Opened Hearts and Homes

The small Honduran village of Los Hernandez was quiet in the pre-dawn hours of March 18,1981. Only a few residents were awake and moving about their homes. It was an uncomfortable quiet, because during the previous three days, the rumble of distant war could be heard from beyond the mountain ridge in the direction of El Salvador.

Into that early morning quiet, a few dozen strangers arrived at one of the homes. They seemed hesitant to come right up to the house. They looked very tattered and dazed.

Beggars are a common sight in Honduras. But so many together was unusual. A Honduran man left his porch to see what the people wanted. As he rounded the bend at the stone fence marking the edge of his property, he stopped short. There were more than a hundred people slowly coming up the dusty path.

By nightfall that same day, more than 3,000 refugees fleeing the war in El Salvador crowded into the yards, paths, and porches of Los Hernandez. The 50 homes in the village were filled with sick children and old folks. A few residents had closed their doors for fear of involvement in something they did not understand.

Honduran soldiers surrounded the village just as the sun set. They refused to let anyone leave the village. For subsequent months Los Hernandez was kept under close military surveillance.

REFUGEE EXPERIENCES such as this are not a new phenomenon in Latin America's history. Since the beginnings of colonization by Spain, Britain, Portugal, and later the United States, countless events have provoked or forced societal upheavals. Although our history books have not explicitly described the affected people as refugees, particularly if they were Indians, they have been just that—refugees from natural disasters, conquerors, dictators, hunger, exploitation, and, in general, from the sudden unraveling of their societal structures.

There is, though, a very new and significant element in the radical social changes that began sweeping through Central America in the 1970s and are continuing in the 1980s. Quite simply, it is the Bible, written in the language of the people and placed in the hands of the laity. This factor distinguishes this decade's Central American strife from that of the past 800 years.

In previous times, whether refugees were fleeing the natural disasters of earthquakes or the human disasters of power-hungry generals, they turned to the church clergy for an explanation and for hope. Similarly those who found themselves facing desperately needy people on their doorsteps also looked to the church hierarchy for guidance on how to respond.

Today both of these groups—those who find themselves homeless and on the run, and those who find needy people in their midst—are looking to their Bibles, their faith communities, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit within them to determine their response.

I believe it is most of all this grounding in the Bible that is bringing these Central Americans into the mainstream of history-making-and-changing. The world is being altered by the experience of millions of lay people in Latin America trying to make sense of the oppressive circumstances in which they find themselves from the viewpoint of the Bible in their laps.

I SPEAK FROM MY particular experience of living a year and a half in the mountains of Honduras during 1981 and '82. So I draw my examples and my reflections from two interrelated groups: Salvadoran Christians who were refugees and Honduran Christians who found desperately needy people in their midst. I will focus on the experience of Honduran Christians receiving the refugees. Important insights from their experience can be applied to our work here in the United States.

I was a white, middle-class Protestant from the Anabaptist tradition, suddenly living in the midst of a poor, Catholic, Latino population. As I immersed myself in that experience and I witnessed acts of Christian charity, I found myself drawing comparisons with my own family, my own church congregation, my own home town, my own country.

One of my earliest experiences was a trip to a Honduran village, where I visited a very small home that sheltered five Salvadoran families. As I spoke with the six women and four men, including the Honduran host couple of the house—all of them with toddlers clamoring underfoot—my mind made rapid jumps between that home, that humble Honduran kitchen that fed some 25 people each meal, and the homes and kitchens of my family and friends. Women sharing the same kitchen amicably and men cultivating the land together and sharing farm tools, not for a day or a week, but for months on end.

I asked the women straight out if it was difficult for so many women to share one kitchen. The way they laughed, looking everywhere but at one another, assured me that although it was an emergency situation, it was the little things that tripped them up, too. They expressed to me, however, that as they learned to focus on the bigger issues, they could put the small things aside.

One woman stated the point succinctly. "It is hard to maintain our quarrels in the kitchen," she said, "when we are reciting the rosary together each night."

Through a multitude of experiences and interchanges such as that one, I learned that the immediate question was not, "Would I or my family, my church, my town be able to respond to great need in such an open way?" The more important question was, "Would I be able, in my own North American context, to be so open to the Bible's guidance in my life as to allow for the total altering of my habits, lifestyle, and everything I am used to?"

THE HONDURANS DID not go looking for a new church project. The situation came to them and demanded a response. Some closed their eyes; some looked more closely.

The required response did not seem to offer any rewards, commendations, or praise. Rather, it very clearly looked as though to respond was to invite trouble in harsh form and degree. Little did they imagine the extent, however. Perhaps it was a blessing not knowing beforehand just how tight the screws of surveillance would turn. Had I known what was in store for me, I doubt that I would have chosen to be there.

I observed that when the Honduran people were confronted with this situation that could not be ignored, the Christians chose the extremes. Either they opened their hearts and homes, accepting all the unknown consequences, or they bolted the door and said, "Go elsewhere." Whatever their choice, all the people of faith experienced an acute tension between fear and spiritual trust.

To a large extent, the Christians who closed their doors were paralyzed by fear and then suffered from an additional internal conflict: the knowledge that they were acting in order to protect their own comfort, jobs, homes, family members, and indeed their very lives. Those of us who have never faced such an agonizing decision have no grounds on which to judge them, and those in that situation who have taken the other path of embracing the unknown will certainly feel compassion born of their own experience of suffering.

