ABOUT WRITING IN THE TIMES OF THE FREE TRADE AREA OF THE AMERICAS (2001)

There have been times when I´ve had trouble with a computer because it was set only for the English language and it didn´t allow me to write in Spanish properly. A letter was missing, the ñ, as was the umlaut and the accent mark and both the upside down question mark and exclamation point needed in front of questions and exclamations in Spanish. But now, on my Spanish language computer, I have another problem, which is the lack of English Spell -Check . Living in a two-language world is complicated, but even worse is to live in a four-language world: I write sometimes in French and in Portuguese and there again, on both English language and Spanish language computers, letters and accents and particular signs such as the cedilla are missing. The integration of the Americas is a technological problem from the start, but even more urgently a cultural one: do all the languages have the same status? Which is the same as to ask: Do all the cultures have the same value?

When we think that next April thirty four countries will sign the agreement to integrate a free trade zone before 2005, we wonder first about the usual commerce laws and the equality they are supposed to bring to the parties of the agreement. Only in the second place do we realize that something deeper is going on among the signers of the treaty.

Being different and at the same time being a part of the same thing, raises questions in every single language of the Americas, and for every national thinker the question is more and more about how we will deal with each culture.We wonder if there is going to be a fight, and who will win in the end, and the nightmare of an uneven imperialism haunts us. Being a Bolivian is not the same as being a Yankee, though a primary question jumps out: what will the Americans from the US be called? "US Americans", maybe, since they will finally have to share the name of America, which is one and only also as a continent, with all the rest of the thirty five remaining American countries, which have been more modest and adopted a second name, leaving the word American to the common property rather than to Yankee greed.

And how will the giant deal with the smaller countries, or even with the big sized ones like Brazil or Argentina? Will every "American" country get the same status that Canada and Mexico have in the present NAFTA? Is it the pure Yankee imperialism that will prevail, as the leftists from the whole Continent claim, influenced by the perpetual divide and conquer European thought? Or, on the contrary, are we at the dawn of a free political, cultural and military association based on the common character of Americans (whole Americans, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego) with a new identity to explore? Signs of a merging new American culture can be seen here and there: a Hispanic minority increasing in the United States, now surpassing the African-Americans, and a military and economical Argentine drive towards an American common market (extra NATO ally military status, and dollarization) show that people are acting toward merging even before the computer manufacturers have reacted.

There is more communication between Americans of all origins than anyone thinks: US American citizens buying big farms in Patagonia; Argentine citizens teaching Spanish in the US; Brazilians dealing with Mexicans; Chileans with Venezuelians; and Rockefeller visiting Cuba and reminding us that Cuba belongs to America, no matter what the former USSR might have thought. It is a strange melting pot indeed, of Americans mingling with Americans in a broth of the four main European languages , mixed in with more than thirty five cultures, each having even more languages, such as the always forgotten American Native ones and all the rest of the European languages that migrated to the American Continent and the Caribbean Islands.

I am writing in Buenos Aires for the English-speaking reader, I still don´t have a Spanish-English dictionary in my computer, and, of course, I know I will solve part of the problem – with a click on the multilanguage button, by trying to memorize every foreign keyboard, or by simply surrendering to an uncomfortable plastic keyboard cover that includes the missing characters. But, am I ready to merge into the pot and trust that all will be for the best? That is to say, is there an English speaking American writing specifically on this issue for an Argentine or Peruvian reader? I wouldn´t be afraid of merging if somebody up there in the North of the Continent is also scared about what will come out of this mainly cultural marriage and wants to communicate with the rest of their Americans pals and share. We are all Americans – not USA subjects– but members of a great, multilingual and fantastic new thing. Hello, is anybody out there awake in this dream? The Great America is waiting.