I speak for the trees

Three more days, two more days...the week before Spring Break is so long. I remember when Alec and I arrived in Tijuana, we were struck by how environmentally unfriendly it is. You can see the smog hanging in the air and feel it in your lungs. "They need to plant some trees, build some parks!" we commented to each other, over and over again. Shopkeepers here will seriously put a toothpick in a plastic bag, as if you couldn't handle it without one. I was surprised to see that Mexico seems to be aware of the situation. My students are taking an ecology class where they learn better environmental practices. I was also assigned an environmental theme for my second unit this semester. As Spring Break got closer, I decided to show my students "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss. I always loved that video when I was a kid, the screaming mustached Lorax and his crazy town with the day-glow Truffula trees. We ate candy and watched it, the students liked the seventies style songs and the goofy animation.

Under the trees...in our Bar-ba-Loot suits!

I, on the other hand, was getting uncomfortable. The depicted town looked a lot like Tijuana. The Lorax screams about the destruction of trees while the Once-ler buildings factory after factory that belch black smoke into the clear skies of the former Truffula forest. People flock to the new town to get jobs in the factories and their houses eliminate all of the green spaces. I was squirming in my chair. The scene looked like the maquiladoras of Otay. A garbage truck dumps trash directly into a river. Oh no, like that river in the center of town that rarely actually has water and when it does, it is black and polluted. As the Bar-ba-Loots walk in a line out of the town, carrying some of their members because the forest is no longer sustainable, images of the lines of migrants I have seen in the desert in Arizona flashed through my mind. Hopefully I was reading too much into it. It was supposed to be a fun day, not a direct criticism of their town.

So I quit my job. No! Not my job here, my U.S. job. I declined my contract for next year. Yeah, it is a little nerve racking to quit a paying job during millennium style Great Depression II, but I did it anyway. What will you do? Stay in Mexico? Teach in some other school in Atlanta? People want to know! As would I....but I think I will just drive around Baja California for the next couple of weeks in my pre-millennium Mazda while I figure that out.

*The Lorax, Dr. Seuss