DGH Profile: Dreaming Life By Gregorio de Anda Pérez, MD

With one blow Blanca Alegria extinguished the candle and suddenly the light of the moon bubbled into her room slipping between the fence that served as a wall. Her feet felt the humidity of the mud on the floor. She slowly approached the corner where her two sons, Samuel and Marcos, slept and drew a cross on their forehead with a caress. She made sure that they were well covered and lay down to rest the fatigue of the day on the pine tables that served as her bed.

Into the air she sent a long, deep sigh, and between the ringing of crickets and the song of frogs, her memories began to blend with her plans and fatigue. By the light of the moon she traveled back eleven years to when she first went to a guerrilla camp to share her dreams of a more just future for her and her people with other compañeros.

“Clinging to the silence of the night, Blanca Alegria thought that her destiny was tied to the light of the moon: One moonlit night Armando had declared his love for her. One moonlit night her first son Samuel had been born. And it was one moonlit night six years ago that Armando had been lost to her when the soldiers surrounded the Zapatistas in Ocosingo, inflicting a considerable number of casualties.”

The memory was so vivid she seemed to be hearing: "Our life is now pain, but tomorrow we descend from the mountains, from this pain hope will be born. You, as farmers of the mountain know that first it is necessary to clear. The burning will soon come. Then the planting and finally the harvest. Now we are clearing. When we have the strength to start the fire, we will set the country afire. And the Indian heart of Mexico will once again be felt."

Clinging to the silence of the night, Blanca Alegria thought that her destiny was tied to the light of the moon: One moonlit night Armando had declared his love for her. One moonlit night her first son Samuel had been born. And it was one moonlit night six years ago that Armando had been lost to her when soldiers surrounded the Zapatistas in Ocosingo inflicting a considerable number of casualties. He had told her: "If a bullet reaches me, take good care of our sons. For them it is that we fight."

After eleven days of war, both the Zapatistas and the federal government decided on a unilateral truce. Blanca Alegria thought: "We spent years clearing, weeding the fields. We set the country afire in eleven days. Now comes the planting season. I hope the harvest will be my children's." When she began to live on recovered land, Blanca Alegria decided: "From this day forward my main task will be to care for the life of my children, all the children and women: I will become a health promoter." Six years after having made that decision, Blanca Alegria told herself the story of that day's harvest: In the morning, as she weighed the small group of 13 malnourished children, she felt an immense joy when she saw that, after two months of preparing mincemeat with toasted corn, beans and pumpkin seeds, six of the little ones were already at normal weight, six were improving and only one continued in the red.

Linnea Capps, DGH Board Member, at a training session of the health promoters in Chiapas.

She was glad as she remembered Nicolás' little eyes, which before seemed dull like ash in front of his food, but now were like two little flames that devoured whatever was put on the plate in front of him. With a disguised smile she noted that, without anybody saying anything to them, each one of the mothers had washed the hands of her children before they began to eat. "We are winning the struggle against the lack of hygiene," she thought .

That same day, in the evening, the Community Assembly had approved the penalty of one day in jail for any man who took advantage of a trip to town to drink, and three days in jail without food to any who dared strike his wife. "Finally, we women are learning to make our rights respected," Blanca Alegria had pointed out when commenting on the Assembly's agreement.

A frozen wind woke Blanca Alegria, forcing her to rise to get a blanket. Upon feeling the roughness of her hands on the smoothness of the blanket, she remembered that in the mañanita, when the sun rose, she would have to go clean her cornfield, and so she sank into the coolness of the night to continue dreaming life.

— Dr. Gregorio de Anda Pérez is a Mexican physician who has been training healthcare promoters in the remote communities of Chiapas. This community health project was initiated through Hospital San Carlos, but was about to be dropped due to a lack of funds. DGH is now sustaining the project and sending volunteers to assist in the development of the training curriculum. This poetic essay was written by Dr. de Anda Pérez about one of the healthcare promoters he has trained (names have been changed). Up to the present, 50 promoters have been trained.

In This Issue:

Los Chavalitos: DGH in Nicaragua
A Day's Life... Los Chavalitos
Like Oil & Water: The Ogoni in Nigeria
Human Rights Around the World
DGH Profile: Dreaming Life
El Salvador Earthquake Relief
DGH Announcements