«Blood, sweat and tears»: Yes, I am Latin.

¿Have you ever been considered a drug trafficker because of been Colombian? ¿Have you ever been abused physically and verbally for being Latin? Although many people believe that the stigmatization of Spanish speakers in the world is normal, we believe that is xenophobia. ¿Do you know what xenophobia is? This is why we want to show readers what it means and the impact it has on being Latin, black, Asian, Jew and other segregated cultures in this times. ¿Are you planning to work or study your master´s abroad? I would think twice.

As Umberto Eco mentioned years ago, we’re experiencing what is considered a "New Middle Age". Eco shows his experience as medievalist. Medievalism is the study of European Middle Ages. In his book he discusses several possible similarities between the medieval era and our own "postmodern”[1]. Silvio Rodríguez, a Cuban singer in an interview last year for “La Ventana”, an information website for America, also said something similar, "some so-called human beings are giving unequivocal evidence of their affinity with the beasts”[2]. All above is true, hitting a defenseless human being for his or her origin, race or color is in the 21^st Century, an absurd behavior.

SOME HISTORY

History of humanity is closely related to the processes of genocide. If you go back in the timeline, you would realize that this statement is accurate. This problem is not new. It would be wrong to suggest that this phenomenon has taken place only in the present days.

For example, in World War II, the persecution suffered by Jews through the centuries shows that the massacres, the destruction of cities, the displacement of populations are not spontaneous or exclusive product of our times.[3]

During 1933 to 1945, under the National Socialist dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, the German Third Reich tried ending the presence of the Jews in Europe. He began enacting discriminatory laws against them, continued to promote programs and ended even organizing concentration camps where he killed more than 6,000,000 Jews. His followers still live in our days. Also, it happened in Cuba with Fidel Castro, and in Chile with Augusto Pinochet.

Christians and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, blacks and whites, yellows and browns, citizens of different nations, all of them have suffered to a greater or lesser degree, this kind of barbarism was made to have others suffer, without complex reasons - in which politics with religion are confused.[4] Homosexuals and street people are other human beings that suffer this situation by urban gangs like skinheads, punks, sharps and neo-Nazi. Even between these gangs they kill themselves. There is absolutely no tolerance. In this situation is when we loose the real sense of life.

¿WHAT IS XENOPHOBIA?

Xenophobia is defined as fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of what is strange or foreign,[5] but it’s more than that. Xenophobia is observed in all societies where different ethnic groups coexist, which are not integrated into the communities.

Lucrecia Pérez was the first Dominican woman who lost her life in the nineties in Spain in the hands of neo-Nazis. It’s estimated that in Spain, there are more than 10 groups of skinheads, nationalists and dangerously organized.

Three Colombians were brutally beaten in Spain, one of the most civic and developed countries in the world. In Spain the majority of victims are Colombians. "People like you are not welcome here, what we did with you we will do against the others", said the attackers who beat Victor Sánchez in the film “Hostility towards Colombians” hosted by Séptimo Día, the last month.

Victor Sánchez, a Colombian journalist was beaten by skinheads on May 6, 2006. "When I was doing an interview, 200 boys armed with sticks, bottles, glasses, with everything they could find in their path appeared. When I was on the floor, I clung to a Rosary that my aunt gave me in Cartagena and I thought they were going to kill me. Suddenly a Spanish taxi driver, like a guardian angel told them "¿Fucking bastards, why are you hitting him?" Victor arrived to the hospital with two broken ribs, an open wound of 6 centimeters in the skull, internal bleeding and bruises all over his body. He lasted 4 days in the emergency room.

According to Esteban Ibarra, the Director of the Movement against impunity in Spain says that for Spanish, "the Colombian passport stinks", Colombian population has increased crimes a lot. After the Moroccans, Colombians make up the second population of prisoners in Spain. Twenty percent of the Spanish population are immigrants and 500,000 Colombians are in it.

After known several attacks by skinheads to Colombians, the ex- ambassador of Colombia in Spain, Noemí Sanín asked to intensify the fight against xenophobic groups that perpetrate aggressions against Colombian immigrants.

WORKING FAR FROM HOME: MIGRATION AND DISCRIMINATION

During the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to 7 September 2001 someone said, “Migrants are a vulnerable group and see their rights routinely violated. They commonly face discrimination and xenophobic hostility”.

In 1997, the International Labour Organization estimated that the number of migrant workers are: In Africa 20 Million, in North America 17 million, in Central and South America 12 million, in Asia 7 million, in the Middle East (Arab countries) 9 million and Europe 30 million.

