The next day we went to the Rio Lempa. We drove a windy road past other small villages. Then we had to walk. It was a short distance, but steep downhill and hot. I slid and scraped the palm of my hand, which bled. Now the scar is a rosy pink oval in peeled skin.
Salome, Pedro, Rosita, Pastor, Juana, Juana's daughter and baby granddaughter came with us. The river was brown-green and unimpressive. The slopes on either side were jungle green and stone. We looked from our side onto Honduras. They looked the same.
Where is the cross? the Valle Nuevo folks wanted to know. They walked up the river and found it. We followed. The cross was long metal piping painted yellow, red, and blue. It marked the spot where the people had crossed the river in 1981. Most did not know how to swim, so they had strung a rope across.
Salome stared at the water. It was the first time he had been back in 30 years. He told us about his brother who had been one of the few who could swim. His brother had crossed the Lempa many times, helping children get to Honduras. Finally, when he was too tired, he walked up the Honduran side and was shot by the Honduran military. They killed many of the men ages 15-40 because they assumed any man that age was a guerilla soldier.
The memories of the Valle Nuevo folks came mostly in fragments, hard to translate. They spoke them to each other in the shorthand of old friendship. They did tell us that the water had been much higher, much faster. The soldiers had let open the dams. Later they showed us further down the river, to a little inlet where shot or drowned bodies had washed to calmer waters.
“God was always with us,” Salome told me later, repeating a refrain I had heard at Valle Nuevo many times. “Always, always.” The intellectual dilemma of the problem of evil does not exist here. The question, “where was God?” never gets asked. God was crossing the Rio Lempa. God was living in a tent in Honduras. God was suffering with them.
We washed one another's feet below the cross in the river water. "This is how you redeem a place," David Janzen said. Juana and Anali cleaned my feet. The water was free of blood.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Valle Nuevo, Part III
The directiva met again on Tomasa´s porch. This time, instead of with the lawyer, they were with the Shalom Missional Communities delegation. We all introduced ourselves in Spanish and said a few words. Even the delegation members who spoke no Spanish had had their introduction translated on paper. They spoke them courageously in haulting syllables.
The directiva updated us on the issue of the land. They had decided to go forward without the engineer. They had divided the land up themselves. Still, the process of legalization would take roughly another year, they told us, nodding their heads and rocking quietly in their chairs. They hoped our relationship would continue after the process was through. Of course, we assured them. This was not a project, but a relationship.
Afterwards, we gathered in to pray for Tomasa, who was sick. A few people prayed out loud; I prayed silently as I touched her shoulder lightly. Tomasa began to shake with all the intensity of an earthquake or an army inside her. ¨Gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios.¨She moaned her thanks to God into Nancy´s chest as Nancy tried to hold on to her. Then she fell back into David´s arms, completly limp. He lowered her onto the patio floor. She lay there for a few minutes, on her back, with her knees bent sideways, and her left arm over her forehead.
I stood over her not thinking one thing. In the U.S., I had seen people slain in the Spirit and it always arroused my suspicion or fear. But here, I felt neither of those. It only seemed like one more thing which I couldn´t explain, one more thing that did not need my explanation.
The directiva updated us on the issue of the land. They had decided to go forward without the engineer. They had divided the land up themselves. Still, the process of legalization would take roughly another year, they told us, nodding their heads and rocking quietly in their chairs. They hoped our relationship would continue after the process was through. Of course, we assured them. This was not a project, but a relationship.
Afterwards, we gathered in to pray for Tomasa, who was sick. A few people prayed out loud; I prayed silently as I touched her shoulder lightly. Tomasa began to shake with all the intensity of an earthquake or an army inside her. ¨Gracias a Dios, gracias a Dios.¨She moaned her thanks to God into Nancy´s chest as Nancy tried to hold on to her. Then she fell back into David´s arms, completly limp. He lowered her onto the patio floor. She lay there for a few minutes, on her back, with her knees bent sideways, and her left arm over her forehead.
