Being Somebody
Being Somebody
The story of Blanca as told by Fr Peter Woodruff SSC
| Blanca (pictured right) was born in a small town on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains. One of ten children, she had a tough childhood, but her drive to push ahead with her life was stronger than the hurt inflicted by others. Like so many of her contemporaries, she came to Lima as a teenager with the dream of completing high school and going on to further studies and a profession. |  |
The idea of personal progress via education has motivated millions of young Peruvians to leave their hometowns to make a new life in Lima. All sectors of Peruvian society recognise the status conferred by a university degree. Regardless of skin colour or family background, a university degree allows its holder to say with pride, "I am a professional", or to put it negatively (even though the protagonists of this struggle may never recognise or express their motivation in this way), "I am not a peasant, nor am I a manual worker, skilled or unskilled. I am a somebody. I am no longer a nobody".
I quote from a poem by the Uruguayan political commentator, Eduardo Galeano, about being a nobody in Latin America:
They speak no language, only dialects.
They profess no religion, only superstitions.
They have no art, only handicrafts.
They practice no culture, only folklore.
They are not human beings, only human resources.
The drive to be a somebody or maybe more accurately, cease to be a nobody, is incredibly strong in many sectors of Latin American society.
Blanca did well in high school and went to university but was distracted from her academic ambitions by the student ferment in search of a more just society. Then she met a man, already established in business, who offered her a way ahead, out of poverty, out of being a nobody (not that she had ever considered herself a nobody). Little did she realise that she was about to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Her man had another woman. They married and Blanca had four children. During the same period, her husband had four children with the other woman.
Blanca finally found the courage to face up to what was going on and divorced him.
She was nearly shattered by the break-up of her home and the social rejection that followed. She found spiritual support, not in the parish community that she had helped establish, but in a Church community that specialised in helping people discover how they might pray. In the words of Blanca herself:
I became interested in the program because the participants did not judge me but rather welcomed me with love. The program itself left me in no doubt that the mercy of God is greater than my sins and that helped me overcome a number of problems arising from both my past and present situation. All this helped me reach out to others and offer them the support of God’s Word and the practice of constant prayer.
Now, a single mother with two dependent children and with barely enough income to feed and maintain her family, Blanca continues to dream. She was never going to accept being a nobody, much less now after coming through such hard times:
My divorce, that caused me such pain, has been a very difficult but determining factor in my life. Accepting the reality of it all has been an enormous help to me in facing up to the future with optimism.
Blanca knows how a dream of personal progress can shape the life journey of a young person from the rural parts of Peru, and she is also aware of the many pitfalls along the way. She feels for the youth of her hometown:
I want to see a tertiary education institute for the youth of my hometown. They struggle to get ahead and believe that they will be able to do just that in the capital, but many end up in extreme poverty, a long way from home, family and a way of life they understand.
Each year in recent times Blanca has travelled to her hometown to be with her elderly mother for a few months. Seeing up close the struggle of an ageing mother has lit another spark in Blanca:
I want to see a drop-in centre for elderly people in my hometown. I can do something about this with my daughters and my hometown’s Lima-based association.
At a more personal level, in line with her interest in the varied and colourful music and dance of Peru, Blanca dreams of developing a tourist venue:
I would like to create a tourist centre where the music, dance, customs and traditional food dishes of the many regions of Peru might be appreciated and enjoyed. This might also serve as a support to folkloric artists, especially child artists.
Whether Blanca’s dreams come to fruition remains to be seen, but I am certain she will continue to act on her dreams and something will come of it all. She is a woman of deep faith that directs and sustains her in her commitments, especially to her family and the poor of her world:
Kneeling before God raises my spirits. I look at the sky and all around me and I see the grandeur of God. At times I have ranted furiously at God because I thought that He could do everything and He just couldn’t be bothered fixing things. When it’s all over I laugh at the past and think positively. I believe that God never sleeps and always protects. It’s we who sleep in our indifference, egoism and jealousy.
I am convinced that the meaning and commitments of my life are expressions of a spirituality because when I was a long way from God I wanted to change the world. I wrote songs and poetry but they were full of hate and revenge, but now it is different. At times I continue to feel furious because of something but I don’t hate nor do I want revenge; I forgive, ask pardon and understand people better.
At the end of the day, contrary to the myth that inspires so many young people, be it in Peru or in other parts of the world, for Blanca, being a somebody has not been a result of tertiary education, as important as all education may be. It has been about taking a firm grip on the reins of her own life, all of it. It has been about following her own star in good times and in bad; a star that she has learned to tune into in a constant dialogue with both the external circumstances of her life and her innermost thoughts, feelings and desires. That star might be called her meeting place with both the transcendent and immanent God of Life.