Summer/Fall 1993

“[H]e had loved in silence much longer than
anyone else in the world ever had.”
— Gabriel Graciela Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will take you through 14 Latin America countries on planes, buses, taxicabs, bicycles, rafts, tuk-tuks, mopeds, and your own two feet. Not bad for someone who has never left the country and feels overwhelmed most of the time. You enjoy getting lost in books. The summer before embarking, you will learn the region’s political, economic, and social history, locating much of the region’s woes in its colonial and imperialist domination by European and North American powers and their neoliberal capitalist rhetoric. Yet you will be tempted to forget such information as you experience the benefits of being a young white American male in a foreign land: approving nods, flirtatious smiles, restaurant recommendations, expedited service, shoulder squeezes, and one returned journal from a movie theater outside Asunción. The journal provides direct evidence of your flower beginning to bloom, “smiles reminding [you] why we’re on this earth” or “the tranquility of indigenous life the exact opposite of everything [you’ve] ever known.” ¹ You will feel earthquakes [literally, in Guatemala] like the ones in your heart, admitting “how nice it would be to spend the night in Juan Carlos’s arms” or preparing ostensibly for the symphony, but in reality for the broad shouldered indigenous man in Arequipa, the one with “a chest of liquid gold who showed [you] to your $4 hotel room.” Will the orphans eat? Will you get laid? How bad must the asthma become before you pass out on the street? These are some of the questions you may answer during the semester. Finally, you will leave the course with an appreciation of all things Latin American, but heartbroken for “little girl[s] in blue pigtails wandering into restaurants for food or into [your] unlockable hotel door for something to cover up with in the cold,” just one of the unresolved tensions that eventually bring you back to the region as a volunteer, study-abroad student, vacationer, immigration attorney, research professor, and lonely single man.

¹Quoted material from instructor's 1993 travel journal

COURSE OBJECTIVES: By the completion of this course, you will be able to

• accept the kindness of strangers
• integrate yourself into indigenous Guatemalan and Ecuadorian families
• recognize your Euro-American privilege
• twirl your r’s
• manage your anxiety
• consider alternate ways of life
• appreciate who you are

REQUIRED MATERIALS:

• Four lined journals
• One borrowed chestnut suitcase from your stepfather. Let the Europeans have their fancy, 12-compartment “I’m on holiday” backpack – you, meanwhile, will emerge from overnight bus trips like Eva Gabor: heels halfway in the mud, but your suitcase glittering like jewels in the morning sun.
• A pair of eyeglasses, which make you feel self-conscious
• One pair of extended-wear contact lenses, worn incessantly
• A small tube of hair gel, intermittently restocked (this is the early 1990s, after all)
• Your favorite purple shorts; one pair of jeans; a new red and blue sleeveless plaid shirt; and a short sleeve, hooded gray shirt with ties you continuously chew
• One faux-leather jacket, a gift from your mother cherished by you because she bought it by working extra waitressing shifts at the Japanese steakhouse down the street

PREREQUISITES: Sadness, loneliness, anxiety. Fractured family. An affinity for the region since you grew up in south Florida. The feeling that you’re still waiting for your life to begin. An intense college gym regimen to shore up your masculinity against any accusations against it. An inability to see yourself as others see you.

READINGS: Readings listed at the end of each unit will familiarize you with the political, economic, and social history of the region via personal memoirs, novels, or well-researched academic texts. Some have yet to be written at the time of this syllabus, not surprising for a region steeped in magical realism. Most texts are authored by Latin Americans, designed to complement the first-hand observations you will make during your travels. The titles should give you a partial glimpse of the book’s thematic arguments. All readings available at the GWU bookstore.

