It's nothing personal, just human nature.

Many fellow Colombians, for many different reasons, are living abroad these days. Some of them were forced to do it. Others, like me, had the chance of making that decision. Even if I do not know too many Colombians abroad, a common conversation topic between Colombians abroad is the kind of information foreigners have about Colombia. We even have fun sometimes. Indeed, it is not difficult to hear pretty strange stuff such as "oh, you're from Colombia, so you speak Portuguese, right?" As an immediate reaction, one starts thinking about the education the person who said that has. After some thoughts, however, I think I have found a good justification for that kind of questions. This is the topic of this post.

An interesting part of a country's culture concerns the perception the country (that is, people living in that country) has of other countries. In this line, a country has "rivals", which are seen in that way because of political, historical or even sport reasons. In the same line, there are countries that are "friends" to each other (again, this means that people of one country see people of the friend country with a positive, open attitude), and so on. Only after you have lived in the country for a while, you manage to understand well these issues.

As a whole, a country's attitude is only the amplified version of its people's attitude. So, just like you have people you respect, a country has other countries they respect or admire, for any given reason. Just as you know certain other people only their names, people in one country might only have heard of some country, but have no real idea of what such a place looks like. (Several youtube videos on the perception people in USA have of other countries illustrate well this idea.) To keep things short, my point is: as a citizen of a country, you only know well those countries that your own country regards as important. That is, countries only care about their "peers"; countries rarely look down, down to those unknown (and/or distant) other countries.

I realized that when I was asked about Belize. In spite of being in central america, I don't know anything about Belize apart from the fact that's a very small country in which English is the official language. According to some "distance criterion", I should know more about Belize than, say, an Italian, because Colombia is closer to Belize than Italy. (I have found that this "distance criterion" is more common in people's minds than I imagined. According to this criterion, all southamerican countries are more or less the same: they speak similar languages and one needs to cross an ocean to reach them.)

Why should a Colombian know about Belize? Well, I have found no good reasons. I guess that apart from drawing it on some map in primary school, I never got information on Belize. (It turns out that drawing a country into a map is the closest many persons get to know about distant countries.) That's my primary school teacher's fault. Now I know nothing about Belize and that's certainly my fault. Do I need to know more, or do I feel curious about Belize? No, not at all. The English fact is a curious thing to know for some trivia, but no more than that. Perhaps if I meet someone from Belize things would be different...

That exercise on a country I don't know was useful to understand that Colombia is a country most people don't care about. That's the reality. OK, people relate drugs and Colombia very easily, and that's a burden because some minds are not able to assimilate there's more beyond that shameful reality. Why should an Italian (French, Danish, almost any citizenship fits here...) know something about Colombia? Really, there's no good reason. Colombia and Italy (or the country you chose) never had any strong diplomatic relationships, excepting perhaps some isolated event. We had no European immigration, so there was no chance for cultural interchange. Apart from some sportsmen (and Pablo Escobar), there are no famous Colombians widely known abroad. (Surprisingly enough, I have found that many foreigners ignore that some famous Colombians are actually Colombians.)

Colombians unaware of this fact complain: "we know so much about this country: we know the language they speak, the name of the capital, who's the president, the football... how come they don't have a similar background on us???" The same Colombians usually confuse this very unique aspect of human nature with ignorance. They think knowledge on other countries should be symmetric, and since we look up at Europe, Europe should look down on us. They get offended, thus finding more reasons to not interact (or to interact with prejudices) with foreigners. They never talk again with the person who made a drug-related joke.

At the end, they do not realize that Colombia is "below" for people in many countries, and since countries do not look down, foreigners have no reason to know about Colombia. Meeting a Colombian is usually not a good reason. That's the way it is: it's nothing personal, just human nature.