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.
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