On the Collaborative Construction of a Medical Clinic in El Mozote, El Salvador, March 2007
In January 2006, Gesundheit, led by Gesundheit's Creative Building Project Team from Vermont, and with help from Homes from the Heart, Camp Winnarainbow, Airline Ambassadors, JetBlue Airways, and local El Salvadorians, designed and built a freestanding medical clinic in Rancho Quemado, El Salvador [1]. We planned to return in 2007 to build another clinic in the remote mountainous region of western El Salvador, where people living in poverty and isolation must travel great distances for health care.
Patch, a physician/social activist is Gesundheit! Institute's founder and Executive Director. Patch collects friends. He describes his medical specialty as "friendshipism". A network of supportive, loving friends not only creates healthy individuals; it also creates healthier communities, societies and a healthier world.
In 1974 Patch befriended me, who befriended Marlena in 1976, who befriended (and subsequently married) Paul in 1978. Paul joined the Rancho Quemado clinic project as a carpenter volunteer. Dave, another friend of Patch's is Gesundheit's architect, and his friend Jim designed and supervised that clinic's construction. Patch friends Zappo and Jundid, clown carpenters, came from Camp Winnarainbow in northern California with 19 friends. The JetBlue connection came via Airline Ambassadors (Cindy, a friend of Nancy and Leelah, who are friends of Patch). Most of the volunteers on the building were connected to the project through a network based on friendships. Our experience, in Gesundheit, is that a shared sense of humor connects friends. We find each other through laughter and play, through a mutual experience of what is fun, and what is not fun.
Didn't I tell you?.... All you could hear was that enormous screaming.
December 11, 1982, during a military action against leftist rebels, an estimated 800 citizens (including more than 130 children) of El Mozote, a mountain village 20 miles from Rancho Quemado, were murdered by US armed, trained and funded El Salvadorian soldiers. There was one survivor, Rufina Amaya Marquez. She began telling her story, and her testimony became the basis for a public outcry over the massacre.What happened that day at El Mozote is now considered to be the largest documented massacre in modern American history. The events, recorded in the New York Times and Washington Post were widely disputed by the United States and Salvadorian governments until 1992, when the government and leftist guerrillas signed a peace treaty. (see The Truth of El Mozote, by Mark Danner [2]). A United Nations investigating team verified the existence of mass graves in El Mozote in 1993. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team exhumed the remains of over 143 men, women, children and infants before the project was halted in 2004. Rufina remained faithful to the memory of her family and village, by unceasingly speaking the truth about December 11, 1982. She became a strong advocate for the crucial ackowledgement of truth and responsibility as a fundamental basis for reconciliation and forgiveness.
A net of gazing eyes keeps the world united; it does not allow it to fall.
Claudia Bernardi is an Argentinian artist/activist who took part in the exhumation of mass graves in El Mozote. She has established an ongoing collaborative art project and school for children, youth, adults and the elderly in Perquin, a community located 4 km north of El Mozote. She works, through mural painting and art education, to deepen the processes of remembrance and hope, in service of healing, redemption, justice and human dignity. She describes El Mozote as "..... multi-layered, mysterious in many ways,.... a place filled with a peculiar, yet complicated sense of hope......I have been coming to El Mozote almost every year since 1992. The life of the community, the people who live there, the personal and tragic histories of everyone I know in this pained village, continue to be intertwined with a unique sense of tenderness that I cannot explain nor describe....." Encouraged by this tenderness and inspired by Rufina's example of courage, honesty and hope, she has devoted her energies towards helping the healing process of one of the western hemispheres greatest modern traumas.
Bernardi was invited to be artist-in-residence last fall to Mary Baldwin College, in Staunton, Virginia, on the recommendation of Marlena (wife of Paul, friend of John), a Mary Baldwin professor. One day, I met with Paul, Claudia, Penelope (a filmmaker), and, as friends do, we found common ground. Gesundheit was seeking a community in need of a clinic; Claudia was seeking help for El Mozote, which had no clinic. People were returning to El Mozote, but with the poverty and rural isolation, the nightmare of 25 years ago takes a long time, a very long time to heal. Many promises are made; not as many are kept. Some groups come and work (law students, for example, to arbitrate land disputes among relatives of the slain). Claudia returned to El Mozote to meet with Dave and Jim, to assess the possibility of building a clinic in El Mozote.
The Building Projects Team returned to El Salvador to scout two possible community clinic locations in November, 2006. Chalantango, an extremely remote mountain village, and El Mozote. But floods had washed out the road to Chalantango. Higher forces seemed to be guiding the unfolding of the mission. Dave and Jim, with Claudia and her friend Sister Ann, together met with the people of El Mozote. Dave: "We found a mural on the side of a church with a depiction of a medical clinic.....That, and the expressions of hope on the faces of El Mozote residents carried the day. El Mozote it was to be."
Patch worked in his persistent, passionate way and raised most of the $35,000. A friend of Jim's donated $10,000. Jim and Dave offered two designs for the clinic to the people of El Mozote before they agreed on the third. Homes from the Heart contracted local workers to grade the building site. Danica, a friend of Paul's and a carpenter on the 2006 building project, did the organizational work with volunteers and Jet Blue. On March 8, 2007 all the volunteers (with their tools, chainsaws, humanitarian aid, a few clown noses and a guitar) traveled from New York to El Salvador on a flight provided by JetBlue. On the way to El Salvador, the volunteers learned that, after 25 years carrying the weight of an enormous collective and personal tragedy, Rufina, the sole survivor of the massacre at El Mozote, had died 2 days before, of a stroke. She was 64 years old.
