“Sorry, Roosi, I don't want this to be all about us being in an interracial relationship.”
– Jhan
It’s the summer of 2024. Two young people — 17-year-old Jhan from Peru and 18-year-old Roosi from Estonia — who fell in love at UWC International School. Two young people from Peru and Estonia explore how history, racism, and imperialism shape their relationship, weaving personal moments with reflections on power, identity, and the legacies of colonialism in today’s world.
We’re finally together after months apart, different time zones, and video calls. A Piece from one of the first conversations in our relationship about race, followed by many others reflecting on how power, domination, and oppression are woven into the geopolitical and historical contexts of the places we call home, the backgrounds and identities by which we know ourselves, and by which the world defines us.
We’re finally together after months apart, different time zones, and video calls. A Piece from one of the first conversations in our relationship about race, followed by many others reflecting on how power, domination, and oppression are woven into the geopolitical and historical contexts of the places we call home, the backgrounds and identities by which we know ourselves, and by which the world defines us.
Geopolitical relations
J:
Before travelling to Estonia to visit Roosi last summer, I was passing through Panama airport. Updating on my travels, I sent a photo of a small graffiti in a toilet that read: “Fuck US imperialism”.
A message one could hardly imagine finding on the walls in Estonia. As in Estonia, the U.S. is seen as a vital lifeline, safeguarding sovereignty through NATO. In Abya Yala (indigenous term for The Americas), it’s a different story: imperialism, abuse, and extraction, toppling governments, backing dictatorships, and facilitating corporate plunder.
During the early 20th century, even before Nazi Germany deployed Zyklon B in gas chambers, the same toxic chemical was used at the U.S.–Mexico border. Mexican migrants were forced into chemical baths as part of "sanitation" programs. On the same stolen land, seized from Mexico in 1848, when the U.S. took what is now part of 8 states, as part of a treaty in which Mexico was forced to cede about 55% of its territory. On the same stolen land, where today's border wall cuts through ancestral territory. Where anti-immigrant laws continue the legacy of conquest, deporting the descendants of the very peoples it displaced.
A message one could hardly imagine finding on the walls in Estonia. As in Estonia, the U.S. is seen as a vital lifeline, safeguarding sovereignty through NATO. In Abya Yala (indigenous term for The Americas), it’s a different story: imperialism, abuse, and extraction, toppling governments, backing dictatorships, and facilitating corporate plunder.
During the early 20th century, even before Nazi Germany deployed Zyklon B in gas chambers, the same toxic chemical was used at the U.S.–Mexico border. Mexican migrants were forced into chemical baths as part of "sanitation" programs. On the same stolen land, seized from Mexico in 1848, when the U.S. took what is now part of 8 states, as part of a treaty in which Mexico was forced to cede about 55% of its territory. On the same stolen land, where today's border wall cuts through ancestral territory. Where anti-immigrant laws continue the legacy of conquest, deporting the descendants of the very peoples it displaced.
The regime of Dina.
While writing this article, Roosi and I joined many grieving families in Lima in their demand for justice and dignity for the 50+ Peruvians (including minors) who were killed by state forces in the protests of 2022-2023. Despite public outcry and widespread documentation of abuses, up to today, perpetrators remain free under a veil of total State impunity.
The demonstrators mainly demanded the resignation of Dina Boluarte. Who, despite the massacres and 98% disapproval from the population, remains the president after the parliamentary coup against Pedro Castillo.
Here, for me, U.S interests of intervention become evident from the nakedly imperialist remarks by SOUTHCOM Commander L.Richardson in 2022, calling Latin America "our neighborhood, overflowing with rare earth minerals”, but “infested with Chinese trade”. To the US Ambassador in Peru, holding meetings with the Peruvian Defense Minister one day before the coup. The Ambassador who, one day after the coup, declared support for the Boluarte regime.
