Santa Anita, Guatemala - Erin McIlvain

Santa Anita la Union was the last place that we traveled to in Guatemala before venturing to Mexico. It was a small community founded by ex-guerillas. The community was founded on the idea of creating a self-sustaining community free from the government in order to try to bring the power back to them. They grow, harvest, roast, and package amazing organic, free trade coffee that we had the privilege of drinking everyday! The community is settled in the mountains and surrounded by lush, green life.

It was mind blowing for me to see this environment working together towards a common goal of becoming independent from the government then comparing that to the United States. I think that being in that place helped me to see the world of living off of the land and the resources that surround you. Land is taken for granted in the United States, but seeing the way the resources of the Earth are used and cherished is truly beautiful.



We spent a day with families in the community and in our particular experience we ventured into the jungle for wood for the stoves. The experience was particularly rewarding because Grace and I found ourselves with only each other and without someone who is fluent in Spanish, which was a first. It ended up being really great because we were able to carry a conversation and understand what was going on which really helped with our Spanish. We were with a family that had about fifteen different trees growing in the backyard each with a different fruit! They were growing corn in the garden and had thirty ducks and a few chickens in the backyard. In the right season they would be able to live completely off their own land.

While walking through the jungle I was thinking about the guerillas fighting against the government and wondering if I could be that brave? Could I leave my home with (maybe) a gun and travel through the mountains and jungle of Guatemala? Could I stand up to my government and physically fight against them?

From a City to an Open Road - Julia Sisson

The transition from Oaxaca city to the two-lane highway that leads to the coast hit me quickly and unexpectedly. One moment we were sitting in traffic, stopped at red lights, breathing in the heat and fumes rising off the asphalt, and the next we were barreling down a road, hardly a house or person in sight, just cacti, mountains, and speed.

The month long travel seminar is already over. It's 'spring break' now, time to go back home, travel to the beach, or just disappear for awhile. I wanted to relax and disappear for a week, so I went to the beach (Mazunte, Oaxaca). But I realize that I cannot disappear, I cannot escape. My mind is still churning through all that we Border Study students have done this past month. Who we've met, what we've learned, what questions people posed to us, how our beliefs and perspectives on the world have been challenged or changed.

So I sit on this beach and think about tourism, escapism, and the layered inequality that is so foundational to the world we live in right now. And the bright sun and beautiful ocean with its rolling calm waves do not match my mood. And the cold beers and dancing at night do not clear my mind, do not help me put my thoughts on hold for a moment.

This vacation hot spot, this chilled out escape, it just embodies the privileges and power some people are able to hold at the expense and smothering of many others. And no matter how friendly people are, no matter how much music is shared, this is a very self-indulgent, individualistic, and violent place in my opinion. It is a dream, what many people want and strive for, but its fun times and faux idyllic feel cannot completely cover what this place is built on. And the relationships of server and entitled client, entertainment and entertained, worker/producer and consumer are ever-present and oppressive.

Borderlands Learning - Beth Lowry

Since around the third week of this semester, I have been experiencing a sense of apprehension when I look forward to my return to the small liberal arts school I attend in Ohio. In these weeks spent in the Borderlands and farther south, my eyes are opening to a new reality about our country and indeed our world that is all too easy to ignore when one dwells among well manicured college grounds nestled among the rolling hills of Amish country.

The landscape of Tucson - the saguaros and cloudless winter skies and parched redbrown earth - is so dramatically distinct from that which I have occupied for the first 20 years of my formal education. Even more dramatic, though, is the contrast between the nature of the education I have received during those many years, and the learning environment in which I am now ensconced. Like most who are privileged enough to have the opportunity to pursue higher education, I have spent a great deal of time learning in classrooms, from text books and lectures and overhead projectors. It is a landscape of facts and figures, syllabi and grading rubrics. By my sophomore year at Kenyon, I could define import-substitution industrialization on my history midterm and spit out a a ten page paper on the implementation of neoliberalism in Mexico and call myself a Latin American Studies major, and a GOOD one at that, with a GPA that put my name on the Merit List semester after semester. And so coming to the Borderlands with these definitions and historical processes ingrained in my mind I felt well prepared, sure and confident in my world analysis.

