An alumni of our program in South America was gracious enough to share this link with us. A 1987 graduate of Macalester College, she's revisiting her travel on a personal blog, chock full of beautiful photos and thoughtful reflections. Take a moment to read through her memories of the HECUA study abroad program in Colombia, in 1984.
"I took these captivating photos 31 years ago (with a Canon Sure Shot) outside of Guayaquil in the squatters’ neighborhoods. You can tell this little boy, drinking out of a baby bottle, was completely used to sitting there on that rock waiting for someone or some thing, passing the time. I was in S. America studying urbanization and economics with the HECUA* program, which is how I managed to find myself in neighborhoods like this all over S. America. I spent a semester in Latin America, starting in Panama for a few days, going to Bogotá for a few months, then traveling in Ecuador and Peru. If you go to the internet today and look up Invasion Barrios in Guayaquil, or any similar search string, you will still see eerily similar photos. The poverty is unimaginable to most of us.
My apologies for the grainy photos, but these were developed in 1984.
The point of this article is that I am surprised that after all these years, these places still exist as if time stood still. In all honesty, I had put the past behind me. After graduating from college, I no longer thought I could make a difference or could change the world, so I stopped worrying about how to solve urbanization issues like these. I no longer worried about people in squatter barrios because I had a big enough struggle to find my own way during the recession of the 1980’s. Eventually that turned into going to sleep at night happy in knowing I was raising my kids with 3 square meals, electricity, hot and cold running water and weekly garbage pickups all taken care of. I knew that even if we went camping, we could find a place with running water, showers and toilets. And I “knew” that my lone voice in the wind would make no difference to my friends in their clean neighborhoods who absolutely didn’t care about the fate or lives of poor people anywhere in the world. Their kids had Christmas presents each year that could be stacked floor to ceiling. They cared about going to church and looking good and doing what was best for their families, which sadly was not very different than how I was living.
Something out of the blue struck me this week. A seed from the past started to bloom inside my chest. And I want to put it out there for more people to experience and be aware of. These barrios are a widespread phenomenon. So let’s bring it home to you for a moment: What if you knew children who didn’t know what a candy bar was because they couldn’t afford one? What would you do if these neighborhoods were being built on the edges of your town? What if your economy were so depressed that thousands of people left their small towns out of desperation for a better life and started to build up enormous neighborhoods overnight on your garbage dumps or along the edges of your sea sides? There have been efforts in the past half decade to clear out some of these squatter villages. Where do you think those people go?"