“For many years in the oppressed countries of the world, the Church has aligned itself to the powers that be. It has depended on the wealthy to build its churches, feed and clothe and house its clergy. It has done all this at the expense of the poor.”
[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 #6
August 5, 1988
USA
Dear Friends:
I returned from El Salvador a month ago and am spending time with my mom and also visiting as many friends as time allows. I apologize to many of you whom it was impossible to see within the few weeks I was back.
Well, El Salvador is in a mess. It is questionable whether things will go better in the near future. On the day I was boarding the bus in downtown San Salvador to return to the U.S., the headlines read: SECRETARY [GEORGE P.] SHULTZ SAYS: "THE MILITARY MUST BRING THE WAR TO AN END NOW -This is the only way peace can be had in El Salvador" (...Words of Secretary Shultz to the military Chiefs of Staff of El Salvador).
At the same time Secretary Shultz was speaking to the military, Archbishop Rivera y Damas was calling for dialogue among all sectors of the Salvadoran society. In hopes, that is, of resolving by peaceful means the eight-year-old civil war.
Need I say more about these two contradictory statements? They merely emphasize the present dilemma existing today in El Salvador.
José, his wife Maria, along with Marta, Juan, and their five children (of whom I've spoken in previous newsletters) are, along with the entire campesino population, caught up in the intensity of the sowing season.
In August of last year, the second planting of the year was completed. However, as quickly as the rains had come to initiate the season, they abruptly ended. There was to be no more rain for the next nine months. The entire crops of corn, rice, beans and soy were lost.
This year, the first of May appeared and the drought continued. It is considered normal and good when the Spring rains arrive in mid-April or by the end of April. When the first of May passed as well as the second and third weeks without rain, the air grew tense.
A Sunday Mass for rain was scheduled. Sombreros, machetes, cumas (the campesino's principal tool of the Campo), small sacks of seed and jars of water are placed before the altar to be blessed. The water would later be taken to the field and sprinkled over the small section of land the campesino family had leased for the season.
It is difficult to feel in my gut the anxiety of anticipation as the rains are awaited. In our area, recently, two families went at it one night, leaving two family members dead and four others hospitalized. Yet, it is not the nature of the campesino to settle their problems by means of violence.
But when the lives of one's children are at stake and there is nothing to be done but wait patiently for the rains to come, it is rather fortunate if an explosion of some kind does not erupt.
The Mass for rain was offered. The sacks of grain were carried great distances on the heads of women or on the shoulders of the man.
A procession of men, women, and children began the celebration. The music was alive and hope-filled. The petitions were spontaneous and drawn from their own reality. On this day, it was as if all prayed in unison as each petition was proclaimed.
The gifts were brought forward by young and old alike and by children accompanied by the family dog. Then, each person took their place around the altar. The words, "take this bread and eat, for this is my body...take and drink, this is my blood,” stirred in our hearts.
When the time arrived to sing the Our Father, all in the church joined hands. At this moment, those present knew that the rains were in the making...that our prayers had been heard.
It is said that rains need vegetation and are attracted to areas well populated with trees. Where we are located, there are very few trees left. They are cut daily for fire wood and new seedlings are not planted to replace the fallen trees.
Because the campesino does not own the land, the incentive to replace the trees has not been there. So without forests, the chance of rain in our area is slim. Yet the people's faith defies this natural phenomenon as they vigorously prepare the land for the rains they sense are near.
And the rains did come - just two days after our Mass for rain on Sunday. It poured for two days. Seeds were sown and a short time later the first green shoots of corn manifested themselves across the vast countryside.
When the campesino is in the field, it is as if the hillside radiates with music. The atmosphere changes when the fingernails are crusted with the soil and sweat fills the brow.
Yet, not all was good. No sooner had the first tips of green corn appeared than the greedy, fearless creature of the campo made its appearance. The Guzano. This small earth worm (that has lain in wait to devour the fresh, sweet stems of new corn) struck its deadly curse. It is one thing to hear of this tragedy from friends - that the "Guzano" is destroying everything in sight - but another thing altogether when I went myself to work in the campo, only to see the devastating work these creatures had done.
I thought to myself, “Maybe guerrilla warfare is as effective as it is because like the Guzano, it defies all the hi-tech devices of our modern age. The person who takes to the mountains to defend him or herself knows the hillside like the Guzano knows the earth...and when one's people is at stake, one is 'indestructible'.
At the time I left El Salvador, the problem of the Guzano was under control. All were praying that the rains would continue to fall and produce an abundant harvest.
For many years in the oppressed countries of the world, the Church has aligned itself to the powers that be. It has depended on the wealthy to build its churches, feed and clothe and house its clergy. It has done all this at the expense of the poor.
We see glimpses of this in El Salvador. When feast days are celebrated it is usually the wealthier families who step forth to put new clothing on the statues of the saints. Everyone comes out to celebrate the feast of the patron saint and the crucifixion and burial of Jesus on Good Friday.
The churches are full on these occasions. Processions are animated and no one absents themselves from these celebrations. In our diocese today, a new cathedral is under construction as well as an elegant chapel on the grounds of the bishop's residence. Monsignor Oscar Romero, as you may recall, discontinued all work on the construction of the new Cathedral while the war was in process.
The celebration of the patron saint and Good Friday are in themselves most important, but until we take the 'Franciscan Robe' off Maximilian Kolbe and robe him in the prison rags that he starved to death in, the world will never know or remember him as the man he was. As the man who saved his small smitherings of food for those in worse shape than himself; the man who offered secret Eucharists with his fellow prisoners and finally volunteered himself in the place of a fellow prisoner and father of nine to be confined in a cell with those considered 'dead' - where food was withheld altogether.
And Mary - who is she if presented to Latin Americans with blond hair, white skin and painted lips? What a difference it would make if Mary were reflected for who she was: A refugee, a peasant, an advocate for the oppressed, the mother of a condemned prisoner, a third world woman, a liberator.
Dom Helder Camara always saw feast days and processions as grand opportunities to help raise the consciousness of his people. Not to omit these days of celebration from the calendar, but to restore them to new life and meaning.
And then , we as volunteers from the first world need to be educated by our Salvadoran sisters and brothers. Efficient programs in alfabetization do exist that conscienticize while at the same time capacitate people to read and write. Base Communities exist that have not lost their direction as being the voice for the voiceless. We must allow ourselves to be taught by those who have suffered torture, disappearances and even death to themselves and loved ones.
As the state of affairs grows worse in El Salvador (and Nicaragua) we do what we can to keep in touch with grass- root organizations outside the country and share with our people the news and events and processes toward liberation that do not appear in the daily news media of El Salvador.
Thanks for listening. Let's keep close. My thanks to the many of you who shared so much with me during these few short weeks I was here in the States. Until later.
Adios, Amigos and Amigas
Lorenzo
Friday, December 11, 2009
News 7 -- Oct. 24, 1988
“In the sudden flight of the ascending butterflies, she was uplifted in heart and soul, as she described, by their presence of beauty, unison and freedom to move about as they wished -- and this sight before her eyes in a country torn by war, violence and a lack of freedom to live out life, free as the butterfly.”
[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]
[This is our 7th Newsletter from Fr. Larry Rosebaugh in El Salvador. This writing began on October 24, 1988 and spans from then until now: April 15, 1989.]
Newsletter #7
October 24, 1988
El Salvador
I think we are in the right place at the right time. This thought springs from me as I sit on my bed, the sweat still discoloring my shirt and a short rest, stretched out on the concrete floor, has restored some life to my bones.
Juan, Ana and I set out at 8 O'clock this morning accompanied by a middle- aged man and his twelve- year- old nephew. They had come by horseback from the village where we were scheduled to celebrate the liturgy today. It is about two and a half hours by foot. The people generally send a person or two on horseback as a gesture of concern and to give each of us the chance to go by horseback if we care to do so.
During the rainy season, as is presently the case, the roads are hard to travel. Even the oxen pulling their carts are often unable to reach their destination.
However, today wasn't bad. Though the rains have come down hard in the last 3 days, the two weeks of sunshine prior to now made the ground hard and we were able to pass without difficulty. Our campesino sisters and brothers, with their patient trust in their God for all seasons, were awaiting this downpour to give life to their second crop of corn sown early in September.
For me, it is too easy to take for granted what we are privileged to encounter as we make our way through the countryside. That there still are winding, dirt roads that run up and down and around the hillsides now covered in a beautiful variety of greens, is a grace.
Children on their way to school make their way up the last steep hill before reaching our town. Womyn carrying small babies now arrive after a 3-hour journey, on their way to the clinic.
The oxen are moving easily enough today. It is good to see the ox carts filled with corn and freshly picked squash. A certain pride is sensed in this on-going movement of people today.
The mothers on their way to the clinic do not seem strained by the possibility that their young child may be gravely ill. The chill of the air has been gone for some time. The good corn crop has provided an abundance of tortillas and a nutritional drink called 'atol.'
This is vaccination time for the children at the clinic as well as the time basic food supplies are distributed to those mothers with children under five.
After greeting the mothers on their way to the clinic, and children with their satchels on their way to school, we came upon a scene I was not familiar with. In the front yard of one of the roadside houses were gathered 25 - 30 head of cattle. As we drew near, we heard what has become familiar to our ears; the shouts and almost chorus-like calls to bring a cow, a horse, a pig or an ox back into the herd.
Today a lassoed cow was running in circles, while 3 or 4 men were tugging with all their might to bring her to a halt. It was vaccination day also for the cattle.
Sweat pours from us as the first hour of the journey passes. But the diversity of colors, sounds and activity have absorbed our minds so that we hardly are aware of the hour or the heat of the day.
Ana described to us later what for her, had been a marvelous experience. It was the encounter she had with the butterflies. Although there was an instant when she had been startled by what seemed to be several hundred butterflies take to flight in front of her, the total impression made on her was magnificent. It would become a grace-filled event that spoke to her uniquely.
She noted that it could have been soldiers stepping suddenly out before her that caused the same shock to her system. The difference, she explained, was what the butterflies represented to her in contrast to the meaning of soldiers appearing armed and ready for confrontation.
In the sudden flight of the ascending butterflies, she was uplifted in heart and soul, as she described, by their presence of beauty, unison and freedom to move about as they wished -- and this sight before her eyes in a country torn by war, violence and a lack of freedom to live out life, free as the butterfly.
We finally reached the village and were greeted by the family in the house where the Mass was to be celebrated. The setting was perfect. In the backyard under shade trees where an ox cart was used for one of the benches and the mountains of Honduras showed in the distance. As the people gathered, we practiced a few songs with them. Work as seen through the eyes of Salvadorans was the theme chosen today for our celebration. Pictures depicting campesinos working in the fields and another showing a young womyn learning to use a sewing machine helped us begin the discussion.
We talked about the work in the fields: that the entire world population is dependent on the labor of the campesino for their daily bread, yet there is no other group of such number and of such importance that is so exploited. Despite their labor, they are forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty.
Six colones, or the equivalent of $1.20, for a day´s work in the fields. A pound of beans, the campesinos daily sustenance, has been recently priced at 4 colones. The average campesino family cannot afford to buy beans at this price and suffers terribly until prices are lowered.
The conversations centered too on the fact that the womyn of the campo rises at 4 a.m. to begin preparing the fire for the tortillas and café. Her work does not stop until 7 in the evening. She walks to the river to wash huge bundles of clothing and often returns again into the countryside to cut and carry back on her head incredible loads of kindling wood.
This total commitment to life and to family however has no financial reward. We discuss the role and the importance of the womyn campesina -- of her suffering , of her exploitation. If she takes work as a domestic, for example, she will work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and be paid 4 colones.
We suggest we finish this part of the celebration with a drama. A man and womyn are chosen to play the part of the owners of the plantation. Several other men, womyn and children take the part of campesinos working the land of this plantation.
The workers have reached their limit. They have not received pay for over 2 weeks. They have, out of desperation, decided to confront the landowner, knowing it could mean endangering the lives of their entire family.
The role playing comes naturally. It allows them to feel profoundly the conditions under which they are living. It allows too the opportunity to question the possibility of beginning to work toward change.
But we are in El Salvador where any type of organizing, conscience-raising are seen as subversive activity and have been met with arrest, torture and death - the tactics used to keep the poor 'in their place.'
Our work is slow, but motivated by the Salvadorans themselves who continue to give their lives to bring about a time when violence will no longer dominate.
Petitions follow the drama and express well the sufferings, the hopes and the joy of those present.
The journeys to the villages are an important part of our work here. They allow us the chance to get to know our people better and will hopefully be the means of building a lasting trust between us.
It is hard to see much hope for this small country of less than 5 million inhabitants. In the last 9 years over a million Salvadorans have fled their homeland. Why do those in power allow the war to go on, and the hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy and injustices - always against the poor?
It's an answer most of us are aware of, but a situation hard to do much about. The military, government and political parties of El Salvador, in order to remain powerful and in control must remain submissive to the superpowers, in this case, the United States....An almost inescapable slavery of a whole people. Every attempt to organize for one's basic human rights is seen as a direct attack against the powers that be and is thus met with force and violence.
But here, the message of Advent and Christmas break through. The message of hope in the midst of darkness, of light and birth and new life. It is the hope, the enduring struggle of the poor that cannot be extinguished.
The scriptures around these mysteries of John's making straight the way and of the birth of Jesus are directly related to the people of El Salvador today -- a people who are discovering Jesus, Mary, and Joseph one with them as refugees sought after, tortured, imprisoned, and put to death. But most important, identified as a resurrected people continuing on to the promised land.
We, too, as volunteers find ourselves baptized into this present reality often feeling exhausted, done-in and asking, "how did I ever get into this?" But last week, while in San Salvador, the capital, a little light was shed on this question. We at the volunteer's house were awakened at 2:45 a.m. by the sound of an explosion. It was loud and we thought, relatively nearby. We drifted back to sleep and later talked about it over morning coffee.
It wasn't until I bought a newspaper at 3 p.m. that I discovered that the explosion was that which had destroyed the office attached to Resurrection Lutheran Church.