Yet the landscape of my education with Border Studies has caused me to question and rethink, indeed unlearn, nearly everything I had learned about Latin America until now. This learning process has most assuredly been informed and enhanced by facts and figures, but in Gambier, Ohio, those facts don't manifest themselves so visibly as I have seen on the border and the communities we passed through this past month on our travel seminar. In these places, we did not so much learn the facts of militarization and the figures of free trade agreements as we did see and feel them. Leaving Mexico, I have a more profound sense for the impacts of neoliberalism there in a way that no letter grade could communicate. There is no formal or personal affirmation for owning that knowledge, but there is a lot of guilt and frustration.

The excerpts that my peers have shared of their individual and our collective experiences this semester give shape to that newly defined landscape of the way we learn about the world and our role within it, one that is fraught with confusion and sorrow that are at times overwhelming. And this is where that aforementioned dread begins to take root. It is a dread of having to reconcile these two landscapes, to return to a midwestern campus with the weight of the Borderlands reality bearing heavily upon my mind and heart. I hope that in these coming five weeks we will continue to develop a better sense of how to navigate this challenge, but a more realistic part of me recognizes that reconciling the realities learned here with the way I learn after this semester is a process that will be part of the rest of my life, wherever I find myself.

Inspiration - Irhad Strika

I have once again been reminded of the cruel reality surrounding us, whether we like it or not. Being able to have had a chance to hear an extensive talk about the reality of militarization in the state of Chiapas and the Zapatista uprising has again made me feel a little bit upset about the unrealized and often hidden truths of continuous dehumanization and exploitation of ordinary people. I have realized that the only certain thing about the current travel experience is the battle between hope and despair. My group and I are learning about the horrifying stories of people's suffering, while trying to build up our own. These experiences are often so harsh that it is almost inevitable to get to the point of feeling desperate and powerless. It is as if there is no way out. It is striking to the point where people feel no desire to keep living; they feel like dying.

Then again, there is another half of the wave, the one that strongly picks you up. There is a light at the end of the tunnel; every storm ends with the shining sun; every closed door opens another. I have to come to realize that very often one specific event or one day can depict the most profound emotions and oscillations in our lives. On a sunny day of 9 March 2011, I have had an opportunity to enter the sacred space of Centro Indigena de Capacitacion Integral (CIDECI). Just roaming around their campus made me feel very optimistic and energized, as if the buildings, plants and humans were exhaling a unique, powerful and epidemic sense of hope.
Centro Indigena de Capacitacion Integral (CIDECI) is a campus based community that works on providing opportunities for people from indigenous communities that have no chance of proper basic human needs, and specifically education. It is completely free, and they currently have around 120 students learning number of different areas of knowledge including literacy, agriculture, agro-ecology, philosophy, systems of autonomy, analysis of world systems, automechanics, hidrography etc. All of these areas of knowledge have a very pragmatic approach in terms of the way they are thought, and teachers have a position of being a role model and a close friend to students. The most significant part of the community is their autonomy, which is defined as the independence from the central government and ability to live their lives as they please. They have their own well, electric generator, sewage and trash system. Farm produces 30-50% of their food needs and surrounding forest is where they have houses for sheep, pigs, chickens and rabbits.

A center of “knowledge building” breeds a life of dignity and trust. It is a place where those previously ignored get their voices heard; those without opportunities are given a chance for the first time in their life; those misinterpreted and misunderstood are carefully listened to; those without hope find it and fortify it all over again.

How Was Your Trip? - Sam Williams

Just fresh off of our talk with Witness for Peace, at then end of our time in Oaxaca, and after discussing how we were going to approach sharing the information we had learned to the people we talk to post-trip, I got my chance. Twice. I woke up in Oaxaca city, had a lovely breakfast with the last girls left, and then set off on my trip back to Tucson.

On my flight from Mexico City to Houston I began writing to a friend, but about half an hour before landing started talking to a very nice man in my row from Chihuahua (what’s up Yessenia), who ironically (as I found out after we had been talking for a while) sells transformers to electric plants all over Mexico. But he asked me what I was doing and then began to ask more about my semester. He became the quintessential supportive, interested party we talked about in our debrief in Oaxaca, and wanted to know everything he could about NAFTA, the School of the Americas, and a bunch of other topics we got into as he peppered me with questions. I ended up leaving our Spanish NAFTA reading from the WfP booklet with him, but all the time sort of wondered who exactly he was selling these parts for these hydroelectric plants to, which he told me at the end are mostly state-owned clients. Hmmm… Then we landed in Houston.

