Relocation and incarnation are two big words in the world of Christian community development. They're also, i'm beginning to realize, complicated.
Relocation is one of the three R's that John M. Perkins, civil rights veteran and founder of the Christian Community Development Association, teaches. Basically, as i understand it, relocation is the idea that in order to come alongside the poor in the development of their communities and the realization of their aspirations, you actually have to come alongside them. You have to move into their neighborhood. You have to make their grocery shopping options your grocery shopping options. You have to make their kids' schools your kids' schools. You have to make their transportation options your transportation options. You have to make their (lack of) healthcare your (lack of) healthcare. That way you don't have a vague idea about what their problems are, as you commute to their poor neighborhood from your middle-class neighborhood to help them solve their problems. Your problems are their problems, and you overcome your problems together.
Relocation, in Christian community development circles, often gets couched in the language of incarnation. Basically (again, according to my understanding and simply put), since Jesus "became flesh and made his dwelling among us," (John 1: 14), that is, became a human being in order to liberate human beings, we also, as people of wealth and privilege, ought to become poor in order to participate in the liberation of the poor. Jesus, though being in very nature God, "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Philippians 2: 6). Likewise, we do not liberate the poor from positions of privilege and power, but instead, live among the poor as servants. When Jesus sent out his 12 disciples to tell people about the kingdom of God, he said, "Take nothing for the journey - no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt" (Luke 9: 3). Likewise, Christians working among the poor bring no staff, no bread (although i did bring two suitcases, a few extra shirts, and a credit card). In other words, they go simply, depending on God's providence and the generosity of their hosts.
My commitment to living and working among the urban poor in Latin America was born out of my involvement in InterVarsity's Global Urban Trek, where we study the passages relating to incarnation, read about "new friars organizations" - new monastic movements of people of privilege who have decided to live among the poor whether in the U.S. or internationally, organizations like The Simple Way, Servant Partners, InnerChange, Servants to Asia's Poor, etc -, and work for five weeks or so with "incarnational ministries" in Mexico City, Lima, Cairo, and others. Learning about God's heart for humanity (and God's option for the poor) that led God to incarnate among us and experiencing the worshipful service among God's poor had an absolutely profound effect on me. That relocation is an important element in people of privilege participating in community development seems fairly obvious to me now. And utilizing the language and concepts related to incarnation provides Christians with a useful metaphor for relocation. So what's so complicated about that?
Well, first of all, to say that i would be willing or able to fully become one of the poor of Nueva Suyapa is pretentious and betrays a lack of understanding of the depth of poverty.
Here is where i quote extensively from Henri Nouwen, namely pages 115-16 of Gracias!, where he writes from a marginalized community in Lima. Feel free to read, skim, or skip (i would suggest the first):
Can we truly live with the poor? Although i live with them and share their life to some extent, I am far from poor. During the noon hour, I walk to the rectory in Ciudad de Dios and eat a good meal prepared by a good cook, and one day a week I go to the Maryknoll center house in Miraflores to take a shower, sleep in, and have a day of relaxation.
So my living with the poor hardly makes me poor. Should it be different? Some say yes, some say no. Some feel that to be a priest for the poor, you should be no different from them, others say that such is not realistic or even authentic.
I have been here only one week, and thus am unable to have an opinion, but I know one thing: right now I would be physically, mentally, and spiritually unable to survive without the opportunity to break away from it all once in awhile... I love living here, but I am also glad that I can escape it for two hours a day and for one day a week. Living here not only makes me aware that I have never been poor, but also that my whole way of being, thinking, feeling, and acting is molded by a culture radically different from the one I live in now. I am surrounded by so many safety systems that I would not be allowed to become truly poor. If I were to become seriously ill, I would be sent back to the United States and given the best treatment. As soon as my life or health were really threatened, I would have many people around me willing to protect me.
At this moment, I feel that a certain realism is necessary. I am not poor as my neighbors are. I will never be and will not ever be allowed to be by those who sent me here. I have to accept my own history and live out my vocation, without denying that history. On the other hand, I realize that the way of Christ is a self-emptying way. What that precisely means in my own concrete life will probably remain a lifelong question...
Like the majority of Suyapans, i have family in the U.S. whom i love. For the majority of Suyapans, seeing their family means either them making a financially costly, life threatening, and illegal journey to the U.S., as my host cousin has done, or their family member giving up the economic stability afforded them and their family members here in Honduras in order to come home permanently, as my host father, after 8 years in the U.S., is getting ready to do. For me, seeing my loved ones means that i or they buy an affordable plane ticket and fly to the U.S. or Honduras, in either of which we are welcomed almost without question. Does relocation - should relocation - mean giving up that privilege?
