The weight that I will carry with me 4.30.11

When I speak of celebrating life here, I mean celebrating life in the midst of a culture where death is present everyday. And when I say death I really mean murder. And murder can mean domestic violence and other crimes, but most often, it means gang violence.

Every week I accompany families in Mariona through my Praxis site experience. I ask questions. I listen. I ask more questions. I listen again and I hold with me the stories that these families share. I love these families. I feel this weight, this paralyzing weight in my body when I remember their stories, when I retell them. In sharing their stories, in sharing what I know of the reality of insecurity and violence in Mariona, I carry that weight with me.

To talk about these stories is delicate. Delicate because these stories are of real people, people I have spent time with, playing with their kids and sharing meals, listening to their love stories, the stories of their weddings. I know their identity; they are not statistics nor case studies. They are my family here as well. And together, in sharing their stories, I begin to carry the weight of being connected to the reality of insecurity and violence in Mariona.

I am entrenched in their reality primarily as an observer, as someone who accompanies them. However, coming from my home in the United States, I accompany these families from a position of wealth and security. My experience of accompaniment and therefore my perspective and analysis of the reality in Mariona is affected by the utter lack of violence that I have experienced in my life. My experience of security rests in stark contrast to the insecurity and violence that exists in the lives of these families.

Not far away from where one family in Mariona lives, there once lived an abusive husband. Just a block away, that abusive husband killed his wife. She was left in the house dead, some even say hanging, her body mutilated, breasts cut off, skin bleeding, not unlike the torture stories people tell from the civil war in this country. The husband who murdered her told the police it had been a crime of delinquency, essentially blaming it on the gangs. He was not punished. That man moved and is now an evangelical pastor in different neighborhood.

And sometimes, for this family in Mariona, the violence is even closer than a story, closer than a block away from their home. Just a few days ago the mother in this family passed by the location of a fresh murder, noting it for the way the blood still smelled. Everyday after picking up her daughters from school, she calls her husband to let him know that they made it home safe. And when it is her husband’s turn to pick up the girls, sometimes he sees dead bodies too. Twice in the last month he has seen men murdered.

And the daughters in this family own bicycles. They rarely ride them. Those bicycles sit by their front door. Their older daughter asks her dad to play outside. She wants to go the park. She wants to ride that bicycle. She is seven years old. One day, after a long while of begging her dad, he took them to the park; he decided to let them play outside. Together with her dad and her little sister, they walked to the park, towing their bicycles. Once they arrived at the park, her dad found what he feared. A man with tattoos was holding a box. Another man was counting out twenty-dollar bills. The man with the box took the money. The man with the money took the box. Her dad told her they had to turn around. As soon as they had arrived, they needed to leave. It became a game for her little sister, making one big circle with their bikes. But the older daughter knew better. She wanted to know more about that box. She wanted to know what that money was buying. She asked her dad. Her dad told her, “I don’t know, my love.” He knew. He wasn’t smiling anymore. So she didn’t ask again. They went back to playing inside.

And this same family has a house made of mostly cement, the floors, the thick walls, and the stairs. One night a few years ago, their youngest daughter fell and broke her head. She began to bleed, a lot. Her parents were worried, she needed help, she needed to go to the hospital. But there was an enforced curfew then, after dark the gangs wouldn’t allow anyone to enter or leave Mariona. Her mom and dad try to stay far away from the gang leaders. They stay inside when they can. But this time they couldn’t stay inside, her dad called their neighbor. And their neighbor called the gang leader. The situation was explained to the gang leader. “There was this girl, you see, less than five years old, who was seriously injured. She needed to go to the hospital.” The gang leader let her mom and dad take her to the hospital. For the next three days while their little girl remained in the hospital, her mom and dad never went home. It was hard enough to leave once.

Physical, mental and emotional insecurity and violence are an integral part of the reality in Mariona. It seems to be everywhere people turn. The smell of blood on street corners. The sound of bullets down the block. The presence of bodies. The horror and the trauma of hearing stories of murders and domestic violence almost daily. On the bus, on the sidewalk, in their neighbor’s houses, the people by the playground, the cars in the street-violence is part of their life. Gangs are the face of that violence.