George Bush International Airport is always an interesting experience. Waiting in line to get through immigration and customs is, in my expert opinion, the best people watching to be had anywhere. I finally made it through the line, after a number of families got put through the wringer ahead of me, getting fingerprinted and photographed. I got asked one question and sent on my way. After I found out my flight was delayed I set off to find dinner. I ended up at Chili’s, hoping I could get a salad and a soup after all our digestive adventures in Mexico. I asked for my salad, and my absolutely enormous and bearded waiter asked me what dressing I wanted: Ranch, Bleu Cheese, or Honey Mustard. Coming from the land of lime juice for dressing all I could think was “Welcome back to America,” a feeling that was only compounded by the conversation being had to my left between three young men rivaling my gargantuan waiter in height and breadth. Their accents were by far the most Southern I had ever heard in my life and they talked about school lunches and barbecue. Cue a call from Riley. As I spoke it became clear they were listening to every word I said, and as soon as I hung up they asked me where I had just come from. The test of a lifetime…where do I start?

I knew for certain that I could not broach the topic of the corrupt and dominant U.S. Government and its questionable tactics abroad, so I started with the basics, sort of hoping I could just avoid the conversation and eat my food. But it was not to be—they were just as interested as my seatmate from the plane, but clearly in a slightly different way. I told them about the program and my work at Florence to start. More questions… They tell me how they work construction near College Station, TX, and how so many of their colleagues are illegal aliens who don’t pay taxes, and aren’t the people you work with just criminals? They weren’t letting me go so easy. So I thought of how I might convey the impossibility of avoiding migration experienced by so many Mexicans and other Latin Americans. NAFTA for enormous Texan McCain supporters? OK, here goes… So the U.S. signed this free trade agreement blah blah blah they said they would cut subsidies to their farmers and didn’t blah blah blah but the Mexican government had to, and now the farmers there can’t sell their corn for anywhere near as much as they could before blah blah blah, but the point is, if the government here stopped paying subsidies to the farmers, they would be just as in need of a living wage—which they barely make now anyway—as are many of the migrants you see in the U.S., those here with and without papers. Then I laid some stats on them for good measure.

After that, one of them, to my surprise, nodded and smiled, said that made sense, one started hitting on me, and one was totally nonplussed. But they kept asking me questions about whether these aliens would ever pay taxes if you gave them the chance? And, aren’t the ones in detention criminals? And, Can’t they just move to cities if they can’t work in the country? I tried to answer in the least inflammatory way possible without ever saying Obama, Liberal, Republican, Democrat, McCain (until about 1 minute before we parted) etc., hoping not to push any buttons that would turn off the information receptors of my bafflingly interested countrymen. As they had me talk to them about PPP and the SOA and paramilitaries, and then one of them talked to me about what they knew about gangs, and how construction workers on the border are allowed to carry pistols to shoot at the narcos coming to kill them and sell their body parts on the black market, I felt for the first time (not) that I was maybe, possibly, fighting a losing battle. But they just kept asking more questions and by the end generally agreeing with some (a couple) of the points I was making (while ignoring or disagreeing with others), and as I was paying for my dinner asked THE question. Yeah, you know the one. “Yeah, but all this is bad, but why should I care, it’s not like I can do anything about it right?”

Just another moment where you have identified your audience from the beginning, and just try to find some common ground, have an amiable (and in my case, quite funny) conversation, and hope that any one of your ridiculously demonstrative facts stuck with them in some sort of positive way. Like the kind of way that will elicit a dissenting vote when Jannie Bannanie Brewer, the puppy dog of governors, asks for her own personal militia. My three behemoth Texan acquaintances walked me to my gate with smiles and handshakes and told me they hoped they never saw me on the news.

San Cristóbal - Julia Sisson

I find this city to be strange and complex, feelings which are accentuated by the rain and hail storms that rush through with little notice. The juxtaposition of dreaded Europeans opening up bars with the name of Revolución, and indigenous women and children trying to sell bracelets and shawls to indifferent tourists only makes the feelings stronger.

While at CIDECI - Centro Indígena de Capacitación Integral - a man named Ivan talked about the density of San Cristóbal, the energy and mixing of peoples, cultures, modernity, and the post-modern. The complexity, and contradictory nature of the city and the businesses here can be overwhelming to me. CIDECI, an 'anti-school,' where teachers are learners and learners are teachers, and practice and theory are explored together, is an autonomous space where the strangeness of San Cris can melt away.

