Migrants´stations of the cross/VIA CRUZES

Living room watching TV at the shelter

Typical feet after walking 5 days

Jumping the train

Front of the shelter

Dining room at the shelter

I’ve been contemplating the struggles of the people I see here. I wonder why they leave their countries when they know before hand what a struggle they will face on the journey.
Why they leave:
This is what I’ve heard from Salvadoreños. They leave for economic reasons and fleeing mafia type control. The money in El Salvador changed from the Colon to the US dollar in about 2004. Immediately people went from being able to buy food to their money being nearly worthless. A worker receives $35 for 7 days of work. A hamburger at McDonalds in El Salvador costs $7. (More than a full day’s salary.)
I talked with one young man to ask what difference he sees from before the war in El Salvador to now, after the war. He said everything used to be very strict. If you did any little thing wrong, the police or army would kill you. Now he says it’s just the opposite. Everything is controlled by gangs like the Salvatrucha. If you try to open a little store or shop, the Salvatrucha (Gangs /mafia) come by soon after opening to tell you what your “rent” will be. It’s usually something like $500/month. If you don’t pay, they kill you. If you find that you are unable to make a go of your shop, you still have to continue paying the “rent”. If you don’t, they come to your home and kill you. AND, if anyone buys your home they need to pay or the Salvatrucha will come to the house and kill them! He said there are some very nice homes in El Salvador that are empty because the people had to flee.

This is what I hear from Hondureños. They also flee for economic reasons. They all say the pay is a pittance but if they could just get their little home, they could stay and make it. However, most of them rent. Consistently people tell me that on payday the landlord is at their house waiting for them to come home from work to collect the rent. After paying the rent they don’t have enough to feed their families for the rest of the month.
One man told me today that his little boy needs an operation. He can’t afford the surgery so he asked God to please give him just 2 months in the US to make enough money to pay for the surgery.

From Guatemaltecos—again economic reasons. They tell me they want a better life for their kids. One young man has a son, Junior, who is “5 years, 4 months and 19 days” old! (Counting the days tells me he was REALLY missing his son!) He said ¨I want him to be able to go to college.¨ He’s trying to make it North alone and later a Coyote (someone who is paid to help people get into the US) will bring his wife. Their “Junior” will be staying with his grandparents. The young man said they can make as much in one month in the US as they make in 8 months in Guatemala. The parents hope to work one or two years and then return to Guatemala. The young man is sitting here now trying to decide if he will continue the journey. He knows he’s risking his life on this journey and is wondering if it’s worth the gamble.
I don’t have any stories of Nicaraguenses but there are a LOT moving through this house this week. They are also primarily economic refugees.

The Journey through Mexico:
In this shelter we register everyone who comes through. (There have been 1600 men and 139 women so far this year.) One of our questions is “Did you have any problems in your journey up to this point?” About 2/3 of them report some sort of assault. Everyone has to pass through many check points on the road. The checkpoints are immigration, local police, federal police, military, and customs. These checkpoints are along all of the roads all the way up through Mexico. About half of the problems people have come from these authorities. They are made to pay bribes. People have been kidnapped, raped and beaten at these checkpoints. They are also sent back to their countries or sent to immigration detention. In order to avoid these problems people walk around the checkpoints. However, walking around the checkpoints doesn’t give them any more security.
There are awful things that happen as they try to avoid the checkpoints. People are held up with guns, knives, machetes. Friday was particularly hard. Young man after young man came into the office to sign in. Each one had been grabbed in la Arrozera--one place were people leave the road to go around a check point. They were taken at gun point to a shack, made to strip, and then they were let go--naked. One group saw a young couple being taken into the shack as they were being let go. They waited 3 hours and the couple was never released. The next young man said that he was taken to the shack but they were raping 4 young women so they just let him go. One woman arrived here with a cut on her face from a machete that she got while trying to resist rape. They raped her and another woman in front of her husband and the rest of the group (all naked) that was traveling together.
I just want to bawl.
Carlos from our shelter called the police to ask them to do something. They said ¨Oh, we´re dong an operativo (maneuver) there right now.¨ I heard him say into the phone ¨that´s a lie. I was just there with a reporter and a priest and there is no operativo going on there¨. (He had just come from there. Said he was scared the whole time.)
It’s so maddening to see this repeated over and over again and the authorities don’t do anything about it. When I said something about that, I was told that those rapes, assaults and robberies couldn’t continue without the approval of the authorities. The authorities are being paid to let the assaults continue. Worse, often times the assaults are done by men with haircuts just like the authorities, dressed in the same clothes as the authorities, and using the same kinds of guns that the authorities have. (It must be what they do for their second job!) Carlos said the US is giving Mexico $500 million this year to stop Central Americans from getting into the US.