Bishop Medardo Gomez is the pastor there. His name has been ingrained into the hearts of the poor in El Salvador after the fashion of Msgr. Oscar Romero.
Over the past 15 years of ministering he has faithfully responded to the situations that demand a response - Saying no to death and injustices, yes to life and liberation.
Medardo's life has been threatened numerous times, the most recently being just a week before the bombing of the church's office. Ten years ago, he had been the victim of arrest, torture, and imprisonment.
Members of Catholic and Protestant churches had responded to Medardo's most recent threats by inviting the public to an ecumenical prayer service of support. The service had been scheduled for the same day the bomb had exploded.
The celebration went on as scheduled. People arrived and saw with their own eyes the results of the morning explosion.
Three hundred persons jammed into the small church. The presence of Medardo's wife and 6 children needed no formal introduction.
Testimony followed testimony for over an hour and a half, interspersed by song, prayer, and heartfelt sentiments. ...Then the blessing all had waited for. Candles held in hand and everyone in the church standing, the bishop rose to speak:
"Sometimes I feel like quitting,” he began. "At other times, as when I viewed the remains of the church office early this morning, I feel scared and want to hide. But then, when I return amidst you, my people, in prayer and song, I am reborn, animated and ready to continue on."
February 14. For the past two weeks we were busily preparing to celebrate the feast of the matron saint of our parish, Our Lady of Fatima. We reflected with our people on Mary's message to the three peasant children of Fatima. Mary's message being: prayer and sacrifice alone will bring the war to an end and peace to the world.
If we translate this message today to apply to ourselves and to our people, what might we conclude?
Sacrifice is at the very heart of daily existence in El Salvador. We need only to listen to the petitions expressed in our 6 a.m. Mass each day to detect this: "For my son who stepped on a mine and lost his left leg..." "...For my daughter who set out two weeks ago for the U.S. and I have had no word from her since." And last week from a grandmother who prayed, "...for my two grandsons of 11 months and 2 years who died of the measles just three days apart from one another." The root cause of these two deaths being malnutrition. O, all merciful God, hear the cry of your people.
This letter is written in the midst of unanswered questions and serious doubts about the future welfare of this country.
Today and tomorrow, February 19th and 20th, (1989) the major political parties of El Salvador are meeting in Mexico to discuss whether to postpone the presidential elections, scheduled for the 19th of March, to September 15th.
There have been threats of an increase in the bloodshed, if the elections are postponed and an all out state of siege if they are not.
The poor of the country have as their only option to dig in once again for the long haul -- united and even more convinced during this season of Lent, that Jesus, Oscar Romero and the thousands of Salvadoran martyrs are alive and resurrected among them.
Saturday April 15th. I have spent the last week in the U.S.. It was a gathering of 135 priests and brothers of my Congregation (Oblates Of Mary Immaculate). It was a week of reflecting together on our past and trying to shed some light on our future.
I will return to El Salvador tomorrow, hopefully renewed in Spirit. If things go well, I'll see you sometime during the Summer months.
Adios,
Lorenzo
[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]
[This is our 7th Newsletter from Fr. Larry Rosebaugh in El Salvador. This writing began on October 24, 1988 and spans from then until now: April 15, 1989.]
Newsletter #7
October 24, 1988
El Salvador
I think we are in the right place at the right time. This thought springs from me as I sit on my bed, the sweat still discoloring my shirt and a short rest, stretched out on the concrete floor, has restored some life to my bones.
Juan, Ana and I set out at 8 O'clock this morning accompanied by a middle- aged man and his twelve- year- old nephew. They had come by horseback from the village where we were scheduled to celebrate the liturgy today. It is about two and a half hours by foot. The people generally send a person or two on horseback as a gesture of concern and to give each of us the chance to go by horseback if we care to do so.
During the rainy season, as is presently the case, the roads are hard to travel. Even the oxen pulling their carts are often unable to reach their destination.
However, today wasn't bad. Though the rains have come down hard in the last 3 days, the two weeks of sunshine prior to now made the ground hard and we were able to pass without difficulty. Our campesino sisters and brothers, with their patient trust in their God for all seasons, were awaiting this downpour to give life to their second crop of corn sown early in September.
For me, it is too easy to take for granted what we are privileged to encounter as we make our way through the countryside. That there still are winding, dirt roads that run up and down and around the hillsides now covered in a beautiful variety of greens, is a grace.
Children on their way to school make their way up the last steep hill before reaching our town. Womyn carrying small babies now arrive after a 3-hour journey, on their way to the clinic.
The oxen are moving easily enough today. It is good to see the ox carts filled with corn and freshly picked squash. A certain pride is sensed in this on-going movement of people today.
The mothers on their way to the clinic do not seem strained by the possibility that their young child may be gravely ill. The chill of the air has been gone for some time. The good corn crop has provided an abundance of tortillas and a nutritional drink called 'atol.'
This is vaccination time for the children at the clinic as well as the time basic food supplies are distributed to those mothers with children under five.
After greeting the mothers on their way to the clinic, and children with their satchels on their way to school, we came upon a scene I was not familiar with. In the front yard of one of the roadside houses were gathered 25 - 30 head of cattle. As we drew near, we heard what has become familiar to our ears; the shouts and almost chorus-like calls to bring a cow, a horse, a pig or an ox back into the herd.
Today a lassoed cow was running in circles, while 3 or 4 men were tugging with all their might to bring her to a halt. It was vaccination day also for the cattle.
Sweat pours from us as the first hour of the journey passes. But the diversity of colors, sounds and activity have absorbed our minds so that we hardly are aware of the hour or the heat of the day.
Ana described to us later what for her, had been a marvelous experience. It was the encounter she had with the butterflies. Although there was an instant when she had been startled by what seemed to be several hundred butterflies take to flight in front of her, the total impression made on her was magnificent. It would become a grace-filled event that spoke to her uniquely.
She noted that it could have been soldiers stepping suddenly out before her that caused the same shock to her system. The difference, she explained, was what the butterflies represented to her in contrast to the meaning of soldiers appearing armed and ready for confrontation.
In the sudden flight of the ascending butterflies, she was uplifted in heart and soul, as she described, by their presence of beauty, unison and freedom to move about as they wished -- and this sight before her eyes in a country torn by war, violence and a lack of freedom to live out life, free as the butterfly.
We finally reached the village and were greeted by the family in the house where the Mass was to be celebrated. The setting was perfect. In the backyard under shade trees where an ox cart was used for one of the benches and the mountains of Honduras showed in the distance. As the people gathered, we practiced a few songs with them. Work as seen through the eyes of Salvadorans was the theme chosen today for our celebration. Pictures depicting campesinos working in the fields and another showing a young womyn learning to use a sewing machine helped us begin the discussion.
We talked about the work in the fields: that the entire world population is dependent on the labor of the campesino for their daily bread, yet there is no other group of such number and of such importance that is so exploited. Despite their labor, they are forced to live in conditions of extreme poverty.
Six colones, or the equivalent of $1.20, for a day´s work in the fields. A pound of beans, the campesinos daily sustenance, has been recently priced at 4 colones. The average campesino family cannot afford to buy beans at this price and suffers terribly until prices are lowered.
The conversations centered too on the fact that the womyn of the campo rises at 4 a.m. to begin preparing the fire for the tortillas and café. Her work does not stop until 7 in the evening. She walks to the river to wash huge bundles of clothing and often returns again into the countryside to cut and carry back on her head incredible loads of kindling wood.
This total commitment to life and to family however has no financial reward. We discuss the role and the importance of the womyn campesina -- of her suffering , of her exploitation. If she takes work as a domestic, for example, she will work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and be paid 4 colones.
We suggest we finish this part of the celebration with a drama. A man and womyn are chosen to play the part of the owners of the plantation. Several other men, womyn and children take the part of campesinos working the land of this plantation.
The workers have reached their limit. They have not received pay for over 2 weeks. They have, out of desperation, decided to confront the landowner, knowing it could mean endangering the lives of their entire family.
The role playing comes naturally. It allows them to feel profoundly the conditions under which they are living. It allows too the opportunity to question the possibility of beginning to work toward change.
But we are in El Salvador where any type of organizing, conscience-raising are seen as subversive activity and have been met with arrest, torture and death - the tactics used to keep the poor 'in their place.'
Our work is slow, but motivated by the Salvadorans themselves who continue to give their lives to bring about a time when violence will no longer dominate.
Petitions follow the drama and express well the sufferings, the hopes and the joy of those present.
The journeys to the villages are an important part of our work here. They allow us the chance to get to know our people better and will hopefully be the means of building a lasting trust between us.
It is hard to see much hope for this small country of less than 5 million inhabitants. In the last 9 years over a million Salvadorans have fled their homeland. Why do those in power allow the war to go on, and the hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy and injustices - always against the poor?
It's an answer most of us are aware of, but a situation hard to do much about. The military, government and political parties of El Salvador, in order to remain powerful and in control must remain submissive to the superpowers, in this case, the United States....An almost inescapable slavery of a whole people. Every attempt to organize for one's basic human rights is seen as a direct attack against the powers that be and is thus met with force and violence.
But here, the message of Advent and Christmas break through. The message of hope in the midst of darkness, of light and birth and new life. It is the hope, the enduring struggle of the poor that cannot be extinguished.
The scriptures around these mysteries of John's making straight the way and of the birth of Jesus are directly related to the people of El Salvador today -- a people who are discovering Jesus, Mary, and Joseph one with them as refugees sought after, tortured, imprisoned, and put to death. But most important, identified as a resurrected people continuing on to the promised land.
We, too, as volunteers find ourselves baptized into this present reality often feeling exhausted, done-in and asking, "how did I ever get into this?" But last week, while in San Salvador, the capital, a little light was shed on this question. We at the volunteer's house were awakened at 2:45 a.m. by the sound of an explosion. It was loud and we thought, relatively nearby. We drifted back to sleep and later talked about it over morning coffee.
It wasn't until I bought a newspaper at 3 p.m. that I discovered that the explosion was that which had destroyed the office attached to Resurrection Lutheran Church.
Bishop Medardo Gomez is the pastor there. His name has been ingrained into the hearts of the poor in El Salvador after the fashion of Msgr. Oscar Romero.
Over the past 15 years of ministering he has faithfully responded to the situations that demand a response - Saying no to death and injustices, yes to life and liberation.
Medardo's life has been threatened numerous times, the most recently being just a week before the bombing of the church's office. Ten years ago, he had been the victim of arrest, torture, and imprisonment.
Members of Catholic and Protestant churches had responded to Medardo's most recent threats by inviting the public to an ecumenical prayer service of support. The service had been scheduled for the same day the bomb had exploded.
The celebration went on as scheduled. People arrived and saw with their own eyes the results of the morning explosion.
Three hundred persons jammed into the small church. The presence of Medardo's wife and 6 children needed no formal introduction.
Testimony followed testimony for over an hour and a half, interspersed by song, prayer, and heartfelt sentiments. ...Then the blessing all had waited for. Candles held in hand and everyone in the church standing, the bishop rose to speak:
"Sometimes I feel like quitting,” he began. "At other times, as when I viewed the remains of the church office early this morning, I feel scared and want to hide. But then, when I return amidst you, my people, in prayer and song, I am reborn, animated and ready to continue on."
February 14. For the past two weeks we were busily preparing to celebrate the feast of the matron saint of our parish, Our Lady of Fatima. We reflected with our people on Mary's message to the three peasant children of Fatima. Mary's message being: prayer and sacrifice alone will bring the war to an end and peace to the world.
If we translate this message today to apply to ourselves and to our people, what might we conclude?
Sacrifice is at the very heart of daily existence in El Salvador. We need only to listen to the petitions expressed in our 6 a.m. Mass each day to detect this: "For my son who stepped on a mine and lost his left leg..." "...For my daughter who set out two weeks ago for the U.S. and I have had no word from her since." And last week from a grandmother who prayed, "...for my two grandsons of 11 months and 2 years who died of the measles just three days apart from one another." The root cause of these two deaths being malnutrition. O, all merciful God, hear the cry of your people.
This letter is written in the midst of unanswered questions and serious doubts about the future welfare of this country.
Today and tomorrow, February 19th and 20th, (1989) the major political parties of El Salvador are meeting in Mexico to discuss whether to postpone the presidential elections, scheduled for the 19th of March, to September 15th.
There have been threats of an increase in the bloodshed, if the elections are postponed and an all out state of siege if they are not.
The poor of the country have as their only option to dig in once again for the long haul -- united and even more convinced during this season of Lent, that Jesus, Oscar Romero and the thousands of Salvadoran martyrs are alive and resurrected among them.
Saturday April 15th. I have spent the last week in the U.S.. It was a gathering of 135 priests and brothers of my Congregation (Oblates Of Mary Immaculate). It was a week of reflecting together on our past and trying to shed some light on our future.
I will return to El Salvador tomorrow, hopefully renewed in Spirit. If things go well, I'll see you sometime during the Summer months.
Adios,
Lorenzo
News 8 -- Jan. 13, 1990
“North Americans, for example, who go to El Salvador for a relatively short period of time in no way go to save, to change, to bring hope, etc. We go to be changed and to discover what survival and faith and hope and resurrection are really about from those living it out day after day.”
[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 # 8.
January 13, 1990
El Salvador
Dear Friends:
On Thursday July 12th I boarded a bus in San Salvador for Talisman, Guatemala, a border city of Guatemala and Mexico. On Saturday July 14, 2 days later, I arrived at noon in San Antonio, Texas.
The trip was without serious problems, even though a few memorable incidents generally occur. On Thursday evening I was told by the man selling bus tickets at the Guatemalan Mexican border that I would have to wait until Monday before a bus seat would be available. A few minutes later and I was in the state of despair, a religious sister from Mexico who knew the ropes well said, "he wants you to offer him a bribe of $10 and you will get your ticket. I did and I was on the bus for Mexico City the same evening.
