News 17 -- Jan. 21, 1997

“Those of you who have known me throughout the years know the freedom the Oblates have allowed me -- choosing back in the 60's to go to the Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, followed by the Milwaukee 14 action, prison and then several more years in Milwaukee, until leaving for Recife, Brazil in 1974.”

[In some of his letters Larry used the word womyn as his way of expressing the equality of women and men.
campo = farm field or farm region. Campesino(a) = peasant farmer]

Newsletter #17

January 21, 1997
Guatemala

Dear Friends,

Another year has gone by and I know my communication with you has been little or none at all.

To analyze the Guatemalan situation politically, economically or socially seems a gigantic task, too large for a newsletter and, frankly, beyond my capacity.

So I must be satisfied with sharing an experience or two along with some recent happenings. The Peace Accords were signed between the Government and the URNG guerrilla forces on the 29th of December 1996 with much ado. Here in the IXCAN where the violence and the war were most intense, the members of the United Nations and over 20 non-governmental organizations gathered to celebrate the signing of the accords and the end of the conflict and violence that has endured over the last 36 years.

It was a memorable day with a Mass celebrated in the city park with Padre Ricardo Falla, SJ, giving the homily that outlined well the necessary process that must now begin to implement these same accords. Ricardo Falla is widely known for exposing in a well documented account: "Massacres in the Jungle" (IXCAN, GUATEMALA, LA 1975-1982) the horrendous atrocities against innocent womyn, children and elderly.

Rigoberta Menchu Tum was also present on the following day with members of the Military and the URNG outlining the demands of the peace accords and their commitment to seeing they are carried out. Rigoberta was recently chosen as the womyn of the most importance in all of Guatemala by the people themselves -- very significant considering the false propaganda against her during the last 10 or 15 years.

I would now like to focus on the reality here in Guatemala in a more concrete way, on the level of daily existence as most Guatemalans experience it. On the evening of December 31st, I went to a community called Nueve Jerusalen to bring in the New Year. There were Baptisms, First Communions, and a joyful and hope-filled spirit in the air. Guitars and the voices especially of the children and youth brought life to the incoming new year.

All that day the people had been working together decorating the small chapel with palm branches creatively arranged on the inside walls of the chapel and pine needles adorning the dirt floor. It is hard to depict what such a fiesta means to an Indigenous community whose entire being rings of their past tradition and culture and rooted in an extraordinary profound faith.

The families of the newly baptized gathered after Mass with lighted candles before the Tabernacle. With the newly baptized infants in their arms they knelt in prayer to present the newborn babes to their Creator God -- worn faces from the heat of the sun; bare leathered feet proclaiming their unity to Mother Earth.

As we ate the traditional tamales prepared for the occasion, a Catechist appeared to ask if we could take him and his pregnant wife (quickly) to the parish health clinic. She had been agonizing for two days to give birth, but complications seemed to be preventing the birth.

It was about 2:30 a.m. now, the first day of the New Year when we arrived. Two of the sisters, Daughters of Charity, came quickly to assist Maria. When I saw that all was under control, I drove our Toyota down the road from the clinic to where we three Oblates live and made haste to my room to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn broke and a new day set in.

As I was about to crawl into bed, I heard tapping on the metal gates in front of the house. At 3 a.m. I thought it was someone pretty well lubricated who wanted to pass the last couple hours of the night in the parish dormitory.

All knew though that doors were closed at 8 p.m. and those intoxicated could not enter due to the problems they might cause for the womyn and children there. I got into bed, but the clanging continued and a voice shouting "Padre Lorenzo, Padre Lorenzo" only made my blood tingle more.

After another twenty minutes or so I realized the voice came from a short distance below the window where I slept. I arose to discover it was Juan the catechist who had accompanied his wife to the clinic.

"Padre, the sisters can't help my wife; we need to go to the health center in Playa Grande where a doctor is on duty.” So off again, with Maria now crying profusely, we made our way slowly down the bad roads leading to Playa Grande.