GRADING: Attendance and participation are paramount in this course. Observations and reflections should be noted in your daily journal. Be honest, yet resist the urge to over-categorize or judge. Keep a list of names and places. Don’t be afraid to ask strangers for the names of specific plants and food. Balance extravagant meals ($4-$6 US dollars) with street vendors selling local delicacies like lamb-heart anticuchos, papas rellenas, or pork and cheese pupusas. Never pay more than $7 for a hotel room or hostel bed. Frugality, forgiveness (of self & others), and depth of feeling mark the highest level of competence. Extra credit for how quickly you overcome specific setbacks, such as your camera being stolen in Rio de Janeiro or your bus capsizing from a barge into Lake Titicaca. You will not realize it at the time, but each of these is minor despite how low you will feel – reimagining obstacles as opportunities will certify growth.

WITHDRAWAL: You will originally plan to study Spanish in Guatemala for 6 weeks over the summer, but you then fall under the spell of a traveling German named Stefan – known to you by his Spanish name, Estéban – who had spent the previous 4 months traveling through Venezuela, Cuba, and Central America, where you meet on a rainy Tuesday outside the Xela language school in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Your father agrees to transfer the $333 monthly college room and board money to your bank account on the first of each month, and you must fax (good luck with finding one in Guatemala!) the paperwork to The George Washington University by August 1 or you will lose your full-tuition scholarship forever. You thank your father but wish you’d saved more money from your spring semester job at Au Bon Pain.

SEMESTER SCHEDULE

Unit I: Expectations – “The beautiful Panamanian, Davíd, rides a horse with a bottle of rum in his right hand, the flesh of his Guess jeans pressed to the top of a saddle.” ²

You are only 19, yet you feel sophisticated. You spent your first two years at George Washington University making up for a small-town childhood. Plays at the Lincoln Center. Basement blues concerts. Croissant-making at French cafes. Studying macroeconomics on the steps of the Federal Reserve. Many of these activities were solitary, however, and you long for more companions. Perhaps a place to reimagine yourself. Most of the time you feel anxious and alone. You want to be like the Panamanians you meet in your first week, “just as cosmopolitan as anyone in the United States.” They can rock a Polo short then jump on the back of a horse. Trade boots for dancing shoes and merengue until six in the morning. You wish to be that confident. You gaze at Ana’s cousin Davíd, wondering what the next six months will bring. “Mother fate,” you’d written in your journal on the plane from Miami to Panamá, “will determine what I see and how I see it.” Mother fate, my ass. Get out there and dance!

Readings: “Sunstone” (Octavio Paz); Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America (Chesa Boudin); Bless Me, Ultima (Rudolfo Anaya).

²Italicized portions of each unit quoted from the instructor’s travel journal.

Unit II: Baggage – “I might be amazingly happy if I were a fourteen-year-old boy visiting this country on a school trip; instead I contend with intermittent periods of despair and anguish, wondering if I will ever learn Spanish and concerned that I am spending too much money. Already, I am tired of being alone. I am scared. I wish I were back in Florida for the summer.”

In this unit you realize that every destination – and person in it – carries their own baggage. Despite your new Panamanian family, you struggle. “Needing solitude,” you write “or I might not survive my own self-consciousness.” At home you’d escape into your room or run toward the library. Later, you’d duck into your own head, fall prey to the ceaseless mind. On the way north to Guatemala from Panamá, you are “in a constant state of paranoia and always feeling lonely.” Months later you ponder this “unwillingness to show myself” to new friends and romantic attractions. How you “must learn to take risks, or life might never reveal itself.” You worry when all your hard-earned muscle begins to disappear. You feel the thinness of your ribs against your favorite gray shirt as you stand atop a mountain in Rio de Janeiro with outstretched arms, an imitation of the enormous Christ the Redeemer statue behind you. You can’t tell if you’re welcoming the people of the world or offering yourself to it. You wonder if that’s how Jesus felt, or as they say down here, Jesús.

Readings: “Song of Myself” (Walt Whitman); “I Got Life” – multimedia (Calma Carmona)

Unit III: Friends & Family – “After all the weekend excursions, I always look forward to coming home, talking with the family, and returning to my room for a restful night of sleep. It’s people like this that make Guatemala so special.”