I give thanks that these trips back to the States have gone well. The 2 1/2 days of travel up and down the beautiful mountainsides and through the valleys have served as a time to unwind and recall the many happenings of the past year; A sort of retreat before reaching home and meeting family and friends again.
When I arrived in San Antonio I was told of an old friend who had recently been in a serious auto accident and after 9 days was still in a coma.
Pio Celestino is a Peruvian who had come to the U.S, to pursue his career as a diplomat. During those initial years he began to meet other Peruvians and people from most every Latin American country. These people had to flee their countries because of war, poverty, and a general state of grave oppression.
Pio's natural instinct was to invite these families or individuals in need to pay him a visit at his home. Soon afterwards, he found himself dedicating his life to the service of these newly acquired friends.
In the last few years Pio has lived in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. There he and a lawyer friend established a community made up mostly of Salvadorans who on crossing the border find themselves without documents, food, housing or work. Pio and Lisa, along with friends, acquired a piece of tillable land - little by little - which has served to build a community. Working together on the land gives the former campesino a sense of family and security.
In early July, Pio had decided to go to Nicaragua on a peace march in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Sandinista government. He and others participating in the march had taken a day off after 3 days of walking and had decided to go by truck into the capital --Managua.
En route, their pick-up struck a horse, sending the vehicle rolling down an embankment. All were thrown free except Pio who was left crushed from head to foot.
It appeared at first he wouldn't survive. However, those at the hospital in Managua worked diligently to save his life. They mended his broken ankles and ribs, doing a remarkable job with the little resources available. Then they decided to send Pio to the States where he could receive better medical treatment.
Pio and I coincidentally arrived in San Antonio on the same day. It was on his hospital bed and in a state of coma that I discovered my friend.
Why do I include this account of Pio in a reflection of my past years in El Salvador? A few more thoughts about Pio might help this to become clear.
It's been over fifteen years since I first met Pio. What stands out most to me about him is his great zest for life. Whenever I have met him, he has been bubbling over with enthusiasm. People seemed to turn him on as did the possibility of a better future for the oppressed of the world.
I first met Pio in Dayton, Ohio where he had a house for refugees and other homeless people. He would put the responsibility of this house into the hands of the people themselves. If it were to function it would be because they would share the work and the needs of the house.
I remember walking through the streets of Dayton at night with Pio listening to his story. He had an uncanny sense of how to get rich and poor alike to solve their mutual problems. I faintly recall a womyn's clothing co-op he had helped to get off the ground. I also met a lawyer friend of Pio's working on behalf of the poor in this house of hospitality.
As I looked down at Pio on the hospital bed in San Antonio, I recalled the Spirit that seemed to drive this person. I was strongly inclined to believe that Pio would recover.
It is at moments like this in Pio's life as well as in the lives of thousands of Salvadorans whose hope for a tomorrow seems bleak, that a ray of hope flashes forth.
In the last few hours before I left San Antonio, Pio had begun to squeeze his visitor's hands in recognition of their presence. No words, no eye contact, but yes, a squeeze of the hand. At this point, his doctor told friends that Pio had a chance of making it.
This to me is the key to survival anywhere among a people. When word gets out - travels forth - or is whispered behind closed doors, "We are going to make it, have you heard?"
In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala... the people are making it. That's what counts.
North Americans, for example, who go to El Salvador for a relatively short period of time in no way go to save, to change, to bring hope, etc. We go to be changed and to discover what survival and faith and hope and resurrection are really about from those living it out day after day.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see Pio before returning to El Salvador. I was told, however, that he had regained full consciousness, had begun to walk and was once again with his Salvadoran friends in the Valley.
Maria and Dora arrived at our front door about 9 months ago. They were preceded by a government worker on the president's commission for returning refugees. She told us that a bus load of 25 refugees had just come into town. They needed a place to spend the night before setting out for the place where they would resettle - could we help them out?
This is how we made our acquaintance with Maria and Dora and the 20 children they claimed as their own.
What happens to people whose families have been torn apart by the war; disappearances, death of a father or mother, or 2 to 3 children of the same family? What happens to people like Maria and Dora who flee the country to spend 6 or 7 years in a camp for refugees?
Maria and Dora were in a refugee camp with 2000 other people, the greater percentage being womyn with young children. Elderly persons too, made up a good portion of this community.
An important factor within these refugee camps was the presence of international volunteers who in turn informed their respective countries when abuses against the human rights of the refugees were committed. The volunteers were persons who generally possessed important skills conducive to the needs of those in the camps. Skills and competency in medicine, agriculture, carpentry and other areas. But more important and essential than all else was the deep desire of the Salvadoran people to take advantage of every opportunity offered to them. And this they did with an indescribable intensity.
These years proved to be a time of growth, of learning and community all in one. The children and adults who never had a chance to learn to read and write would now have the opportunity. Campesino families would learn to work the fields collectively and to share the fruit of their labor according to each family's needs. The kitchen was run communally and with patience acquired so as to solve the problems that arose.
In effect, the years of collective living and sharing developed whole and integral persons, persons who would return to El Salvador determined and prepared to make the future a better place to live for themselves and their children.
Central and basic to all this was the building of Christian base communities. The forming into small groups to listen to the Word of God within the context of reality in which the people found themselves. Usually native Salvadoran sisters or priests lived within the camps and taught the elements of forming Christian community. The people came to experience that the Word of God like a two-edged sword penetrates every aspect of life, giving it the breadth and width and depth necessary to meet life with all of its demands.
From out of such a profound experience - such as this - Maria and Dora came to us. On this first night, we did what we could to provide space to sleep, food to eat and listened without intruding. We accepted what they offered to say, marvelled at their genuine goodness, love and the exceptionally good behavior of their children.
The following morning they set out by foot with everything they owned balanced on the top of their heads.
On the day Maria and Dora and their children arrived at our door, it seemed that the whole town had gathered in the plaza across the street from our house. Who were these newly arrived sisters and brothers? Where have they come from and where do they intend to settle? And all those children ranging from 19 down to 4 years of age... Who and where are their parents? Questions they hoped would soon be answered.
The National Guard of the town also came demanding information and documents from Maria and Dora. The soldiers took their personal belongings from the many cardboard boxes and spread them on the ground. A humiliating process, not new to them and other Salvadorans during these 10 years of unending war.
Salvadorans who fled into Honduras, Guatemala or to countries North or South of them fled because of the heavy aerial bombings and ground war carried out in the areas where they lived.
There is not a family amongst the refugee population who has not lost 2, 3, or more family members to the war.
Maria and Dora and their children have resettled in a small village two and a half hours by foot from our town. It is evident to the people of their community the gifts these 2 families have shared in the short time they have been there.
They share the Word of God with conviction and a vast amount of past experience. They have spoken within their community too, of the value and dignity and role of the womyn. Dora has become a leader of the local farming cooperative and responsible for calling the workers together to learn the value of working collectively.
Wednesday January 3, 1990.
My first New Year's resolution is to finish this newsletter to you (which I started writing in July while I was in the States).
The most recent outburst of the war here in El Salvador began on November 11th and continued until a truce was called for on the day before Christmas and terminated on the day after New Years.
When the two sides at war talk on and on about ending the war and it proves to be only a prolongation of empty promises and fruitless accusations, something has to give. And it did. Weeks of fighting in the streets, bombings in poor residential areas - killing an untold number of innocent people - leaving more than 70,000 homeless.
Living two and a half hours by bus from the Capital, with no means of travelling due to an ordinance by the guerrilla forces prohibiting all motor vehicles to operate until further notice; having all public radio stations taken over by the government, transmitting only what it wished the people to hear; telephone lines and the electrical plants dynamited and put out of use throughout the country for over a month, made life a nightmare for all.
Families from the countryside almost without exception had sons and daughters, parents or relatives in the capital or in one of the other larger cities under attack. They were frantic.
Daily Mass during this time brought more and more folks to church. The sharing of the Word was powerful, profound and deeply personal. At times like these, quarrels, and divisions among neighbors are often forgotten and the concern for family, friends and relatives becomes a common bond.
The guerrilla forces, by the way, operate their own radio station, moving its basic equipment for operating from place to place in the mountainside. This station remained functional too during this period of fighting, the result being that we the listeners had two sources of information or propaganda as one cares to interpret it to decipher from.
The government reported from the first day of the guerrilla attack that its troops had everything under control. This was quickly disproved as the war continued day after day, breaking out anew in most every major city of El Salvador.
On November 16, in the early morning hours, thirty to forty uniformed soldiers, as one reliable source has it, climbed the walls and entered a Jesuit residence. This community is responsible for running the Jesuit University in the capital. Six Jesuit priests, a womyn who cooked and cleaned house for this community and her 15 year old daughter were shot and killed point-blank.
Though shocking to all, many saw it coming for a long time. The Jesuit University with a presence of 25 years in El Salvador was renowned for its efforts to bring peace and justice to his land. Father Ignacio Ellacuria was second only to Monsignor Oscar Romero for his ability to confront the powers of injustice existing in El Salvador. He brought together a Jesuit Community and lay faculty dedicated to the liberation from oppression of the Salvadoran people through the means of educating the community and leading it frequently toward non-violent direct actions.
Immediately after the attack of November 11th began, the government encouraged people to call the radio station and express their heartfelt feelings. Hundreds of these calls were directed against the Jesuit University and specifically their director, Fr. Ellacuria. Accusations described the university as the center of guerrilla training and activity. What followed on November 16 in the Jesuit residence, after these public slanders were made, could have, again, almost been predicted.
President Cristiani has recently denied charges that the church in El Salvador is being persecuted. The facts show that since he took office in June, 53 church facilities have been entered into. Medicines, dental equipment, church documents, computers and other office material have been stolen or destroyed. The new printing press at the Jesuit University and the Church office of Bishop Medardo Gomez, recently destroyed by bombings, are cases in point.
Seventy eight church workers including religious sisters, priests and lay volunteers have been recently arrested, interrogated and expelled or pressured into leaving the country.
But even more devastating than this are the attacks leveled against the Salvadorans themselves who are involved in justice issues. Leaders of grass-root unions and cooperatives have been arrested, tortured and killed. An all out attempt to destroy what are referred to here as the popular organizations has since June been in the making.
The Lutheran bishop Medardo Gomez left the country recently under threats to his life. If violence occurs to Archbishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador, it will come as no surprise. With the arrival of the Arena party, Archbishop Rivera y Damas has been referred to as an arch enemy of the government and supporter of the FMLN.
This isn't exactly a cheery note on which to begin the New Year. But beneath the suffering is an amazing spirit of unity and hope within the Salvadoran people. Our Christmas and New Year celebrations in our rural community were joy-filled and hopeful.
As volunteers from the U.S., we feel the same way. Our people share and partake of this gift of hope and joy with us. And as Monsignor Oscar Romero said - Con este pueblo no cuesta ser Buen Pastor. [With a people like these, it costs nothing to be a good pastor.]
A Blessed and Joy-filled New Year,
Lorenzo
[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 # 8.
January 13, 1990
El Salvador
Dear Friends:
On Thursday July 12th I boarded a bus in San Salvador for Talisman, Guatemala, a border city of Guatemala and Mexico. On Saturday July 14, 2 days later, I arrived at noon in San Antonio, Texas.
The trip was without serious problems, even though a few memorable incidents generally occur. On Thursday evening I was told by the man selling bus tickets at the Guatemalan Mexican border that I would have to wait until Monday before a bus seat would be available. A few minutes later and I was in the state of despair, a religious sister from Mexico who knew the ropes well said, "he wants you to offer him a bribe of $10 and you will get your ticket. I did and I was on the bus for Mexico City the same evening.
I give thanks that these trips back to the States have gone well. The 2 1/2 days of travel up and down the beautiful mountainsides and through the valleys have served as a time to unwind and recall the many happenings of the past year; A sort of retreat before reaching home and meeting family and friends again.
When I arrived in San Antonio I was told of an old friend who had recently been in a serious auto accident and after 9 days was still in a coma.
Pio Celestino is a Peruvian who had come to the U.S, to pursue his career as a diplomat. During those initial years he began to meet other Peruvians and people from most every Latin American country. These people had to flee their countries because of war, poverty, and a general state of grave oppression.
Pio's natural instinct was to invite these families or individuals in need to pay him a visit at his home. Soon afterwards, he found himself dedicating his life to the service of these newly acquired friends.
In the last few years Pio has lived in the Rio Grande valley of Texas. There he and a lawyer friend established a community made up mostly of Salvadorans who on crossing the border find themselves without documents, food, housing or work. Pio and Lisa, along with friends, acquired a piece of tillable land - little by little - which has served to build a community. Working together on the land gives the former campesino a sense of family and security.
In early July, Pio had decided to go to Nicaragua on a peace march in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Sandinista government. He and others participating in the march had taken a day off after 3 days of walking and had decided to go by truck into the capital --Managua.
En route, their pick-up struck a horse, sending the vehicle rolling down an embankment. All were thrown free except Pio who was left crushed from head to foot.
It appeared at first he wouldn't survive. However, those at the hospital in Managua worked diligently to save his life. They mended his broken ankles and ribs, doing a remarkable job with the little resources available. Then they decided to send Pio to the States where he could receive better medical treatment.
Pio and I coincidentally arrived in San Antonio on the same day. It was on his hospital bed and in a state of coma that I discovered my friend.
Why do I include this account of Pio in a reflection of my past years in El Salvador? A few more thoughts about Pio might help this to become clear.
It's been over fifteen years since I first met Pio. What stands out most to me about him is his great zest for life. Whenever I have met him, he has been bubbling over with enthusiasm. People seemed to turn him on as did the possibility of a better future for the oppressed of the world.
I first met Pio in Dayton, Ohio where he had a house for refugees and other homeless people. He would put the responsibility of this house into the hands of the people themselves. If it were to function it would be because they would share the work and the needs of the house.
I remember walking through the streets of Dayton at night with Pio listening to his story. He had an uncanny sense of how to get rich and poor alike to solve their mutual problems. I faintly recall a womyn's clothing co-op he had helped to get off the ground. I also met a lawyer friend of Pio's working on behalf of the poor in this house of hospitality.
