Reflections

On Sunday, I returned to my current home in Guatemala after an all too brief visit to friends and family in Ireland and New York.

The time I spent in both Ireland and New York was my first time out from Latin America since arriving on the continent just over 9 months ago. This respite period revealed to me a true sign of how at home I had become living in la vida latina - habituated to my new environment, I have developed partial blindness to some of what makes this continent remarkable.

On my first day in my hometown of Newbridge, Co. Kildare in Ireland I was startled by how tranquil everything seemed. The throbbing hum of high tempo chaos, noise and confusion that soundtracks my daily life in Guatemala had been strangely silenced. Newbridge is hardly a gentrified, scenic or wealthy town - it is a mid-sized dormitary town in Dublin’s commuter belt that, though not unpleasant to inhabit, has never been famous for its charm. Yet, after navigating cities in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras and Venezuela the walk into Newbridge’s town centre felt like an aristocratic stroll beside the manicured lawns of the genteel and serene. What once struck me as regular living - neither especially middle nor working class - now seems more like extreme wealth. And for all the deep social problems that many experience in Ireland, they look somewhat differently when viewed from the perspective of much of Latin America. I encountered no minor army of children working during school hours. The people with disabilities I encountered were not obliged to beg for food, or walk on their hands because they had no wheelchair.

While in Ireland, I was surprised to note that my interactions with people staffing shops, cafes and bars had regressed to an almost caveman functional monosyllablism. My lack of chattiness with service staff is a learned behavior with which I cope with the secret shame I carry around Latin America. It took me some time to remember that encounters with strangers were not threats to expose my embarrassingly moderate level of fluency in Spanish.

New York is a city that dwarfs anything my little island of lakes and castles can offer in terms of metropolitan marvels. It therefore provided an even more dramatic counterpoint to the experience of living and traveling in the Central and Southern part of the American continent. Latin America can do its fair share of great city splendor - it is hard for anywhere on earth to trump Rio De Janeiro’s seductive pull as a place to be. However, New York is also a symbol of national power and pre-eminence - not something that more southerly neighbors can lay claim to. Walking the streets of one of the great cities of the world’s dominant power, I wondered how it was that the North part of the American landmass has prospered in such stark relief to the Spanish and Portugese speaking countries to the south. My fleeting acquaintance with the history of this continent leads me to a conclusion that is totally against my cultural conditioning as an Irishman. The British seem to have been a much better class of conqueror than the Spanish, not guilty of the same scale of plunder and more enlightened on issues of trade and governance.

Now recently returned to Guatemala, I can - for the moment - again notice poverty, noise and disorder. But I also see the reason I returned - energy, freedom, excitement, passion and beauty. But above all possibility. It is good to be back.