Introduction
This is the testimony of a friend of mine, Oscar Lopez, whom I knew in Honduras. When I met him, he had been a Christian for about ten years. He was a good student (studying to be a priest), a good father who took care of his daughters, and an able pastor. I later learned that he became a highly respected and effective priest, committed to Jesus Christ and open to the power of the Spirit.
I have written his story in a literary fashion, supplying some typical descriptions of life in San Pedro Sula. All the essential facts, however, are true -- his mother working for the rich man, his early happiness, the loss of her job, his being beaten by his stepfather, fleeing home and hiding under car, working in the dump, his job as a carrier, falsely accused, escape from prison, and onward to the end of his story. Here is his story.
Oscar's Testimony
Oscar Lopez was born in the colonia, "Las Brisis," located on the southeast side of San Pedro Sula. While he was still a baby his mother got a job working as a maid in the house of Anselmo Callejas, the owner of one of the largest department stores in San Pedro Sula. She and her baby lived in the maid's quarters, a little room at the back of the rich man's house. It was about six by eight feet, with a floor of cement, concrete block walls, and a tin roof. At one end of the room there was a toilet, a laboratory by the toilet, and in that corner, a pipe protruding from the wall for a shower. When tiny, Oscar slept with his mother. When the grew older, he slept on the floor on a pad. In the morning his mother would fix them breakfast. He never forgot the food - tortillas, breads, eggs, sausages, frijoles, rice, coffee, coca-cola's. They would sit together in a room at a small table, eating and talking, and listening to the radio. During the day he played in the yard, playing with the rich man's son. There was a mango tree there, overhanging the house, and in the months of June and July when the mangoes were ripe, they would climb on the roof of the house and stand among the limbs and eat mangoes. The house was located on the lower slopes of the mountain and they could see the city in its entirety, the far mountains on the east and the plain to the north opening toward the sea. In the center of the city was the central plaza, facing the plaza on the east was the Cathedral, and on the north, the San Pedro Sula, the city's best hotel. To the south was the stadium, and in the distance, one could see the tops of grain elevators and other buildings, houses and roads interspersed among the trees. All seemed as it should be on those days: the light blue of the sky, the sounds of animals and human voices, the taste of the mangoes, the breeze in and among the leaves, and the city stretched out in the distance, hazy in the sun, and there, below him in the yard, his mother hanging out the washing for the rich man's family. Oscar was never to forget those days. He was never hungry then, nor was he ever afraid.
When Oscar was six, Callejas moved to the capital and his mother lost her job. She was adrift for some time, living with her sister and then her mother, and then she moved in with a man. Shortly thereafter, the man began to beat her and Oscar was beaten as well. Oscar endured this, running away at times, but always coming back. When he was ten, he struck his stepfather for the first time. While Oscar was trying to escape, his stepfather managed to hit him with the flat side of a machete. He outran the man and spent the night hidden under a car, nursing his arm. The next day he moved in with his aunt, his mother's sister who lived in a shantytown at the edge of the city dump. He worked in the dump for years, scavenging food, wire, glass, paper, putting things in categories, crawling like an at through the refuse of the city. He earned the equivalent of two or three dollars a week. There were days when he almost nothing to eat, and he would at times drink the aguas negras, the sewer water from the drainage ditches.
When he was fourteen, he was offered a job as a messenger, carrying documents and messages all over San Pedro Sula on a bicycle. To get the job, he had to provide a bicycle, but he managed to do it and started earning about ten dollars a week. He made friends with a number of young men his age. They were young and homeless, on their own, working in various unskilled jobs and poorly paid. Almost all had girlfriends, most of whom were maids. When the day was over, they would visit them. The girls would come outside after the chores were done and stand by the walls and gates of the houses in the cool of the evening. Oscar at his friends would come and talk with them. Sometimes, late at night, after hours, Oscar and his friends would gather at a restaurant. They would bring their girlfriends, sing songs, laugh and make jokes, talking late into the night drinking cokes and beer, and eating tajaditas, enchiladis, and sandwiches with mustard. Once Oscar got sick with a fever and chills and lay in bed for some days, gradually getting worse. He knew he was dying, but he had no money for a doctor since he could not work while sick. His friends collected money, got him to a doctor, and bought the medicine he needed. He quickly recovered and never forgot his friends for this. When he grew older, they drifted apart. He didn't often think of them, but he never forgot them. Every now and then he would hear news of one of them, or see one of them on the streets of San Pedro Sula.
When he was seventeen, he was falsely accused of stealing $4000 from the company for which he worked. His name was turned into the DIN, a special arm of the police force. He was beaten repeatedly by the DIN until he confessed, and then beaten some more and thrown in a cell crammed with prisoners. He lay there and became violently sick with dysentery. Two days later, it was discovered that it was his superior who had stolen the money. Oscar was thrown out on the street. His aunt came and picked him up, nursing him for nine months until he recovered.