During the bloodshed, the regime’s Congress approved U.S. military training for the Peruvian police and army in “conflict regions”, including the rural south in which most massacres were perpetrated.
One of those regions is Apurímac, a region especially close to my heart, as it is home to my grandparents and ancestors. A place where the rhythm of daily life collides with the machinery of extractivism.
It is also the home to a site of Las Bambas, one of the largest copper mines worldwide. Operated by MMG, a Chinese-Australian multinational. The surrounding communities have for years mobilized, blocked highways, and raised their voices against the contamination of their rivers and lands.
The demonstrators mainly demanded the resignation of Dina Boluarte. Who, despite the massacres and 98% disapproval from the population, remains the president after the parliamentary coup against Pedro Castillo.
Here, for me, U.S interests of intervention become evident from the nakedly imperialist remarks by SOUTHCOM Commander L.Richardson in 2022, calling Latin America "our neighborhood, overflowing with rare earth minerals”, but “infested with Chinese trade”. To the US Ambassador in Peru, holding meetings with the Peruvian Defense Minister one day before the coup. The Ambassador who, one day after the coup, declared support for the Boluarte regime.
During the bloodshed, the regime’s Congress approved U.S. military training for the Peruvian police and army in “conflict regions”, including the rural south in which most massacres were perpetrated.
One of those regions is Apurímac, a region especially close to my heart, as it is home to my grandparents and ancestors. A place where the rhythm of daily life collides with the machinery of extractivism.
It is also the home to a site of Las Bambas, one of the largest copper mines worldwide. Operated by MMG, a Chinese-Australian multinational. The surrounding communities have for years mobilized, blocked highways, and raised their voices against the contamination of their rivers and lands.
But who listens? Is this new? Why does this continue?
China didn’t have to invent a system to extract wealth; it inherited one already polished by the U.S. and consolidated through free trade agreements, investor-state dispute settlements, and arbitration courts like ICSID.
It is a well-documented reality that imperialism in Abya Yala was never just about direct military occupation or overt political control. Instead, its most enduring legacy has been the construction of a legal, financial, and political architecture that systematically privileges foreign capital over the rights of local communities.
In Peru, it is no coincidence that our current constitution was imposed during the Fujimori dictatorship; its 1993 economic model, heavily promoted by the Washington Consensus, as in the rest of Latin America, laid the foundation for extractivism shielded by law.
In practice, its structure binds the Peruvian state to make future contracts on terms that can't be changed without risking multimillion-dollar lawsuits. Take Doe Run, a U.S. mining project that polluted a Peruvian city so badly it became one of the world’s most toxic cities. When Peru tried to hold it accountable, Doe Run sued the state for $800 million.
Whether the looter represents Wall Street or Shanghai, as long as the legal framework imposed by U.S.-style neoliberalism remains intact, local populations will continue to bear the cost of global consumption. That’s why a new popular constituent process, in essence a constitution drafted by the people, has been a central demand of the recent protests, not as an end in itself, but as a tool to rupture with the legal backbone of extractivism.
Legacy of colonialism on whiteness
The day before Roosi arrived in Lima, my aunt asked at the dinner table, “When is Roosi coming?” As I answer, “Tomorrow.” Her husband smiles: “Good boy, you’ll improve the race.” The phrase thickens the air. Everyone is laughing awkwardly. The ghost had entered.
A phrase that has haunted Peru for centuries. Under Spanish colonialism, caste determined value. Whiteness meant access to rights, land, and dignity.
This logic did not disappear with independence; it was rebranded. Through the national ideology of mestizaje, the “mixing of races” reinforced a racial hierarchy. Where whitening, biologically, culturally, and socially, was positioned as desirable. Mestizaje became both a myth of inclusion and a strategy of erasure: Indigenous and Black identities were subsumed into an imagined homogenous mestizo nation. While whiteness remained the ideal. As Anibal Quijano's work on the coloniality of power reminds me, “race continues to function as an organising principle of modern societies in Latin America, despite the end of formal colonial rule”.
