MISSIONARIES OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD

CPPS Today - Cover Story

Up the Polochic River Road

C.PP.S. Missionaries stand with the people of La Tinta
through high points and low spots.

The Polochic River runs alongside the road from the highway up and then down the mountain to the valley village of La Tinta, Guatemala. Sometimes the river is little more than a stream; in other places it roars and tumbles. The terrain is meant for rivers, and offers the Polochic endless opportunities to explore as it twists and turns down the mountainside.

Roads are less adaptable. The road to La Tinta, called the Polochic River Road by locals, is narrow and winding. The vehicles that travel on it rattle and bounce, the drivers intrepidly shifting and down shifting, slowing or not slowing for ruts and puddles as their patience or their passengers will allow.

Navigate it they must, for it is the only road to La Tinta. Alongside the road grow the smooth and stately ceiba trees, the national tree of Guatemala, or fields of corn whose spent stalks are used to support new vines of runner beans, or hillsides of riotous red and orange impatiens. The surroundings are beautiful. The road is not.

In patches where it has grown too bumpy even for the seasoned spines of Guatemalan drivers, men and boys work with shovels to patch the worst of the holes. These repairs are funded not by the government but by drivers, who need this road to travel up and down the mountain. In Guatemala, one finds a way to solve one’s own problems, even if it is in a small way, even if it might not really solve the problem.

At the end of the road, hours away from the capital of Guatemala City, is the village of La Tinta. North central Guatemala was once the heart of the ancient Mayan civilization, and the descendents of those native people still inhabit the villages of the region. Spanish is a second language here; most people grow up speaking a dialect of Q’eqchi’. Q’eqchi’ dress and customs still rule community life, though modern ways are creeping in. Until recently people in the village had no telephone service because phone lines were impossibly expensive to bring along that mountainous road. Now, some people are investing in cell phones to keep in touch with faraway family members.

The people of La Tinta are isolated by geography and also by their culture. Though they are proud of their Mayan ancestors, they sense that the Guatemalan people of Spanish descent look down on them. They sometimes feel they are second-class citizens in their own country.

It is just one of many tangled hardships that the people face. Formerly farmers, they are watching many family-owned farms disappear, swallowed up by larger commercial farms. With the family farms go many families’ means of support. Fathers are forced to travel long distances over that same narrow, rutted road into the city to find work. Often their children travel with them, missing weeks and months of school. Without education, families watch opportunities for their children dwindle and disappear. But with education, children often leave their home villages, in search of a better life in the city or even in another country.

At the Center

At the center of La Tinta, physically and spiritually, is Santa Catalina parish. The beautiful adobe church rises up out of the surrounding hillside, white and gleaming. Inside the adjoining parish house lives Fr. Darío Caal, C.PP.S., the pastor and sole priest assigned to La Tinta and its 70 surrounding smaller communities.

Fr. Darío understands the problems of the people of La Tinta, as he was born and raised in a similar village. He speaks Q’eqchi’, Spanish and English, and in addition to his duties as pastor he is the director of the Guatemalan mission of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood. Missionaries of the Precious Blood have served the people of La Tinta for nearly 20 years.

On one rainy night in December, Fr. Darío cooked eggs and greens for visitors in the small kitchen of his parish house. It was dark, but still warm. That was a good thing because there is nothing in Fr. Darío’s crumbling house that would keep out any kind of weather.

He likes to cook. One of his specialties is a soup that he named Mitch after the hurricane that so devastated the local countryside and much of the rest of Central America in 1995. It is called Mitch, he said, because it is made up of a little bit of everything, like the piles of debris Mitch left behind.

It is the perfect metaphor for his ministry at La Tinta, where he takes what he has been given, and makes something of it. Someday, he even plans to fix his kitchen – but it won’t happen soon. “Everything else is more important than my needs,” said Fr. Darío. “Taking care of the poor and the marginalized, it’s all more important.”

