RAIN, RAIN . . . and chill

Today it’s been drizzling and about 59°. It’s been cold and rainy since I got back home in Honduras on Friday night, October 24. In some parts of the country it has been raining more than fifteen days straight.

As a result there have been landslides, flooding, and more. There are more than 33 dead and tens of thousands homeless due to the rains.

Just south of Santa Rosa de Copán there was a great landslide in a village named Suptal, in the municipality of Corquín. About 80 manzanas (138 acres) of land slid down the mountainside and formed a dike in the stream which filled up as a lake behind it. Fortunately, the water flowed out in an orderly manner. If it had broken it could have devastated some towns and villages downstream.

Sunday, in Dulce Nombre, I met the director of a high school in Corquín who had gone to Suptal the day before. He showed Padre Efraín Romero, the pastor, and me the photos he’d taken there. In one there was a house that looked in fairly decent shape. But it had originally been about 30 meters (about 48 feet) higher up the mountain.

People have also been evacuated from a number of towns and villages, especially in Belén Gualcho where there have been earth movements and tremors, because the earth is so saturated by water.

The bishop told me that there are more than 490 people in this area who have had to leave their homes. (I have heard higher figures.) The people are living in shelters, but many have lost almost everything and have to depend on donations. What is a blessing is that many people have provided help. But it has been quite cool here – low sixties and below – but it is a piercing cold due to the rain and the humidity. Some people even are living in higher altitudes where it is even colder.

This doesn’t take into account the long terms effects. People need to rebuild their homes. Also, many people have lost some of their crops, washed away. A friend who works in Belen Gualcho told me that one small farmer told him that only about 40% of his crop remains. The bean crop was already being affected in September by the rains. In addition, a friend told me that some lending agencies are not providing people with loans for next year’s planting.

What this means is that there will be more hunger, more suffering, more need.

Devastation

I am still in Ames, Iowa, but I am very anxious to get back to Honduras after a little more than two weeks away.

Sister Nancy Meyerhofer alerted me from Gracias, Lempira, Honduras, that there has been massive devastation due to several days of intense rains.

I checked in the Honduran press on line and found out that there have been more than 20 deaths and more than 22,000 persons forced to flee their homes due to the flooding and landslides and threats of landslides.

Several areas in the diocese have been severely affected. Belén Gualcho, where a friend works, has been devastated with more than 59 houses destroyed. Some people from the municipality of Vera Cruz (in the parish of Ducle Nombre where I work) have had to move because of the danger of landslides.

What makes this difficult for many is that it has been ten years since Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras.

I am, thus, really anxious to get there to see what I can do. In the meantime, prayers and solidarity are needed.

Soeur Emanuelle

I just read that Soeur Emanuelle, a French nun who worked in the slums of Cairo, Egypt, died today. Many years ago I read a book of hers. This is a quote I wrote down at that time:

...the root of the problem must lie in the fact that, above all else, people need to be loved — to be loved for what they are, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, good or bad, dishonest or otherwise. Love them, I can, and when it comes down to it, that’s what they expect of me.

Sister Emmanuelle, To Share with God’s Poor, p.11

Back in the USA

I'm back in Ames, Iowa, for a few weeks to connect with St. Thomas Aquinas Church and Catholic Student Center where I worked fro 24 years and which is supporting me and providing a means for others to support me and the other ministries in the diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras.

It is good to be back, to see old friends, to relax a little. But it has been really a blessing to spend some time with the children in St. Thomas Aquinas' Religious Education program. They have provided a lot of support. The Vacation Bible School had Honduras as a sub-theme and raised more than $1000 for the silo project in the parish of Dulce Nombre de María. See their photos at http://www.staparish.net/gallery/v/vbs08/.

The children in Vacation Bible School had sent a number of drawings and messages to the children of the Dulce Nombre parish which I passed out to the catechists. The children in one village, Plan Grande, sent back small hand-made cards which I'm sharing with St. Thomas.

Ames, a university community, seems not to be too much affected by the current economic crisis in the US, but I am sure that there are more people suffering here and that contributions to churches and other groups have suffered. But all the indications are that the economy here is in trouble.