Every textbook will explain the importance of family in Latin America. It’s equally true of friends, but you must experience it yourself. Your family back home never stops quarreling. Ana’s family in Panamá will feel like your own – scolded by her father, kissed by Mama Nimia. Cousin Juan Sebastian will hug you and kiss your cheek, whisper how he already misses you, this future veterinarian with the soft voice. It’s easier to manage your anxiety when you don’t feel so alone: you’ll wish you realized this in high school. For seven weeks you live with a Guatemalan family in Quetzaltenango. Carlos is a thin young teacher with an even thinner mustache. His wife, Chiqui, is lighter skinned with a German grandfather and rosy cheeks. She makes you meals whenever you’re hungry and imitates the neighbors, especially how the fat lady on the corner fluctuates her wrists like she’s playing the maracas. Wilheim (Billy) is five and has no teeth; Hans is nine and dances like Michael Jackson. The entire family gets up at 4 in the morning your last day in Quetzaltenango to walk you to the bus station. On the curb later that morning you write: “I can’t say enough about how incredible they are. Chiqui brought me a chocolate cake (which I am snacking on right now), while Carlos gave me a small wallet. Both mean a lot to me, although the cake takes first place right now. It’s delicious. ¡Que riquísima! I gave Carlos my Walkman (with earphones) and the shirt from Barbados, ³ while Chiqui inherited her favorite pair of my shorts. I would have given everything I had to them.” Such selflessness is new to you.

Readings: “Ancestor” (Jimmy Santiago Baca); Dreaming in Cuban (Christina García)

³A present from my stepfather

Unit IV: Kids, Kids, Kids – “I have never seen a more beautiful child, lying on the floor next to his mother. Just two years old. He was all bundled in a tiny ski hat and thick jacket, and just looking at him made my world a joyous, happy place.”

While children are drawn to everyone, they are particularly drawn to you. Billy leads you through a dirt road surrounded by a small corn field tended to by an old indigenous man and woman. Billy skips and says hello to them, dancing over a rake and criss-crossing between you and the pair. Later, at the sports complex near the school, you watch the older boys pull Billy away from home plate so he doesn’t get hit by the bat. “Among these boys,” you write, “friendship is everything, not the hyper-competitiveness I see at home, but just kids enjoying each other’s company.” Do your best to learn from kids like Billy or Julio, known by his more descriptive name, Jamón (ham):

“I’ll never forget the orange Crush I drank, which Julio bought for me after the soccer game. That quarter was reserved for him, but it went to me instead. It’s comforting to see a fourteen-year-old boy who is not afraid to be nice, that smile on his chubby face like artwork. Always playing with the neighborhood kids, yet as more of a big brother than a bully. Initiating the games, and giving rides on his bike to the boy next door. I hate to laugh, but ‘Jamón’ really is a funny nickname.”

Readings: And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (Tomas Rivera); The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)

Unit V: Poverty – “It’s easy to romanticize poverty in Panamá, especially with the children.”

You will be tempted to imagine yourself poor and hungry. After all, some days you can spend no more than $5 on food. Your stomach aches from eating so many $1 meals from vendors on street corners, although here is where you start to really learn the language. You often wake up to bed bugs and crusty toilets. The pillows are hard and unforgiving. But if you think your life is hard, you are wrong:

“This morning while relaxing in the sun outside the Church of San Francisco, I met two very young and dirty shoeshine boys. One of them had mucus coming out of his nose and had a charcoal-black face; the other was comparatively cleaner, but he could have used a good scrub down. They asked for money, my watch, and a sweater, all of which I said I needed since I was a poor traveler. They didn’t look convinced, so I decided to buy them some breakfast. We went to a panadería, where I bought them four pieces of some type of fruit bread. They quickly took the bread and, hand-in-hand, scampered off, not before promising to meet me at the same time tomorrow. The way they hurried off made me believe the pan [bread] was for a younger sister or, perhaps, their mother; something tells me they didn’t eat a bite, not even a crumb.”

