Latin Americans Research Paper

There are many times in the course where I have seen Latin Americans respond to events different than North Americans would, but the different reactions mainly came from the indigenous people. The example I saw that was most prominent is “Huaorani time”. The Huaorani live in the now, when they say it is going to be two hours more, it is going to be more around eight. They don’t think about the future all they think about is the here and now. They do not save food, or when they do other Huaorani come and take it because they do not understand why have food if you are not going to use it. They do not take time for granted whereas we do.
Us Northern American know that tomorrow is not promised but it does not keep us from putting things off until the future. We say ‘what we cannot do today we can do tomorrow’, it almost gives us an excuse of why change happens so slowly. There are a lot of reform movements, climate change for example. We keep saying that things are going to change that we are going to save the planets but then it is pushed off until next year, the decade, the next generation. Because it is almost as if we don’t think something truly bad can happen. You also see how time is taken for granted when there is a murder. People so ‘Oh they were so young, they had so much life to live.’ For us good and bad things have
an end and we know that we cannot live in that emotion forever. We have lives to get back too.
The Huaorani on the other hand live every day as their last, but I bet if you lived in a place where everything and everyone wanted you dead you too would learn that life is a precious commodity.
To us they may seem reckless, never planning for the future, but if you are always waiting for the future to happen when do you have time to live your life? When the Huaorani experience an emotion it has been described as if it will last forever, I think it is this way because to them it might. They may be killed before the next emotion can come in. To them there is no need to save food because why should you have something that you are not going to
use.
I know there are many more differences between the North Americans and the Latin Americans, but the concept of time is something that I feel is very important. Looking at time you can really see how different our cultures influence how we see time. North Americans are more developed than our Latin American counterparts. To those who know the real struggles of life, and know what it is like to live in danger of death, the Huaorani, they live for the moment. Those who can hide behind a false sense of security they are the ones that wait time and take it for granted.