Why Mexico?

Hi everyone :)

I am Caterina, an italian student who's arrived in Mexico 10 days ago and is planning to stay here for about 2 months and a half. Why? The short answer is: to do an internship. When I give this answer, though, I then have several people asking me: yes, but why in Mexico?

Just to be clear, I actually live in the Netherlands and the moment, where I'm doing a two-years Master in International Relations and Diplomacy. The master's module for these months precisely consists in doing an internship, with the end goal of writing a research paper on something related to the experience. This was actually one of the main reasons why I chose my course so, free tip to everyone who's thinking of doing a Master: consider whether it has an internship or not! It's a tip that my professor in my Bachelor gave me, and I think it's very valuable. Not only because employers do look at this kind of stuff (basically, working experience), but also because you can get the chance to try out a type of job, and see whether you actually like it or not. Of course, these Masters tend to be two-years long, so you have to see whether that's something you're OK with!

Well, let's get back to why Mexico. I was here last year, in July, after a week in Cuba with my mum. The week in Cuba was sort of a "prize" for graduating, and was probably my best holiday ever (no, we didn't spend all days on the beautiful, sandy beach...just one, tbh). When planning it, I realised Cuba was relatively near to Mexico (what a surprise!), so it could be a great occasion to go and visit on of my best friends, who lives in Guadalajara and who I hadn't seen for one year and a half. The decision to come here the first time, in 2013, was therefore purely out of chance. I was never really interested in Mexico, the picture I had in my head was of boring deserts with some cactuses here and there and, sometimes, pyramids. Nah, not my kind of thing.......how naive!! To cut a long story short, I fell in love. Purely, in any sense of the word, since one night I found a great Mexican man who made me go crazy with his perfect salsa moves.

After that amazing experience, then, all I could think about was: how do I get back there? So, when I had to find an internship, I decided to ask my friend's boyfriend, who's a professor of International Relations here in Guadalajara, if he knew of any organisation I could work with. I was thinking in particular of the issue of migration, something that is very interesting for me personally, both because I'm italian (and we get a lot of "illegal" immigrants there) and because it's strongly connected to what I study. Short flashback: last year, when I was here, we went to the Tequila distillery with a train. When boarding the train in Guadalajara we saw the other train, the one called la Bestia, carrying goods (and migrants) to the US. It was rather shocking, seeing these men holding onto the outside of the carriages, in such an unstable way that several of them never have a chace to reach the US. Since then, I had been thinking that I would have loved to work to improve their conditions.

And this is where we finally get to why I came here: my friend contacted the founder of this great organization (FM4 Paso Libre, I'll talk more about them in the next posts), who agreed to have me as an intern. I came here because, during my short trip last year, I realised there's so much more than cactuses and pyramids here. I came here because Mexico is a country that tens of thousands of immigrants cross every year hoping to follow the "American Dream", and where the issue of human rights is therefore particularly pressing. I came here because I thought I had a chance to do something meaningful, while enjoying it.

The whole blog is meant as an account of my weeks here. I hope that it will serve to explain better why I came here, and to inspire other to do something similar. As I'm writing, though, I'm just being particularly optimistic: I don't know what will happen to me here in the next months...It could end up being a horrible experience for some reason! I doubt that, but I'll keep you updated! :D

Ciao!

Caterina