HONDURAN RESISTANCE

On July 17, the same day as a major national mobilization in Honduras for a new mining law, this quote appeared in Sojourners “Verse and Voice.” See http//www.sojo.net.

“We campesinos are used to planting seeds and waiting to see if the seeds bear fruit. We’re used to working on harsh soil. And when our crops don’t grow, we’re used to planting again and again until they take hold. Like us, you must learn to persist.”

Elvia Alvarado
from Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.

MINING

This coming Tuesday, July 17, there will be a series of public demonstrations in Honduras in support of a change in the mining laws in Honduras. A regional popular organization, Alianza Cívica por la Democracía – the Civic Alliance for Democracy, is spearheading this public mobilization.

The bishop of Santa Rosa de Copán, Monseñor Luis Alfonso Santos, has been in the forefront of this struggle, especially since last July. He is urging all the parishes of the diocese to support the current demonstration. He and others want an entirely new law, not just some changes, but many Honduran congressional leaders do not support such a change.

The current law allows open pit mining of gold, silver, lead, and zinc. A July 2001 report of Mining Watch Canada detailed some aspects of the situation:

“In 1996 and 1997 alone, the Honduran government licensed mining concessions totalling 21,000 square miles — more than 30% of Honduras’ territory — to foreign companies, mainly from the United States, Canada and Australia. Then in December 1998, just weeks after Hurricane Mitch ravaged much of the country, a new mining law was passed — written by the mining association (ANAMINH), primarily made up of US and Canadian companies. The new mining law offers companies lifelong concessions, low taxes, unlimited access to water, legal rights to expropriate campesino (peasant farmers) and indigenous lands, and few environmental restrictions on their operations. In December 2000, the IMF pressured Honduras to reduce taxes even further, with the elimination of the export tax on mining products. With land use fees as low as $1500 a year for a large mine, and a nominal 1% municipal tax, Honduras has created an ideal tributary environment for foreign companies. Several of the mines now entering production are planned to produce more than $30 million worth of gold annually.”

The issues are many and some are quite complicated. But they include environmental contamination, displacement of peoples from their lands for the mines, the failure of the lands to benefit the people of Honduras.

A few years ago one mine at San Andrés Minas, Copán, released cyanide into the Lara River which is a source of water for much of the western region of Honduras. Tests of the water in Santa Rosa de Copán revealed traces of cyanide and lead.

A major concern is that the wealth is going out of the country to enrich some international corporation. As I see it, in a country as poor as Honduras this is criminal.

CHANGE OF P(L)ACE

A Change of Place

After four weeks of living in the obispado, which serves as both the bishop’s residence and the diocesan office, I am moving to a house about six blocks up from the center of town, on a dirt street. It’s a little large for me but will serve as a great place to welcome visitors. The place was completely empty, but the bishop has given me some furniture which will significantly cut down the cost of setting up a household. I bought a refrigerator and will have to buy a stove as well as household supplies.

Moving to a house will make my move to Honduras much more real for me. I am no longer a guest in someone else’s house – but a member of a community.

The house is in a part of town called Colonia Prado Alto. There is a small chapel a few blocks up from my house – Saint Martin de Porres. I have already gone to Mass there and found it a very welcoming community. I had planned to go there on Sundays no latter where I lived, but now I can be part of their community. Furthermore, a few days ago I met the young man in charge of the base communities in the parish. He invited me to come to the meeting of the leaders on Tuesday nights. I hope to take him up on this and also plan to join one of the communities.


A Change of Pace

For a change of pace, I went twice this past weekend to the town of Gracias, Lempira, a small colonial town (founded about 1536). Saturday I accompanied the bishop who was blessing eighteen new communion ministers for the parish. The parish already had thirteen communion ministers, but these new ones were all from the countryside. These sixteen men and two women will take communion to the sick and dying and will distribute communion at celebrations of the word in their communities. The Eucharist will be reserved in the chapels in the communities where they live.

The parish of Gracias has one priest for about 100 widely scattered rural aldeas and Sister Nancy Meyerhofer, a Dubuque Franciscan sister, works in the parish and has visited many of these communities. But there seldom are Masses in the communities. Yet the people have a deep love of the Eucharist and a longing to receive. The presence of these new communion ministers will enable the people to receive communion more often.

It was really moving to see them, chosen by their communities, at the Mass on Saturday. To me they appeared to be simple campesinos, people from the countryside, truly the salt of the earth. They were trained by Sister Nancy. I hope I have a chance some day some to work with people like them. I love working with college students, but there is something real about the campesinos in Latin America.

Sunday I went back for a meal and a few hours with Sister Nancy and Sister Brenda. Brenda, also a Dubuque Franciscan, was raised in Ames, Iowa, and is visiting Nancy for a month. I think she’d like to be stationed here. It was the first time in two weeks I had had an extended conversation in English! It was great to connect with these two delightful women.

Getting on the return bus from Gracias I was greeted by a woman with two kids. She was the teacher from the kindergarten I had visited last week. A block later a student from the Catholic University got on the bus and greeted me. I am getting to know people and be recognized faster than I’d thought. I better watch what I do!

Sin and grace

Wednesday, July 4, I spent much of the day with Sor Ines, a Spanish Franciscan sister who has been here at least five years.

In the morning we went to a neighborhood, just below the main highway in the lower part of town. Sor Ines spends two mornings a week there at a kindergarten.

