CONTINENTAL EYES

We all see with the eyes of a nation: for most of us, the nation where we were born and which speaks the language we speak and that we learned from our parents. What happens if we are introduced into the challenge of a new multinational superstructure? Will our eyes change? How much are we expected to change? These questions, which have been often debated in the United States as a country with a large and diverse immigration, become again pertinent these days. The project of a continental union revivified by the attempts of the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, requires from the United States a strong political and cultural response. Chavez promotes a dangerous Latin American alliance against the United States and to successfully counteract this project of aggression with a project of union, the United States needs to see Latin America not only with its American eyes but with its continental eyes.

Both North Americans and South Americans are challenged to travel the space which goes from their nations, language, and culture to the common continental space with, at least, two main languages and cultures at stake. This political journey was not invented by Chavez. Three very different American presidents, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, with different degrees of enthusiasm, stated in the recent past that Latin America and the United States were finally compatible and potential partners. They launched the ambitious Free Trade Area for the Americas, a program which has been quietly making its way defying the unfriendly environment of leftist Latin American governments and the US priorities after 9/11.

Beyond the traditional Latin American complaint about North American capitalism and its attributed imperialistic intentions, the lack of a clear program for economic growth appears to be the main problem which divides the United States from Latin America. What we, Americans and Latin Americans, face now is the challenge to finding a common ground that allows us to have hopes in the future and dream with what the Europeans already have: a continental union. Our American Union, which now would follow the model of the European Union, has been however the early dream of North American patriots as James Monroe and of South American patriots as the Argentine José de San Martín and the Venezuelan Simón Bolivar. Imagined during the days in which American countries were still reaching their independence and building their identities, the American union was never concreted. The fact that most of the colonies were gaining their independence from the losing and decadent Spanish Empire and that the United States was emerging as the brightest child of the dominant British Empire created a lasting cultural web of resentment and hatred. The common American-ness was crushed against the differences in language, culture and religion opposing Anglos and Hispanics. This opposition configures a category which continues to nurture speeches on both sides. Samuel Huntington is as scared of what Hispanics may do to the United States if let as Hugo Chavez and his followers from the supposed imperialistic United States threat.

American presidential candidates in their current campaign to reach the White House seldom talk about Latin America. When they do, it’s always about immigration issues: how to better protect the borders to prevent illegal Latin American immigration and how to deal with legal and illegal Latinos in the United States. They are not still thinking, and less talking, about what could actually stop immigration, which is bringing the U.S. organization and services to Latin America. The Free Trade Area has been widely resisted as the NAFTA was because it is wrongly depicted as an export of jobs, when it should be considered as an export of know how and services. A continental commercial union wouldn’t promote a loss of jobs in the United States because an ambitious and realistic American Union is not about exporting factories to Latin American countries but about to helping them in their development, selling knowledge. The United States can export and sell its know how, its engineers’ and technicians work and its financial and organizational services to communities which lack of everything, from water to highways, from credit banks to efficient federal organizations. Latin American countries in return can help to create a bigger common market for both United States and American products and thus enlarge commerce with the rest of the world. The Americas, duly organized, have the potential to become the biggest common market in the world.

This project of union can be seen as Chavez fears, as a form of imperialism, or as what it really is, the most progressive immediate idea to boost both the United States and Latin American economies. Those who already have in place their continental eyes can see in this possible union the continental essay of global rules for growth and wealth.

CONTINENTAL HUMOR: THE SIZE OF THE AMERICAN PENIS

“Do you want enlarge your penis up to 4 inches?” No matter I am a woman who has longtime ago overcome that envy which made Freud rant about gender and accepted that I have no penis at all, small or long, but an equally serving vagina, I still receive dozens, if not hundreds of spam a week with the call of the mermaid. No, sir, I don’t want to enlarge a penis I don’t have and you would better trim your spam listings before sending them out. Such an amount of messages around the lines of “‎Imagine being able to put on inches permanently, safely, and quickly,” “Tired of a small cock?”, “It's normal to be ashamed if you have a small schlong, but change that around today” must have a better clientele than non envious women. The language is clearly and unmistakably American and whether I am still wondering if this type of spam is written by angry females or by rogues of any sex who know the nail they have to hit to sell pills, devices, or herbs or to get the click that will confirm a name in a spam list, I have no doubts they address American men.

The problem is that besides being a woman, I am a foreigner, and this spam is reaching not only Americans, who may laugh at it, but the whole world. In Beijing, Rome, El Cairo, Sidney or Buenos Aires, where I live, people envious of the American superpower also laugh. Thanks to spam, they are now into the long time kept secret of what is behind so much war. Freud helps them to deduct that a small penis calls for great empires. How come Homeland Security hasn’t noticed this leak in the American border? How come the Department of State didn’t detect the actual reason beneath the loss of American influence in the planet? How could ever America get her reputation back when spam addressed to American men yell in the world’s email boxes: “The problem is that you have a small one.”

America the beautiful, land of the free and home of the brave, confesses to the world her impotence to comply with the constitutional mandate of bed happiness. Is this true? Or is this spam written in anger by Arabs, by Chavez’ Venezuelan followers or by Castro’s Cubans, the usual suspects, all making a projection of their own lack? Will an atomic threat substitute later the spam in what is now only a more subtle dirty war? A spam which boasts “I carry a bazooka in my pants walking around” may be giving a clue that, after all, penis spam could really belong to some kind of unstated military problem.

But not all is about war in these uncertain times in which the economy takes the lead in presidential debates. The math and the grammar police combined could take a look at the funny “9 inches in your pennies will make you the world’s 8th wonder to women.” If 4 inches are usually promised and 9 inches is the final length, that means the average American penis is 5 inches long which doesn’t look that bad and wouldn't be a reason for so much war. On the other side, if the plural of penis is pennies, Freud might have something to add to the slip: power comes also from money and not just from building empires.

I can better understand the other series of penis spam, referred to Viagra and what spam calls the “Whopping Dick,” because it’s about age and decay. All males in the world will sooner or later have to deal with this, but the persistence in making of it a priority adds to the worries about size and, there we go again, the penis shines as an unavoidable American obsession. Written in American slang most of the times, this spam excels in distribution and seems to have no competitors: there is little or none spam in other languages concerning other foreign nationals. In the rest of the world, men have something else in mind but their penises.

Could it be that all this tragedy finally comes from the also often mentioned eternal dissatisfaction of American women? A careful reading of spam suggests that this uncomfortable revelation of too small American penises could have been triggered by the overwhelming demands of those bitches who always want more. To rescue male readers from despair and hopelessness, spam advices: “Do not worry! You have unique possibility to solve this problem. At present you can enlarge your male aggregate size.” In spam, promises soar, “You will be a king of bed sure enough,” while the actual problem is faced: “Don't let girls laugh at your small manhood, when you can add inches so easily.” But it's America and it all comes about reaching a Hollywood ending to this penis affair: “Bigger, better, mightier means getting laid more.” No matter what the world may think about the penis quandaries of American men or the fury of desperate wives, the problem can always be solved and men and women live happily ever after. Where there is a will, there is a way.