Hill Connections: Contemplation -Inspirational People (Heitor Turrini, OSM)

The parishioners come by foot or more likely by bicycle. Sena, in fact, is a town of bicycles. Almost everyone has one: the young, the old, men, women, grandfathers, and grandmothers. Mothers ride their kids on their handlebars or on behind them. In fact, there are almost no automobiles. Why then would there not be many automobiles?

The simplest answer is that even if the residents of Sena Madureira could afford to buy one, and most of its residents can not, there would be no place to go. Map highlighting Acre, Brazil

The next town down the recently paved road is Acre’s state capital, Rio Branco, 90 miles away. It’s 600 miles from Rio Branco to Lima, Peru. Going the other direction, it’s some 2,400 miles and across the whole of the Amazon jungle from Rio Branco to Sao Paolo.

In fact, when the Servites first came to Sena Madureira in 1920, they traveled by boat. It took them 40 days to reach Sena Madureira from the Atlantic, traveling by boat up the Amazon, Purus, and Aco rivers to reach their destination. To this day, it’s far more sensible for a Sena Madureihno to make or purchase a dugout canoe and equip it with a small motor, than to invest in a car. The little floating contraption allows one to make visits to friends and relatives living in settlements that dot the rivers of the area.

Mass ends. Father Turrini, cleans up, crosses the street back to the rectory. In the meantime, kids are beginning to arrive at school, which is located next to the rectory as well. Founded in 1926 by the Servite Reparadora (Reparatrice) sisters, it is now a public school. The original three-story building bearing the placard “Instituto Santa Juiliana” still stands but is now largely unused awaiting eventual renovation. A more modern one-story school building is used in its stead. The newer building is notable for its simplicity and airiness.

Father Turrini enters the rectory. In the meantime, breakfast is prepared. There are about a half a dozen young men, aspiring to be Servite friars, living in a barracks-like dorm at the top floor of the rectory. They have prepared breakfast. These young men, usually in their twenties, are living in the Servite community, finishing their high school, and often even their primary education, so that they can hopefully proceed with a seminary education.

Economically speaking, Sena Maduriera may have 20,000 residents, but there are few opportunities for economic advancement. In fact, about half the town’s residents live in shanties called favelas at the edge of town. There aren’t usually many career options in Sena requiring a great deal of education. As a result, the neighboring school is mostly filled with young children in their early grades. Many of the locals, looking to see if they’d like to join the Servite Order, are very surprised to find out that they'd have to complete their high school education first. Many have not been inside a classroom since seventh or eighth grade.

After breakfast, Father Turrini goes a few blocks to the local hospital to visit the maternity ward. Usually there are three or four mothers who have given birth since the previous night. There are also wards for those who have come down with fever and other infectious diseases. Turrini visiting the hospital Rooms and hallways are kept sanitary with bleach. Visitors from the U.S. would find the hospital striking for its near total lack of medical equipment. There are no monitors in the patients’ rooms. A nurse’s station is simply an open area with a desk where she can sit and write. Often the only medical equipment in a patient’s room is an IV drip. Many emergency medications are available. It seems rather clear that most surgeries, except for the most simple, would be done elsewhere.

Nevertheless, one learns some startling things. To the average Sena Madureihno, malaria has now been reduced to being simply something of a hassle. Father Turrini notes that fellow community member Father Paolino has had malaria more than a dozen times during his 40-plus years in Acre. “You just sleep, take medication for three days and you’ll be fine. It’s not what it used to be.” This is the truth for not merely the Servite friars, but also for other inhabitants of Sena Madureira. For as basic as the medical care that is offered at Sena Madureira’s hospital may be, it is also free. In Brazil, access to medical care is a right and a responsibility for the government to provide. So Father Turrini blesses the mothers and new borns in the hospital, visits with parents of the sick children, prays with them, and then goes home.

When he comes home, he finds out that an older parishioner, a grandmother in her 50s, died the previous night. The wake takes place in her house and the funeral will take place in the late afternoon the same day, when the day gets a little cooler.

It is now close to 10:30 a.m., the hottest time in the day. When Father Turrini comes home, he calls down the wanna-be seminarians, other members of the Servite community, and the parish staff. Together, they break open the Word, the Scripture readings of the day, and together reflect on the readings in light of their experience in this town at the edge of the Amazonian forest. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the Gospel was meant not merely for the well-born or the seemingly more consequential and powerful, but for everyone. When they finish, it’s almost time for lunch, followed by a siesta.

At 5:00 p.m., a procession bearing the body of the woman who had died the previous night arrives at the church and is greeted by Father Turrini. A short service takes place inside the church. The casket was transported in the open bed of a pickup truck to the town cemetery with a procession of people on foot and on bicycles behind the casket. Following the Committal prayers, the casket is lowered into the ground. Father Turrini says that about four to five funerals take place each week, a good third of them being children.

Getting Ready for a Disobriga Mission

At 6:30 p.m., it’s dinnertime. There is plenty to talk about with regards to the days ahead. Father Paolino is preparing to go on a desobriga mission into the jungle. Sister Andrelina, one of the members of the Servite sisters’ community in Sena, as well as several parishioners hired to operate the boat, will accompany him. During this desobriga mission, expected to last about two weeks, they will visit about a dozen settlements that dot the shores of the Aco and Purus rivers. Turrini leading in prayer They will also visit a number of settlements further away from the rivers and accessible only by foot.

