“We are lucky to have the collaboration and the great awareness of the ministries of the Augustinian-Recollect Family outside Brazil” [Part 2]

How do the laity participate in the life of the Church?

In Lábrea, we have always counted on the laity, although at the beginning, it was due to the shortage of priests, dispersion, distances, and many communities. We have been training coordinators for years, giving them materials and with them as the main protagonists and leaders of the daily life of their local community.

In the urban area, almost all pastoral groups also regularly count on laypeople, partly due to the strategy and formalization of the ecclesial base communities as a priority ecclesial model in the Prelature.

The challenge is in training, preparing them to take on this evangelization from the parameters of initiation into Christian life. It is difficult because they are accustomed to traditions, that hindrance of “it has always been like this.” But they have always been counted on, and more so now from the new pastoral perspective.

What is the care of the rural area, of riverside dwellers and indigenous people?

In the classic “desobrigas,” there was one visit per year by the priest to administer sacraments. This model has given way in the last 30 years to another in which the visits for formation and catechesis are multiplied, with multidisciplinary teams, with a deserved emphasis on the religious in this field.

The most significant difficulty is the high operating costs regarding resources and time. Furthermore, rural communities are increasingly depopulated. The care is excellent but scarce. I wish we could organize more trips.

What are the main problems in urban centers?

The Prelature has 100,000 inhabitants, and 40,000 live in the urban area of Labrea. Every day, new migrants who feel lost arrive from rural areas. For example, they do not usually approach the ecclesial services, but we must look for them.

For example, while the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) makes great efforts to reach all Indigenous villages, however isolated they may be, the care for Indigenous people in urban areas is not intense; it focuses on immediate assistance.

Pastoral services in urban areas are well organized, but almost always, the same agents act in several services. The clergy and religious must choose between more urban care—to the detriment of going out to rural areas—or vice versa. Time and circumstances do not allow for both.

Another curiosity: from the Brazilian Episcopal Conference (CNBB), at the time of the Olympics, we received a letter from the person in charge of the Sports Pastoral encouraging us to take advantage of the opportunity. I asked the Pastoral Coordinator if we had someone interested in sports and implementing something… How complicated it is to attend to everything! It is increasingly challenging to meet all the needs which are constantly growing.

How is the health care system?

Health care in Brazil is precarious, and in Lábrea even more so due to isolation: professionals prefer other positions, and the City Councils must pay them very high salaries to maintain them. There is infrastructure in the urban area but a lack of personnel and materials; in the rural area, there is also a lack of infrastructure.

With the management of the Epiphany Group of consecrated women and aid from Spain, we have the hospital ship “Laguna Negra” ( Black Lagoon), which travels through the Prelature every year during the two or three months that the river has a flow for safe navigation and you can reach almost every inhabited corner by the river.

It is still a drop of water in the Amazon River. When we evaluate it, we see an admirable work but with a continuity problem: a man had four teeth removed, but what about the follow-up? If he needs a painkiller, if he gets infected, is he going to wait a year for the ship to return? The situation is very precarious.

The local councils in the region usually have their hospital ships, but they use them as an electoral resource. They put them into operation to win votes or if they receive an inspection from a higher administration; the rest of the time, they are stopped or go out for very short periods of time, given that they consume a lot of resources.

What is the situation of leprosy as a specific problem in Lábrea?

Hansen’s disease has a cure, and with simple hygiene prevention, it will disappear. Untreated water or the lack of sanitation do not facilitate this.

The sick already have their associations, which were born through the promotion of the Church and are today very focused on obtaining subsidies and resources. Currently, evangelical work is done by Dr. Antonia [Tony] López González (Guareña, Badajoz, Spain, 1967) and her Association Comité Ipiranga.

She visits us every year. Although the authorities usually offer their help in words, they can only travel with our boat, “Black Lagoon,” or our vehicles and boats when necessary. They have part-time local professionals.

The authorities need to work more effectively. There is a great paradox: Lábrea is the second place in the world with the most leprosy, but this obstacle needs to be hidden: eradicated from the rest of the world, it is still present there, which gives a terrible press.

Although the prevalence and incidence have been contained, it has grown astonishingly and frighteningly in the last three years. International aid is generous but requires a great deal of administrative work.

Corruption and discrimination are the other stones in the road. The worst insult in Lábrea is “leper.” The disease is hidden, and it is concealed. The sick is afraid and ashamed, marginalized and despised. The health space where they allow Dr. Toni to attend is in the back of a building, with a different, hidden entrance. She has to go and look for them to care for them.

What can the Church do in the area of chemical dependencies?

