The Pilgrimage Transformed: How to Decompartmentalize U.S. Volunteer Tourism in Central America

Abstract

In his 1869 book The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain famously said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” But one should always be cautious when quoting our American trickster. In the same book, Twain observed how his fellow travelers solidified their class status, ignorance, and foibles. He wrote, “The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass.”