The story behind the founding of these river settlements is a sad one for a U.S. visitor to hear and is recounted by the Servites with great passion. In the 1940s, during the Second World War, the Japanese conquered southeast Asia and controlled most of the world’s rubber producing capacity. In an urgent search for alternate sources of rubber, the U.S. army landed at the mouth of the Amazon River in 1942, and more or less ordered the Brazilian military to send Brazilians, no questions asked, up-river to the Acre region of Brazil to harvest the latex from naturally occurring rubber trees present there. This action greatly helped the Allied war effort.

After the war, with Southeast Asia freed from Japanese control and it’s rubber plantations back in production, the price of rubber collapsed again; tens of thousands of previously impressed rubber tappers found themselves abandoned. After considering the limited economic prospects that most of these rubber tappers had experienced “back home” on the plantations and towns of northeastern Brazil, most decided to take their chances and simply stayed in the jungles. They have eked-out subsistence but more or less dignified existences ever since. Most of the people living in Sena Madureira and along the settlements that dot Acre's rivers are descendants of these rubber tappers and other adventurers of the 1940s.

Life on the Rivers

These river communities are a different world again. A U.S. visitor would be astounded or shocked to find that most of the young people are married by the time they are 14-15. Yet, in the context of life in the jungle, there’s little reason to wait. By then most of the young know how to cook, farm, fish, and build a house. Moving out of the jungle to a town like Sena offers them little besides the prospect of living in a favela at the edge of the town. Indigenous children on a river boar

When Father Paolino visits them, he takes the time to talk to the villagers to hear what’s happened since the last time a Servite passed through. All who wish are given a basic medical exam. Medications, brought from Sena’s hospital, are distributed to those who need them. Recently-born children are baptized, and the rest are catechized.

In the 1960s and 70s, such desobriga missions became controversial in Latin America. Indeed, both Father Paolino and Father Turrini knew the Brazilian activist Chico Mendez very well, who in return was very open about Servite influence on his life and work. Chico Mendez was murdered by hired guns of some of the larger landlords in the region, and both Father Paolino and Father Turrini received death threats at the same time. At one point, the Brazilian bishops actually forbade the development of base Christian communities in the jungle communities fearing that they would be used to ferment Marxist revolution.

In recent years, the Brazilian Church has relaxed its opposition. However, both Father Paolino and Turrini lament the time lost. An entire generation of jungle dwellers was left largely to its own devices without appreciating that God was with them and wished that they live meaningful and dignified lives.

A Visit to Sena's Municipal Jail

After spending time talking of Father Paolino’s upcoming desobriga journey, Father Turrini remembers that he has one more errand before the day is out -- a visit to Sena’s jail. A young mother is there as a prisoner, along with her toddler child. Father Turrini had promised to bring something for them. Her case is not unusual. The poor and the desperate often find their way into all sorts of trouble, turning to theft, prostitution, or drugs. In Sena, as elsewhere, they often end up in jail. In such cases, the question comes up: what to do with the children. In Sena, there’s often little else that one could do other than allow the mothers to take their smaller children with them.

A Chance to Reflect on the Meaning of it All

After Father Turrini returns, he talks to me, a visitor, about the many “whys” and “what needs to be done” of the situation in Sena Madureira and its environs. During the 1980s -- when the political situation was particularly hot in Acre, and indeed, Chico Mendez was shot -- Father Turrini spent several years away from Brazil learning English and then helping with the Servite foundation in the Philippines.

During that time however, he never forgot people of the Servite Mission in Acre. He spent a great deal of time researching the questions of global debt. When he returned, he and Father Paolino were at the forefront of the international campaign to save the forests of the Amazon region. Indeed, he is very proud of the fact, that due to pressure both in Brazil and from abroad, about 90 percent of Acre’s rainforests are still standing. He is also proud of the fact that, in recent years, laws have been changed to protect the rights of the people, both indigenous and Brazilians living in the jungles as well. Turrini visiting indigenous people

Yet, there is much to do. Father Turrini would like to see English taught at Sena Madureira’s school. Knowing even a little English would help students later in finding a job if they chose to flee Sena Madureira in the future for Rio Branco or even the larger cities on Brazil’s east coast.

The Servite mission has opened a vocational training school, teaching carpentry and furniture making by using scrap mahogany wood retrieved from abandoned logging sites in Acre. The school also teaches students word processing skills using older but still working computers.

Father Turrini would like the whole question of international debt to be reflected on in a Christian manner. "Is it fair," he asks, "that the poorest nations be forced to shoulder, virtually in perpetuity, enormous debt burdens to the richest nations of the world?" Especially galling is the fact that most of these debts were accrued by less than democratic governments and, thus, without the consent of the peoples’ of these countries.

The Challenge -- to Care

So, to any U.S. visitor, Father Turrini is a challenge. Here in Sena Madureira and in the river settlements in the jungle, it is clear that Christ is already present. But Christ is also weeping. Few of us could imagine living, much less tolerate, the choices made by the residents there. Few of us could imagine that living a squatter’s life in a river settlement downstream from Sena Madureira may offer more economic stability than living in a favela at the edge of a large town. To visitors, gaining a basic education seems a natural to gaining greater decision power over one’s life. Yet in Sena or the river settlements downstream, finishing one’s schooling offers little in way of practically improving one’s life. Even if one completes secondary schooling, there are few jobs to which to apply that knowledge.

in many respects, the folks in Sena Madureira are stuck in suspended animation with very few choices and little economic opportunity. Yet, at the gates of the Amazon rain forest, they live in a vital part of the earth for all the world’s inhabitants. Father Turrini’s challenge to us is to better understand their situation -- so that together we can find greater opportunities for Sena’s inhabitants to carve out their destinies and to do so in ways that allows all of our descendants to live with dignity.

Suggested Further Reading
1) Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells, (1992 Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York)

2) Clodovis Boff, OSM, Feet on the Ground Theology, (1987 Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York)