Panama Real Estate Investment Travel Information


The G-word

(6 votes)

Written by Matt Landau

Wednesday, September 12 2007

I have always very much liked ethnic and racial slurs, to such an extent that I keep a small diary-like list of them updated in the second drawer of my desk. They are words, not unlike small traffic jams or menstrual cycles, which tend to get people all up in a fuss, and to me this alone makes them great.

Panama has offered very few contributions to my list of slurs because, for one reason or another, its people are rarely offended by these sorts of things. Chinese people in Panama have willingly adopted the name chinitos, Indian people have no problem being dubbed hindus, and North Americans are (and always have been) known as the gringos.

The word gringo is defined by most dictionaries in a negative light. "A disparaging term for a foreigner in Latin America" one says. "A foreigner of U.S. or British descent;" says another, "usually used as a term of contempt." But what the dictionaries don't tell you is that in Panama, in addition to a number of other nearby countries, the term gringo is doesn't have much negative subtext at all. It can even be endearing at times!

I learned to use the word gringo quite quickly, as I did the bunch of other ethno-based descriptors. Among fellow expats who arrived around the same time I did, I made a name for myself by unloading these smears as effortlessly and judiciously as a local. It was like watching Baryshnikov in a room full of slam dancers. I was that good.

There's a certain liberty in being able to call someone whatever you want without them wanting to attack you.

As a child, I saw firsthand that in the equation of school bully and class nerd, the word crackhead often equaled a black eye. You see, in the USA, this liberty to call people what you wish has long been replaced by verbal assaults, sexual harassment charges, and something called political correctness: the notion that in our country, illegitimate wars and embarrassing scandals pale in comparison to calling a slow kid retarded.

While most of the other circles of minorities in Panama don't refer to themselves by their no-nonsense nicknames, gringos are almost compulsive in this practice. You'll hear the thing tossed around anywhere and everywhere, not unlike a well-liked frisbee. And first-timers can be thrown off when they hear gringo, thinking to themselves, oh, he must be a bad white man. But it shouldn't take long for them to adopt the g-word like a little puppy and embrace it with open arms.

Comments (1)

jean louis le guillou: linguistic origin of the G-word

Most of linguists agreed upon the fact that this word is coming from some desapprovals of central America's populations during the 19th century against some military operations of the US expeditionary Rangers Corp, smartly dressed in their green-lettuce-jungle-uniforms.

At this time, "Green(s)go home!" was as common as "US go home!" in the 70's, on the next century, in some other places like Vietnam...

It is effective that the "green-go/gringo" word, i quote," doesn't have ... negative subtext" in Panama. I am not sure it's the same in Mexico or in Cuba.

This is one more example, if necessary, showing us that Panama is a so very attractive country.

September 30, 2007

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