This is about an experience that happened to me my first week in Honduras, and I’ve wanted to write about since then but its been really hard to. I don’t think I did a great job writing about it, but this is basically just my thoughts while it was happening. Like I said, it was really hard for me to write about, but this is what happened.
“It’s really a dream living here. I just ride my bike down the beach all day and am free to do whatever I want basically.”
He is about 5 foot 9 and overweight, although far from fat by American standards. Unshaven bits of facial hair appear next to shaved sections, razor cuts, and the messy, disorganized hair of someone who has no need to impress anyone whatsoever.
He is seated at a table with two other middle aged Americans, moving in slow motion as a day of drinking catches up to them and the lightheaded jubilation of earlier turns into a confused stupor that has not yet been broken by the nightly boost of cocaine.
Young girls in tight shirts and short skirts mill around the vicinity of the table, rapidly bouncing between talking to the men and talking to other friends at the bar. The excitement of their buzz and quick, youthful flirtation contrasts and accentuates the stupor of the older men.
To anyone watching in this relatively small town where everyone knows everyone it is completely obvious what is going on. Everyone knows the resident ex-pats from the States, and it is impossible to not notice everything they do and everyone they talk to in a place where they stick out so much.
As if what was going on wasn’t already obvious enough, Rick begins his bragging after about 5 minutes of small talk about the areas geography and beaches.
“I make as much in an hour as any of these fuckers in this town make in a month! The girls here are so easy that its embarrassing.”
His voice is filled with contempt and disgust as he launches into his monologue. “All they care about is your money. Their fucking parents teach them to suck it out of the gringos. It’s disgusting. I fucked a 14 year old girl here. She wanted my cell phone. Dumb bitch didn’t even know that it only cost 15 dollars! But yea, they really don’t want anything from you except money.”
The contempt in his voice rises. Contempt towards the stupid girl who was pathetic enough to have been born poor. Pathetic enough to have never had anyone teach her about self respect, and stupid enough to need things bad enough to abandon her morals in her desperation.
An awkward silence follows his bragging. How exactly does one respond to an admission like that? I barely get out “that’s pretty messed up man.”
“In the States yea, it would be. Here its no big deal it’s pretty normal actually.”
I make a mental note now. If people are born poor its perfectly acceptable to do things to them that would be unacceptable in a richer country. Important to remember.
As I look into his eyes, I can see centuries upon centuries of this mindset. Columbus landed for the first time on the mainland a few hundred miles down the coast, and greeted the beauty of a new land and the new cultures he discovered by immediately taking slaves. I can picture him using the same justifications.
“Of course it would be messed up to do this to Europeans. But not to do it to people who were born here. Do it to people who were born here, and someday you’ll even get a holiday named after you.”
I see Rick’s face and see his complete lack of shame as he tells a stranger about child prostitution. He is so out of touch with reality at this point that he doesn’t even seem capable of realizing that this is something someone should feel shame at. He lives in a reality where he expects anyone else from the United States he meets to high five him and buy him a drink after they hear about his exploits.
I picture the leaders of United Fruit company in Central America and how they must have felt when they killed union leaders who demanded more pay. I picture US and Russian leaders funding civil wars and death squads throughout the region, and how little shame they felt in playing their games of world domination with millions of lives hanging in the balance. I see how much Rick despises these people for being so poor, and I can see the leaders of industrialized nations not even counting the dead civilians in poor countries we invade, people killed like one kills a line of ants without it not even be worth knowing how many have died. I can see the true, honest belief that things that happen in poor places are not real, and that nothing has any real consequences if its done to people who already live in misery. I think about how many people without even realizing it have the mindset that things that happen in the developing world are not real, and that actions there have no consequences.
Rick sighs. “These girls are just trying to get a drink off of me.”
I think about making a sarcastic remark about girls in the States, and how 16 year old girls there must talk to him for so much of a wider range of reasons besides money, but I decide saying anything is pointless as I sit in shock and horror.
“They really think they’re going to get something worthwhile out of me. They won’t get anything more than 5 dollars, maybe 10 but they’ll try their asses off for something more.”
I see now the contempt towards poor people for being desperate enough to do whatever it takes to get ahead. The same as the contempt directed at immigrants in the US.
“How dare these people leave their familes behind and risk starving or getting massacred crossing the desert? How dare they think they deserve the right to work the lowest paying jobs in our country? How dare they be willing to do whatever it takes to move out of dirt floored, one room houses that are shared by 3 generations of family? Why don’t they just accept that they were born poor and leave us alone?”
Rick begins talking about safety in Latin America.
“I would be really careful in La Ceiba. You’re really likely to get robbed or something there. Here, the tourist police will shoot anyone who robs a gringo to keep the place safe for tourism.”
Yet another reason for Rick to feel that this place isn’t the real world. It’s an alternate reality with no consequences, a world where he can do whatever he wants to people and the law is set up to protect him because he brings money in. Where he can steal girls dignity and respect, yet someone who resented his presence there could get shot for stealing 5 dollars back from him.
“Anyone man I gotta run. These two girls are coming back to my place and they’re gonna fuck and I’m gonna watch. If you’re back in Tela sometime, look for me or ask around, people know who I am.”
As he leaves with the two girls, I sit in stunned silence. Everyone in the bar watches them leave, and I know that at 16 years old the girls will be known forever in this community based on the choices they are making. That they will forever be known as whores, and as worthless, based on choices they are making in desperation while they are too young to understand the ramifications of them.
I think of the volunteer work I am doing, and how as someone from the United States I try to integrate myself as part of a community here and convince people that I am their friend. Then I think about the impression of my country that Rick is making, and that the CIA and United Fruit company have made, and I think again of the insane look I saw in Rick’s eye at the moment I realized none of this was even the real world to him. I think about evil, which had always seemed like a rather abstract concept, and I wonder if this is what it is. And then I wonder if there is really any way to stand up to it that is worth anything, and whether education and development can ever stand up to the people who see people in poverty and immediately seek a way to exploit it.
Here is a good article about sex tourism in Central America.
http://gbgm-umc.org/response/articles/sextourism.html
If anyone knows about any other NGOs or organizations that are doing anything about this please post them.
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