Ben's Blog

My name is Ben Clay, and on this site I bring together different kinds of writing: fictional stories based on real events, reflective posts on my own travels, and analyses of contemporary issues like migration and food. Sometimes I include real historical figures within fictional narratives, and other times I write directly from my own perspective as a traveler or observer. The idea of the blog is to make Latin American history and contemporary life feel vivid and story-like while keeping the events, places, and people grounded in reality. My goal is to make learning about Latin America both fun and educational.

The main focus of this blog will be Latin America, highlighting key moments when people cross borders, whether as explorers, migrants, tourists, or locals moving through their own changing landscapes, and how those crossings have shaped and reshaped cultures from the time settlers first encountered native populations to the present day. I will focus on how cultures clashed, morphed, and blended over time, and also on how inequality and power shape who gets to move freely and who is forced to move. The blog will show points of view from different angles. For example, I might use a primary source written by a European traveler but then write the blog from the point of view of a native who is following the European on his journey, or I might reflect on my own experiences in places like Costa Rica or imagine what it feels like to walk the Darien Gap today. This highlights the theme of perspective, showing how people can experience the same events and places in completely different ways. I will also explore the themes of survival, adaptation, and memory, using sources, personal reflection, and occasional fictional components to show how humans respond to upheaval and change, how they cope with drastic shifts, and how all of this has shaped Latin America today. These themes connect to course topics such as colonialism, cultural hybridity, contact zones, and the legacies of conquest and inequality.

Some of the key questions I want readers to ask themselves while reading my blog are: what would it feel like to come into contact with a culture so different from your own, and one you did not even know existed? With social media today, it is easy to be exposed to different cultures and viewpoints and to appreciate the beauty in those differences. However, before the internet, many people in both Europe and Indigenous tribes had never left their own town or community. Experiencing another culture for the first time would have felt alien and frightening. As a result, the way they described one another was often harsh and judgmental, viewing the other as evil, barbaric, or simply too different to understand. Another question I want to ask is: how can fiction help us imagine perspectives that were often left out of the written historical record? Many writings from the past focused on the biggest events and left out the small details. Fiction allows us to imagine the day-to-day life and how natives and Europeans truly interacted. Finally, I want to ask: what role do time and translation play in shaping how we understand these events? Many writings may have been altered by publishers or funders who wanted to push certain narratives. Explorers’ more positive impressions could be edited or changed to appear completely different, similar to how media can operate today.

The WordPress site will be organized around a central home page where I introduce the overall theme and goals of the project. From there, I will post five entries, each written from a different perspective and designed to offer the reader a diverse range of experiences and viewpoints. Each post will include images to help the reader imagine where they are and what the environment looks like. Some posts will be based on primary sources like Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwrecks and Commentaries, fictionalized to bring those moments to life, while others will draw on documentaries, secondary sources, and my own travel experiences to reflect on contemporary issues involving tourism, migration, and food culture. Each post will balance researched historical or contemporary detail with creative storytelling to make the project engaging and informative.

Although I am not literally traveling across all of Latin America, the combination of fictional narratives, imagined journeys, and reflections on real travel allows me to take the reader across different times and places. From Texas to Mexico to the Caribbean, Costa Rica, the Darien Gap, and the Andes, this blog explores many parts of the region. Ultimately, my travels through this project help me learn about Latin America’s past and present and challenge me to consider how history and contemporary experiences are remembered and retold.