Intercultural Communication Essay

Cultural Reconciliation

It’s funny, many Americans, such as myself, find ourselves in a position thinking that we have such a tough life. Much of this is sarcasm of course, but if we look at it in an abstract way, we actually have the luxury of being sarcastic. From the inside looking out, we truly do not understand the hardships many citizens of other country go through, and the day-to-day accommodations our country offers, that we take for granted, such as running water, a-somewhat- trustworthy bureaucracy and political system. The novel Enrique’s Journey, by Sonia Nazario, tells a story of a boy, who’s mother flees to America to leave behind the corrupted government of Honduras, in hopes to find a better life in the United States, so she can afford a hospitable life for her son. But when she does not return, Enrique ventures through South America, towards the American border to find his mother. Through is journey, he comes across many different encounters that changes his mindset, from a boy, to a man; finding and deriving his own awareness of his identities, identifying the people in his surroundings and building perceptual filterers. Compared to Enrique’s childhood, I was far more privileged. It wasn’t until I moved out of my parent’s house, from Las Vegas, to California for college, that I realized I was a spoiled child. I grew up in a white suburban community, surrounded by custom-built homes. I never came close to the experiences that Enrique went through. I came from a higher socio-economic class, which was due to my fathers business. So, in a sense, I was sheltered by my family’s income, and blinded by the realism of what second world countries going through- such as Enrique’s Journey. I choose this particular story, not just because I was inclined to read it, but my proclivity to understand more about other ethnical and regional morals and stories, grows day by day. The similarities Enrique and I have is the process of acculturation. As I encounter various cultures, my adaptation to those cultures becomes stronger and less ignorant in terms sociological and physiological etiquettes of the culture. Enrique undergoes acculturation as he travels through South America and is forced to adapt to the different subcultures he experiences from Honduras, up to South Carolina. Honduras is geographically located between Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Colonially, during the pre-Spanish arrival, the general area was occupied by many different cultures, with many different religions. The Mayan and Aztecs empires both controlled certain segments of the area now know as Honduras. From 1450- pre-Columbian- up until British settlements around the late 1600’s, Honduras was not a westernized civilization, excepting the catholic missionaries. Once the British Empire‘s colonies settled, they started to export their domestic products, such as: bananas, plantains, coffee beans, and corn. Currently, Honduras is one of the main drug routes to the U.S. Currently, there is a high correlation between drug involvement, political power, and high socio-economic status; meaning that those who are involved in the drug trafficking are also involved in politics, and by default, are predominantly wealth. The U.S. Department of State Diplomacy has recoded that there are approximately eight million citizens, which the ethnics groups are made of ninety percent mestizo-mixed Amerindian and European- seven percent Amerindian, two percent black, and one percent white. The popular practiced religions are Roman Catholic, which take up about sixty-five percent of patricians and thirty-five percent Protestant. In terms of cultures on a macro level, the Hispanic and Latino culture reins supreme. Though on the macro level, there are many similarities, there culture is divided socio-economically. The muted groups are the micro-cultures; theses are the groups that do not partake in the drug trafficking related occupations. There economy is that of

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