In the Fall of 1998, eleven students from the Merritt College Anthropology Field School (Oakland, California) traveled to Tijuana, Mexico with the purpose of exploring the impacts of immigration and U.S. free trade policies on local Mexican communities. We visited a variety of organizations and met with many community and business leaders. Our trip was timed to coincide with the Days of the Dead, the yearly event in which ancestors are remembered and honored. Five students from West Valley College (Saratoga, California) joined a different group of twelve students from Merritt College for the 1999 tour.

Our trip was organized by Exploring California, a department of Global Exchange, the San Francisco-based human rights organization that takes the 'tourism' out of travel. Instead, their Reality Tours focus on building people to people ties by taking an issues-oriented and interactive approach to travel, which saturates the participants with the realities, issues, and ways of life of a particular community or region.

Students of Merritt College and West Valley College