Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Kinno's essay

BOLIVIAN STEREOTYPES
Pareja M. Kinno I.
In our current times, many countries are being demeaned by many critics. And almost all of those comments are not based on good things that countries have. If you want to criticize countries and people living there, you must spend some time living among them. Our country is one of those countries because foreign people have a wrong idea about Bolivia. They have heard things from persons who have had a bad experience in our country, or they have watched us in news. Whatever you think, those things might be partially right, but you shouldn’t believe all the news; in fact, you should be open-minded. I will show you that not all those things are true.
A thing that everybody believes is that we are violent. It might be partially right, but you have to consider that we are a developing country and like anyone in our situation, we have a lot of conflicts because we are trying to improve. If you believe we are ignorant or we are not smart, don’t say that. There are several schools, universities and like anywhere else you can think that some of them are better than others, but our standards of education are better than ever and we are improving day by day in order to solve our conflicts the best way we can.
The most interesting stereotype that I’ve heard and I’m sure you know, is that all of us are indigenous like our president and therefore not attractive. You shouldn’t believe that we are not attractive or that we all have the same tanned-skin and physical traits. Well, this is the funniest stereotype, because people might be considered attractive or not, depending on the perspective you have. Even you might not be the most attractive person in the world according to others’ standards. You have to know that like other countries, our country has many indigenous groups. We got 80 ethnic groups more or less, but our whole country is not indigenous. As all South American countries, we have a “mestizo” population.
Another point that we completely disagree is that foreign people think we are not hard-working or skilful. People say that we just want to earn enough money to live. Well, the thing is that we do all the jobs that we can because our country is a developing country and the incomes that we can earn, are for our families. We get all kinds of works that we can do because our skills are our best resources. And our skills are used to do things like crafts, sculpture, painting, etc. Whether we know how to do something or not, we do our best to figure it out. Even if we don’t know how to do it, we can learn fast like anyone who uses his whole skills to improve in his life.
Nowadays, we should consider that there are a lot of Bolivians in any countries like the United States and Spain. These immigrants might be an example for those countries. They were good or bad, but foreign people can’t think that all of us are the same and you should meet us before getting a wrong idea about us. I’ve explained some points and arguments that refute some stereotypes, which are partially right. Sadly the stereotypes follow us like a shadow, there is no country without stereotypes. And we should know that people are just different.

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