wayow

It was the early seventies and I had just been appointed to our new mission in Paraguay. You can imagine the enthusiasm and zeal that I, a brand-new missionary, had as I prepared to take up abode in that South American country. I was anxious to get down to work learning Spanish, practising Guarani, the native Indian language and evangelizing. Before I left Trinidad I pictured a happy and wonderful mission environment where we would all work harmoniously for the greater glory of God When I arrived, however, it didn't take me long to realize that the new Trinidadian mission in Paraguay was already experiencing painful beginnings.

Within my region of Xore there were several well-functioning and flourishing basic communities, the best-known being that m Jejui. For some time this community had been under the shady scrutiny of dictator-president Alfredo Stroessner's henchmen. They believed that members of the Jejui community and other basic communities were communist rebels trying to undermine the stability of the government.

I lived in Xore about twenty miles from Jejui. The "rectory" - I like to call it that - was approximately 3 x 4 metres, with a dirt floor and a straw roof, about 50 metres from the road. I spent many happy hours in that humble little shack From time to time I saw Fr. Neil Rodriguez, my fellow Spiritan. I'll never forget the last night he came to Xore.

Saturday night
At about 8:00 in the evening it was already dark and I was sitting outside enjoying the fresh air and looking at the stars. Then I heard the sound and saw the lights of a motorbike coming down the dirt road. The rider left the bike at the roadside and started walking toward the rectory, but instead of coming straight on, he made a strange and unusual trajectory. When he finally got close enough, I realized it was Neil. "Is you boy?" I asked him in Trinidadian lingo. "Why you walked that way? Why you left the bike at the roadside?" He was breathing heavily and his face was a mixture of angel and devil. I immediately knew that all was not well. "How do you want to the news?" he asked me. "Sitting down or standing up?" I chose to sit. "The police raided and ransacked the community at Jejui," he told me, his voice quivering with emotion. "They arrested the leaders and threw them in jail."

While Neil filled me in on the details of the raid, I lit my kerosene stove to make us some coffee. We talked late into the night. We decided not to change plans already in place for the Sunday Masses, but we both felt an urgent need to be together. We thought it would be good to meet at the rectory after our Masses and stay together for a few days for mutual support.

Sunday morning
My Sunday Mass was anything but routine. Everyone in the parish knew what had taken place in Jejui and they were scared. The law of guilty by association was rife in Paraguay. Many of these campesino knew they could be rounded up at any moment, jailed, and tortured because of their association with someone unfortunate enough to be on the government black list.

After Mass, at about 12:30 pm, I jumped on my motorbike and headed home. When I arrived, Neil wasn't there yet, but hiding in the bushes was a campesino, evidently very nervous. He informed me that Neil had been arrested while saying Mass and was in the holding cell of the local police station waiting to be taken to Asuncion, the capital. "Run, Father," he told me just before he left. "Run quickly or they'll come and get you too." I was devastated.

After thanking the campesino for risking himself to help me, I started thinking about my next line of action. My first impulse was to go to the police station to help Neil. After all, I knew the top cop very well I often saw him and his family at Sunday Mass. He struck me as a good and sincere man. In my confusion I had forgotten that he was just another pawn in the hands of people higher up.

From Xore to Asuncion
My second option was to go to Asuncion where all the important decisions were made Maybe we'd be better able to help Neil and the others from there, I thought. As I was deciding what best to do, I saw the bus to Asuncion coming down the road. I quickly grabbed some money, flagged down the bus, and at 11:00 that night, after a harrowing nine-hour journey, full of dirt and sweat, I was in Asuncion with Joe Harris, another Trinidadian Spiritan.

"What to do with me?"
That night during a meeting with the Archbishop of Asuncion and my own bishop I heard that my name was mentioned at each roll call in Jejui. Although I had suspected it, here was the first proof that the police were looking for me. So "What to do with me" became an item on the agenda. The archbishop offered me refuge. He thought that I should stay at his place until things calmed down. I was now a fugitive. He took me to a self-contained bedroom on the second floor, and instructed me to stay there with the door always locked. The maid, he said, had a key to my room and would bring me my meals at the appropriate time. "No one must know you're in this place," he said. "Can the police come in here?" I asked. "They've never done it before," he answered, "but if they want to come in, no one can stop them." That night I hardly slept, in part due to tension, in part due to the cathedral clock across the road. It had a mechanical defect, and insisted on chiming loudly every fifteen minutes.

Two men on the run
After a couple of days at the chancery, I began to feel safe and thought that being a fugitive wasn't so bad after all. While I was in this quasi-euphoric state, my bedroom door opened and in came Joe Harris. "What are you doing here?" I asked him. "Boy, the people say the police looking for me too," he replied. Joe was clean-shaven. Ever since he arrived in Paraguay he always wore a long bushy beard, maybe to command more respect from his parishioners. "What happened to your beard" I inquired. "I hear that the police torture people by pulling their beards off completely, a few hairs at a time," he said. "I don't want them to do that to me if they take me in."

Joe and I spent a couple of weeks hiding in the chancery, two men on the run, until the archbishop thought the storm had blown itself out. Neil was released from jail, but understandably he was a nervous wreck. To this day he has been slow to relate what took place while he was in captivity and what torture, if any, he received at the hands of his captors. He is likewise hesitant to talk about the infamous torture chambers that allegedly exist in the Asuncion prison.

After the departure of General Stroessner, an international team of Spiritans replaced myself and the other Trinidadian pioneers who were forced to flee the country. The mission flourishes now, partly, I believe, because of the very painful beginnings of the work.