“To be disciples, missionaries, itinerants and prophets”
Rocio, can you introduce us to the community of SSCC sisters who live in the Vicariate of Aguarico, in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
We opened the SSCC presence in Aguarico on 15th March, 2015. We were four sisters. At present there is Blanca Orellana Cuji. Blanca is 69 years old, a native of Azuay, with missionary experience in Mexico, Bolivia and other places of mission in Ecuador. She helped in the formation of the juniorate, among other services. Isabel Torres, 60 years old is from Loja. She collaborated in mission in Mexico and was a missionary in various places in Ecuador. Mélida Ramírez, 59 years, is a missionary and has teaching experience in the country. The four of us were part of the initial community. Our greatest gift was that we all started out with joint missionary experiences and dreams. After 3 years Mélida left because of her mother's delicate health.
María Antonia Macas then arrived. She is a teacher with missionary and educational experience in Ecuador and she came from the interprovincial novitiate in Lima. As for myself, Flor del Rocío Vinueza Goyes, I am 50 years old and I was born in Quito. I spent my youth in the parish of San Carlos SSCC. I have served in various mission places in Ecuador, in our educational units and in the Peruvian jungle with Aymaras and Quechuas. At present my experience of mission is alongside the Shuar people. I started and continue my connection with the indigenous world thanks to the EMI (Itinerant Missionary Team - Riobamba) promoted by Monsignor Proaño and thanks to the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs).
What is the main work of the community?
We carry out missionary work in the rural areas and offer pastoral services to the Shuar people; this implies preparation for sacraments, formation of catechists and leaders of the communities, promotion of women, working with youth, children, personal and family accompaniment, etc.
We also accompany and support the local Mestizo (mixed descendants) and Shuara organisations in their struggle for rights pitching against the oil companies and the state institutions that have abandoned the province, whose product is eminently oil.
Each one of us participates in a commission in the Vicariate representing the following areas: social ministry, Amazonia and integral ecology, family ministry. We are also supported through coordination with the Vicariate for religious life which is in turn linked to the neighbouring Vicariate of Sucumbíos.
We also work together with the Alejandro Lavaka Foundation (dedicated to the indigenous peoples of the province: Waoranis, Kichwas and Shuar and peoples in voluntary isolation Tagaeris and Taromenanis). This foundation is linked to the Vicariate.
Moreover, we have been involved with shelters for women and girls who have been victims of violence and abuse in Orellana and Lago Agrio.
In one specific Shuar pastoral project we support a group of between 50 and 70 young people who have received scholarships. We try to promote among them the value of their cultural identity: language, song, dance, crafts. We also try to accompany them with personal and integral formation until they finish their high school.
We have helped these young people with their schooling, as they have a very high academic deficit; our SSCC community Rumipamba supports this project. The work was with young Shuar people and in the area’s ‘mestizo school’.
During mission days in Holy Week, we work with the SSCC youth ministry as well as young people in the Vicariate. We have had young volunteers from Argentina and one Basque student: at Christmas, we focus on confirmation and school levelling in Shuar single-teacher schools (a teacher with students from the seven grades).
Over the years, we have welcomed two volunteer high school girls from our educational units in Quito each for one year, and two university students (male) from the Province of Orellana who came for one month to work on school levelling with the Shuar people.
You collaborate in the Vicariate with Capuchin and Carmelite religious. Can you say something about this relationship?
For context, it is important to note that the Vicariate of Aguarico has been entrusted to the Capuchin mission since 1953. Its main concern has been to prioritise two mission bases: (i) working together and (ii) the option for the minorities present in the area: Kichwa, Waorani, Shuara, peoples in voluntary isolation (Tagaeris and Taromenanis) and others. The particularity of this Vicariate is that it functions through pastoral areas and pastoral teams. There is no parish priest, but a pastoral team. In this spirit, intercongregational work is part of the whole pastoral dynamic. So, as an SSCC presence, we become part of a team that has the name Team Via Auca, Taracoa and Zorros. In the team are Capuchins, Franciscans of Mary Immaculate, SSCC; on the other hand, there is Team Shuar that involves Carmelites and SSCC.
