The Bochica Syndrome
For long Colombians have been known for worshiping foreigners, even more when they are white, blond and blue-eyed. It's not a secret and even the most educated elite still follows this ancient costume and tries to emulate their looks, lifestyle and costumes, to the point they don't act Colombian at all, unless they are drunk, which should be another post on this blog.
So, this behavior is actually rooted in our ancestral memory. Now, some might deny this fact, because having indigenous blood makes you unworthy and less than a third class citizen, that's the last thing you want to be, because being an "indian" (this word is due to the belief Columbus had he had reached India, not America) is a synonym of poor, uneducated, rude, impolite, amongst many other negative connotations. If at this point you're wondering why is called the Bochica Syndrome, is actually very simple to understand if you know the ancient Muisca myth (further reading about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochica).
So, when the conquistadores arrived, most Muisca people believed they were descendents of Bochica, because Bochica was white, had a beard and blue eyes. They thought then that Bochica had sent his children to educate them into new things (and boy they did teach them, but all the wrong things, remember that Columbus' boat was full of inmates who were sent to a journey of which they might never return). Then, of course, Spaniards used this belief to manipulate the poor Muiscas, who started to think they were beneath Spaniards.
Long story short, so to speak, the Muiscas started to believe that Spaniards where gods because they brought shiny objects (such as mirrors). The myth got ingrained into the Muisca memory and was never overcome, and for centuries Colombians have been thinking that any foreigner that arrives to this developing country (which might never reach its developed state) is a god who brings shiny objects (now known as Euros or Dollars). I have witnessed this not one or two times, but hundreds of times (I have for a partner a blue-eyed, white, tall and blond demigod) and it never fails, it is definitely structural and it will take a lot of time to be overcome by Colombians, who go out of their way to prove their lineage is pure white Spaniard and that never got mixed (when in fact, two months after their arrival they were impregnating all indigenous women), so they are pure creole (white Spaniards born in Colombia, not Spain) people, which a couple of decades later where so mixed they could not even remember that there was such a thing as creoles (well, not that far back, we're talking about 1810 or so).
One thing is for sure, not many are proud of being Hispanic or Latino descendants, because we were never taught to feel proud of our ancestry; when you're native American, member of one of the many tribes that still populate the Americas, you can feel proud, you never mixed; when you are black, you know you came from Africa and that's where your roots are, but when you're Latino or Hispanic, you're white, black and brown, because we are the result of the mixture of African descendants with native Americans and European colonists, we are the living result of a huge melting pot (which Americans love to use as if they were in one, considering that late into the 1960's racist laws still existed and reservations were just a solution to deal with the "problem" of native Americans) and our skin is the living proof of that mixture.
Now, there's another problem, I'm not white, I'm not black, I'm not brown, so all of them despise me anyway!
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| https://cdn.colombia.com/images/colombia-info/bochica-maestro-de-los-muiscas.jpg |
So, when the conquistadores arrived, most Muisca people believed they were descendents of Bochica, because Bochica was white, had a beard and blue eyes. They thought then that Bochica had sent his children to educate them into new things (and boy they did teach them, but all the wrong things, remember that Columbus' boat was full of inmates who were sent to a journey of which they might never return). Then, of course, Spaniards used this belief to manipulate the poor Muiscas, who started to think they were beneath Spaniards.
Long story short, so to speak, the Muiscas started to believe that Spaniards where gods because they brought shiny objects (such as mirrors). The myth got ingrained into the Muisca memory and was never overcome, and for centuries Colombians have been thinking that any foreigner that arrives to this developing country (which might never reach its developed state) is a god who brings shiny objects (now known as Euros or Dollars). I have witnessed this not one or two times, but hundreds of times (I have for a partner a blue-eyed, white, tall and blond demigod) and it never fails, it is definitely structural and it will take a lot of time to be overcome by Colombians, who go out of their way to prove their lineage is pure white Spaniard and that never got mixed (when in fact, two months after their arrival they were impregnating all indigenous women), so they are pure creole (white Spaniards born in Colombia, not Spain) people, which a couple of decades later where so mixed they could not even remember that there was such a thing as creoles (well, not that far back, we're talking about 1810 or so).
One thing is for sure, not many are proud of being Hispanic or Latino descendants, because we were never taught to feel proud of our ancestry; when you're native American, member of one of the many tribes that still populate the Americas, you can feel proud, you never mixed; when you are black, you know you came from Africa and that's where your roots are, but when you're Latino or Hispanic, you're white, black and brown, because we are the result of the mixture of African descendants with native Americans and European colonists, we are the living result of a huge melting pot (which Americans love to use as if they were in one, considering that late into the 1960's racist laws still existed and reservations were just a solution to deal with the "problem" of native Americans) and our skin is the living proof of that mixture.
Now, there's another problem, I'm not white, I'm not black, I'm not brown, so all of them despise me anyway!
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