Goodbye, USA
For many years of the almost twenty-six years I've been living here, my intention had been to someday return to the United States. To me, most things were better there. Jobs were easier to find, there was a greater array of food to choose from, everything was in English, and there was snow in the winter. Over time, I have come to regard Spain as home, yet I still wanted to return, even if only for an extended stay with a return ticket at the end. Things have been shifting, what I believed has been discovered to have a foundation of quicksand.
The pros of living in northwestern Spain:
1. Most food is fresh and locally grown. Yes, in some supermarkets you will find potatoes from Israel, and blueberries from Peru, but you learn to wait for its proper season or look somewhere else for produce closer to home, and not fall into the trap of paying twelve euros for a kilo of cherries in February.
2. There's barely any air pollution. Living away from the big cities of Madrid and Barcelona has the advantage of healthy lungs. I don't smell the ozone I sometimes smelled in a Boston summer.
3. We have universal health insurance. Everything is covered, though medications only a certain percent. But if there's a generic, that's what we're prescribed. We do pay for this bonanza, but through the taxes we pay every day, and not through the nose at the end of the month just like another bill.
4. There is no obvious racism. No, it's still not common in these small towns and villages to see a black person, or a woman with a hijab, but when they are seen in the population, they are treated as another neighbor. In fact, most people here are more open to sharing what they have with those who need it. (Unless it's someone they know, there all kinds of old family and neighborhood feuds flare up. The kindness of strangers, however, is truly kindness.) Sadly, scam artists are learning to rely on our goodwill to fleece the more vulnerable.
5. Education is cheap. It's not wholly dependent on our taxes, which it should be, but, unless you're dirt poor, affordable. The cheapest courses of study at university run about six hundred euros a year in tuition. There is subsidized housing, though most students share apartments and expenses. The government tends to grant tuition and some expense money, depending on family income, though it arrives in December and it is a little less each year. Still, students do not graduate in debt for the rest of their lives. There are private colleges that are more expensive, but those are frequented by the elite who can pay for them. If a middle income family shops around, they can find a good quality public education, too.
The cons of living in northwestern Spain:
1. Jobs are scarce. Once upon a time, people emigrated to find decent jobs. Now, our young people have to do so again. But this time, it's the college-educated young who are leaving because the only jobs they can find here are temporary jobs that have nothing to do with their qualifications and which do not pay enough to live.
2. The bureaucracy is one-of-a-kind. Some people put off projects because of the amount of paperwork in duplicate and triplicate they have to fill out, documents they have to collect together, and time they have to spend travelling from government office to government office. And at each office, the fee.
3. Government corruption is maddeningly frustrating. It is enough to keep you home on election day, because whomever is elected, they will find a way to do what they want, not what you put them in office for, and to have money disappear into megalomaniac projects that you have to eventually pay for and never needed and never will. And then you discover that so-and-so squirrelled away millions of public money in their Swiss bank account.
4. Daily living is getting progressively expensive. Just today, with freezing temperatures, electricity prices have hit an all-time high. Bottled gas is also rising in price. Gasoline and diesel have increased almost forty percent in the last year. Almost everything has gone up. Except salaries. Salaries have either gone down, or have been stuck for the past few years. As a consequence, things that could have been easily bought or done five years ago, now are almost impossible to save up for.
5. Our freedom of expression has been limited by the conservative government. For any little slight against a police officer, the least you can expect is a fine of six hundred euros. That includes a "F**k you" on social media. If things get unruly at a protest, police don't tend to care whom they catch, and some innocents have faced jail time. We seem to be going back to the time of venting our rage in whispers behind closed doors and windows, in fear of being heard by the powers that be.
Memories of life in Boston:
One of the best things I remember from growing up in Boston, is the sense of national pride. It was a pride in that people from all over the globe followed their dreams to the United States, where they had to freedom to realize them, and that together we made one of the strongest countries in the world, and an example for others. We learned in school that the tenets of the American Revolution, written by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other Founding Fathers, were the ideas that spurred the French Revolution against the Ancien Régime. I also believed, perhaps through childhood innocence, that our elected officials truly represented us, except for a few bad eggs. In my memory these were mostly Republican, except for a notable Democrat or two. Former Boston mayor, Kevin White, and his memorable speech of his resounding "triumphs" that he gave during my senior year at Boston Latin School, springs to mind. (Whatever did become of the Curley Desk?)