You will watch Papá in Panamá drop change in the old woman’s bucket at the front door. Her desperation is eerie, reminds you to appreciate the food on the table, even if you’re not sure how to hoist a tiny rooster leg toward your mouth. It haunts you how she came right up to the front door – poverty so hidden in your own county – but then she’s gone as quickly as she comes. Resist the temptation when you return home to blame everyone around you for the region’s inequality. Join a think-tank instead. Besides, it’ll look good on your law school application.

Readings: The Poverty of Progress (Bradford Burns); Open Veins of Latin America (Eduardo Galeano​​ Galeano)

Unit VI: The Virgin & The Whore – “Today was all about the women – on the bus and in the market, grinding corn and weaving tapestries. Everywhere. I feel like these countries still don’t know what to do with them. God forbid they actually ask.”

Don’t be misled by dichotomous descriptions of Latin American women. Women are neither virgins nor traitor-whores, and it is not their fault that indigenous cultures were conquered by the Spanish. Here women take the blame, shoulder the burden. Sweet Damisela, the young maid in a tiny 9x9 room behind the kitchen; everyone in Panama City has a maid. Even your poor family in Guatemala pays a dark-hued indigenous woman to pound the laundry against a wall. The market of Chichicastenango swells with cross-legged sisters on stone sidewalks, surrounded by vibrant cloth woven into intricate patterns. Perhaps the men are in the fields. Consider this inversion of space, the so-called “private” sphere of women so out in the open. Look what the tourist has done. But the native elite are worse: Guatemalan genocide; Argentinian “Dirty” War; Salvadoran Civil War; Los Desaparecidos de Chile. Never forget. “When they took our husbands,” says a woman at the Ixtala clothing cooperative in halting, hesitant Spanish, “we had no other choice but to band together and survive.” She clasps hands with an old white woman in a beige scarf, who you later meet as Sister Nancy, a native of Iowa who isn’t a nun, but came to the Guatemalan highlands and never left. “I wanted to adopt a baby,” she tells you and your language school friends. “But I realized there was so much more I could be doing.” You’ll soon forget this moment, preferring instead to revel in your manhood. Remind yourself of the burden this region places upon its women.

Readings: The Children of the Dark (Carolina de Maria de Jesus); Refiguring La Malinche (Andrea Powell Wolfe); Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (Rota Arditti)

Unit VII: Religion – Catholicism is everywhere. Prepare yourself to be blessed. Ana’s brother Tito is a nice young man studying to be a priest, and you can see his green priest gown on the door, a tiny gold cross hanging on the wall, and an immense rosary of wooden balls guarding your shared bedroom. You wonder if you can look holy in your sleep. You’re glad God doesn’t let us read minds: if he did, you’d be on your way to the place down under. But then the majesty:

“Everyone running. Running running running. From Ipiales to El Santuario de las Lajas, whole families jogging along the mountainside, and through the valley to the cathedral. They looked like they were running from an erupting earthquake! The Church, astounding! Gothic in design and nestled above a deep Colombian valley between two towering green mountains. Inside the church is a giant rock, the side of the mountain really, which is said to have contained an image of the Virgin Mary. The singing filled the valley with holiness and only a devilish soul could not feel the presence of God. Damn, how physically fit, these people are (especially the men!), hard to keep my eyes off such nice legs. Outside the church, nailed or stuck or taped to the rocks are thousands of plaques and signs thanking the Virgin Mary for some kind of miracle. A holy Sunday morning that will remain in my memory forever.”

Readings: The Conquest of the Incas (John Henning); Latin American Liberation Theology (David Tombs); How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church (Edward L. Cleary)

Unit VIII: Longing – “I know that someday I can make something beautiful out of these longings, but companionship is hard to come by, and I’m getting rather restless.”

