Gringos

As I'm sure you know, our neighbors to the south have their own special name for us Americans: gringo. It may come as news to you (it did to me) that the word "gringo" in Brazilian Portuguese doesn't have a negative connotation. "Gringo" is used throughout Latin America to designate Americans or more generally "whities," and it may or may not be derogatory depending on how and when it's used. In Brazil, "gringo" has an even broader meaning than in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, being an informal way to refer to anyone who is foreign:

"Gringo" is thus used today in Brazil in a manner remarkably similar to the way it was used two centuries ago in the Iberian Peninsula. Though it's not meant as an open insult it certainly is not a compliment. It is a euphemism for "funny speaking/looking/acting outsider"; a way of signifying that which is not Brazilian and which has little hope of ever being so. In fact, the term comes awfully close to the original Greek barbaros, a foreign babbler. The term's current preferential association with Americans, Canadians and Northern Europeans is thus perhaps more historically connected to the fact that these groups speak non-Latin based languages ("...foreigners who have a certain kind of accent...") than any physiognomic qualities per se.

The quote comes from an interesting article written by a guy writing his master's dissertation about the term, appropriately entitled "Gringos." He talks about degrees of "gringoness"; one can simply be foreign and thus a gringo, or one can be stereotypically gringo-ish (light eyes/skin/hair, from an imperialist nation, non-Latin language speaker) and very gringo. As a tall, blue-eyed, brown-haired, English speaking American, I am pretty much the epitome of a gringo. My Taiwanese friend, Sphinx, is also a gringa here, but she's less gringo than I am. Even my Columbian exchange student friend Enrique is a gringo in Brazil, a term which, in Columbia, is reserved for Americans.

A Level 5 Gringo