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Running head: BLUE-EYED: WHO AM I?

Blue-eyed: who am I?

Márcio Padilha

College of Southern Idaho

Robb/ADDS 190

Fall/2009
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While watching Jane Elliotǯs Blue-Eyed, the concept of self-identity and the

process by which this identity is acquired was brought to my conscious attention.

Born and raised in Brazil, I moved to the United States since 1995, having spent

roughly each half of my life in each country. This experience has caused on-and-off

intense self-introspection as means to understand the cause and effect of the inter-

transactional relations between the micro-, macro- and intra-culture which have

arisen thereof.

My culture-specific self-classification starts by the socio-geographical

assertion that I was born and raised in Porto Alegre, the Capital of the State of Rio

Grande do Sul, both City and State of prestigious sociopolitical status within the

Brazilian spectrum.

Whereas the Stateǯs international borders have a direct affect on Brazilǯs

trade with Argentina, Uruguay and Chile as well as with all the Asian Nations, whose

maritime import and export transactions take place via Santiago, Chile through

Argentina, the City has never had a metropolitan population inferior to 3.5 million

inhabitants in my lifetime. Furthermore, whereas no other Brazilian State has had

more than two Presidents in office since the 1888 inception of presidentialism, five

Brazilian Presidents sprung out of Rio Grande do Sul throughout the countryǯs

presidential history. Lastly, besides being the mother city of the first of many World

Social Forum editions, a sociopolitical opposition the World Economic Forum in

Davos, Switzerland, Porto Alegre is also the Capital of MERCOSUL; an exclusive

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international trade agreement among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay since

its 1991 foundation.

Brazil is geopolitically divided in five regions, i.e. South, Southeast, Central-

West, Northeast and North. These regions are further culturally subdivided, each

having its own set of subjective preconceived perceptions in relation to the other,

which stem out of the interaction between climate, ethnicity, economics and politics.

Furthermore, the harsh Military Dictatorship, which tentatively placed a gag order

on free speech in Brazil between 1964 and 1979, ultimately leading to a temporary

generational victimization through years of passive uncontested exposure to

subliminal discriminatory imagery, stressed, as a whole, the values of one regional

culture in detriment to the other. Thus, socializing agents such as school, media and

family inevitably assimilated the negation of both principles and praxis of social

constructivism. Therefore, this reality, pre- and coexisting to my own, mechanically

instilled in me, during my primary and early secondary stages of socialization, what

I eventually realized to be a culturally biased set of perceptions.

As stated by Mark Twin, Dztravel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-

mindednessdz and, with such contention in mind, as I started getting to know my

country by traveling, I instinctively initiated a spontaneous critical analysis of

Dzmacro culturesdz which surrounded me at different times and places. In doing so, I

could not help but notice that the pseudo culture-specific information fed to me

through a variety of socializing agents did not always pan out. As I engaged in

culture-general bidirectional transactions, I found out immediately that the

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surrounding micro macro-culture, more often than not, had much more to offer and

exchange than what had been Dzadvertiseddz to me.

The utopia of the Brazilian racial status quo, which preaches racism to be

nonexistent, emanates out of an ambitious and bold mid-16th Century ideology by

the Portuguese, who as the Colonial Supremacist race, were determined to

exterminate all non-Caucasian ethnic groups present in the Brazilian Colony by

forced miscegenation. Whereas this ideology embraced genetic components only

scientifically understood centuries later, it then justified the atrocity of raping the

African Female Slaves and Natives by the Portuguese under the auspice racial

unification as an idealistic single multiethnic race. Historically processed over

centuries, the social fabric of Brazil evolved into one where, unlike its American

counterpart, terms such as ethnic or minority groups are rarely heard of.

Nevertheless, in critically observing what one Brazilian had to say about the other, I

came to the personal conclusion that, at a much more fundamental level, we, the

Brazilian people, still struggle with bias issues and that, as stated by anthropologist

Roberto DaMatta, there are indeed many DzBrazils within Brazil.dz

As this observational process carried on, I came to an even more pungent

realization. In my very own micro macro culture, the natives of the State of Rio

Grande do Sul are denominated Dzgaúchos,dz a term which is a Dzcommonly-used

descriptor for residents of the South American pampas, found in parts of Argentina,

Uruguay, and the state of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazildz (Wikipedia, Gaucho).

In light of that, I have realized, as well as enthralled about, the fact that there are,

indeed, cultural elements which bind us, Brazilian Gaúchos, more closely to a
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Dzforeigndz culture, namely to Argentine and Uruguayan Gaúchos, than to the rest of

Dzour owndz nation.

The commotion caused by the passing of Argentine folk singer Mercedes

Sosa, 74, in Buenos Aires on October 4, 2009 may serve as an anecdotal piece of

evidence to the above-referred premise as Brazilian gaúchos perceived Argentine

gaúcha Mercedes de Sosa as an integral piece of their continuum. Collaterally, the

same type of commotion in light of passing was observed in Israel, where there a

significant number of Argentine and Brazilian inhabitants.

In addressing this complex issue, it is also fundamental to realize that the

concept of DzBrazilianessdz stems out of one fundamentally dichotomized perception:

whereas, throughout the Colonial and Imperial Periods, Brazilians essentially

perceived themselves as being a Dzlost piece of Portugaldz in the Americas, thence

never acquiring a sense of belonging to the American continent; the Portuguese,

perceiving Brazilians to be Dza sick and condemned set of intermixed races likely to

degenerate biologically, psychologically and sociallydz never accepted Brazilians as a

part of their own (DaMatta, 11, 1984).

