Travel Is Their Textbook

Areta Odiah’s head was spinning.

A few hours before, the honors broadcast journalism major was at Logan Airport, wiping the sleep out of her eyes as she prepared to board a 6 a.m. flight. It was only the third time she’d ever been on an airplane.

Now here she was, in the middle of an outdoor dance floor on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, dressed in a flowing, floor-length skirt, sweat pouring off her body. Along with nine other Suffolk students, she was learning the intricate steps of bomba, a dance that’s a pillar of the island’s culture, as well as a window onto its colonial history.

“I came to Puerto Rico to learn, to be a sponge,” says Odiah of the workshop led by Maribella Burgos, a well-known bomba dancer and educator. “The culture is so tight, and we got to see it firsthand.”

That’s exactly what leaders from Suffolk’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE), the Center for Student Diversity & Inclusion (CSDI), and the Spanish Program had in mind when they organized the six-day Suffolk Serves trip to Puerto Rico last May. In addition to partnering with local community service organizations, they wanted to immerse students in the island’s culture as a way to better understand its past and the present-day lives of its 3.7 million residents—who, despite being American citizens, cannot vote in US presidential elections.

“Puerto Ricans tend to understand a lot about the US,” says CSDI Director Bea Patiño, including its history, politics, and pop culture. “But the reverse is not always true.”

Take bomba. As Spanish Professor Iani Moreno points out, “learning this dance actually teaches you about Puerto Rican history.” Created during the Spanish colonial period by enslaved Africans brought to Puerto Rico to labor on sugar plantations, bomba was both a form of resistance and celebration. Today, adds Patiño, it’s a powerful symbol of the African diaspora’s ongoing impact on the island.

Making travel more accessible

While travel can greatly enrich students’ education, not every student can participate in traditional, semester-long study abroad programs—particularly if they’re working their way through college or have major family responsibilities.

That’s why Suffolk is expanding its range of shorter-term travel opportunities, both abroad and in the US. Last January, for example, Patiño, Sociology Professor Felicia Wiltz, and Vice President for Diversity, Access & Inclusion Joyya Smith offered a Culture & Connection trip to Washington, DC, funded by a University experiential-learning grant. Seventeen students spent three packed days visiting major Black history monuments and cultural institutions, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

For Nayellie Estrella—who spent much of her Suffolk career “going from school to work, from work to school” before graduating magna cum laude in May with a BS degree in sociology—the DC trip was a revelation. It was a chance to learn alongside students who were passionate about the same things she was, and to discover lessons different from those she’d found in the classroom. Direct experience, she says, “stays with you longer. It goes deeper.” When she heard about the Puerto Rico trip, she signed up immediately.

Meeting the mayor 

Travel is nothing new at the Center for Community Engagement. Since its founding in 1997, the center has sponsored weeklong Alternative Break service trips that have taken thousands of Suffolk students into communities all over the country and abroad. What set the Puerto Rico trip apart, says CCE Director Trina Bryant, was that it combined service, cultural immersion, and the opportunity for students to deepen their knowledge of Spanish.

The students—some novice, most advanced—spoke Spanish throughout the trip, enabling them to interact directly with local residents. Odiah, one of the novice speakers, plunged right in. As one of the trip’s student leaders, she encouraged the others to “talk with someone different [each day] and learn something about them.”

One of the students’ more memorable conversations came during a private Q&A session with the mayor of San Juan, Miguel Romero. That visit, as well as tours of City Hall and the Capitol, were arranged by Patiño’s cousin, Maria Rivera, the mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island. The first Latina mayor in state history, Rivera maintains deep connections throughout Puerto Rico, and she traveled with the group for part of their trip. “It was really something to see the respect in which she is held,” says Odiah.

Estrella, whose family is originally from Puerto Rico, was impressed by the San Juan mayor’s approachability. When she asked him about his leadership style, Romero explained that he tries to prioritize serving and empowering his community rather than governing from the top down. “That really resonated with me,” she says, “because it’s similar to my approach. He made it easier for me to envision myself in a leadership position because of the way he conducts himself.”

Watching Estrella and the other students converse in Spanish with Romero, discussing everything from politics to community engagement, Bryant found herself thinking, “‘This is why we do what we do.’”