People are asking me about how this affects Honduras. It is hard to tell, since I am not in touch with all the figures. But the cost of living has increased significantly in Honduras in the last few months and people are having a hard time meeting basic needs.

That's why I am glad that I have been able to help with the Santa Rosa comedor de niños (lunch program for kids) and that Fr. Efraín in Dulce Nombre and others in the diocese are looking at ways to assist people with some agricultural projects, including a projected project to encourage and support small family gardens, with both fruit trees and vegetable gardens. That's one project I hope I can support when I get back.

In the meantime, it's a privilege and a blessing to be able to help connect St. Thomas and my friends and families with the diocese of Santa Rosa and the parish of Dulce Nombre - to help us share each other's joys and pains.

And our hope for you is confident,
since we know that, sharing our sufferings,
you will also share our consolations.

2 Corinthians 1, 7

I lost it

October 2 through 4 there was a conference in Copán Ruinas sponsored by Project Honduras (http://www.projecthonduras.com) which brought together over 170 people, mostly from the US, who work in Honduras or support programs in Honduras. It was a great opportunity to make connections with others working in – or with – Honduras. Over all, it was a very good conference and I made a lot of connections. In future years I may try to make it back to the yearly conferences – at least to try to connect with more people and to hear about other projects throughout Honduras.

However, I lost it at one point.

I had read in the program that some people from US Task Force Bravo, which is headquartered at the Soto Can0 (Palmerola) Air Force Base would be there. They do some humanitarian work and I presumed they would talk about it. But I was uneasy, since many Hondurans I know are very critical of the presence of US troops (about 520 of them, I found out) on Honduran soil. It feels like an occupation to some, especially as they remember the role the US government had in the 1980s supporting a repressive regime in Honduras and using the US base at Palmerola to support the Contra in Nicaragua and the repressive regime in El Salvador.

The Ambassador spoke the first morning, commending the people assembled for their efforts to help Honduras and laying out what he saw as the problems of Honduras. What I found most amazing is he did mention corruption at all, when many Hondurans consider this a major problem and both source and symptom of other ills. (In fact the word corruption was not mentioned once until the afternoon of the second day!)

Friday morning a woman from Task Force Bravo spoke. She proceeded to describe what they did as well as how they help humanitarian efforts. But she also gave a short history of the base. She stated that the base was there in the 1980s to combat aggression. That deeply affected me because I know the role of the US government at that time and have seen the effects of US support of Central American regimes like Honduras and El Salvador in that time. It was, I believe, far from combating aggression. Using the excuse of “Communism,” the US supported militarily and financially regimes that killed and disappeared civilians. This was well-documented by Americas Watch and Amnesty International.

So, I was upset and walked to the back of the hall to try to compose myself – praying and breathing deeply. Calmed down a bit. I returned to my seat, still trying to breathe deeply and pray the Jesus Prayer. I had decided not to ask a question.

However, someone, noting that the power-point was labeled “unclassified,” asked if she could share something more specific about their efforts against drug trafficking. The woman said that she couldn’t share that information since it was classified. And, she added, “ If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” And the people laughed.

That was it. I got up, first just thinking I’d move to the back . But as I walked I could not hold it in. I turned and said to her something like this. “That is not funny. It is not right to make a joke of killing. I know people who have been killed by governments in this region.” She insisted it was just a joke. I repeated my objection again. And then walked to the back.

As I got to the back, an attendee mentioned his support of what I had said. But it took me probably about three hours to restore some semblance of serenity in my spirit.

As I think back, perhaps I still harbor pain at the suffering I have seen in Latin America, often perpetrated in the past with the support of the US military and with the silence of diplomats.

But as I reflect I think my breaking point has something to do with the apolitical nature of the conference, with little social analysis except that provided by the ambassador and the woman from the airbase. The very fact that corruption was hardly addressed bothers me. But I think the fact that the person I work for, Bishop Luis Alfonso Santos, has received death threats (along with others) deeply affects me. There is structural violence and structural injustice here which must be addressed. People in Honduras are killed and threatened for less than seeing classified documents.

One cannot cover the injustices of a society by mere acts of charity. Transformation is necessary.