It was now about 4 a.m.. There were four attendants to meet us and help Maria out of the car and into the clinic. A quick examine showed there were no apparent difficulties, just a rather large baby ready to enter the world.

Wheeling Maria into the delivery room, Juan and I sat anxiously together in the lobby. A nurse sent Juan down the road to awaken a household that sold medical supplies, to buy some gauze etc.. Shortly after his return, we heard the first cry of new life. Juan broke into a huge smile and a few minutes later was invited in to see his newborn daughter and now greatly relieved wife who lay nursing the infant. WOW!

Earlier in the entrance room Maria was asked how many children she had and responded 'solamente nueve' (only nine). The nurse had smiled appreciatively, but not surprised, as it is not uncommon to be the mother of nine or more children in third world countries. The staff at the hospital was delighted as this was the first child born in the clinic in this new year.

For me, the experience was a special blessing to start off the year. However, birth here in Guatemala is as natural as any other daily occurrence. Coming to the clinic to give birth was done in cases of emergency only, as in the case of Juan and Maria. The midwife couldn't seem to bring the baby forth and the Sister felt there may be unforeseen problems.

At the small hospital, there was still fresh blood on the floor from an earlier patient and the metal moveable bed that Maria was rolled into the delivery room on needed to be washed of blood stains before using also. Thus, surroundings were not as clean as one would find in hospitals of the U.S., but the love, care and joy among all was not lacking. And Maria's and Juan's baby daughter would receive all the love in the world; especially by her nine sisters and brothers.

I was called into the delivery room to see Maria and the child. What a beautiful sight! Juan talked to his wife, then to the nurse who said Maria would be ready to return home that evening at 6 p.m. Juan returned with me to his home along with the mid-wife. Maria no longer needed them and, too, the necessities of the family had to be attended to.

It has been over two and a half years since we 3 Oblates, Beto, Gerardo and I arrived here in the Northern part of the country, a part of the El Quiché diocese, torn over the years by many massacres of entire communities. Trinitaria is one such community, village close by to us. The Army entered there in the early 80's accusing all of siding with the guerrillas and left no one alive including womyn, children and the elderly.

Juan and Maria lived in the parish at this time and witnessed this sort of violence throughout the IXCAN. With the arrival of the new communities seeking land came guerrilla forces who found the jungle and the mountainside a place where they would be hard to detect and ideal for guerrilla tactics. At the same time they could win over the population to their cause and seek out tortillas and a certain security.

The people though would suffer the consequences. For the government forces would eventually establish their largest of military bases here in the IXCAN and begin an unheard of violence and terror that until this day Juan and Maria carry in their hearts.

Those of you who have known me throughout the years know the freedom the Oblates have allowed me -- choosing back in the 60's to go to the Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee, followed by the Milwaukee 14 action, prison and then several more years in Milwaukee, until leaving for Recife, Brazil in 1974.

I chose to hitchhike to Recife, which proved considerably meaningful and experiential. Living on the streets of Recife was an education that brought me closer to the reality that literally millions of folks the world over are plagued with. We cooked soup each night from vegetables gathered from those having vegetable stands in the market. Once people realized what we were about, we never lacked any of the essentials that go into making soup.

When one plants oneself, whether it be for a stretch in prison or locates in the streets of a city for a year or so, it soon dawns on one that those in prison or those burdened with street existence are just like me. They taste and smell and think and have the need for friends just as I do. Confidence builds when among prisoners, street people, with the Indigenous here in Guatemala we allow it to.

People often say: "I couldn't do time in prison,” or "I could never live on the streets, or adapt to the conditions of the third world.” Perhaps it's true, but how many times have I accepted a challenge and then discovered that in fact this was the right thing for me, that it was within my capacity. I needed only to follow my initial instinct and the rest would follow easily enough.

