Otra vez, Eleanor in El Salvador

The past week has been filled with joyous reunions, only slightly interrupted by the serious work of getting the paperwork ready for our doctors' permits and our customs clearance.

One joyous reunion has followed another since Sister Eleanor Gilmore walked off the plane last Saturday.  Eleanor's long history in El Salvador goes back to time during the civil war in the 1980s, when she worked with the Archdiocese of San Salvador and with Jesuit Refugee Service, was twice picked up for questioning by suspicious authorities, and helped people coming in from the campo, including a few guerillas, get some much-needed health care.

Eleanor left El Salvador after the signing of the peace accords in 1992, but the people had found a place in her heart, and she returned in 2000 to begin the El Salvador Health Mission of PeaceHealth and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.  She and Kathy Garcia developed the PazSalud mission over the next nine years as Eleanor continued making friends.

She's stayed away for four years and a few surgeries, but this week she's back at last for a good visit with those friends.  We began the celebrations on Sunday with Mass in the Crypt of the Cathedral, where Monseñor Romero is buried, followed by a festival dinner at Estela and Susy Garcia's home, with almost all the Garcia family in attendance.  Here's Susy and Estela with Estela's mother and Eleanor- it was a glorious afternoon and wonderful Sopa de Gallina India, la abuela having provided the gallina. 

It's been like that all week - we've connected with many, many friends, and each connection has been a delight.  I get to share in the memories and in the joy that Eleanor's presence - in El Salvador again! - brings to her and to the many, many folk who know and love her.

Eleanor and I were both saddened that Sister Noreen Linane died while we were so far away.  Eleanor says she was ready and completely at peace - it's good to know that, and no surprise.  Noreen was a tiny woman full of life and energy who loved gardening and sewing and creating the most beautiful flower arrangements.  I first got to know her when, as a novice, I was told to shadow her in her work at Jubilee Women's Center, transitional housing for homeless women in Seattle.  As I quickly found out, Noreen's shadow had to move fast and listen hard to the wonderful stream of Irish talk that moved with her - I was exhausted by the day's end, and enchanted.  She's continued to be one of the hearts of our community at St. Mary-on-the-Lake, and while she's gone through many serious health crises, she always before has emerged full of energy, ready to move fast, to talk fast and to create beauty.  We will miss her so much.

Oh the permissions?  I hope all is well....it's always an area of headache and worry until that moment when the customs people wave goodbye to us, and that's still a little more than a month away. 

Meetings and memories

Saturday's procession and Mass commemorating Monseñor Romero was a beautiful event, even though Patti and I only saw the start of it (we knew that walking some miles to El Rosario, the Dominican church, at the slow pace of the procession wouldn't have been a good idea for either one of us, alas).  We did meet a lot of friends at the Plaza of the Americas, where the procession began, among them Sister Peggy, Leslie Schuld, Patty Clausen, and Hernan Merino.  It was wonderful to be part of this large, reverent, and joyful crowd remembering Monseñor. 

Then today I had the honor of meeting Doña Tulia of San Antonio Los Ranchos and her son Toño, two people who lived some of the worst of the horrors of the Civil War.  Doña Tulia, now a beautiful woman in her 80s, lost 9 of her ll children.  Toño, the youngest, told me about his memories of Karla Petitte (very likely I'm not spelling her name correctly), a beloved Maryknoll Sister who drowned when her jeep was caught in a flash flood.  She was with Sr. Ita Ford, who somehow survived the flood only to be murdered in December, 1980.  Hearing this eyewitness of El Salvador's tormented history brought home so powerfully the pain and loss of the years of repression and war.  These are the people Monseñor Romero loved and spoke for and died for.  And now he does live again in the Salvadoran people.

Photos below: Hernan Merino in this year's Romero T-shirt; Patti Moore with monks in the background; part of the crowd.

An El Salvador light on the scriptures

Yesterday I was invited by my Seattle parish, St. Patrick's, to reflect on the readings for the 2nd Sunday in Lent in light of my experience in El Salvador.  The readings were the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22, 1-18); the passage from Romans that asks "if God is for us, who can be against us"; and the Transfiguration (Mark 9, 2-10).  Here's what I said:

God put Abraham to the test.  How can we bear to hear this passage from Genesis, this terrible story of child sacrifice required by God?  We can look at it from a distance and say that yes, it’s a story about leaving behind an ancient and horrible tradition of sacrificing the first born son, leaving behind the image of a God who would require that sacrifice.  But we’re still faced with the unimaginable horror of that moment when Abraham turns to bind his son and lay him on the altar in his obedience to a bloodthirsty God.

