Sad times in La Montaña of Mexico

This past week I have been visiting communities throughout La Montaña of Mexico, and I've seen firsthand the difficult realities of the people who lost family members, homes, animals, and crops during Tropical Storm Manuel. I personally saw more than one thousand families (families, not persons!) living under pieces of plastic, and, believe me, it's cold and windy and still raining in the high mountains here.

I don't have the words to express the incredible challenges facing these families. Here are just a few photos. If a photo really is worth a thousand words, the first two photos are symbolic of the reality of the people here.

Santiago and his wife, Gregoria, showed me what was left of their house in Chuparosas:

Then Santiago started crying as he talked about what his future might look like:

In Moyotepec, more than six hundred families are living in plastic "tents" above their village; the fear is that the mountainside will continue disintegrating and completely wipe out the village:

In San Miguel Amoltepec el Viejo, that same fear exists. The top third of their village was already destroyed, and the soil above the village is still very loose. Can you, the reader, pick out the red roof in the middle of the gravel of the one school building that survived the landslide? The school used to be surrounded by other houses; those houses simply don't exist any longer:

And the big problem this year, besides housing, health, education, etc., is going to be hunger. The people tended to plant their corn on the mountainside and (even better) near rivers. Anything near the rivers was not only destroyed; what used to be fertile areas are now filled with rocks, gravel, and sand. Some families were lucky; for example, the family that owned this field in Lucerna lost only a part of their mountainside crop:

The struggle will go on. Mission Mexico will do all it can to accompany this afflicted people. Thank you for your support and prayers.

The Joys of Being Mayor

I read this week that Naheed Nenshi was re-elected mayor of Calgary. I congratulate Mr. Nenshi and wish him and his council—and all of the elected officials in Alberta—all of the best during the next years.

Mr. Nenshi knows what it’s like to coordinate efforts when a major disaster like flooding hits his community. Here in Mexico, after the tropical storm that affected hundreds of towns and villages last month, many mayors know what it’s like to (try to) coordinate such efforts.

On Wednesday I visited a village called Lucerna, here in La Montaña of Mexico. Here are a few photos of Lucerna’s mayor, Juan Garcia Mateo, and his community. I invite the reader to reflect for a few minutes: where might you sooner be mayor, in Calgary or in Lucerna?

Here is the mayor of Lucerna in front of his present residence:

Here is the mayor visiting some of his constituents:

Here is the mayor looking over his constituency:

Here is the result of the tropical storm for one family in the mayor’s village:

Here is the mayor on his way to work:

Here is one of the few residences with windows in the constituency:

I could add more photos, but I suspect you're getting the idea. Now the reader gets to decide: where might it be more challenging to be mayor?

PS: A special thanks to Lucerna’s mayor, Juan Garcia Mateo—and to the people of Lucerna—for allowing me to accompany him (and them) on Wednesday and learn about the challenges of trying to rebuild community life after Tropical Storm Manuel. And thanks to Mission Mexico for trying to make a difference in La Montaña.

World Mission Day — October 20, 2013

On Friday, October 18, I sent the following lines to Father Fred Monk, founding director of Mission Mexico. I don’t think he’ll mind that I share them in this blog.

Good afternoon, Father Fred. I hope that all is going well with you.

I couldn’t help but notice that this coming Sunday is World Mission Sunday. In the gospel Jesus shares a parable about a persistent widow; Luke tells us that it’s about the need to pray always and never lose heart.

I’m sure, Fred, that one of the things that most impacted you on your first trip to the mountains of Mexico was the persistent prayer that the poor here seem to so easily incorporate into their lives. I still can’t give a good response to the question of why it seems that God can be so present in their lives when it’s so easy to think that God must be absent from this reality of so much suffering and marginalization.

I think of Juan, a father of three children in Cochoapa, one of the poorest villages here in the mountains of Mexico. Juan’s wife, Anna, was pregnant with their fourth child when she became very ill. Juan was too poor to take her in the back of a truck to the hospital inTlapa, so he lit a candle in front of the image of St. James in the church and prayed for Anna’s health in his native language of mixteco. A short time later Anna and the unborn child died.

Anna’s brothers were angry that Juan hadn’t taken their sister to a doctor, so they openly let it be known that revenge would be forthcoming. Sister Silvia, one of the nuns working in Cochoapa, heard about these threats, so when Juan came to her one evening and asked her to write a letter for him in Spanish about how he had done the best he could to assist his wife, about how Anna’s brothers were planning to kill him, and about how that would leave his three small children orphans, she automatically assumed that the letter was to be sent to some kind of police force or government office.

You can imagine Silvia’s shock when, after the letter was finished and Juan had added his thumb print as a signature, she asked Juan whose name she should put on the envelope. He replied, “God the Father.” Juan explained that he had no doubt but that the brothers would carry out their threat to kill him, and since God had let his wife die even though he had prayed hard, maybe God didn’t understand mixteco. So he wanted to be sure to have this letter written in Spanish so that he could pass it over to God the Father after his death. Juan was murdered three days later. Silvia made sure the letter was in his pocket when he was buried.

I don’t think that God fails to understand prayers in mixteco. And I don’t think that God wanted Anna to die, just as I don’t think that God wanted Anna’s death to lead to Juan’s death. So why did they die? Did persistent prayer make a difference?

All kinds of answers could probably be offered to “explain” this all-too-common reality. One thing I do know is that malnourishment, preventable diseases, lack of education, health care and decent living conditions, and exclusion from the many glorious gifts of God’s creation—gifts for which many of us said “Thank you” to God just last weekend—all played a role in these deaths.