Longing comes in many forms: for familiarity, for competence, for companionship. Even erotic longing. Many first-time travelers fall victim to infatuation and/or exoticization. You will become obsessed, first, with that German named Estéban, who becomes the first person with whom you’ve ever fallen in love. You can’t resist his smooth Spanish and the long bangs of his hair. You go so far as to call your relationship “spiritual,” insisting that “it has been a long time since I felt so special, and I don’t want it to end.” You like hearing about the women he loved – it means he can feel love, and maybe one day he could feel it for you too. Soon you will get jealous because your host family loves him, too. Eventually the repression becomes too much, the soft pull of his shoulder from yours on the bus back to Guatemala City. You remember how he hoisted his giant backpack atop his shoulders and threw his lit cigarette into the street. A small boy behind him tugged at his backpack, but then the bus turned the corner and Estéban was gone. And then the Englishman in Quito, who you can’t stop thinking about. “Sometimes the only thing I want to do is rest my head on your chest, and you stroke my hair, and we pass the night together in each other’s arms,” you write. “I’m sure this is all I want, but as soon as it is over I will probably feel that loneliness again.”

So if infatuation leads to unrequited love, it’s no surprise that your exoticization of native men makes the ache even worse: “This time my anxiety swelled due to the presence of so many smooth, calmly-dressed, thoroughly sweltering, delectably-carved, impeccably-nurtured Ecuadorians [Yes, you will write with such hyperbole!]. I found myself staring as usual, my mind wandering into a misty lagoon, and then the basic, instinctual desire, the beating of the drums, enraptured by nothing more than strength, shape, and color.”

And you haven’t even made it to Perú yet, where you will specify the “exact indigenous attributes” you have come to love: “a shy, humble countenance; wide smile; short, but perfectly proportioned body; golden chest; and eyes like chocolate wafers.” One man will personify this list, outside a bar bathroom in Lima, where days later you write how “I can still feel his strong hands along the back of my neck, bringing me forward to whisper into my ear . . . the way he looked at me making clear his intentions.”

Question this unit’s assumption that infatuation or erotic exoticization are necessarily bad things. Ask yourself who was harmed in the making of these desires. You don’t know yet about Dominican sex tourism or the way old white men marry teenage Filipina brides. Besides, you’re still a virgin. What you see in so many indigenous men, especially the Peruvian outside that bathroom in downtown Lima, is a mutual recognition you should never be talked out of. Who’s to say your own “outsider” sexual desires aren’t what draw you to men living outside dominant structures of power, like these indigenous men. Or maybe you’re just another gay man eroticizing physical strength and competence.

Readings: Zigzagger (Manuel Muñoz); Tropics of Desire (José Quiroga); “How Ethnotourism Exoticizes Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples” (Kristen Martinez-Gugerli)

Unit IX: Machismo – A good time to look at machismo. Instead of critiquing it, you will glorify it, even seek it:

“The oldest son, a big and strapping young man in repressive tight black jeans, collected the money and helped the passengers with their belongings. I remember the way this tight-muscled bar of gold smiled at his little brother; it was a smile of sincere love and companionship. Sometimes there is nothing more relaxing, more sensual, than this rudimentary gesture of affection from someone who, on the surface, seems so hardened and strong.”

And so begins your foray into Latin American cultural anthropology and eventually leads to your first book, Mucho Macho, an ethnography about Latin American masculinity. In it you wonder about the young Peruvian military men half-naked in the blazing heat of the Northern Peruvian desert. It seems men can do anything they want here, you notice, a situation that bodes well for your future erotic adventures. “The big one, the large man in his underwear,” you write from the bus, “is watching me watch him. Their bodies are a little darker than the desert sand, but they are much stronger and smoother. No one is embarrassed, their deep masculinity only confirmed by these strong and squatty Incan bodies.” As they buckle their belts and zip up their pants you wonder how many golden Peruvians will die in this fruitless war: the Sendero Luminoso against the military state. And what of the women? “I have forgotten the women,” you write. “Yet again.” But it’s no surprise, really, as you are a man and privilege your desires over their basic needs. The literature you’ll uncover in this unit does not consider how machismo makes it easier for strange men to know each other – to sleep thigh to thigh on a crowded bus from Quito to Guayaquil (Dios Mio!) or share the same small bunk bed in a Paraguayan hostel with a Brazilian Navy soldier on leave until morning. Your book will attempt to explain such things to skeptical readers. In some ways, you’re explaining yourself.

