Brazil – Page 17 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

On the way to Ipê Amarelo

13 March, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

At four in the morning I am already on my way to the airport with Cristian, as his brother and nephew are taking us. I keep meeting hospitality and availability wherever I go.

Cristina has decided to accompany us for a few days to Ipê Amarelo, Belo Horizonte, Besides the years in the Amazons area among the indigenous people, she was also in mission with this community as formator and coordinator of the group. So I have the good fortune of her company and teaching and with Lourdes, we will be able to talk during these days.

Fr. Joaquín, a Comboni Missionary of the community of Contagem, where Ipê Amarelo is located, and Lourdes came to meet us and we ate at the Comboni community.

In Ipê Amarelo we have a house for formation and mission. They are connected with the Comboni house, a point of reference for various social programs involved in the community such as psychological care, health care and alternative medicine, women’s groups, children programs, cultural activities, handicrafts and recycling…

Besides this more formal part of the activity, a lot more is given by the community in accompanying and visiting families in the community, going house to house greeting one by one. I had the good fortune to spend these days visiting together with Cristina and Lourdes, sometime together and sometime separately. It was a precious time. To see how people appreciate them, know their lives, their history, their worries and how in conversation the normal every day worries surface and they, always attentive, take mental notes, advise, help and/or take notes in order to return home to think how they could help.

We had Mass with the community, where I was introduced and welcome together with Cristina. Then Lourdes organized a meal with lots of people who are close to the CLM. Among others there were Tere and Alejo and their daughters, who cooperate a lot in the formation of the CLM and lead a beautifully committed life, Vanesa who was in Mozambique with the CLM, with her husband and her little daughter, Adelia who is a CLM very involved in social issues such as APAC and others, all told about 30 people.

We were also able to visit the mother and the sister of Marcelo, a CLM whom I will meet later in Balsas. I am enchanted by this family spirit that embraces the CLM.

The next day we found the time to go with Adelia, another CLM from Petrolândia which is about a half hour away, to visit Ouro Preto. It is a colonial town from where the Portuguese were excavating the gold mines with the work of Black slaves from Africa.

Later in Mariana we ate with Paulinha, the CLM’s lawyer. She tells us about the struggle facing them, starting with the break of the dam and the responsibilities of the mining companies that keep on exploiting the area. It is an ecological disaster to which one must add the destruction of humble villages with loss of human lives for not having foreseen the events and let people know. Naturally, they try to wash their hands of it, taking no responsibility and persecute those who fight for the people by accusing them of providing bad coverage that chases away tourists from the area.

The next day we went to Itauna to visit an APAC. Can you imagine a prison where the prisoners have the keys to everything? Our visit to the prison was guided by two “recovering” [the prisoners are so called in general because they are all undergoing recovery. They are all called by name and wear a tag with the name on it.] They showed us both the semi-open system and the enclosed system. The only thing, in order to pass from one side to the other there was an agent present while the “recoverings” were opening the door.

It is a prison system that costs 1/3 of the normal one, has lots of volunteers and a community that is involved. Recidivism is 28%, compared with 85% in the rest of the country and 75% globally.

We ate with the prisoners of the locked up part: salad, mashed pumpkin, rice, beans and chicken lasagna. In the afternoon we spent time talking with Valdeci [the CLM who is the coordinator of the various APAC, more than 60 in Brazil and with others being opened in other countries]

I do not want to linger any further but I am giving you a link to our blog where recently we published an issue on the prize he recently received as an executive (there you will also find more about APAC)

https://lmcomboni.org/blog/en/prize-for-a-social-entrepreneur/https://lmcomboni.org/blog/premio-de-emprendedor-social/

The next morning another very early rising and again back to the airport on the way to Rondônia.

Greetings,

Alberto

Time in Curitiba

10 March, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

The trip to Curitiba became a little heavy, traveling at night with your knees wedged into the seat in front of you is not really comfortable. But, as Cristina says, it is one of disadvantages we tall people have.

