Now, after almost exactly a month of near-constant travelling, we´ve reached the end of the travel seminar. A month ago, we flew into Guatemala, and most of us were immediately shocked by the climate, the culture, and the fact that we were very definitely not in the United States anymore. Now, most of us are headed back, and everyone is going their separate ways for a week or so. Some are headed back to their schools for a reverse on the normal spring break trip, others are going back to Tucson, I am staying in Mexico, and someone else is going back to Guatemala. Regardless, we are all going with very different ideas in our heads than when we came. Speaking for myself, there is also a drive to do serious work when we return to Tucson in a little more than a week. Our last days in Oaxaca have been aimed largely at that goal, and we have had long and useful discussions about what we are taking away from this trip and what we want to do with that knowledge. Through the past weeks we have seen a lot of impacts of US policy that have driven people off of their land and towards the border, met those very migrants and felt the need that propels them forward, and worried as we learned more and more about how difficult their path is. But, even more than that, we´ve seen people who are working to change that system, and been asked to carry on their work in the United States, either as portavoces (voice-carriers) or by doing our own work in our own places our own ways. I think we all have very different ideas of what that means, but I think that´s something that a lot of us are ready to figure out, both over the next month and over a much longer time. From here, we´ll see where we go.
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