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Living in the Andes has fashioned me, I am who I am because of the people
I don’t like writing about myself, nor having my photo taken, but I can’t refuse to write this article, since I lived with the webweaver in the International Community in Rome. There, we shared anxieties and uncertainties, and I’m glad to say we also shared dreams, experiences and love. Being a part of the first phase of the Sophia Commission is a chapter in my life that I can’t delete. I became aware of my limits and saw the extent and complexity of the world and of the Society, but my conviction grew stronger that its intuitions and aims need the dynamism that we breathe into it from every corner of our lives and ministries. And my commitment will continue! What better programme could we possibly have than that, as educators, we should be passionate and untiring in defending justice, peace and the integrity of creation?
And now I go on to the latest stage of my life, which I feel is also the final one– the return to the world of the Andes, where I had previously worked for thirty very intense years. Since working in the private Schools of the Sacred Heart and studying for my Master’s, the first little step on the road to change was in the Sacred Heart School of Jaén (1970), with children who were mainly from the country, and with outreach to the Caseríos and the city. That was also where I had my first experience of popular education, literacy, and theatre programmes for adults.
As a result of the earthquake and flood in the department of Ancash, I had the joy of participating for three years in a project of the Conference of Religious (CONFER). We lived in mixed groups of lay people and religious, both men and women, which meant we were integrated into the population and had a special contact with them. They were victims not only of the natural catastrophe, but also of history. There was a similar great upheaval in my head, heart, hands and feet…never have I covered so much ground, in every sense.
The journey within was also a kind of earthquake which anchored me more closely to a Jesus ever-present in strength and sweetness, challenge and compassion. But it also set up an incurable “addiction” for the poor people I so love. I was put in charge of a Parish which had been without a priest for more than 20 years, and the experience of a Christian community, its organisation by the people themselves, and the rebuilding of housing, and of life itself, went hand in hand.
That stage was not free from conflict. The interests of the powers that be clashed with our form of work and attacks began, because the people were taking greater initiative and could come up with fresh alternatives. Sadly, the Bishop who came in the second year of the experiment brought to an end what had been begun by CONFER and hastened our departure. This was the opportunity for me to plunge into the Surandino (the region of the South of the Andes) and Cusco. Thirty years of consistent Christian commitment and collective enthusiastic creativity at the level of the Church and of civil society! I can’t say any more about it, and indeed it would be a very long story, but I realise that I must give an account of what I was doing there as an RSCJ. I was alone for more than 20 years, living in a Christian community with Dominican priests and laywomen, doing pastoral work together and striving to get the men and women of the Andes to stand on their own feet. It involved regional formation of Christian animators in eight ecclesiastical jurisdictions, running the Andean Pastoral Institute, working in the Pumamarka Farm-School (an “indigenous boarding-school” with a productive enterprise to make it self-supporting) and in Rural Communities in the vast territory of Calca and Urubamba, in the department of Cusco. It also entailed conflicts and accusations, even of terrorism, when the terrorists constantly made death-threats against us. The “Archbishop of the Poor” died in Cusco, and his successor came with the intention of ridding his jurisdiction of “communists”. More than 27 pastoral workers left in a year. Our Community survived through the NGOs we founded: the Bartolomé de las Casas Centre and the ARARIWA Association (“watchful” in Quechua), the Help the Children Association (work with street children) and one on the second level: the Intercentral Co-ordination of Investigation, Development and Education (COINCIDE). Together with regional leaders, we created and ran the Defence of Human Rights Committee in Cusco, which became very influential in the years of violence. In the 90’s a process of decentralisation began in the country; in 1992 it destroyed Fujimori’s dictatorship.
In those two years, Fanny Cebreros (our Provincial) allowed me to participate in the first Regional Government with the portfolio of Social Politics…. It was an opportunity to press for agreement and popular participation; it taught me a great deal, while at the same time we were witnessing to the love of the poorest people, and their central importance in a work of “emergency in order to emerge”.
At an untimely moment in 1995 came an urgent call to take on the management of the Higher Teachers’ Training College Tupac Amaru of Tinta (Canchis, another province of Cusco). And I took the plunge unhesitatingly, since ARARIWA had by then grown and matured enough to look after itself …and here I had to prevent 900 rural students, all Quechua-speakers, from losing their studies through the closing of the institution, which trained teachers in a region of extreme poverty. It was being affected by a serious crisis and by mismanagement, and the Province asked me to take it on. The venture had no shortage of difficulties of every kind, but it was marked by genuine, simple joy. When three Sisters arrived in 1997, I had a chance to go back to living in an RSCJ community. From here I set out once more with the consent of our Provincial at the time, Pilar Cardó, to form part of the Transitional Government, with national responsibility in the Ministry of Education, from which I resigned after 20 months because I disagreed with its policies… and again at the request of Clare Pratt rscj, our Superior General, I studied English (for which I was very grateful to the Australia-New Zealand Province) before beginning the Sophia Commission in Rome. In the very brief space a couple of months I had to say my good-byes my work in the mountains and from everyday life there…but I’m glad to be back i!
I should add a little about my “beginnings”… I had profoundly Christian, exceptional parents, one brother and four sisters (the eldest belongs to Opus Dei and Milagros is an RSCJ), with five nephews and one niece whom I don’t yet know. It’s hard to describe them because of their overwhelming personality and originality. I’ll confine myself to one story which delights me, because it says everything about my mother, who has now reached the age of 92. A while ago, on hearing about the difficulties of my life-style and the misunderstandings it entailed, she thought I was going to leave the Society. The simple faith she always professed, inspired her with a solution to her dilemma and a marvellous expression of the essential. She scolded me a little, then said: “If the day comes when you have to stop being the bride of Christ, my girl, arrange things so that you can go on being his lover!” I do try to be just that, for there’s one thing certain: He is the greatest!
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Well, if you’re after dates: I was born in Lima in 1943 and entered the noviceship at 16 in Chorrillos. I was “knit together“ here in Cusco, and I would like to end my days in this land, though thanks be to God, life never does come to an end.
“If anyone says I’m a happy woman, and that I’m free and passionate, you can believe them.”
“How could I not agree with Sophie that: ‘A single one of these children is worth a whole life’?”
Rosario Valdeavallano rscj
Province of Peru
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