特派团办公室

In a quiet conference room of a Franciscan Brother’s retreat house in 新墨西哥, I sat in a prayer circle with other Lasallian educators.  The organizers asked me to recite a poem authored by Archbishop Oscar Romero, “预言一个不属于我们自己的未来,，部分内容如下:

这就是我们的宗旨:

我们播下的种子总有一天会成长.

我们浇灌已经种下的种子，

知道自己拥有未来的希望.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

…

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between

建筑大师和工人.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.

我们是一个不属于我们自己的未来的先知.

Upon reading the poem I immediately added it to my daily meditation as it seemed like a natural extension to my favorite parable.

A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, 天上的飞鸟也把它吃尽了.  And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, 它因为缺乏水分而枯萎了. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.  And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bore fruit a hundredfold.

St. 路加福音8:5 -8

正如我后来对其他老师说的那样, it was during the study of those two lessons that I realized my calling as a Lasallian educator was, 事实上, 神圣的职责.

During the July of 2005, through the efforts of St. Mary’s College and the Catholic Institute of Lasallian 社会行动 (CILSA) I attended, 以及SMC的其他教授, the Lasallian Social Justice Institute’s Conference on Global Economic Justice in Texas, 华雷斯城(墨西哥)和梅塞拉公园, 新墨西哥.  The first half of the week-long workshop was conducted as an immersion program in Mexico where we spoke with Mexican and Central American migrants and non-profit organizers on both sides of the Texas/Mexico border.  The latter half of the week was spent in 新墨西哥 where we attended several workshops regarding the economic realities of globalization for citizens of both Mexico and the United States; evening sessions focused upon the teaching of St. John Baptist de La Salle and our role as educators in Lasallian institutions.

As I focused on Archbishop Romero’s words and the Scripture, I began likening my teaching to that of the Sower.  While the seeds of lessons I plant may immediately bloom, 晚些时候发芽, 或者干脆不扎根, I believe that my teaching methodologies and philosophies provide the students with the foundations necessary to learn, 成长, 和适应.  It my privilege to teach at a Lasallian institution where such work with students is valued and I can carry on in the spirit of St. La Salle.

——Dana R. 埃雷拉,Ph值.D. 人类学副教授

Juarez, MX is considered the murder capital of the world; drug
暴力已经失控. 每天都有关于暴力事件的报道
that is terrorizing the lives of the residents at this border town;
美国人被警告远离华雷斯. 但是生活还在继续
there are children to educate and parents who need help to support
他们的孩子.  谁在帮助他们?? 这是一个关于如何
remarkable woman and a group of Lasallians are making a difference
in the lives of children in a small colonia outside of Juarez.

克里斯蒂娜的孩子

If you had visited Anapra in 1999, you would have found an
impoverished desert community just outside of Juárez, Mexico where
many residents lived in makeshift homes often constructed from
木托盘，硬纸板，轮胎和沥青纸. 日日夜夜，
children played in the dirt streets; there were no playgrounds,
recreation centers, libraries, or athletic fields.

That same year on one of those streets you may have noticed that
instead of playing in the streets, the children who lived near 克里斯蒂娜
埃斯特拉达开始在放学后顺道拜访她.  你会
seen them clustered around plastic tables in 克里斯蒂娜’s yard reading
做家庭作业.  克里斯蒂娜也在那里，提供帮助
鼓励.  如果你一直看着这一切，你会的
found yourself wondering how 克里斯蒂娜 was handling the ever-
increasing number of children crowding into her yard and her home.
Today if you visited Anapra, as we did as participants in the Lasallian
Social Justice Institute, you would see children working in one of the

three educational buildings; the older students are tutoring the
年轻的. There is now a small library and computers available
对学生来说. 克里斯蒂娜 and other adults also teach the children
about their culture – through dance, costume, and music.  克里斯蒂娜
additionally serves as mentor and surrogate mother to many of the
社区的孩子.

If you had not been in Anapra since 1999, you might be shocked to
see that 克里斯蒂娜 now works with over 250 children and that her
students are graduating from high school and going to the university.
There are now ten youth in post-secondary education, training to be
护士、心理学家和教师. 你会意识到我
impressive accomplishment this is, given the demographics and past
阿纳普拉教育成就的历史. 你会认出
that, against all odds, 克里斯蒂娜 is creating an educational miracle in
Anapra.
 