There is also a cafe in San Cristobal with the name of 'TierAdentro' - within the earth. It claims to support Zapatista communities, but I have heard mixed opinions, like most things here. Many businesses profit off the commodification and commercialization of revolutionary ideals, Zapatismo, and alternative ways of organizing (socially and economically). Cafes, hotels, boutiques, and other businesses have recognized how profitable it is to incorporate anti-neoliberal Zapatismo into neoliberal capitalism so that 'radical,' 'alternative' tourists can buy it up and feel like they are supporting a movement of the people, like they are in solidarity with Zapatista communities in Chiapas.

But walking by TierAdentro almost everyday, has made me think more about this idea of within the land. It is where roots grow and life's foundations are formed, and without your roots, how do you know who you are? How do you sort out your identity? Without your roots how do you know where to go?

My roots are not in this city. And this trip has helped me realize that I want to work in the U.S., where my roots are, because that's where i can push and grow, that is where I'll understand where I want to be going and why.
I want to dig deep into the earth, and understand the soil that my roots are in.

Acronyms - Sam Williams

PPP NAFTA CCA TPD USNG DHS ICE PCJ CADC CAFTA PROCEDE DESGUA FIRRP NMD FCC ADM CONASUPO MASECA WB IMF G8 PAN PRD PT PP PROCAMPO SAP IDB FTAA SPP IBRD WTO MI PM CAF BCIE FTAA CIA FBI TLCAN OMC APPO ASARO PEMEX CEMEX PRI PVEM OPEC CCAMYN DESGUA INM HRW AI EZLN FRAYBA SOA WHISC WHINSEC BP UNE UCN PU URNG GAN MAREZ GC PFP PEP PEC PEF PSP PJF PJE INM GAFE OCEZ NU USA EUM PRONACOM FTN UPRR PGT MRP FAR EGP ORPA IFI DF COMI EDUCA CODIGODH CDH CPS PCADC SPC INS NSC NSA USM USMC DD BP CIS MIDP USDA CBP NTA DOE DOL IV NISGUA VAWA THE ALPHABET OF NEOLIBERALIZATION MILITARIZATION REVOLUTION RESISTANCE GLOBALIZATION AND NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ALL THE ACRONYMS OUT THERE…

Caracol Time - Julia Sisson

When we went to Morelia, a Zapatista caracol, an autonomous space where the seat of buen gobierno (good government) or civilian government is located, our sense and relationship to time changed. We were no longer part of our rigid, right agenda.
The caracol, or snail, is a spiral, where inside meets outside. And when the story of the caracol was shared with me, it was in the context of the seemingly slow pace of Morelia - turbine of our dreams - from an outsider's perspective, when in reality there is a lot happening and being discussed and figured out in that space. The story I heard goes something like this, although I doubt I can fully do it justice, or tell it as beautifully as I heard it.

When the world was formed, full of colors happiness and brightness, the snail, or caracol was a very fast animal. Caracols were messangers from one place to another, one world to another, because of their speed. But when the caracol was in the middle of a journey taking a message from one place to another, the world began to change. Everything became faster, people began running around, machines sped up production, life took on a sense of hurriedness. And so when the caracol arrived back to its world everything was different, the caracol's speed was now slow. Now we view the caracol as being slow, because our worlds have changed, and the caracol did not change with them.

It was so beautiful to be on caracol time, to play basketball and soccer, eat lunch together, talk, and to observe and feel the new space that we were in, reflecting on the meaning of the caracol and caracol time.

Psychological Borders - Michelle Jahnke

We humans are incredibly complex beings. I know that sounds obvious, but I think we often forget it. In "mainstream" middle class white US society the tendency is to essentialize someone without papers as "illegal", indigenous culture as primitive or backward or underdeveloped, a Latina lesbian living in the barrio as underprivileged and a straight white middle class man as privileged. We have been systematically taught to divide up our society and our world, and, no matter what geographical and social part we belong to, we have been systematically taught to build psychological barriers and borders against others who are different than us. The system has taught us to fragment ourselves and we perpetuate this within our schools, social groups, neighborhoods, families, even our work to "change the world." What better way to break down the fabric of society and make us all rely on policies and ideas from above, instead of relying on ourselves and each other.

In Guatemala we met many wise and beautiful people who have helped me to think about the world in this way. One woman in particular, Maria Elisa, put it like this: "Al final tod@s vamos a salir afectad@s. Hay que romper con las fronteras en nuestras cabecitas." "In the end we are all affected by the situation in the world. We have to break down the borders in our own little heads."