The more students can have these kinds of meaningful conversations, she says, “the more they really get to know a community. The more they can understand a community’s strengths and its needs, the better able they are to walk alongside them”—not leading, not following, just working together.

Colonialism and its legacy

What helped make the students’ six days in Puerto Rico successful was the groundwork laid before the trip began by the trip’s organizers and two student leaders.

Odiah’s co-leader was Emily Gonzalez de Los Santos, a self-described “proud Puerto Rican” who has visited the island many times. “I was very excited to share my culture with the other people on the trip,” she says. “You don’t want to go into a place completely clueless. You do your homework in advance, so that you know something about the communities you’ll be working with.”

During the spring semester, the students studied Puerto Rican history and politics with Professor Moreno. They learned about the island’s indigenous peoples and their colonization by Spain, beginning in the late 1490s and lasting until the Spanish-American War in 1898. Following that war, Puerto Rico became a US territory; in 1952, it was designated a commonwealth. Today its residents are US citizens who are governed by federal laws, yet they still lack full voting representation in Congress.

Learning about colonialism was eye-opening for the students, says Yvette Velez, MA ’02, the CCE’s associate director for community partnerships. “As outsiders coming into this space, how should they grapple with its legacy?” she says. “And not all Puerto Ricans feel the same way about their history; how do you sit with that?”

That became evident over the course of the trip, says Jasmine Vogtli, an international relations major who is minoring in Spanish. “While US colonization of Puerto Rico is still controversial, it seems like there’s a general sense of admiration towards Spain,” she says. “It made me wonder where these dissonant views of the two colonial powers come from.”

Students also learned more about the debate over political independence vs. statehood. As a Puerto Rican born on the mainland, Estrella thought Puerto Rico deserved the chance to break from its colonial past. “Going there and actually interviewing people was humbling,” she says now. Many of those she talked with told her Puerto Rico couldn’t survive economically as an independent nation.

“This is something we talked about before the trip—you can’t walk in with a savior mentality,” she says, assuming you know what a community thinks or needs. “Going to Puerto Rico gave me that broader perspective.”

The team’s ambitious itinerary took the students to some of the island’s key historical and cultural sites, as well as to El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest in the US National Forest System. Mayor Rivera, Patiño’s cousin, connected them with La Casa de Nuestra Gente, a governmental organization that works with unhoused people and addicts in recovery.

Students spent a full day working with Casa de Nuestra Gente clients. Odiah and Estrella helped a formerly unhoused woman deep clean her home. As they scrubbed out the fridge and scoured the bathroom, the woman showered the students with food and small gifts.

Vogtli received a different kind of “gift”: Meeting a man who shared the story of his recovery from substance use disorder. “Throughout his life music had been important to him, and it was a supporting pillar in helping him [heal],” she says. “He sang and played guitar beautifully, and it was so meaningful to be able to hear someone perform and tell us about something so vulnerable in his life.”

As a criminal justice and law major, what struck Gonzalez de Los Santos was the contrast in how the US and Puerto Rico address homelessness. “Here in the US, we have laws that criminalize it,” she notes, “while Puerto Rico seems to work day and night to integrate people back into society after hardships.” That difference also extends to outcomes: Puerto Rico’s rate of homelessness is considerably lower than that of Massachusetts.

Built into every CCE service trip is time for reflection and journaling. It’s a chance, says Odiah, for students to sit with all that they’ve seen and experienced in a 12-hour day and consider what it means and what they’ve learned.

Months later, many of them are still reflecting.

Puerto Rico’s beauty may draw tourists looking for an island getaway, says Gonzalez de Los Santos, “but the people who live there are not on vacation. There are beautiful parts of the island, and there are places where people live in houses with tin roofs.” When everything isn’t picture perfect, she says, it’s important to ask why and what factors are contributing to that lack of resources and opportunity.

After all, she adds, “When you stop asking questions, you’re not traveling correctly.”

CCE to Launch New Partnerships and Service Opportunities

Building on the success of the Puerto Rico trip, the Center for Community Engagement is introducing new short-term service travel adventures and more dynamic partnerships, including a collaboration with the Journey Leadership Program for an immersive experience in Portugal and a joint venture with the Black Studies Program to delve into education, innovation, and sustainability. Applications are now open—join us in making a difference!