coldhearted scientist وداد

I was out walking and came upon one of the bailes de cuna Villaverde describes taking place in Havana, but that we also have here. A grandfather in a green silk suit waved me in. Another one grabbed me to dance. I like your step was his first salida.

Caribbean men. He was one of these jinetero types and he thought I was a tourist. In French he said he was a curandero and could read the souls of people. I was thinking about how standard this line is, and how I could write a novel about it parodying Alejo Carpentier.

I am collecting material for a recreational study on piropo styles. Look at the elements above: subject knows he is exotic. He spoke the local French, danced the local dance, and said he was a curandero, gifted with a form of second sight. It is as though he had sung, “I’m a traîteur, baby — I can heal your pain.” He really and truly thought these things would work on me, as I was a tourist, and I was having déjà vu and laughing because I have heard versions of this line in so many other Latin-style countries.

My current Spanish colleague, as well, keeps emphasizing that he is a bullfight fan, that he has honor, and that if I do not want him to call me an American Puritan, I will put his needs first in the department and implement all of his suggestions straightaway. He is genuinely surprised that the “American Puritan” line does not work. It does not register that he is hardly the first Spaniard I have met and far from the best, and I am not an American student trying to acquire a culture, in general, and my new colleague’s approval, in particular.

So is it exceptionalism, or an awareness of exoticism — or both — that give rise to this style of piropo and to the use of similar rhetoric and cultural assumptions in other power plays? Do you have examples … or counterexamples? I would really like to know.

Axé.