My Dreams are Linked to Your Dreams

By Lisa Sullivan

Morning arrived early at the beach town of el Cuco, and by 6 am, some of us were savoring a wonderful cup of coffee under palm trees in the hotel patio. Women from several distant communities were arriving, and we had the chance to chat over breakfast. I had the privilege of sitting with Elsie Oriana and heading her extraordinary history of serving as a front-line nurse with the Frente from the very young age of 13 until 18, after her entire community was forced into hiding. She never looked back on this commitment to community health, even after the war, and went to the university, get a degree in social work, and then continue health work with PROVIDA.


After breakfast, we gathered with some 40 women from 6 different communities for the workshop titled Women Constructing Health with a Social Focus on Self-care. We started with a round of introductions followed by a moving testimony by Ruth, who had battled cancer with the support of women from PROVIDA, who accompanied her from diagnosis to treatment and provided emotional, practical, and economic support through her total recovery. Later we divided into pairs - one from the community and one from the delegation- to share messages and conversations, leading to a lovely sense of connection and comfort.

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After a slide presentation by one of the leaders of PROVIDA, each of the six communities gathered with a few people from the delegation to answer two questions: what are the difficulties and what are the dreams of your community? It was a beautiful opportunity to listen deeply to difficult realities but also to concrete dreams of specific ways of improving their community health. Afterwards, each group presented their ideas followed by a round of responses from the delegation. One beautiful phrase by Marianne Perrone captured the feelings of many of us: “My dreams are linked to your dreams”. This is the essence of solidarity which this delegation embodies in such a powerful way. Allowing a deep connection to individuals and communities whose pain is, in many ways, an outcome of horrific US policy, seeking to transform that connection to heal both parties, north and South.

After taking leave of this wonderful group of women we traveled 4 hours through green mountains. cattle and corn fields, and winding rivers to Guajirla, Chalatenango where we were welcomed by the team from CCR. We had a delicious meal of pupusas. We had a rich interchange at my table with Miriam Alas and Francisco Mejia of the Community. They shared the amazing efforts to create a center for Memory and Reflection at the House of the Massacre - a place which holds the ruins of a massacre that took place in 1990, only months after they were relocated from the Mesa Grande refugee camp in Honduras. The Western University of Toronto is sponsoring this.

Francisco and Miriam also shared about the very disconcerting situation of repression under the current regime. Nine young people were randomly selected to be taken to jail a year and a half ago, with no basis of any connections to the maras. Also, on March 24 of this year, some 500 soldiers suddenly appeared in their community, demanding to use community spaces to sleep and private homes to bathe and eat. They stayed for a week, interrogating and intimidating community members. They outnumbered this small community of only some 200 people. After another week they returned with the same intimidation and demands. The overall feeling in the community was that they were being warned and that their every move was being monitored by the regime to attempt to keep them in fear and conformity and not speak out.Paragraph. Haz clic aquí para editar.