One Of Those Rare Treasures

Only one day in the month of a monthly magazine is more frenzied, more demanding than the day before deadline, and that is the day that follows. Neither is a day to be gone from the office.

The phone call came at that worst of all possible times: Julia Esquivel is in town for two days; she says she would especially like to meet someone from Sojourners.

I had first heard her name more than a year before, when I was putting together our December, 1980 issue on the church in Central America. A close friend who had spent time in Guatemala mentioned that he had some of Julia Esquivel's poetry. Would I be interested in looking at it?

I remember being gripped by the poems' words and images. I discovered what felt like the most authentic touch that I had had with the pain and tragedy of the people of Central America, and I hoped someday to meet the woman behind the words.

So when the phone call came, I knew I had to meet her. My first impression was one of surprise that a woman so outspoken and courageous could be so small and humble. I knew that Julia had been the editor of the banned Guatemalan magazine Dialogo, had received several threats on her life, and was now living in exile. I met her at the U.S. Jesuit Conference, where she was sharing her concern for her colleague and co-editor, Luis Pellecer. Pellecer, a Jesuit priest who served as a chaplain in Guatemala City's slums, was beaten and kidnapped last June. After keeping him in captivity for almost four months, the Guatemalan government began to use him as its instrument, arranging press conferences in which he recanted his work for the liberation of the poor and attacked Catholics involved in such work. Many believe that Pellecer is the first confirmed example in Central America of the use of sophisticated methods of psychological control.

Tears gathered in her warm eyes as Julia reflected, "Luis Pellecer no longer exists. They knew his weaknesses. They knew his sensitivity. It is worse than torture." She spoke about her country since U.S. intervention in 1954: "We have lived 27 years of crucifixion. In Guatemala there are 20 Somozas [the overthrown Nicaragua dictator]. The military is no longer human. They cut out the fetus from a woman, then put her husband's head in her womb and sew her back up. We struggle not against people; we struggle against the devil incarnate. But we are people of profound faith."

There was too little time and too much to say, and my Spanish was not clear enough to tell her how her people have been part of my conversion. I could only embrace her. As I handed her a copy of my recent editorial on Guatemala, she thanked me for coming.

I thought often of our brief meeting during the next few months. And with joy I received another phone call from my friend saying Julia would be in town the next day. It was deadline again. We decided on an early breakfast.

She walked into my apartment, recently created from the top floor of a community household, stepping around the boxes and past the unpainted walls into the unfinished kitchen. I dug out a toaster oven and placed two pieces of bread in it. I was nervous about the eggs I cooked. She took some hot water for a blend of Guatemalan tea that she always carries with her.

We are both trying to do better with language, so she spoke to me in English and I to her in Spanish, promising to correct one another's mistakes. She began, "You are our voice. We cannot speak for ourselves. We have been silenced. You must keep writing. Do you plan to visit Guatemala?"

I explained to her that I had a deep desire to go to Central America but that I had received many warnings from friends about going: "I wish I had been smarter before I signed my name to so many articles against the governments there."

She smiled and said, "Yes, I made the same mistake. You and I, we would both be shot if we went to Guatemala."

As we talked, black smoke suddenly poured into the room from the direction of the toaster oven. I jumped up to rescue two pieces of bread, burnt to a char.

"Perfect!" she exclaimed with a smile that filled her face with beautiful wrinkles. "It's exactly the way I like it." I apologized, declaring that she didn't have to eat burnt toast just to try to make me feel better about my incompetence as a breakfast cook. But she explained, "No, it is good for my throat." And just to prove it, she pulled out a small box filled with carbon tablets that she takes for a bronchial condition.

There is something marvelous about her--about her courage, her kindness and faith, about being able to suffer so much and still make the most of a piece of burnt toast.

She hardly allowed me the time to tell her how deeply my life has been changed by her courage and faith and that of her people. She instead wanted me to know, "When I heard of you, of your community, I could not believe it. Not in this country. It gives me such hope. I had to come and see it."

She gave me a book of her poetry and left acknowledging that we are both exiles of a sort from Guatemala. I cannot visit those who have inspired and touched me so deeply these many months. She cannot go home. Her pain is certainly the greater.

Julia Esquivel holds onto faith for me when I doubt. She is one of those rare treasures who pass through our lives occasionally, a reminder that we struggle not for nations and churches alone, but for people. And when I'm just about convinced that nothing we do can ever reverse the callousness of our government's policy toward Central America and the brutality of the governments there, her courage reminds me that in even one dissenting voice can be found hope.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.