Honduras and Guatemala PART TWO

On Tuesday we had the oportunity to speak with the US Ambassador in Honduras, and with other US officials. They gave us their perspective on factors in the country causing young people and families to head north. 

We spent time at CRS headquarters in Tegucigalpa. I was able to say Mass for the many local CRS staff who were there on Tuesday afternoon. 

Here is a picture of Tegucigalpa taken from the roof of CRS headquarters. We were able to speak to representatives of Casa Alianza, one of CRS's partners in the region who work with children caught in traps of violence. 

The violence we hear about in the American media is particularly pronounced in Honduras. Children are literally forced to move drugs within the country or face death if they refuse. Children who try to escape are tracked down by the gangs and brutally murdered as a way of preventing other children from trying to escape. These would be children from 8 to 14 years old. 

By late afternoon on Tuesday we took a flight to Guatemala City via San Salvador's airport. Guatemala City is quite large, and one of the things we did there on Wednesday was visit a settlement being built up in the north of the city. Small shelters made of tin-siding are built by families into the side of the hill. 

Most of the settlers there are from the rural west of Guatemala. They slowly build up their homes in Guatemala City, work there, and cooperate with each other to provide a kind of leadership team. I was very touched by the spirit of hope and cooperation I saw there. Perhaps 85 families in this one area, all from different parts of the country, look after each other, figure out how to get good water supplies, and make plans for the education of their children. The settlement is built under one of the major bridges in the city.

 

It was a long climb down to the place where the families live. And a long climb back. But it was one of the highlights of the entire trip. 

The families we met reminded us all that the greatest resource in a country is the hope present within it's people. In this sense, Guatemala and Honduras have tremendous human resources. But there are dark and powerful forces that threaten these resources on every side. 

Things can be made better. Desperate poverty and violence need not prevail. Peoples must be able to mold a future for themselves, and not simply be at the mercy of powerful interests. But without the human heart and will to work for a better future for the generations that follow, authentic human development is not possible. 

I think the presence of CRS and others in these countries seeks in diverse ways to work with people and communities to make things practically better in their lives, and thus sustain their hope into the future, so that entire peoples can be the principal protagonists of their own future. This work often requires great sacrifice. 

As Catholics, our solidarity must not stop at a border; it must embrace the suffering and laboring face of Christ everywhere. CRS helps us do that. 

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Visit To Honduras and Guatemala, PART ONE

I was invited by Catholic Relief Services to join in a quickly arranged journey to Central America to learn more about the migration of so many children from Honduras and Guatemala to the United Stares. Since I am a member of the Board, and since McAllen, Texas, is the focal point of passage into the United States, I thought it important to see and hear for myself about the complex circumstances that have contributed to the humanitarian upheaval we have been witnessing.

I left on Sunday morning for San Pedro Sula, the industrial center of Honduras. We had Mass at the Cathedral on Sunday evening. I concelebrated at the kind invitation of Bishop Angel Garachana. 

We spent Monday talking to CRS personnel in San Pedro, and visiting sites of repatriation. We saw where children are returned to Honduras from Mexico. Several buses a week arrive from Mexico to bring children to facilities in San Pedro. We saw and spoke to the Scalibrini Sisters who work at the airport with adults who are brought by plane from the United States for re-entry into Honduras. 

On Monday afternoon we took a flight to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and had a meeting with the First Lady of Honduras. She explained the fruits of her study of the complex causes influencing the departure of so many families and unaccompanied young people. 

As this journey progresses, I will try to post what we are seeing, and with time, after I return, try to put together some thoughts about the full hemispheric context of what we see on the Texas/Mexican border. All of us have to make the effort to see and understand, so that we can better meet our obligations before The Lord Jesus to act effectively in the defense of human dignity. 

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