Although progress does not seem to reach the Amazon, the damages of progress all reach. The Purús is a transport route for drugs from Peru and Bolivia, and some of those drugs stay. Many people have become addicted to drugs and, to a much greater extent, to alcohol, with severe effects on physical and mental health.

A few years ago, we received a donation of land that we decided to use to care for chemically dependent people. My predecessor started the project, but it lasted only two years due to a lack of human and financial resources. However, social demand has only grown, given the magnitude of the problem. The Pastoral of sobriety has done incredible fieldwork. It sent the cases with the greatest hope to Fazenda Esperança in the neighboring city and diocese of Humaitá. Ultimately, we sent them so many patients that they proposed: Why not open one in Lábrea?

Fazenda Esperança is a project that cares for chemically dependent people. To open their new headquarters in Lábrea, they asked us for two things we had. They could offer with great pleasure a piece of land to establish themselves on and ensure pastoral care with several monthly visits and the celebration of sacraments.

Although the local authorities promised help and even attended the inauguration seeking some prominence, it is a purely and fully ecclesial task. There are currently twelve beneficiaries from Pauiní and Tapauá; those from Lábrea are sent to other places to get away from the environments that harmed them.

What is the situation of education?

Education is another structural problem in Lábrea. There is a lack of human and material resources; classrooms are frequently suspended because there are no replacement teachers: At 11 in the morning, the students are already released for the rest of the day. Although the school year begins in February, the regular rhythm starts in April.

The public schools do not even comply with local or state regulations, although the same Administration forces us, the Church schools, to comply with every detail while turning a blind eye to our own.

In the rural world, the situation is much worse. First, the teachers have to arrive, then the educational materials and the food for the school snack; then we have to hire the boats and have the fuel so everything arrives at each place.

When our young people try to access university, they fail because they are not prepared, they do not even speak the language correctly, Portuguese is one of the subjects that cause failure at school… The most advanced leave and look for a future elsewhere. And those who obtain degrees never return.

And how do the Hope Centers contribute?

They are a reference for youth. The problem is maintaining them because they force us to do more and more in legal matters. For example, they require us to have a social worker and a psychologist… But if the few professionals already work in schools, how can we get them to go to the Center as well?

Our luck is in having the collaboration and the great awareness of our ministries outside Brazil. Without their help, the Hope Centers would not continue or improve their work. The fight is worth it: our beneficiaries come out different in a social context in which there are usually minors who are victims of abuse, used by traffickers to move drugs or information or to watch the streets in front of the police and other gangs, or integrated into crime and practicing robberies…

What is the most challenging thing for family pastoral care?

In the Amazon region, what we know as the “traditional family” is not an inherent part of the local culture. Teenage pregnancy is widespread, and men do not take charge or feel responsible for the children they father… Children grow up among stepbrothers and sisters, and women are fighters who seek survival against all odds in a very sexist culture in which there is no lack of intra-family abuse, violence, abandonment, or the scourge of alcoholism that destroys relationships and families.

The social mentality is profoundly different from our patterns. One of the twelve-year-old students at the HopeCenter became pregnant: her mother commented on how happy she was because she was going to “be a grandmother.”

Among Catholics, the sacrament of marriage is hardly celebrated, and most couples, including quite a few pastoral agents and collaborators, are in a second or third union, even rarely formalized civilly. The work of family pastoral care is hard, but little by little, it is making headway. In recent years, we have celebrated some community weddings. But the cultural shock the demand for a deep and conscious Christian life in this field is enormous.

What do families in Lábrea live on?

When I get up to go to the chapel every morning, I pass by the terrace, which overlooks the the main square, and I usually see all the children going to school, people going to the market, fishermen, and dockers going to the port… And I always have the same question: Will they have something to eat today?

Many live on public and contract jobs generated by the local administration; others live on social aid from other administrations, such as the “family bag” of the federal government, and entire families live on the retirement of their elders. Mayors, councilors, and politicians function as employment agencies, which goes hand in hand with corruption, with promises of work in exchange for votes and many abuses for those of the opposite political sign.

At the same time, in Lábrea, you see shops with expensive imported products, latest model vehicles, even luxury products… This makes you think of the many resources generated by illegal activities. At the same time, it makes you suspect a whole money laundering industry through these businesses is entirely out of step with the social reality surrounding them.

People, in any case, live from day to day; no one can think about saving or investing. Everything they have is practically spent immediately. When they receive their salary, they already owe almost everything on their credit cards; when accidents or unexpected situations occur (health problems, fires, unexpected death of the head of the family), they resort to charity raffles and lotteries as the only way to overcome the problem.