But at that awful moment on the mountaintop there’s a pause, then a shift,  the light changes and the angel says NO, no, put down that sword, here is your beloved son, here is your future.  Who could bear such a moment? 

We are all put to the test in our lives, facing questions of who we are and who we’re called to be, facing into grief and loss, or finding ourselves in a moment when what’s asked of us – going with someone we love through a terrible crisis or caring for someone we love who is dying – seems far beyond our power to give.  This happens often enough to those of us who live in the rich world of North America, but how much more often are our brothers and sisters in the poor world, in countries like Haiti, Somalia, El Salvador faced with tests that you would think no one could pass

Many of you know that I have been living in El Salvador for three years now, coordinating PeaceHealth’s medical mission program and getting to know the people and the tragic history of this small Central American country.  El Salvador means “the savior,” of course, “el Salvador del mundo,” the Savior of the World.  And the feast of the Savior of the World is the feast of the Transfiguration, an event celebrated with a week of vacations and celebrations and processions every August.  …So as I reflected on today’s readings I began to ask myself what my Salvadoran friends and neighbors will be making of them.

They won’t, I think, find the sacrifice of Isaac as strange, as horrifying, as archaic as we do.  It’s going to remind them too clearly of the realities of their history and of their lives – and of the way their lives are part of God’s story.  It will remind my friend Lita of watching from a refugee camp in Honduras as villagers fleeing Chalatenango were mowed down by Salvadoran and Honduran troops.  It will remind Doña Licha of the nights she spent huddled hungry and terrified with her children in what’s now our pleasant little tourist town, Suchitoto, listening to rockets and bombs and gunfire.  It will remind Doña Mercedes of the day she found the headless body of her son in a Suchitoto park. It will remind Doña Tulia of San Antonio Los Ranchos that she lost nine of her eleven children during the Civil War. 

Rogelio will remember, as he does every day of his life, that he witnessed the massacre of his family and his village, Copapayo, escaping only because he – a 10-year-old boy - fell back among high grasses and played dead. 

it will remind them all of the story of their beloved pastor, prophet and martyr, Monseñor Oscar Romero, who knew he was marked for death in 1980 and asked only that his blood become a seed of liberty for his people.

The sacrifice of Isaac might also remind my Salvadoran friends of the terrible choices and realities they often face in the present moment: to know that your child’s life could be saved with a new heart valve that you cannot possibly afford; to love and raise children who may well grow up and join a gang; to pay protection money to the gang so you can keep your little store open; to save money so you can send a family member north for the hope of remittances. 

But in their terrible experiences – in the past of the civil war, in the present of poverty and violence and limitation – they know God who stands with them, God who is for them.  “If God is for us, who can be against us?” asks Paul.  This is not the God who demands sacrifice, but the God who loves and saves – the God of the Transfiguration, who saves Isaac, who loves and reveals Jesus, who leads us up the mountaintop to the place where truth can be known. 

The God revealed to us all in the Transfiguration is not a God who saves us by keeping us from suffering.  Just before this passage in Mark’s Gospel Jesus says, “whoever wishes to save her life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” And coming down the mountain, he reminds them that the story leads to resurrection – but only through death.  Still the disciples are allowed to see what my Salvadoran friends know in their hearts and souls: here is the Beloved.  Through Jesus we are all the Beloved.

I find it hopeful that Peter, the Rock on whom our church is built, is such a bumbler.  He’s been taken up to the mountaintop with James and John and he sees the reality revealed, the dazzling white clothes, the conversation with Moses and Elijah (and what would be the sound of that conversation – birdsong, falling water, fire?) and he’s terrified – they are all terrified – at this fearful reality.  Peter, it seems, can’t just fall on the ground in silence before this Jesus, he has to do something – let’s keep this going, let’s make some tents, let’s have a party, he says. 

But then they are overshadowed, Peter and all, by the truth within the truth: “This is my beloved son.  Listen to him.”  And suddenly there’s nothing to be seen anymore but Jesus alone with them, the truth within the truth on the mountaintop. 

