American Notes (2)

If the American influence in Colombia was already notable during my parents' youth, it was enormous by the time I was born. Ciudad Kennedy was already one of the largest human settlements in the entire country. The Spanish edition of the Reader's Digest, a dreadful publication as I came to realize later, could be found in every waiting room appealing to an educated clientele. Urban households concerned with the social mobility of their offsprings (like yours truly) were trying to give their children a bilingual education. (I studied in the Colegio San Carlos, one of the first schools to offer a full-immersion program in English, taught by American teachers.)

The first sizable diaspora of Colombians in the US settled around the late 50s and early 60s. For people my age, in a middle-class urban setting in Colombia, it was normal to hear of a relative in the US, or planning to move to the US. I doubt that Colombian migration to the US has ever been as "democratic" as the Mexican one. But by the 70s and 80s it was already the case that Colombians of relatively precarious means would wind up going to the US.

American popular culture was everywhere, from the bright and early TV broadcast of the "Superamigos" on Saturdays to the dreamed Disney holiday. I still remember (1984? 1985?) when Avianca slashed the price of the Bogota-Miami red-eye flight to $299 (from I don't remember how much, certainly a lot more): the planes were packed while the bags were empty upon arrival in Miami, but obviously busting at the seams on the way back.

American know-how inspired awe all over the place. Colombian firms would hire American consultants for everything: the best medicine, the best engineering, the best administrators, anything the Americans ran, would run well. A Fisher Price toy under the Christmas tree (another American import) was the guarantee of a toy well-built, unlike the national brands  (I learned the hard way). Why wouldn't the Americans just take over? Everything would work smoothly.

There is a tidbit of history behind this unknown to most Colombians. As a matter of fact, during the Administration of Ospina Rodríguez, in the mid-XIXth Century, the Colombian government, just like many other Central American governments in the region, briefly toyed with the idea of simply asking for admission in the American Union. It never happened.

In my case,  things were a bit more complicated. As it happens, somewhere in my late teens, as I became politically aware, I drifted toward the left, for reasons better left to some other blog entry. It was hard being pro-American under those circumstances. The overthrow of Allende, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the support of the Argentinean junta, those things weighted heavily on the budding consciousness of young leftists like me.

American consumerism could be blamed for the cultural philistinism of the Bogotan middle classes. If you wanted to opt out of it, European high culture was the place to look at. French cinema, German classical music, Italian literature, or any permutation of these arts and countries with a smattering of Central Europe thrown in for good measure, were the way out.

Although I didn't know it at the time, in our Philosophy curricula we were treated to the highly successful effort of the German government to show to the world that German thought was not linked at all to Nazism. German philosophy, up to and including the Frankfurt School, was the dominant force in the Philosophy Department of the National University, an influence made possible by the support of scholarships provided by the German government. (Of course, the Germans can produce visceral anti-Communists like Adenauer, but even they were ready to subsidize the intellectual Left if that helped restore the German image.)  

As a result, if somebody had told me in, say, 1987 or 1988, that I would end up spending 17 years in the US, I would have either laughed heartily, or become appalled at the suggestion. Yet I did. What was the US I found like? Was it in any way similar to the image I had cultivated growing up in such an environment? I'll try to say something about it in the next entries.