There’s No Such Thing As a S-Hole Country

So stop taking a dump on my Peruvian boyfriend

Photo by Kindel Media from Pexels, Adapted by Author on Canva

I lived in Peru for six years. I met my boyfriend a few months into my stay and we’ve been together ever since. Our relationship opened my eyes to the prejudice people show LatinX people, especially of African descent, particularly Spanish-speaking ones. From friends to esteemed colleagues, people I knew in Peru gave him the cold shoulder at best, and at worst, were combative, insulting and just plain offensive.

Ninety nine ways to kill off a black man

My boyfriend and I went to a nature reserve in Lima with some friends, all of whom were light-skinned, white Peruvians. My boyfriend is Afro-Peruvian. My friends had only met my boyfriend one other time. We arrived, checked in, and made arrangements to go on a boat around the swamp to scope out some birds. Raquel, one of my friends, asked my boyfriend if he knew how to swim. He said he did, and she responded by miming out that she would push him overboard in the boat, and strike him repeatedly with her oars. We all laughed. But I couldn’t help thinking, would I dare to make the same comment about Raquel’s girlfriend? Especially after just meeting her once? I think not.

This continued. We walked into the pantanos, or swamplands where our guide explained that there were many…