After we had the opportunity to speak to the head of Catholic Relief Services in Latin America, I better understand this reality. The gang situation has increased in the past twenty years. The aftermath of the civil war favored impunity over reconciliation. The traumas of the war created a culture of fear that has yet to be remedied in many parts of the country. Those traumas and that fear eat away at social cohesion thus destroying the sense of community necessary to combat the spread of the gangs. In Mariona, an area that was once rural and become largely urban during and after the war, lack of sufficient social cohesion contributes to the fear and insecurity, which makes it ripe for the infiltration of the gangs.

Money is intertwined in all of this violence, but it is not the cause. The cause of the insecurity and violence has more to do with the lack of social cohesion in Mariona than it does with the reality of poverty. The gangs share money fairly amongst members, needs are generally met. The appeal of gangs is not wealth but the identity, protection and empowering social inclusion that they can offer to alienated youth.

The gangs make the decisions in Mariona, not the police. If something changes, the gangs are involved. If someone dies, the police sweep up the body, promise to investigate and rarely does anything come of it. People who witness murders do not dare share what they know with anyone in authority for fear that their identity may get back to those responsible for the murder. The police and the general population in Mariona do not make the important decisions because they do not have the power or the control; instead they are ruled by fear of the gangs.

For some, gangs offer security. For others, gangs affect the lack of security in their homes; security means maintaining as much distance as possible from the gangs. It means whispering whenever they talk about the gangs or the police, even within their home, because people are often walking by their doors, listening and watching.

This is the reality that I am accompanying with the families in Mariona. It is not my reality, I am not unsafe in Mariona. I am not threatened by the reality of violence nor am I directly affected by the violence, but I am connected to it through the stories that I hear. It is the reality of these families, and when I leave they will still be living in Mariona. They will still be hearing about and seeing murders as often as I fill up my gas tank back in the United States. This is the weight that I will carry with me. Knowing that their little girls hardly ever play outside. That their parents sometimes lay awake at night wrestling with the fear of gangs. Resting myself with the knowledge that the civil war in this country, that our country largely funded, is tied up in this mess, is tied up in this new war today. I will walk with the memory of what it means to accompany a violent reality, even for only four months. In this short time I know the fear that I have felt with them, the deep sadness, at times the hopelessness, and most certainly the weight, the heavy weight of living in the midst of that darkness, of carrying that darkness together as we chose, as a bold act of resistance, to keep living everyday.

Celebrating Life 3.24.11

I miss my family back home. My family back home is my mom and dad, my brothers, Joe and Patrick, my sister-in-law, Mary, my many aunts, uncles and cousins and my beautiful Grandma Erb. My family is also my close friends and mentors in Chicago, my friends across the U.S. who are studying at their respective colleges, and my dear friends studying in foreign countries this semester. And if all I could do is hold them each in a hug right now, I could rest content. Instead I hold them in my heart during this Easter season. Instead I honor the love that they have taught me by seeking out family here in this country.

For it is a strange place in which to stand, nearly four months passed. All at once there is this desire to soak up every last experience that I can encounter during my time in El Salvador. Staring longer at the mountains, breathing in deeper the air, noting the people, the places, the sounds, smells and moments that I love most about this country and these people. Attempting to relive the presence of mind that I walked with during my first weeks in this new place. Yet at the very same time, the very same time, four months feels like a long time. I feel physically so very far away from those that I love most in this world, and I can feel my heart tugging in their direction.

But that tugging, necessarily, could not lead me back home to Minneapolis quite yet. Instead it led me to my Praxis site and to the house of another Salvadoran friend. As Easter approached, all I could think of was family, family, family, family. My mind and heart were preoccupied thinking of all of those that I love.

Here in El Salvador, I have grown into another family. I have two in Mariona, with three little children. And humbly, if not uncertainly, these families took me in on Good Friday. I called on Thursday, stumbled awkwardly over asking if I could sleep in their home, and felt a great relief when they welcomed me happily. And the visit wasn’t exactly perfect, Holy Week does not exempt these families from their reality. I still worried them when I lingered too long by the taxi cab outside their door, attracting questions from little children who seemed a little too curious to know the name of this foreign white woman in their neighborhood. I knew better than to attract attention to myself like that, and so did my driver. These worries are constant. So necessarily we moved on, carrying them with us the rest of the night, eating dinner and playing card games.

