Buenaventura: to dream is to resist

It had rained the night before. That afternoon, the heat and humidity were an invitation to sleep. There was very little breeze and the scorching mugginess plunged everyone into a peaceful drowsiness. Slowly, tranquility took over the group. In Buenaventura there are also moments and places of peace. This is one of them: the headquarters of the Diocesan Secretariat of Social Pastoral. A little late, the ceremony we had been waiting for began.

On one of the walls of the room hangs an image of Bishop Gerardo Valencia Cano, a precursor of liberation theology. On the other, the air conditioning emits a monotonous noise that promises to cool the environment. We gathered to celebrate the graduation of the first cohort of the Diploma in Psychosocial Care organized by Corporación Vínculos and the University of the Pacific, with the support of Dejusticia. For a few months, the members of the Social Pastoral learned tools to accompany victims in their processes of understanding, acceptance, and reframing. Among many other topics, they were able to discuss how to navigate coping, what is important when listening, why it is important to understand violence, and how to strengthen memory reconstruction processes.

A training space like this could only take place in the Social Pastoral of Buenaventura, an organization that has been sowing hope in the communities of one of the most violent cities in the country for more than twenty years. The accompaniment of conflict victims and displaced people has been just one of its flags. Its broader agenda is to build a society in which no person’s human rights are violated. It is a commitment that is born precisely in one of the most unequal cities in the country.

In 1999, the Social Pastoral emerged as a branch of the Catholic Church dedicated to helping those who need it most. After a violent or traumatic event, the first to show up in the community were the members of the Pastoral. They talked with the survivors, accompanied the victims, supported the families, and looked for ways to heal. On occasions, the Pastoral has dressed up as the State to give affected people what they need: a roof, a mattress, groceries. At other times, the Pastoral has maintained its ecclesial attire and has offered a helping hand willing to listen, advise, and mediate among those who ask for it. Its dual nature, which is only apparent as it is not a state body, has earned it the recognition of the inhabitants of Buenaventura. Everyone knows that the first person to turn to is the Pastoral.

After years of traveling the path of peace and accompanying those who suffer from war, the Pastoral also bet on social transformation. It initiated projects aimed at promoting dignified life and harmony. Ultimately, it set out to give the communities of Buenaventura the opportunity to dream.

In an overwhelming context, where poverty and violence abound, it is easy to fall into despair. Very quickly, the Social Pastoral identified that it had to fight against discouragement. Otherwise, people ran the risk of getting used to pain, suffering, hunger, and war. To dream is to resist. The possibility of building or accessing a better future is often what encourages the struggles and sacrifices of the present.

There are no magic formulas or defined recipes for sowing hope. By embarking on the difficult path of offering a better future, the Pastoral ended up doing a little bit of everything. It has not lost its way, in any case. Its focus remains the victims. Currently, it coordinates twenty-two community kitchens and delivers more than 4,000 lunches daily, trains 250 young people to improve their resilience tools, and accompanies 100 women victims of forced disappearance in their reframing processes. It also coordinates a theater group for peace and recently inaugurated a listening center for women victims to receive psychosocial care.

Although its team is not numerous, the Social Pastoral is in everything. While some attend to victims, others get mattresses for the displaced, others participate in public policy discussions, and others strengthen the Afro-Pacific identity in the territory. Therefore, the graduation was special. The group of people who graduated was special. Instead of just receiving diplomas, they shared a fruit mandala, sang, and exchanged messages of thanks. At the beginning, to dispel the grogginess, they danced to the rhythm of a children’s song. In the end, they said goodbye with the certainty that all those who attended the diploma course will continue to work for a Buenaventura free of violence, poverty, and despair.

(*) Researcher at Dejusticia.

(**) This article is part of the special #TejidoVivo, a product of a journalistic alliance between the Dejusticia study center and El Espectador.