Cristina, a Brazilian CLM and member of the central committee, andAlex, a Comboni postulant, took me to the postulancy where I will stay these days.

Since Cristina was busy, I went with the Comboni community to a lecture on a thesis about the decree ad gentes and an experience with the Pokot of Uganda. As you can see, in this mission trip there is a little bit of everything.

Later in the afternoon I was able to go see Guilherma, a Brazilian CLM who did a lot of work in Mozambique. She is in poor health. We hope she will recover her strength. We spent a good afternoon together, conversing and snacking.

In the evening we attended a formation program on global violence as part of the fraternity campaign of this year in Brazil. It is part of the formation given in the Comboni parish of Curitiba. These were three days of evening formation sessions and they were attended by 110 people. I thought it was marvelous to see this expression of a Church being formed and attempting to be involved in the reality in which it lives, looking for answers. This sort of thing is not easily seen elsewhere.

But not everything is meetings and gatherings. The following morning they took me to visit the botanical gardens of Curitiba. There was time to share with the community of the postulancy and to visit the city.

In the afternoon I met with part of the CLM group of Curitiba. They took me to see the places where they want to get involved as a group. We spent time with the “catadores.” These are people who gather non-organic garbage, organize it, select it and sell it to make a living. This way they take charge of recycling for the city. They have formed an association to which they want to give a legal form in order to improve their living standards and here is where the local CLM group cooperates.

Later we also visited a community bakery, organized as a cooperative, both as work and as earnings. All this happens in a neighborhood at the periphery of the city (a rather violent one, to be sure). This is another area where our CLM are working and cooperating.

In the evening I was able to get together with the CLM group of Curitiba, and we had time to share about our CLM at the international level, to tell them about what other groups and communities are doing and to answer their questions. It was a good time where we could share the life of our CLM around the world. Let us hope that some will also feel inspired to leave for other places as the Brazilian group has been doing since forever.

Greetings,

Alberto

Visit to the CLM in Brazil

7 March, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

Greetings to all.

As many of you know, I am in Brazil and I will try (with a little delay) to jot down some of my experiences in this marvelous country as I go about learning first-hand the commitment of our CLM in Brazil.

When I arrived in São Paulo, Lourdes (the CLM coordinator for Brazil) was waiting for me. We spent the afternoon visiting the Avenida Paulista, the cathedral, and the surrounding areas with brother João Paulo, whom I had met in Mozambique.

The following day we went to the home of Flavio’s parents, another CLM whom I will visit in the Nordeste.

We stopped briefly for lunch on a plate of “beef, rice and black beans” at Flavio’s parents’ house before continuing our journey. The father took us to visit the shrine of the Virgin Aparecida. It was an obligatory stop in Brazil so that she will be with us on this journey. Without any doubt, she is a strong spiritual presence for and the protector of the people of Brazil. And all this with the good fortune of living it through the eyes of Lourdes and Carlos, Flavio’s dad.

After having spent several hours visiting and attending Mass at the shrine, we left Lourdes at the bus station because she was going back to Ipê Amarelo, where I will see her again later, and we rested briefly before boarding the night bus for Curitiba.

A first few days of family welcome.

Greetings,

Alberto

Prize for a Social Entrepreneur

12 November, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

Valdeci Antonio Ferreira is the founder of the Comboni Lay Missionaries in Brazil. He is 55 years old and 34 of them have been dedicated to prisoners.

After many years as head of the Assistance for the Protection of Prisoners (APACE) he is currently president of the Brazilian Fraternity of Assistance to Prisoners (FBAC). During this past weekend the daily paper Folha de São Paulo awarded him the prize of social entrepreneur for the system of humane incarceration.

Our sincerest congratulations to him and his cooperators.

May Comboni Always be the great intercessor in this journey towards Resurrection.

Lourdes, CLM Brazil

Folha de São Paulo

Valdeci Ferreira, of the FBAC, was given an award for the system of humane incarceration.