I believe that’s the Jesús my Salvadoran friends know, the beloved one, the one who loves them even though AND BECAUSE they’re bumblers too, as are we all, who loves them even though AND BECAUSE their lives are lived at the margins of the world’s great events, who loves them even though AND BECAUSE, like the disciples, they don’t understand theology and don’t know how to make a liturgically correct response to the Transfiguration.

Instead, like Peter, they make a party, a fiesta.  No one makes fiesta like my neighbors in El Salvador, with costumes and firecrackers and processions and speeches and dances and food and drink.  They celebrate being alive, even though it’s hard, this life.  They celebrate the truth within the truth, that they are seen and known and loved, just as they are.

My friend Lita – the woman who witnessed the massacre at the Rio Sumpul - comes to visit Margaret Jane and me most Thursdays.  Lita got to know our Sisters Andrea and Margaret Jane when she lived in the Calle Real refugee camp during the civil war and they were providing some safety by being an international presence.  Now she’s a health promoter, a pillar of life in her El Bario community, a woman who, given half a chance, could manage the world.  When she comes to call we have lemonade and cookies and talk about her disabled granddaughter, about the trouble she’s been having for months with a sinus infection, about the hard work. 

La vida no es facil, she says, life isn’t easy, la vida no es facil.  And then she laughs and lets down her beautiful long hair, black streaked with white, and she gives us a great hug and maybe some mangoes or tamales and says “Primero Dios nos vemos el otro jueves” – God first, we’ll see each other next Thursday.  Primero Dios, God first: that’s what Lita and my Salvadoran neighbors get right, what we gringos often get wrong.  We want to think it depends on us whether we’ll meet on Thursday.  Lita knows that our meeting, everything, depends on God.  And then we laugh together because we know that la vida no es facil, but it is transfigured by love and laughter, by the truth within the truth and, primero Dios, we will meet.

Whitewash

San Salvador's Cathedral is a national gathering place, the site of massacres in the 1980s during the Salvadoran Civil War, the grave of murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero, the center for the Catholic community of El Salvador.  And until recently it was graced with a tile mural by Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort, with vivid and striking images of the people and the country.

In December, right after Christmas, this famous mural was demolished by order of the Cathedral authorities, without notice to the artist or to the people.  The reason given was that pieces of the mosaic were falling off, that tiles had become discolored in the sun and could not be replaced because new pieces would not match the existing ones.  The Archbishop said that an engineering and architectural firm working with the Archdiocese had recommended removing the mural.

To me it is a great sorrow that the church authorities destroyed this mural so quickly, so lightly.  Where Llort's bright tiles once brought life to the cathedral's facade, there's now a blank, whitewashed wall. 

Whitewashing the past, covering up history and art, has been too much the way of life in El Salvador.  The wounds from the Civil War still bleed - you will hear about them early in any conversation with a Salvadoran over 30 - because there has never been the kind of national process of memory and reconciliation that could bring healing.  Now the San Salvador Cathedral has lost its historical memory and imagery: another wound, another whitewashing.

The Nenzel Sisters

Andrea and Judith (Knight), the two Nenzel sisters, are safely back home in the Northwest - Andrea in Vancouver, WA or somewhere up or down the highways from there on the way to many PeaceHealth meetings, Judith in Nanaimo sorting through photos and memories to share with other family members.

It was a joy to have them both here, and it was fun to get to know them as sisters.  After working for six good years with Andrea, I know her pretty well, but it's always a new light to see the family connections, the shared jokes, the pauses, the likenesses and differences.

As you can see, it's not at all difficult to guess that these two are sisters, and since they're both tall and blond women, I had a rather nice two weeks of being short - not my usual experience in El Salvador.  We also got to hear, from Lita Calderon, Dina Dubon and John Guiliano, some good stories about Andrea's time here at the Calle Real Refugee camp from 1985-87.  My favorite was about Andrea using every one of her inches of height to insist peacefully and with great determination that an unhelpful local priest send a water truck up to Calle Real.  He did. 

It's always a moving experience for me to hear the Calle Real stories as I continue living my part of our Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace history in this country, which now stretches back more than 25 years.  And it's wonderful to see the love and gratitude that greet Andrea and Margaret Jane in this country.  The people remember who was there with them in a dark and uncertain time.

