Hola todos! I've been meaning to contribute to this blog for a while, but my laptop took a dislike to Mexico early in my trip and crashed, so my internet access has been touch and go. I am working at an organization called Acortar Distancias, http://www.acortardistancias.org/, which serves people living in the poorest neighborhoods in the outskirts of the city of Zapópan, which borders Guadalajara, Mexico. In addition to working at Acortar Distancias during the days, I am happy to be taking an evening class on human rights law at the Universidad Panamericana in Guadalajara. This has been a great way to meet people and to study some of the topics that animated me to go to law school in the first place.
Guadalajara is one of the wealthiest, most modern cities in Mexico, and so the contrast between the excess and extreme poverty is startling and impossible to ignore. I spend a good amount of my commute time each day trying to make sense of this dichotomy as the bus bumps its way from the middle class neighborhood where I am living to the neighborhoods where I work, where the architecture of the houses can best be described as forts scattered amid the city's garbage dump.
I haven't done any sightseeing yet, but I´m taking in the city during the course of my adventures to visit judges and jails each day with the lawyers in my office. Most of the clients in the neighborhood where we work are abused women, people who are the victims of exorbitant interest rates and unconscionable contracts (think 2-wheel corp. times 10) and people imprisoned without a fair trial.
In the last week, we started our summer "campaña" which is a 6 week-long push to alert the people in the community around our center to their legal rights and to process extemporaneous birth certificates and identification cards for the people who don't exist according to the State. This campaign involves going from house to house and talking with all the people about their rights and needs of their families. So, I've been doing the work of a social worker. Ideally, I´d be trained to handle the kinds of sensitive issues that I come upon in every doorway, but what is needed above all is someone to show some compassion and to treat the people with dignity. For example, this morning I tapped my 5 peso coin on a piece of metal fence post long enough that a little girl crawled out from under a blanket/tent like structure to see what the gringa with the sunglasses wanted with her family. She let me in and I was introduced to 9 children under age 12 - all brothers and sisters huddled together under a blanket. None of them goes to school, the mother works all day, and the father is not in the picture. It wasn't a moment to act like a lawyer, so i sat down and began talking to the children about how they spend their days, how strong the sun is here, what the streets of New York look like. When I left, I made note in my log that the professional social workers in Acortar Distancias would have to return to this family. Although I am witnessing horrible injustices in this work, I find it incredibly life-giving to meet wonderful, generous people in the midst of such poverty. It's beautiful to see that they have faith in God despite the fact that the dogs in Manhattan live in far more comfort and dignity than they do. Almost every dwelling, no matter how poor, has an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the entrance, and it helps me to keep presence of God as I make my way through the trash and the signs of life. I'm also grateful to find motivation to continue in the legal profession because I see that, poco a poco, the lawyers I work with are improving the lives of the people in the community.
Thanks all for posting. Keep up your good work and let's not forget these experiences as we choose our career paths in the next 2 years.
-Monica Brown
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