The enrichment of sharing experiences of spirituality, charism and mission is experienced as a contribution to mutual service and accompaniment. With the Capuchins, for example, I do not have a direct job, but they are our neighbours and share mission with the sisters. In the pandemic they became the brothers who facilitated our mobility and provided what was necessary for our survival.
The Carmelites are my direct companions and their choice of being missionaries on foot (not using a vehicle) for example, introduced me to another way of being and working with the people that has been very valuable. Their commitment to the working world and social organizations, has resonated with the path that I took since EMI formation (Itinerant Missionary Teams). It was then when the indigenous world found me and marked me for ever.
From the Capuchin spirituality our vicariate and all our activities are influenced by the martyr spirituality of Alexander and Agnes. For me it is an invitation to leave behind life as we know it, even our SSCC spirituality: to let ourselves be pierced by love, in the style of Jesus on the cross and throughout his life, and in the style of Alexander and Agnes who died pierced by spears to defend the peoples in voluntary isolation from the oil invasion. Their prophetic phrase: "If we don't go, they will kill them", found me and has motivated me since I arrived at the Vicariate, to continue in difficult times.
St. Teresa I understand as a restless, searching woman; She inspires me in my missionary life especially when she was called "female, restless, a walker, disobedient and stubborn". This is what is needed to become disciples, missionaries, itinerants and prophets.
You work directly in the Vicariate in a service centred on rural ministry, in contact with the indigenous communities, specifically the Shuar people. Would you please share your experience with us?
My sisters work hard coordinating with all the rural pastoral team together with other congregations other than those mentioned that form part of the whole Vicariate.
I am a member of the indigenous pastoral team that includes missionaries who work with Kichwa, Waorani, and Shuara: Laurites, Oblates, Carmelites, Diocesan, SSCC, Xaverians. It is together as a team that we can coordinate the Amazonian indigenous and national pastoral. We have our own processes for the indigenous world, bilingual catechisms, inculturated celebrations, the search for ministries which arise from the life of the people, formation in land community rights. The observatory of vulnerable peoples was created to give social expression to the social problems of the destruction of ecosystems, the social fabric, culture, etc. The aim is to use this space to seek possible solutions to accompany the people and their problems.
I have very much enjoyed and also suffered in this effort to build a partnership. I believe that the very life of indigenous peoples gives us another way of being, being and working. Mother Laura (foundress of the Lauritas) used to say, if you don't have a tabernacle you have the jungle, "contemplate God there". That has been for me our contemplative spirituality as we walk along the long roads alone in the jungle, stay in people's houses, meet Arutan, the God in the sacred waterfalls, who purifies us and gives us strength to move forward in the challenges of life. Learning from all the diverse experiences of inculturation has been very valuable.
As an indigenous pastoral team, we have made the journey by creating a week of language and culture. In the morning we propose common themes for the three cultures, and in the afternoon we work on what is specific to each culture, dedicating time to language and myths, which are then shared in inculturated celebrations.
These experiences are really motivating for me. This and other activities where we work jointly. We are here to shake hands and look for new paths together with the indigenous people we accompany.
Receiving from the different charisms has strengthened my own charism. Thus strengthened, I can reciprocate with our own charism. Being a heart specialist, I try to put the heart where divine wisdom has placed us. Through love, everything is integrated, nothing is separated. Love unites and enriches. Everything passes but love remains.
It is not an easy task to weave networks between different men, women, clergy, nuns, lay people, young people, adults, elderly, ‘mestizos’, indigenous people, Latin Americans, Europeans, diverse criteria, etc. But we are committed to this and it is worthwhile. We are unity and we are interlinked. That is why the Pope's call to take care of the Amazon is perfectly understandable, because it is a care that affects us all.
What is the pilgrim Church like in Aguarico? What is your vision of the Church there?