I worked with a team of local volunteers under the auspices of Caritas of Honduras. Most of my co-workers were born and raised in the immediate area. None of them had much more than a high-school education. Most were simple laborers. They ranged in age from those in the local youth group to a few whose hair had turned white and whose teeth were long gone. All were active in the Catholic church, and most were lay church leaders. They had a strong personal faith that they tried to live out daily; they had compassionate hearts.

Into their lives came the Salvadoran refugees. First there were a few dozen hiding in ravines in unpopulated areas. Those Hondurans who were distantly related to Salvadorans took the first small amounts of food out. The refugee numbers swelled, and then a few Caritas leaders took food out.

It took months, and the numbers swelled to more than a few thousand before someone took the bold step to say, "Come into my home." Remember the context in which they acted. There was a civil war going on in El Salvador. The Honduran government filled its radio reports with descriptions of subversion and communism tearing apart the fabric of Salvadoran society. As the Honduran families listened to the radio propaganda and looked into the faces of needy people, they faced a dilemma. They found the answer in the Scriptures, then sought the courage to follow the biblical mandate.

For those who embraced the task, for the Caritas volunteers and their families, the way was not easy. Indeed it got harder than anyone imagined. But those who plunged most deeply into the work of simple biblical charity told me time and again that their faith had deepened beyond all boundaries, in ways they had previously not thought possible.

THREE FACTORS in the Honduran Christians' involvement are especially noteworthy for us. The first is that they grounded themselves solidly in the Scriptures. With each achievement they gave praise to God. They celebrated; they had fun. And whenever they encountered an obstacle or persecution, they turned to the pages of the Bible to once again get their bearings.

They scrutinized themselves and each other, identified errors and corrected them, and went on. They faltered. They rethought their involvement and went through the decision-making process again and again.

Some families burned out and pulled up stakes to move off to another part of the country. Some individuals found that family and friends turned from them. Most found themselves the targets of government suspicion and harassment. Many faced imprisonment and torture. Some were killed.

We never thought it would reach that point. We were very naive. The Honduran church also made mistakes, such as encouraging total investment by their lay catechists, then not moving in with full support when those lay leaders found their homes, livelihoods, and positions in the community threatened and destroyed.

At every new development, the Caritas team sought out one another to study the Bible and pray. When the obstacles and hardships evoked doubts in them, they would turn again to the Scriptures to make sure they had read them right. They could gain reassurance and hope from both the Scriptures and each other. It is crucial that we maintain this discipline.

Second, the Caritas team became aware that as months passed without any sign of change for the refugees, it was the poorer Honduran families that remained most faithful. Families with more material possessions were not more generous. Their possessions continually posed obstacles to their faith. Possessions competed with the refugees. Fear of losing everything they possessed made some Hondurans pull away from the work.

We in the United States must dare to confront our own attitudes toward our possessions and our propensity to define Christian charity as giving of our excess and no more. We must be willing to give more and to change our perceptions of what our basic necessities are. Our synagogues, congregations, and meetings must take seriously the responsibility to support those who give everything to help others.

The third point is one of attitude. It is very difficult to maintain a sense of the worth of the individual when the word "refugee" replaces the word "person." Persons are more easily seen as brothers and sisters, as equals in the sight of God. Refugees tend to become inanimate objects toward which we direct our pious acts of charity, for which, we think, they should be exceedingly grateful.

The Honduran Caritas workers were able to see the worth of the individual, acknowledge it, and draw it out. Songwriter and singer Holly Near expresses in one of her songs, "It could have been me, but instead it was you." Our tendency in this country is to say the opposite: "It could never happen to me." While even a trace of that condescending attitude lurks within us, we will not be able to fully embrace the Central American refugees among us as brothers and sisters.

A FINAL OBSERVATION: the Salvadoran refugees I worked with were eventually moved into a refugee camp far from the border. The Hondurans who had helped them were left with nothing but a bad reputation in the eyes of the local authorities. Harassment continued. Three of my co-workers were killed because of their refugee work, their children orphaned.

I correspond with some of the Caritas workers who survived. One might expect bitterness from them toward God, or at least toward the Catholic church hierarchy. But they are not bitter. They say that the biblical message continues to bear them up. They write that their suffering is not an unbearable burden. Their hearts have learned the deep and inexplicable joy of simply having done what was right. Hope for a better future is still very much theirs.

Honduran Christians experienced what they did because they turned to the Bible for direction when confronted by a difficult situation. When it became more difficult, they refilled their souls from the same Scriptures. It proved to be adequate nourishment.

What have we learned as we begin? For we really have just begun. I don't expect any of us to find 1,000 people in our front yards overnight. Nor will the U.S. authorities respond so rapidly or with such intense brutality as the Honduran authorities did. Nevertheless, the way will not be easy for us. Already some of us are persecuted by U.S. authorities for opening our doors to refugees rather than turning away.

My hope is that we can ground ourselves in the Scriptures and be sustained and encouraged by the words we find there, and by one another. When we do, we also will experience the deep joy of having done what is right.

Yvonne Dilling, the author of In Search of Refuge (Herald Press, 1984), delivered this address at the Sanctuary Symposium in Tucson, Arizona, in January 1985. She was the director of the Washington, D.C. office of Witness for Peace when this article appeared.