The majority of Suyapans live on less than one U.S. dollar per day. I need not even ask if i will live on one U.S. dollar per day. I'm not going to.
For Suyapans and for me, going to even a free cultural event means paying 2-3 dollars to get there and about five dollars for a taxi home. Thus, a "free" cultural event would cost the majority of my neighbors about a week's budget. Does that mean i shouldn't go to the cultural events that i find so wonderful, where i feel a connection with Hondurans with interests and backgrounds more like mine?
I've never gone, and most likely never will go hungry in Nueva Suyapa. Have i "relocated"?
Some of my privileges i could not give up. I cannot give back my college education. I cannot undo growing up in a loving home. I can't undo having known my father's love.
Also, even if i were to become fully a poor person of Nueva Suyapa, even if that were possible, it could only be through my own personal choice. No poor person of Nueva Suyapa chose to be poor. In other words, my decision to become poor and to what extent will always be made freely, which is important to realize.
I recently heard a podcast with Murphy Davis, cofounder of the Open Door Community in downtown Atlanta. (Listening to podcasts, by the way, is something that most of my neighbors will never be able to do.) Davis shared the story of how she gave up her health insurance to live in community with her homeless brothers and sisters. It was not until she got cancer and went through years of treatment at the public hospital for the uninsured that her friends stopped suspecting that she had some "out" - that she wasn't really committed to living among them. To me, this story illustrates that relocation - that downward mobility - is neither impossible nor unimportant, much less easy. For the time being, i will not give up my "outs." I'll keep my bank account, my U.S. citizenship, my family, my friends, my computer, and my books.
In thinking about these things it's worth pointing out the importance of a community. Instead of "going it alone" i am working with a Honduran NGO. Yes, i will probably leave here after two or three years, but MCM has been here for about twenty years and has no plans to leave. Yes, i'm an outsider to this community, but most of my coworkers live here and have family here, and many of them grew up here in Nueva Suyapa. So whatever barriers i have between me and truly becoming one of the poor, i at least know that the organization i am working with is truly a part of the community i live in.
Why else is the incarnational model complicated? Well, a common problem among both Christians and other people of privilege seeking to do some good among the poor is the oh-so-dangerous savior complex. While the incarnational metaphor has many benefits, i would say, it also has the pitfall of encouraging people to think of their lives as being like those of the savior. "Just as Jesus became a human [to save the world], i [a rich white person] am becoming poor [to save poor brown people]" would basically be the danger that i see. It also intentionally casts those who are, through privilege and injustice, able to relocate (mostly rich white people from The United States, Canada, and Europe) as the Jesus to those who, through lack of privilege and oppression, are forced to stay where they're at (poor people of color in the Global South). The incarnational model is seriously susceptible to conflation with the colonialist thinking that has infected the Christian community in industrialized countries for centuries, even as Christians in the Global South are continuing to raise their voices to point out both that the church needs to be decolonialized and that, additionally, Christians of the Global South just might get Jesus a lot better than Christians in the West do, and consequently, if anyone should be "incarnating" it just might be Christians of the Global South incarnating among people of developed countries, not the other way around. In a lot of ways, it's a valid criticism.
I've also realized that the longer the period of time for which i try to relocate, that harder it is. For six weeks i can pretty easily only eat what's given to me by my hosts, wear only two pairs of pants and five shirts, stay within the community in which i'm working, and feel more-or-less fine with not having a clue how the Phillies are doing (especially if it's around the all-star break). For two years i have to keep Nature Valley almond bars on hand as comfort food; i quickly realize i need a fourth pair of pants, and ten shirts quickly starts to feel like too few; i need to leave Nueva Suyapa at least a couple times a week to go to a coffee shop or (gasp) the mall; and i have to surf my family's tv to look for the Phillies (although maybe not after this season). So what kinds of privileges would i be tempted to justify if i were to commit living a lifetime of relocation?