After dinner, we reflected with the Gospel for Good Friday, starting with the reflection of their young six-year-old son named after Archbishop Romero. When it came to me, I was able to express honestly what it meant to me to be with them, to be with family. I felt this great lifting after sharing my thanks, now they understood why I had come. They understood and the mother of this family took my hands in her familiar way and looked again into my eyes. After the reflection, we stayed like that for a while, holding hands. We talked about simple things, still holding hands. Like my mother back home, this Salvadoran woman knows the power of that loving touch. She shared it with me generously.

That night I slept in the meditation room above their home. Made primarily of tin walls and tin roof, it is a sacred place. This is where we practice meditation every Wednesday. This is where the mother practices meditation with her friends and family when we North Americans are not around. This is the space she intentionally uses to recall the memories of the martyrs during the civil war and the daily struggles and traumas she and her family live today. This is where I was able to fall asleep during a rain storm that night, with the heavy sound of rain pouring down on the tin, sitting with God, recalling the sacred memories in that space.

On Saturday I traveled with the Salvadoran student who lives down the hall from me in our community. We went to the house where his family lives in the mountains to the West of us. We had visited his house one other time and I immediately fell in love with his home. Not only do they live close to a flowing river under canopies of mango trees, but he also has two little brothers that love to play soccer and go searching for crabs under rocks in the river. And again it wasn’t a perfect visit. My Spanish often fails in the more rural areas of El Salvador where the accents are different, the words are cut shorter and North Americans are few and far between.

I struggled to communicate with my friend’s parents and felt heavy in my strangeness as a foreigner, but content nonetheless just to be with his family, just to be near to his parents who worried about my cough, just to be near to his brothers who stared at me curiously most of the time and took care to show me every last page of their homework and drawings. And still Holy Week does not exempt this family either from their reality. On the radio we heard over and over again of the murders throughout the country, as crime seemed to spike during the week of vacation. As my friend had told me of his country, so many people head to the beach and murders rise, therefore there is not more peace during this week but less. And so in the safety of their home I celebrated Easter. We did not read the Bible but we walked through rivers, greeted cows and played soccer. We did not talk of Jesus but we celebrated life.

My life here is different from my life at home. This is obvious. But I am reminded of it in almost every moment. Even among family here, life is different, therefore we celebrate it differently. And one of the gifts that comes with that change is a whole new perspective on practicing Lent and celebrating Easter. If there is meat to eat on Ash Wednesday or Fridays here, we eat meat. These families sacrifice meat most other days of the year because their pockets can’t afford it. If there is a week of vacation as Easter approaches, with that vacation comes more crime, more murders. And so sometimes it is enough to be together, even if not at a mass or attending the processions at night when the walk home is less safe. Life, sacred as it is, is celebrated here in being together. Whether reading the Gospel or searching for crabs, either way, we are alive and celebrating with family.

Encounters to Remember Pt. II

I looked at the calendar today.

I have one month left. In fact less than one month left here in El Salvador. I have a ticket waiting for me on May 11^th to return to Minneapolis. I am at this moment standing with my whole body here in this country and still a great deal of my heart and mind back in the States or throughout the rest of the world as I try and often fall short of staying in touch with friends and family that mean the world to me.

And how do I communicate all that has passed? What do I do when the experiences I am having here became normalized, seemingly less profound? How do I continue to share my experience with those that I care about without simply sharing a laundry list of events, listing the dates and the significance?

But to share nothing seems worse. And so has the heat of the semester passes and I venture into the last month of my time here, I am going to try and express where I have been in the past few weeks as life has begun to move a little more quickly...

“Ex-COPPES”

One night in March, we had a social event where we invited an artisan cooperative to sell their crafts. We had made jewelry before with this cooperative, and I had bought many gifts for friends from the woman teaching us her craft. Specifically, I had bought several of the same necklace. On the necklace was an image of a fist with a shackle around the wrist. Above the wrist flew a dove, and in the midst of a sunset, that dove was breaking through the chain attached to that shackle. On the back of the necklace was written, “Ex-COPPES”, which I learned was a self-organized committee of political prisoners formed during the civil war here in El Salvador.

