PVC 1990 Delegation – Part Seventeen: Aguilares area

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

8 October 1990 - Aguilares area

We are visiting a community which was one of the stops made by the 1989 delegation. Returning delegates are amazed to see how much building and planting has taken place in just one year. We are told that they have about fifty acres in the community. About 7.5 acres are planted in vegetables, and about ten are set aside for grazing. They have four cows. The main crop is corn, with sesame interspersed. They also have a chicken house and bee hives.

Question: How did you get this land?

"We have the help of U.S. sister parishes, and also of a Norwegian group. SHARE was a big help to us. We have put in electricity and an irrigation system."

Question: Do you experience much harassment?

"Not right now. In other areas there is repression, but for us here, right now, there is nothing repressive. Of course, they are watching us. We had plenty of problems in the first location where we settled as a repopulated community. The most serious of our problems was land, which is why we moved here. We heard about this land and had an opportunity to buy it."

PVC 1990 Delegation – Part Five: Morning in La Peña

 

The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.

2 October 1990 - Morning in the village in San Miguel

We settle for sleep overnight in the common house, the eight women on four reed-mat beds in an inner room, and the men on mats on the porch. The room is damp and colder than outside; I think that I am the only one not wishing for a heavier covering than our flannel sheet. Gail and I share a bed against the far wall. I must have slept for a few hours; she claims that she has slept not at all. By quarter after four my need to use the bathroom has grown greater than any concern for disturbing the others. I whisper to Gail that I am getting up, and she decides that she will, also. We draw on the skirts and shoes which had been the only garments removed for the night, and I pin up my hair as best I can, tucking it under the Totes hat which serves as my protection from both sun and storm. Then with hands covering flashlights we make our way around the prone bodies of our comrades and out into the pre-dawn air.

The room had been utterly black, with no perceptible difference between eyes closed and eyes open. Outside we are greeted by a sky brilliant with more stars than I can remember ever having seen before in my life, and a nearly full moon making its way toward the western horizon. The "facilities" are across the clearing, around the bus, and into the woods – left turn for the men and straight ahead for the women, then pick your tree. A concrete latrine in this village will be a major improvement, once they get it built.