On a visit home from Brazil in 1980, I found myself listening to a friend contemplating an action in Amarillo, Texas against the making of the nuclear bombs and the risk that was being taken to ship these bombs by train across the U.S. As I listened to this man's reasoning and how several others had been drawn to participate, I was deeply moved by the circumstances that had led each to decide to travel South to Amarillo. What brought me into contact with Bill at this given moment? Why did my conscience begin to stir within me that this might be a hidden movement of the Spirit that would engage me too in the 'protest' to follow (as in fact it did)?

I became concerned with the U.S. involvement in El Salvador while doing time in a federal prison close to the Mexican border. After getting out, the 'opportunity' arose to travel to Ft. Benning and learn more about the Salvadoran officers being trained by our government there. And it wasn't long afterwards that 3 of us donned army uniforms and entered the base to address the problem of the U.S. presence and involvement in El Salvador.

Another term in prison, a year with some lay missioners in Chihuahua, Mexico and then to El Salvador for six years and a very rewarding experience.

Twenty or more years free to choose my own destiny, free to travel by thumb across the U.S. on various occasions and to hike too to Recife by thumb -- helped me to be a firm believer in the "guardian angels.” My bike trip home from El Salvador in '93 was the last time I was free from impending structures that pretty much do the determining.

For the first time in years, I've entered a community of Oblates to live and work in our mission here in Guatemala. It's the other side of the coin, so totally different in many ways. New and demanding in many ways for me, being part of the diocese of El Quiché with a pastoral program well put together, geared primarily to the formation of lay leaders.

I have tried to keep my head above water, while acclimating the best as possible in this relatively new--for me--terrain. However, this move has put me in touch with the Indigenous community on many levels, their spirit, their life, their community sense of being, and their ability to love unconditionally.

The big test for me has been to live out of a huge parish house, rather than a simple 'casita' as in Salvador, among the people. For more than two and a half years I've been living with two other Oblates, a rather hair-raising experience at times. Different backgrounds and lifestyles all make for some intriguing episodes among us. But it is a challenge we are called to -- to work and pray hard at bringing about community.

And now more of the present. The Peace accords are signed. Now comes the test. How committed are we all at making these promises a reality?

All hope the people of Guatemala have learned from the mistakes made in El Salvador and Nicaragua. After the war in those two countries, armed violence increased as did robberies on the streets and highways. Will Guatemala necessarily face the same dilemma? Will the Truth Commission's report on the atrocities committed especially during the early 80's be recognized by the Government and Military and justice be brought through court action? Or instead, as in El Salvador, grand massacres such as in El Mozote, where an entire population were killed with the exception of one womyn who survived? Evidence of such atrocities with lists of the names of military officials involved were scorned and denied.

1997 is the year of TRUTH. Either commitment be kept, the peace accords applied, or the future of Guatemala may be worse than it has ever known. This is the opinion of many at this point in history.

Let me close this newsletter with my feet on the ground and in the concrete reality of present surroundings. Did I write of Sebastian? Two years ago Sebastian at the age of four was living on the streets or at best in an abandoned room within the city limits -- his father, elderly and nearly blind, his mother 25 or 26 years of age, but incapable of raising children and all that this implies.

One day Maria, the mother, discovered a plastic bag of what she thought was powdered milk as she scanned through garbage on the side of the road. She mixed it with water and served it to her family. It was in fact some kind of poison. The father and two boys were rushed to the small hospital in playa Grande but not in time to save the father's life. The two boys lived

The Sisters (Daughters of Charity) in the parish, had just a few days before the accident moved the family into a newly built wooden frame house, at the Sisters´ expense. Within two months of the incident, the Sisters had located Maria in one of their own institutions where she has received good care. The kids, Sebastian and Miquelito, are in separate communities.

When Sebastian visited us at Christmas, he was a picture of good health, able to read and write after only one year of schooling and sharper than a tack as we had always known him to be. He is like a son to the whole community here in Playa Grande. We pray that he and his younger brother have a bright future with all the necessities they deserve.

I better finish up on this rather sad but happy note. Let us stay close in continual love and prayers.

A Blessed and Joy-filled New Year.

Lorenzo

[Received and prepared for mailing February 25, 1997 - mlp]