Lately I´ve started doing a sort of silly thing and putting my thoughts and feelings into the form of haikus - those three line 5-7-5 syllable Japanese poems. I don´t really think of myself as a poet or anything, but the exercise does help me start thinking and writing about things I´m experiencing. I have written a bunch of them based on what different places we went and people we met in Guatemala made me think about and feel. I think they have a lot to do with the ideas I expressed above. Here are a few written in English, Spanish, and Spanglish.

The poor are so poor
Cus the rich don´t ask themselves
Why they are so rich

Mujeres mayas
Unidas en su lucha
Crean dignidad

Autonomia
Es tomar justicia y paz
En manos propias

Ya basta con las
Visiones importadas
Hay que unirnos

Take back our histry
Luchar to break the silence
We are all HIJOS
More info: www.hijosguatemala.es.tl/

Outsiders come in
Passports heavy with privilege
We are here with you
www.nisgua.org

Guatemalan dreams
Un desmadre hermoso
Roots deep as mountains
www.desgua.org

Travel Seminar in Guatemala - Carmelle Kniss

We spent the first 2 days in Guatemala City learning about the next 2 weeks of our life and getting to know our delegation/tour guides. There we vistited a Casa del Migrante (migrant shelter), and learned a bit about what information they provide to migrants about the journey. Though we had spent quite a bit of time studying the trek and the dangers, it was interesting to hear it from the shelter´s leader. He told us that $3.2 billion is sent to Guatemala from migrants in the U.S. each year, making remittances one of the most important parts of Guatemala´s economy.

We also met with HIJOS, an urban youth resistance movement that has been fighting for justice in Guatemala since 1999. Specifically, they are concerned with the injustices of the government, who initiated a civil war, genocide, and fight with the people of Guatemala for 36 years. They are trying to bring these ex-combatants to trial, and make them pay for the war crimes they committed. It was so great to see how the youth are involved in such a powerful movement. The rhetoric and images they use are powerful and arguably contreversial--many of the teens were holding signs that said "BUSH", but the "S" was a swastika....

The next day, we drove for an hour or two up this windy, bumpy road and ended up in this gorgeous mountain village. The town was literally in the clouds and the people were so friendly. We met with a man who had been part of the Postville, Iowa raid, which was a mass deportation of Guatemalans that were living and working in Iowa in the early 2000s. He was working 18 hour days in a meat packing factory and trying to send money home. Like many Central Americans, the effects of NAFTA and CAFTA have essentially forced people to abandon their lives, their families, and their comforts and head north. U.S. government subsidies and free trade agreements have destroyed virtually all industry, agriculture, and autonomy here. This town was a perfect example. After spending 5 months in prison, not being fed for several days, and losing 50 pounds on the journey back to Guatemala, he will never return.

Yesterday, we had a conference on the migrant journey, and learned that the average trip to the U.S. from Guatemala costs $4,000, yet the average person earns $2-$5 a day. The cost of a pound of chicken is the same here as it in the U.S. Seventy-five percent of Guatemalan products are exported elsewhere, making it impossible for the country to support itself. Ninety percent of the women who make the journey experience some sort of physical assault or abuse on their journey. Most are robbed; many are raped. Each day, roughly 200 Guatemalans leave the country and travel north. Of those, only 17 make it the U.S., and they don´t get their travel money back. Ever.

We then had a panel with four migrants who all shared different stories. It was shocking. The first man who spoke had spent 19 out of his 22 years of life living in the United States. For years, he trained to be a professional boxer, and was about to sign a contract when Immigration crossed his path. Years after committing a minor crime--which became a closed case--he was deported to Guatemala, a country in which he had no family or friends. Luckily, he came in contact with DESAGUA and is now getting back on his feet and working for justice in Guatemala, but the injustice he experienced in the U.S. will live with him forever.

The next story was incredible. Juvaldo went to the U.S. at age 15 and began washing dishes and studying English. He wanted to study medicine, but he couldn't afford to pay the tuition. He came back to Guatemala for a little while, couldn't find work, and then decided to make the trek back north. He paid $5,000 for a coyote to help him cross the desert. Along the way, he was deserted. He spent twelve days in the desert--alone--without food or water. He eventually passed out and was later found by Immigration, who put him in jail for 11 days before he was deported.

It is these kinds of stories that make us forget that we feel too hot or too uncomfortable at any given moment. These are the stories that silence our complaints about not being able to check our email or not getting to eat the food we want. These stories show us what pain and suffering really are, because we will never in our lives experience anything even remotely similar. This is why we're here.