Anyway, i think i've said enough about relocation and incarnation for now. As Nouwen says: "...I realize that the way of Christ is a self-emptying way. What that precisely means in my own concrete life will probably remain a lifelong question..." In other words, it's complicated.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Operation Lightning Bolt
On Tuesday i stepped out of my front door at 8 a.m. to go to work, and before i'd walked a block i saw four soldiers in full camouflage with M-16 rifles turn the corner in front of me. I wish i could say i was shocked, but i was more just curious. As the day went on i realized that the neighborhood was full of soldiers, and i found out that the government had begun what they're calling "Operation Lightning Bolt," which has sent the army into high crime areas around the country, including all over Tegucigalpa. As the days have gone on, the military presence has increased. There are regularly truckloads of soldiers outside our building, which is right by the main bus terminal in Nueva Suyapa, and soldiers with M-16s standing in the center of the road spaced about every ten yards.
On Wednesday there were about 5 soldiers lined up in front of the building i work in, where our elementary school, microloan program, dental clinic, and a few other offices are located. I said casually to the woman who cleans our offices, "Look at all these soldiers in front of our building." It's the first time i'd mentioned their presence to anyone. To my surprise, she said, "Yes, how good that they're here." As the days went on, i realized that this is by far the majority opinion among Suyapans; in fact, i have yet to encounter one Honduran who's critical of the military's presence in their neighborhood.
My family explained it to me more or less in these terms: "We're very happy that they're here. They're only here to find the people in gangs or who are involved in drugs. The police never come up here, and it's not safe. It's about time they did something about all the robberies and shootings. Since everyone in the United States is rich, if people want drugs they just buy them. But since we're a poor country, if people want to buy drugs, they have to steal. So the army's here to do something." My host mom said she's glad because the army's presence will push the gangs somewhere else.
Even people whom i've talked to in the ministry praise the operation. One of the loan officers asked me what i thought about the operation. I told him i felt like it was basically trading one form of violence for another for a short time, and asked him what he thought. Very emphatically he told me, "It's amazing. It's amazing. I think in your country the army doesn't do things like this. They only use them for war. I think it's great."
The only somewhat nuanced analysis i've heard was during a conversation i had with the elementary school principal. As i was coming back from lunch Friday, i saw her outside our building. "Look at all these soldiers we have in our street, Mark," she said. "I know," i said. "What do you think about it?" "I told my husband, 'It's good to be able to sleep at night without hearing gunshots outside my house,'" she said. I told her i know that i'm new to Nueva Suyapa and that i don't share most people's opinion and that i can't say it's wrong to want to sleep peacefully, but we have to be honest and say that what's going on is not the solution and that the gang and drug violence might be reduced for the couple weeks or however long the soldiers are here, but it will come back when they leave and that i, as a Christian, don't put my hope in military violence but in God. She agreed that what's going on is not a solution. "Violence is like a termite eating away at the foundations of our society. This is only addressing the problems on the surface," she said. "And anyway," she said. "Jesus is coming soon and this doesn't really matter." She also pointed out that the only reason the operation started was that the son of the director of one of the universities was killed, and that even though the poor have been suffering violence in Nueva Suyapa for years, the government doesn't pay attention until someone important gets killed. But when people forget about the university director's son's killing, they'll forget about Nueva Suyapa too, and things will be like before.
Friday night my 14-year-old host brother came home in the evening and said, "The army was up at the soccer field checking our papers and looking for drugs." My face must have betrayed my disgust. "It's good," he said. "Sometimes the kids smoke after we play, so it's good they're there." "To stop you from smoking?" i asked. "It's fine," he said. "They just check our fingers for drugs and check our papers. And they didn't even search us younger ones. They just made us lift up our shirts."
When i was 14 years old my host brother's experience would have been traumatizing for me, more so than i can imagine. But not only is he fine with it, he supports it. My coworker, who is from the U.S., had a very perceptive comment to make. "I think the people here don't realize just how traumatic their day-to-day lives are. We come here, having grown up the way we did, and it's shocking to see things like this. But they take these traumatic things as being completely normal."
Like i told the elementary school principal, i cannot, from my position, fault my coworkers for feeling relieved to get a few nights' sleep without hearing gunshots. To feel relieved to know that for the time being you can walk your neighborhood without having to fear being robbed is an honest response. What is difficult for me is to hear the violence that the military brings being celebrated. The celebration of violence i've heard over the last few days from my family, neighbors, and coworkers has been troubling. To me, a Christian response to such an overwhelming display of violence in my neighborhood is to mourn. And so i have been, in my own private way, trying to mourn the violence in Nueva Suyapa.
Instead of celebrating the military coming to my community to protect me by beating, shooting, arresting, or imprisoning the "other" - the gang member, the drug addict, the delinquent - i mourn the brokenness of my community, my own sinfulness, and my complicity in violent and unjust structures. I mourn the ways that we as individuals and as a church community have fallen short in collaborating with the inbreaking of God's peaceable kingdom, but instead have collaborated with empire.