When migrants leave here to hop the train, their problems increase. They have all the dangers of falling off the train or being brushed off by tree branches and losing limbs or their lives. One 47 yr old woman was going to jump the train 3 days ago. She tripped in a hole near the tracks and broke her leg in 3 places. We took her to the hospital by taxi. There they said she needs surgery with nails and a plate. We couldn’t cover that cost and she certainly couldn’t pay for it. So, we made an arrangement for someone to send her by ambulance to Tapachula. Olga will find a way to cover the costs in Tapachula.
There are gangs on the train who also rob and, if they don’t get what they want, they throw people off the train. They also kidnap. There used to be about 10-20 kidnappings a month. Now there are over 100 people at a time, daily. They kidnap the migrants and call their families, demanding money or they will kill the person. Whether they get the ransom or not, they will still often kill the migrant.
We have one couple here who said they were on the train when the military stopped it. People were pulled off the train and beaten. They used tear gas and rubber bullets. Bones were broken. They threw them all in cells and many hours later someone started coming around giving pain shots. Until then people were screaming in pain.
Others have told me that when the authorities stop the train, people start running to escape. They said they go after the women. If the officer is chasing a man and sees a woman, he stops chasing the man and goes after the woman. One woman said the officer told her she had to pay. She didn’t have any money so he said “then you’ll pay with your body!” Another woman fell and thought she broke her leg. When the officer came up to her she said her leg was broken. He said “we’ll see about that”. And took her leg and broke the other bone too!
This morning the train was FULL of people. It looked like a thousand. There were pregnant women and some little kids. You’d think they must be crazy for doing that. They’ve all heard the same stories I’ve heard. This just tells me how desperate they are to get to el Norte (the North).
This is what I’ve learned about the Migrants Way of the Cross/Via Cruzes in Southern Mexico. I’m assuming the rest of the journey through Mexico is similar to this. When they hit the Northern border they have other problems with crossing. Many of you know the next stations of the cross that the migrants pass through in the US….Minutemen, immigration, living in hiding and all the abuses that invites, lack of health care, finding work, being picked up while driving or at work and deported. So, I’ll leave the rest of the stations for you to fill in.

People ask what they can do to change this. I ask myself the same question every day. It feels like I’m putting band aids on a scratch on the left arm while the right arm has been cut off and the person is bleeding to death. All I can think of is to ask you to keep praying and talking to Congresspersons to pass comprehensive immigration legislation that is not focused on enforcement and building walls but provides for immigrant protections, a pathway to citizenship and reunification of families. It won’t change what people go through on the journey, but at least when they get there, they don’t have to continue suffering.

Lillian

Donkey carrying coffee beans

I think I may have learned how to send fotos! It may take me a while to get this arranged.

Remember I said I went to a water falls with Denise (in red cap) and Mayra (next to her) a couple of weeks ago? On our walk down to the bottom of this ravine we came across this donkey and later a few other horses carrying coffee beans up from the bottom. The coffee plants were in full bloom and smelled so pretty. They don´t smell at all like coffee.

Lillian

The beach and a Prosthetics shop

Kids with hotdogs at the beach
Denise with 2 of the kids
This kid kept wanting to use my camera. This is his self foto. He got some really good pictures, better than any I take.
The little kids start learning surfing in the pool before they even start in the ocean.


I said I’d write about going to the beach with the street kids. It was WONDERFUL. It was a bit overwhelming to walk into a yard full of 45 kids from 3 to 18 years of age but we jumped into the pool with them and had a great time. I don’t know how these kids come to be at the shelter, but they refer to the foster parents as Mom and Dad. I’m guessing they may have been abandoned or mistreated and removed from homes. The place is run by an Australian couple. They look to be in their late 60s. They have young volunteers from all over the world, mostly English speaking countries. The little kids speak quite a bit of English now.

I was surprised at the kids. I´m guessing they must get some very good care, attention and have strong supervision because they were very well behaved and, for that many little kids, and assuming not great backgrounds, there were VERY few squabbles. They try to keep the kids busy. They have a home on the beach where they take them 3 weekends a month. The home has a pool with a baby pool in the huge back yard and a gate out to the beach.

We spent a lot of time at the beach. Those little kids were like fish. They had absolutely no fear of the water. There were huge waves crashing in and the little 4 and 5 yr olds were just diving right into them and laughing all the way! The bigger kids were surfing and teaching the next smaller kids how to surf.

