Tourism in Latin America & the Caribbean

Week 4 Blog Post

I have spent a good amount of time traveling in Latin America and the Caribbean over the years. My experiences have all been very different, but can probably be summed up in three categories: time spent as a tourist, time spent visiting family, and time spent working and volunteering. The vast differences that I’ve found depending on what brings me to a foreign place are fairly staggering. As a tourist, I’ve seen Costa Rica, Mexico, and a number of typical vacation spots in the Caribbean. My family and I have split our time between small bed & breakfasts and big chain hotels, but wherever we ended up, the experience was not at all immersive. We saw the sights, spent time at the beach, explored some of the eco-tourism options, and enjoyed the sunny weather, but we learned very little about the cultures or people of the places we visited. While enjoyable, being a tourist was never transformative or meaningful for me, and I often wonder if there were ways in which we could have been more responsible, respectful travelers while abroad.

Visiting family in Latin America & the Caribbean is certainly different. Whenever we visit my aunt and uncle in Puerto Rico, there is necessarily a cultural exchange. Although Puerto Rico is an American territory, the culture is quite distinct from what you’d find here in Hanover, NH, or anywhere else in the continental U.S. The food, the language, and the way of life are all different, and when you are staying in the home of your family and trying to befriend and communicate with their Spanish-speaking friends, you would be hard-pressed to not feel immersed in that culture. My experiences there have been far more significant, and have shaped me in ways that tourism has not.

Still, I find that my most meaningful experiences have come from working and doing volunteer work abroad. When I was living on Saba, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, and volunteering for their marine park two summers ago, I learned far more about Caribbean culture than I ever did as a tourist or visitor. The long-term commitment, the forced immersion as I lived and worked with the people in the community, and the sense of partnership that I felt with my coworkers as well as the community members were all crucial to my experience of the culture there. Most important, I think, was my desire to learn and to be a partner to the community, rather than a tourist or an outsider. I strived to build relationships, listen to the people around me, and learn about and respect the culture I lived in. The experience of doing service in a community that I felt welcomed into, one that I worked to understand and fit into, was far more rewarding than I imagine it might have been had I viewed myself as an outsider come to help those in need. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited to be a part of this specific program – I’m looking forward to being involved with an organization that has a long-term relationship with and commitment to the people it serves. I’m glad to know that my classmates and I will be going into this experience with knowledge of the Nicaraguan culture and awareness of our role as service-learners. It is my hope that this experience will be just as transformative as my previous time as a volunteer abroad.