.

.

My encounter with the Abaco Islands was brief and less than ideal. I was on a press trip, working for a luxury magazine with a sexist and emotionally abusive publisher. The whole trip felt surreal in large part because I was so miserable. I was working for a publication whose stories reinforced Capitalist cycles of greed and oppression while under a boss who literally was not paying me. I grappled with that fact throughout the trip. I wanted to appreciate the beauty of Abaco’s people and landscape, but not at a place that perpetuated colonialist patterns. Hadn’t this been my internal struggle all my life? I am the daughter of a Salvadoran mother and an American father. I was raised in white, suburban Washington, DC where classmates thought my “Mexican” mother was my nanny.

Still, I felt guilty for being on a luxury trip and not enjoying it.

The PR team designed a packed itinerary full of mansion tours, spa appointments, boat tours, and elegant meals. Lush scenery and fascinating wildlife surrounded me. I clicked away on my DSLR and tried to soak in every moment. Yet I experienced a dream-like state, a cognitive dissonance between my social role over those two and a half days and my personal ideals. I knew that the Abacos were more multi-layered than what I was seeing—and I knew I was more multilayered than the average American tourist. On Monday, I quit my job and began the process of taking my ex-boss to small claims court to get the money he owed me. I was not going to let another white man mistreat me. I was not going to write for another magazine that promoted avarice and materialism. And I hope that I can return to the Abacos one day fully present not as a tourist but as a traveler with my eyes and heart wide open.