As I looked down at Pio on the hospital bed in San Antonio, I recalled the Spirit that seemed to drive this person. I was strongly inclined to believe that Pio would recover.
It is at moments like this in Pio's life as well as in the lives of thousands of Salvadorans whose hope for a tomorrow seems bleak, that a ray of hope flashes forth.
In the last few hours before I left San Antonio, Pio had begun to squeeze his visitor's hands in recognition of their presence. No words, no eye contact, but yes, a squeeze of the hand. At this point, his doctor told friends that Pio had a chance of making it.
This to me is the key to survival anywhere among a people. When word gets out - travels forth - or is whispered behind closed doors, "We are going to make it, have you heard?"
In Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala... the people are making it. That's what counts.
North Americans, for example, who go to El Salvador for a relatively short period of time in no way go to save, to change, to bring hope, etc. We go to be changed and to discover what survival and faith and hope and resurrection are really about from those living it out day after day.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see Pio before returning to El Salvador. I was told, however, that he had regained full consciousness, had begun to walk and was once again with his Salvadoran friends in the Valley.
Maria and Dora arrived at our front door about 9 months ago. They were preceded by a government worker on the president's commission for returning refugees. She told us that a bus load of 25 refugees had just come into town. They needed a place to spend the night before setting out for the place where they would resettle - could we help them out?
This is how we made our acquaintance with Maria and Dora and the 20 children they claimed as their own.
What happens to people whose families have been torn apart by the war; disappearances, death of a father or mother, or 2 to 3 children of the same family? What happens to people like Maria and Dora who flee the country to spend 6 or 7 years in a camp for refugees?
Maria and Dora were in a refugee camp with 2000 other people, the greater percentage being womyn with young children. Elderly persons too, made up a good portion of this community.
An important factor within these refugee camps was the presence of international volunteers who in turn informed their respective countries when abuses against the human rights of the refugees were committed. The volunteers were persons who generally possessed important skills conducive to the needs of those in the camps. Skills and competency in medicine, agriculture, carpentry and other areas. But more important and essential than all else was the deep desire of the Salvadoran people to take advantage of every opportunity offered to them. And this they did with an indescribable intensity.
These years proved to be a time of growth, of learning and community all in one. The children and adults who never had a chance to learn to read and write would now have the opportunity. Campesino families would learn to work the fields collectively and to share the fruit of their labor according to each family's needs. The kitchen was run communally and with patience acquired so as to solve the problems that arose.
In effect, the years of collective living and sharing developed whole and integral persons, persons who would return to El Salvador determined and prepared to make the future a better place to live for themselves and their children.
Central and basic to all this was the building of Christian base communities. The forming into small groups to listen to the Word of God within the context of reality in which the people found themselves. Usually native Salvadoran sisters or priests lived within the camps and taught the elements of forming Christian community. The people came to experience that the Word of God like a two-edged sword penetrates every aspect of life, giving it the breadth and width and depth necessary to meet life with all of its demands.
From out of such a profound experience - such as this - Maria and Dora came to us. On this first night, we did what we could to provide space to sleep, food to eat and listened without intruding. We accepted what they offered to say, marvelled at their genuine goodness, love and the exceptionally good behavior of their children.
The following morning they set out by foot with everything they owned balanced on the top of their heads.
On the day Maria and Dora and their children arrived at our door, it seemed that the whole town had gathered in the plaza across the street from our house. Who were these newly arrived sisters and brothers? Where have they come from and where do they intend to settle? And all those children ranging from 19 down to 4 years of age... Who and where are their parents? Questions they hoped would soon be answered.
The National Guard of the town also came demanding information and documents from Maria and Dora. The soldiers took their personal belongings from the many cardboard boxes and spread them on the ground. A humiliating process, not new to them and other Salvadorans during these 10 years of unending war.
Salvadorans who fled into Honduras, Guatemala or to countries North or South of them fled because of the heavy aerial bombings and ground war carried out in the areas where they lived.
There is not a family amongst the refugee population who has not lost 2, 3, or more family members to the war.
Maria and Dora and their children have resettled in a small village two and a half hours by foot from our town. It is evident to the people of their community the gifts these 2 families have shared in the short time they have been there.
They share the Word of God with conviction and a vast amount of past experience. They have spoken within their community too, of the value and dignity and role of the womyn. Dora has become a leader of the local farming cooperative and responsible for calling the workers together to learn the value of working collectively.
Wednesday January 3, 1990.
My first New Year's resolution is to finish this newsletter to you (which I started writing in July while I was in the States).
The most recent outburst of the war here in El Salvador began on November 11th and continued until a truce was called for on the day before Christmas and terminated on the day after New Years.
When the two sides at war talk on and on about ending the war and it proves to be only a prolongation of empty promises and fruitless accusations, something has to give. And it did. Weeks of fighting in the streets, bombings in poor residential areas - killing an untold number of innocent people - leaving more than 70,000 homeless.
Living two and a half hours by bus from the Capital, with no means of travelling due to an ordinance by the guerrilla forces prohibiting all motor vehicles to operate until further notice; having all public radio stations taken over by the government, transmitting only what it wished the people to hear; telephone lines and the electrical plants dynamited and put out of use throughout the country for over a month, made life a nightmare for all.
Families from the countryside almost without exception had sons and daughters, parents or relatives in the capital or in one of the other larger cities under attack. They were frantic.
Daily Mass during this time brought more and more folks to church. The sharing of the Word was powerful, profound and deeply personal. At times like these, quarrels, and divisions among neighbors are often forgotten and the concern for family, friends and relatives becomes a common bond.
The guerrilla forces, by the way, operate their own radio station, moving its basic equipment for operating from place to place in the mountainside. This station remained functional too during this period of fighting, the result being that we the listeners had two sources of information or propaganda as one cares to interpret it to decipher from.
The government reported from the first day of the guerrilla attack that its troops had everything under control. This was quickly disproved as the war continued day after day, breaking out anew in most every major city of El Salvador.
On November 16, in the early morning hours, thirty to forty uniformed soldiers, as one reliable source has it, climbed the walls and entered a Jesuit residence. This community is responsible for running the Jesuit University in the capital. Six Jesuit priests, a womyn who cooked and cleaned house for this community and her 15 year old daughter were shot and killed point-blank.
Though shocking to all, many saw it coming for a long time. The Jesuit University with a presence of 25 years in El Salvador was renowned for its efforts to bring peace and justice to his land. Father Ignacio Ellacuria was second only to Monsignor Oscar Romero for his ability to confront the powers of injustice existing in El Salvador. He brought together a Jesuit Community and lay faculty dedicated to the liberation from oppression of the Salvadoran people through the means of educating the community and leading it frequently toward non-violent direct actions.
Immediately after the attack of November 11th began, the government encouraged people to call the radio station and express their heartfelt feelings. Hundreds of these calls were directed against the Jesuit University and specifically their director, Fr. Ellacuria. Accusations described the university as the center of guerrilla training and activity. What followed on November 16 in the Jesuit residence, after these public slanders were made, could have, again, almost been predicted.
President Cristiani has recently denied charges that the church in El Salvador is being persecuted. The facts show that since he took office in June, 53 church facilities have been entered into. Medicines, dental equipment, church documents, computers and other office material have been stolen or destroyed. The new printing press at the Jesuit University and the Church office of Bishop Medardo Gomez, recently destroyed by bombings, are cases in point.
Seventy eight church workers including religious sisters, priests and lay volunteers have been recently arrested, interrogated and expelled or pressured into leaving the country.
But even more devastating than this are the attacks leveled against the Salvadorans themselves who are involved in justice issues. Leaders of grass-root unions and cooperatives have been arrested, tortured and killed. An all out attempt to destroy what are referred to here as the popular organizations has since June been in the making.
The Lutheran bishop Medardo Gomez left the country recently under threats to his life. If violence occurs to Archbishop Rivera y Damas of San Salvador, it will come as no surprise. With the arrival of the Arena party, Archbishop Rivera y Damas has been referred to as an arch enemy of the government and supporter of the FMLN.
This isn't exactly a cheery note on which to begin the New Year. But beneath the suffering is an amazing spirit of unity and hope within the Salvadoran people. Our Christmas and New Year celebrations in our rural community were joy-filled and hopeful.
As volunteers from the U.S., we feel the same way. Our people share and partake of this gift of hope and joy with us. And as Monsignor Oscar Romero said - Con este pueblo no cuesta ser Buen Pastor. [With a people like these, it costs nothing to be a good pastor.]
A Blessed and Joy-filled New Year,
Lorenzo
News 9 -- Oct. 1990
“In March of this year, 1200 Salvadorans, the majority being womyn and children, returned from a refugee camp in Honduras. Some of them had fled El Salvador as early as 1980. Many of the children, born in Honduras, had never before set foot in El Salvador.”
[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]
October 1990
Newsletter # 9.
Dear Friends:
I am sitting here in downtown San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, August 23, 1990 at 2 PM, after two and a half days travelling by bus from El Salvador.
This is the end of the 4th year in El Salvador for myself and Val, a nurse, who have worked together in a rural parish which is 2 1/2 hours from the Capital - San Salvador. Each year the 4 or 5 volunteers from the U.S. who make up our team feel the need to get away for a while and generally return to the U.S.
As I related to you last year, coming back by bus is a time for letting things go. It's a trip of changing dollars to Quetzales in Guatemala, and to Pesos in Mexico. The exchange for pesos is now 2800 pesos to one dollar. Can you imagine the bundle of coins and paper one needs to travel a few days in Mexico?
However, this change in customs, the crossing of borders, the inspection of baggage and paying for visas is a good diversion from certain problems and tensions one lives with in El Salvador.
There needs to be space in my newsletter too to publicly give thanks to God and to friends for having gotten through another year South of the border. And thanks given to the bus drivers travelling the entire night on pitch black, two-lane roads, on buses not air conditioned as we are used to in the U.S.. The drivers travel in two's, sharing driving time while another person is along to care for the luggage.
Thanks for their patience, especially on that stretch of highway just after leaving El Salvador and entering Guatemala. It took us about five hours to travel 70 - 75 miles. The road appears to have been bombed out. In many places the holes are small trenches and we crept along at 5 to 10 miles an hour.
Toward the end of the first day, after crossing into Mexico from Guatemala, a womyn with her 2-year-old son approached the counter to buy a ticket for Puebla, Mexico. She was told there were no seats left for Puebla until the following day. What was she to do? Not enough money to pay for a hotel room and no friends in the area, she decided to approach a bus driver who was headed for Mexico City. On hearing her story, the driver simply replied, "I'll take you to Puebla." No fanfare about it, no apparent regulations prohibiting his doing so. I personally couldn't believe my ears - a forty-five minute detour off his scheduled route.
I too was in this same bus station waiting in line to buy a ticket for Mexico City. Person after person ahead of me was told there were no more seats till the following day. Yet, I decided to remain in line to hear it with my own ears. Finally, it was my turn. I asked for one ticket to Mexico City. Before the womyn was able to reply, a man standing next to her with a list of tickets purchased and seats occupied, said: "There's one seat left, sir." It was the last seat on the bus, seat number 41. Gracias a Dios.
Not only was I thankful for getting the seat, but also for being in that last row of seats at the rear of the bus. I felt so anonymous. As people fell asleep, I found an atmosphere of perfect peace. The purr of the diesel engine, a coolness in the air and a few dim lights to mark the aisle, made it a time to be alone, to give thanks and to pray while remembering the happenings of the past year.
It was a blessing too, to meet, upon my re-entry to the U.S., a community of friends in San Antonio who welcomed me with open arms, not to mention the freshly baked pecan pies, dishes of lentil, salads, etc.. And though only two days in San Antonio, the sharing was grace-filled and renovating.
And now, what to say about El Salvador? The completion of four years brings to mind a certain picture of an experience hard to write in summary, but important to recall.
The vast majority of families in our parish barely eke out an existence that could be declared human. Visiting village after village recently, the cry was for rain. If the rains don't fall, the corn will be lost, and the rice and barley too. If the crop is lost, the people will have little or nothing to eat. The few coins gained from selling a portion of the crop, if lost, makes it impossible to purchase seed, fertilizer and the veneno [pesticide] necessary in preparation for sowing their second crop in September.
You may recall my writing about the family of Bertha and Vincent and their five children-- their daily life consisting of going to the fields to work, of carrying firewood up the mountainside and the incident of where, when rains had not come for 9 months, they as a family, began, as a token gesture to bring water from the river up the steep hillside to their one-acre rented plot of land. While climbing the hill, the skies began to cloud, thunder rumbled in the distance and an avalanche of rain drenched the fields for days on end.
About the same time I wrote about Bertha and Vincent, I wrote also about Benjamin, our sacristan. I described his life as a campesino, his strength of body and soul. The sweat and tears and anguish that is a part of every campesino's life. As is the case of many campesino families, a great number of the children do not live to see their teenage years.
This was true in the case of two of Benjamin's grandchildren. They died within 3 months of each other. Seven and ten years old. They appeared to look healthy. But because survival depended on it, they did the work of adults. Working under the hot sun, sowing seed, picking corn, carrying firewood and water up the hillside, their small undernourished bodies could not take it. Their deaths were diagnosed as due to malnutrition and over-exhaustion.
During these four years in El Salvador, the above stories along with innumerable other tragic episodes have occurred. At first, it was an account that I related only to the poor of El Salvador. But my eyes were soon to be opened to other realities outside El Salvador.
I have lived outside of the U.S. for the last five years, except for an annual visit home. It has been on my visits to the inner city, such as in St. Louis and Chicago, where I witnessed such an agonizing parallel.
The city streets of America, in many respects, are like a jungle. This summer as I walked on the northeast side of Chicago I viewed block after block of abandoned apartment buildings. These buildings are now taken over by the poorest of the people. Womyn with their children are setting up home in these condemned buildings, while outside on the sidewalks, people are shooting cocaine and crack deals are negotiated. Violence was in the air as I've seldom experienced it in El Salvador.