We all had a great time. When my sunburn heals I want to go back!

The International Red Cross came to the Albergue Jesus el Buen Pastor today. They came with 2 prosthetists. Olga has wanted to set up a place where we can make prosthesis at the Albergue, but she is getting a bakery and a tire store set up first.

Well, these folks came wanting to know what our needs would be in relationship to setting up a shop for making prosthesis. It seems there was a place in Guatemala that was all set up but it didn’t take off, so all of the equipment is in storage in a basement. It looks like if we want to take advantage of this, we will need to build the building and find someone who is trained as a prosthetist. (Pick me, pick me---In 1980 I wanted to do that and I still have an interest, but it would take another 3 years of school. There are SO many things here that I want to do.)

They also said you need to be making a couple of hundred prostheses to really be worth setting up a shop. Kathrin has data that says by Sept of 2007 there had been 225 Hondurans who had had traumatic amputations in Mexico and were deported back to Honduras. With those numbers, calculating the percentage of immigrants from each country, she figures there were probably about 250 Hondurans, about 200 Guatemalans, and a few less Nicaraguans and Salvadorans who had amputations in Mx from train accidents in 2007.

The immigrants jump a cargo train to travel up through Mexico. In 2005 Hurricane Sam destroyed the tracks here in Tapachula, near the border. Now people walk or find other means of transportation to get to where the train starts up again. (One of those places is Arriaga, where I go to help for one week a month.) So now the accidents happen further north in Mexico where they get hurt hopping on the trains or fall off when they are tired after riding 2-3 days.

In those other cities they are taken to the hospitals, basic surgery done, and within a couple of days Immigration ships them back to their own countries. If we had a prosthetics shop here, we would talk with the hospitals, International Red Cross, Grupo Beto (Mx government employees who’s job is to aid immigrants), and immigration to see if they couldn’t be transferred here instead of shipped back to their countries.

So, this is one more iron that is going into the pot here. I’ll keep you informed if more comes of it.

Lillian in Taspachula

Fun

Saturday, Feb 23, 2008
Hi. This is just a quick note to say, yes, I did go to the water falls Sunday and had a great time. It was about 1 1/2 hrs from here by combis (those mini vans) and walking. As we were riding up into the hills/low mts we started smelling something so beautiful. It was the coffee bushes in full bloom. I can´t tell seasons here yet, but it seemed like it must be spring there with all of the trees in bloom. There were orchids hanging all over. They weren´t in bloom yet, but the plants were there.
The day was perfect; blue sky, little yellow birds, butterflies, the mist of the waterfalls on our faces, and no sounds except the sounds of nature. We saw horses and donkeys carrying gunny sacks of coffee beans up the path---all pure back to nature.

There were cashew trees. Cashews are so interesting. They start with a blossom, produce a huge nut shell, then continue producing a fruit that turns red. So, to look at the tree with the full fruit and nut you would see the branch, a red fruit about the size of 1/2 of your palm, then from the end of that is the nut that looks like a parrots beak. The fruit has a real dry tart taste.
I´ve also had Cocoa beans from the pod. The beans are sweet to suck on, then you wash and dry them, grind them and add sugar for chocolate.
I haven´t picked my mango yet, but there are mango trees in the back yard of the albergue so I hope to do that soon! Others have picked them and I´ve eaten them the same day they were picked. There is definitely a difference between picking it right off the tree and eating it and how we get it in the grocery stores up north.

Tomorrow I will be going to the ocean with Mayra (from here), Denise and Kathrin (from Germany), and 40-50 kids (from 4-18yrs old) from a shelter for street kids. I´ve not met any of the kids yet but Kathrin knows someone who works at that shelter so we´re all going along to help. It´s a way for me to get to the beach and I´m looking forward to making contacts with that shelter. I´ll let you know more after Sunday.

I guess my biggest accomplishment this week is that I´m driving more independently. I´m either driving Doris (Olga´s sister) for her errands or am driving alone. It feels good to know how to get around a little more.

We have started taking 3 of the residents of the shelter for physical therapy/rehab twice a week. They won´t do the therapy unless one of us is with them. Luckily, that means me! I am learning the exercises then work with the residents when they get back home. I had been working with 2 of the men but I guess I was way too easy on them. I would slowly do a few stretching exercises with each of them. At therapy they worked their tails off-----so I´m doing the same thing now! I´m getting more set for starting a rehab/exercise room at the shelter. I´ve gotten ¨stress reliever¨ balls for many who have had hand injuries (attacked with a machete, bitten by a cottonmouth snake, brain tumor, stroke) and they all faithfully carry them around and work with them. Today I got some stretch cords so they´ll be able to do some exercises more independently. I´m looking forward to setting up something nice for them and working with them.
I´ll let you know how the ´gym´ progresses too.

