no hablo inglés
at least not with you
Here, the most common question American bros ask me is, “You don’t like me very much, do you?”
I’ve never had a very good poker face.
And by common, I mean twice, because usually I pretend like I don’t speak English when they lumber up to me and my girlfriends and ask, with a hard h, “Hablan Inglés?”
At first, my girlfriends, most of whom are Argentine, would point to me and say “Ella, sí!” (she does!) but after a few nights of getting stuck in mind-numbing chats with a bro who “came over to the island for the day in a catamaran,” I told my girlfriends they no longer had my consent to out me and my native language. It’s usually not a problem. I easily pass for Argentine, and to the untrained, English-speaking ear, my Spanish sounds native.
The first guy who so astutely discerned my dislike for him was the friend of a tinder date of one of my girlfriends. The bros—all salt of the earth Midwesterners—had rented a boat for the day and invited us along. I was new to the island at the time, fresh off the 2020 presidential election, and ready to feel the wind in my face, so I was happy to go. They picked us up in a golf cart, and the three of us held onto each other so we wouldn’t fall out as the tinder date sped over the speedbumps that plague Mexico and are invisible to the American eye.
At first, the friend of the tinder bro seemed nice enough, despite the fact that he was quick to tell me how much money he made. But then, he started poking his dirty little pinky finger into politics and pandemic territory. At first, it was non-descript. “Damn, wearing a mask sucks.” Or “I can’t wait until things go back to normal.” But then he said something that alerted me to the fact that his pinky finger was coated in orange dust from his 2020 presidential vote, and I said, kindly, but firmly, that I work in politics, and I was burnt out and I had no interest in having any sort of political conversation with him. His nice bro façade started to melt after he tried to convince me that he had some valuable political knowledge to impart, and I batted my eyes and said “I’ve spent the better part of my life fighting against everything you just said. This conversation is over.” And then I got up, walked to the other side of the boat, sat down with my feet over the edge, closed my eyes and concentrated on the wind in my face for the rest of the ride.
Bro ended up getting wasted and he and his friends groped every woman on the boat (except me, the only non-Latina), which is when we requested an early disembarkment and he overheard me asking the one decent guy why he was friends with a bunch of douchebags after he tried to apologize on their behalf. That’s when he figured out I didn’t like him very much.
“Why do they always do that to Latinas?” my girlfriends asked me as we walked away, and I didn’t know what to tell them.
The second guy who was smart enough to figure out I didn’t like him spent the whole dinner talking about putting his Latina girlfriend on Pornhub and “making a killing.” He noticed my face and announced to the table that I didn’t like him very much and I told him he was correct. I’m sure he thought I disliked him for some puritan distaste for porn, but it was more that she was out there literally putting her ass on the line, and he was bragging about how smart he was for making money off of it.
That was when we instated the “I don’t speak English unless I decide to” rule.
My friends have adjusted well. Just last week, we had dinner with a guy from Florida. I disliked him the second I met him and quickly told my friends that the rule was activated, so when he sat at the head of the table, ordered a bottle of red wine for everyone that nobody wanted, and magnanimously asked, “So, everyone here is from Argentina?” They all said Yup! You know it.
I know it sounds judgey, but I promise you I don’t ice out all American bros. Just the ones I immediately dislike. There’s a type. We all know it.
Besides, I was right about the Florida guy. At some point during dinner, he flipped a switch when he realized he wasn’t going to score with one of my friends. He abruptly left the table, got into a yelling fight with a street vendor, and then only paid for the bottle of wine after a handful of waiters managed to corner him when he went back to the bar for another drink.
“He’s the kind of American that would shoot everyone up,” was my girlfriends’ assessment of the situation as we read over AirBnb guidelines about kicking out a guest who makes you uncomfortable and threatens your safety. He was renting a room from them in a property they manage for a local Mexican guy that is adjacent to their own apartment. In the end, they decided to let him stay instead of making him angry and provoking retaliation, but they didn’t sleep all night, worried he was going to come banging on their door. And then the next morning we found a bunch of online articles about his Christian fundamentalist views and an ongoing feud with a Muslim professor of his.
Look, there are lots of harmless bros here, too. Like the ones I sat next to the other day at happy hour. I didn’t choose not to engage with them because they were douchey, but because they were talking about how sailing is a lifestyle and I had nothing to add to the conversation.
Ok, maybe it was a little douchey.
And maybe I’m a little judgey.
Although I know I shouldn’t be.