I stood over her not thinking one thing. In the U.S., I had seen people slain in the Spirit and it always arroused my suspicion or fear. But here, I felt neither of those. It only seemed like one more thing which I couldn´t explain, one more thing that did not need my explanation.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Valle Nuevo, Part II
I watched Felipa make tortillas. Her husband Salome had already grown and harvested the corn and this morning Felipa had boiled it and ground it into a paste. Now she took the long smooth stone and used it to pushed some of the paste thin against the rectangular stone with the curved depression. She did this several times until she had some of the paste separated. Then she took some in her hand and smacked it into the palm of her other hand and patted it in a circular motion. Then she spun it with one hand and smoothed its edges with the other until it was perfectly round and just the right thickness. She patted it twice more and flipped it onto a round iron sheet sitting over a wood fire. It was beautiful. The fluid motions were entirely natural and unselfconscious, as if she were playing a musical instrument.
She gave me a little bit of the paste and I tried to imitate her motions. I felt like a child. When did you learn to make tortillas? I asked her in Spanish. When I was little, she answered, holding her hand to the height of her waiste. Your mother taught you? Si, mi mama. She died in the war. Was it the soldiers? Si, the soldiers. She flipped my first tortilla onto the iron plate and gave me another small portion of the paste. My father too, she said. Before or after you went to Honduras? I asked. During, she said. In the Lempa River.
The Lempa River forms the border between El Salvador and Honduras in the area. In March of 1981, the soldiers came to the villages and 5,000 people fled to Honduras on foot. They were met at the river with gunfire from U.S. helicopters. 50 people died.
I didn't know what to say to Felipa, so I said nothing. Look, how beautiful, she said of my second tortilla, lightly browned. You are getting better, she said, though I saw no difference between the two. Then she smiled into the creases of her beautiful brown skin.
She gave me a little bit of the paste and I tried to imitate her motions. I felt like a child. When did you learn to make tortillas? I asked her in Spanish. When I was little, she answered, holding her hand to the height of her waiste. Your mother taught you? Si, mi mama. She died in the war. Was it the soldiers? Si, the soldiers. She flipped my first tortilla onto the iron plate and gave me another small portion of the paste. My father too, she said. Before or after you went to Honduras? I asked. During, she said. In the Lempa River.
The Lempa River forms the border between El Salvador and Honduras in the area. In March of 1981, the soldiers came to the villages and 5,000 people fled to Honduras on foot. They were met at the river with gunfire from U.S. helicopters. 50 people died.
I didn't know what to say to Felipa, so I said nothing. Look, how beautiful, she said of my second tortilla, lightly browned. You are getting better, she said, though I saw no difference between the two. Then she smiled into the creases of her beautiful brown skin.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Valle Nuevo, Part I
**This is the first in a series of blogs about my trips to Valle Nuevo, a rural community of people in El Salvador who suffered greatly during the country's civil war and who have been rebuilding their lives ever since.***
The directiva of Valle Nuevo met on Tomasa's covered patio. The men wore cotton slacks or jeans, a collar shirt unbuttoned at the top, and a straw hat. Tomasa, the only woman, wore a brown dress with a dirty white apron. She was petite. Her whispy hair was pulled back in a bun; she had dark rings around her eyes, and a kind face. Below her feet, a kitten was breastfeeeding on a cat not much bigger than it. The directiva talked for awhile about tabacco and plastic and potatoes, which they had heard were the tortillas of Bolivia. Then the lawyer came. He wore slacks with a shirt unbottoned at the top and a gold cross around his neck, no hat. After he sat down by the others in a plastic lawn chair, a chicken pooped one inch from his shoe.
They were meeting about the land. Eight years ago, with the help of Shalom Missional Communities, the directiva had bought El Piyachu (the mountain that the people farm), and for eight years they had been trying to divide it legally into family plots. Family plots would mean that they could develop the land in long term ways--grow fruit trees, enrich the soil. It meant they could more easily obtain visas to visit the US. It meant a sense of security--no one could legally kick them off. They were stalled because the engineer who had divided up the plots was witholding the family names that went with each one. He wanted more money up front. It would be difficult to assign plots themselves, since some would necessarily be better than others. They began to talk through it together.