Feliz Año and all that jazz

It's a bit of a shock to find I haven't posted since New Year's Eve.  But mind you, the silence has only been on the blog channel.  Andrea and Judith and I have been having a wonderful time, first in Antigua, and then in El Salvador, where we visited our February medical mission site in San José Villanueva and last year's site, San Rafael Cedros.  There we had lunch with Mari and her family and enjoyed Richard Stanley looking healthy and happy with his new heart valve working just as it should - and Judith got to see one of our water filters in use.  This was especially nice, because she's donated quite a few of them to PazSalud.

But yesterday was the best, though not at all what we had planned.  We had planned going to visit Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a home for orphaned and abandoned children that's north of Santa Ana, a fairly long drive from Suchitoto.  We set out, and five minutes later the car announced that it was shutting down - check engine light on, engine coughing, and - we quickly discovered - the temperature up at the ceiling.  We called Peggy, who sent out her friend and car doctor Chamba; Chamba arrived in a pickup, put some water in the radiator which promptly began dripping out again which led to a diagnosis.  He refilled the radiator and drove the X-Trail back into a taller (repair shop) in Suchi, and we followed behind in his pickup, driven by a young friend.  Riding in the back of the pickup was a great treat for Judith, after she'd seen so many Salvadorans in one. 

There we were at home when Peggy called to say she had a special friend of Andrea's who'd just popped in for a visit.  She sent him over, and it was the famous John Guiliano, who'd worked as a volunteer at Calle Real with Andrea and Margaret Jane during the Civil War, decided to stay in El Salvador, married, settled in Guajila, Chalatenango, and is working to engage the young folk of that community in sports.  I'd heard so much about him, and he lived up to billing: joyful, dramatic, very Italian, determined and great fun.  We also got to meet his beautiful 15-year-old daughter Rose, and we all went out to lunch at the Café Guazapa and listened to the stories.  Imagine, if the car hadn't had a breakdown, John would have missed seeing Andrea for the first time in about 25 years.

I was glad, too, because the day at home gave me time to assemble all the materials that I needed to present today for our customs approval - there were three separate packets, lots of paper, lots of details to worry about, and I needed the time.  And today, oh joy, I got each packet into the right office with the right people there to receive it.  Primero Dios, we'll get our franquicia in plenty of time this time... And in any case, gracias a Dios for getting to meet John and share a memorable lunch.  Oh, and the car repair was well done, we've driven all day today with no trouble.  Gracias tambien a Chamba.

La vida política

I drove back to Suchitoto in the late afternoon yesterday to find a couple of policemen directing me away from my usual route to the Centro Arte para la Paz where I park the car. I turned the corner and found a few more policemen at the next corner. Several corners and several policemen later I was finally able to get to the Centro Arte by making a wide swing around the center of town, noticing on the way several FMLN buses parked. Of course I had to find out what was going on, so I walked back via the Parque Central and noticed that the street that goes past the Alcaldia (City Hall) was set up with a stage, lots and lots of FMLN flags, and a covered area for dancing. A normal enough sight in this city that for the past 24 years has been voting FMLN (this is the party of the left, formed by an alliance of five smaller political parties in 1981, in the early years of the civil war). But the event wasn't normal, and that's why the police were out in force. The FMLN 's central committee has named Pedrina Rivera as the candidate for Mayor in the elections coming in March, 2012, and many in Suchitoto were upset that they had not been consulted and that the current and very popular FMLN Mayor, Javier Martinez, would not be up for re-election. The flags and banners and stage were set up for Pedrina Rivera's opening speech in the campaign, and supporters had been bused in to make the event look festive and popular.

I didn't stay around to witness the event - it seemed like one of those fights in the family where you'd just as soon the guest didn't witness it - but I learned from the paper today that there had been protests and a scuffle, plastic bottles and pop cans had been thrown, and there was enough shouting to drown out the official words. And then, perhaps to everyone's relief, the sky broke open with thunder and lightning and torrential rains and the rally was at an end.

This morning when I walked over to church, the banners and flags were torn and tattered. It had been a hard night in Suchitoto.

Feliz Año

Happy Year! That's what everyone here is saying to each other. Sometimes "Nuevo" gets added, but mostly it doesn't. Here in Suchitoto we began 2011 with plenty of noise - from the mountain of firecrackers that were lit with a bang in the streets to the dance music pulsating from the disco next door - and everyone proceeded to enjoy the lovely long weekend. I've been enjoying getting to know Susan Masters, Korla's mother and a Lutheran pastor called to a deaf community in Minnesota. Susan goes home tomorrow, and we will settle back into the ordinary times of January for a while.