“People have been leaving their homelands in search of a better job and a life elsewhere since payment in return for labour was introduced. People also leave their own countries because of civil conflicts and insecurity or persecution. However, in this globalised world, we are witnessing an unprecedently high labour mobility and an increasing pressure of migration”. [6]

LOOKING FOR “IDENTITY”

To find a solution to the conflict among people of different nations because of their age, sex, condition, race, it is a problem that many have tried to solve and nobody has found an answer. The reason is that xenophobia is almost an illness, but its roots are more varied than they seems. Apart from the already explained previously, and referred in particular to the Colombian case, one can say that the xenophobia that foreigners feel towards Colombians is largely our fault. How is this possible? The truth is that in our daily thoughts and our live, we create this problem. And this is because we lack something essential that should have all nations, and this is: identity.

Nationalism for our homeland, for our country, in other words COLOMBIAN IDENTITY, that is what Colombians need and, it is causing big conflicts. This is a problem that affect us a lot, but that nobody knows.

The world has always been divided in territories that called themselves States which have not been the same neither in its topography, neither in its inhabitants, and neither in its culture. These variations embrace to many beliefs, conceptions and projects that some diverge of other, in the same way that makes it the genetic and social history of towns. Even in the prehispanic time the Colombian territory and their inhabitants worshipped different gods and their lives occurred in different form, the difference is in that time the territory was divided a whole, without dividing it into States. In that time the sense of identity didn’t exist it should exist now, because it was not necessary.[7]

At the present time this identity is an unavoidable factor to achieve the social union and the coexistence among contradictory cultures, allowing this way a combined work in pro of the common well-being for all of us. [8] The truth is that we don’t have a strong identity and a sense of ownership, the social life will be impossible.

We could think that the same identity is the cause of xenophobia, since it is such a strong identity that by nature it rejects all the others ones, but this isn’t the way. The truth is that the identity should go of the hand with tolerance, because identity is respect and love toward our things and toward others. To kill xenophobia many things are necessary for example accept plurality, diversity and to look for a national identity that should try not to transform culture into a bad factor, the contrary, enrich the social experience.[9]

But to achieve these dreams in the world it’s necessary to reach them nationally first. Beginning with the acceptance of the diversity that there is inside our same culture, because if it is not this way how can we ask them to accept us in the rest of the world? If that dream is achieved, it would be much easier to eradicate problems like xenophobia in the world level, because there would be more conscience, and more commitment.[10]

Furthermore, it isn’t only that, it´s about not trying to reach the sky stepping the culture, because life and happiness are not only in other countries. Colombia also has a future, happiness and strength. But if all of those that can fight and make an effort to make their own country a better place travel to the United States or Spain, there will no longer be happiness, neither life. On the contrary Colombia will be seen as a country of poverty and misery, of hate and war, and this will generate in the rest of the world a rejection toward us, and this would be the beginning of Colombian xenophobia. But if to that we add the fact that we permit the destruction of our identify, but also help destroy others with it. How can we ask them to accept us? The world will continue seeing that all Colombia is violence, illegal drugs, guerrilla, war, women as "prostitutes" and our men as "drug dealers."

Years ago, Rodrigo Escobar Navia, a Colombian politician raised a new concept. Rethink Colombia. This is our invitation to you. Patriotism and identity can be summed up, to see Colombia with "new eyes”, with a hopeful outlook, opponent of indifference, to build the country that we dream together.

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[1] ECO, Umberto "The Return of the Middle Ages" (Travels in Hyperreality [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983], 59-85). http://bwhawk.blogspot.com/2008/03/on-modern-scientific-significance-of.html

[2] ARREOLA, Gerardo. Entrevistas: Estamos viviendo una nueva Edad Media: Silvio Rodríguez. http://laventana.casa.cult.cu/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1090

[3] LA PLAZA, Francisco. El delito de genocidio o genticidio. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Arayú, 1995. Page 17.

[4] Ibídem. Pages 34-35.

[5] The New Merriam –Webster Dictionary.

[6] [Online] http://www.un.org/WCAR/e-kit/migration.htm

[7] Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Oxford: Blackwell.

[8] Hornsey, M.J., and Hogg, M.A. (2000). Assimilation and diversity: An integrative. Model of subgroup relations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, p. 4.

[9] Project: “En la búsqueda de una identidad colombiana en los niños, enfocada desde la diversidad cultural”: http://wwwest.uniandes.edu.co/~aj.cortes235/Trabajototal.pdf

[10] Gaertner, S. L., and Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing intergroup bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Philadelphia, PA: The Psychology Press.