A volunteer for more than 30 years, Valdeci Ferreira of FBAC was recognized for the system of humane incarceration.

He is the leader of FBAC, a federation connected with APACS (Association for the Protection and Assistance of convicts). His mission is to spread this innovative methodology of resocialization of convicts, which aims at recovering the detainees, protect society, help the victims and promote restorative justice.

Receiving the prize, the entrepreneur said that, 34 years ago when he first visited a prison in Itaúna, MG, he could not have imagined receiving the main award of this evening. Visibly moved he said: “Life did not place rugs on my path for me to walk on, but rather stairs and today this is another stairway we are climbing. I need to share this moment with all those we were recovered by passing through APAC and with those who are still there and are the reason for our work and for what I had to give up in my life.”

One of them came up to the stage in his wheelchair. “Here in front of you is someone who went through APAC. I am a recovered individual and I believed in this man,” said Rinaldo Guimarães. “Valdeci always remembers a quote by St. Augustine: “Hope has two daughters: indignation and courage. Indignation is needed in order not to accept things as they are, and courage, like this man’s, to change things and make a difference,” he concluded.

In recognition of his work, Ferreira was elected as Social Entrepreneur of the Year among 100 candidates in the largest competition in the area of Latin America, organized by the Folha in cooperation with the Schwab Foundation.

It is estimated that more than 33 thousand Brazilian convicts have already passed through APACS, units of humanized prisons without arms or armed guards. This alternative system today houses 3,500 prisoners divided in 48 units across Brazil. This method is being tried in 19 other countries.

In 1972 this organization developed 12 elements such as work, the value of the person, legal assistance, family, meritocracy, and the principle of self-help in recuperation.

This method has suffered a mere 20% to 28% of recidivism versus the 85% of the common prison system with a cost of only one third of the regular prisons.

Ferreira ran for the grand prize against Bernardo Bonjean, 40, the leader of Avante, an organization offering credit and humanly acceptable terms for micro-businesses not accepted by the banks, and Ronaldo Lemos, 41, of the Institute of Technology and Society (ITS) which developed the application Cambiamos, a tool of direct democracy for the collection of digital signatures in favor of projects of popular empowerment.

Piquiá

8 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

I went to see an open cut mine, the largest iron ore mine in the world which is located in the mountains of Carajás. When I got there, I was overwhelmed by its size, I took a technical look at that exploitation and thought: at one time I would have given anything to work in a place like this… Then I looked at the reality of this place and felt great sorrow remembering all those who are affected by the impact it has for hundreds of miles. It was not by chance that we had to travel an entire night to visit this mine, since between the mountains of Carajás and São Luís stands Piquiá.

And in Piquiá, where our mission is located, we are well aware of the social and environmental impact of the mine. The ore extracted from there is taken to Piquiá by train to be treated in the various local iron plants, then still by train it is taken to the harbor of Sâo Luís from where it is shipped all over the world.

Piquiá is a neighborhood on the outskirts of Acailândia, MA and is divided into High Piquiá, where we live, and Lower Piquiá, where the iron plants are located in people’s backyard.

The inhabitants of Lower Piquiá suffer daily from the contamination coming from the factories. With the coming of summer, the contamination increases and, on a daily basis, one sees black clouds spewing from the smokestacks without any emission control and without any type of government control. The amount of iron dust found in the air, and the damage caused to our health and wellbeing are staggering. While visiting the families in Lower Piquiá, I could not remain indifferent to the stories of life and sufferings encountered by this community due to the contamination and the destructive environmental impact caused in this area that used to be a little paradise.

Over the years, there have been many struggles, the people united to fight for their rights, for an healthy and clean place where to live and, little by little, they have had some success against these giants in order to give dignity to their lives. Currently, they already have a piece of land and a project for the construction of a new neighborhood, “Piquiá de la Conquista,” removed from the source of contamination. Bureaucracy is still the main obstacle, but hope still lives on…

Lower Piquiá, already resettling!

Liliana and Flávio CLM Brazil