I looked for an image that might speak of my hopes for 2011, and found this photo of the altar mural in the church at El Paisnal, the church where Padre Rutilio Grande was buried after his assassination in 1977. He was the first of many Salvadoran priests, religious and catechists who were killed during the civil war, and his death turned Monseñor Romero into a prophet for justic. In this mural, Rutilio stands to the right and Monseñor Romero to the left, blessing a table filled with the good things of the Salvadoran earth - fruits and vegetables, tamales, tortillas, a jug with something good to drink - and around them stand the people they loved. The legend - taken from one of Rutilio Grande's sermons - says "una mesa comun para todos" - a shared table for everyone. May we come closer in 2011 to sharing the goods of the earth with everyone, with justice, and may we treat tenderly the earth that blesses us with such bounty.

Bugs

Our PeaceHealth group visited Parque Cuscatlan in San Salvador last week to see the memorial wall which gives the names of more than 36,000 Salvadoran civilians - men, women and children, priests and sisters, trade unionists and sidewalk vendors - who were killed or disappeared in the Civil War (1977-1992). It's a sad and beautiful memorial, a fitting end to the group's week of experience and discovery in El Salvador.

We got distracted as we walked along by an amazingly colorful bug that was working hard to climb the wall by the names from 1989. I've never seen a creature like this, and when I showed the image to a Salvadoran friend he said that he hadn't, either. I can't quite imagine the evolutionary purposes of his flamboyant markings - I'll just have to say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Glory be to God for dappled things."

Saints and Martyrs

The street I live on, while technically (to the Post Office) 4th Avenue South, is also Avenida Padre Rafael Palacios. Rafael Palacios was the priest in Suchitoto when he was assassinated in 1979; his body is buried in the Sanctuary of Santa Lucia. This mural remembers Palacios and Romero. The worn lettering underneath the mural translates, more or less: "They wanted to kill you, but you are more present in the people than before."

For Restorative Justice

For three days the International Tribunal for Restorative Justice in El Salvador has been meeting at the Centro Arte para la Paz and hearing from survivors and family members some of the terrible stories from El Salvador's Civil War years. The Tribunal, a project of the Institute for Human Rights of the UCA (IDHUCA of the University of Central America), has two judges from Spain, two from Brazil, and two from El Salvador.

This year they heard wrenching testimony about the Copapayo Massacre, told by one of the few survivors, Rogelio Miranda, who was 10 at the time of the massacre that took the lives of most of his family. They heard about the death of Christian Democrat and human rights activist Mario Zamora Rivas, from his wife, Aronette Diaz. Zamora was assassinated in the family home just a month before the killing of Monseñor Romero. They heard from daughters and sons of other victims, and at times the judges wept and begged pardon of those giving testimony.

This Tribunal for Restorative Justice is an annual event, now in its second year, begins a work that has long been needed in El Salvador: the work of hearing and recording some part of the tragic history of El Salvador's Civil War years. In part because an amnesty was granted to all participants in the war with the Peace Accords of 1993, there has never been a full examination or accounting of the many massacres and murders - the estimate is that more than 70,000 people died or were disappeared - between 1977 and 1993. The Tribunal begins that work.

One of the gifts of the Salvadoran people is knowing that even their tragedies require celebrations, so this heart-wrenching tribunal (if you read Spanish, you can read a fuller account here) ended in the Festival of Truth and Justice, celebrated this year on the Plaza Central, with a beautiful prayer service and an evening of music. The festival began with a lively group of girl drummers and dancers from the community of Guillermo Ungo and it's still going on.

Three photos from the tribunal and the celebration: the first is of Dra. Aronette Diaz testifying about the death of her husband, Mario Zamoa; the second shows a banner created by the Concertacion de Mujeres of Suchitoto with the names of women from Suchitoto who lost their lives during the war; and the festival photo is of the girl drummers.

Images from Calle Real

Most of these photos need no words: they were taken between 1985 and 1988 at the Calle Real Refugee Camp outside San Salvador, and show children at school, on a walk, at first communion, and at an improvised concert. Some of those children - now adults with children of their own - were hugging Andrea and Margaret Jane today.

