Two of the three locations are areas where I research. Motozintla, (Mariscal region) of Chiapas, Mexico was one of the main areas to receive refugees from Guatemala's genocide in the early 1980s. The region had been a part of Guatemala until the border was drawn in 1882, but the border was porous and people rarely observed formal border crossings (people shape geography). The second location (geography shaped people) is in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. That is the sending region of refugees from the violence. The similarity of landscape between these two regions made it an "attractive" region for refugees. 

The third location is the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It has been a favorite camping spot--both as a child and as an adult. I love the fact that you can "walk across" the Mississippi, and the surrounding areas have been protected as wild spaces. 

I am a Latin American historian who researches migration and the ways people understand movement. From the origins of the regional coffee economy along the Guatemalan/Mexican border, indigenous campesinos regularly crossed the border to work the coffee harvest. Seasonal migration for economic reasons became the norm for most of the 20th century. However, the Guatemalan conflict (1962-1996) challenged this labor pattern. Guatemalans increasingly fled to Mexico as refugees and Mexican law initially had no way to classify them and many were deported back to Guatemala to face imprisonment, torture, and/or death. 
The Guatemalan/Mexican border and the US/Mexican border share many similarities. Relatively porous borders become increasingly rigid, negative rhetoric about "foreigners" intensifies, and migrants/refugees are dehumanized as dangerous "others." I live in San Antonio, Texas and for the past several years, I have taught classes that discuss borders. My students (majority Latinx) experience repeated challenges based on how people who are NOT from South Texas perceive the border region and those who live there. (Ex. of El Paso WalMart shooting, and this weekend, students are concerned about the "Take Back Our Border" convoy that is bringing in people from out of the region into Eagle Pass, Texas. 

Three words associations from Geography:

1) Maps: The first association is with taking (and giving) map quizzes. The first day of college geology, (rocks for jocks--or science for those who don't do much math!) the professor gave a blank US map and a blank world map for us to fill out. We had 30 minutes to complete both of them, and all we had to do was to put where we were from--not our names--when we turned them in. He had been tracking students' general knowledge of geography based on where they were from--and noted that people from "flyover" country knew much more about US states than people from the coasts. International students knew much more about country locations than any group from the US. He then tied that to how people saw the world and their place in it. In my classes, students must be able to label the countries, capitals, and major geographical features of Latin America so that they can understand how the landscape shaped human societies.

2) Migration: How do things move through the physical environment? The monarch butterfly has become a symbol of undocumented students because it crosses all sorts of borders in its annual migrations. 

3) Place: What meanings do people assign to physical spaces and why is that important?