Do you have any notion of what Latino men are like? In my case, I love them for the same features for which I hate them.
I haven’t met any people who would be more romantic and more focused on a woman.
Always for you. Always telling you that you’re the most beautiful. Always in love.
Always promising to do anything for you. Always, everywhere, anytime. Especially Argentinians.
They are compliment wizards who can seduce with a look alone, not to mention what they can do when they start talking.
Every woman grows (upwards, not sideways ;)) a few centimetres after every minute of being in their company.
Linda, hermosa, guappa, preciosa, maravilliosa, divina…
But…
They will do the same for every other woman and tell the same to every other woman.
At first I considered this the height of hypocrisy and mendacity. Something insulting, unpleasant and sad.
One moment I’m a goddess and the most beautiful and extraordinary woman and we almost work up the details of marriage and the sex of children. And then I go to the bathroom and when I come back, the said details and all the “and they lived happily ever after” stuff is being discussed with some blonde bombshell from Canada…
How can anyone do this?!?! – I thought. Not that I treat things like this seriously, but hey, some decency would be appreciated. Something like waiting for me to leave, to reject the suitor unconditionally, to go back home… I don’t know, anything. Just not doing it so blatantly.
(The most funny thing about it was that it was enough for the Canadian bombshell to leave for a moment and new ones appeared immediately. And all of them, myself included, were treated with the same extraordinary degree of kindness, friendliness and adoration – as if nothing happened.)
I was young when I started getting to know Latino men so I didn’t understand a lot of that and it aroused a lot of emotions in me. And criticism. And judging.
The longer I know them and the better my Spanish is, the more I feel that it’s not hypocrisy, but… Well, I’m not really sure what it is, but it’s definitely not AGAINST ANYONE.
The fact is that when they say all these things, it reflects what they really think. Except for the fact that they really think like that about every or almost every woman.
My charming macho tour guide, Pablo, enabled me to call and understand it properly.
“We just have grand corazon.”
They have a big heart and that heart has a lot of space for emotions and a lot of admiration for women. However, a single woman cannot fill out all of that space. The fact that you’re beautiful doesn’t mean that other women are not beautiful. And when other women are beautiful it doesn’t mean that you stop being beautiful.
To make it clear, it’s not that I support it or love it. But I can’t say anymore that I hate it either. I love the romanticism, energy, charisma and charm of a Latino man. And I take the best of it for myself. I enter this game aware of its rules. I take what strokes my ego. I don’t treat it like a seal or a band-aid, but like a gentle touch of wind on my face. One moment it’s there, next it’s gone. But who wants to miss the pleasure of exposing oneself to the warm sun and soothing breeze?
Here and now.
Here and now.
This is my main objective when it comes to developing my mindfulness and Latin American countries teach me that on every level.
A compliment here and now is beautiful and is supposed to raise your spirits.
Without categorizing. Without analysing. Without too much thinking. Without attachment. Without judgment. Without trapping the person that says it within the frames of your own expectations and hopes.
It’s neither hypocrisy nor trickery of seducers. Latino men are like that because their hearts are big. Take it or leave it. Enjoy it or complain about it. Use it or refuse it.
That’s a lesson in complimenting coming straight from a Latino guy – the freedom of enjoying the here and now.
When I met them I thought that it’s nice that a father travels with his daughter. Fortunately, I held my tongue this time. She’s 23, he’s 59. They’ve been together since she was 17. You’re probably thinking now the same thing I was thinking back then. But after a week of staying with them I understood why she’s so in love with him. He treats her like a queen and the only woman in the world. However, she told me many stories about how she has to fight other queens every day.
When we were in the northernmost part of Colombia, one with very unfavourable atmospheric conditions, even there the local men would bring me a star from the sky if I asked them to. Or at least they would bring me some big insect and then demonstrate to me for several minutes that it can even dance when pushed in all the right places. It started with wanting to please me and ended on personal level of involvement typical for boys playing on PlayStation.
A beautiful couple that I met on the way to the flamingo park. They’ve been together for 40 years and he looks at her and treats her as if she just won the Miss World title yesterday. I know, because I saw it and heard it. He thinks that their marriage works so well because he treats her well and doesn’t let her know how well he treats other women.
In the beautiful flamingo park our guide, Julian, was offering to marry me already after 15 minutes and enumerating in a very serious manner all the benefits coming from taking him as a husband. After we reached the shore his wife didn’t confirm those benefits.
I love the desert. It’s a place of natural meditation to me. Next to being the most beautiful place in the world, that is. Later I got to another place and also consider it the most beautiful. And every time I say, think and feel it, it’s real. When I realized that, my attitude towards Latino men immediately got better and I stopped being so angry and critical with regard to their indiscriminate nature.
The captain of the boat on which I travelled from Panama to Colombia noticed that I like jewellery (it’s not that hard to guess, actually, but he did that on his own and without any tips :)) and made me the same kind of bracelets that the Kuna people wear. We waited two hours for him to put them on me and not everyone was happy because of the delay, but… beauty requires sacrifice. Later, no matter when we went in Cartagena, he was showing everyone my leg, always accompanying that with a rain compliments.
The great seducer from Colombia. No matter whether I had my hair and makeup done (and I usually hadn’t), I was always the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Until the moment he saw another, that is. And whenever such another woman disappeared over the horizon, my status was returned. He comes from Medellin, one of the largest cities in Colombia, but he moved to Guajira in order to have better access to doing whatever he feels like doing. But I have to give it to him that next to seducing every beautiful or a-bit-less-beautiful tourist, he was characterized by unearthly calm and contemplation, smoking one joint after another.
I learn being here and now during formal meditation trips, but… everything that I experience outside of them – if I treat it as a lesson and want to understand the reasons and consequences – can be a great training in meditation as well.
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