What an
exciting week it has been for everyone here in CGE Mexico!
Last
Thursday, all of the students (with some exceptions) returned to Casa CEMAL to
spend the last two weeks of the program together. Although it was a bit difficult and sad to
say goodbye to our host families of 4 weeks, we are all very excited to start
the last chapter of our time in Mexico together as a group.
On Friday,
the students in the Religion and Women Studies’ programs took a day trip to
Mexico City to meet with some very interesting people. To start the day, we met with a panel of four
people to discuss religion and sexuality.
Speakers Rodolfo, Judith, Emilio, and Eva all met with us to share their
journeys and own personal stories through religion and sexual identity, and how
they came to be where they are today.
Judith is actually part of the first lesbian couple to be married in
Mexico City. Rodolfo is the pastor and founder of a successful reconciliation
church. Eva and Emilio shared amazing stories of their struggles in coming to
terms with their sexual identities while being raised in Jewish families. They were a group of very amazing and inspirational
individuals!
After a
break for lunch and an hour or so to wander around the amazing campus of UNAM
(Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) we headed back to meet with Natalia Anaya. Natalia is a bisexual, transgendered, and HIV
positive woman with a remarkable story to tell.
She shared with us her life’s accomplishments, struggles, and inspiring
stories and even told us that she considers the moment she found out about her
HIV to be “the best thing that’s ever happened to her.” We were very lucky to have the opportunity to
meet and talk with her!
On Saturday, most of the
group, along with the Gettysburg students, took a trip to Las Grutas de
Cacahuamilpa. Las Grutas are said to be
possibly the largest discovered caves in the world! The caves were very beautiful and it was a
great way to spend one of our last Saturdays here in Mexico.
All of the students in
CEMAL have begun preparing for our final exams and projects of the
semester. Today also marks the 10 day
mark on the countdown till our departure back to the United States, we are all
expecting these last few days to be crazy and busy. Wish us luck!
By Marie Stousland
This trip to Mexico City for the talks on sexual diversity had two of my favorite lectures from our entire stay in Cuernavaca. The first panel with Eva, Judith, Rodolfo, and Emilio was not only inspiring but also very eye-opening. As an individual who has wrestled with the issues that religion presents for the LGBTQ community, but also believes that religion can be a powerful and helpful tool for creating social change, it was crucial to hear how four individuals who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or gay, are able to utilize religion as a way to justify their lifestyle and find strength in their beliefs. These four people have truly revolutionary ideas -- that sin should not be a part of religion because it causes people to feel guilt and God doesn't want people to live in this way; that one of our biggest freedoms within religion is the ability to be suspicious or doubt what is in religious texts or has been taught to us; that they can embrace religion even while they embrace their own homosexuality. Hearing people present these ideas is something that has never happened to me in the United States, but these same concepts exist in many forms within the Latin American Liberation Theologies that began in the 1960s and continue to play an important role on changing the way that individuals interact with Catholicism. Seeing individuals who have benefited from the kind of open-mindedness that these theologies have fostered in Latin America has inspired me to re-evaluate my own religious beliefs and to think about what I need to bring back to the United States to share with my friends, family, and religious groups. Social justice, homosexuality, women's empowerment, the right to decide, and religion -- they CAN all exist within the same realm and support each other, as evidenced by the four people that spoke to us in this panel.
ReplyDelete-Elle