This is not just theory. In the 1990s, over 200,000 Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized under USAID-funded programs of poverty reduction. Only 6.7% of Indigenous youth reach higher education. COVID killed Indigenous Peruvians at three times the national average due to a lack of healthcare. Most of the deaths resulting from protests are also of Indigenous people, and indigenous languages (47 officially) are not recognised in state practice, with only 1% of legal proceedings being conducted in them.
Roosi’s presence evokes fascination and admiration, even a sense of validation. She is welcomed, but also objectified; celebrated, but also reduced to a symbol of ongoing racial myth.
But I believe the unease in the room matters. The awkward smiles suggest that something is shifting, that the phrase no longer lands as easily as it once did. There is discomfort. A crack. And through that crack, the myth begins to tremble.
A phrase that has haunted Peru for centuries. Under Spanish colonialism, caste determined value. Whiteness meant access to rights, land, and dignity.
This logic did not disappear with independence; it was rebranded. Through the national ideology of mestizaje, the “mixing of races” reinforced a racial hierarchy. Where whitening, biologically, culturally, and socially, was positioned as desirable. Mestizaje became both a myth of inclusion and a strategy of erasure: Indigenous and Black identities were subsumed into an imagined homogenous mestizo nation. While whiteness remained the ideal. As Anibal Quijano's work on the coloniality of power reminds me, “race continues to function as an organising principle of modern societies in Latin America, despite the end of formal colonial rule”.
This is not just theory. In the 1990s, over 200,000 Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized under USAID-funded programs of poverty reduction. Only 6.7% of Indigenous youth reach higher education. COVID killed Indigenous Peruvians at three times the national average due to a lack of healthcare. Most of the deaths resulting from protests are also of Indigenous people, and indigenous languages (47 officially) are not recognised in state practice, with only 1% of legal proceedings being conducted in them.
Roosi’s presence evokes fascination and admiration, even a sense of validation. She is welcomed, but also objectified; celebrated, but also reduced to a symbol of ongoing racial myth.
But I believe the unease in the room matters. The awkward smiles suggest that something is shifting, that the phrase no longer lands as easily as it once did. There is discomfort. A crack. And through that crack, the myth begins to tremble.
Racism in Estonia
However, when it comes to Jhan's experiences in Estonian society, the awkward smiles and comments play out completely differently.
On Jhan's first visit to Estonia last summer. We're enjoying a cozy summer evening with friends, buying snacks at a Coop in Tartu. As he isn't buying anything, he stands outside the queue, laughing and talking to us while we pay at the checkout. Suddenly, a security guard approaches him and asks to check his tote bag. For Jhan, a minor incident, as regular bag checks are common at Peruvian supermarkets. However, the rest of us stand surprised and confused. Having spent our whole lives living in Estonia, neither of us has ever experienced anything similar, nor almost ever seen it happen to anyone else. The question stands firm: Was this situation suspicion based on racist screening or really an uncommon random check?
On Jhan's first visit to Estonia last summer. We're enjoying a cozy summer evening with friends, buying snacks at a Coop in Tartu. As he isn't buying anything, he stands outside the queue, laughing and talking to us while we pay at the checkout. Suddenly, a security guard approaches him and asks to check his tote bag. For Jhan, a minor incident, as regular bag checks are common at Peruvian supermarkets. However, the rest of us stand surprised and confused. Having spent our whole lives living in Estonia, neither of us has ever experienced anything similar, nor almost ever seen it happen to anyone else. The question stands firm: Was this situation suspicion based on racist screening or really an uncommon random check?
Another moment, a middle-aged lady, with seemingly innocent curiosity, asks
- “Is Peru as violent as Colombia?“
- “Peru is like Colombia, right ? Problems with the drugs?”
- “People killing each other on the streets?”
- “Is it safe to walk around?”
- “You’re from Lima? Not the countryside?”