Readings: The Meanings of Macho (Matthew C. Gutmann); In the Land of God and Man (Silvana Paternostro); Mucho Macho: Seduction, Desire, and the Homoerotic Lives of Latin Men (Chris Girman, aka your professor)

Unit X: In Sickness & In Health – “So there it was, the train toilet covered with hardened shit. But I was standing in the aisle for two hours and the stomach pains were almost too great to make it out alive. I had to go in!”

You will poop and piss in unimaginable places covered in filth. To save money you eat at roadside food stands. You will pass out in Santiago, Chile – the last thing you remember is a fast-food chicken restaurant – and awake in a hospital bed. Bronchitis. You’ll be nursed back to health on the top floor of a private home by a teenage girl named Luisa. You won’t recall how you met, but at 8:30 each morning she serves you breakfast in bed on a silver platter: hot tea, bread, meats, and jam. She’s suspiciously quiet. For two days you don’t leave the third-floor room, stuffing yourself into giant blankets, your body wrapped in your faux-leather jacket. When you finally bathe in the marble bathroom a floor below (walked down cautiously by Luisa herself), you realize you’ve been living in a mansion. And Luisa hadn’t told her parents about the foreigner upstairs; that is, until you windmill open your bedroom window to abuela’s surprised chants of “Dios Santo” from the courtyard below. Your privilege has never been so stark, or so appreciated. The family lets you stay another day.

Readings: Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel García Márquez); Born to Die: Disease and the New World Conquest, 1492-1650 (Noble David Cook); The Devil’s Highway (Luis Urrea)

Unit XI: Souvenirs (or what to take home) – “What I remember most, and will remember forever, is the little bracelet he gave me – said it was a ‘gift’ – that boy with so little, square shoes falling off his feet and a dusty brown cardigan. I don’t think I can wear the green, yellow, red, and black bracelet because I would be afraid something might happen to it. The bracelet is the most wonderful gift I have been given, and that physical reminder of youthful innocence and compassion is important to me. I’ve got to bring some of that compassion home.”

Expect to collect many souvenirs along the way but know that you can’t possibly fit them all in your traveling backpack (the glittering suitcase left behind at Ana’s place on your second pass through Panama City). You will carry a reed boat from the floating Peruvian Island of Puno across three countries and back to Florida, and a t-shirt with a topless Brazilian woman for your father. But buy things anyway: you’ll need some way to show your affection for those you’ve come to love. “My Ecuadorian family is truly amazing,” you will write, giving you a flying wooden bird on a stick so you can remember Quito. You will have no more money, but you wrap a sweater for Mariana and trinkets from Rio de Janeiro – a t-shirt, license plate, and a silver tray – that the teenage siblings love. “Rosa [the housekeeper] thanked me so much for the tiny Incan relic I got in Trujillo . . . and Norma [her daughter] put the flashy necklace around her small neck as if she were trying out for Miss Pre-Teen Ecuador.” You will feel so much compassion, even if your pre-trip self thinks this impossible and your later self feels embarrassed by your sentimentalism. Congratulate your traveling self for the emotional availability you’d thought you’d lost during childhood.

“I gave Licha my most prized possession of all: the sandals of Jesús she’d seen around my neck all weekend on Lake Atitlán. The other children said she would just sell them, but I have a feeling she might hold onto them for a little while – at least I hope so. I think of her and I see a beautiful child, grabbing my thumb and pulling me all over Santa Catarina, this beautiful long-haired guide barefoot and talking to everyone we passed by. Counting to ten in five languages! We kissed the little girls goodbye, one kiss for each on the cheek, and Pedro led us to a truck that returned us to Panajachel, returned us to the travelers’ reality that is quite removed from the reality of the village. For at least two days we experienced village life, one that Jesús must have brought to us in the figure of this little girl.”

