Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

Over the last two years, and especially since learning how to salsa last summer in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, I’ve been really into Latin music.

Of course, I probably have really terrible taste in Latin music. In fact, I’m almost certain that I listen to the Spanish equivalent of stuff like the Backstreet Boys. But I figure my Spanish is perhaps at the level of a four-year-old, so if I’m listening to music for teenagers then I can’t be doing that badly.

Anyways, there were a few songs that I heard over and over in Guatemala last summer. (Including the overplayed but embarrassingly catchy “Baby Te Quiero,” by the unfortunately named Panamanian singer “Nigga.” Seriously, if you want to ever have a chance of breaking into the American market, why would you choose a name that is a racial slur?) I believe that only one of these songs that I heard was actually Guatemalan.

Ricardo Arjona is a Guatemalan rock singer who plays really cheesy power ballads. On field trips with my Spanish school last summer, we’d play some of his songs on repeat. They are the kind of stuff that I would totally scoff at if they were in English, but they got in my head anyways. One song in particular was really catchy – so much so that when I visited my wonderful friend Michelle (who I met in Guatemala) in D.C. in January, we belted out the tune in her car.

A couple weeks later, I looked up the lyrics.

I got completely offended. Here is the chorus of the song:

Dime que no
y me tendras pensando todo el dia en ti
planeando una estrategia para un si

Dime que no
y lanzame un si camuflageado
clavame una duda
y me quedare a tu lado

Rough translation:
Tell me no, and I’ll spend all day thinking about you, planning a strategy to get you to say yes
Tell me no, but give me a camouflaged yes. Leave me doubting, and I’ll stay at your side.

Now, being obnoxiously hyper-sensitive about this kind of thing, I went “Oh no! This song is just reinforcing the idea that women shouldn’t appear to eager. If we say yes, the men won’t like us, because they will lose the chance to try and conquer us.”

Blah, blah, blah.

I asked a good Guatemalan friend of mine, and he couldn’t understand why I found this offensive. Of course, this is the same friend who say’s I’m oh-so-much-more attractive when I’m being bitchy and aloof.

Of course, then I started to think about it. Maybe this is not a “Latin American” thing or even a “men” thing. I often find it off-putting if a dude is too overly-eager when I first meet him. “I’d never want to be part of a club that would have me as a member,” as the saying goes.

But seriously, give him a “camouflaged yes?” Should women really be expected to play those kinds of games?

Or maybe something is only meaningful if it’s difficult.

Now excuse me while I go listen to the song and enjoy getting annoyed yet again.