He got a job as a messenger for another company. One day he received a message, the owner of the former company wanted to see him. He arrived at nine and the secretary told him to wait. He sat against the wall, waiting, feeling the cool of the air-conditioner. Then he was called in and a man in a business suit looked up at him from behind a desk. It was the owner. The man got up, reached into a desk drawer, got a piece of paper and handed it to him. It was a check for $4000. Oscar stood still for moment. Then he tore the check into pieces, dropped them on the carpet, and left the room without a word. The man was swearing and screaming at him as he left.
He met a woman named Juana, and they began to live together. Two children were born. Oscar drank away most of his meager income and often spent the night in the bars and whorehouses of San Pedro Sula. He sometimes beat Juana and the two children. In time they broke apart and he began to live alone.
One day, as he rode his bike along the concrete streets of the upper part of the city, he found himself thinking of his neighbors. They had told him they were praying for him, and they had asked him to go with them to their church, a charismatic church located in their colonia. The thought occurred to him that he could visit the church that very night. It was a Wednesday, the night of their midweek service. He had never gone before. He looked around him for a moment. He always felt alone in the upper zones, yet strangely free, alone among the fine homes surrounded by their walls with bougainvillea, each set in a garden of palms, flowering shrubs, and tended lawns, and beyond them all, the mountain and the sky.
At about five in the afternoon, the sun passed beyond the mountain. The world felt different, the heat was past, a time of rest and cool was coming. The day waned. He made his final delivery and turned for home. He alternated blocks, going south and east, the block downhill giving him the speed to go the block south on level ground. The city lights come on, but he soon left the well-lighted zones. He road on into the darkening streets until he came to the periferico, the road that circled the city and marked its boundary. The periferico was lit by rows of streetlights, and consisted of two lanes in each direction divided by median. There Oscar turned left, always descending, passing increasingly dilapidated workshops and houses, trash, bare earth, weeds, people walking, or standing around talking, or waiting for buses. Finally, he came to the turn-off to his colonia. There were few streetlights in his colonia. He turned right and disappeared into the darkness.
He rode on in the darkness, virtually oblivious to the world around him, steering instinctively among the potholes and the trash. On all sides of him were the sights and sounds of densely-packed life. The roads were of dirt, and narrow, squeezed between dwellings crammed side-by-side. The houses were mostly wooden shacks, a few of cinderblock. They were dimly lit from within, candles, flickering TV screens, bare light bulbs. On all sides were sounds, voices, music, dogs barking, chickens, the roar of a occasional bus, the sounds of traffic coming and going in the distance. The streets were hazy, smoky from trash fires, and there were areas of open sewage. There were few trees, mostly almonds with their symmetrical branches radiating out from their central trunks. Some of the workshops were still open, they bicycle repair shop, radio and TV repair, car body shops. Many of their employees were boys, or teenagers, dirty and ragged. From time to time a room on the corner was lit up, a ?pulperia,? a tiny one-room store. Oscar passed the corner where he often stopped to buy a bit of food or something to drink. He recognized some of his friends. They were watching a tiny TV and talking. He stopped a second, deciding to buy a Coca-Cola and a little packet of Ritz crackers with peanut butter. He finished the coke and then rode on.
From a distance Rub?n could see and hear the church. Powerful lights on the top of the church lit up the street and blaring loudspeakers broadcast the worship service to the neighborhood. People were standing around outside talking, a group of teenagers were looking at a moped one of them had purchased, and a number of adults formed a circle just outside the door. One of them recognized Oscar and greeted him as he rode into the light. Oscar stopped, the friend approached, and after Oscar had locked his bike to the iron fence in front of the church, he was taken in and introduced to the circle of friends by the door. They greeted him with smiles and handshakes. They talked awhile. At once they recognized that Oscar was not a believer, and that it was his first time. They were happy that he was there, looking at him with smiling faces. Then they went into the church. The congregation was singing, driven on by guitars and tambourines, "Alabar?, alabar?, alabar?, alabar?, alabar? a mi se?or" "I will praise, I will praise, I will praise my Lord" Up in front, on the wall behind the altar, there was a life-size statue of Christ hanging on the cross. His shoulders were hanging forward but his head was lifted up, and with a mournful gaze, he seemed to be staring straight at anyone who looked his way. There was blood on his face from the thorns, and blood on his hands and feet. They sang on, one little ?corito? after another, clapping hands, smiling, and laughing at the wit of some of the lyrics. Then the padre got up to preach. The sermon was straight and to the point. They must break with sin, with whoring and drinking, with witchcraft and adultery. Oscar listened intently, and when the time came for the Holy Communion, he decided to join with them and he was changed forever. For there in the circle of light, surrounded by the smiling faces of his friends, battling the demons that laid them waste, suffering the abuse of the world, and even of the padre who berated them, they entered into the Kingdom of God. For Jesus could not forget that it was they who had known him in his suffering and received him as his own, and for that, he made his home with them upon the margins of the world.