The last photo is an image from the memorable day when Archbishop Rivera y Damas, the successor to Archbishop Romero, visited Calle Real, so that he could see with his own eyes and testify to the authorities that it was indeed a refugee camp, and not a place where guerrillas were operating. And, of course, that's Hermana Margarita (Margaret Jane) greeting him.

Just visiting

I picked up Andrea Nenzel, Hermana Andrea, at the airport on Monday, and since then I've been privileged to be part of some wonderful visiting and story-telling.

Andrea and Margaret Jane Kling opened the Calle Real refugee camp in 1985, during the height of the Civil War in El Salvador. The camp, on land owned by the Archdiocese of San Salvador, became a place of refuge for many families displaced by the war; Andrea and Margaret Jane accompanied them, working with the Salvadorans to keep the camp healthy and fed and to keep the community safe. They worked with staff from the Archdiocese, and yesterday one of their favorite colleagues, Gabina Duvon de Garcia, came to lunch. Gabina, or Dina as she's usually called, is one of my favorite colleagues too - she still works for the Archdiocese' Pastoral de Salud office and was my main contact for our mission in San Juan Opico. Her connections with Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace span a quarter century, so it was no challenge to keep the conversation flowing.

Many of the Calle Real refugees resettled rural communities in the Suchitoto area, and today we went to visit two of those communities, Marianela Garcia (named for a human rights advocate who was killed during the Civil War) and El Bario. In each place, Andrea and Margaret Jane found many friends, got abundantly hugged, caught up on children and grandchildren, looked at old photos and remembered stories from the Calle Real days. And I captured a few of those moments on camera. I also photographed a few Calle Real photos, but those are for the next post.

Primero Dios or Primero El Salvador

Yesterday La Prensa Grafica featured a two-page spread on the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Archbishop Romero's murder, and one item on the page reported vandalism at a small park in Antiguo Cuscatlan honoring Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA party and a man considered by many to be responsible for Romero's murder (for a recent, well-reported and chilling story about the events surrounding that murder, see the English translation of El Faro's excellent interview with Captain Alvaro Saravia.).

The vandals at the park had left a sign saying Asesino and the outline of a body in red paint. But what really struck me in the photo was the plaque with what I presume was D'Aubuisson's motto:

Primero El Salvador
Segundo El Salvador
Tercero El Salvador

How different that is from the words I hear every day in El Salvador, Primero Dios, God first. There's a huge irony here in that El Salvador means the Savior, means God. But I don't think that was how D'Aubuisson meant it.

San Romero of the Americas

Today, speaking as head of the Salvadoran state, President Mauricio Funes asked pardon for the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Funes said he apologized because the state failed to investigate the murder. For this story and a link to a BBC radio program about Romero, go to Tim's El Salvador Blog.

Today the Chapel of the Hospital Divina Providencia, the Hospitalito where Monseñor Romero lived and where he was shot 30 years ago today was crammed with people - Salvadorans, delegations from other countries, youth groups, labor organizations. Although the big memorial march took place last weekend, today's ceremony, which began with Mass at the Hospitalito and proceeded to the Cathedral, was full and moving. His words were spoken in Spanish, in English, through many different voices. His message and his fearless example have lost none of their force. The message on the back of one of the official T-shirts for sale today is: Bienaventurados los liberadores que ponen su fuerza no en las armas, no en el secuestro, no en la violencia, ni en el dinero, sino que saben que la liberación tiene que venir de Dios; que sera conjugación maravillosa del poder liberador de Dios y del esfuerzo cristiano de los hombres. [Blessed are the liberators who place their strength not in arms, not in kidnapping, not in violence, not in money, but who know that liberation has to come from God; that it will be a marvellous combination of the liberating power of God and the Christian efforts of people.]

Here are two photographs from the day - one of the march in progress, and one of my friend Mercedes Arias holding a Romero poster. I particularly liked this poster because it uses the same image our Congregation leadership used in our recent gatherings, of a seedling. Here the seedling springs from a cracked and parched land. New hope, new possibilities: a marvellous combination of the liberating power of God and our efforts.

An El Salvador weekend

Our great mission team got on the plane very early this morning - at least most of them did: a few are relaxing at the beach or with family, Zach Pedersen is on the way to Panama, and Cathy MacKay has started a three-month language-learning stay in El Salvador. Kathy Garcia and I drove back to the base house in Suchitoto and well-deserved naps.

