Migration is an act of courage
Migration is complicated and stories of migration, like their protagonists, are unique. What they have in common is the combination of resilience and the human desire to survive. In the countries of the Centra...
MCC Colombia-Ecuador Virtual Learning Tour
Welcome to the MCC Colombia-Ecuador virtual learning tour! Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are unable to welcome you in person to visit our program and partners. But that doesn't mean there aren't lots of hope...
Maya Textiles: The Books They Couldn’t Burn
Ignorance is a blessing. I really mean that. Ignorance allows us to visit places like the Ixchel Museum of Indigenous Textiles and Clothing and leave marveling at the beauty of the huipiles, cortes, and other ...
Luz: Laughter amidst the tears
The protagonist of today’s story is a woman who, for security reasons, I’ll call Luz.
Luz was born in La Guajira, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. She describes it as a beautiful region, very warm but al...
Anabaptist churches and organizations respond to violence in Colombia
On April 28, tens of thousands of Colombia marched in a renewed iteration of the National Strike that had begun strongly in November 2019. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Strike stopped but the r...
How border militarization in southern Mexico is putting Central American migrants at risk
Doña Francisca* keeps a photo of herself and a young relative, Kevin*, on her phone. In the photo, Doña Francisca is wearing a mask, but Kevin is bare-faced, clean-cut and smiling. He looks like a good kid. “H...
Partner Spotlight: The Children’s Program in Palmira
These photos were taken February 2020, before social distancing measures were put into place in Colombia.
It is a Saturday afternoon and a group of children gather in a community hall located in Palmira...
The Heresy of U.S. Exceptionalism
As extremists scaled the wall of the U.S. Capitol, I sat less than four miles away, staring at my computer screen and trying to follow the news reports covering what some called an attempted coup. Sirens waile...
A chapina in Nicaragua
*chapín/chapina is a word many Guatemalans use to refer to themselves.
“Dale”—a slang word that means something like “go for it”—is one of the most common words among Nicaraguans. This year as a MCC volunte...