Assignment:

1. “What was the bump about? When and how did it occur? Describe it as clearly as you can.
2. Describe your behaviors and feelings. What cultural values do they represent?
3. How will this learning impact you in the future?
4. What were the other person’s behaviors and feelings? What were the behaviors that you expected from him/her based on your own cultural values?’
5. What were the expectations that the other person had of you based on their cultural values? How did his/her actions reflect those cultural values?’
6. What was the source of this bump?
7. What did you learn about yourself from this bump?

[I had originally begun to write about my conflict with the housekeeper, but after the incident with Elka I withdrew, deciding not to write about anything real that mattered to me, or to put myself and my opinion in open view for further criticism and challenge. This resulted in my losing an opportunity to explore the topic deeply, but it kept me safe. Now, several weeks after the precipitating event, I continue to be wounded and resentful about having my perceptions not only challenged but labeled as “wrong,” and I am pretty certain that I will no longer offer my full or true viewpoint in this context again. It is a shame, but it is the consequence… and interesting that my holding back in itself is singled out. Alas… what can one do.]

A Culture Bump: Tourists in San Juan Chamula

[Elizabeth’s comments will be in this pinky-purply color, okay?]

Introduction

I have chosen for my culture bump a situation that is common for travelers to other countries, where communication can’t (or doesn’t) take place. Some travelers don’t notice at all that they’ve encountered a “culture bump” — which I’m defining as a moment when two cultures encounter one another without genuine comprehension of the interaction — while others recognize that fact but don’t know how to interpret it.  Also, do you think that perhaps some travelers don’t care.  They’re on a trip to see the sights, etc. and not to think too deeply about the new culture?

Background

Not many kilometers from San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the southern state of Chiapas, are several small indigenous Maya villages. Outsiders usually visit with a tour guide, since the locals often prefer not to have individual tourists poking around.

What’s notable about these aldeas is that the traditional Tzotil way of life is largely preserved, most visibly in the natives’ clothing: thick fuzzy black tunics and skirts, even for the toddlers. Their religion is a unique blend of ancient Maya ritual and 400-year-old Catholicism.

I went with my friend Sarah. We opted to go in a group, figuring we’d be less intrusive that way. Both of us are highly sensitive to what I called the “zoo phenomenon,” when people enter the world of another culture and observe activities.

Situation

From the moment we disembarked from the van at the ancient cemetery, I felt uncomfortable. To begin with, the guide was giving us a list of things we should and shouldn’t do, which gave the impression of entering forbidden territory. So conscious was I about offending the locals that I was hesitant to glance up and see their faces as they walked by. But I did, because not to look seemed ruder. Why did it seem ruder? Based on your own cultural norms or on something you knew already about this culture or something the guide told you?

You seem to be moving beyond description at this stage of your reflection. Try to  re-write this paragraph without any of your own personal analysis and see what happens.

We visited a church. As we stood against a thick stucco wall we heard music: accordion, ukulele, guitars and a kind of stringed instrument I’d never seen before. Thirty people filed in through the single, low wooden door, led by the male musicians who moved to the left of the church, and followed by women and children, with a few infants firmly dangling from exposed breasts, who massed toward the right. Up front, several women knelt. Through the candle smoke they waved vocally unhappy roosters. They looked at us where we stood at the edge of their sacred place, and then went about their business of prayer. This paragraph is a clearer description without the analysis.  This paragraph describes what you saw, not what you felt or thought.

Leaving there, we arrived at a women’s cooperative where all kinds of beautiful woven goods were made, displayed and hawked. In the back was a lightless, dirt-floored, smoky room — the kitchen — where an indigenous woman cooked green corn tortillas over a wood fire and offered them to us. She’d laid out a variety of embellishments: beans, guacamole, powdered pumpkin seeds and regional cheese. The group of us formed a semicircle around her, watching her work. She didn’t speak. She just made tortilla after tortilla as our group watched her. At that moment, Sarah and I both had a jolt of extreme discomfort. Most of this is a clear description, but at points, you move into your analysis.  For example, choosing “hawked” is your opinion of how the weavings were being sold.

As with the people in the church, she barely looked at us, instead watching her hands as she slapped tortilla after tortilla between her palms. She knew she was on display. You’re moving here to your own interpretation. I wanted to look and see her craft. I wanted to take in details of her surroundings. Yet I didn’t want to look. I wanted to talk to her, to make a human-to-human connection, but my impoverished Spanish (which she might not have spoken anyway) prevented more than a cursory greeting. I wanted to leave her a tip for her efforts, but couldn’t decide if that would be welcome or insulting.

And that was it. I did say a few words to her. She nodded to me, but didn’t smile. I left her a few coins — “Un poco de gracias.” I never knew what she thought or felt. On one hand, tourism is her livelihood. Yet at what cost? Was she feeling only that she was at work, lost in her own thoughts and disregarding us? Or was she resenting the foreigners with money who came to watch her do something so fundamental to her life as make a tortilla? Was she thinking, “At least I have a job?” these are good questions to ask as you move into the interpretation and analysis stage.  How can you find answers?