阿纳普拉教育项目

Though 克里斯蒂娜 was working a miracle, she could not do so without
financial support, and that is why we created the Anapra Education
项目. We are educators, students, staff members, and graduates,
primarily from Saint Mary’s College, who were influenced by the
Lasallian Social Justice Institute in El Paso/Juarez where we first
became familiar with the work of 克里斯蒂娜 Estrada.   在访问
Anapra, we were confronted with the stark poverty there, yet
heartened by 克里斯蒂娜’s work to educate every child in the
贫困的殖民地. 受到克里斯蒂娜的承诺和服务的启发
to her community, we dedicated ourselves to raising funds to provide
scholarships to pay for the children’s education there.
Over the past five years, with the donation of one generous benefactor
and many smaller, yet signficant donations, we have raised over

25万美元帮助克里斯蒂娜的孩子们. 我们的工作开始是因为我们
were introduced to the Lasallian mission in the dusty colonia of
Anapra, MX; we continue because we want to keep the lessons
learned there about poverty, injustice, and hope alive by Living
Lasallian.

As teachers, we often speak of our goal as the transformation of the student. 这是, we don’t simply want to communicate facts to young women and men; we want to foster the kind of educational environment that allows for radical changes in their perception of the world—a world that they thought they knew. 这些都是众所周知的“啊哈”时刻. As I look back on my own intellectual and spiritual 成长th, I count myself fortunate to have had a few such experiences where data and knowledge suddenly became wisdom and insight. One of the most poignant occurred in the summer of 2005. I had just completed my first year as a faculty member at Saint Mary’s, and I had been invited to learn a little bit more about the Lasallian mission by joining a cohort of educators on the U.S.-Mexico border for a week of education and immersion into the issues of immigration and 社会 justice. I learned a great deal in the course of the week about politics, 对经济学, 关于天主教社会训导. I also met some wonderful people on both sides of the border whose faces I can still see. However, I already knew people who were immigrants and knew their stories. 我也知道一些复杂的法律, 社会, 以及我们这个世界面临的经济现实. 我所不知道的——或者更好的, 从来没有理解过——边界的现实是什么, 生活在世界的边界上是什么感觉.

We spent the first several days of our trip on the Mexican side of the border, 在华雷斯城, sleeping at a shelter that existed to allow migrants to gain their strength, before they attempted the hazardous journey across the deserts of southern Texas and 新墨西哥. It was a stark and uncomfortable reality of poverty and heat, but not radically different than the Mississippi delta region that I call home. 事实上, the shelter was still within the city limits of Juarez, which resembles cities in the United States in many ways, 与社区, megamarts, 和高速公路. It was only when we left the ciudad that the world changed. 华雷斯的郊区是殖民地, shanty towns of squatters who live at the ends of civilization. We had the opportunity to spend some time with the people of one such colonia named Anapra. 混凝土块和金属壁板, along with an assortment of scattered trash from our world, 构成了那里人们的家园. Wires littered the dusty streets as the people siphoned electricity from nearby electric poles. 没有下水道，没有市政设施. 这是一种艰苦奋斗的生活, though there were rays of hope in a local priest and a local teacher, 是谁为社区服务了这么多. As hard as it was to see such poverty, the drive home was so much harder. 我们爬进我们的货车, thankful for the comfort of air conditioning in the sweltering heat of northern Mexico, and we drove the several miles of dust back to the paved highway that led to the city. 在泥土和混凝土的交界处, 我抬头看向我的左边, 去看一座美丽的石头和玻璃建筑, shining in the afternoon sun no more than a hundred yards away. 我问司机那是什么建筑. His response – It was part of the University of Texas at El Paso. 这句“啊哈”深深击中了我. It suddenly dawned on me, the reality of their world, the reality of a border life. It was not just that the people in Anapra lived in abject poverty and struggle. 这是悲哀的，也是可怕的. But what is unthinkable is that they live in such poverty quite literally in the shadow of such wealth—and no matter how close it is, 他们永远不能碰它. 它比他们高得多, 诱人的, 羞辱, mocking and—I am quite sure—completely unaware of those who live in the valley below.

Karl Marx once said that no man knows that he lives in a shack until his neighbor builds a castle next door. Before my trip to the border with the Lasallian Social Justice Institute, 我不知道这是什么意思. 现在我无法以其他方式看待这个世界.

扎克Flanagin

神学副教授 & 宗教研究

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