And from the truck you see Licha holding those sandals high in her tiny hands and waving. “I never knew,” you will write, “how good it feels to give of yourself, but also to stay open to things coming your way.” You wonder, too, how something so good can also feel a little bit like mourning.

Readings: The Heights of Macchu Picchu (Pablo Neruda); One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Graciela Marquez)

Final Exam (Sample)

(to be answered in your journal the final day of your class/trip: December 27, 1993 ⁴)

Did you do the right thing?
“I think so. If not, too late now.”

What did you learn?
“First of all, Spanish, as in Español.”

Are you the same person as before? What did you become?
“I’m not the same person as before. Irrevocably different. No tangible difference (except for the weight loss) – can’t touch it or, perhaps, even define it. I hate people who manipulate women. I learned to travel on my own and do things on my own. Self-reliance defined my travels. But I discovered that, for myself, independence is not about solitude; it is about having the personal freedom and confidence to put your trust in other people, to choose the advice best given, to distinguish between the pertinent and superfluous. I made my way through Latin America by trusting and allowing myself to be led. I gather a small piece of everyone and they become who I am. Maybe it makes up for the vacuum of my early adolescence, the reality of being constantly ignored. It’s like I’m coming into myself, but not by myself. I’m creating myself from the outside in, I think, so I’m poor and dark and female and sexy, but not so perpetually lonely anymore.

And all these men? What will become of that?
“I know that one day I will be in love. Sometime soon I will make love. But before I can fall in love, I must first love myself. I almost did. Now I just need to get back in shape so I can feel more confident, and then I will love like I’ve been waiting to love. Didn’t know it, but I’ve been waiting to fall in love. I will not love in silence anymore, because loving in silence is like reading the same book a thousand times: newly-discovered nuances keep the book enjoyable, but the ending is always the same and known in advance. Something in South America taught me how to love. To appreciate. Myself. Others. The gorgeous ochre sky. The way fried plantains lean into this mound of white rice.

Any caveats or take-aways?
“I know I’m lucky to take such a trip. Should thank my dad and the entire American economic and political enterprise. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention to the historical stuff that made these societies so unequal, but I think I’ve seen it all from the ground now, probably better than in my own country. I think I understand better now what it means to be poor, like really poor, and I hope I keep this reality in mind as I get back to college and continue my life. Why does it have to be this way?

Not to offend the hippies at the language school or diminish all the left-wing movements with the best intentions in mind, but I can’t get these men out of my mind: the deep dark men and a muscularity that I can feel around me. Yes, it’s desire – duh! – but something else too. Maybe it’s competence, as if I’m attracted to such self-assuredness, like maybe it can rub off on me. Which is cool because I saw the same confidence in so many female travelers, too. Maybe forgiveness, as well. Almost like I might someday realize none of this is my fault, the sad and low and lonely feelings that have been with me for years. But shit, I deserve this too, really just need this right now: the sexy police guards in tight clothes, smiling white smiles over golden bodies. Taxi drivers touching my shoulders, bus mates falling asleep on top of me. The tantalizing presence of so many beautiful men.”

Can you speak to this blatant objectification of Latin American men?
(Seriously? I’m not sure I understand.)

“A voice that is soft and understated, emitting from parted pink passionate lips. I could have remained on that bus forever, fantasizing about an impossible future with that special handsome joven – the young bus attendant on the road from Nazca to Santiago – of the dark glasses and candid smile.”

(I don’t think anyone who has truly loved before could ever think this wrong, professor. I could never think this wrong. I will never think this wrong. Not anymore.)

⁴Italicized sample answers quoted from instructor’s travel journal.

August 3, 2023

About the writer

Chris Girman is an associate professor of nonfiction writing at a Mid-Atlantic university, and he’s also an immigration attorney who uber drives during the summer. He loves the thrill of travel, but he can never decide which wallpaper to buy. His bathroom, therefore, remains barren. Perhaps that's why he flees.