Waiting for the train from Aguas Calientes to Ollantaytambo, I asked Daniel how to see and write in terms of affect. Of course it’s important to talk about ideology. But I think I think too much in categories and broad concepts and don’t pay enough attention to how bodies move and are affected by other bodies. I said my writing has been too detached. I’ve been afraid to fuck up. Daniel said I should pay attention to the moments of intensity.
I journal every night in bullet points recounting the day’s events. At the very least a single line, but sometimes I write a few pages. If there’s something I need to flesh out or give more detail I linger on it. I scanned through my journal this past week and found no moments that screamed out at me. Until I noticed something I’ve noted down almost every day here: people confronting me or yelling at me in the street about my race. I feel disgusted whenever I hear the word race but it just feels more honest than the word ethnicity. Ethnicity is race in the language of tolerance. And tolerance is at best a conditional acceptance of difference. Cleansed, aestheticized difference. Difference kneeling in its right place. Ethnicity is not just “cultural,” it is irreducibly political.
I’ve been bothered by people yelling things like “Chino!” and “Japonés!” here before but I’ve never really been mad. I assumed it was just a crude recognition of difference. One of my favourite race moments was when I was eating chaufa de carne at one of my favourite stands in the Pisac market and the owner, Dina, poked me: “Better than your country, right?” I asked her: “What is my country?” She didn’t reply. But she was right. It was among the best I’d had.
The worst moment was probably in Aguas Calientes. As it’s primarily a tourist town for Macchu Picchu, there are already so many people in the streets and in front of restaurants harassing people and trying to get business. One day a man stopped me as I was leaving the market to ask me where I was from. When I said I was from Canada he refused to accept it. He said: “You don’t look like a Canadian.” I asked him: “What does a Canadian look like?” No response. I gave him a friendly glare and walked off. But on the way back to the hotel a man started yelling at me in the street. I hardly remember what he was saying. It was like all the times before but more intensely aggressive and patronizing. This was the first time I wanted to yell back. I wanted to scream at him like a real righteous fucking racist. I wanted to match him and get all of our ugliness out in the open. Because if you know what it is it’s to be seen as a caricature of all the worst associations you can imagine and to see yourself as that, to become that caricature at the same time. I wanted to take away his humanity. I wanted to make him into a figurine on a shelf. I wanted him to feel on what level it hurts and on what level it works. But I didn’t turn around. I just walked away.
Yesterday after Inti Raymi I stopped at a mercado for water. A few women were chatting there, most likely the owner and her friends. One asked me where I was from: “Canada.” She made a gesture with her fingers and her eyes. “Oriental?” I let her guess a couple times until she got it right and she cheered a little like they always do. But she was very sweet. With the warmest smile, she said: “Welcome to Peru.”
Part of me likes this treatment better than back home. I often feel these impressions implicitly even when it’s unsaid. Sometimes my mom and I notice it in the way a waitress treats us. Without words, we know it’s there. I don’t know if I like pretending it’s not. It doesn’t give us a chance to speak back.
I wonder if any of you have had similar experiences here you’d like to share, and if you feel similarly about them?