There’s an article going around about Americans flocking to Mexico to escape inflation and live “the good life” under budget. The article specifically calls out Americans moving to Mexico City and working remotely, accusing them of gentrifying certain neighborhoods, whitewashing taco eateries, and refusing to learn or speak Spanish, calling it “new-wave imperialism”:
“New to the city? Working remotely?” fliers popping up around Mexico City reportedly said. “You’re a f—ing plague and the locals f—ing hate you. Leave.“
At the end of the day, I know I’m nothing more than another American spending half the year in Mexico because I can. I’m no better than any other tourist or expat on this island despite the fact that I only speak Spanish here and have spent time and worked in Mexico for the last 20 years. And despite the fact that I avoid tourist traps and put my money in local market stands and mom and pop eateries (like many expats here). And despite the fact that I’ve waged a holy war against all unholy (or duly holy) American bros who step foot on this island.
I’m no better because I come with a currency and complexion that gives me preference over locals. Period.
It’s a weird place to be and I’m honestly not sure what to do with it.
Here, I rent a studio apartment for a local rate, but it’s in an AirBnb vacation home owned by a woman from New York. She is lovely and has been deeply engrained in the community for over 15 years, but sometimes I wonder what was on this lot before. Who would be here if I wasn’t here?
In New Orleans, I own a home in Tremé that I bought seven years ago because raising rent prices were becoming untenable. The first time I ever went to go see it, Ronnie, the neighbor across the street who grew up on the block and has emblazoned his last name on every single telephone pole on the street, approached me and proudly said, “Do you know where you are? You’re standing in the Tremé.” When I responded, he heard my accent and said, “Oh. You a local,” in a different, more familiar tone.
In New Orleans, I know who was there before me, although his name now escapes me. I want to say Willie, but I suspect I only want to say that because I know it started with a W, or maybe an M, and I just finished reading Isabel Allende’s memoir, Paula, and Willie is the name of her husband.
My Willie was an elderly Black man who died in my house—his house—I assume of natural causes. When I bought the house, his clothes were still hanging in the closet. I gave away most of them, but held onto one coat for a while. It was big and warm, looked like a work coat. I got it cleaned and wore it a few times as I talked to Willie, making sure we were cool and that it would be a peaceful transition for the both of us.
Before Willie, it was a daycare. There was an identical, adjoining house on the lot that was knocked down after the storm. Ronnie told me the two houses used to be connected by a door that has now been sealed up and replaced, along with the fireplace that no longer exists, in some renovations years ago. Although I still find more bricks from the fireplace every time I dig into my garden to plant something new.
My house is small and essentially only has three rooms—the living room/kitchen, the bathroom and the bedroom. When I bought it, each room was painted a different color: mustard yellow, navy blue, and blood red. The first thing I did was paint them all white.
A friend of mine told me she would never buy a house where I bought because I was just part of the problem. I don’t entirely disagree with her. There is definitely a problem and I’m definitely part of it. I try to mitigate my role in it whenever and wherever possible, but that’s a topic for another essay and not something I want to get into here because I’m not trying to make excuses for myself.
A lesser person would rationalize her negative impact by telling you that she refuses to short-term rent out her place when she travels out of respect for her neighbors, but fail to mention that she does rent it out month to month.
She might also tell you that as a native on a waitress salary, she had limited options and was priced out of most neighborhoods she had previously lived in, but would leave out the fact that she did finally qualify for a home loan once her daddy agreed to cosign.
She might even say, “But my boyfriend’s Mexican!” but then she would just be a total asshole.
The fact of the matter is, we all walk through this world incurring and inflicting harm in some way. There are very few places we aren’t visitors, and we need to remain cognizant of that.
Sometimes, as I talked about on this Planet Nola podcast, transplants in New Orleans annoy the fuck out of me and then I come here and I’m the exact same person. Hiking up the prices, bitching about power outages, and making grand generalizations about quaint, island life. Opining about how it could be better. How I could make it better. About how, despite it all, it’s still magical here.
On the podcast, I say, “I wish they would just listen sometimes,” as I liken being a transplant to being an ally. Something I hated that I said the second I said it. Probably because I knew it was directed at me.
I’m no better than any of them.
But, I am DEFINITELY better than the groper bros and the Christian zealots and that makes me feel a whole lot better about myself.
So I’m going to stay up here on this high horse, holding the reins with this little pinky finger, kept clean because, if given an option, I like to order my tacos on sturdy flour tortillas instead of flimsy corn ones and then pick off the cilantro before digging in, feeling nice and full and satisfied before I whitewash it down with an orange fanta.
Melvin. His name was Melvin.
nah brah business:
I think about this A LOT. Especially since I moved to New Orleans and when traveling. Appreciate you creating space to talk about it and own it.