Tyson Volkmann
BootsnAll Author
I am Tyson Volkmann from the United States of America or, to avoid crude boxing references and foreign relations debates while traveling, John Smith from Canada. This Summer (or Winter depending on your hemisphere) 2003 I am writing a travelogue as I meander through parts of South America. Being from the Pacific Northwest, The idea of my journey is that if I were accepted into graduate school in Birmingham, Alabama, endearingly called by some "the Pittsburgh of the South", I was going to give myself a bit of South American culture shock and awe before I receive my culture shock and awe in America's South this Fall. That and to have a good time. My past travel experiences include 49 states, much of Canada, eh?, Mexico, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Ecuador, Europe, Morocco, Egypt and the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia.
This eleven week loop is to begin in Lima and cover Southern Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Northern Argentina, and up the coast of Chile to finish. So why do I think it's important for you to know any of this information, or to write at all for that matter? It's not, but if you are reading this then you already care so buckle up. My brief travel philosophy as it drips out of my electronic pen this afternoon: To understand culture in light of the privilege all travelers (especially myself) are blessed with. To appreciate the rest of the world without the bias of my First World attitude. To encounter the covert policies of government whose effects manifest in the reality of the human condition. To covet culture as a unique entity with a life of its own. And to learn how to make my world and whatever surrounding part or pieces of that part better and more tolerant of differences.
I sound like a real saint, right, but the reality of much of a study in foreign travel is political strife, corruption, poverty, oppressive regimes, exploitation and globalization. Factors which are just as important to me as a traveler as the myth behind a certain ancient Incan ruin. And South America, being a land almost entirely conquered, divided, then abandoned, is a land full of extremes in respect to these cultural, social, and political issues.
If I had a mission statement for this trip if would inevitably be: To rationalize the contradiction of my exploitation of South America during my study of the historical and contemporary contradiction and exploitation of South America. So the following words will appear often: rationalize, contradiction, food poisoning, exploitation, cerveza, privilege.
From Pizarro to Peace Corps, the Exploitation and Contradiction of South America starts here.
Feel free to email Tyson at Tysonv@rocketmail.com. Also look to the left for links to all of Tyson's BootsnAll articles.
