Travel to Mexico with Lakeland 2004 :: Archives

Click here to view the Lakeland News Release on the 2004 Trip

Travel with the Women’s Center at Lakeland Community College to the border zone of Mexico, and learn why lessons of the border are important to people 2,000 miles away from Ohio. Travel and Learn in Mexico takes you to Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico during spring break, March 14-20.

This trip is open to the public and offers hands-on learning that moves constantly between activity and analysis. Interviews with government officials, business managers, church leaders, factory workers, human rights and environmental advocates provide the opportunity to build personal relationships with border residents who are struggling to improve their communities.

“It was a tremendous mixture of eye-opening and touching personal stories. We gained an understanding of laws and policies while developing relationships with the people they affect,” said a previous participant.

The cost is $975. Fees include airfare from Cleveland, lodging, meals, medical insurance and educational material. Students can earn two Foreign Studies credits with a minimal additional charge for credit. This trip is also open to non-students.

The week-long program is presented by BorderLinks, located in Tucson, Arizona. BorderLinks provides an educational opportunity which grows out of personal experience, pits academic analysis against the everyday lives of people, acknowledges complexity and refuses to be satisfied by oversimplification.

For more information about the trip, call the Women's Center at 525-7322.

Journal Excerpts from a BorderLinks Trip

The problem with Nogales is the population explosion. Since the creation of a free trade zone along the US-Mexico border, hundreds of US and multinational companies have opened manufacturing plants here. Poor immigrants from all over Mexico have come to seek jobs in these factories. In the US, factories make a nice tax base, but they pay no local tax in the free trade zone, and therefore fail to support the population boom that they have created. Poverty, health problems, disintegration of families and environmental degradation have resulted.

Mexican factory workers make $4 per day. One thing we often hear is "well, the standard/cost of living isn't as high in Mexico." True about housing, but we decided to investigate for ourselves, so we did a market basket survey. We went to the super market with a list of basic necessities that a family would purchase. We went through the store and wrote down the price for each item. A gallon of milk = 24 pesos, 1 liter of cooking oil = 10.9 pesos, and so forth. When we were done, we reconvened as a large group to mathematically calculate the cost of living based on our research.

We determined that a worker making 50 pesos per day (or $5.00), who paid 24 pesos for a gallon of milk, had to work 4.3 hours, or just under half of his 9 hour workday to buy that milk. If an American minimum wage earner worked 4.3 hours for a gallon of milk, that milk would cost $25.15. How long do you have to work to earn a gallon of milk?

-Gloria Lane

The cement floor was a cold and hard place to find a night's sleep, and the bathroom was a monument to wishful thinking. But the home-cooked breakfast offered by our hosts was a pleasant way to start the day. I was halfway through my BorderLinks visit and only a few days away from that near mystical event all BorderLinks veterans grow to long for - a hot shower!

It will never be confused with Club-Med, but a journey with BorderLinks brings visitors right into the homes of people living in border communities.

BorderLinks "tourists' share the same material conditions of the people they visit; they also share their host's daily bread. They'll find a perspective on US/Mexico relations that can't be seen on TV or hear from politicians, but one that has become critically important to respect - the perspective of the people who have the most to say about how we shape out global market future because they have the most to lose.

-Kevin Clarke

This week-long trip will include:

" A chance to see first-hand what the border is like and to discover it's relevance.

" Interviews with government officials, business managers, church leaders, factory workers, human rights and environmental advocates and others who will help interpret your experience.

" A chance to live with Mexican families and experience everyday life on the border. Some nights will be spent at the BorderLinks dormitory.

" The opportunity to build personal relationships with border residents who are improving their communities.

" An educational opportunity that grows out of personal experience, pits academic analysis against the everyday lives of people, acknowledges complexity and refuses to be satisfied by over-simplification!

What previous participants are saying:

"The Lakeland Women's Center's journey to the US/Mexican border at Nogales was a trip of a lifetime!"

"It was a tremendous mixture of eye-opening education and touching personal stories. We gained an understanding of laws and policies while developing relationships with the people they affect."

"The trip was an up close and personal confrontation with life at the border, with reality both harsh and inspiring. "

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything. The world would be a different place if everyone went on this trip!"