In addition to this love-hate binomial relationship, Brazilians, being heirs of

the Portuguese resentment of Spainǯs 87-year-long annexation of Portugal during

the 16th Century (Entroportugal), grew a strong national identity which, while being

the centerpiece of Brazilian cultural cohesion, concomitantly establishes an

ethnocentric, quasi xenophobic, position that dictates that Brazil, as its very own

entity, has absolutely nothing to do with the Spanish-speaking neighboring nations.

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Thus, perception of a cultural commonality with two of the neighboring Spanish-

speaking countries creates an interesting paradoxal conundrum.

With that and all other issues considered, I couldnǯt help but notice that

whereas language, being one of the most central elements of culture binding, differs,

other sources of cultural identity, permeating the man-made political international

borders, are transactionally harmonious as the cultures of Southern Brazil,

Argentina and Uruguay, both individually and collectively, share a great esteem, and

transactional symmetry, regarding gender, health, ethnicity, nationality, religion,

age and social status. This communal cohesiveness is, thence, sufficiently strong as

to create a supranational micro-culture that is both strong enough to bind

satisfactorily and weak enough as to not detach or deflect the involved parties from

their own macro cultures.

At a second stage in life, I was again exposed to concomitantly Dzculturally

perceivingdz and Dzbeing culturally perceiveddz by the macro culture of the United

States, if such thing essentially exists, when I immigrated to the United States.

Upon my arrival in 1995, I did puzzle several people in the United States who

stereotypically expected me to be a Dzperson of colordz who should further know how

to folk-dance and have a communicational deficit in English language. Yet, as I

stepped Dzoff the boat,dz or plane per se, I was absolutely everything but the

stereotypical non-English speaking minority South American immigrant. Tall and

slender, then at a 5ǯ11dz and 190 lbs, Caucasian, black hair and eyes, I did not, and

still do not, know how to do the samba while I could speak English with an

impressive vocabulary and a nearly imperceptible accent. Consequently, the

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combination of all these characteristics, in juxtaposition with the human intrinsic

need to categorize, caused sporadic social discomfort as people in my inner

community, needing to assign me a category, were simply unable to define me by

the set of socio-cultural parameters that existed in their comfort zone.

At this stage, the reigning events of my new immigrant life prompted me to

start reasserting my cultural identity as to find an equitable middle ground which

would both suffice the Dzneedsdz of the macro culture that engulfed me without

necessarily sacrificing my sense of self. On a personal level, that meant that if while

in Brazil, I thought of myself as a Gaúcho, in the United States I redefined myself as

an Italo-Brazilian, which brings forth a whole new set of bias, parameters and

perceptions to the table.

Being that Dzculture is both learned and shared with the family being one of

the socializing agentsdz (Cushner 2006). The Hispanic heritage of my paternal

grandfather, a Spaniard who died sixteen years before I was born, is de facto neither

meaningful nor existent in my perceptual set of notions. On the other hand, in light

of my extremely close relationship with my paternal grandmother who, being

Italian, instilled in me many Italian values and, as a consequence, I perceive myself

as a member of the group as well.

In addition, another facet of osmotically absorbed cultural identity has

surfaced in me. In light of my being in the United States for 15 years now, my sister

jokingly Dzaccusesdz me often of being Dztoo Americandz each time I travel back to Brazil.

Furthermore, in direct agreement to such position, my in-laws have said I am Dztoo

Brazilian againdz soon after I arrive from a trip to South America.

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Another peculiarity I experienced, regarding perceptual issues, took place

soon after my marriage. I had entered the United States legally and, under the

conditions of my tourist visa, I was granted, by the Immigration officer at the port of

entry in Los Angeles, six-month permanence with the stipulation of no

remunerated-work permission. During the validity of the six-month permission, I

got married to a US citizen, which altered my immigration status and, precisely at

this point, peopleǯs preconceived perceptions started clouding reality. Initially, most

people imagine that a foreign citizen who marries a US Citizen is automatically

granted a Green Card and the subsequent permission to engage in gainful

employment at the moment of the marriage. Hence, that not being the case, I started

becoming the target of all sorts of derogatory remarks and grief in light of my

marriage and incapability, then perceived as Dzundesireddz, to work. If that were not

enough, I had, as part of the Green Card acquisition procedure, to surrender my INS

Form I-94, which was the official immigration document that proves a foreign

personǯs legal immigration status in the United States. In exchange, the immigration

authorities put a big red stamp on one of my passport pages which read, DzINS Ȃ

PAROLED.dz Oblivious to the popular connotation given to the term, I could not

understand peopleǯs expressions when they, for whatever reason, need to see my

passport and found that stamp there. It was only much later that I was able to grasp

the negative connotation to that term. Whereas I inferred it solely for what it was,

i.e. Dzallowed to stay in the United States without a Visa,dz people at large perceived

that I must have had committed this horribly heinous crime and was only allowed to

roam the streets again do the piety of the American Judicial System. After
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deciphering the Dzparoleddz riddle, I could clearly perceive that some individuals truly

felt that if I had to be Dzparoleddz, I should not even be allowed to be in America.

In closing, I believe that cultural identity and all other perceptual concepts

both arising thereto or thereof are a flexible and should osmotically metamorphose

in light of an individualǯs transactional relationships with the greater surrounding

sphere in constant check. It is further important to be vigilant of the interactions at

play so that in acquiring new perspectives, one does not let go of their true self.
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References

Cushner, K., McClelland, A., & Safford, P. (2006). Human diversity in education: an

integrative approach; 5th edition. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

DaMatta, R. (1984). O que faz o Brasil, Brasil? Porto Alegre: Mercado Alberto

Gaucho, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (1 December 2006) Retrieved

December 1st, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaucho

History of Portugal (2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from

http://www.enterportugal.com/history.html

Portugal: history and events (07 July 2006). Retrieved December 1st, 2006, from

http://www.portugal-info.net/history/third-dynasty.htm