Llorene

In the past few months, with my travels in India and now in Mexico, I have really been trying to get a sense of the country's culture. This is usually done through a talk with a citizen of that country and sharing their perspective with me on various things.

Recently, I had a very very interesting conversation with a new found friend. I met her at an AIESEC function (surprise surprise). Anyway, we went out for coffee on one of the days and I asked her this question, "Do you think there is racism in Mexico?" That day, in our Mexican culture class, this question really sparked some interest in me, and so I decided to ask her what her take on it was, especially being a Mexican living in Mexico.

Her response to me was that she doesn't think that there is racism in Mexico in terms of race. There does, however, seem to be a denial of one's self-- one's indigenous part of self.

A bit of background here would be appropriate I suppose...
Way before the Spanish colonized in Mexico, there lived great civilizations such as the Mayans and the Aztecs. Their civilizations was deemed to be great because they not only had millions of people, but there was a system of governance, of hierarchy etc.

However, when the Spaniards came, these civilizations were wiped out. But not before mixing their races. A mix of Indigenous blood and Spanish blood were called Mestizos.

And so-- the modern day Mexican has some ancestry of Aztec or Mayan blood. But as we discussed in class that day, if you were to ask Mexicans what they consider themselves to be- they would definitely say they are more Spanish than they are Indigenous.

Yes it's true that modern day Mexicans speak Spanish and not the Indigenous tongues. But the whole denial seems to go deeper than that. Although most Mexicans would admit that the Mayans and the Aztecs had incredibly great civilizations, they would deny that they have any Aztec or Mayan blood in them.

Trying to figure this out even more, I asked Mireya whether or not they are taught any history pertaining to the Aztecs or the Mayans when they were younger. She told me that they are taught very little, and that she herself knows very little about them.

Then she asked me: "Do you know any Philippine history before the Spanish colonization?"

I admit, I was stumped. Although I knew a bit of Philippine history, I could not outwardly say that I knew much before the Spaniards arrived there.

My findings
The next day, I decided to look up some info regarding the history of the Philippines before the Spanish colonization. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a lot. All I did find out was the fact that before the Spanish arrived, the Philippines was populated with a lot of people from different parts of Asia- namely Borneo, Malaysia, China etc.

Even more interesting though, is that I found out that the Philippines and Mexico actually have a connection from way back then. For Spain to get to the Philippines, they would need to land on the port of Veracruz (Eastern side of Mexico), travel inland and ship out from the port of Acapulco (western side of Mexico). Because of this, there was actually a lot of Mexican influence in the Philippines.

A great example is actually language. Not only does the Tagalog language have hundreds of words that stem from Spanish words, but it also contains words in Nahuatl (the Indigenous language that the Aztecs used).