History
Fr. Frank O'Loughlin happened to be the parish priest among the migrant workers in Indiantown when the first refugees from the Guatemalan war on the indigenous appeared in the early '80s among the labor force. He became fast friends with the people, and as there was worldwide horror at the massacres, good people gathered to work on their asylum applications. Our State Department was in a tactical denial of the genocidal assault of the Guatemalan military, so asylum was denied, and at the same time, nobody was repatriated to the certain death. Eventually, in 1986, we qualified the unfortunates for legal residence as laborers necessary to the agricultural industry.
From Indiantown, people spread out to work at Fort Myers, Homestead, Naples/Immokalee and up the migrant stream. At Jupiter and Lake Worth people escaped field labor and found work in la madera, making roof trusses. The Church immigration office run by Policarpia Gaspar Xuncax became the Guatemalan Center.
Several enlightened leaders of community agencies such as Dr Malecki and Tana Ebbole helped to create the Center. They questioned whether their agencies could respond as needed to a Third World community within their districts. Margarita Pinkos would be an example of such a person at the School District. How were they to effectively deliver their services across a divide which could be measured in terms of time at about 500 years, with few shared cultural markers, and educational systems that didn't correspond? The refugees came as bloodied and traumatized survivors, but with their dignity, culture and leadership intact, capable of assisting those who would help them.
Ask County leaders "How are social services in P.B.C?" The answer well may be, "Stretched but adequate. Operating efficiently and to worthy standards." But we were lucky to have leaders who knew that they did not know whether their systems were capable of coming to grips with the challenges represented by the exiles from the villages of the Cuchumatanes Mountains.
Ask about cultural congruency and teachers, police and social workers will tell you, "I have taken the class." Agencies of good will hire a translator. Can you imagine what a lacuna that leaves when only language translators enter where cultural interpretation is required?
You don't have to imagine. Look at the data. Check the neo-natal intensive care units for the numbers of babies whose mothers were not persuaded to receive pre-natal care. Though uncomprehending of social workers, they might have been persuaded by people of their own culture who spoke of healthy practice in the terms with which they customarily imagine it. Check the early school years for children whose entry into education is a miserable set-back. Look at the FCAT performance of the exiles' children. An educational catastrophe for the County, it requires nothing less than a vigorous turnaround within the exile communities that reaches every family.
As these stateless uprooted people are generously allowed to find their feet again in this society, they need to establish in what they are rooted. For many it is in their Faith, and some villages reunite as church. Many young people, unhappily, find their American home in gangs.
The hardest evidence of institutional failure with the children of Third World U.S.A. is the extent of the gangs. Miami students who visit as mentors during the year and build strong affirming relationships at Camp are shattered to find children they came to love in this Summer's activities, already displaying gang tattoos on their bodies for Facebook.
The Guatemalan Maya Center has two programs for grade school children, housed courtesy of supportive Principals at Highland and South Grade elementary schools. The Escuelita Maya receive 120 students from 2.30 to 6.00 each school day and all day whenever school is out. The escuelita at its most ambitious hopes to stand in loco parentis, assisting with homework, tutoring, monitoring grades and report cards, consulting with teachers, etc. At minimum it assures that little ones are not on neighborhood streets or in houses shared by other families. The escuelitas offer an ideal way for volunteers to meet and work with the children; Ladies of the Jewish Federation, several of them teachers, have tutored the sixty kids at Highland.
Nobody doubted in the early days that the children would be happy in their schools and return the love of their teachers. We did worry that as they mastered our local ways and assimilated, they might distance themselves from parents for whom school systems, much of our culture and even English language continue to be a mystery. Wonderful that they should love Miss Smith and Miss Jones, but what would become of them if they lost confidence in Papa and Mama, in Abuela and Tio?
Our answer to the threat of a West Side Story was that they should come from Miss Smith and Jones to spend the afternoon in relationship with Maya figures like their fathers and mothers. Our star in this respect has been Zoila Jimenez Xuncax.
Zoila was the teacher at an indigenous school when the army bombed the building. Through most of the Center's lifetime she has been for parents and students an embodiment of the community's commitment to its children. Her decades of service ended only recently, when she resigned rather than impose tariffs on the parents.
At this stage of its transition to life in Florida, the community of Maya in exile needs as much as ever the goodwill and assistance of our PBC community. At current performance levels, many Maya are missing the bus to a successful transition. They are getting locked into a struggling underclass. Too many beautiful young girls and boys are failing to find America. Their caring school principals notwithstanding, they are doomed to drift demoralized into gangs. To value their true identity, they need friends, the help of afternoon tutors who will take them through Reading Plus, The Path to Read, learning drills, Math flash cards etc.. They need new escuelitas at the middle -school level, which will form partnerships with Boys & Girls Club, Boys Town, Homeboys and other such innovators in youth work.
It goes without saying that accompanying the exiled Maya in their couple of generations of transition is a great privilege. That the success of the journey calls for the help of some capable people is apparent. We need friends.