I´m still working on learning how to send pictures. I have lots and wish I could send them. I learned what I´m doing wrong but don´t know how to correct it yet.

Lillian

Notes from Arriaga.

Feb 12, 2008-02-10
I’m back at the Albergue Señor de la Misericordia in Arriaga this week.
Again the hemorrhage of people leaving Central America is overwhelming.
Yesterday I registered 26 men and 5 women from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. (Sixty-eight people were registered in the last 3 days.) Most are coming from Honduras. Nine came from one village in Honduras. They came in 3 different groups, none of them knowing that the others were coming. When they met here at the shelter it was the first time they knew that the others were also heading for the US. When I asked about it, they said you don’t talk about that. It’s all kept hush hush.

I don’t know why, but for some reason it seems like people think immigrants are fair game to attack and rob. (I guess that’s not a whole lot different from the prevailing political attitude towards immigrants in the US.) It seems that by being so vulnerable, it brings out the worst in people. They are robbed by bandits and gangs. They are made to pay bribes to immigration, federal and local police. I saw some statistics that said 51% of the abuses they receive are at the hands of the authorities. In the last 3 days I’ve registered 13 women. Of those 13, 1 had been raped and 12 had been robbed. Of the 55 men I’ve registered 26 had been robbed.

Bus drivers and taxis over charge them and tell them that if they don’t pay, they’ll turn them in to immigration. One guy this morning said they took 7 different combis (vans that transport people like a mini bus system) yesterday. Each combi should have cost about 20 pesos ($2). The first combi charged them 50 pesos and kept handing them over to the next passing on the word that they were to be charged 50 pesos each time. So, they were each overcharged 210 pesos (about $21). They knew it but there was nothing they could do.

Just to give you an idea of what $21 means to the poor, one of those men worked in a Maquiladora in El Salvador. He was paid $35 for a 7 day week. So, being over charged $21 was the equivalent of over 4 day’s labor. Try putting your salary into that equation, what is 4 days of labor worth?

On a lighter note. I told you it was hot here. Well, I use a fan most nights. For a couple of nights in Arriaga, my fan wasn’t working. I didn’t know that the fan not only helped for the heat, but it keeps the mosquitoes away! I was slapping my head, ears, face and arms all night. My face looks like I got a bad case of measles! Actually, I took a picture of it and it does show up---feo (Ugly)!

Feb 15, I left Arriaga today. Exhausted but glad that I had been there. When I leave I wish I didn’t have to leave. I want to just stay there. (That’s the same way I feel when I’m leaving Tapachula!) When I got back to Tapachula, Olga was asking me about my time in Arriaga. She looked like she was checking me out to see if I was going to tell her I was going to stay in Arriaga. Then she said there is so much stuff happening here, she is so glad I’m back. They had one guy here from Honduras who had been in a coma after being beaten. He was brought to the shelter while I was gone and he died. She said there are several more new people for me to be seeing. I’m looking forward to that.

I am starting to miss having friends around to play. I’ve met a couple of people that I think may become playmates!! I’ll keep you posted on the fun now too! Actually, I do laugh a lot here. That is probably why I’m able to just keep on with work and be happy. It’s kind of like being on the farm. You don’t count the hours you’ve been working, it’s just life and living.

Oh, PS. I have to tell you about the Duct tape. It was a great success. I saw people who had walked from Tapachula to Arriaga (It took us 4 hrs by car.) Their legs and feet were swollen, blisters over half of the feet. I cleaned them, put on Zinc Oxide and the duct tape, and they walked out of there!!!---Well, some of them did still limp, but they said it felt a lot better!

Lillian

Ash Wednesday

Tomorrow I`m leaving Tapachula to spend the next week at the shelter in Arriaga (Señor de Misericordia). I won´t have internet access for a week so I´m writing a short note before I go.