Bertha and Vincent and their five children have grown in many ways over the years since I first met them. In the first place, survival itself is a sign of growth. Their five children have remained in school too, during the few years we've known each other. They are all excellent students. Yet, the cost for a child from a poor family to finish the first nine years of schooling is unbelievable. It is nothing less than a miracle. Sickness in the form of high fever, coughing and sleepless nights. Scrounging enough money for medicine and visits to the doctors are part of the human cost. Bertha and Vincent have managed that cross on several occasions. Death too has been close to their children frequently.
Yes, faith plays an important part in their lives. They read the scriptures together as a family each evening. They struggle to see the relation between the Word and their daily lives. They come to share the Word at 6am with others who meet and slowly have formed community, bound by their common sufferings. Recently Vincent told me that he and Bertha have promised each other to take 20 minutes each day privately to communicate their feelings to one another. He said this practice too has had a significant effect in their lives.
Several years ago, a small group of womyn in El Salvador began to gather each week in front of the cathedral in downtown San Salvador. They wore white bandanas on their heads and carried banners that read: "Where is my son!" Or "Where is my daughter!" as the case might be. They came and stood in silence. And after some weeks and months passed, other mothers of the disappeared joined them. Their presence needed little explanation. It was, in a way, a direct confrontation with the military and those in the government who order the arrests, capture, torture and death of the many who disappear.
Despite the early threats and arrests of the members of their group, they continue their weekly presence. As they began sharing their personal stories among themselves, they saw the need to open a place where they could gather. They found such a place and several `Mothers' as they are called opened an office where they displayed pictures of the men and womyn who were tortured and murdered. People made their way to their office in order to hear the mothers´ stories and to offer whatever support they could.
The Mothers´ stories made international news. Mothers of the disappeared from Guatemala, Honduras and Argentina also formed groups in unison with the Mothers of El Salvador. Large-scale marches have been organized by the Madres where madres from across Central and South America have come together.
Recently I read of a group of Black womyn from Detroit who organized the Madres in their city in solidarity with those of Latin America. They formed specifically to say NO to the drug dealers ultimately responsible for the death of so many inner-city youths.
As the visibility of the madres increases, government officials will be forced to listen and address the issues that they raise.
In March of this year, 1200 Salvadorans, the majority being womyn and children, returned from a refugee camp in Honduras. Some of them had fled El Salvador as early as 1980. Many of the children, born in Honduras, had never before set foot in El Salvador.
Can you imagine then that day, when, crowded onto buses (over120 buses in all) filled with their possessions, they crossed the Honduran - Salvadoran border and made their way down the highway to their final destination?
And what a thrill too, it must have been, when they finally made the turn off the Pan American Highway onto the road which would lead to their newly acquired piece of property. All 403 acres suitable for growing crops, divided by two gushing rivers, ready to receive them.
And we, from our small town a few more miles further down the Pan American, were waiting with our banners of welcome. Bus loads of family members and friends from other parts of El Salvador were also there.
What goes through the hearts and minds of a people who have been confined and guarded by soldiers for the last 7‑10 years of their life and now suddenly are given their freedom? A people who were not allowed to leave their small 4-acre plot of land to wash clothes in the nearby river or cultivate the land outside the fences enclosing them. It would be months before they would begin to speak of those years of confinement and the grief they had endured.
However, it was not only their pain and grief they would share with us. God had been present with them in their seclusion and had bestowed many favors upon them. Their sufferings had become known to the outside world. Concerned sisters and brothers, on hearing of the massacres endured by this fleeing community, came immediately. Professional people such as doctors, nurses, teachers and those possessing other skills came to accompany and to support in this difficult moment.
Conscientious persons from Canada, the U.S., and many other countries felt their responsibility and came. For it had been U.S. helicopters and bombs that strafed and devastated their towns and villages, killing womyn, children and the elderly, who were unable to defend themselves.
Out of their pain, the people longed to better their human condition and build a future for their children. With the arrival of the volunteers, both young and old jumped at the chance to learn to read and write. They mastered courses in carpentry, book-binding, shoemaking and tailoring. In fact, shoes and clothing for the entire community along with tables, chairs and beds for each family are manufactured cooperatively by members of the community. Unbelievable!
Out of the ruins of destruction, God has raised up a people. In those years of separation from their loved ones, the Spirit blew in from all directions. What we encountered as the community of San Antonio stepped off the trucks that Sunday afternoon, was a people reborn, resurrected and ready to live life fully, whatever the cost.
Segundo Montes, one of the six Jesuits killed last November, stated: "The Salvadorans returning from Honduras will be the salvation of El Salvador. They are the prophets, the chosen ones, who through their sufferings will unite and capacitate their sisters and brothers on their march to liberation."
In the first five months since their return, the challenge has been all but overwhelming. Building temporary housing, clearing the land, repairing the roads, making tortillas for over 1200 people each day, demands the cooperation and determination of the entire community. First, the basic necessities must be attended to. Later the schools, the clinics, the cooperatives where they will put their acquired skills into practice.
As the song says: "The road is long to freedom." Soldiers came from our town, offering the new community food, seeds and building materials. But the people politely replied: "Thank you, but no thank you. We have everything we need." Helicopters destroying their village and killing their people remains fresh in their memory: "Just permit us to be alone. We will manage fine."
The negotiations going on in Costa Rica between the guerrillas and government are seemingly going nowhere. The guerrillas have warned that if a truce is not signed to end the war, there will be another attack against government and military installations more damaging than the attack of last November.
Among certain elements of the base communities, some are saying that now may be the time to pull our energies together in saying "no more" to this war and this violence... Saying "no" through non-violent actions. The international community is conscious of the reality and ready to join hands with their sisters and brothers of El Salvador. How in the concrete do we do this? How do we organize? How are the numbers needed brought about? I feel the question of non-violence is valid, if it arises from the Salvadoran people. Let us pray for the wisdom and insight necessary to do what must be done. As Monsignor Romero said: "BASTA! - Enough!..." to the violence and war that is destroying..." my people."
Lorenzo
[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]
October 1990
Newsletter # 9.
Dear Friends:
I am sitting here in downtown San Antonio, Texas, Thursday, August 23, 1990 at 2 PM, after two and a half days travelling by bus from El Salvador.
This is the end of the 4th year in El Salvador for myself and Val, a nurse, who have worked together in a rural parish which is 2 1/2 hours from the Capital - San Salvador. Each year the 4 or 5 volunteers from the U.S. who make up our team feel the need to get away for a while and generally return to the U.S.
As I related to you last year, coming back by bus is a time for letting things go. It's a trip of changing dollars to Quetzales in Guatemala, and to Pesos in Mexico. The exchange for pesos is now 2800 pesos to one dollar. Can you imagine the bundle of coins and paper one needs to travel a few days in Mexico?
However, this change in customs, the crossing of borders, the inspection of baggage and paying for visas is a good diversion from certain problems and tensions one lives with in El Salvador.
There needs to be space in my newsletter too to publicly give thanks to God and to friends for having gotten through another year South of the border. And thanks given to the bus drivers travelling the entire night on pitch black, two-lane roads, on buses not air conditioned as we are used to in the U.S.. The drivers travel in two's, sharing driving time while another person is along to care for the luggage.
Thanks for their patience, especially on that stretch of highway just after leaving El Salvador and entering Guatemala. It took us about five hours to travel 70 - 75 miles. The road appears to have been bombed out. In many places the holes are small trenches and we crept along at 5 to 10 miles an hour.
Toward the end of the first day, after crossing into Mexico from Guatemala, a womyn with her 2-year-old son approached the counter to buy a ticket for Puebla, Mexico. She was told there were no seats left for Puebla until the following day. What was she to do? Not enough money to pay for a hotel room and no friends in the area, she decided to approach a bus driver who was headed for Mexico City. On hearing her story, the driver simply replied, "I'll take you to Puebla." No fanfare about it, no apparent regulations prohibiting his doing so. I personally couldn't believe my ears - a forty-five minute detour off his scheduled route.
I too was in this same bus station waiting in line to buy a ticket for Mexico City. Person after person ahead of me was told there were no more seats till the following day. Yet, I decided to remain in line to hear it with my own ears. Finally, it was my turn. I asked for one ticket to Mexico City. Before the womyn was able to reply, a man standing next to her with a list of tickets purchased and seats occupied, said: "There's one seat left, sir." It was the last seat on the bus, seat number 41. Gracias a Dios.
Not only was I thankful for getting the seat, but also for being in that last row of seats at the rear of the bus. I felt so anonymous. As people fell asleep, I found an atmosphere of perfect peace. The purr of the diesel engine, a coolness in the air and a few dim lights to mark the aisle, made it a time to be alone, to give thanks and to pray while remembering the happenings of the past year.
It was a blessing too, to meet, upon my re-entry to the U.S., a community of friends in San Antonio who welcomed me with open arms, not to mention the freshly baked pecan pies, dishes of lentil, salads, etc.. And though only two days in San Antonio, the sharing was grace-filled and renovating.
And now, what to say about El Salvador? The completion of four years brings to mind a certain picture of an experience hard to write in summary, but important to recall.
The vast majority of families in our parish barely eke out an existence that could be declared human. Visiting village after village recently, the cry was for rain. If the rains don't fall, the corn will be lost, and the rice and barley too. If the crop is lost, the people will have little or nothing to eat. The few coins gained from selling a portion of the crop, if lost, makes it impossible to purchase seed, fertilizer and the veneno [pesticide] necessary in preparation for sowing their second crop in September.
You may recall my writing about the family of Bertha and Vincent and their five children-- their daily life consisting of going to the fields to work, of carrying firewood up the mountainside and the incident of where, when rains had not come for 9 months, they as a family, began, as a token gesture to bring water from the river up the steep hillside to their one-acre rented plot of land. While climbing the hill, the skies began to cloud, thunder rumbled in the distance and an avalanche of rain drenched the fields for days on end.
About the same time I wrote about Bertha and Vincent, I wrote also about Benjamin, our sacristan. I described his life as a campesino, his strength of body and soul. The sweat and tears and anguish that is a part of every campesino's life. As is the case of many campesino families, a great number of the children do not live to see their teenage years.
This was true in the case of two of Benjamin's grandchildren. They died within 3 months of each other. Seven and ten years old. They appeared to look healthy. But because survival depended on it, they did the work of adults. Working under the hot sun, sowing seed, picking corn, carrying firewood and water up the hillside, their small undernourished bodies could not take it. Their deaths were diagnosed as due to malnutrition and over-exhaustion.
During these four years in El Salvador, the above stories along with innumerable other tragic episodes have occurred. At first, it was an account that I related only to the poor of El Salvador. But my eyes were soon to be opened to other realities outside El Salvador.
I have lived outside of the U.S. for the last five years, except for an annual visit home. It has been on my visits to the inner city, such as in St. Louis and Chicago, where I witnessed such an agonizing parallel.
The city streets of America, in many respects, are like a jungle. This summer as I walked on the northeast side of Chicago I viewed block after block of abandoned apartment buildings. These buildings are now taken over by the poorest of the people. Womyn with their children are setting up home in these condemned buildings, while outside on the sidewalks, people are shooting cocaine and crack deals are negotiated. Violence was in the air as I've seldom experienced it in El Salvador.
Bertha and Vincent and their five children have grown in many ways over the years since I first met them. In the first place, survival itself is a sign of growth. Their five children have remained in school too, during the few years we've known each other. They are all excellent students. Yet, the cost for a child from a poor family to finish the first nine years of schooling is unbelievable. It is nothing less than a miracle. Sickness in the form of high fever, coughing and sleepless nights. Scrounging enough money for medicine and visits to the doctors are part of the human cost. Bertha and Vincent have managed that cross on several occasions. Death too has been close to their children frequently.
Yes, faith plays an important part in their lives. They read the scriptures together as a family each evening. They struggle to see the relation between the Word and their daily lives. They come to share the Word at 6am with others who meet and slowly have formed community, bound by their common sufferings. Recently Vincent told me that he and Bertha have promised each other to take 20 minutes each day privately to communicate their feelings to one another. He said this practice too has had a significant effect in their lives.
Several years ago, a small group of womyn in El Salvador began to gather each week in front of the cathedral in downtown San Salvador. They wore white bandanas on their heads and carried banners that read: "Where is my son!" Or "Where is my daughter!" as the case might be. They came and stood in silence. And after some weeks and months passed, other mothers of the disappeared joined them. Their presence needed little explanation. It was, in a way, a direct confrontation with the military and those in the government who order the arrests, capture, torture and death of the many who disappear.
Despite the early threats and arrests of the members of their group, they continue their weekly presence. As they began sharing their personal stories among themselves, they saw the need to open a place where they could gather. They found such a place and several `Mothers' as they are called opened an office where they displayed pictures of the men and womyn who were tortured and murdered. People made their way to their office in order to hear the mothers´ stories and to offer whatever support they could.
The Mothers´ stories made international news. Mothers of the disappeared from Guatemala, Honduras and Argentina also formed groups in unison with the Mothers of El Salvador. Large-scale marches have been organized by the Madres where madres from across Central and South America have come together.
Recently I read of a group of Black womyn from Detroit who organized the Madres in their city in solidarity with those of Latin America. They formed specifically to say NO to the drug dealers ultimately responsible for the death of so many inner-city youths.
As the visibility of the madres increases, government officials will be forced to listen and address the issues that they raise.
In March of this year, 1200 Salvadorans, the majority being womyn and children, returned from a refugee camp in Honduras. Some of them had fled El Salvador as early as 1980. Many of the children, born in Honduras, had never before set foot in El Salvador.
Can you imagine then that day, when, crowded onto buses (over120 buses in all) filled with their possessions, they crossed the Honduran - Salvadoran border and made their way down the highway to their final destination?
And what a thrill too, it must have been, when they finally made the turn off the Pan American Highway onto the road which would lead to their newly acquired piece of property. All 403 acres suitable for growing crops, divided by two gushing rivers, ready to receive them.