One of the worst things was insecurity. It was worse when I was a child and tapered off when I was an adolescent. Yes, there were shootings, muggings, and robberies that justified that feeling. My mother and I were in a shop carrying mostly Hispanic products in Jamaica Plain once, when two guys with sawed-off shotguns surrounded the lone security guard and demanded all the money from the cashiers. We hid, along with the other customers, in a storage room. Another time, my mother was on the subway with a co-worker going to their evening job cleaning offices in downtown Boston, when two guys standing in the doorway next to her started joking, and one pulled a gun on her asking for her money. She ignored them, and they laughed at their joke and put the gun away.
Yet, apart from that, I realized as I got older that most of that insecurity was due to fear. My parents were fearful, like too many other white residents, of their black neighbors. As I mixed with all types of kids at a public school, I learned that that fear was stupid. The kids with a darker skin than me wanted the same things I wanted, liked the same things I liked, and were just as afraid as me of a gun-carrying hood. The only difference was that, because of the color of their skin, too many doors had been closed to them. The ones that were finally opening were doing so too slowly. And too many intelligent and valuable people were still considered inferior because of a difference in pigmentation.
Now, the United States seems to be imploding in on itself, overwhelmed by that fear that has never been shaken off. Racism is still one of the major problems facing society. Added to that is the fear of a different religion, of which some insane members have threatened anyone who doesn't believe exactly as them, including their co-believers, which fact is often overlooked. The upsetting of the status quo between men and women have led some conservatives to extreme reactionary positions, as if they believe they can relegate women to the subordinate role they have been forced into for too long. Hatred against the establishment has led, not to a liberalizing of the establishment, as was attempted in the tumultuous 1960's, but to an entrenching of it, through foul mouthpieces that spew hatred, into a very parody of what caused the hate to appear in the first place.
Donald Trump embodies all that has gone wrong in these past thirty years. Tomorrow he will be sworn in as President. One can only expect tensions to worsen, hatreds to become even more generalized, and the country I came to love and admire, turn into a faint, dark shadow of what so many immigrants once escaped from. From being a beacon of hope to so many, it has now evolved into a pit of darkness. No one knows what strange beast might escape from it to threaten the world that once learned about freedom from that very country. No, I don't plan to return to the United States for a very long time. I'll take my chances with the cons of living here.
The pros of living in northwestern Spain:
1. Most food is fresh and locally grown. Yes, in some supermarkets you will find potatoes from Israel, and blueberries from Peru, but you learn to wait for its proper season or look somewhere else for produce closer to home, and not fall into the trap of paying twelve euros for a kilo of cherries in February.
2. There's barely any air pollution. Living away from the big cities of Madrid and Barcelona has the advantage of healthy lungs. I don't smell the ozone I sometimes smelled in a Boston summer.
3. We have universal health insurance. Everything is covered, though medications only a certain percent. But if there's a generic, that's what we're prescribed. We do pay for this bonanza, but through the taxes we pay every day, and not through the nose at the end of the month just like another bill.
4. There is no obvious racism. No, it's still not common in these small towns and villages to see a black person, or a woman with a hijab, but when they are seen in the population, they are treated as another neighbor. In fact, most people here are more open to sharing what they have with those who need it. (Unless it's someone they know, there all kinds of old family and neighborhood feuds flare up. The kindness of strangers, however, is truly kindness.) Sadly, scam artists are learning to rely on our goodwill to fleece the more vulnerable.
5. Education is cheap. It's not wholly dependent on our taxes, which it should be, but, unless you're dirt poor, affordable. The cheapest courses of study at university run about six hundred euros a year in tuition. There is subsidized housing, though most students share apartments and expenses. The government tends to grant tuition and some expense money, depending on family income, though it arrives in December and it is a little less each year. Still, students do not graduate in debt for the rest of their lives. There are private colleges that are more expensive, but those are frequented by the elite who can pay for them. If a middle income family shops around, they can find a good quality public education, too.
The cons of living in northwestern Spain:
1. Jobs are scarce. Once upon a time, people emigrated to find decent jobs. Now, our young people have to do so again. But this time, it's the college-educated young who are leaving because the only jobs they can find here are temporary jobs that have nothing to do with their qualifications and which do not pay enough to live.
