Age: 33
CV
From: Chicago, United States
Education: Masters in creative writing and poetry, University of Miami
Profession: Founder and CEO of Spanglish Exchange
Last book: A Krishna Murthy book
Last film: Rio
Gadget: Blackberry
What’s your first memory of Argentina?
Coming in from the airport and thinking I was going to die during the traffic. I’d never seen anything like it, the driver weaving in and out of the lanes. I was deathly afraid.
Why did you come here?
I was deciding whether to go hiking on Machu Pichu or work on my thesis in Buenos Aires. This was my post-divorce trip, which is very cliché, but since I didn’t speak Spanish I thought a city would be a safer option.
What did you do in those three weeks?
I went to a lot of cafés, and sat forever to write. Took two or three Spanish classes, a salsa class. I then rented an apartment here for two months, as I was taking a semester off from grad school. It made sense to be here where it was cheaper and I didn’t have to be at college until January. And I had met my ex. So I’d fallen in love by that point.
When did Cupid get involved?
Let’s see. I got here on October 8, so on October 15! It was love at first sight. I went dancing and this guy came up to me with a great piropo (chat-up line). I’d never heard one before so anyone could have made it work. It just so happened that his was in English once he realized I couldn’t speak Spanish. I fell in love as I thought it was the sweetest thing.
What was the line?
He said: “All of the women must be so jealous.” And I said: “Why?” And he said: “Because your skin, it’s so beautiful.” I got swept up with the romanticism. All the men do here is tell you how beautiful and wonderful you are. In the US no one does that, at least no one I know. With hindsight, that isn’t one of the typical piropos you hear in the street, such as “call a doctor, I’m having a heart attack.” His was original.
Would there have been such a connection if you hadn’t fallen in love?
I felt I belonged here, in the sense of not liking to be restricted by hours. I felt I fit in. I love to eat so being able to sit at a restaurant and not have anyone bother you, especially as a writer, was amazing to me. I remember thinking: “This is so much better than the US.”
When did you permanently move here?
After a year of going back and forth I moved after my programme finished. We had to decide whether to live here or in Miami and he had two years left of his degree. I bought a house with the idea of sharing time between both countries. My plan wasn’t to make Argentina my home forever…
Why did you buy in San Telmo?
It was the house. I’d only been to San Telmo once! I spent all my time in Palermo and Belgrano. Then the owners lowered the price so it was within my budget…
Any regrets?
Sometimes yes, but only in that half of my friends live in Palermo. At the same time I love San Telmo as there aren’t that many foreigners or expats — it has a more neighbourhood feel to it.
When I go to Palermo, it’s like one big shopping mall filled with foreigners. I can relate to foreigners who live here but not the ones who are just passing through as they still have the mentality of “just take a taxi, it’s so cheap.”
After being here nearly six years, nothing is cheap to me anymore. In fact I’m trying to think in dollars again, as I always want to visit my family in the US, and it’s dollars to get there, dollars once when you’re there. I don’t want to think in pesos any more.
You weren’t planning to live here forever…
The idea had been to teach poetry at college level once I got back to the US, but I couldn’t do that here due to my level of Spanish. I fell pregnant four months after moving and decided to have the baby here. I started coming up with events ideas and Spanglish was one of them. I couldn’t even call them events in the beginning as only eight or 10 people came and it kept losing money! But every one had a good time so I kept doing it.
How old was your son by now?
He was 10 months, and by that point I felt very much that I live here and I was different from other foreigners and I didn’t feel like an expat. I had a child, a house. I felt like an immigrant as I thought I might be here the rest of my life.
Any surprises on raising a child in Argentina?
They don’t like kids in my country that much! It’s funny spending time there as you can’t go to dinner and have everyone get excited that a toddler is there.
I can’t imagine being a single mom in the States. Here, I can afford private medicine, pay a housekeeper twice a week and send my son to a private school.
It’s not because I’m a single mom who makes a lot of money — not even — but it’s more affordable to have those things. It also helps that my own mom lives here.
After our separation I felt stuck, not because I didn’t want to be here but because I had to be — and there’s a distinction.
Why are you forced to live here?
What people don’t realize when their child is born in Argentina is that the law, regardless of whether both parents are Argentine or not, says that the child is an Argentine citizen, which takes precedence while they are here.
So in order to leave the country I need “permission to travel” from my ex until Cassius is 18.
I just discovered that I also can’t leave without my child and if I do, that would be classed as abandonment and I could lose custody. I have to live here because if I leave, I’d be giving up my child and no mother leaves her child.
What would you have done differently?
With hindsight, I’d have had Cassius in the US. However, his father is Argentine and once children come here, I would still have needed that permission to travel.
When I’ve got some more time on my hands, I want to change that law as I think it should be flexible where one parent is a foreigner and stipulate how much time they can spend visiting their home country. Basically I’m held hostage here.
The US Embassy won’t help — “he’s an Argentine citizen” — and although he’s also a US citizen it doesn’t matter. Would Cassius’ US citizenship take precedence in the US? It still would not and Interpol would be able to send us back, which is what happened to that US woman (Cathleen Pizzutello, see story below, United nations?).
Feeling like I am forced to live here as been part of my adjustment process — I’ve been accepting the fact that for the next 14 years Argentina is home.
United nations?
Although having and raising her dual-citizen son, now aged three and a half, on her own in Buenos Aires might not necessarily be the future she would have predicted for herself, Maya May is doing so, first, because she has to, and, second, because she has realized she wants to.
The founder and CEO of Spanglish Exchange says candidly: “No separation is ever a happy one, especially cross-cultural ones, as one parent is afraid the other will kidnap the child, although that sounds crazy.”
It can’t be an easy path, repeatedly seeking permission from an ex partner with whom there may be an acrimonious relationship after a separation, in order to take a holiday or spend time with other family members in a far-off land. Planning a trip with a small child is stressful in itself, never mind wondering whether that child will actually be permitted by their Argentine parent to leave the country.
“What people don’t realize when their child is born in Argentina is that the law, regardless of whether both parents are Argentine or not, says that the child is an Argentine citizen which takes precedence while they are here,” says May.
Which is perhaps where Cathleen Pizzutello, a US citizen, fell down once her marriage to Argentine Teofilo Méndez-Lynch ended.
In a 10-year, highly public, custody battle involving a lot of back and forth between Argentina and the US, Pizzutello and her two sons have been tracked down by Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, in the US, and returned to live in Argentina, while in an attempt to appeal to a judge and obtain permission to travel, she also chained herself and her sons to a courthouse.
A vindictive parent using the law as a weapon against an ex should be ruled in and out. But who is really being harmed at the end of the day?
In a 2010 interview with ABC News, elder son Dylan said: “This court has taken my childhood and really destroyed it. This is my childhood. I don’t remember a time when this hasn’t been an issue in my life. It has taken over and it’s all that really matters in my life.”
Warring parents who can’t reach a custody arrangement over their dual-nationality children, for whatever reason, will only end up damaging their offspring, as Dylan’s comments prove.
But with time comes realization, as May has discovered. “Living in Argentina doesn’t matter so much now because, even if I could move to the US, I wouldn’t.”
First published in the Buenos Aires Herald‘s On Sunday supplement on JUne 19, 2011.
Photo by Diego Kovacic