And we, from our small town a few more miles further down the Pan American, were waiting with our banners of welcome. Bus loads of family members and friends from other parts of El Salvador were also there.
What goes through the hearts and minds of a people who have been confined and guarded by soldiers for the last 7‑10 years of their life and now suddenly are given their freedom? A people who were not allowed to leave their small 4-acre plot of land to wash clothes in the nearby river or cultivate the land outside the fences enclosing them. It would be months before they would begin to speak of those years of confinement and the grief they had endured.
However, it was not only their pain and grief they would share with us. God had been present with them in their seclusion and had bestowed many favors upon them. Their sufferings had become known to the outside world. Concerned sisters and brothers, on hearing of the massacres endured by this fleeing community, came immediately. Professional people such as doctors, nurses, teachers and those possessing other skills came to accompany and to support in this difficult moment.
Conscientious persons from Canada, the U.S., and many other countries felt their responsibility and came. For it had been U.S. helicopters and bombs that strafed and devastated their towns and villages, killing womyn, children and the elderly, who were unable to defend themselves.
Out of their pain, the people longed to better their human condition and build a future for their children. With the arrival of the volunteers, both young and old jumped at the chance to learn to read and write. They mastered courses in carpentry, book-binding, shoemaking and tailoring. In fact, shoes and clothing for the entire community along with tables, chairs and beds for each family are manufactured cooperatively by members of the community. Unbelievable!
Out of the ruins of destruction, God has raised up a people. In those years of separation from their loved ones, the Spirit blew in from all directions. What we encountered as the community of San Antonio stepped off the trucks that Sunday afternoon, was a people reborn, resurrected and ready to live life fully, whatever the cost.
Segundo Montes, one of the six Jesuits killed last November, stated: "The Salvadorans returning from Honduras will be the salvation of El Salvador. They are the prophets, the chosen ones, who through their sufferings will unite and capacitate their sisters and brothers on their march to liberation."
In the first five months since their return, the challenge has been all but overwhelming. Building temporary housing, clearing the land, repairing the roads, making tortillas for over 1200 people each day, demands the cooperation and determination of the entire community. First, the basic necessities must be attended to. Later the schools, the clinics, the cooperatives where they will put their acquired skills into practice.
As the song says: "The road is long to freedom." Soldiers came from our town, offering the new community food, seeds and building materials. But the people politely replied: "Thank you, but no thank you. We have everything we need." Helicopters destroying their village and killing their people remains fresh in their memory: "Just permit us to be alone. We will manage fine."
The negotiations going on in Costa Rica between the guerrillas and government are seemingly going nowhere. The guerrillas have warned that if a truce is not signed to end the war, there will be another attack against government and military installations more damaging than the attack of last November.
Among certain elements of the base communities, some are saying that now may be the time to pull our energies together in saying "no more" to this war and this violence... Saying "no" through non-violent actions. The international community is conscious of the reality and ready to join hands with their sisters and brothers of El Salvador. How in the concrete do we do this? How do we organize? How are the numbers needed brought about? I feel the question of non-violence is valid, if it arises from the Salvadoran people. Let us pray for the wisdom and insight necessary to do what must be done. As Monsignor Romero said: "BASTA! - Enough!..." to the violence and war that is destroying..." my people."
Lorenzo
News 10 -- March 1991
Luis is clear in describing his family's exodus: "There was a time when religion was comprised of saying the rosary, participating in processions and assisting at Mass on Sunday morning. But that was before Medellin (the Latin American Bishops´ Conference held in Medellin, Colombia in 1968). After Medellin, parish priests and sisters began to tell us that religion was more than pious, individual devotions. It was a way of life; a commitment to be involved in ´my barrio' with those like ourselves whose rights too had been violated and whose voice was not heard."
[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 # 10
March 1991
El Salvador
Dear Friends:
The direction to proceed is often difficult to determine. This was the case recently while trying to decide when to terminate our work in the parish here in El Salvador.
After 4 1/2 years as volunteers accompanying the day to day life and struggle of our people, we felt it was the time to allow the community to continue on their own.
Though these past years have been invaluable in this small pueblo of El Salvador, I had always hoped to also experience how life is lived in other parts of the country. But how to leave, gracefully, those we had come to love dearly, and when to go from there were questions whose answers remained unclear.
However, around the 3rd week of January, a young priest from our diocese paid us a visit. He came with a proposal from the bishop. The bishop wished to send two young priests to work in our parish. We could stay on and work as a team with the 2 priests or we could join the families recently returned from Honduras, located relatively close by.
To Margaret, a Franciscan sister from Colorado, and me, the visit from the young priest was seen as a God-send. We now had a clear and justified reason for moving on. The bishop requested it. And where we would go was also seen as an answer to our prayers.
When the repatriation community returned from Honduras a year ago, the bishop asked our pastoral team to accompany them in any way possible. Our frequent visits allowed us to make acquaintances. Hearing the people's accounts of their personal sufferings, stories till then we had only read about, left a deep impression on us.
Now, with the bishop requesting that we take up residency with the community, we would have the opportunity to share even more in their life experiences.
We were asked to make the change promptly. And so, on Friday February 22nd, Margaret and I moved to our new location. We arrived in time to enter into the preparations for their first year anniversary celebration. A year ago, March 5th, marked the date of their return, that jubilant day of freedom, after nine years of separation from family, friends and homeland.
What memories would this celebration conjure up from their history of the past? In what way would Margaret and I be able to partake in this recounting and planning for the future?
Luis is clear in describing his family's exodus: "There was a time when religion was comprised of saying the rosary, participating in processions and assisting at Mass on Sunday morning. But that was before Medellin (the Latin American Bishops´ Conference held in Medellin, Colombia in 1968). After Medellin, parish priests and sisters began to tell us that religion was more than pious, individual devotions. It was a way of life; a commitment to be involved in `my barrio' with those like ourselves whose rights too, had been violated and whose voice was not heard."
Maria then continued: "A center for Christian lay leadership training was opened in our diocese. During these workshops, hundreds of us began to realize the role we had to play in the development of our future. It was during these days of study that we heard for the first time the words of the many popes who spoke of human rights, the right to organize, to work cooperatively and collectively."
As coffee simmered above the sizzling coals outside the provisionary plastic dwelling of Maria and Luis, Luis continued to tell me what was to be the turning point in their lives: "Upon the completion of several of the workshops for the laity, we returned to our community and began meeting weekly with a small group of neighbors. We read the scriptures aloud and then related them to the reality we found ourselves in. The challenge before us was how could we work toward changing the miserable conditions surrounding us?"
"We knew we had to do something," Maria said. "None of us in our village had the means to buy seeds to plant corn or to rent a piece of land. Our houses did not keep the rain out - put together with pieces of tin with cardboard or plastic bags used for the siding. We were faced with the question, what as a group must we do, in light of gospel demands?"
"Our Pastor agreed to loan us money to purchase a few acres of land that we would work together. The harvest would be shared according to the size and needs of each family."
"We also decided,” Luis said, to work together putting up a house at a time for the family needing it most, though the process would be slow and need the cooperation of all."
"We learned to do these things,” Maria added, "even before arriving in Honduras. However, from the very beginning, we were accused of being communists. After the arrest of one or two member of our community, we began to meet in secret. We invited only those we trusted the most to participate."
"We kept struggling to remain alive,” said Luis. "Meeting regularly and working the land together became harder and harder. And when the soldiers arrived in the middle of the night to arrest neighbors and friends, we realized that our work and our organizing was a threat to them. It was finally when the soldiers came and murdered our pastor that many of the villagers fled to take refuge in the nearby hills. From that time on, life was hell for us."
"Entire families fled, one after the other as our community leaders, catechists and delegates of the Word disappeared or were found dead along the roadside. Endless days and nights were spent walking without food or sleep."
It was at 5 a.m. over hot coffee that Luis and Maria shared their story. A time when the chill is still in the air and the fire and hot coffee warms body and soul. They want and need to share their hurt and their pain stored up within for so long. But not only their hurt and pain but also their many victories experienced both in the refugee camp of Honduras and now their joys and victories as they build toward a free and independent life again in El Salvador.
"We learned to read and to write, both the young and the old, while in Honduras,” continued Maria. "We learned to cultivate productive vegetable gardens and everyone was given the opportunity to learn a trade, the products of which were distributed to all. Shoes, clothing, tables, beds, hammocks and fresh vegetables were shared in common."
"Now that we are back on the land in El Salvador,” Luis said, "the challenge to begin again from scratch has been hard. But we have completed the first year of our return and have overcome what had seemed to be insurmountable obstacles."
"Planting small vegetable gardens,” said Luis, "is much different than looking at 70 acres of land, overgrown with weeds, directly in the eye. Less than 2 months after our return last March, with temporary housing needed for all before the rains came, and with latrines and collective kitchens demanding our immediate attention, the community went to the fields with cumas (small hand sickles) in hand, chopping and burning weeds, while borrowing a pair of oxen to turn the soil."
"Our hands and our backs were not accustomed to the hard work in the field. Aches and pains accompanied those first weeks as men, womyn and children worked from early morning to late afternoon. Neighbors came to join us,” Maria recalled. Two, then three, pair of oxen were on hand because of the generosity of our neighbors. Chickens were given to us and fresh milk sent down from the villagers living above us. They were glad to have us and we were made to feel welcomed from the start."
"When the first corn was sown,” Maria continued, "and temporary housing set up, concentration turned toward reopening schools again for the children. Popular education, a method learned in Honduras, capacitates young men and womyn as teachers of their own community. While the young and old are learning to read and write, they do so by speaking about the reality in which they live. They learn to write words such as water (aqua), land (tierra), corn (maiz). They talk about the importance of rain, of working in community and of forming cooperatives."
"Speaking about the price of beans, of rice, and of coffee captivates the campesino's interest," said Luis, "and thus we yearn to read so we can better understand the problems of the poor, because we ourselves are poor.”
One morning while we sat drinking coffee Maria and Luis' 17 year old son came out from their small plastic dwelling, supported by a pair of crutches. Luis extended a small bench for him to sit on. "Miguel came home from the hospital yesterday," Luis explained. "His knee was shattered by an M‑16 shell and his stomach opened in the same skirmish."
"We have lost two sons to the war,” Maria said, "and our 4th boy is presently away fighting. The war has taken a terrible toll on all of us in the community, but we have returned to El Salvador in hopes of creating a better life for our children and their children to come."
Maria is part of a group of womyn who wish, she says, "to discover together our role and rights as womyn. First to do so within our own community and then as womyn of society at large. God only knows, there is a false sense of values concerning womyn in our own community and we have an obligation to put things straight if we are to live together as Christians."
Luis, a member of the pastoral team, has, along with other members of the community, shared their stories on the diocesan level among men and womyn active in social action groups within their parishes. This interchange of lives and values has helped to break down barriers. True, but sad to say, the press and national television often depicts the men and womyn returning from the refugee camps as “guerrillas” and members of the FMLN. Reaching out to the local churches helps greatly to alleviate any existing fear and false impressions caused by such slander.
Maria and Luis believe, as does their community, that they have discovered a way of life, a model for living in community that poor the world over could benefit from. "We are eager," Luis says, "to share with our neighbors where we have been and where we hope to go in the future. It is not an easy road and often demands all we have - even our very lives."
Lorenzo
[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 # 10
March 1991
El Salvador
Dear Friends:
The direction to proceed is often difficult to determine. This was the case recently while trying to decide when to terminate our work in the parish here in El Salvador.
After 4 1/2 years as volunteers accompanying the day to day life and struggle of our people, we felt it was the time to allow the community to continue on their own.
Though these past years have been invaluable in this small pueblo of El Salvador, I had always hoped to also experience how life is lived in other parts of the country. But how to leave, gracefully, those we had come to love dearly, and when to go from there were questions whose answers remained unclear.
However, around the 3rd week of January, a young priest from our diocese paid us a visit. He came with a proposal from the bishop. The bishop wished to send two young priests to work in our parish. We could stay on and work as a team with the 2 priests or we could join the families recently returned from Honduras, located relatively close by.
To Margaret, a Franciscan sister from Colorado, and me, the visit from the young priest was seen as a God-send. We now had a clear and justified reason for moving on. The bishop requested it. And where we would go was also seen as an answer to our prayers.
When the repatriation community returned from Honduras a year ago, the bishop asked our pastoral team to accompany them in any way possible. Our frequent visits allowed us to make acquaintances. Hearing the people's accounts of their personal sufferings, stories till then we had only read about, left a deep impression on us.
Now, with the bishop requesting that we take up residency with the community, we would have the opportunity to share even more in their life experiences.
We were asked to make the change promptly. And so, on Friday February 22nd, Margaret and I moved to our new location. We arrived in time to enter into the preparations for their first year anniversary celebration. A year ago, March 5th, marked the date of their return, that jubilant day of freedom, after nine years of separation from family, friends and homeland.
What memories would this celebration conjure up from their history of the past? In what way would Margaret and I be able to partake in this recounting and planning for the future?
Luis is clear in describing his family's exodus: "There was a time when religion was comprised of saying the rosary, participating in processions and assisting at Mass on Sunday morning. But that was before Medellin (the Latin American Bishops´ Conference held in Medellin, Colombia in 1968). After Medellin, parish priests and sisters began to tell us that religion was more than pious, individual devotions. It was a way of life; a commitment to be involved in `my barrio' with those like ourselves whose rights too, had been violated and whose voice was not heard."
Maria then continued: "A center for Christian lay leadership training was opened in our diocese. During these workshops, hundreds of us began to realize the role we had to play in the development of our future. It was during these days of study that we heard for the first time the words of the many popes who spoke of human rights, the right to organize, to work cooperatively and collectively."
As coffee simmered above the sizzling coals outside the provisionary plastic dwelling of Maria and Luis, Luis continued to tell me what was to be the turning point in their lives: "Upon the completion of several of the workshops for the laity, we returned to our community and began meeting weekly with a small group of neighbors. We read the scriptures aloud and then related them to the reality we found ourselves in. The challenge before us was how could we work toward changing the miserable conditions surrounding us?"
