Continuing with Colombian idiosincracy
Yesterday I started thinking about Colombians and their costumes! I'm Colombian as well, but I noticed something very interesting which was brought to my attention by an acquaintance not long ago. Now, Colombians love creating distinctions in any possible level: color, religion, location, accent, but the one they love the most is social class. We are stratified, which means that depending on your family income you can say you're between 1, which is the lowest, and 6, which is the highest; well, this Pythagorean perception is so strongly based that a lot of people jokes about it saying "he acts like he's on the 40 social stratum", implying that such person acts like royalty, or ta least pretends to do so.
Categorizing simplifies many things, which is the reason why we do it, but this particular separation works better to keep each social stratum at bay! No matter how hard you try, you will never be social stratum 6 unless your income can move you into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, a nice car, and a couple of trips abroad for the holidays (Miami is their favorite destination); now, with this number comes a long list of responsibilities: you have to dress properly, you have to talk properly, visit the right places and do the rights things, if you don't well, then they will call you "new money" and try to keep you at a safe distance.
But no matter how hard they try, this social stratum acts like the rest of them, except they have larger amounts of money in the bank! Give them a chance to drink, and their social stratum will start to go down, so at the end they act like any regular blue collar from social stratum 1. Something interesting, you will never see the social stratum 1 people shooting guns (they can't afford them, unless they're in a gang) as the social stratum 6 people will do given the chance to do so.
So, where does this particular view of life comes from? Very simple, when Spaniards arrived they treated indigenous people like slaves and did so until the independence. Right after that, people were able to take back the haciendas, plantations, and all the land that had been taken away from them; however, those with a little more power and access to funds than the rest started treating those who fought with them side by side for independence the same way the Spaniards did to them, even though they were the same from the very beginning. So, at the end of the day, we are all the same bunch of "indians" (understand this word as synonym of native American) we have been from the beginning, no matter how hard we try to say we live in a social stratum 6 home. There are some that leave the country, emulating lifestyles and costumes of other countries, saying they have been assimilated into that culture, but deep inside they are still the same ones and they're homesick, because no matter where they are, they simply can't be anywhere else but here, with the children of potato farmers and drinking "agua'e'panela".
Categorizing simplifies many things, which is the reason why we do it, but this particular separation works better to keep each social stratum at bay! No matter how hard you try, you will never be social stratum 6 unless your income can move you into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, a nice car, and a couple of trips abroad for the holidays (Miami is their favorite destination); now, with this number comes a long list of responsibilities: you have to dress properly, you have to talk properly, visit the right places and do the rights things, if you don't well, then they will call you "new money" and try to keep you at a safe distance.
But no matter how hard they try, this social stratum acts like the rest of them, except they have larger amounts of money in the bank! Give them a chance to drink, and their social stratum will start to go down, so at the end they act like any regular blue collar from social stratum 1. Something interesting, you will never see the social stratum 1 people shooting guns (they can't afford them, unless they're in a gang) as the social stratum 6 people will do given the chance to do so.
So, where does this particular view of life comes from? Very simple, when Spaniards arrived they treated indigenous people like slaves and did so until the independence. Right after that, people were able to take back the haciendas, plantations, and all the land that had been taken away from them; however, those with a little more power and access to funds than the rest started treating those who fought with them side by side for independence the same way the Spaniards did to them, even though they were the same from the very beginning. So, at the end of the day, we are all the same bunch of "indians" (understand this word as synonym of native American) we have been from the beginning, no matter how hard we try to say we live in a social stratum 6 home. There are some that leave the country, emulating lifestyles and costumes of other countries, saying they have been assimilated into that culture, but deep inside they are still the same ones and they're homesick, because no matter where they are, they simply can't be anywhere else but here, with the children of potato farmers and drinking "agua'e'panela".
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