice, stopping for lunch, and then walking around one more time. We were able to see a lot more animals this way as some of them were hiding the first or second time around. The paths are fully accessible and stroller/wheelchair/walker friendly-ish (in some places the grade was steep and may be difficult for folks with walkers and would almost surely be difficult for non-electric wheelchair users to navigate alone).
There is an ice cream stand and a restaurant on site, you can bring a picnic lunch too. The restaurant was a big disappointment for us as vegetarians, we had some of the worst pasta we have ever eaten, literally a pile of spaghetti with flavorless tomatoes on top, no seasoning at all, not even salt. It was also relatively expensive. We think it would be better for meat eaters though and it was a lovely place to sit and rest while watching peacocks and iguanas roaming freely around us. There’s a toddler play area too, which is nice because we ended up having to wait for about a half hour for our food, so that helped the kids stay happy. In total we spent about four hours there, it was a wonderful afternoon. We highly recommend it!
The Women’s March 2018:
I was so excited to hear there would be a Women’s March in the capital city of San Jose. I went to the first one in Sacramento, California last year and it really helped lift my spirits and gave me a small piece of hope to cling to. That march had tens of thousands of people in attendance; this march had about 75 people. The small number was fine, Julian and I have done Black Lives Matter Corner Stands with just our family of four. When we got there I started feeling uneasy though, I only saw gringos. Hmmmm… this is kinda a weird dynamic, I thought. What does this march represent in another country? Who and what are we marching for? What does it mean that the key organizer, or at least the organizer who is most visible, is a white man? How are we being perceived by the Ticos (people from Costa Rica) around us, many of whom probably don’t know anything about the Women’s March?
To be honest, I’m still unpacking all of this and don’t yet have a lot of answers. I was glad to see that there were a number of Ticos that ended up being there and a Costa Rican organization for women held the largest signs. Most of the speeches were in Spanish too, though the longest one by far was by a man (in Spanish at least). We walked through a busy shopping area with loud music—in English--blasting from a portable speaker, a conspicuous group with many white faces. We took up a lot of space, with demand energy, in a country with a history of colonization. Women have every right to demand the space and time to address issues of safety and equality, but what does it mean when there are all these other dynamics involved? Did we do this in the most responsible, respectful, and intersectional way we could have? I don’t think we did, but is it better that we did something than nothing?
These are tricky issues to sort out. Yes it’s good to have this movement be represented internationally, but a big group of North American white people taking up space in another country can be harmful (and certainly has been!). Yes it’s good that men are involved, but when they take on leadership roles and time on the mic, they leave less space for women (I’m guessing they would respond to this by saying that all women were invited to speak, which they were, but that would be failing to recognize the impact of having men be the primary, initial speakers/organizers; that is an impact rooted in hundreds of years of misogyny and isn’t something they could change by any other means than stepping back from those roles). Yes the women of Costa Rica face the same forms of oppression as women in the States do, but I don’t want to be speaking for them and I would never think I knew what their biggest issues are or what they need most. I am glad we went, it’s important for me to have my daughter and family involved in this movement and I loved feeling connected to all my friends marching in the States, but it was also uncomfortable and complicated.
Meanwhile back in the States, the conversation that was started last year about the march not being intersectional enough raged on. This is such an important conversation to have and I welcome it! Let us white folks sit in that fire and reflect on how we have failed, about the people we have hurt and let down again and again, and about what we need to do to improve. This is one of the most important things to come out of The Women’s March, this examination of how white people continue to only see things through their white perspective and how we maintain white supremacy by putting our voices and needs before others. What I don’t welcome is the predictable response from Woke White Women (WWW).
Somehow the Woke White Women have interpreted the pain and anger expressed by marginalized groups as saying, “you shouldn’t participate in this march.” I’m not sure how this interpretation got hold but it is so deeply flawed it makes me want to scream. I get it the initial feeling behind not wanting to associate and support a movement that isn’t intersectional, I totally get that. But this movement is happening, we are making history right now, so the question becomes, are you going to sit back and let this movement be ruled by white feminists or are you going to leverage your privilege and make sure you do everything you can to make it more intersectional?
Take the women’s suffrage movement for example, a movement led by racist white feminists. Do you feel glad that there were a few white women who didn’t take part in it because it wasn’t inclusive? Do they really deserve any credit for their inactivity? Or do you wish that more anti-racist white women worked harder to make sure it was inclusive? Your lack of engagement does absolutely nothing to change the situation. Get involved, leverage your privilege, make sure to be involved in other less white activism (with both your time and $$$), and help create space for diverse leadership. Don’t sit back and think things are going to magically change without people like you doing the work. Be the change.
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