I appreciate the fact that our pope, Francis, seems to have great clarity in terms of the evil of poverty—the sinfulness of poverty. And he has been very clear that alleviating poverty must be at the very heart of the church’s mission; it’s not something that’s optional or secondary. It is at the heart of our role as members of the community of Jesus’ disciples.

So I guess that I believe that, as the song we often sing at Mass expresses it, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor.” But I often wonder: do we hear the cry of the poor? And even more I wonder: do we hear the voice of God that is surely inviting us—pleading with us us, I daresay—to be God’s instruments/stewards/disciples in transforming ourselves and in transforming our world? I think of the words expressed by Saint Teresa of Avila almost five hundred years ago:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.

Christ has no body on earth now but yours.

Thank you, Father Fred, for starting Mission Mexico. Thanks to all of the people who support Mission Mexico. Thanks to all of the people who pray for Mission Mexico. All of us involved with Mission Mexico try, with humility, hope, love, and persistence, to respond to this invitation from God to struggle against death and for life. We do what we can to help the Juans and the Annas (and their unborn children) live to a ripe, old age with dignity and love. We do what we can to educate people like Anna’s brothers so that mercy and solidarity, not revenge and death, are the guiding lights of their lives. We do what we can to live the advice of the prophet Micah: do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). 

None of this would be possible without the persistent prayer mentioned by Jesus in the gospel. Such prayer makes love, solidarity, justice, and hope part of our DNA as disciples of Jesus. It will give new truth to the psalmist’s words put in the mouth of our loving God:

“Call on me in your day of trouble;

 I will deliver you,

and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).

The Struggle Goes On

It has been a busy week. Trailers continue arriving from different places in Mexico with supplies for the villages most affected by the recent tropical storm. And trucks from these villages continue arriving to bring these supplies to the needy families in their areas.

Consider the village of Zontecomapa. Below are two photos: one of the school before the storm, and one of the school after the storm.

And, of course, many people lost their homes, their animals, their crops, their whole way of life (and many lost loved ones). Supplies are getting to the villages at the moment, but the question is: what will happen in two months, in four months, in six months? That’s when hunger is really going to strike La Montaña. If there is a line between poverty and misery, this storm undoubtedly forced many families to cross that line.

Of course, with the hunger and malnutrition will come diseases. Some of the villages have (or had) health centers, with at least a nurse or a doctor-in-training offering services on some days of the week. This is what the health center looks like now in Zontecomapa. This is just one of hundreds of villages affected by the storm. 

Tlapa’s bishop, Dagoberto Arriaga Sosa, has been travelling to the villages with his message of solidarity and hope. The people are in dire circumstances, but they still do their best to celebrate the presence of their pastor. In one village where I was accompanying the bishop, the people even found a turkey (no, it wasn’t Thanksgiving; Mexico doesn’t have that celebration) to share with the bishop. Everyone is so grateful that the bishop and the church are “so close” to them during this difficult time in their lives. Bishop Dagoberto has been bishop of the Diocese of Tlapa for only six months. He is a man who truly leads by example.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk with a group of about 25 young people from two towns, Olinala and Atlamajalcingo del Rio, who came together for a weekend of reflection and activities; the weekend was organized by two seminarians, Pedro and Ponciano. The theme of my talk was “The Bible and Justice.” It was heartening to see the concern of these young people for transforming the reality of impoverishment and marginalization in La Montaña.

So the struggle goes on. Thank you, Mission Mexico, for allowing me to be here. Thank you, friends of Mission Mexico, for helping to make a difference in the lives of these beautiful people. God bless all.

Dreaming A New Reality in La Montaña

Saturday night…it’s going to be good to rest. Although the thought of having to unload another trailer tomorrow reminds us of how sore our bodies are at this moment.

The diocesan seminary has become the “warehouse” for supplies being sent to the people in La Montaña from Catholic dioceses in other parts of Mexico. The seminarians and I have become specialists in unloading big trucks—just in the past week, more than 100 tons have been unloaded from trucks. The real challenge has been—and is—to get these supplies to the neediest of the needy.
 
 Just as an example, 600 boxes of supplies arrived for people in the parish of Xochitepec; each box is individually prepared for a family. But it took Gustavo (a member of the
Missionaries of the Holy Spirit; they are in charge of the parish there) two days of walking and half a day on the back of a truck just to get here to Tlapa this week. Some organizing and hard work are going to be required to get these boxes into that area.

 I went on Thursday to the high school in Potoichan, just to see how things are at the school there (Mission Mexico helped to build it and still supports it in several ways). The 255 students from all over La Montaña have been busy cleaning up, so things don’t look too bad. Their sports field that was near the river was destroyed, as well as a few orchards and gardens. A couple of the students posted a three-minute video about their school on YouTube; it kind of shows three stages: before tropical storm Manuel; immediately after the
storm; after several days of cleanup by teachers and students. The video plays music and has some typed information in Spanish, but I think you’ll enjoy it even if you don’t understand Spanish. Here is a link to that video: http://youtu.be/hE0mijqVLXo.

  
My friends, thank you for all you are doing for Mission Mexico. The people here need solidarity. Father Rodrigo, one of the priests in Cochoapa el Grande, was wondering out loud the other day: if Cochoapa was considered the poorest area of all poor areas in Latin America before this disaster, what do we call it now? After the loss of lives, crops, roads, animals, homes, etc., it just doesn’t seem right to use the same expression to describe this new reality.

 However, one thing not lost is hope. The sharing and concern demonstrated by people from all over Mexico and from all over the world—even Pope Francis—have strengthened this hope. I can’t help but think of some words expressed once by a Brazilian bishop, Dom Helder Cámara: “When we’re dreaming alone, it’s only a dream. When we’re dreaming with others, it’s already the beginning of reality.” Mission Mexico is trying to nourish that shared dream.