An American in Lima

Seventeen days ago I wrote a short post on “The Big Olympics and Little Peru,” about my shifting perspective, as an American expat in Lima, on the Olympic Games.

I thought that one post would be it on the Olympics.

Instead, as I dug for background material on Peru’s thirteen Olympians, I discovered that little was being written about the athletes in English.

Not only that, Peru’s Spanish-language media outlets gave scant coverage to the Games. Newspapers in Lima were more focused on South American fútbol matches than track & field or gymnastics in Beijing.

Faced with an information gap, I decided to fill in as best I could.

I’m not a sports writer. I don’t even know much about sports. But I love the Olympics and I used to earn my living as a researcher, so I went at the project with a stubborn enthusiasm that partly made up for my lack of expertise.

I’d wake up at one in the morning to check stats on the athletes’ official Olympic pages. I’d find myself wondering, the day of a match, Would Cristina Cornejo beat her own record? Would Sixto Barrera make the world take notice?

When I’d mention these names to people in Lima, many would say, “Cornejo?” “Sixto who?” They didn’t have Olympic consciousness, let alone obsessiveness, as I did.

That discovery made me feel lonely. During the first several days of the Olympic Games, I daydreamed about finding a sports bar in Miraflores where I could sit down at a nice, polished-oak counter and drink Cusqueno beer and eat piqueos and watch the Games all afternoon. (Note: I am not a sports bar person.)

Of course I didn’t have any luck finding my Olympic “Cheers” in Lima.

But after posting on the Olympics for several days, I discovered something else: Thousands of people online who were just as interested in Peru’s Olympians as I was: Peruvians living in the United States, or Canada. Americans who’d lived in Peru for a while, then left the country, but couldn’t forget it. These readers found their way to this blog and left their comments – for me, for other fans, for the athletes themselves. I wasn’t alone in cheering for Peru.

Five days after the Olympics began, I’d found my own online sports bar: the readers of An American in Lima.

I posted as often as I could about the Olympics, conscious that Peru’s delegation was largely being ignored by the mainstream media. What attention the athletes were receiving in English-language media was far from encouraging. The lead story on Google searches for “Peru Olympians” during Week 1 was a nasty post by an American blogger who named Peru as the worst of “The World’s Worst Olympians.” (I won’t stoop to publish the link.)

Other bloggers began linking to that post, circulating the specious idea that Peru was a loser country because it had only won four Olympic medals in its history in the Games. Never mind that many countries have won no medals – the proliferation of that ugly post prompted me to counter its effect by posting as much as I could, and to report as fairly and broadly as I was able.

Happily, my posts on the Games began to outrank the sneering American’s. In its own small way, An American in Lima became a temporary haven for people to celebrate the efforts of some of Peru’s finest athletes, who receive little money for training but whose stamina and determination make them heroes in their own right. (Blogger CarlosQC raised this point on his sensitive post about Afro-Peruvians in the 2008 Olympics.) Perhaps you need to spend time in a developing country, like Peru, to understand the magnitude of the achievement of a María Portilla or a Sixto Barrera.

Writing about Peru in the 2008 Beijing Games also enlightened me about something crucial that the North American media has overlooked: Many viewers in the United States and Canada are interested in the fates of other teams, not just those of the U.S. and Canadian delegations. These viewers are frustrated when they try to find relevant programming or information, as some readers of this blog have pointed out.

The problem is especially acute for those living in America, as Renée commented on August 26 (in response to “Trying to Watch the Olympics in Peru“):

Well, I am tired of watching only American athletes in the Olympics. No other competition matches are broacast. It gives the false feeling that Americans are the best in the world and that they win almost everything they play. Sad existence, to say the least… I would love to trade with you for these two weeks, to sit in “La Rosa Nautica”, right at the pier at the base of Miraflores Bay, enjoying mariscos and pisco sours with wonderful Peruvian people around me….

Renée’s not alone in feeling this way. Right now, in the United States, there are 33.5 million Hispanics who speak only English or are fluent in both English and Spanish, notes Hispanic Tips. These readers may live in the U.S. and even be American citizens, but they maintain ties to their home countries as well. Included in this group are many Peruvians. Whether they receive their news in English or Spanish, they want programming that speaks to their concerns.

Many readers and viewers in North America care about what happens in the Southern Hemisphere. Until the traditional media understands this evolution, they’re missing out on the crucial conversations taking part in the blogosphere right now.

Oh, and about that American’s comment that Peru produces the world’s worst Olympians?

Watch for my next post, when I hand out gold medals for the world’s most amazing high-altitude athletes.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.