My first week at IU coincided with the opening of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the city where I was born. Some floor mates and I gathered to watch the ceremony in one of the residence hall lounges. Everything was fine until I heard a voice coming from the crowd ask, “Isn’t the host country Argentina?”
Some people who knew me shared a horrified look, and then I asked myself, “How could people possibly mistake Brazil for Argentina?” Then it hit me. People in countries outside of Latin America don’t actually have knowledge about the different countries that compose it.
In schools in the United States, it’s not required to teach students how the Paraguayan War, which was one of the biggest battles in which Brazil actively fought, almost changed the ownership of the La Plata River in the 1860s. We also fought in World War II but with not as much passion.
Another thing that has really bothered me since I moved to the U.S. is the fact that many people simply assume I speak Spanish. I do not. I actually hate Spanish, because my tongue just cannot get the hang of it, but I admire those whose tongues can.
So here’s a bit of history from south of the U.S.
In 1500, a Portuguese gentleman named Pedro Álvares Cabral arrived on a giant and beautiful land he called Ilha de Vera Cruz. He met with some natives and decided to give them mirrors in exchange for trees. A bit before that, in 1494, a treaty — the Treaty of Tordesillas — was signed between Spain and Portugal that divided the land that Christopher Columbus had discovered between the two nations. That is precisely why Brazil and other countries like Cape Verde, differently from the rest, speak Portuguese and not Spanish.
My point is no, we are definitely not the same. We never were and never will be. Those who like Brazilian soccer know, culturally, Argentinians and Brazilians sort of hate each other. I don’t like to support mutual hatred between civilizations, but when it’s World Cup season, it’s on.
Portuguese and Spanish are incredibly different languages, although they may sound a bit alike. I have a couple of friends that teach Portuguese for non-native speakers here at IU, and they have said how easier it is to teach our language to someone who has a Spanish background as opposed to someone who does not.
Our tongues do some twists and turns in similar ways, and my dad did his best to talk to the taxi driver in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with what we call Portunhol — a mix of Portuguese and Spanish — but they simply have different tongues. Every single country down below is different. Just because we are below the great U.S. doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be respected and learned about.
You know that amazing coffee that is part of your daily routine? Mostly likely it came from Colombia. Love a nice piece of chocolate? The ancient Mayans of Central America, who used to live in lands that now belong to Mexico, were the first to discover it back around 900 AD. Love hiking? The historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu in Peru is one of the most important archeological sites in the world.
So many beautiful things were created in Latin America, so many languages are spoken, and so many different cultural events happened in those lands that the rest of the world did not bother to learn in school. It does hurt that people assume things to be right just by thinking that we are all the same when we’re not.
God, I am so glad that we aren’t the same.
