A lot of seemingly non-connected things have been happening in the last week or two. This blog post includes a number of them - in a very disconnected fashion.
Reina, a young lawyer, who works in Caritas’
program on Strengthening Citizenship has been doing research into the human rights situation in
the municipalities where the project is working.
One of these is Dulce Nombre. The juez de la paz, an official to take legal complaints has a backload
of cases, no secretarial support, and a provisional office. This sounds just like what the authors of The Locust Effect wrote about. See my earlier post here.
One of the major
concerns in legal issues in the Dulce Nombre municipality is domestic violence. Illegal gun traffic is another.
The health situation is dire. The Dulce Nombre health center is supposed to get medicine
every three months from the government. The last shipment of medicines was last
August, the only one last year. The doctor though has been able to get
donations of a few basic medicines from some suppliers in San Pedro Sula.
The rains have finally started. Usually people here plant
about May 15, the feast of St. Isidore the Farmer. But this year there had been
little rain until a few days ago.
The rains have been torrential – as is not uncommon. The
results are muddy roads and mud slides. Today on the road between Copán Ruinas
and San Jerónimo there was mud over the road – despite a stone retention wall.
The house in Plan Grande is going well. Thursday they will
start laying bricks on the first floor. I am hoping it will be done late
September or early October. We’ll see. I
just hope I have enough patience, I really want to move out there as soon as I
can.
Last week a taxi driver from Santa Rosa was killed in his
taxi outside Dulce Nombre. It seems quite strange since, as I’ve been told, it
was not a robbery and the driver may have been shot by a passenger from within
the taxi. The taxi had been active in politics and was supportive of LIBRE, the
opposition party. He also had a regular program on a community radio station in
a nearby municipality. I am almost positive I rode in his taxi several times in
Santa Rosa.
Saturday is the Vigil of Pentecost. We will be having a 6 pm
to midnight vigil which will include Mass (and maybe a procession.)
Next week Padre German and I will go to two zones of the
parish for the workshops with community base community leaders. There will be
meetings in the four parish zones this month.
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| Deacons Mark and Jeff |
Later this month I will be going to Iowa for the ordination
of three young men to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Dubuque. I know two
of them since they wen tot Iowa State. One of them, transitional deacon Jeff
Dole, sang the Gospel at the Pope Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday this year. The
three of them distributed communion at the canonization of Popes John XXIII and
John Paul II. The other one I know, Mark Murphy, started a story when he was an
undergraduate at Iowa State University that outlived his time here. Supposedly
I was a Navy Seal in my former life and had a conversion to a justice and peace
advocate. I neither confirm nor deny this.
I do, however, still want to confirm that I continue to be a vegetarian; today, when I encountered cows sitting on a rural road I didn’t even consider slaughtering
them. I honked the horn for a long time and a worker (cow herder?) came and
helped me get through them. So much for Honduran traffic jams.
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