What Biking From Mexico to Argentina Has Taught Me About Borders -- & Myself
JESSICA DIAZ-HURTADO
LAST UPDATED JUNE 3, 2022, 8:22 AM
There seemed to be no end to the rain. At the foothill of her next incline, Andrea Molina looked around the Andes mountains she was steeped in and knew she needed to climb out of this and get some rest. The 30-year-old Salvadoran cyclist had been on a cross-continent bike journey with her partner, Jake, for almost a year. The beautiful Colombian terrain she found herself in was magical, but being caught in a rainstorm in a rural mountainous area amid the mud and wind was a bit terrifying. They were hungry. They were grumpy. And damn, they were tired. The rain got harder, the thunder struck, and there were no flat spots on the too-dark-to-see land. She felt defeated. But in the middle of their trail, they spotted two cows. And after that moment, she knew they were going to be all right. They had to be.
These were the moments Molina didn’t expect to encounter when she dreamt up her cross-continental bike ride from Mexico to Argentina and began her trek two years ago amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Her exchange visitor visa (J-1) was expiring, and with no way to renew it, she was forced to return home to El Salvador. Except, her immediate family no longer lived there, there was an infectious disease devastating the world, and El Salvador was responding by arresting people arriving to the country. “I felt like I was backed into a wall with not many options,” Molina tells Refinery29 Somos. With few alternatives, she needed to make this journey — both to have something to do during her time in limbo and to make a statement about the myth and politicization of borders.
Still, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. Just five years ago, Molina was scared to get on a bike, cross borders, or be outdoors. To mentally prepare, she started seeing a therapist. To physically get ready, she biked around her Washington, DC neighborhood, an activity that was still new to her. Molina started cycling as a 20-something-year-old college student in Maine. Having migrated to the United States at 18, and knowing little English and even less of her New England college town, she biked to get acclimated. In the bike-friendly city of DC, where she later relocated for work, she cycled even more, falling in love with the sport. But she quickly realized that biking wasn’t just foreign to her as an immigrant; many communities of color in the U.S. did not have access to outdoor spaces.
“The cycling world is mostly dominated by white men with money who can buy bikes and can take time off to do these trips. I haven’t seen a lot of women who look like me much on this trip,” Molina tells Refinery29 Somos over the phone from Oaxaca, Mexico, where she is taking a break from her odyssey while awaiting her visa to travel through Peru. “It has been hard to encounter people who don’t acknowledge me or who ignore me because I don’t look like a ‘cyclist,’ because I look like a random person on a bike.”
More:
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2022/06/10985757/bike-ride-mexico-to-argentina-essay
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