Day 15 - I Love Tacos

I love tacos. Proper Mexican tacos, straight from the mobile taco cart with the taco people making tacos in it: so delicious and awesome. I also love the special Mexican hamburgers they have here in San Miguel. You buy them from the small hamburger cart in the central square/park, the Jardin, with the hamburger people making hamburgers in it. Yum! The interesting thing about my love for these foods is that they represent a diversity of influence that you find in Mexican food and culture in general. Hamburgers are American (US) in origins, but through adaption they have become a part of the Mexican cuisine and got their own local twist. This makes people associate with them and even sometimes sees them as a part of their local identity. Tacos are a mix of the ancient Latin-American tortillas and Spanish meat and cheese culture. So all the way from the beginning of Mexico as a nation the national identity has been a mix of many different and sometimes contradicting cultures. 

National identity is one of the five social issues we are exploring this week, and it’s my session. The other ones are poverty, nutrition, education and environment. For a week the participants will explore different aspects of one issue, learn, discuss, engage and in the end spread awareness about the topic to people outside of course, in their local communities, schools and basically the rest of Mexico. As earlier weeks I am bitter for not being able to participate in all of the different workshops myself, as all of them are super interesting. I’m also craving to discuss and express my opinions about the different issues; it’s just such a shame that the language is a barrier. The participants are doing the job much better than I would have anyway, and it’s amazing to see the capabilities the participants have to develop knowledge. From a beginning of a really small amount of facts they can create an understanding of different aspects of society precisely and constructively. This is why I love the idea of developing each other through discussion so much more than a “teacher”-figure pouring information into his students.

The other thing we are doing this week is Civic Engagement Workshops. Today democracy and tomorrow different forms and civic engagement. This is the kind of stuff I really wish I learnt properly in school, just because I find it really important.  What do you need to have well-functioning democracy? What are the limitations in the world today? How is power distributed? What are the limitations of democracy itself? And so on and on and on. Personally I love the concept and pursuit of democracy and can keep discussing it for hours and hours, only time puts a limit. And hopefully that’s how it will be with the participants in the future as well, that they’ll keep searching for answers and then throw their passion into realizing them.


Albert Andersen Øydvin (Norway, AC 10-12)