La Chureca, some thoughts

It’s Hell on Earth, but not for the obvious reasons. Sure, there’s fire everywhere, caused by spontaneous combustion that occurs when the intense sunlight heats mixtures of dangerous chemicals, which creates a dense smoke that makes it hard to breath; there’s the putrid stench of rotting rot, which makes you not want to breath even if you could and wanted to; there’s an abundance of hazards, due to the shattered remains of old appliances, out of order machines, empty bottles, and the like, as well as to dangerous chemicals from batteries, house cleaners, paints, glues, etc.; and there’s rampant disease (in spite of extremely high immune systems) as a result of the poor living conditions such as polluted water, unhealthy diets, the lack of showers and toilets, and overpopulated homes. These reasons would suffice to make someone see why this place is a living Hell. But they are not the real reasons.
As bad, and valid, as the conditions in La Chureca are, the people can, and do, live with them. Granted, it’s not a glamorous life by any means, but the physical conditions are not the most deteriorating thing that one can find slinking and crawling in the shadows of La Chureca. No, for that one must look into the lives—neigh, the hearts (believe it or not, they have every bit as much a heart as you or I if not more)—of the people living there. Most of these have two sides, some more, some only one (those with one-sided hearts are usually young, and are yet to grasp what is going on around them). The two sides are, for lack of better one-word definitions, public and private, or inward and outward, open and personal. Outwardly, the children are usually very lively, running around, playing and laughing, or teasing. But inwardly, these kids have some of the biggest wounds this world can dish out. They are victims of their parents’ decisions, which are as follows: 1. The decision to move to La Chureca in the first place. People come from all over the country to work in La Chureca, where the girls come easy and the drugs come cheap. 2. The decision to drink, smoke, and use other drugs (glue sniffing is the favorite). 3. Finally, the decision to use their kids as sources of income, punching bags, and sex objects.
The parents are victims of their own decisions, we cannot forget, but these children are born or brought into this Hell without a say in the matter. By the age of ten, maybe twelve, these children have been through it all. For the girls that carries a little more weight. While the boys do experience physical abuse, the girls are faced with rape and other forms of sexual abuse from their fathers or from other men in La Chureca. Prostitution is a plague that these girls are pushed into by their own families. From a young age, girls here learn that the only way to interact with men is to try to please their lustful eyes and hearts. What we would call normal relationships almost do not exist between men and girls in La Chureca. For the boys, they go to work as soon as physically able, often before the age of eight. Drilled into their minds is the belief that they will never be anybody, but rather will continue in the lives of their fathers before them, without a shred of self-esteem or value. They learn how to cope, often through the use of drugs and alcohol. There is a shame in this, but it is not strong enough to stop it. Their hunger, pain, and feeling of abandonment and worthlessness are seemingly insuperable.
I guess that in light of all of this, my goal is simply to pour value into these youthful hearts. Value and hope. It starts with value and hope because I still don’t know enough Spanish to really communicate the Gospel in a deep enough way. All I can do at this time is demonstrate His love for them through spending time with all of them. I just started to take kids out of La Chureca on my own, even if just for a brief moment. I don’t really know what my goal is in doing that, but it gives me some time to get to know them better and it gives them time away from all of the mess that they call home. That in itself justifies it I suppose. To me it’s just fun… I almost do it out of selfishness. I want so badly to see these kids change their futures, to see them grab hold of the life that Christ is calling them to, and to accept the love He has for them, which is so often hard to receive.
For me it’s a little easier to realize—I mean the whole world that I come from tells me I’m valuable. I have a loving family, friends, and church; I live in one of the wealthiest places on the planet, where marketing schemes constantly tell me that I’m the only one that matters; and I have everything I need and more as far as living goes. Then I look at these kids, who have broken if not shattered families, who are constantly told that they don’t matter, and who can’t afford even a bite to eat or a new pair of sandals to replace the ones they broke last month. How can God possibly love them? Better yet, how can He love them and let this place exist?
Well, why does Hell exist? It is for the same reason that La Chureca exists—La Chureca, in the sense of the community of people living there, not the trash dump itself. The reason, the real reason, is Sin. And Sin sucks. It ruins everything. Luckily, God has it on a leash, but even so, it has a potency that leaves quite a scar. Living in the thick of it for too long can really do some damage to a human soul. I’m not sure I believe that the damage is irreversible, but it can be pretty darn close. While nothing is impossible for God, nothing is possible without Him. And His ways are not our ways, so I must remember that, even though I may try with every ounce of my strength to change things, the result is ultimately in His hands. And even though it’s often hard to understand how they work, like the question of why do the La Churecas of this world exist, those hands are capable of unbelievably more than I could ever dream up, much less do on my own. Thus, for now I am living with the hope that something wild will happen here, something for which the credit can only be given to Him who reigns over all that is, and was, and ever will be.