Mapping the Hurt
Mapping the Hurt
Applied Theology in the Urban Environment 2
Last week, I started a short series on applied theology in the urban environment. If you have not had a chance to read the first essay, click the link below, read it, and then come back.
The Football Pitch
When I started working in the slums of my city, the youth that I worked with took me around the community. They showed me the places where they liked to hang out. They took me to their favorite pool hall. They also took me where their friends had been killed. They taught me how to map the hurt of their neighborhood without realizing it.
I was not fully aware of what was happening. I did not have the words to articulate what I felt and experienced. I just knew that the different sites that they showed me had a special meaning for them. One of the places that they loved and hated was the football (soccer for the gringos) pitch of their community. The place was rough. There were four pitches in the park behind their neighborhood. Each pitch was full of dirt, construction waste, and every now and then we would find some needles left by drug addicts buried in the mixture of sand, dirt, and pebbles. There was no grass in sight. Every time we played, we would end up covered in a brownish layer of very fine dust. And if we fell too hard, we had to dig out encrusted tiny pebbles out of our skin.
In one occasion, one of the young men I was close to took me to a corner of the park next to the pitch we used to play at. Once we were there he said: “last week, after you guys left, another kid got shot here.” His eyes showed sadness for a few moments, and then he cracked up a joke like nothing had happened. I thought he was just kidding because his change in mood was very drastic. He was not. There had been a shooting at the park, and a kid had been murdered in that place.
Pasaje Rubio
Pasaje Rubio is one of my favorite spots in Guatemala City. It is a building with a passage that connects Sexta Avenida with Séptima and the Plaza de la Constitución in the historic district. It is filled with jewelry stores. There are two cafés that I frequent every now and then. It also has a nice bookstore that promotes Guatemalan authors and other Latin American literature. The place has one eye sore, though. There is a Dunkin Donuts that has one of the best store fronts anybody could want.
At the end of Pasaje Rubio there is a place that reminds Guatemalans of our dark past. There is a memorial plaque that reads: “This is where the college student Oleverio Castañeda was brutally murdered, on October 20, 1978.” Even though the plaque is there, not many people stop to look and read. Not many remember. It is on the ground, in the place where his body lay after being fatally shot by government sponsored death squads.
On one occasion, I took a group of university students on a historical tour of Guatemala City. Surprisingly, about half of them did not know who Oleverio Castañeda was, and just a few knew what happened in that place. Seeing the lack of historical and geographical memory of suffering was a stark reminder of how easy we hide our hurt. Even more so, it showed me that we don’t remember because we have not mapped our suffering. We have not brought our pain to sight in order to heal.1
San Sebastián
San Sebastián is a Catholic parish located in the historic district of Guatemala City. The church has a beautiful little park just outside its doors. For many years, the park was the home for many homeless people and drug addicts. Today, there is a fence that keeps people living on the street out of the park at night. San Sebastían is the church where Bishop Juan José Gerardi was a pastor for many years. Bishop Gerardi was the force that powered the investigation and research of the Guatemalan historical memory documents. During the research, the Bishop and his team gathered information and stories of the survivors of the Guatemalan armed conflict. They found out that 95% of the war crimes were perpetrated by the Guatemala Army.
On April 24, 1998, the historical memory report was made public. Two days later, on April 26, Bishop Gerardi was brutally murdered by the army in the garage of the parish house. According to some of the accounts of the crime scene, his face was smashed with a heavy rock or a piece of sidewalk. That is how the face of reconciliation and justice was smashed to pieces in a society that has not healed from the wounds of the war.
Mapping the Hurt
The three places that I mentioned before are geographical and emotional locations. They are part of what I call a cartography of suffering. This way of tracing an emotional and geographical map of our communities allows us to understand our trauma, for mapping the hurt has to do with knowing the wounds of our communities.2
Mapping the hurt is not for the faint of heart. It requires a commitment to healing in community. The hurt of our societies can awaken our desires for vengeance and retribution. That is why, the task of our leadership is to bring our pain to sight so we can heal together. This is the scandal of the incarnation, the only way out of our trauma is through. In Jesus’ incarnation the wounds of his hands and feet become wombs of new creation and forgiveness.3
Reflection Questions
In the next post, I will explore what mapping the hope of our communities look like. For now, here are some reflection questions:
What are the geographical places of your community where something painful happened?
How did you find out of what happened there?
O’Connor, Kathleen M. Lamentations and the Tears of the World. New York: Orbis Books, 2003.
Rocke, Kris, and Joel Van Dyke. Incarnational Training Framework. 2nd ed. Tacoma, Washington: Street Psalms Press, 2017.
Incarnational Training Framework. 129.
Yes, thank you for this. I read a lot about how my place has "moved on," ignoring that we haven't had a government for the past 6 years because of a lack of healing.
There are two places that stick out in my mind. There is a place called Windmill Hill where there are two curbside gravestones for children (16 & 18) shot durring the troubles by the British Military. I happened upon this place cleaning out wheelie bins and it strikes me every time I think about it.
The second is a Hardware shop with no sign that would lend its tools to Protestants to stop Catholic parades down Ogle Street. I heard this first hand from one of the Catholic Civil Rights marchers I worked with.
A third signifier of our lack of healing is that every park is fenced (we're talking 8/9ft fences) and locked after 9PM in the summer which is a holdover from the Troubles (Civil War really) where the Catholics weren't allowed to play in the Protestant parks.
Add to this the bars on historic building's windows and the signs of the Civil War in Ireland are everywhere you look.