Interesting dynamic observed.

[wetibbe]

Seems that lots of Americans have quite a lot of contempt for the French, always putting them down. Not me.

But when we speak of likes and dislikes in Latin America we should, of course, remember that there are whites, browns, tans, bronze, blacks and colors in between. And lots of prejudice.

When I lived in Venezuela, I was on the east Shore of Lake Maracaibo in an oil town. I was visiting an American oil company office talking to an American client where locals were present. There was a Venezuelan from Caracas called Caraqueno and one from Maracaibo, a Maracucho. The Maracucho asked the Caraqueno a question in Spanish and the Caraqueno got a funny look on his face and turned to another asking: " What did he say" ?

I think I already told this one. I was in Florida last year for a christening. My son in law took me to a little strip mall restaurant that was Cuban, bustling with activity. He wanted a Cuban sandwich which is really delicious. You had to go to the counter, look in the display cases, make your selection, pay the cashier and carry your food to a table. When we finished and went outside several teen agers, boys and girls exited, boiling mad. I asked my son in law if he knew what their problem was and he said they were protesting the presence of those "Puerto Ricans" and wouldn't stay. Apparently they were Cubans.

Spanish is my second language but I can spot a true Spaniard in a heart beat from his "accent". I travelled all of the Latin Countries and it is indeed very true that accents vary from country to country a very great deal and from one social level to another, as well as words and the meanings of some words.

I worked with Latinos, over the years, from the top to the bottom of the social, economic scale. Ingenieros *( engineers ), licenciados *( generally degreed people with a college education ), obreros *( blue collar workers ), campesinos *( peasants/ hicks, country people of low education ). The different words and composition varies enormously. Some is very proper and some is slang loaded with expletives.

[ilbegone]

I worked with some French a few years ago, nose in the air types. I eventually got around the snubbing.

There was a French Canadian with them I got along with well. I asked him about the problems and dislike between the French of Quebec and the English of the rest of Canada, he simply replied that it wasn't between himself and I and moved on to another conversation. He did like a lot of Mexicans will do, started teaching me the French names for tools and such. I'd have liked to stay around them, but the superintendent found I had a certification for something he needed elsewhere so I was moved.

Some time ago I made a statement in a group (who had all been doing some drinkin') about people who worked for nothing and who shouldn't be here to start with. A gentleman whose parents were a Mexican national and an Arizona Indian (he identifies as Indian, claims to be Yaqui) angrily objected and got loud, yelling that I was a racist or something similar (but not quite those words, I don't remember exactly what they were). A white Mexican national from southern Mexico (who had French ancestry and was married to an Indian looking Honduran woman), maybe not catching all the English, launched on the Indian, yelling at him that I (the white American) was married to a Mexican woman (born in America to born in Mexico parents, she's been asked a number of times over the years if she belongs to one of the local Indian tribes) and that if the Indian didn't like it he (the white Mexican), himself a Mexican, was going to kick the Indian's American ass. The Indian was wide eyed, open mouth dumbfounded and I was thinking "???what just happened???"

That was surreal.