2. The bureaucracy is one-of-a-kind. Some people put off projects because of the amount of paperwork in duplicate and triplicate they have to fill out, documents they have to collect together, and time they have to spend travelling from government office to government office. And at each office, the fee.
3. Government corruption is maddeningly frustrating. It is enough to keep you home on election day, because whomever is elected, they will find a way to do what they want, not what you put them in office for, and to have money disappear into megalomaniac projects that you have to eventually pay for and never needed and never will. And then you discover that so-and-so squirrelled away millions of public money in their Swiss bank account.
4. Daily living is getting progressively expensive. Just today, with freezing temperatures, electricity prices have hit an all-time high. Bottled gas is also rising in price. Gasoline and diesel have increased almost forty percent in the last year. Almost everything has gone up. Except salaries. Salaries have either gone down, or have been stuck for the past few years. As a consequence, things that could have been easily bought or done five years ago, now are almost impossible to save up for.
5. Our freedom of expression has been limited by the conservative government. For any little slight against a police officer, the least you can expect is a fine of six hundred euros. That includes a "F**k you" on social media. If things get unruly at a protest, police don't tend to care whom they catch, and some innocents have faced jail time. We seem to be going back to the time of venting our rage in whispers behind closed doors and windows, in fear of being heard by the powers that be.
Memories of life in Boston:
One of the best things I remember from growing up in Boston, is the sense of national pride. It was a pride in that people from all over the globe followed their dreams to the United States, where they had to freedom to realize them, and that together we made one of the strongest countries in the world, and an example for others. We learned in school that the tenets of the American Revolution, written by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other Founding Fathers, were the ideas that spurred the French Revolution against the Ancien Régime. I also believed, perhaps through childhood innocence, that our elected officials truly represented us, except for a few bad eggs. In my memory these were mostly Republican, except for a notable Democrat or two. Former Boston mayor, Kevin White, and his memorable speech of his resounding "triumphs" that he gave during my senior year at Boston Latin School, springs to mind. (Whatever did become of the Curley Desk?)
One of the worst things was insecurity. It was worse when I was a child and tapered off when I was an adolescent. Yes, there were shootings, muggings, and robberies that justified that feeling. My mother and I were in a shop carrying mostly Hispanic products in Jamaica Plain once, when two guys with sawed-off shotguns surrounded the lone security guard and demanded all the money from the cashiers. We hid, along with the other customers, in a storage room. Another time, my mother was on the subway with a co-worker going to their evening job cleaning offices in downtown Boston, when two guys standing in the doorway next to her started joking, and one pulled a gun on her asking for her money. She ignored them, and they laughed at their joke and put the gun away.
Yet, apart from that, I realized as I got older that most of that insecurity was due to fear. My parents were fearful, like too many other white residents, of their black neighbors. As I mixed with all types of kids at a public school, I learned that that fear was stupid. The kids with a darker skin than me wanted the same things I wanted, liked the same things I liked, and were just as afraid as me of a gun-carrying hood. The only difference was that, because of the color of their skin, too many doors had been closed to them. The ones that were finally opening were doing so too slowly. And too many intelligent and valuable people were still considered inferior because of a difference in pigmentation.
Now, the United States seems to be imploding in on itself, overwhelmed by that fear that has never been shaken off. Racism is still one of the major problems facing society. Added to that is the fear of a different religion, of which some insane members have threatened anyone who doesn't believe exactly as them, including their co-believers, which fact is often overlooked. The upsetting of the status quo between men and women have led some conservatives to extreme reactionary positions, as if they believe they can relegate women to the subordinate role they have been forced into for too long. Hatred against the establishment has led, not to a liberalizing of the establishment, as was attempted in the tumultuous 1960's, but to an entrenching of it, through foul mouthpieces that spew hatred, into a very parody of what caused the hate to appear in the first place.
Donald Trump embodies all that has gone wrong in these past thirty years. Tomorrow he will be sworn in as President. One can only expect tensions to worsen, hatreds to become even more generalized, and the country I came to love and admire, turn into a faint, dark shadow of what so many immigrants once escaped from. From being a beacon of hope to so many, it has now evolved into a pit of darkness. No one knows what strange beast might escape from it to threaten the world that once learned about freedom from that very country. No, I don't plan to return to the United States for a very long time. I'll take my chances with the cons of living here.
As an ex_american, as a person who has lived in four countries, you have nailed it.
ReplyDelete