'Gringo' as used here & elsewhere
The newsroom was on deadline last Wednesday, and downstairs some of the staff had already begun pasteup when a woman called from San Rafael and began berating business manager Don Schinske over The Light's using the word gringo.
My partner tried to explain we were on deadline and that this was no time to discuss the issue, but when she began talking about throwing rocks at the newspaper office, he handed off the call to me.
It was bad timing on everyone's part. Less than an hour earlier, I had finished writing about the horrible death of a Latino worker, Aldolfo Montiel. The previous day, a machine for breaking up hay bales had killed him only four blocks from our office, and by the time I had finished interviewing people for an obituary, I was absolutely miserable.
And then suddenly, here was this woman in East Marin indignant that we weren't being respectful of folks like her when we referred to them as gringos. I tried to get her off the phone, but she persisted. I began insulting her, hoping she'd take offense and leave me alone. She didn't. I hung up several times, but she kept calling back. However, after enough hangups, she finally gave up. This week, however, I got a followup call from a man who identified himself as belonging to the European-American Forum. Although I was again on deadline and although I find it strange to worry about promoting white culture in this white-dominated country, I tried to reason with him. But when he kept interrupting me, I hung up on him too.
What caused the woman (and perhaps the subsequent caller) to be so obsessed with the word gringo? It is, after all, a fairly common word in casual Spanish both here and in Latin America. It seems the woman had read in an English-language dictionary that in Latin America, gringo is offensive slang for Brits and Americans, so she was choosing to take offense.
Apparently it never occurred to her that an English-language dictionary is not the final authority for defining Spanish words. In fact, Spanish-language dictionaries list numerous definitions for gringo, and only one of them is disparaging.
Having worked in Central America and having spent considerable time with Latinos - both there and in West Marin - I'm personally aware that the word gringo can be neutral, negative, or positive depending the context and the person speaking.
Substitute the word Yankee for gringo, and you'll see what I mean. The American Heritage Dictionary says the most common use of Yankee is a native or inhabitant of New England, a native or inhabitant of a northern state, or a member of the Union Army during the Civil War.
However, the dictionary also notes the word Yankee first came into use during the 1700s with "the term being used derisively by the British for New Englanders." As with gringo, Yankee these days has a neutral, positive, or negative connotation, depending on the speaker and the context.
Having also worked in the Deep South, I can assure you that below the Mason-Dixon Line, Yankee still has negative connotations. In Central America, where gringo is usually a neutral word, the connotation of yanqui depends on the politics of the person talking.
On the other hand, if I were to mention a Yankee clipper ship, the connotation would essentially be neutral while if I spoke of Yankee ingenuity, the connotation clearly would be positive.
Now let's return to the word gringo. Linguists believe that before any of gringo's various meanings had a negative connotation, the word was widely used in Spain to mean Greek - in both senses of the word: a person from Greece and it's Greek to me (i.e. unintelligible).
The Collins Spanish~English, English~Spanish Dictionary is considered one of the best for everyday translating, and its definition of gringo illustrates how narrow a definition the word gets in most English-language dictionaries.
Depending on what Latin American country you're in, gringo alternately means foreign, unintelligible, blond(e), or fair (in appearance), the Collins dictionary notes. The word can also mean dirty foreigner, a Briton, a North American, or a Yankee, the dictionary says.
Because some English-language dictionaries ignore how many meanings gringo actually has in Spanish, people like the woman on the phone can get caught in linguistic paradoxes. If a Latino refers to her family as gringos, in all likelihood his comment is perfectly polite. But because she herself doesn't know everyday Spanish, she can't use the identical word to describe her family without insulting them. Or so she and the European-American Forum imagine. It's bizarre.