Highlights of the 2006 trip:

• Meeting with Zapatistas in the state of Chiapas, Mexico,
• Homestays in Oaxaca, meeting and staying with Sister Peggy O’Neil in Suchitoto El Salvador,
• Shadowing Peace Corp volunteers for two days in Morazán El Salvador and going up into the former zones of conflict during the Contra War in the 1980s in northern Nicaragua.

During our journey, we encountered dynamic people, including many who were confronting serious life and death issues, like grinding poverty and the struggle to keep ethnic identity alive.

As a group, these encounters challenged and expanded our existing worldview in unexpected ways, and we took the opportunities to explore these experiences with one another. Many of the participants from both 2004 and 2006 described the trip in their evaluations as the highlight of their academic career at Furman, and both of the professors will certainly echo that sentiment in their own professional lives.

Readings from the 2006 trip included: Opening Mexico, Silence on the Mountain, Virginia Tilley’s Seeing Indians: A Study of Race, Nation and Power in El Salvador (University of New Mexico Press, 2006); and selections from Christopher Dickey’s With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (1987).

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