Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Qupperneq 32

32 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 16 — 2014HUMANS
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THREE TIMES A CHARM
AT HARPA CONCERT HALL
Keeping The
Romance Alive
Mexicans:
They’re Everywhere—
Part 3
As fate would have it, Libertad wound up
falling in love with an Icelander she met
online. After a period of courtship, the two
made plans to convene in person, and, as
they say, the rest is history. “I was going to
come to Iceland to meet him. However, I
worked as a consultant, and not long af-
ter we met I got a three-month job, so I
couldn’t really take off,” she shares over
the phone. “So, I said to him, ‘why don’t I
get you a ticket to come here and stay with
me for a while?’”
And he did.
From chaos to calm
Libertad hails from Michoacán, a state
in the Southern Pacific region of Mexico
that has been in the news of late due to an
outbreak of drug war-related fatalities. In
recent months, locals—tired of the crime,
disappearances, rape and unfair taxation—
have banded together in a self-defence
group to fight against the Knights Templar
cartel. As a result, organized crime in the
state has taken a turn for the worse.
“When I went to Mexico in 2011, there
was a shooting next to my mom’s house.
We were all there when my neighbour’s
son was executed. He was only seven-
teen,” she confides. Libertad doesn’t
sound shaken by the horror story she’s re-
laying, although she admits to a lingering
fear for those she left behind. In contrast,
one of the things she enjoys most about
living in Reykjavík is the ability to breathe
peacefully. “I used to live in Mexico City—
with a population of twenty million. This
place allows me to walk,” she says.
Mexicans tend to be careful at all
times. Locking the door, avoiding walking
alone at night, holding on tight to valuables
and keeping flashy jewellery at home are
all part of the national lifestyle. It’s just the
way it is. In Iceland, however, Libertad has
never felt unsafe. “Sometimes the silence
is overwhelming,” she says, “but I learned
to slow down my pace and enjoy myself.”
Yes! We have no bananas
As was to be expected, Libertad experi-
enced a bit of culture shock once she re-
located to Iceland. Her bubbly and friendly
demeanour, for example, is not the norm
in her new country, as she would learn.
“My husband is always dumbfounded by
the way I act towards people,” she says,
admitting that she is perhaps more chatty
than the common Icelander. “Or what hap-
pened with my sister in law! For some rea-
son, I was always hungry when I arrived at
her house. She used to keep a bowl filled
with bananas, and I never thought twice
about grabbing one and eating it. One day,
however, she told me that I owed her a
bunch of bananas.” This took Libertad by
surprise. “The next time I visited,” she goes
on, “I brought along a kilo of bananas. And
I never grabbed one again. In Mexico, fam-
ily is always welcome to the table. If you
haven’t had any breakfast, you eat break-
fast. It’s just how it is.”
When asked about what she misses
most about Mexico she immediately re-
sponds, “The food, and the weather,” with
not a second thought. “The concept of
going to the market like we do in Mexico
simply doesn’t exist in Iceland. Here you
only find produce in a cold section in the
supermarket. Although I have to admit that
by now we can find staples that weren’t
available ten years ago, like avocado and
cilantro,” she says.
Libertad says she’s now used to not
seeing any hot foods at parties, something
that is perfectly normal in Mexico. “Here
they will offer five different cakes, cheeses
and maybe a salad. That’s it. You don’t re-
ally have dinner, it’s more like coffee be-
ing served,” she explains. In Mexico, if
you attend a party, you can come with an
empty stomach and leave the party with a
Tupperware container filled with leftovers,
also known as itacate. It’s a very bountiful
culture when it comes to food. As for local
fare, Libertad had to learn the hard way
that rice pudding—what Mexicans would
only regard as a dessert—was something
people ate with sausage as a main course.
“The food here is very different. When they
gave me that pudding, I kept telling them,
‘That’s not food, that’s dessert!'”
Obviously, one of the most striking
contrasts between Iceland and Mexico is
the climate—the weather. “Winters here
are very long and intense,” Libertad says.
“I’m still getting used to the idea of having
to wear a ton of clothes everywhere I go.”
What really gets to her, though, is the lack
of sunlight. “I find that lately, it does affect
me a bit more not having a lot of sun. I get
bored in the darkness.”
Language matters
Living in the capital gives Libertad greater
opportunity to speak her mother tongue.
“Most of my friends are foreigners and
Latin-Americans,” she says. “I really don’t
know if it’s easy to
have Icelander friends.
I think it’s possible, but
they are very reserved
and perhaps under-
stand friendship in a
different way.”
The cultural dif-
ferences, along with
her new situation as a
mother of an Icelandic/Mexican baby, has
lead Libertad on a search for new ways to
share experiences, needs and frustrations
with other expats. “I participated in the for-
mation of a Spanish-speaking Association
to create a platform that brings together
Spanish-speaking people and help them
incorporate into Icelandic society.”
While the community is quite small,
Libertad says, the people who attend now
have a place where they can share their
struggles. The Association also works
with Móðurmál, a local association meant
to help preserve new Icelanders’ mother
tongues. That way, children born from
Spanish-speaking parents can find a way
to be bilingual.
One thing that concerns Libertad is
seeing her children grow in this extremely
safe environment, where it seems like
nothing can ever go wrong. “Children
aren’t necessarily street smart,” says Lib-
ertad, “I think we [as foreigners] are at
an advantage because we grew up in big
cities, we know what bad looks like. That
worries me, but at the same time I’m so
happy to see my kid living a peaceful and
carefree childhood.”
For Libertad, one of the most inter-
esting aspects of Icelandic culture was
realizing how active
women were in the
educational and politi-
cal scenes. “Icelandic
women do a lot and I
respect them for that,”
says Libertad. But that
sense of equality can
be seen in every as-
pect of the family dy-
namic. “When my mom came to visit, she
was very surprised to see that I could leave
the baby with my husband and go out with
my friends. The idea of taking off without
leaving a plate of food for the husband
to reheat is unheard of in most Mexican
families,” she notes. And that is one of
the things she doesn’t miss at all from her
home country. “Men can be very macho
over there. Here, it’s not like that at all.”
When asked about the future, Libertad
admits she is here to stay. “Twenty years
from now I hope to have learned Icelan-
dic already, since it’s really hard for me to
speak. I hope my daughter is happy and at
ease. And I have faith that things will get
better in Mexico one day, that this crisis
won’t last forever.”
No Mexicans were harmed in the writing of
this article.
Thank you, Libertad Venegas for your
valuable time. ¡Muchas gracias!
And special thanks to the Mexican Em-
bassy in Denmark for helping me spread
the word and begin my research.
Photo
Hörður Sveinsson
Words
Jessica Solt
In our third and final instalment of “Mexicans: They're Every-
where,” we meet Libertad Venegas. Prior to her first visit to
Iceland, the only thing she knew about the country was that it
was home to a famous singer called Björk. For Libertad, that
tiny speck of earth above Europe with the intimidating name
was a land of total mystery.
“Twenty years from now
I hope to have learned
Icelandic already, since
it’s really hard for me to
speak. I hope my daugh-
ter is happy and at ease.
And I have faith that
things will get better in
Mexico one day, that this
crisis won’t last forever.”