The people of the parish, encouraged by Fr. Darío, work hard to take care of their own. The parish operates a candle shop, where families make hand-dipped candles then sell them in a stall just outside the main church’s doors to help support themselves. Dozens of people volunteer as catechists, carrying the work of the parish far out into the surrounding hillsides. Volunteer lay catechists are crucial to a parish like Santa Catalina. It is so large and so far-flung that a single priest could not possible reach its farthest corners more than once or twice a year. Catechists organize prayer services, help the people prepare for sacraments, and lead religious education programs. “Here, the young people are hungry for God, and I am not sufficient for all of them,” Fr. Darío said.

There are about 30,000 people living in the region of La Tinta, but Fr. Darío doesn’t really know how much area the parish covers. Linear terms like square miles or acres seem irrelevant in La Tinta’s mountainous terrain. He does know from the parish center out to its farthest reaches is five hours by car then on foot. It’s a lot of territory.

Taking to the Air

Even though the people of Santa Catalina are spread among smaller communities in the hillsides surrounding La Tinta, the parish has found a way to send its message to its farthest corners. Volunteers operate a radio station headquartered in a low-slung outbuilding next to the church. It is 103.9 on the FM dial.

Programming starts each day at 4 a.m. Volunteers read announcements from the parish that help keep its people in touch, a weekly bulletin-of-the-airwaves. Other daily programming includes Bible study and catechism. There are public health classes and story hour for the children. From 4 to 6 p.m., the station broadcasts adult education classes in math, language, social studies and science.

“I feel so happy to be able to help other people,” said Apolinario Ical, a Santa Catalina parishioner who volunteers as the daytime program director at the radio station. The local diocese has recognized the parish volunteers for their work.

It’s always an effort to keep FM 103.9 on the air, Ical said. Sometimes the power goes down in the village, and with that the station goes silent. Sometimes stormy winds damage the tower. Sometimes a part burns out among the station’s dusty and antiquated equipment, and then a volunteer has to make the long and bumpy trip into Guatemala City for parts. “Sometimes there is no radio for 15 days,” Ical said. The silence on the hillsides is deafening.

In the south tower of the church building, Fr. Darío has reserved additional space for the radio station. There in a clean and quiet room, Juan Xol Coc, the president of the parish’s radio commission, records programming for the coming days. He and Fr. Darío hope to keep improving the station, strengthening its reach. In the outbuilding, which is open to the weather, dust and insects damage the equipment. Here in the church, as with so much else, it is safe.

At the Vigil

Fr. Darío presided at an evening liturgy, on the vigil of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It is an important holiday in Guatemala, and the church was full. He preached to the people in Q’eqchi’, the native tongue of 90 percent of his parishioners. Incense is an important part of the sacred surroundings; grandmothers gathered around the altar to tend to the smoldering pots.

The overflow crowd gathered on the steps outside the church door, where the atmosphere is part reverent, part festival. Vendors came by with ice cream or Pepsi, and restless children slipped out of church for a quick treat. The teenagers who could escape from their families met outside, at the very edge of the pool of light cast from the open church doors.

Just before consecration a young man set up a launch tube on the steps of the church. At consecration, he set off an M-80 firework, the Guatemalan version of tinkling bells to signal the holy of holies.

Many came into the village to celebrate the feast day. Others must wait in their smaller communities for the time when Fr. Darío can come to them. He knows, as always, that there is not enough of him to go around.

He thinks a lot about ways that he’d like to help improve their lives. The people need a source of clean, reliable drinking water. “There is lots of water up here, but we have a problem getting fresh water,” he said. “It’s a contradiction to have a place that’s so rich in water but lacking in drinking water.”

He worries about the disappearance of family farms. Most of the people of Santa Catalina come from farming families; what will they do next? He wants to expand the parish center, and he knows that his kitchen needs a lot of work – but the kitchen comes last.

It may seem like a far corner of the world but to Fr. Darío it’s home. La Tinta, with its daytime markets and its nighttime woes, its lonely isolation and its riotous flowers, the rutted road and the Polochic River, its children and its old folks, is all his to shepherd. And why it is his, why he was called to minister in this particular valley at this particular time, he does not question.

“You have to love what you do, and you have to love the people,” he said, as if it is just that simple. And for him, it is.

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"You have to love
what you do."

Fr. Dario Caal, C.PP.S.

At left, Fr. Dario cooks in the kitchen of the parish house at Santa Catalina.

Below, Apolinario Ical works ont he day's programming for FA 103.9