And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
As the bus arrived in El Mozote, March 9 mid day, Rufina's memorial service was ending. Dave: "For the service it seemed like the entire population came with everyone dressed up in respect with their best dresses and shirts, whole families, old, and young. And at the exact same time, 100 feet away, our team from the US, patched together from across the nation, arrived dressed for work..." and the volunteers recognized the irony that "... the destruction of the town was with US made tools (guns), and the healing center is being rebuilt with US made tools (hammers) and the transition is at the exact same time as her funeral..." For the next 5 days, our carpenters, local workers and El Mozote volunteers, women, men and children, worked from dawn to dusk and built a freestanding medical clinic beside the community center in El Mozote. The clinic has four rooms at the corners, three exam rooms and a doctor's office. In the center is a high space with 8 trees holding up the roof structure. This open, central room is a common space for waiting patients and their families. Rainwater will be collected off the roof of the common space (an enormous roof) and used for flush toilets and wash basins.
Dave: "The best part of the design has been the process of building it. With 5 trained clowns and magicians, 4 Jet Blue pilots, 2 flight attendants, 6 trained architects and 21 builders. (7 women, 14 men ), the process went smoothly from the start with everyone pitching in. The local families, including loads of kids as young as 5 yrs. old to teenagers, jumped right in mixing cement, carrying water, lumber etc..... We had a bucket brigade made up of half locals and half our team....Lots of kids aged from 8-12 helped out carrying water and wheelbarrows of concrete. The brigade had 50 people and went from 9am to 5 pm. We finished all the concrete walls in that time. The local guys did most of the concrete block work, the plumbing and the tile work. "
Throughout the 5 days, when not working construction, there were new friendships being built. Cindy and the JetBlue/Airline Ambassador crewmembers delivered over 800 bags of food and clothing to families in remote areas of El Salvador and nearby Honduras. Zappo did an impromptu magic show in the community center the first evening as the workers packed up their gear, and then again each night after work for growing crowds of children. Jundid entered deeply into the community, making friends through his gentle open playfulness. Sammy joined Jundid and Zappo in clowning one day for 180 schoolchildren. As the workers were packing up their tools for the last time before leaving for home, Danica and Maria played and sang a song they had written, accompanied on guitar by a young local musician, named Orlando whom they had met while working together on the clinic.
Gracias Mis Amigos (based on the tune "Gracias a la Vida")
(lyrics by Maria, trans. by Elsie & Orlando, sung by Orlando, Maria & Danica)
Thank you our friends for our wonderful time.
For opening your door to us here in El Mozote.
We worked together, the young and the old
Passing heavy (fishy)* buckets full of cement.
Many hands working together to create a beautiful place.
Thank you our friends for our wonderful time here.
For the sweetness of the honey you shared in the evening.
For the tasty pupusas** hot off the grill
For your smiles and your stories...We will not forget you.
Many hands working together to create a beautiful place.
* "During the bucket brigade, some of us confused the word "pesado" (heavy) with "pescado" (fish). We were warning the children and others about the particularly "fishy" bucket of concrete making its way down the line! They thought our mis-speak was hilarious. During the song, some of us sang "pesado" and some of us sang "pescado" " Danica
** Pupusa is a thick, stuffed handmade corn meal tortilla, for over 3000 years a basic dietary staple of the Salvadorian people.
It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.
Everything that is worth living for... is only possible through community and collaborative action.
The gringo volunteers left with a sense of humility, having had direct experience of compassionate service and of the greatness of spirit of a traumatized people. Dave Sellers: "One elderly woman passing by, knowing (why is it so obvious?) I didn't speak Spanish, held her hand over her heart, nodding her head, smiling and pointing at the new clinic building. Wow....."
El Mozote is now further along the healing path, despite Rufina's death, and despite the many obstacles its citizens face; isolation, poverty, unemployment, and echoes of the massacre in their collective memory. Many, many new friendships were made. El Mozote now has a beautiful clinic building, a communal step forward into a future now a little more secure.
Gesundheit is working to provide medical supplies, furniture and staffing for the now empty building. Martita, Rufina's daughter, is in her second year of medical school in San Salvador, and relies on international donations to fund her education. She is a B+ student. She plans to return to El Mozote as a physician one day, working out of this building which, though now empty, is already healing both builders and local citizens. The building has been named the "Rufina Amaya Marquez Clinic".
Special thanks to Ron at the Perquin Lenca, for his support in providing food, lodging, tools, transportation and late night cold beer for exhausted builders, to Cesar for all his behind-the-scenes work, and to the people of El Mozote. And gracias to Danica, Marlena, Paul, Dave, and Claudia for their revisions and corrections for this story. And photos are courtesy of Dave.
Tax deductible contributions (checks made out to Gesundheit! Institute) to support the operation of the Rufina Amaya Marquez Clinic can be sent to:
Gesundheit Institute Global Outreach
6855 Washington Blvd
Arlington, Va. 22213
Phone: 703-525-8169
Fax: 703-532-6132
Please make check out to: Gesundheit! Institute
Check memo line: Rufina Amaya Marquez Clinic
To inquire about future Gesundheit! Outreach programs or about how to help Gesundheit! Global Outreach, contact John Glick at jawkneemail@comcast.net [3]
Tax deductible contributions supporting Martita's medical school education are being accepted by:
The San Carlos Foundation
1065 Creston Road
Berkeley, CA 94708
Phone:(510) 525-3787
Fax:(510) 525-3278
Please make check out to: The San Carlos Foundation
Check memo line: Marta Amaya Professional Medical Education
Mail to:
Michael Barger
488 30th Street
San Francisco, CA 94131