I’ll never know.  This is the place where you might want to do some research?  Is there an informant you could ask?  A student on campus from Mexico or Central America who might have insight?  Any textbook research about the area where you were and the people?  Did you ask the guide to get more information?

Lenses

I like the way you have gone through each model and made connections.  The challenge, I think, with this culture bump, is that it is one-sided (as you note in Lederach’s model) and more of an intellectual analysis (Hanvey) and it is a ‘frozen moment in time (Hooper) without any need to assimilate and it didn’t have any real consequences for you.  Most of these models work better when the bump affects both parties in more profound ways.  In a way I wish you had explored the bump you shared with your small group about your homestay.  I think your analysis would have fit better with the models and might have been more meaningful to you.  Perhaps after a period of time, you would be willing to try this other bump?

Lederach: His comparison of perspectives is not applicable here, since this is a one-sided “bump.” There may in fact be no conflict. His questions, “How do we end something not desired” or “How do we end something destructive and build something desired” could well be irrelevant. The woman making tortillas may have been perfectly contented with her job. The “bump” may — or may not — have been all in my head.

Hanvey: According to this model, I would fall into the third category of each of his three constructs. I have an “awareness of … cultural traits that contrast markedly with one’s own,” my thinking is solidly in the “intellectual analysis” phase without the immersion experience of truly knowing what the other person feels, and I believing cognitively in the cultural wholeness of her life.

Hooper: This process is less applicable to my “culture bump” since it describes a process of learning, while my experience is a frozen moment in time, based on my past cultural learning. I am certainly not on the ethnocentric end of the scale, but nor is mine a continuum toward adaptation. I was “appreciating” and “valuing” but not heading toward “assimilating.”

Brown: Brown’s “stages of acculturation,” which I’ve found interesting from a teaching perspective, isn’t relevant to this story.

Bennett: Once again, Bennett’s construct reveals a continuum from “isolation” to “integration,” which is not the situation of my “culture bump.” Had I been planning to move to Mexico — specifically to this community — it would have related. However, the underside of his spectrum describes a move from “ethnocentrism” to “ethnorelative” stages. I think it’s correct to say that my thinking falls into the “adaptation” box, alongside “empathy” and “pluralism.” The “culture bump” arises from an awareness of the difference between us, and a desire to honor that difference.

Kim: I am interested in this model and the gradually rising spiral between stress and adaptation. In my time in Mexico in general — not during this “culture bump” — I found that my emotions went through up and down cycles, from “I don’t belong here” to “I appreciate the different way of life here.”

Paige: Again, this framework applies not to my “culture bump” but to a person adapting to the realities of living in a new cultural environment. However, I find it useful in referencing my own adaptation to life in Mexico, as I became poignantly aware of language and “visibility” differences.

Gochenour & Janeway: I can apply to aspects of this model to my “culture bump.” Stage one: I did attempt to “establish contact and essential communication” via eye contact and conversation. I, of course, was not able — and didn’t/couldn’t try — to be accepted, since by definition I was a temporary visitor. I did observe what was going on and try to infer meanings, but I didn’t have the cultural or personal knowledge to do anything but project my own American assumptions on the situation, and my own inferences based on what I do know about other cultures. The rest of the chart doesn’t apply here.

Summary

I find that this situation — not a hurdle in communication, but rather a hurdle in my own mind as I strive to understand what I’m seeing —yes. Because this was a brief encounter that didn’t effect your on-going relationships with another person, you can look at it as a riddle without an answer.  If you had been a part of the community, you could have moved on through the experiential learning cycle to try to figure out (through an informant, through getting to know the woman?) what was going on in her mind and in her cultural framework.  As an outsider with a short time period there,  you can only make speculations– is a common one in my travel experience. It is strange as an outsider not to understand the things I observe, when I am accustomed at home to comprehending effortlessly even the most minor actions and gestures. I often can read facial expressions in the US, but I couldn’t begin to see meaning in the face of the woman making tortillas. I can project how I might feel were I — Ginna, an educated middle-class, middle-aged American — to be in her situation, but I will never begin to know the complexity of her situation, history and emotions.

Travel heightens my awareness of what I don’t know. I know there are cultural boundaries between me and what those I meet, but I don’t know what or where they are. So all I can do is look through the Ginna lens, acknowledge that it’s the Ginna lens, and act according to my own standards of human decency.

I like the way you end this.  It is your lens ultimately that defines what you see and how you react.  The fact that you have your own standards of human decency allows you to see things in a certain way.  Keeping your eyes open and not drawing conclusions too soon will certainly help you in future intercultural encounters.

-Elizabeth