"We knew we had to do something," Maria said. "None of us in our village had the means to buy seeds to plant corn or to rent a piece of land. Our houses did not keep the rain out - put together with pieces of tin with cardboard or plastic bags used for the siding. We were faced with the question, what as a group must we do, in light of gospel demands?"
"Our Pastor agreed to loan us money to purchase a few acres of land that we would work together. The harvest would be shared according to the size and needs of each family."
"We also decided,” Luis said, to work together putting up a house at a time for the family needing it most, though the process would be slow and need the cooperation of all."
"We learned to do these things,” Maria added, "even before arriving in Honduras. However, from the very beginning, we were accused of being communists. After the arrest of one or two member of our community, we began to meet in secret. We invited only those we trusted the most to participate."
"We kept struggling to remain alive,” said Luis. "Meeting regularly and working the land together became harder and harder. And when the soldiers arrived in the middle of the night to arrest neighbors and friends, we realized that our work and our organizing was a threat to them. It was finally when the soldiers came and murdered our pastor that many of the villagers fled to take refuge in the nearby hills. From that time on, life was hell for us."
"Entire families fled, one after the other as our community leaders, catechists and delegates of the Word disappeared or were found dead along the roadside. Endless days and nights were spent walking without food or sleep."
It was at 5 a.m. over hot coffee that Luis and Maria shared their story. A time when the chill is still in the air and the fire and hot coffee warms body and soul. They want and need to share their hurt and their pain stored up within for so long. But not only their hurt and pain but also their many victories experienced both in the refugee camp of Honduras and now their joys and victories as they build toward a free and independent life again in El Salvador.
"We learned to read and to write, both the young and the old, while in Honduras,” continued Maria. "We learned to cultivate productive vegetable gardens and everyone was given the opportunity to learn a trade, the products of which were distributed to all. Shoes, clothing, tables, beds, hammocks and fresh vegetables were shared in common."
"Now that we are back on the land in El Salvador,” Luis said, "the challenge to begin again from scratch has been hard. But we have completed the first year of our return and have overcome what had seemed to be insurmountable obstacles."
"Planting small vegetable gardens,” said Luis, "is much different than looking at 70 acres of land, overgrown with weeds, directly in the eye. Less than 2 months after our return last March, with temporary housing needed for all before the rains came, and with latrines and collective kitchens demanding our immediate attention, the community went to the fields with cumas (small hand sickles) in hand, chopping and burning weeds, while borrowing a pair of oxen to turn the soil."
"Our hands and our backs were not accustomed to the hard work in the field. Aches and pains accompanied those first weeks as men, womyn and children worked from early morning to late afternoon. Neighbors came to join us,” Maria recalled. Two, then three, pair of oxen were on hand because of the generosity of our neighbors. Chickens were given to us and fresh milk sent down from the villagers living above us. They were glad to have us and we were made to feel welcomed from the start."
"When the first corn was sown,” Maria continued, "and temporary housing set up, concentration turned toward reopening schools again for the children. Popular education, a method learned in Honduras, capacitates young men and womyn as teachers of their own community. While the young and old are learning to read and write, they do so by speaking about the reality in which they live. They learn to write words such as water (aqua), land (tierra), corn (maiz). They talk about the importance of rain, of working in community and of forming cooperatives."
"Speaking about the price of beans, of rice, and of coffee captivates the campesino's interest," said Luis, "and thus we yearn to read so we can better understand the problems of the poor, because we ourselves are poor.”
One morning while we sat drinking coffee Maria and Luis' 17 year old son came out from their small plastic dwelling, supported by a pair of crutches. Luis extended a small bench for him to sit on. "Miguel came home from the hospital yesterday," Luis explained. "His knee was shattered by an M‑16 shell and his stomach opened in the same skirmish."
"We have lost two sons to the war,” Maria said, "and our 4th boy is presently away fighting. The war has taken a terrible toll on all of us in the community, but we have returned to El Salvador in hopes of creating a better life for our children and their children to come."
Maria is part of a group of womyn who wish, she says, "to discover together our role and rights as womyn. First to do so within our own community and then as womyn of society at large. God only knows, there is a false sense of values concerning womyn in our own community and we have an obligation to put things straight if we are to live together as Christians."
Luis, a member of the pastoral team, has, along with other members of the community, shared their stories on the diocesan level among men and womyn active in social action groups within their parishes. This interchange of lives and values has helped to break down barriers. True, but sad to say, the press and national television often depicts the men and womyn returning from the refugee camps as “guerrillas” and members of the FMLN. Reaching out to the local churches helps greatly to alleviate any existing fear and false impressions caused by such slander.
Maria and Luis believe, as does their community, that they have discovered a way of life, a model for living in community that poor the world over could benefit from. "We are eager," Luis says, "to share with our neighbors where we have been and where we hope to go in the future. It is not an easy road and often demands all we have - even our very lives."
Lorenzo
News 11 -- August 10, 1991
“If I were to try to put my wishes in a nutshell for my Salvadoran community to which I return, they would be this: to discover in the daily reading of scriptures, the light and energy to pass from the present darkness of fear and violence to the light of an end to the war and a steady building of a new El Salvador.”
[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 # 11
August 10, 1991
El Salvador
Dear Friends,
The majority of the community are busy about many things this morning. Many of the men and their sons are in the fields collecting the fruits of their months of labor, though about half of the corn crop is lost to the weeks of drought. The other half has survived. For this reason, there is joy among the people to be eating fresh corn, tamales and atol -- a delicious drink made from corn.
I cannot go anywhere without being invited to share in the reaping of the year's harvest, though faltering this year in its abundance.
I am planning on leaving for the U.S, next week to visit my mom, other family members and friends. I go, as usual, with some anticipation as the country remains tense and as the war continues on. In the midst of negotiations between the FMLN and the Government's military forces, the deeper forces of fear and hate rise to the surface. It looks to me as though the government and its military forces do not wish to end the war through negotiations and peaceful accords. They continue to promulgate hateful propaganda and tactics of kidnapping, torture, and violent death against the guerrilla forces of the FMLN and the civilian population.
To the military and government, an end to the war is disadvantageous. War keeps the money flowing from the U.S. -- that is 1.4 million per day. For those who believe in and benefit from the war, U.S. dollars are indispensable.
From our viewpoint here in the countryside, we see and experience the government's plan with our own eyes. There is an all-out movement to crush opposition to government and military by any and every means necessary.
The popular organizations such as the campesino movements fighting to regain the land and other organizations serving the communities who had to flee their towns and villages and those who crossed the borders into neighboring countries are, upon their return, claiming and demanding their rights. They are a force that must be reckoned with.
No amount of money or military strength will overcome them. Concretely speaking, this has meant the march of campesinos to demand their right to the land. This year alone thousands of acres of land have been claimed by the campesinos as their families´ rightful duty to work in order to survive. These acres and acres of land `owned' but not used by the rich are being defended--often by violent methods--by the Arena party and the military. We in our community are parceling out this land of the rich so that no family here goes hungry. It would otherwise not be used and serve no purpose at all.
Because of this possession of the land by the campesino, hundreds have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Others have disappeared and been killed. In our community, the military presence has been increasing day by day. Arrests and imprisonment of members of our community is steadily increasing each day.
A week ago today we awoke to an entire battalion of soldiers, heavily armed, passing by foot through the middle of our settlement. Men, womyn and children lined the porch rail of the hacienda watching as the soldiers passed through. Not a word was uttered or need be. Passing out of our front entrance, the soldiers continued down our road in the direction of the corn fields, watermelon patch and the grazing land for the animals. It was a tense few minutes. Arriving to work in the watermelon patch, I saw the last of one of the brigades making its way past a group of campesinos in the direction of the river below us.
We moved slowly into the field to begin to cut and bring the watermelons to those with the wheelbarrows waiting close by. It wasn't 10 minutes into our work, that we heard the sound of automatic weapons in the distance. Then mortar shots shook the earth about us and a battle set in that would last for 12 hours, at a cost of more than 30 government soldiers dead, 80 wounded and several soldiers captured by the FMLN. The FMLN had set an ambush. One member of the guerrilla forces was reported killed and 3 wounded.
At 2:00 pm, the community was witness to two jet planes roaring at tree-top distance overhead. Never had I experienced such sudden terror as the mountainside in front of us went up in smoke. This was a show by experts who manipulated these U.S.-made planes with exact precision. A Franciscan sister from the U.S., also working here, remarked: "Only American pilots could have flown this mission with the skill displayed overhead.”
We are a community of 1200; 600 being children and the other part being made up of mostly womyn and the elderly. Arriving less than a year and a half ago, after 9 years in a refugee camp in Honduras, our community was promised the right to return to the land, live in peace and be granted the necessary documents to move about in El Salvador, free from harassment. We wish we could say that such freedom has been granted our people but the opposite has been true.
An accurate description of what to expect in the coming months is hard to predict. The complexity within the Arena Party and the Armed Forces, along with the external pressures from the Bush administration makes such a prediction impossible. At best, some basic hopes can be underlined.
The Salvadoran people are tired after 11 years of war and 75,000 dead. The popular organizations have regained their strength and unity. They have discovered this strength and unity in walking the long haul together. With the support of the international community, these organizations and communities such as our own will persevere until justice and peace reign here in El Salvador.
The FMLN guerrilla forces are not weak and divided among themselves as Colonel Emiliano Ponce, chief of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, would have the world believe. The FMLN is at the negotiating table to bring about a cease-fire, but only with conditions attached:
---To demilitarize the Armed Forces. This basically means to cut the number of 60,000 soldiers to 5 or 6,000, essential to maintain the security of the country.
---To do away with the National Guard units and the National police; both groups are notorious for their atrocious acts of violence against the civilian population.
---To recognize the FMLN as a legitimate political entity, with the areas under their control respected as such.
Months and months at the negotiating table has brought no concrete results, no cease- fire with agreements from both sides attached. What can be hoped for in the near future? We in our community and other repatriated communities and with the displaced groups and popular organizations throughout the country linked to international community sense our common strength and will continue to build our communities stronger in every possible way. We have come a long way. There can be no turning back now.
Our community is getting closer and closer to becoming self-sufficient. Our clothes, our shoes, our tables, beds and chairs are made with our own hands. Many of our basic food staples are grown on our land: corn, soybeans, rice, along with more and more tomatoes, chilis, squash and watermelon. A banking system is underway as is our educational program. They become more sound each day. We have five years of basic grammar school and then offer skills that will provide each person to earn his or her own salary. This looks good on paper, but is more difficult to accomplish than meets the eye.
Most of the above was completed since my return to the U.S. almost four weeks ago. I have received almost no news, especially through the news media here, about El Salvador.
As I sat in my mom's apartment tonight, after most have retired to bed, I picked up a small book on Bonhoeffer's reflection on the Word of God: "We read the Word daily and its spirit enters our hearts and we are strengthened for whatever the day may bring."
Bonhoeffer wished this for all with whom he lived and worked. He believed that the daily reading of the Word would enlighten our beings with the energy and light to walk through whatever darkness, into the light.
If I were to try to put my wishes in a nutshell for my Salvadoran community to which I return, they would be this: to discover in the daily reading of scriptures, the light and energy to pass from the present darkness of fear and violence to the light of an end to the war and a steady building of a new El Salvador. Let us all work toward this end that Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself so aspired.
Until next year, friends,
Lorenzo
[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 # 11
August 10, 1991
El Salvador
Dear Friends,
The majority of the community are busy about many things this morning. Many of the men and their sons are in the fields collecting the fruits of their months of labor, though about half of the corn crop is lost to the weeks of drought. The other half has survived. For this reason, there is joy among the people to be eating fresh corn, tamales and atol -- a delicious drink made from corn.
I cannot go anywhere without being invited to share in the reaping of the year's harvest, though faltering this year in its abundance.
I am planning on leaving for the U.S, next week to visit my mom, other family members and friends. I go, as usual, with some anticipation as the country remains tense and as the war continues on. In the midst of negotiations between the FMLN and the Government's military forces, the deeper forces of fear and hate rise to the surface. It looks to me as though the government and its military forces do not wish to end the war through negotiations and peaceful accords. They continue to promulgate hateful propaganda and tactics of kidnapping, torture, and violent death against the guerrilla forces of the FMLN and the civilian population.
To the military and government, an end to the war is disadvantageous. War keeps the money flowing from the U.S. -- that is 1.4 million per day. For those who believe in and benefit from the war, U.S. dollars are indispensable.
From our viewpoint here in the countryside, we see and experience the government's plan with our own eyes. There is an all-out movement to crush opposition to government and military by any and every means necessary.
The popular organizations such as the campesino movements fighting to regain the land and other organizations serving the communities who had to flee their towns and villages and those who crossed the borders into neighboring countries are, upon their return, claiming and demanding their rights. They are a force that must be reckoned with.
No amount of money or military strength will overcome them. Concretely speaking, this has meant the march of campesinos to demand their right to the land. This year alone thousands of acres of land have been claimed by the campesinos as their families´ rightful duty to work in order to survive. These acres and acres of land `owned' but not used by the rich are being defended--often by violent methods--by the Arena party and the military. We in our community are parceling out this land of the rich so that no family here goes hungry. It would otherwise not be used and serve no purpose at all.
Because of this possession of the land by the campesino, hundreds have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Others have disappeared and been killed. In our community, the military presence has been increasing day by day. Arrests and imprisonment of members of our community is steadily increasing each day.
A week ago today we awoke to an entire battalion of soldiers, heavily armed, passing by foot through the middle of our settlement. Men, womyn and children lined the porch rail of the hacienda watching as the soldiers passed through. Not a word was uttered or need be. Passing out of our front entrance, the soldiers continued down our road in the direction of the corn fields, watermelon patch and the grazing land for the animals. It was a tense few minutes. Arriving to work in the watermelon patch, I saw the last of one of the brigades making its way past a group of campesinos in the direction of the river below us.
