Students Explore Guatemala on Alternative Breaks Trip
Last spring, 13 LMU students and staff spent spring break immersing themselves in Guatemalan history and culture as part of the university’s Alternative Breaks trips.
Organized by LMU’s Pam Rector Center for Service and Action, Alternative Breaks (AB) take place during students’ winter, spring and/or summer breaks. Groups spend between 1 to 2 weeks in locations in the continental United States, United States territories, and/or international locations.
“An AB trip is a chance for students to travel locally, nationally, internationally,” said Patrick Furlong, director of the Pam Rector Center for Service and Action. “We are trying to widen students’ realities. We’re trying to widen their understanding of the globe and how complex it is and how there are different ways of thinking than maybe what we’re exposed to.”
On the AB Guatemalan trip, which was hosted by Augsburg University’s Center for Global Education and Experience, LMU students and staff were able to experience the country’s hospitality firsthand and engage directly with Guatemalans who have different perspectives on education, health and wellbeing; they even had the opportunity to explore Mayan cosmovision by observing and participating in a Mayan ceremony.
“We want these immersive experiences to be powerful reminders of the responsibility we all have to be in community with one another,” Furlong said.
Additionally, the students and staff learned about Guatemala’s rich history and how it shapes the current social-political situation, and they visited community partners to learn about land tenure, sustainable agriculture, (im)migration, and a variety of economic and educational development initiatives.
“I’ve never really heard a lot about Guatemala,” said Alyssa Gutierrez ‘26. “When I learned in my history classes their internal conflict was so recent – it was in the 80s and the 90s – I feel very grateful that I got to learn about that and learn how that intersected with a bunch of different issues.”
For Furlong, AB trips are about getting students into an immersive place to broaden their horizons and understandings of different injustices that exist in the world, but also trying to connect students to leaders at the community level who are addressing those injustices and actively working to create a better world for themselves, their communities and their families.
“The more we can learn about the world, and different ways to see the world, different perspectives, different cultures, I think it just makes us better people,” said Diana Laura Renteria ‘24.