- “Your parents emigrated from the countryside? So they are peasants, right?!”
Innocent questions of intercultural exchange? But innocent for whom?
I believe the questions reveal assumptions: Latin America means violence and the drug war. Browness means automatic poverty.
Questions based on stereotypes are asked with such ease and normality, revealing the wider structures of racism’s manifestation in nowadays “non-racist” Western societies. Where, despite the hypocritically preached values of non-discrimination, "New Racist” narratives — the expression of negative views about racialised groups without actually using the concept of race strongly persist.
Whilst new racism is hidden behind “polished” stereotyping, direct and violent racist practices are becoming increasingly normalised among the general public of Europe, with the growing popularity of the far-right.
From microaggressions and structural discrimination to physical assaults. An alarming trend, for example, spotted while walking the streets of Tallinn, is being normalized. AC, graffiti. Behind the initials stands “Active Club” — a white supremacist movement directed at youth, especially young men, branded through combat sports and fight clubs. First starting in the US, it has now established a fast-growing network abroad with presence in different European countries as well as in Estonia.
The practice of racism is rooted in and justified based on one's perception of their whiteness within the "white supremacist” framework. However, in Estonia this is particularly conflicting when considering the context of 700 years of slavery in which the Estonian peasants itself was being subjected to violence rooted in the system of “white”, and “greater civilized supremacy” of the Germans and Russians.
Questions based on stereotypes are asked with such ease and normality, revealing the wider structures of racism’s manifestation in nowadays “non-racist” Western societies. Where, despite the hypocritically preached values of non-discrimination, "New Racist” narratives — the expression of negative views about racialised groups without actually using the concept of race strongly persist.
Whilst new racism is hidden behind “polished” stereotyping, direct and violent racist practices are becoming increasingly normalised among the general public of Europe, with the growing popularity of the far-right.
From microaggressions and structural discrimination to physical assaults. An alarming trend, for example, spotted while walking the streets of Tallinn, is being normalized. AC, graffiti. Behind the initials stands “Active Club” — a white supremacist movement directed at youth, especially young men, branded through combat sports and fight clubs. First starting in the US, it has now established a fast-growing network abroad with presence in different European countries as well as in Estonia.
The practice of racism is rooted in and justified based on one's perception of their whiteness within the "white supremacist” framework. However, in Estonia this is particularly conflicting when considering the context of 700 years of slavery in which the Estonian peasants itself was being subjected to violence rooted in the system of “white”, and “greater civilized supremacy” of the Germans and Russians.
So, when does one become white?
The process of Eastern Europe's reclamation of its witness in post-Soviet reconstruction has been explored by I. Law and N.Zakharov work on their reflections on Eastern Europeans' search for race. In trying to westernize and distance themselves from the “peripheral whiteness” with the adaptation of appearance, behavior, and culture, perceived to align with the current norms of ‘Euro‑whiteness’.
Personal reflections on the positionality as an Estonian
Estonians place great importance on remembering our bloody past rightly. But has the narrative of being oppressed also blinded us for seeing the complicity in bloody profits we receive today?
Born into the first post-Soviet generation, I was raised to remember Estonia’s and my family’s history of occupation and repression — carrying the fragments of collective memory I haven’t lived myself. The urgency of joining the EU and NATO for survival doesn’t resonate as deeply with me as it did in 2004, when, according to T. Raun, EU integration was seen as the most significant achievement of the past two decades. Alongside pride in being Estonian, I was also socialized into a broader European identity and belief in the EU’s moral greatness, the “EU values”. A discourse that I understand as support from the EU played an important role in the rebuilding of the post-Soviet Estonian precarity.
Yet one I disagree with.
Starting from the unimaginable horrors committed by the Israeli state over almost two years in Gaza. A genocide broadcasted live 24/7, yet one that EU heads have chosen to ignore.
Wait? Excuse me! What was that?! To ignore? A genocide, but funded and supported by most of the EU countries.
