VivirLatino

Countries, especially third world Latin American countries and the people inside them have often been sold to tourists and colonizers as exotic. It’s what makes us and our people less human, othered. It’s what allows our men to be murdered and our women to be raped. Our nations are metaphors for our cuerpos and vice versa.

From a disgusting piece in the Times Online published yesterday:

Mexico is a great big beautiful country. But not near the border with California. Here, it’s a dirty, tawdry stinkpot, infested with partying Americans and unscrupulous Mexicans who will provide anything for them. It’s a place where morals don’t seem to count and anything goes. At least, that’s what I hoped as I headed across the border on a bus, in the first days of my long student holiday.

At dusk, I reached Ensenada, a town about 75 miles south of the border, threw my bags in a friendly hotel and walked across the dirt road to the nearest bar.

There was a woman standing just inside the door, so I said hello politely. She lifted her top, showed me her breasts and asked how much I was prepared to pay for a good time. This was a bit more than I had expected. I was only saying hello.

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