We moved slowly into the field to begin to cut and bring the watermelons to those with the wheelbarrows waiting close by. It wasn't 10 minutes into our work, that we heard the sound of automatic weapons in the distance. Then mortar shots shook the earth about us and a battle set in that would last for 12 hours, at a cost of more than 30 government soldiers dead, 80 wounded and several soldiers captured by the FMLN. The FMLN had set an ambush. One member of the guerrilla forces was reported killed and 3 wounded.
At 2:00 pm, the community was witness to two jet planes roaring at tree-top distance overhead. Never had I experienced such sudden terror as the mountainside in front of us went up in smoke. This was a show by experts who manipulated these U.S.-made planes with exact precision. A Franciscan sister from the U.S., also working here, remarked: "Only American pilots could have flown this mission with the skill displayed overhead.”
We are a community of 1200; 600 being children and the other part being made up of mostly womyn and the elderly. Arriving less than a year and a half ago, after 9 years in a refugee camp in Honduras, our community was promised the right to return to the land, live in peace and be granted the necessary documents to move about in El Salvador, free from harassment. We wish we could say that such freedom has been granted our people but the opposite has been true.
An accurate description of what to expect in the coming months is hard to predict. The complexity within the Arena Party and the Armed Forces, along with the external pressures from the Bush administration makes such a prediction impossible. At best, some basic hopes can be underlined.
The Salvadoran people are tired after 11 years of war and 75,000 dead. The popular organizations have regained their strength and unity. They have discovered this strength and unity in walking the long haul together. With the support of the international community, these organizations and communities such as our own will persevere until justice and peace reign here in El Salvador.
The FMLN guerrilla forces are not weak and divided among themselves as Colonel Emiliano Ponce, chief of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, would have the world believe. The FMLN is at the negotiating table to bring about a cease-fire, but only with conditions attached:
---To demilitarize the Armed Forces. This basically means to cut the number of 60,000 soldiers to 5 or 6,000, essential to maintain the security of the country.
---To do away with the National Guard units and the National police; both groups are notorious for their atrocious acts of violence against the civilian population.
---To recognize the FMLN as a legitimate political entity, with the areas under their control respected as such.
Months and months at the negotiating table has brought no concrete results, no cease- fire with agreements from both sides attached. What can be hoped for in the near future? We in our community and other repatriated communities and with the displaced groups and popular organizations throughout the country linked to international community sense our common strength and will continue to build our communities stronger in every possible way. We have come a long way. There can be no turning back now.
Our community is getting closer and closer to becoming self-sufficient. Our clothes, our shoes, our tables, beds and chairs are made with our own hands. Many of our basic food staples are grown on our land: corn, soybeans, rice, along with more and more tomatoes, chilis, squash and watermelon. A banking system is underway as is our educational program. They become more sound each day. We have five years of basic grammar school and then offer skills that will provide each person to earn his or her own salary. This looks good on paper, but is more difficult to accomplish than meets the eye.
Most of the above was completed since my return to the U.S. almost four weeks ago. I have received almost no news, especially through the news media here, about El Salvador.
As I sat in my mom's apartment tonight, after most have retired to bed, I picked up a small book on Bonhoeffer's reflection on the Word of God: "We read the Word daily and its spirit enters our hearts and we are strengthened for whatever the day may bring."
Bonhoeffer wished this for all with whom he lived and worked. He believed that the daily reading of the Word would enlighten our beings with the energy and light to walk through whatever darkness, into the light.
If I were to try to put my wishes in a nutshell for my Salvadoran community to which I return, they would be this: to discover in the daily reading of scriptures, the light and energy to pass from the present darkness of fear and violence to the light of an end to the war and a steady building of a new El Salvador. Let us all work toward this end that Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself so aspired.
Until next year, friends,
Lorenzo
News 12 -- Jan. 2, 1992
“As we sat on small stools unraveling the tamales from the banana leaves they were wrapped in, we turned the radio on to catch the 11 o'clock news. President Cristiani was being interviewed. The negotiations had concluded and an agreement had been reached and signed. The process in implementing the end of the war would begin February 1st and be completed in all its aspects by October 1st of this year 1992.”
[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 #12
JANUARY 2, 1992
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR
New Year's Eve, 1991. After finishing our celebration of the Eucharist and being invited up the hill to a friend's house to eat the traditional Salvadoran chicken-filled tamales, I heard my friend's account of what this unique night in history meant to him.
As our whole community gathered below the veranda of the huge hacienda, we were filled with hope that the people of El Salvador would be blessed with a cease-fire and an end to the 11- year-old war, within the closing hours of the year (1991).
The evening was planned well. Our musicians and choral group were present to start things off. Folk music depicting the Christmas event helped set the mood. As the benches began to be filled with children and their mothers, the men were meeting in small groups in the rear. A group of youths and adults were applying makeup to their faces, putting on wigs and completing last-minute details. In a few moments they would present a social-drama entitled EL HOMBRE VIEJO, EL HOMBRE NUEVO. The Old Man [Person], The New Man [Person]. The idea being that we all need to enter the New Year renewed, vitalized and graced.
While we were busy getting this evening underway, the FMLN and Salvadoran government were meeting in New York in hopes of reaching a final agreement to sign a cease-fire within the very near future. And though our community and Salvadorans the nation over were carrying out traditional New Year's eve celebrations, ears were glued to nearby radios or televisions to receive the news all had waited and prayed to hear.
As we walked up the hill to Tobias' house, he began telling me what an end to the war would mean to him and his wife. "You would have to have been the parent of a son or daughter killed in the war to feel the hurt and pain as we have," he said.
"We have lost a son 14 and a daughter 16 to the war, another son, José, whom you know, Lorenzo, injured, captured and then released in 1989 and now our last boy on call to fight whenever he's needed."
"We don't like this war, but are committed to it. We believe in it because it is a struggle to restore the land to the campesino and take the power now in the hands of a few and place it back into the hands of the people. A cease-fire would remove the agony of not knowing whether or not tomorrow, another of our children would be taken from us."
As we sat on small stools unraveling the tamales from the banana leaves they were wrapped in, we turned the radio on to catch the 11 o'clock news. President Cristiani was being interviewed. The negotiations had concluded and an agreement had been reached and signed. The process in implementing the end of the war would begin February 1st and be completed in all its aspects by October 1st of this year 1992.
We sat there in the candlelight, Tobias, his wife, Rosa, and I, assuring one another that what we were hearing was true. What could be better news than this, the last night of 1991, for all of El Salvador?
As we walked down the hill to extend our "abrazos" to our community gathered below, Tobias couldn't hold back the tears. His voice cracked several times as he repeated over and over, "You will never know, Lorenzo, how relieved we are on hearing this news. We can hopefully begin to live our lives once more in peace. Gracias a Dios."
As we became involved with the crowd bringing in the New Year, I sensed what a blessing it was to be part of this community. It is a community that, from the moment of its return to El Salvador, has committed itself to the task of making a better life for their children.
Since returning, members of our community have been arrested, questioned and blindfolded for periods of 12 hours at a time and then imprisoned. It wasn't the kind of "freedom" they had anticipated upon their return from Honduras. Yet, daily life continued; crops were sowed and harvested, construction projects implemented, trades learned in Honduras were again functioning here in the community. Nothing, it seems, will dampen or prevent them now from going on with their lives.
I, too, little by little, am learning and loving the life and work in the "campo" (field). We've been picking corn in these weeks before Christmas and the New Year. Sounds easy enough. But WOW, have I discovered otherwise! The weeds often are as high as the corn and if not weeds, sorghum stands in the way, making it almost impossible to pass.
Working together, a few persons go in first to chop the weeds down, followed by those picking the corn. The corn is picked and tossed into huge netlike sacks, later to be hauled out of the field on the backs of the workers.
What makes this grueling work possible is the spirit of community that is felt among the men, womyn, and young folks working together. Singing, telling jokes and sharing stories of the past is all part of it. Last week, a man went about looking for the holes in the ground dug out by ground hogs. When discovering a hole, he would sink his long stick into it waiting a response. Before the morning was over, he had killed three ground hogs which make for the best of soup, they all agreed.
The stories the people share while working inevitably recall their long treks through the mountains, days on end,fleeing the government's armed forces. The tortures, their babies bayonetted, houses burned, parents beheaded, are recounted. The recounting provides a form of therapy among those who have shared similar experiences. I give thanks for being part of such sharing.
It is now Monday, January 6, which is traditionally celebrated as the feast of the 3 Kings. The 3 Kings were not, in fact, Kings, but sages or wise men, (womyn) who followed a light as they shepherded their flocks at night. And in being true to themselves and following the "star,” Jesus was able to manifest himself to them.
I guess that pretty well sums up the message my community has given me. That Jesus keeps appearing along the way, in the "campo,” eating and sharing tamales or in a big abrazo shared with a sister or brother on New Year's eve.
Thanks much to all of you who've written or passed news to me in one form or another over the last year.
Let's make time this year too to be quiet and bring each other and our lives and work to mind before the Spirit.
A joyful and blessed New Year. My love and prayers to each of you.
Lorenzo
[received/prepared for mailing 1/17/92]
[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 #12
JANUARY 2, 1992
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR
New Year's Eve, 1991. After finishing our celebration of the Eucharist and being invited up the hill to a friend's house to eat the traditional Salvadoran chicken-filled tamales, I heard my friend's account of what this unique night in history meant to him.
As our whole community gathered below the veranda of the huge hacienda, we were filled with hope that the people of El Salvador would be blessed with a cease-fire and an end to the 11- year-old war, within the closing hours of the year (1991).
The evening was planned well. Our musicians and choral group were present to start things off. Folk music depicting the Christmas event helped set the mood. As the benches began to be filled with children and their mothers, the men were meeting in small groups in the rear. A group of youths and adults were applying makeup to their faces, putting on wigs and completing last-minute details. In a few moments they would present a social-drama entitled EL HOMBRE VIEJO, EL HOMBRE NUEVO. The Old Man [Person], The New Man [Person]. The idea being that we all need to enter the New Year renewed, vitalized and graced.
While we were busy getting this evening underway, the FMLN and Salvadoran government were meeting in New York in hopes of reaching a final agreement to sign a cease-fire within the very near future. And though our community and Salvadorans the nation over were carrying out traditional New Year's eve celebrations, ears were glued to nearby radios or televisions to receive the news all had waited and prayed to hear.
As we walked up the hill to Tobias' house, he began telling me what an end to the war would mean to him and his wife. "You would have to have been the parent of a son or daughter killed in the war to feel the hurt and pain as we have," he said.
"We have lost a son 14 and a daughter 16 to the war, another son, José, whom you know, Lorenzo, injured, captured and then released in 1989 and now our last boy on call to fight whenever he's needed."
"We don't like this war, but are committed to it. We believe in it because it is a struggle to restore the land to the campesino and take the power now in the hands of a few and place it back into the hands of the people. A cease-fire would remove the agony of not knowing whether or not tomorrow, another of our children would be taken from us."
As we sat on small stools unraveling the tamales from the banana leaves they were wrapped in, we turned the radio on to catch the 11 o'clock news. President Cristiani was being interviewed. The negotiations had concluded and an agreement had been reached and signed. The process in implementing the end of the war would begin February 1st and be completed in all its aspects by October 1st of this year 1992.
We sat there in the candlelight, Tobias, his wife, Rosa, and I, assuring one another that what we were hearing was true. What could be better news than this, the last night of 1991, for all of El Salvador?
As we walked down the hill to extend our "abrazos" to our community gathered below, Tobias couldn't hold back the tears. His voice cracked several times as he repeated over and over, "You will never know, Lorenzo, how relieved we are on hearing this news. We can hopefully begin to live our lives once more in peace. Gracias a Dios."
As we became involved with the crowd bringing in the New Year, I sensed what a blessing it was to be part of this community. It is a community that, from the moment of its return to El Salvador, has committed itself to the task of making a better life for their children.
Since returning, members of our community have been arrested, questioned and blindfolded for periods of 12 hours at a time and then imprisoned. It wasn't the kind of "freedom" they had anticipated upon their return from Honduras. Yet, daily life continued; crops were sowed and harvested, construction projects implemented, trades learned in Honduras were again functioning here in the community. Nothing, it seems, will dampen or prevent them now from going on with their lives.
I, too, little by little, am learning and loving the life and work in the "campo" (field). We've been picking corn in these weeks before Christmas and the New Year. Sounds easy enough. But WOW, have I discovered otherwise! The weeds often are as high as the corn and if not weeds, sorghum stands in the way, making it almost impossible to pass.
Working together, a few persons go in first to chop the weeds down, followed by those picking the corn. The corn is picked and tossed into huge netlike sacks, later to be hauled out of the field on the backs of the workers.
What makes this grueling work possible is the spirit of community that is felt among the men, womyn, and young folks working together. Singing, telling jokes and sharing stories of the past is all part of it. Last week, a man went about looking for the holes in the ground dug out by ground hogs. When discovering a hole, he would sink his long stick into it waiting a response. Before the morning was over, he had killed three ground hogs which make for the best of soup, they all agreed.
The stories the people share while working inevitably recall their long treks through the mountains, days on end,fleeing the government's armed forces. The tortures, their babies bayonetted, houses burned, parents beheaded, are recounted. The recounting provides a form of therapy among those who have shared similar experiences. I give thanks for being part of such sharing.
It is now Monday, January 6, which is traditionally celebrated as the feast of the 3 Kings. The 3 Kings were not, in fact, Kings, but sages or wise men, (womyn) who followed a light as they shepherded their flocks at night. And in being true to themselves and following the "star,” Jesus was able to manifest himself to them.
I guess that pretty well sums up the message my community has given me. That Jesus keeps appearing along the way, in the "campo,” eating and sharing tamales or in a big abrazo shared with a sister or brother on New Year's eve.
Thanks much to all of you who've written or passed news to me in one form or another over the last year.
Let's make time this year too to be quiet and bring each other and our lives and work to mind before the Spirit.
A joyful and blessed New Year. My love and prayers to each of you.
Lorenzo
[received/prepared for mailing 1/17/92]
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