One Life One Encounter

Earlier today I was sitting in a pool at a really nice bar/restaurant in El Paredón- steps from the beach, reading a book that just happens to be about a woman from Guatemala and her story of illegally migrating to the U.S. because of how dangerous it was to live here — and for the poorest, it most likely still is.

It’s especially dangerous for young men growing up without fathers, or for families who receive money from relatives in the States. They’re flagged as “having money” and become vulnerable to extortion. I’m confident there are plenty of books written on this subject, and all I can offer is the tiniest window into that world — through reading and through conversations with my Spanish teacher.

But this post isn’t me trying to tell someone else’s story. It’s not about the perils of fleeing one danger only to face completely different dangers along the way.

No — this post is about the balancing act that comes with travel. About what happens when you go to a different country and actually settle into its rhythm.

I’m struck with an immense amount of guilt simply for being born where I was born, knowing that fact alone comes with enormous privilege.

I am anti everything Trump is doing when it comes to immigration. Family separations at the border. Inhumane detention facilities. Mass deportations. ICE raids. The continued narrative that immigrants are the root cause of crime, unemployment, and nearly every problem in the U.S. It’s a campaign rooted in fear, misinformation, and cruelty

So here I sit — in a country that has welcomed me with open arms — and whenever I’m asked where I’m from, I absolutely hate saying that I’m from the U.S. Especially the follow-up question: What part?

I bite my tongue.

Do I play it safe and say Connecticut (technically true)? Or take my chances and say Texas — but only after quickly clarifying that I lived in the “non Texas” part of Texas?

No matter what response I give, I find myself apologizing for what’s happening in my country of birth. I make sure, in no uncertain terms — language barrier or not — that people understand what America stands for right now is nothing I support. Not even a little bit.

And still… after those conversations, after the shared eye rolls and quiet commiseration, I’m left staring straight at my own privilege.

Simply being born in the U.S. has afforded me—guaranteed me—luxuries that many people here, and in countless other countries, will never even come close to accessing.

It’s a hard pill to swallow when I catch myself griping about paying 35Q for a cocktail (that’s less than $5 USD), while my Spanish teacher in Antigua barely makes $25…. a day — teaching me Spanish and patiently suffering through me butchering her mother tongue for five hours at a time.

I listen to her stories about growing up during the Guatemalan Civil War — a war that lasted over 30 years, saw over 200,000 people killed or desaparecido and ended in the mid-1990s, a war the U.S., unsurprisingly, played a hefty role in. Something we never learned about in history class.

She tells me she loves hearing her students talk about where they’re from, because they’re all places she will likely never have the opportunity to visit. Whether it’s time or money, there’s just never enough of either.

And as I answer her questions about where I’ve traveled, I can’t remember a time I’ve felt so guilty about getting on an airplane — like it was nothing — to move between cities, states, countries, without giving it much thought at all.

I try every day to be a responsible traveler. I spend my money at locally owned shops and restaurants. I don’t haggle over five quetzales at the market — hell, I don’t haggle at all. I’m okay paying the “tourist price,” because I am a tourist, no matter how much I try to assimilate into daily life and culture.

I feel guilty for having the money I have at the age I am — even though by the standards of my own home country, it’s hardly impressive. Sure, I worked hard and saved harder to be in this position, but while I’m out chasing sunsets and learning a new language, a fraction of what I have could genuinely change someone else’s life.

And that’s where the question keeps circling:

Should I feel this bad simply for being born in a country I currently despise, but one that has also given me so much?

I want to do more, and I don’t know what that “more” looks like — aside from giving all my money away — just to quiet the guilt — even that feels complicated.

So for now, I sit with it.
With the guilt. With the gratitude. With the privilege I didn’t earn and the anger I feel toward the country that gave it to me.

I don’t have a clean way to reconcile loving the freedom my passport gives me while hating what it represents to so many people standing on the other side of a border.

Maybe the point isn’t to resolve it.
Maybe the point is to stay aware, to stay uncomfortable, and to not let the ease of my life make me numb to how hard it is for others.

I don’t know what “doing more” looks like yet.
But I know pretending this imbalance doesn’t exist isn’t an option anymore.

-A