When I first arrived in Chile, I was still a seminarian, fresh from four months at the Maryknoll language school in Bolivia, which not only introduced me to Spanish grammar and pronunciation, but also to one of the bloodiest military coups in the history of that Andean nation.
This turned out to be well-suited to what I would find in Chile. The whole country seemed traumatized, even in 1980, seven years after its own coup d’etat. People were quiet, subdued, and wary of anyone they didn’t know. But this stood in stark contrast with the ebullient spirit of the parish church of San Gabriel, where I was assigned, joining the team of three Columban priests.
We lived in a working-class area of Santiago, in the midst of concrete and wood homes that stood where land squatters’ huts had once been set up literally overnight, some 20 years earlier — on unused land that was seized by a very large and well-organized band of settlers, availing of a basic right long recognized by successive Chilean governments.
Our mission in this community was to accompany them, just as Jesus showed His own disciples how to do, while on His earthly mission, when He approached the marginalized and poorest of His own people and land — a land that was itself violently occupied by military forces of the Roman Empire, augmenting the similarity to our own situation.
Right away, I found this meant that I had to dismiss any lingering ideas of our mission as one of “educating” or “pacifying” the local population. The local Church, present for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Columban missionaries in 1953, would give us our cues and roles, showing us how this mission had already been lived for centuries, and sharing the lessons of their wise and compassionate presence among the poorest of their society.
One of our priests took me, on a dark and rainy winter evening, to an encampment of land squatters less than a mile away. Seizing land in these circumstances of a brutal military regime was nearly unthinkable, and never successful in the way such initiatives used to be, in normal times, in times of democracy.
It was cold, and the tents of plastic and cardboard, held together by pieces of wood, left the floor muddy, and were full of sick, crying children. But people with smiles welcomed us, so happy to see us visit them, and to hear their stories. Pots of hot water boiling over small fires here and there were used to give us a metal mugful of tea, in cups with bent and battered handles, before we crouched down and sat on small boxes or stools, in circles of conversations.
I heard about what it was like to live in the crowded, unhealthy conditions of the allegados, the “have-arriveds.” Young couples and their children seldom left home, but usually stayed with their parents, relatives or in-laws who already had their own houses and lots. Room was always made for growing families over the years, since the dream of saving up enough to buy or rent their own rooms or homes required a stable and minimally decent income, which was seldom found in the lives of the impoverished.
Chile has many natural riches, especially copper, that was mined for nearly a century in the north of the country, but the money that came in never seemed to trickle down to the workers of the country in sufficient abundance to make a real difference in their lives. Decent living conditions often depended, instead, on land seizures, which had worked for people in the past, but now, as we sat under the wet skies and listened to these families, there was only desperation. Those lacking adequate housing barely survived under an uncaring, violent dictatorship whose only concern was imposing order. Only in desperation did people keep trying what had worked in the past.
The mission of Jesus Christ today has meant drawing near to those who are considered first in the Kingdom of God, with eyes, ears and hearts that can attend carefully to what God shows and tells us, in the faces and voices of the poor.
The only alternative for so many of the housing-challenged in Chilean society was to continue living cheek by jowl in tense family situations with little privacy and an abundance of resentments boiling over frequently— all the ordinary tensions of family life familiar to most people throughout the world, but multiplied exponentially, for lack of adequate living space.
The mission of Jesus Christ today has meant drawing near to those who are considered first in the Kingdom of God, with eyes, ears and hearts that can attend carefully to what God shows and tells us, in the faces and voices of the poor. We believers discover the Holy Spirit there before us, revealing the path forward for the Church as we become companions to the most vulnerable in society and announce the Good News by living among them, reflecting with them on the meaning of faith in the conditions they experience, and stand by them as they gather to find the kind of community that supports one another.
In their God-given dignity as human beings, they organize themselves to allow each member to become an instrument of greater equality and just treatment, among themselves and acting as a leaven in a society that becomes more responsive to their needs, and learns to create a space at the center of its concerns. Society itself will come to manifest God’s own hand among them, in its growth into something closer to the gift of the New Creation, with New Persons born again in the living Christ present among them, leaving their selfishness and indifference behind, and raised to positions of leadership of the people.
From those first baby steps in the muddy encampment of several hundred families, I grew to learn so much about Christ’s mission in the land of Chile, and our own part in that mission as Columban lay and consecrated missioners. In the years that followed, the dictatorship fell and democracy returned, economic inequality and justice for the survivors of the terrors of the past were addressed, and the destructive exploitation of Chile’s natural resources came to be denounced — all issues pending resolution, but which the Gospel of Jesus Christ continues to illumine for all who seek the future that God speaks to us of in our hearts, as we pour ourselves battered mugs of tea and avail of the hospitality of those who are grateful for our presence among them.
Columban Fr. Robert Mosher lived for many years in Chile, and later in El Paso, Texas, before arriving at his present assignment in Bristol, Rhode Island.