I am learning from the people of Valle Nuevo that the struggle continues always. The night before, Pastor and Rosita talked to Nancy, Gabriela and I over pupusas. They ripped off a piece of the tortilla; steam rose from an exposed edge of the beans inside. They told us about las minas. Two years ago a local journalist had been marytred for opposing Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company that is polluting water sources in the area. "He was disappeared?" we asked. "No, they found his body five days later. His wife was killed too." They rubbed the piece of pupusa in a thin salsa. Then Rosita added, "Es otra guerra, las minas." Another war.
On Tomasa's porch, the rain started. At first I could not see it, only hear plinks on the tin above us. Four scraggly white pullets ran for cover. The rain got louder. Mical and Tomasa moved their lawn chairs closer in. Tomasa waved the chickens away from the kitchen with a cross between a hiss and a tsk.
The struggle continues, and the people of Valle Nuevo face it with the patience they have learned from long suffering. Maybe it was that patience, or maybe only the rain and the lazy meander of the animals, but I felt a sense of peace on that porch in Valle Nuevo. I felt as if I too could continue to struggle, and that the struggle, if not the suffering itself, could enrich my life.
The rain got louder. The meeting became a movie with the sound turned off. They gestured in the air and wrote things down and moved their lips, but I heard nothing. Streams poured down from the edge of the tin roof. The yard filled with brown puddles pocked by craters, the ephemeral imprint of each drop.
The directiva of Valle Nuevo met on Tomasa's covered patio. The men wore cotton slacks or jeans, a collar shirt unbuttoned at the top, and a straw hat. Tomasa, the only woman, wore a brown dress with a dirty white apron. She was petite. Her whispy hair was pulled back in a bun; she had dark rings around her eyes, and a kind face. Below her feet, a kitten was breastfeeeding on a cat not much bigger than it. The directiva talked for awhile about tabacco and plastic and potatoes, which they had heard were the tortillas of Bolivia. Then the lawyer came. He wore slacks with a shirt unbottoned at the top and a gold cross around his neck, no hat. After he sat down by the others in a plastic lawn chair, a chicken pooped one inch from his shoe.
They were meeting about the land. Eight years ago, with the help of Shalom Missional Communities, the directiva had bought El Piyachu (the mountain that the people farm), and for eight years they had been trying to divide it legally into family plots. Family plots would mean that they could develop the land in long term ways--grow fruit trees, enrich the soil. It meant they could more easily obtain visas to visit the US. It meant a sense of security--no one could legally kick them off. They were stalled because the engineer who had divided up the plots was witholding the family names that went with each one. He wanted more money up front. It would be difficult to assign plots themselves, since some would necessarily be better than others. They began to talk through it together.
I am learning from the people of Valle Nuevo that the struggle continues always. The night before, Pastor and Rosita talked to Nancy, Gabriela and I over pupusas. They ripped off a piece of the tortilla; steam rose from an exposed edge of the beans inside. They told us about las minas. Two years ago a local journalist had been marytred for opposing Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company that is polluting water sources in the area. "He was disappeared?" we asked. "No, they found his body five days later. His wife was killed too." They rubbed the piece of pupusa in a thin salsa. Then Rosita added, "Es otra guerra, las minas." Another war.
On Tomasa's porch, the rain started. At first I could not see it, only hear plinks on the tin above us. Four scraggly white pullets ran for cover. The rain got louder. Mical and Tomasa moved their lawn chairs closer in. Tomasa waved the chickens away from the kitchen with a cross between a hiss and a tsk.
The struggle continues, and the people of Valle Nuevo face it with the patience they have learned from long suffering. Maybe it was that patience, or maybe only the rain and the lazy meander of the animals, but I felt a sense of peace on that porch in Valle Nuevo. I felt as if I too could continue to struggle, and that the struggle, if not the suffering itself, could enrich my life.
The rain got louder. The meeting became a movie with the sound turned off. They gestured in the air and wrote things down and moved their lips, but I heard nothing. Streams poured down from the edge of the tin roof. The yard filled with brown puddles pocked by craters, the ephemeral imprint of each drop.
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