Between the end of clinics on Friday and the plane ride this morning, our team members expanded their understanding of this beautiful country. We spent Saturday in the capital, San Salvador, visiting the Hospital de Divina Providencia where Monseñor Romero lived and was assassinated in 1980; we heard the story from Sister Bernadita, a Honduran nun and the only person who makes Kathy Garcia look like a basketball player. At the University of Central America (UCA) we learned about the assassination of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter nine years later. And we took a little time for shopping and sightseeing.

Saturday evening we had the traditional pizza-beer-and-coconut-ice-cream dinner, this time at the home of Leslie Schuld, Director of the CIS (Center for Interchange and Solidarity), and got to hear Leslie's take on politics, economics, crime and development in El Salvador, knowledge borne of 16 years in the country.

Sunday was our Suchitoto day, beginning with an inspiring conversation with Sister Peggy O'Neill at the Centro Arte para la Paz. Peggy reminded our team that the medicines and glasses we offered mattered less than the attention, respect and dignity we gave our patients; and that our consciousness of the limitation of what we could give was also a grace.

After a few hours to walk and shop in Suchitoto, the team headed for our new Base House and lunch and time to sit under the lemon tree and relax. Then it was back to the Novo Hotel, our elegant weekend lodging, to debrief and pack and get to bed early for the long trip home.

A visit to El Bario

Yesterday Alexine, Margaret Jane and I visited El Bario, a village that is part of the Suchitoto municipality. Many people from El Bario lived in the Calle Real refugee camp in the mid-1980s when Margaret Jane and Andrea Nenzel worked there - walking in with Margaret Jane is a bit like being an escort for a star! Lita, who once travelled to a Geneva conference on refugees with Margaret Jane, showed us around her beautiful and well-organized village. In the top photo, Lita (in pink) stands with her mother, Margaret Jane and Alexine. Other photos show the village chapel, Alexine with two very delightful young girls, an older girl with a hen on the way to market, and a mother watching over her daughters who are embroidering panels for baby dresses. The panels end up on clothes in the United States; the girls get two dollars for each panel, which is pretty good pay in El Salvador, especially for work that can be done in a friendly group of girls.

El Bario was organized as a cooperative in the 1970s. They were forced off their land during the Civil War, but were one of the first communities to return in the late 1980s - in part because they feared that if they did not return they would lose their land. This is a very well organized farming community, with a school, a community center, a corn mill, a small store and the chapel; it feels to someone from the United States like an extended family, and so it is. Lita sent us home with embroidered handkerchiefs and a recently published study of El Bario's history and present life - great memories of a very special day.

Honoring the Jesuits of the UCA

Yesterday Pat and I drove in to San Salvador for a memorial Mass in the crypt of the Cathedral, honoring the six Jesuits and their companions, assassinated twenty years ago on November 16th. It was a beautiful Mass, and the huge crypt - chosen because it is the burial place of Monseñor Romero and a sacred place for Salvadorans - was packed with people. The Jesuit Provincial, Father Jesús Salguero, said the Mass, with the current rector of the UCA, Fr. José María Tojeira, and several priests assisting. Cardinal Keith Patrick O’Brien of St. Andrews and Edinburgh talked at the end of the Mass, calling for the rapid canonization of Monseñor Romero, which drew a huge round of applause.

Today the murdered Jesuits were honored by Mauricio Funes, President of El Salvador, who presented them posthumously with the "José Matías Delgado" order of the golden cross - El Salvador's highest honor - which was accepted by their families and their Jesuit colleagues. This honor was an important symbol of the changing times in El Salvador, and perhaps a beginning of a process of truth-telling and reconciliation that has never yet happened publicly.

Photo by Jane Halsey from the rose garden at the UCA marking the place where the Jesuits were assassinated.

A time of terrible memories

Today the Jesuit community of the UCA (University of Central America) is remembering the Jesuits assassinated 20 years ago on their campus. Last night the community of El Sitio Cenizero, a village settled by survivors of the 1983 massacre of the people of Copapayo, remembered those who died during the three terrible days of killing. Margaret Jane and I heard the story of the Copapayo massacre two years ago, when the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace sponsored a week of study and reflection in El Salvador. I turned the story into a poem, and in memory of all those lives squandered so terribly during the Civil War, here it is:


Copapayo

He stands staring into his hands
moving them back and forth
talking to the ghosts that live there.