Near the kindergarten I saw a number of fairly new houses that looked very nice. I asked her if these were “casas de lujo” – “luxury homes.” No, she said, they are houses of the Aldeas Infantiles, the Children’s Communities. (But then, I guess, poor children deserve the best.) Abandoned or orphaned children, or children whose parents cannot take care of them, are taken in by this international organization. Five to eight children, of all ages, live together in a house with a housemother and so children from a single family are not separated. The housemothers are carefully chosen and trained and are expected to spend many years working as a mother to the children in the houses. One housemother spoke of her role as a “vocation.” The idea is to be a place where the children grow up in as normal as household as possible.

After speaking to the director we went to the kindergarten, where many of the children are from the Aldeas Infantiles. Sister and I took the four year olds on a walk where we passed by their houses. In one we stopped a saw a 10 month old who had newly arrived in his new home.

After this sister took me on a tour of the neighborhood – Colonia Divina Providencia, the Divine Providence neighborhood. But one must wonder if the Divine Providence has really arrived here.

We passed a site at the side of a stream of “aguas negras” – sewer waste – where the city had wanted to put the kindergarten. Sor Ines was one of those who fought against it, suggesting at one point that they should put offices there.

A little further along we saw some houses at the side of the stream, mostly made of bamboo and mud, tin, or adobe. There are ninety households in this area. About 41 families now have cement houses but many houses are very provisional. The community now has water and electricity is slowly arriving, but this is a very poor area. there are also some problems of drugs, prostitution, and occasional murders.

Yet I felt very safe here for Sor Ines is well known, having worked here for about five years. She must know almost everyone and always asks if the children are in kindergarten or school. What a light she is for these people, a true sign of Divine Providence.

After lunch I met Sor Ines and another Spanish Franciscan, Sor María Jesús and visited the jail. It is quite a ways out of town and holds about 550 men and 12 to 15 women. The sisters are among a number of people including a local priest and some Missionaries of Charity who minister in the jail. The sisters are responsible for setting up a carpentry shop in the jail as a way for the men to learn a trade and to earn some money. Sor María Jesús works a lot with the carpentry shop. Sor Ines has a literacy class twice a week. I ended up helping two men – one a 22 year old who could not read. (I don’t find this totally strange after finding out that the teachers in El Bálsamo usually only teach two days a week!) During a break he told me that he had tried to enter the US but had been caught at the Tijuana border and returned to Honduras.

Before I left one of the men showed me around the prison. The men were playing pool, weaving hammocks or fishing nets, playing cards, washing clothes, or just hanging out. He also showed me the room where he and 16 other sleep, with at least four levels of bunks.

As we left the prison an Argentinean-born Spanish woman who had come with us said to me – these two sisters are saints; they are always working and helping. I don’t know if they are saints, but they are signs of grace and God’s love. I am glad that I will be living in their neighborhood.

El Bálsamo

This past Saturday and Sunday morning I accompanied a class of students from the Catholic University on a trip to a remote village. As part of his class in professional ethics, Fr. Roel Mejía had his class visit this village to do a survey of the community.

Thirty some of us left at about 10:: AM on Saturday in three pickups. We drove about 15 minutes on the highway and then turned off onto a dirt road. We reached the town of Vega Redondo about noon and then walked about 40 minutes up hill and 20 minutes down hill to reach El Bálsamo.

El Bálsamo has about 45 households and 400 inhabitants, 80 of whom are students in the local school with classes up to the sixth grade. There is no electricity and the road is extremely poor, especially in the rainy season. Not all members of the community have access to water. Most are subsistence farmers, growing corn and rice mostly for their personal consumption, and many of these rent the little land they have for their crops. A few folks grow coffee.

The students were divided into eight groups which each visited 4 to 6 houses. They listened to the people talk about their lives and their communities. They people spoke of the lack of adequate housing, problems of access to water, the limited amount of land available for cultivation (since some of the best land is used by the land owning for grazing cattle). They told stories that revealed the precarious nature of their lives. A child had a bicycle accident and was taken to a nearby health center; but there was no surgical thread there to sew up the child’s wounds. The people were also honest about the situation of the community, about its conflicts and lack of unity. Some students also found some people resigned to their condition, without much hope of things changing. But they also found that the people welcomed them into their homes. One group noted that they had coffee and sweet bread five times!

The students’ interviews will help the local leadership team to begin to plan and prepare proposals for development which they will take to some international governments for funding of projects in the community. Two persons who had connections with development and funding agencies had accompanied the students.

Saturday night there was a cultural festival around the campfire with music and skits. One skit, which provoked a lot of laughter, was a commentary on the community and its experiences. Though I couldn’t follow all the dialogue, I did get the satirical portraits of abusive drunk husbands and politicians who promise everything before the next election (but deliver almost nothing).

After this the students shared heir reports with Fr. Roel and the local leadership team. Sunday morning we had Mass in the little chapel; Fr. Roel brought some of the insights into his homily to encourage the people to work together and overcome differences in order to meet the community’s needs.

There was one very interesting moment at the end of Mass when Fr. Roel invited the students and members of the community to share any reflections they had. The students expressed their gratitude as did the community members. Then, at the end, a community leader noted that there was a visitor from the United States – me. Here was someone who was interested in the good of their community. And, he said, it is good to know that there are Christians in the United States.

Aha!