Overseas Briefing

They say studying abroad changes your point of view, that it opens your mind to a wealth of different opinions, customs and ways of life. Three months into my stay in Peru, I can’t disagree with that. But I don’t think it is Peru I’ve come to appreciate, so much as America.At dinner one night with my host family, my host mom asked me — with the same worried look she gives me whenever I go out at night — if I was around the Campo de Marte, a nearby park, that day. No, I responded, a little confused why she was so concerned. There was a parade of gays there today, she informed me. Evidently, it wasn’t a safe place to be walking around.

On a tour of Lima with my host uncle, the topic of race came up. He asked if there were Latinos or African-Americans at my school.  Caught a little off guard, I replied ‘Yes, of course, Middlebury tries to seek out people of all backgrounds.’ ‘Oh,’ he replied, a little surprised himself. ‘They’re pretty lazy, though, huh. I bet they don’t study that hard.’ Language barrier aside, I wasn’t sure how to respond, and we just kept on walking.

A few weeks ago, I traveled to the Valle Chanchamayo in the Peruvian jungle. Carrying with me a firm belief in the environmental misdeeds of the United States, I set out on the trail expecting to find an unspoiled paradise. Instead, I found an erstwhile paradise, now littered with bottles of the ubiquitous Inca Kola. The signs begging the visitors to demonstrate their culture and throw their trash away (their phrase, not mine), were seen as nothing more than suggestions, something like the traffic laws in Lima.

What’s more important than what these stories have in common, I think, is what they leave out. These events, while all true and not taken out of their immediate context, were taken out of the overall context of this country. They focus on the negative, mistaking the “rotting trees” for the forest.

Ironically enough, we tell the same sort of slanted narrative about our own nation. Many people in the liberal (read: Middlebury) establishment tend to glorify all things international, despite the obvious faults many foreign nations — and peoples — have. This glorification is coupled with a sort of “American un-exceptionalism,” a counterpoint to the “America the Great” diatribe so many of us scorn. Seemingly in an attempt to define ourselves as intelligent, critical thinking college students and distance ourselves from the loud, flag-waving and country-invading stereotype of Americans, we talk of an America as the ultimate evil in the world. And often, rightly so: by virtue (or perhaps, curse) of our power, our mistakes have a greater effect on the world. But do our past — and present — errors mean that the “American way” is entirely without benefit? Or, rather are we instead like every other country — Peru included: simply imperfect?

Perhaps the next time we complain that racism and xenophobia still pervade much of our society, we should remember how far we’ve come, and acknowledge that, unlike many countries throughout the world, the law is against the racist. And when we lament how America emits more greenhouse gases than many other nations combined, let’s also not forget about how America’s national parks are among the best kept in the world. And finally, when I’m back in Vermont, complaining about how much everything costs, I’ll hope you remind me to thank the Vermont Health Department for assuring that I won’t be reaching for my Pepto the next morning. Here’s to America; imperfect, just like everyone else.