Word: gringo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...every university campus these days, exemplifies the new, no-nonsense mind-set. "Every time I hear public officials shout about defending our national sovereignty, I shake my head," she says, "because I know that their corruption and mistakes have compromised my country's sovereignty as much as any gringo...
There's nothing much remarkable about Happy Hour other than the false escapist sensation. But people there really don t want to escape, else they would have. Meaning that anyone can set up a cantina south of the border and live the life of the gringo in paradise. Anyone can take off for Russia and start waiting tables. Anyone can go to Nairobi and set up a lemonade stand. But people don't; they remain their vocational selves in one American metropolis or another...
These side-commentaries convey Fuentes' frustration with the situation around him as well as if he had been writing directly about them. His disgust for the Hollywood society is apparent, as is his confusion over why Diana submits to this artificial universe: "It all reminded me of... the gringo cocktail party, where no one deigns to concede more than two or three minutes to anyone, not the most fascinating stranger, not even one's oldest and dearest friend. Yes you're made of glass, they look right through you... All of this while balancing a drink in one hand...
Mexican anthropologist Roger Bartra sees ``a revolution in the way the Mexican views the gringo.'' In the past, he says, ``the ruling classes emphasized our acute differences with the Anglo-Saxons in order to affirm our separate identity. But now hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mexicans have built bridges to the U.S. The frontier has become but a minor inconvenience. Perhaps it is utopian, but I look forward to its disappearance.'' From south of the border, at least, Mex-America beckons...
...Always remember FM's first and golden rule of foreign travel: The only good gringo is the respectful gringo...