"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading [Luke 23: 35-43] shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters." -Oscar Romero, November 20, 1977
On Wednesday there were about 5 soldiers lined up in front of the building i work in, where our elementary school, microloan program, dental clinic, and a few other offices are located. I said casually to the woman who cleans our offices, "Look at all these soldiers in front of our building." It's the first time i'd mentioned their presence to anyone. To my surprise, she said, "Yes, how good that they're here." As the days went on, i realized that this is by far the majority opinion among Suyapans; in fact, i have yet to encounter one Honduran who's critical of the military's presence in their neighborhood.
My family explained it to me more or less in these terms: "We're very happy that they're here. They're only here to find the people in gangs or who are involved in drugs. The police never come up here, and it's not safe. It's about time they did something about all the robberies and shootings. Since everyone in the United States is rich, if people want drugs they just buy them. But since we're a poor country, if people want to buy drugs, they have to steal. So the army's here to do something." My host mom said she's glad because the army's presence will push the gangs somewhere else.
Even people whom i've talked to in the ministry praise the operation. One of the loan officers asked me what i thought about the operation. I told him i felt like it was basically trading one form of violence for another for a short time, and asked him what he thought. Very emphatically he told me, "It's amazing. It's amazing. I think in your country the army doesn't do things like this. They only use them for war. I think it's great."
The only somewhat nuanced analysis i've heard was during a conversation i had with the elementary school principal. As i was coming back from lunch Friday, i saw her outside our building. "Look at all these soldiers we have in our street, Mark," she said. "I know," i said. "What do you think about it?" "I told my husband, 'It's good to be able to sleep at night without hearing gunshots outside my house,'" she said. I told her i know that i'm new to Nueva Suyapa and that i don't share most people's opinion and that i can't say it's wrong to want to sleep peacefully, but we have to be honest and say that what's going on is not the solution and that the gang and drug violence might be reduced for the couple weeks or however long the soldiers are here, but it will come back when they leave and that i, as a Christian, don't put my hope in military violence but in God. She agreed that what's going on is not a solution. "Violence is like a termite eating away at the foundations of our society. This is only addressing the problems on the surface," she said. "And anyway," she said. "Jesus is coming soon and this doesn't really matter." She also pointed out that the only reason the operation started was that the son of the director of one of the universities was killed, and that even though the poor have been suffering violence in Nueva Suyapa for years, the government doesn't pay attention until someone important gets killed. But when people forget about the university director's son's killing, they'll forget about Nueva Suyapa too, and things will be like before.
Friday night my 14-year-old host brother came home in the evening and said, "The army was up at the soccer field checking our papers and looking for drugs." My face must have betrayed my disgust. "It's good," he said. "Sometimes the kids smoke after we play, so it's good they're there." "To stop you from smoking?" i asked. "It's fine," he said. "They just check our fingers for drugs and check our papers. And they didn't even search us younger ones. They just made us lift up our shirts."
When i was 14 years old my host brother's experience would have been traumatizing for me, more so than i can imagine. But not only is he fine with it, he supports it. My coworker, who is from the U.S., had a very perceptive comment to make. "I think the people here don't realize just how traumatic their day-to-day lives are. We come here, having grown up the way we did, and it's shocking to see things like this. But they take these traumatic things as being completely normal."
Like i told the elementary school principal, i cannot, from my position, fault my coworkers for feeling relieved to get a few nights' sleep without hearing gunshots. To feel relieved to know that for the time being you can walk your neighborhood without having to fear being robbed is an honest response. What is difficult for me is to hear the violence that the military brings being celebrated. The celebration of violence i've heard over the last few days from my family, neighbors, and coworkers has been troubling. To me, a Christian response to such an overwhelming display of violence in my neighborhood is to mourn. And so i have been, in my own private way, trying to mourn the violence in Nueva Suyapa.
Instead of celebrating the military coming to my community to protect me by beating, shooting, arresting, or imprisoning the "other" - the gang member, the drug addict, the delinquent - i mourn the brokenness of my community, my own sinfulness, and my complicity in violent and unjust structures. I mourn the ways that we as individuals and as a church community have fallen short in collaborating with the inbreaking of God's peaceable kingdom, but instead have collaborated with empire.
"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading [Luke 23: 35-43] shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters." -Oscar Romero, November 20, 1977
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