What is it like being a foreigner in the most conservative city in the United States? In 2001, at the age of 15, the brazilian director Fernanda Pessoa experienced being an exchange student for a year in Mesa, Arizona, considered the most conservative city in the U.S.A. Fifteen years later – and two months before Donald Trump’s election – she returns to try to understand her experience there and the conservative ideas regarding topics such as the Mexican border, country lifestyle, religiosity and patriotism.
In 2014, a study conducted by researchers from UCLA and MIT found that Mesa, Arizona, is the most conservative city in the United States. That news affected me personally: Mesa was the city where I spent a year as an exchange student when I was 15 years old in 2001. This information made me rethink everything that happened during my time living the american lifestyle in a city in the middle of the southern Arizona desert.
In 2014, a study conducted by researchers from UCLA and MIT found that Mesa, Arizona, is the most conservative city in the United States. That news affected me personally: Mesa was the city where I spent a year as an exchange student when I was 15 years old in 2001. This information made me rethink everything that happened during my time living the american lifestyle in a city in the middle of the southern Arizona desert.
A few weeks after my arrival, the attack on the Twin Towers occurred and I witnessed the first year of George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism policies from within the country. In September 2016, exactly 15 years after my stay I returned to the city with a small team, trying to understand what it meant to be the most conservative city in the U.S., but also to reframe my experience as a brazilian teenager there. I reconnected with people who were part of that period of my life, such as my host family, my american literature teacher and the high school cowboy.
In a global context of conservatism – especially in Brazil, which seems inspired by a desire to align with or imitate the American conservative model – revisiting Mesa helped me gain a deeper understanding of myself and the current moment we live in. — Fernanda Pessoa