"You simply cannot prance around Guatemala like you are in LA," the Board Director chastised, after she expelled me from my study abroad program. Imagining my homosexuality as a transgressive frolic and mistakenly confusing my home state LA for liberal Los Angeles-LA, she framed my dismissal as protection in Guatemala's "conservative political climate." The organization gave me twenty-four hours to leave and no opportunity to respond -- ignoring the fourteen phone calls and three e-mails I sent in desperation for answers.
I cringe with anxiety when I think about this abrupt end to my participation in a six-month gap year program in Xela, Guatemala. This time last June I was boarding my plane with three suitcases of required supplies, clothing, and medical anthropology books I had read for my college degree. Based out of an elite university in Southern California and structured around social justice in the medical humanities, this selective program marketed itself as combining both intensive language instruction and inclusive health politics seminars. I had just come out as gay my senior year, so I was drawn to this program's advertised curricula on discrimination, social determinants of health, and healthcare reform.
When I arrived in Quetzaltenango, I met the other participants and local directors: two white, cisgendered American women with male Guatemalan partners. They opened orientation by explaining how sexism, racism, and xenophobia manifest in Guatemala, and instructed the women and students of color to contact the group any time discrimination presents. They then prescribed how 'men who date women' and 'women who date men' should behave while going to bars or engaging in romantic relations. Homosexual, transgender, and non-binary identities were ignored during all orientation programming. As the program commenced, I began to experience an overwhelming amount of heteronormative jokes in the classroom, probing in my household, and harassment on the streets. Whenever I brought up these issues to my participant peers, they responded with irritation or apathy.
At the beginning of August I called one of the directors to express my discomfort by homosexual prejudice within and around the program. Bothered by the idea that she or the students could be homophobic, she promptly rejected my experiences as "petty" and "personal." She feared that my sexual identity and associated experiences might disrupt ties between the program and my family homestay, and so required that I leave my house to find a new place to live immediately -- lest I "wished to fly back home." Alarmed by this threat, I obediently complied and moved out by way of taxi: a displacing turning point that filled me with new fears.
In the subsequent weeks, my feelings of isolation built. Our lectures reduced "Guatemalan Culture" to a rigid checklist of generalizations: machismo, heterosexual, Catholic, poor, unstable. Healthcare disparity seminars acknowledged human variation but blatantly ignored sexual diversity and discrimination. Upon asking the directors why this was so, I was told, "PLG...er, whatever...issues are non-existent in Guatemala, since there are no gay people here." Yet while being lectured on the non-existence of LGBTQ people in Guatemala by day, I was out meeting a sizeable community of gay Guatemalans in Parque Central by night. Xela has had five Pride parades since 2011, and Guatemala City has celebrated sixteen. There is wide documentation of LGBTQ violence and related health problems across the country.
After our weekly seminar one Thursday in mid-August, I shared my concerns to the group with director permission. Because it seemed that mention of sexual health politics stirred discomfort in ways other topics did not, I inquired if it was something I should not discuss. I desired transparent boundaries in order to understand which lines to not cross, and to ascertain whether or not the program was a space I could access support from. To my sudden surprise, the director loudly scorned my question and dismissed me from the room. I heard no answers: only laughs and murmurs. Two days later, I got an e-mail from the Board Director at the California university, who also happened to be the Dean for Science and Health and former Associate Dean for Admissions and Educational Affairs at the medical school. In this ambiguously-written letter, she told me I had been dismissed from the program effective immediately. I was un-enrolled from my classes, cut from communications, and mandated to fly home straightaway, even though all roads from Xela to the Guatemala City airport were blocked that week from political demonstrations. My only option was to drive overnight.
These unwarranted actions of expulsion and silencing devastated my mental and physical health. What's worse, my experiences are not unique. As June -- National Pride Month -- unfolds once again, I reflect on three lessons this trip taught me:
First, I faced a traumatic reminder of the daily injustices exercised against LGBTQ people around the globe, fueled by ignorance and power. "Liberal" labels and "awareness" proclamations exempt no institution. While it can be energizing to focus on progress -- especially during Pride month -- it is equally important to remain vigilant of the extensive enduring injustices less visible by law.
Second, I witnessed how damaging American programs can be to international advancement by generalizing and assuming knowledge of different cultures. Doing so promotes false cultural competency (while displacing cultural humility), dismisses local experience, denies cultural overlaps, and reinforces institutional violence against people with marginalized identities. Many of my gay Guatemalan friends relied on discrete technologies to stay connected, feared family and job rejections, and received minimal access to sexual health education and support. Although sexual identities and socialities vary across the world, these are common threads experienced by sexual minorities everywhere: much like what I experienced growing up in Northern Louisiana.
Lastly, these events made me realize how little research there has been on studying abroad as LGBTQ. Prevailing heteronormativity in US higher education contributes to this absence of information, partly by discouraging many students from disclosing sexual identity and discrimination. Myriad reports, like the GSLN, have documented sky-high levels of stress and lack of safety LGBTQ students feel in schools, instigated by verbal harassment, discriminatory policies, and physical violence. Meanwhile, more than fifty percent of students do not report these incidences for fear either nothing will change or matters will worsen. Speaking up carries risks, as my study abroad experience evidences.
When I returned to the US, my college friends and advisors suggested that I should have re-closeted my identity and kept quiet in the program seminars. However, I kept quiet for the past twenty-two years. Complacency marks the demise of progress; silence equals death. Academic and healthcare institutions must do better at expanding educational curricula and resources to account for LGBTQ people. Study abroad programs must acknowledge human diversity at all levels, practice exchange rather than unidirectional instruction, and recognize their limits. And to my LGBTQ community and allies: we must stand strong against oppression, counter misinformation with truth, and never stop marching forward with courage and dignity.