I´ve taken a big risk---I´m driving now! (Maybe it´s Olga who´s taken the big risk letting me drive!) I definitely need a copilot for a while. I need someone to tell me when I have preferencia (right of way) and need to keep moving through intersections so I don´t get hit from behind, and when I don´t have preferencia (right of way) so need to yield. It´s marked by red arrows (preferencia) or black arrows (no preferencia) painted on the corner buildings. I also need that copilot to tell me where to go. I am catching on to how to get to San Juan, Sam´s club, Chedraui, and Ahrrorar (the places where we buy in bulk), the hospital, the shelter Albergue Jesus el Buen Pastor, and immigration. I still have some difficulties finding my way home!
I´ve found immigration because I´m getting the equivalent of my ¨green card¨.
I can find the shelter because that is where I try to spend as much time as I can. I´ve been giving rehab. Mostly what I do is listen and talk with people while I am able to physically touch them--range of motion, strengthening, stretching exercises or massage. I´ve always treasured being able to place hands on people as something special that a nurse can do. Socially it´s not possible for others to touch the way a nurse or therapist can.
While I´m doing therapy I hear stories. A lot of stories about chanaged lives. D is a young man that had bilateral amputations. We started out talking about phantom pains. It ended up moving into talking about self acceptance and his spiritual journey. He said ¨we were each given a life to desarollar (develop). When my legs were cut off, I was given the opportunity to desarollar a different life.¨ That was so powerful and it came from deep inside of him, not some pious platitude. It didn´t happen for him overnight. He´s had his amputations for 3 years and he´s worked hard and prayed hard. He´s joyful, helpful, positive, funny, sensitive, grounded. When I asked him what he was like before, he said, ¨not like this.¨
One of my first impressions at the shelter was the joy that is so present. I didn´t expect it. After that conversation, I have a better understanding of the spiritual development that happens at the albergue. I´m appreciating the opportunity to learn and hopefully develop my spiritual life just being here.
With this I´ll close until after next week.
Good lent to you all,
Lillian

Background

Feb 2, 2008

I think I jumped into this blog without really giving a background on how I came to be here, who Olga is, or what the shelter is about. So, I’ll try to back up to fill you all in on this.

Last spring a friend said, ¨You’ve got to read Enrique’s Journey.¨ I did and I think you all should too! The book is the story of a young man’s journey from Honduras to the US. His mother left him and his sister with his grandmother to come to the US to be able to support them. It talked about her struggles and the struggles of those left behind without their mother. His journey was horrific. He was beaten and sent back many times but was determined to find his mother. The journalist who wrote the book stayed here at Olga’s house and in one part she talked about Olga and this shelter, Jesus el Buen Pastor. When I read that piece I just put the book down and said to myself, “I have to go there and do whatever I can.”
I started researching in the internet and found several sites, found a connection, and came down in Oct with another sister to check it out. When I got here it felt so right. Meeting Olga, I felt comfortable and right at home. Kathrin is a young woman from Germany who has been here for 4 years. I also felt very comfortable with her. So from then I started making plans to come down.

Olga is a woman a few years younger than I. She’s married and has 3 teen/young adult kids. She visited patients in the hospital and found so many from Central America who had been injured on their journey. Their wounds resulted from being attacked by people with machetes, shot by the police, immigration, or bandits, fallen or thrown off of trains and suffering traumatic amputations and whatever else might occur on the journey. When these people were being discharged from the hospital they had nowhere to go and no one to care for them. She said ¨Stay with me,¨ and they did. When her house could no longer hold them, someone loaned them a house. In 2004 President Fox (?) gave her a human rights award. With the money from that award she bought some land and material and the men who were staying at the shelter built it.

The shelter does have some money that comes from a Kellogg grant to cover some salaries. But, all the work that we do buying and selling little bits here and there is all for the possibility of keeping the shelter running and for the needs of the shelter guests-------- or whoever else calls on her (such as the burial for the man who died that I wrote about previously.)

Olga has dreams of making the shelter self supporting. She says, “If not, who is going to support this after I die?” She is in the process of setting up a shop for tire repair. (If you’ve driven these roads, you would also think that was a good idea!!!) She has ordered the equipment and needs another $8,000 to pay for the rest of that and expects to be able to build the shop for another $10,000. She also wants to set up a bakery and candy store in the back of the Albergue/Shelter as part of this self sufficiency plan. The shelter guests would be the employees. It will be a way for shelter guests to have employment and reinforce that they are useful and able to support themselves.

My dreams are a little more modest. I did say OK to being the official ¨nurse¨ at the shelter. For me that means I want to set up a rehab area. So, I’m out looking for a few basic things like elastic exercise therabands, a mirror so they can see themselves. Walking bars, an exercise ball, and I’ll need a copy of the Dr. Charles A. Long balance exercises. (Chuck, could you email those to me please?)

Before saying “yes” to being the clinic nurse, I did talk to Olga about going to Arriaga one week a month to help out at that shelter and do some foot care education too. She´s ok with that.
I think I´ve found a niche that is fitting so well!
Take care all
Lillian