We have seen no sanctions, but loud complicity from the EU countries. The same ones that, under the flag of protection of human rights and commitment to international law, like to claim their moral greatness.
Wait? Excuse me! What was that?! To ignore? A genocide, but funded and supported by most of the EU countries.
We have seen no sanctions, but loud complicity from the EU countries. The same ones that, under the flag of protection of human rights and commitment to international law, like to claim their moral greatness.
From political to economic complicty, the road is not short.
Jason Hickel's book “Divide” explores the concept of unequal exchange of labor. Between 1990 and 2015, the Global South transferred over $242 trillion in unequal labor and resources to the Global North—subsidizing its GDP by a quarter over that time. Unequal exchange shows how the Global North appropriates vast quantities of labour and resources by undervaluing payment for workers and raw resources, hence exporting the bulk of the value.
Structural economic imbalances in trade, wages, international debt, and global governance mechanisms, e.g, in the form of neoliberal policy conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank for receiving loans, continue fueling inequality profitable for the few.
Structural Adjustment Plans applied in the 1980s-90s, which made many countries in the “Global South” cut their social programs and governmental subsidies in the name of market liberalisation and as a condition for receiving loans. Created favourable conditions for foreign investment and multinational exploitation. Market conditions such that domestic unsubsidised products were not able to compete with foreign ones, a legacy of a system which pushed many countries back from the progress they made in 60s-70s on combating poverty.
From the wealth of Central Europe, which was built on slavery and colonisation, to today, transnational corporations. The cycles of inequality and plunder cannot be broken without restructuring the systems enabling corporate greed and favoring the immense wealth of the few over the dignity of all. Neoliberal logic based on the unlimited extraction of resources.
I believe that as Estonians, we should more often take a further look and take accountability in our current position for benefiting from Europe’s wealth earned with exploitative and bloody practices today.
To love across borders is not neutral. It means navigating power, history, and the desires we’ve unconsciously inherited. But love can also resist. Loving radically means unlearning the logics of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. It means abolishing the hierarchies that shape intimacy. In our case, love has been a place for great reflection.
Structural economic imbalances in trade, wages, international debt, and global governance mechanisms, e.g, in the form of neoliberal policy conditions imposed by the IMF and World Bank for receiving loans, continue fueling inequality profitable for the few.
Structural Adjustment Plans applied in the 1980s-90s, which made many countries in the “Global South” cut their social programs and governmental subsidies in the name of market liberalisation and as a condition for receiving loans. Created favourable conditions for foreign investment and multinational exploitation. Market conditions such that domestic unsubsidised products were not able to compete with foreign ones, a legacy of a system which pushed many countries back from the progress they made in 60s-70s on combating poverty.
From the wealth of Central Europe, which was built on slavery and colonisation, to today, transnational corporations. The cycles of inequality and plunder cannot be broken without restructuring the systems enabling corporate greed and favoring the immense wealth of the few over the dignity of all. Neoliberal logic based on the unlimited extraction of resources.
I believe that as Estonians, we should more often take a further look and take accountability in our current position for benefiting from Europe’s wealth earned with exploitative and bloody practices today.
To love across borders is not neutral. It means navigating power, history, and the desires we’ve unconsciously inherited. But love can also resist. Loving radically means unlearning the logics of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. It means abolishing the hierarchies that shape intimacy. In our case, love has been a place for great reflection.
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This material is part of the PERSPECTIVES 2 project – a new label for independent, constructive, and multiperspective journalism. The project is funded by the European Union. The opinions and positions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). The European Union and EACEA assume no responsibility for them. Learn more about PERSPECTIVES.
This material is part of the PERSPECTIVES 2 project – a new label for independent, constructive, and multiperspective journalism. The project is funded by the European Union. The opinions and positions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). The European Union and EACEA assume no responsibility for them. Learn more about PERSPECTIVES.
