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Photo by Geoffrey D. Brown
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By Geoffrey D. Brown
News-Post Staff
gbrown@fredericknewspost.com
PUENTE BLANCO REFUGEE CAMP, Guatemala — Little Mayra Gutierrez in her pink dress grabbed 10-pound rocks, one after another, and hoisted them up to the missionaries. By midday her dress had taken on the dusty brown color of the riverbed. Her face was streaked with dirt, her hair matted and mussed. And her grin was as broad as the river rushing behind her.
Mayra, 5, and 20 other children of Puente Blanco last month filled the pickup truck, load after load all morning, 5 tons in all. After each load they jumped in on top of the smooth river rocks and rode back to the edge of the village, where they clambered out of the truck and hurled the rocks with a splash into a muddy hole in the washed-out dirt road.
A stream carved a rut through the mud and emptied a few yards away into the rushing brown river. Chocolate brown mud is everywhere in and around Puente Blanco, named for a white bridge over the river just to the north. The road is mud, the fields, the floors of the makeshift school and shantytown shacks erected by the camp’s 53 families, all mud.
Rising from this bed of mud are walls constructed of refuse and available materials — corrugated tin, plywood, cardboard, sticks, palm fronds, barbed wire, pieces of appliances, half a plastic chair.
Although its poverty strains description, Puente Blanco has changed significantly since work began on a water tower and a church, missionaries said. Missions from four churches have worked at the village with resident missionaries Robert and Tharsis Rodriguez-Jackson, a Pennsylvania couple whose passion for their work is matched by an unbending will. Their organization, RWC Missions, is affiliated with the Resurrection Worship Center, an Allentown, Pa., church.
Missionaries from the Frederick Church of the Brethren were in Puente Blanco on June 11 to help repair a washed-our dirt road and to administer basic medical care to the village in the shade of the newly built church. It is the Frederick Brethren’s third trip to Puente Blanco since April 2005.
Butch Reinhold, a Charles Town, W.Va., pastor who has gone on three missions to Guatemala with the Frederick Church of the Brethren, said he’s seen a remarkable difference in the health and outlook at Puente Blanco since his first visit more than a year ago.
“I can really tell a difference in the people here. They’re more coherent, they communicate together, they’re healthier looking. The kids are a lot healthier looking, they’re bright-eyed, clean, just healthier.” “I also think the fact that they’re working together, they’re getting community spirit. You don’t see any trash around their church. Before, it was trash city.”
The children of Puente Blanco are remarkably strong and energetic. They screamed with glee and piled into the truck each time Mr. Jackson called to them to fetch more rocks.
As the truck crossed a clearing on the way to get another load, a group of older boys stopped playing soccer, and the younger children chanted “Campo bello! Campo bello!” The “beautiful field” of patchy grass and dirt had been lined by hand. The goals were four sticks with no cross bars. On the other side of the field Mr. Jackson shooed a small herd of cattle off the road, which isn’t more than two ruts through the underbrush. The cows seemed to be constantly in the way, although perhaps they were thinking the same of the missionaries.
By 1 p.m. the hole in the road was filled with rocks and, after a few unsuccessful attempts by her husband, Tharsis Rodriguez-Jackson gunned the motor and willed the truck across. The repair was rudimentary and temporary, but it gave access to the village from this road.
But three days later the road was under water again. Heavy seasonal rains had swelled the rich brown waters of this tributary to the great Motagua River. Children were playing soccer in a field greatly reduced by the encroaching river, which had moved to within 30 feet of the church. The ball kept landing in the water. Gustavo Alberto Reyes, 12, stripped off his shirt and jeans and dove after it.
Water is why Gustavo is at Puente Blanco — the torrents of rain dropped almost eight years ago on his native Honduras, which borders this brutally hot, humid area of southeastern Guatemala, killed 11,000 Hondurans and drove Gustavo and his family over the mountains, eventually to settle on railroad property, along with dozens of other refugee families from Honduras and the provinces that neighbor Zacapa.
Gustavo’s parents take on extra work to send him to a regional school outside the village, and Gus said he plans to study hard so he can get a good job and help support his family. His father works in Honduras, and Gus helps his mother around their home, and babysits his 2-year-old niece, who has recovered recently from a serious illness.
Before the water tower was built, the refugees at Puente Blanco got all their water directly from the river. Health problems ranged from skin lesions to intestinal infections to more systemic problems, according to the Jacksons. There was no proof that the provision of fresh water led to improvements in health, but the health of the villagers was clearly worse before.
“The first couple of months we were in Puente Blanco, we had about five or six people die in the community,” the Jacksons wrote in response to questions about the change in villagers’ health. “The death rate there has been greatly reduced since. It could be coincidence or it could be because of the improved living conditions. It's hard to say and we don't want to jump to conclusions.”
The rest of the children in Puente Blanco attend school in the village. On the missionaries’ first visit, a Sunday, the school was empty. Its scrap metal door was padlocked to a wooden post to prevent theft, but it wasn’t easy to see what would be worth stealing. Broken chairs lay on the dirt floor. There were flies in the schoolroom and the familiar odor of urine and mud that permeates the village. Bright flags hung from the ceiling and the walls were covered with children’s pictures. The walls were palm fronds, corrugated tin, scrap metal and wood.
Four days later the school was filled with children. Teacher Mirna Chacon-Salguero, 20, is barely 5 feet tall and looks hardly older than her oldest students. She began her teaching career 16 months ago at a different village but developed allergies to the insects there and transferred in March to Puente Blanco. How long she stays is up to the departmental school board. She has six more years of study before she is fully certified.
She said she would like to have a permanent school building like the church, to get away from the dirt and animal feces of the floor. She would like a place she could leave things behind and be sure they would be there the next day. Her biggest challenge is to teach everyone aged 4 to 12 to read.
The Jacksons, who live and work out of Zacapa, a city a few miles from Puente Blanco, hope a new school will be next, but their priority is to make sure the people of Puente Blanco continue to have a home. The railroad that owns the land has been putting pressure on the government of the department of Zacapa to move the squatters, and negotiations between RWC Missions and the governor of Zacapa so far have guaranteed the people of Puente Blanco a permanent home.
For the time being, they will stay put. The new church was dedicated Saturday as the Iglesia Del Nazareno, Caserio Puente Blanco. Although the government stipulated that the church be built so that it could be moved if necessary, the Jacksons said they hope its dedication would give the village a greater sense of permanence.