the woman of the hour: Maria Belen Chapur

During the last week of June 2009, no one could locate South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, a Republican in his second term. Aids said Sanford, married and with four sons, was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but even they seemed unsure. Then the cat clawed its way out of the bag—Sanford was in Argentina, with his Argentine girlfriend (the press used the old-fashioned word “mistress” to make the story juicier). His wife, it came out, had known about la argentina, Maria Belen Chaper, for a few weeks, and had given Sanford the boot.

“The mistress” is 43, divorced, with 2 children of her own. She works at a multinational agribusiness corporation and is fluent in Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Chinese. She lives, the press reported (with photos and google maps!) in the upscale Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo.

Belen Chaper sounds like a woman of substance and accomplishment. But even if she weren’t, she has, to Sanford, one other enticing allure: she’s foreign. She doesn’t look, smell, sounds or taste like the women in Sanford’s South Carolina home. The very way she thinks, moves, and scrambles an egg is decidedly unfamiliar. And he, in turn, is foreign to her.

Anyone who’s had a foreign fling knows that
ho-hum + foreign accent = doable
& appealing + foreign accent = utterly irresistible

What happens when the fling steadies into a real relationship? Well, then things get tricky. The same foreignness that first drew you in is now, subtly and not-so-subtly, pushing you away. It’s the same thing that happens in every relationship—what draws you in starts to drive you crazy. But with a cross-cultural relationship, the differences are wider and deeper. Those who can manage it end up with a wider frame of reference and a deeper understanding of the varieties of humanness. Either that or they go stark raving mad.

If Sanford ends up staying with his ‘mistress,” let’s check in in a year or two to see how things are going.