He cannot lift his eyes to look at us
because we are the ones who were not there
and so are still living.

He is compelled to tell the story
again and again, talking into his hands
to the ones who are not here,

Mamá. Papá. Tia. Hermana. Sobrino.
How they came down into the canyon to the lake
looking to go home again, was it safe? Was the Army
somewhere else? Looking to go home to plant the fields
with corn and beans, to harvest oranges. Peasants, paisanos,
thought to be ripe for communism, wanting rights
they shouldn’t have. He was just ten,
old enough to help. They sent out scouts,
the army came back after them, there was no time
to run, no where to hide, they started shooting,
bodies fell, beloved ones fell, blood fell into the lake.
After a while the army rounded up the survivors
and marched them away. The officer told some of the men
they could take the young girls, do as they liked with them.
He heard the girls screaming as they marched the others up
the hill away, he hears them still.

They were thirsty, hungry, so afraid. The soldiers said
they’d take them to a camp. After a while. First they were marched
to another village, not their own, He found his aunt and sister on the march,
still living, walking, and they walked together, kept together,
They were divided into three groups, sent to different corners
of the village, his group in tall grass when he heard the shots begin
and dived back, a small, thin boy, into the tall grass, trying to tell
his aunt, his sister to come hide with him, but then he was alone
alive holding silence while the world erupted into gunfire
and the soldiers joked and reloaded and shot some more
and tossed some branches over the dead and went away
and only he and Pedro were left, and Pedro, older boy, was
wounded so he couldn’t walk and he tended him for a night
and a day, fetched water for him, but he couldn’t carry Pedro
and he had to leave and the weight of what still feels like betrayal still
hides in the lines of his hands.

But he left and walked back to the canyon, past the bodies of the girls
now torn and dismembered by dogs, past the bodies of the ones
who had died in the canyon, no one left, no one alive to break
the silence, and he walked back to the village where the corn fields
were still unplanted and the orange tree hung heavy with fruit
and he hid in a hole in the earth like a dead boy until he heard
voices and it was the guerrillas gathering oranges and he came out,
and there was his uncle, the only one left, who put down the oranges
and gathered him up, cipote, precioso, and then the story
is over.

He stands staring into his hands
moving them back and forth
talking to the ghosts that live there.

He cannot lift his eyes to look at us
because we are the ones who were not there
and so are still living.

He is compelled to tell the story
again and again, talking into his hands
to the ones who are not here.

Travelling with Hermana Margarita

Travelling anywhere around Suchitoto - probably anywhere around El Salvador - with Margaret Jane Kling - is glorious. Many, many people in this area remember Margaret Jane well from the Civil War years when she and Andrea Nenzel were the North American presence that kept the refugee population in the Calle Real camp safe, and they are so delighted to see her again, to give her news of their families, to ask where Sister Andrea is, to exchange un abrazo fuerte (a big hug).

Yesterday Margaret Jane and I went with Lita, one of the strong women from Calle Real who now lives near Suchitoto, to visit Fausto and his family in Tenancingo (that's Margaret Jane, Fausto and Lita in the top photo). Fausto became a refugee in Canada after his days in Calle Real, and spent 8 years in the Edmonton area; his two older daughters, now teenagers, are Canadian/Salvadoran citizens, and one of them, Andrea Elizabeth, is named after Andrea Nenzel. The two younger children, a girl and a boy, were born in El Salvador.

Fausto brought out his photo album to show us photos of Margaret Jane and Andrea 20-plus years ago, and the stories about life at Calle Real came thick and fast - the time a depressed young man tried to kill himself with rat poison (they found the antidote), the time the Army came wanting to get the names of everyone there and Andrea and Margaret Jane, who had very little Spanish at that time, had to hold them off, stories of births and deaths and living with daily fear.

Since he came back to El Salvador, Fausto has created a little paradise around his house - many fruit trees (lime, orange, marañon - that's cashew - mango, banana) with orchids and flowering plants beneath them. It's a beautiful place that witnesses his love of life and the artistic touch of his wife, Transito - who also makes the best pupusas I've ever eaten. Though both the older girls want to return to Canada - no doubt for better schooling and better opportunities - and Fausto is working to get papers for the whole family, I wonder if the many positive they'll find in life there can compensate for the loss of this beautiful home.