I perceive the Church as simple and fraternal, with all the difficulties that this entails, but it is one of the few ecclesial spaces that I have known where its members take care of the meeting, striving for teamwork. It does not follow the parish model where one is in charge and the others follow. Encouraging dialogue, agreement is their quest. Another value I recognize is the participation of lay missionaries from Spain, the Basque Country, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries who, from their experiences, have contributed a lot to being a Church that is going out to the periphery of human existence, that goes beyond the sacraments, that focuses on specific needs; violence and sexual abuse, hunger, illness, injustice in the treatment of public institutions, taking care to reduce and avoid contamination of the planet, in their own ways of praying, working, being ….
Their questions and contributions have been very enlightening for me. They have helped me to look at things that I had taken for granted. They have opened my eyes to realities that I had not studied in depth: the world of sexual diversity, the lay ministries that are present, though not institutionalized, the role of women in our Church and society, etc. And then there are the resounding Laudato Si' and the Amazon Synod resulting in Querida Amazonia. And still much remains to be done.
I unite myself to the voice of Simon Peter (Benedictine monk): "If the Church does not change its way of seeing women and sexuality it has no future. The pandemic has made us face the fact that the changes were already there before we accepted and institutionnalised them, the small groups of prayer, reflection, solidarity work are there. We need to learn from what life communicates to us, recognize the Good God present in them and follow Him. The indigenous world has much to tell us as does the forest and its mystery.
One of the great challenges facing the Vicariate is the high level of migrants from all over the country and the world who exist because of the influence of the oil industry. How do you try to respond?
Our area has the greatest presence of oil. There are settlements of people from various sectors of the country who, with their differences, coexist alongside the Waorani, Kichwas, Shuar, ancestral peoples who are itinerant. They move easily, depending on the circumstances, from one place to another. They are not totally sedentary; rather they are nomadic.
This makes people suspicious. Added to that is the division brought about by the company and its economic proposals that have divided the communities and fractured the social fabric, turning people into beggars. People have come to expect everything from the company, the mission and the state, and they don't launch out on their own.
As a vicariate we question the fact that in about 15 years the area will stop producing oil: what will people live on then? Some projects are emerging, we try to support and accompany them. We are working to train young people in leadership, founded on their own values. We start this project at the end of January with 31 young indigenous leaders, who will be able to accompany their peoples in helping them to solve specific problems in their communities. After so many years of this way of living, it is not easy to repair, but we must start again and again without giving up, creating spaces not only out of our visions, but with them.
A commitment to social organisations is key. A people that is not organised is an easy victim of mistreatment and abuse of authority and marginalisation, but to organise them demands a lot of patience and long periods of listening.
Our contribution from the Gospel and keeping our distance from personal interests is vital in this reality. We have so much to contribute and life is crying out to us. Life is asking for a different and motivating word and experience among so much discouragement.
What is your analysis of religious life and our Congregation from this privileged place where you carry out your mission?
As religious life, as a Congregation and as the Church in general, we need to listen more, to recognize that for some time reality has already overtaken us, the pandemic has reminded us of this. We need to relocate, we are no longer the ones who know, those who have the answers, those who know the truth. We need to learn from people, from their wisdom, to allow ourselves to be helped and to redirect our actions.
How we used to do things doesn't work as much as before. People who live on the edge of life have had to come out of their abode, and they come out because they are hungry, they get sick and they can't go to the doctor; so they come to us.
We need to change our well-known plans and projects. How to do this, where to do this, is our challenge as a Congregation and Church. Let us follow life, which is already ahead of us showing us new directions. Let us take risks, let us make mistakes, as did Henriette and Joseph Marie, Damien, Eustáquio, the sisters and brothers who have gone before us, and the poor. By pooling together the strengths and knowledge that exists among religious men and women, together with the laity and people of good will, does us much good and enables us to do good.
Can you imagine the SSCC brothers coming here to Aguarico? What would you say to them?
