Peru and the Half-Blood Prince

LIMA, Peru – I traveled to Peru to, like any study abroad trip, practice Spanish, to learn about South American history, and to immerse myself completely in another culture.

So naturally last Wednesday I opted to partake in the most traditional of Peruvian cultural activities: making the opening night showing of the new “Harry Potter” movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

All right, I confess. Seeing my favorite British children’s series played out on the big screen isn’t exactly the reason I traveled all the way to South America. But I convinced myself if it was playing in Peru, Peruvians must like Harry Potter too. Clearly that makes it an opportunity for cultural exchange, right?

However, one foot in the theater and I realized how wrong I was. The 8 p.m. showing with subtitles was an expatriate setting to a lost Hemingway novel, with nothing but “gringos,” as one of the Hispanic members of our group pointed out.

Still, seeing the oh-so-familiar story played out with Spanish subtitles was interesting in and of itself.

I learned, while I was waiting in the ticket line, that the book’s title (“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” for those of you uncool enough not to know) had two very different Spanish translations.

The more common title, and the one that appeared on my ticket, “Harry Potter y la Misterioso del Principe,” translates to “Harry Potter and the Mystery of the Prince.”
But the more literal translation of the English name and the one many Peruvians use is “Harry Potter y el Principe Mestizo,” a title that is charged with the particular undertones of a difficult racial history in South America.

“Mestizo” is a word that harks back to the days of the Spanish conquest of South America. When Pizarro and the conquistadors arrived in Peru, many of them fathered children with members of the local indigenous population, producing a mixed European and indigenous race, which the Spanish dubbed “mestizo.”   

The conquistadors also brought with them the Spanish tradition of a racial hierarchy.
In Peru, they used words like “mestizo” and “cholo” to make fine distinctions between races. And these distinctions laid the foundation for a racially stratified social system, wherein lighter-skinned people were offered more social opportunities than their darker-skinned counterparts.

So, Wednesday night when Snape confessed to Harry that he was in fact the “principe mestizo,” it was clear to everyone in that Lima theater – gringos and Peruvians alike – that old Spanish words like “mestizo” still have a powerful meaning.

When I got into the cab after the movie, I couldn’t help but notice my cab driver’s mixed skin. Was he a descendant of a mestizo family? Was he relegated to driving a cab because of the forsaken opportunities the color of his skin gave him?

Of course, dissecting the relationship between history, race and contemporary society is as tricky in Peru as it is in America. But as he drove me to my light-skinned host mother’s middle-class house, I couldn’t help but wonder – had Harry Potter helped me understand something about Peru after all?