Nearly a month after that initial purchase, at this social event in March, I found myself chatting again with the woman who had sold me the necklaces. She introduced me to her husband, one of the two members of the cooperative that were political prisoners during the civil war and who had painted those necklaces. Instead of participating in much of the social event, I stood talking to this man and his wife. We talked about his experience of being tortured in jail during the war, the formation of this committee of prisoners, and the symbolism within the image of the dove and shackle on the necklaces he had painted. We talked about the struggles that started and fueled the war, how those struggles have changed in their reality today, and what it means to him to have solidarity with North Americans. Today him and his wife have many children and work together with those children sustaining their cooperative, they are living and fighting with the memory of the traumas of the war and the hopes and fears of their lives today.

“Divina Providencia”

The week before the anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, we visited Divina Providencia. Divina Providencia is the location of the chapel in which Romero said his last homily before he was assassinated. We sat in the pews listening to the story of his assassination. We stood behind the altar looking out over the chapel, seeing the last scene that Romero saw in this world before he died. We stopped briefly in the spot where he fell near the altar after having been shot, in the spot where he died. We were asked to think of one word in our reflection of the life of Romero, my word was “calling”. We were invited to place our hand on the altar and take a moment recalling that one word.

“Romero Vigil”

The Saturday before the anniversary of the martyrdom of Romero, we attended the Romero vigil with thousands of other Salvadorans. All of the students of the Casa along with the Salvadoran scholarship students in the Romero program traveled together to the vigil. We chanted together and sang songs. We marched from a large roundabout three miles from downtown to the Cathedral for an outdoor mass. As the sun went down, the moon shown bright and the candles that each person held created an orange glow under the white light of the moon. All around us Salvadorans were reminding us that in that moon, closer that night to the earth than it had been in almost two decades, was the presence of their beloved martyr, their Saint Romero.

"Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Romero"

On March 24^th, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Romero, a few students and I woke up early to make it to the 7AM mass at Divina Providencia to celebrate the anniversary. We stood in the back when there was no more space left in the pews. We listened to recitations of quotes from Romero’s homilies and we listened to testimonies about the visit of Obama to El Salvador the two days before the anniversary. We listened to commentaries about the U.S. relations with El Salvador. We felt the tension that exists today. What are my country’s intentions with this small nation? What does Obama say here to the reporters that he may not say in our country? To follow a Liberation Theology, we have learned to think critically about structural sin and historical context. We have become accustomed to hearing commentaries about the political reality in many of the masses here, the U.S. influence being among the most common topics. After mass I united with the two families from Mariona that we are also there. As I looked around the crowd for them I suddenly felt people tickling me. It was the husband and wife from Mariona, they had found me. We then drove back from Divina Providencia in a taxi just in time for our 10:15 class. At that class we had a guest speaker, Juan, Archbishop Romero’s personal taxista before he died. Juan shared stories about Romero’s moments of great fear as well as Romero’s favorite jokes and favorite type of pupusas.

"Silent Retreat"

The following weekend, we were invited as a program to participate in a three-day silent retreat at Centro Loyola. Loosely structured, with the greatest time devoted to space for reflection, the retreat allowed me to step back and look at where I have come from and where it is my heart is leading. In reflecting on my life, on my calling, on my vocation, on my relationship with God, I was filled with a great calm. I was filled with a great comfort. It was a time to rest in gratitude for all that had been and for the great gift of life that I have left to live. In that great calm, I finally felt empowered to confront deeper struggles that I had been carrying with me. I needed that calm to return to the fear and pain that I hold still in my muscle memory, that I held as I looked to the future. I took time to listen, to sit with God, to let prayer come to me. My prayer, each time with a different ending and accompanied by one deep breath in and another deep breath out, began with the same repetition, “Lifting my pain. Resisting my fear…”

And here I am today, a sum of these experiences and so many more. Sometimes overwhelmed, other times calm and content. But each day living, with flaws and aspirations, falling into humility and rising again through the love of others.

I looked at the calendar today.

I have one month left here to be present. I have one month here to live in that love.