The popular saying is that Fe y Alegría beginsWhere the Asphalt Ends"What do you do when you meet a dead body on the street?" Sr. Teresa asked herself. Propped up against the wall of her house was the body of a young man, hands tied behind his back. His naked body was slashed. Around his neck hung a crudely l ettered sign: This is how traitors die. Children who were eyeing the body knew not to get too close because they knew the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) occasionally planted dynamite under the bodies of its victims to try to kill police w ho come to remove the bodies. No one had called the police; no one wanted to get involved. You never knew who might report it back to Sendero. The question in Teresa's mind was not what you do when you see a body in the street but what you do when you meet a dead body. For Teresa, the skinny corpse was not something to get rid of but rather the very human remains of a person who had been brutally tortured and murdered. Teresa knew what she could do. She made the call. The bomb squad arrived, tied a rope around the corpse's feet, and dragged it into the road. No explosion this time; they simply left. The corpse, though, remained¯all afternoon. The year was 1991, a pai nful time for Teresa and the members of the community where she worked, Montenegro (Black Mountain), a tough shanty town on the outskirts of Lima. Sr. Teresa Walsh, IHM, was serving as director of a Fe y Alegría (Faith and Joy) school, one of a network of Jesuit-founded and -sponsored schools in Latin America that educates the poor and marginalized. The question Teresa alone asked and answered re veals a lot about how Fe y Alegría understands itself and its mission. Teresa's order, Immaculate Heart of Mary, is one of many religious congregations working in Fe y Alegría schools. The sisters became involved in Fe y Alegría when they began asking how they could best work with the poor of Peru, whose lack of political or economic influence locked them out of the country's public institutions, including banks, courts, and police departments. For Peru's poor there was no running water or sewer systems. Their homes were lit by candles. Their neighborhoods were patrolled by corrupt police, if at all. Their unpaved roads were filled with garbage. "We realized that there are some things that we just can't do," Teresa explains, "but we also realized that educating children is something that we do very well." Knowing they could contribute, the sisters contacted Fr. Antonio Bach , SJ, then director of Fe y Alegría in Peru.
Begun in Venezuela in 1955 by Fr. José María Vélaz, SJ, Fe y Alegría has now expanded to thirteen Latin American countries, educating more than 500,000 students each year. Each school offers technical training as well, ranging from farming to secretari al skills. Sewing class students, for instance, make gym uniforms; those taking carpentry construct school desks and chairs. Students, the majority of them children of peasants, street vendors, or the unemployed, learn marketable skills with which they ca n support themselves. In Peru, a country where a hide-bound educational system stifled creativity, where students lacked desks and teachers chalk, Jesuits, working with members of other religious congregations, were educating more than 40,000 students and doing so in places where schools had not existed before. The popular saying is that Fe y Alegría begins where the asphalt ends: its schools are on the periphery of cities and in the interior of each country. Fr. Bach recalls that back in the fifties many thought that the Jesuits were crazy to be building so many schools at the same time. But, he says, "We counted on a very valuable resource¯the collaboration of religious men and women with a great des ire to dedicate themselves to educating God's poorest."
Some of those poorest are in Montenegro, one of the pueblos jóvenes (young towns) that surround Lima. Its residents, native Quechuan speakers who had fled the violence of the Sendero Luminoso in the Andes, are reconstructing their lives in the strange Spanish-speaking world of the capital. To prevent their squatting on the lands of the wealthy, the government conceded them about six square blocks. These people, former farmers and herders of goats, llamas, and vicuñas, were recreating a community in a f oreign place. Men and women began building roads, arranging for a visiting nurse, and thinking about education. In 1988, Montenegro community leaders asked Fe y Alegría to open a school in their barrio. Fr. Bach's response was guarded: he rejected their offer of a parcel of land for the school because it was small and poorly located. He also told them that if he were to build the school, he required not only the permission of the leaders but that of all Montenegrans. Two weeks later the people unanimously voted to donate land that had been set aside for a plaza; it was more important that their children be educa ted. That consensus in place, he then turned to the sisters to assume direction of the school. When Teresa first arrived, Montenegro reminded her of the Old West: primitive, mountains of dirt, not a tree in sight. But it was the children who first helped he r discover the beauty of the barrio. "That a child beaten by parents for not earning a small amount of money could also be loving and want to relate to another human being was to me a miracle," she reflects.
Life in the fledgling Montenegro barrio in the early nineties, though difficult, seemed to hold the promise of a future until Sendero reentered the picture. It began with a march of young women with red scarves around necks and rifles in arms. Later, r oads were blocked and buses burned. No one was allowed on the streets. Children couldn't come to school. Military helicopters buzzed above, while below terrorists painted slogans on the school's walls and entered Montenegro homes at night to hide, indoctr inate, kidnap, or kill. A number of Fe y Alegría students lost parents to the violence. Montenegro extinguished its lamps early and pretended to sleep for fear of not waking. Today, while the threat of terrorism has diminished, life continues to be a struggle. Sr. Annette Pelletier, IHM, present director of Fe y Alegría in Montenegro, and the other sisters meet challenges every day. And those challenges are great. "How do I respond to and reach people on the very gut level of injustice, of survival, of simple hunger?" Teresa asks. In 1988, when the school began, students were falling asleep in class because of malnutrition; there was no food at home. S o in 1990 the school began a lunch program. According to Annette, the lunches "changed the whole reality of the community because now the children have enough nutrition to be educated." Last year Fe y Alegría finished constructing a kitchen staffed by volunteers, many of them mothers o f students, who keep a portion of what they cook for their own families. They feed at least 600 kids a day, not only students but also others who work or just wander around. "Even if there is no money or donated supplies like powdered milk, vegetables, or pasta, the mothers seem to make a meal out of nothing," Annette says. If there is no kerosene to cook the food, out of the blue they receive a donation, as if f rom heaven. Annette takes pleasure in seeing something grow from nothing: classrooms constructed on barren land and families working together to improve the community. "Parents come to the school Sunday mornings from 7:00 to 11:00 because they want something better for their kids. They believe that if they sacrifice for their children, the future will be better. By their parents' example, the kids begin to under stand that they too must contribute to the betterment of their community. People begin to see themselves not as victims but as men, women, and children capable of bringing about changes." Today, the school consists of 55 teachers and 1,400 students, half of whom attend from 8:00 to 1:00, the other half from 1:15 to 6:00. Students in primary and secondary grades carry notebooks everywhere as there are no textbooks; students copy and then are tested on what the teacher dictates¯a traditional emphasis on memorization in a nontraditional setting: "We offer the kids of Fe y Alegría a basic structure of what we believe to be the truth about the human condition. We trust them to choose well in keeping with their dignity as persons, and they usually do," says Teresa. "We are educating a whole class to speak up. Vocations are coming out of our schools, and former Fe y Alegría students are being elected as local mayors. Ignatius's goal of educating children to assume positions of service to God's poor is becomin g a reality here." 
Page maintained by Richard VandeVelde, vande@math.luc.edu. Copyright(c) Company Magazine ,1998. Last modified: 8/14/98 |