Welcome! We need hands but above all hearts and wills that want to relearn, to get down to the level of the children who have to start talking, walking, eating... We need to let ourselves be helped and guided first and then walk together, not in front or behind, and feel the Spirit of the Good God in these beautiful Amazon lands and its people.
I believe that the Congregation, especially the branch of the brothers, has a duty to be present in the Amazon mission, now more than ever, when this is a call from the planet, from humanity and from the Pope. For this it is necessary to begin to know, to approach these realities, to challenge ourselves to begin learning the ancestral languages of the peoples whom we want to serve; or in turn to think of accompanying the mestizo peoples.
A valuable help can be found in Laudato Si' and Querida Amazonia if we approach these documents from the depths of our hearts, allowing them to warm our hearts and ignite our desire to come and see.
We wonder if steps are being taken to make the dreams embodied by Pope Francis in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Querida Amazonia" come true:
I dream of an Amazon region that fights for the rights of the poor, the original peoples and the least of our brothers and sisters, where their voices can be heard and their dignity advanced. (QA, 7)
Steps are being taken. They are important, but they are so small in relation to the whole reality and its challenges. For example, the Pope dreams of a Church with an Amazonian face, but if we do not change our western, clerical way of understanding life and mission – so far removed from the Amazonian Church - we will not have Amazonian services and ministries but rather we will provide our own, repeating our models. They have a vision where no one understands each other outside the family and the community. Even if these people leave their world and mix in the mestizo world, the values remain in their genes.
There is dialogue and respectful listening when you recognize the other as an equal, with the capacity to contribute. Not so, when the other is seen as the poor little ones, ignorant, half-wild that need to be helped. They do not need their dignity promoted, they have it, they need presence and support so that they take courage and go out on their own.
These are peoples of resistance, they have lived with harassment and violence, even ours (Church) for years. Motivated to help them and to form them, they were told to leave behind their language and ancestral practices. Now we are telling them to speak their own languages and not to forget their customs; for this reason, it is important to situate ourselves humbly in the errors committed and those that are being committed in the new contexts; and to point out here we are, sisters and brothers - what can we do, how can we do it?
I don't deny, on the contrary I value, all the work and effort that has been done and is being done. It is titanic, but there is still so much to be done and we need people who are keen to help, and this includes in a special way the laity.
Highlighting the great work done, I believe that a vital contribution in this path has been made by REPAM (Pan-Amazonian network) which is the soul that provoked the Amazon Synod and as a result, the papal document Querida Amazon. REPAM continues to seek to encourage these dreams to create the space for what already is there to appear, to emerge, but which has not yet entered into our Amazonian stories and paths.
How can the presence of the Congregation in the Amazon help us to take care of the Common Home?
Every contribution to being among the Amazonian peoples and their ancestral and colonized lands is in some way taking care of the common home. One cannot be here and be indifferent to the exploitation of wood, mining and oil, as well as the contamination of the forest and rivers with plastics and other waste generated by our unbridled consumerism.
Here is like going back in time. What, in the big cities, is seen as rubbish management, falls lamentably short here because of the lack of resources allocated to the task (rubbish dumps without adequate process). Citizen behaviour leaves much to be desired. In other words, whoever wants to work for the care of the planet, please come quickly to the Amazon.
What message would you like to give from the Amazon to the whole Congregation?
From this green part of the planet, where the wisdom of the jungle and its peoples welcome us, let us see diversity as the presence of God Mother and Father who cares and provides generously, despite the mistreatment of Mother Earth. Let us, wherever we are, colour our tasks, our missionary services, our liturgy, with green, with the jungle. Let us keep our hearts united to the cries and pain of their people and land. Let us become aware, let us get involved in these struggles that belong to all of humanity, let us join forces in all languages and in all places. As the Good Father says, "Let us form but one heart and one soul”. I would add "for the care of our Amazon". I also join in the call of our founder when he said: come and "savour the Good Lord on the path of life," and specifically in our Amazon lands.
I would like to share with you a painting that I did during the pandemic, in which the Shuar and Wao people and the creation are present, as is the loving work of God and the Congregation.
02/12/2021