The beautiful Ana Lucia Dominguez, who you might know from Telemundo’s “Deciciones” series is staring in a new romantic comedy coming out sometime this fall. The movie, Gringo Wedding, is your standard white man, Justin Kane, looking for ethnic love movie.

The synopsis, as you can imagine, is pretty simple. He goes to Colombia, to find a real woman, and my my, he finds the most beautiful woman in the world. She of course falls for him, he’s tall, blonde, rich, the trifecta. They each poke fun at each other’s cultures. Oh, and they don’t speak each other’s language. In comes, the token gay man, Sebastián Boscan, who does the translating for them, and I’m sure provides overly done comic relief. There are scenes of her on a hacienda, and the horses and green spaces that make novelas seem so dreamy. Her dad, Julio del Mar, is opposed to the idea, and at one point in the trailer says something about “bring me my gun!” Of course, he probably comes to see the errors of his ways…

But a movie is never just a movie…

A fiction writer I’m close to recently petioned the Jerome Foundation for a travel grant so that he research this phenomenon. (He was turned down. He’s not bitter about it.) The fact is, mail order brides and marriage agencies are very real businesses. As a person who has family and knows a few women who’ve married American men via the Internet, I wonder how much magic is involved in these transactions. Because after all, isn’t all love supposed to contain at least a little bit of magic? (I’m a fiction writer and I’m guilty of at times only caring about love, ok?)

In a way, isn’t the existence of marriage agencies doing its part to redefine marriage? More so than the white hipster tries to do so on a daily basis? (At least they don’t get married. They just run away from it.) Mail order bride services and marriage agencies are making marriage a transaction between two people that is mutually beneficial. He gains a gorgeous wife. And I’m sure everything that a wife entails. She gains a ticket to the US. Which is eventually a ticket for everyone in her family. Not a bad thing considering that unless you’re Cuban and you set foot on US soil are not you allowed to stay over here. Right?

But what about the union? In a marriage isn’t the entity created by the union, la pareja, supposed to gain something? Like wedding gifts that are for the two of them, not for one or the other. Or is it that my definition of marriage is outdated? Unrealistic?

And what about these women? What is this doing to the minds of these women? What are they thinking? I know a lot of women who’ve commented that these women are just lazy and using what’s between their legs to get what they want. That they are in essence, prostituting themselves. But that’s like believing in the culture of poverty theory. It’s always easier put the blame the poorer persons involved in anything.

I look at these “romance tours” and can’t help thinking, they’re just elaborate and complicated sex parties. Read the text from the following websites.

BarranquillasBest.com
2000latinladies.com
Latin-wife.com
Ilovelatins.com

Or if you don’t want to read, just look at the pictures. You can go there, party, all the women–most of them redefining the definition of beautiful–will be in bikinis, mostly thong bikinis, and they will be dying to get to know you. It doesn’t matter if you’re fat or ugly or old even.

Now look at it from the man’s perspective.

Image Via / gringowedding.com