15. Witnesses: Francisco Pierola

He was born in Mendaza (Navarra, Spain) in 1939 and is an Augustinian Recollect since 1959, and a priest since 1963. He came to Brazil after six years of pastoral work in Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz, Spain), and after a few months in Tapaua was sent for eleven years to Labrea.

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I came to the Amazon mission as a volunteer, after six years in Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz, Spain), where I lived very well in every sense. It was a great shock to come to the mission, where my very soul fell at my feet… the heat, a different language, the coldness of the people, no television, no motorbike, no boat, not even a bicycle, with the strong impression of wasting time without knowing what to do for many hours… It was the first experience that taught me to live, and to see how far a human being can fall.

The necessities of the parish were huge: they had no priest, for the last one had left the priesthood. On our arrival there were no committed lay people. At the beginning I only watched, kept quiet and thought about what could be done. The prelature was without a Bishop, with a Vicar General that “did nothing about nothing” without a pastoral plan. This was the true reality which we found, without false platitudes.

Expectations were intensified with a firm leadership respected by everyone, a pastoral plan to abide to, and above all a large quantity of grass root communities and lots and lots of lay leaders. May God reward the humble Bishop Florentino Zabalza, for his interest and dedication until his strength could do no more!

Tapaua was a great unknown for me. Before arriving I hadn’t stopped to think about it. On arriving, I saw that it was a difficult reality; afterwards I understood it was even worse than that first impression. Now in 2015, those who know it say that it is worse still.

When I arrived, there were some seven hundred inhabitants in the city and another fifteen thousand in the inner district. There was nothing specific that we were told to do, and we had to go on inventing “how to fill the day”. A curious idea came about: the three recollects (Miguel Ángel González, Jesús Moraza and myself) committed ourselves to study some topics and then inform our companions in what each one had studied, once a week. Miguel Ángel studied the documents of the Brazilian Bishop’s Conference; Moraza focused on tropical illnesses; and I studied the History of Salvation (Apologetics).

We also wanted to start the desobrigas. Miguel Ángel spent fifteen days on the river; Moraza had to go to Labrea; I was left alone, and to top it all with malaria, an extreme fever and no medicine… When I least expected it, at about two in the morning, I heard some noise in the house… it was Miguel Ángel! He had come back two days later, for the place where he went was covered by ten meters of water for the people only lived there in the summer.

A small anecdote still effects the reality of Tapaua. Cequiña was a small tradesman at the mouth of the river, and another tradesman wanted his customers. And had no better idea than killing him. How? He convinced some Indians that were dying of measles, that Cequiña’s bad spirit was sending them evil spirits. So what did they have to do?… Kill Cequiña and all his family, and so finish with the evil spirits.

The Indians, at night, crept into the house. The man managed to escape, but not his wife or children. I am not going to describe the fear that this produced, nor how the police caught the Indians to discover who was responsible for the massacre. The police recognized that the Indians had been fooled, and they obliged them to live in the city of Tapaua, one day appearing fully armed in a boat.

The people of the city, also armed, urged them to leave and finally they went to live behind the town in the village of São João. There was panic! Days and nights of vigilance in the furthest part of the town, but nothing happened. The Indians continue to live there peacefully.

Another story is that of the slaughter of the Jumas. Some white people from Tapaua, in order to take their lands, exterminated the whole tribe. There was left a group of six, visited by the Augustinian Recollect José Luis Villanueva and some others.

In order to be brief and not fool ourselves, in the city nothing was organized. A Mayor did what he wanted. He kept the money, and the people said nothing… They were years in which those that complained were considered communists, to say nothing of Liberation theology! Everything was done in the name of National Security… and the insecurity of the inhabitants of the nation.

But the mission in the Amazon made me get to know and follow Christ, getting to know the reality of simpler people. These two things, accompanied by a lot of reading, have given meaning to my life; that of feeling good but at the same time “indignant” with reality.

Finally, I wish to tell a story that for the mission of Labrea marked a before and after, a plant that one day was planted and whose fruits continue to flower. Around 1977, Rómulo Ballesteros, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Vitoria (Espíritu Santo, Brazil), the sister church of the Prelature, came to visit us. They were great benefactors to the mission, to the female Augustinian Recollects and to the Church. I was very impressed: a Vicar General! How great was my surprise when a small priest came who was thin, discrete, humble and stayed with us for some twenty days.

On day, a great day, I asked him if he would accompany me to a rural community. On the way I said: “We are going to have a meeting. The people don’t come together if the priest isn’t there, and this happens once a year. In Vitoria the people are cultured, here they are illiterate; in Vitoria you have many communities which meet every week, but here it is impossible for a lack of culture. I want you to tell me the truth about what you are going to see, whether it is good or bad”.

When we arrived, we climbed the ravine to the community. I opened the door to the chapel, rang the bell and clapped my hands on entering. I put myself at the front and the people sat down. I made the sign of the cross and led the prayers. Then I gave some notices, closed the Church and we went back. Back in the canoe I spoke to Fr. Rómulo:

• What did you think of the meeting?
• Francisco, you want me to tell you what I thought? Look, you opened the door, rang the bell, read the gospel, etc. This is an error. They don’t know how to do anything?
• Here the people are illiterate, very shy, they are afraid of everything; there aren’t these difficulties in Vitoria.
• But Francisco, something they must know how to do. They don’t know who to pray the rosary?
• As far as a rosary they know, for they do it in their houses.
• Therefore they can pray the rosary and you could encourage them to do it every week in community, by themselves, whether the priest comes or not. They can only do this? They are giving a hundred per cent…

I heard all this as something so simple, but I was all ears. Rómulo returned to Vitoria. When the day came for me to return to the community which I went to with him, I asked for light from the Holy Spirit. I arrived, rang the bell and the people came in their canoes, and we went in and I placed myself amongst them. I told them that we had to have a meeting, and that I would be praying with them

• Francisco, we don’t know how to do anything, do it yourself just like always.
• You don’t know how to do anything? You know how to pray the rosary.
• Well, this we do know.
• Well, then let someone come out and lead the rosary.

It took a while, but Doña María put herself in front of everyone to pray.

• Francisco, I am going to pray like I do at home: first I sing a Glory be, then another in the middle and another at the end.
• Wonderful, Doña María.

Doña María sang the Glory be, prayed the rosary…

• Did you see that you know how to do it? Therefore, the next day could you do it on your own?

So it was. From that day they met together every week, without the priest. We made the same suggestion to all the communities. In two months there were quite a lot, and they met by themselves once a week. Time went by and the Bishop released Jesús Moraza from the parish, so that living on a boat he would visit all the communities and explain to them the way of coming together to meet without a priest. Sometime later he discovered that all the communities were meeting together.

In time they made a booklet with the Sunday Gospels, prayers, some songs for the more advanced communities. Later, they started to bring together the leaders of each community, in order to receive formation for some five days. Without realizing it the prelature had now another face, we had a lot of people do something as a Church. As a fruit of this movement began the rural unions, who increased the efforts to defend the Indians. As a result of that “great day,” we accepted many other things we would not have had accepted before when our mentality was different.

Many years passed. I met by chance with a certain Bishop on a spiritual retreat, and he started to tell me how when he was a priest he was in Labrea in an assembly of missionaries. And there he discovered what Rómulo made us discover, and that had revolutionized the prelature. He said “I returned to my parish and from that moment everything changed, and I can tell you that my pastoral work as a priest and bishop has not been anything else than to develop that intuition. For this reason, I say to you many thanks for amongst you I saw that light”, he told me.

May the Holy Spirit be our guide.

NEXT PAGE: 16. Witnesses: Cenobio Sierra

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