Human Trafficking Abroad, and at home?

Here is a translation of a true story that we heard at the youth event held this past weekend. The main topic of the weekend was human trafficking, its realities, causes, and possible solutions. Please take a moment to read this story, and if you wish, reflect on the questions that follow or use some of the links.

Basilia and her husband, Pedro, had a small business in Bolivia, near Tarija, that wasn't bringing in enough money. So when a friend told them about an opportunity to move to Buenos Aires to work in a clothing factory, they readily accepted and prepared for the trip with their 18-month old daughter. They were going to be paid by the garment, and they would even get food and housing. The gentleman that set up their contract sent them some money to travel to Yacuiba, where they were supposed to contact a taxi driver. The taxista took them to a mountainous area where a guide was waiting to take them through the wilderness to a town, which has a name that is currently escaping me, but supposedly it was in Argentina. The next day, the guide got them to Salta and bought their tickets for Buenos Aires. When the couple got to the bus terminal in the capital, their contact's sister was waiting for them. She took them straight to the factory where they were going to work. They were given a simple dinner and then told to work until one in the morning.



In the workroom, which was really a big shed, there were eighteen adult workers and thirteen children. In one corner and barely concealed by a partition, they set up a cot for the couple and their baby daughter. They later found out that the school-aged child laborers didn't go to school because the patrón didn't allow it. The work day started at 8 in the morning and lasted until 1 the next morning. The workers seldom left the factory, and despite the fact that the door wasn't locked (though they always had to let the manager when they were going to leave), the patrón never missed an opportunity to remind them about their illegal immigration status and the certain encarceration or deportation that awaited them if they were captured by the police. These warnings were corroborated by the two times that the police--whose stationhouse was on the same street--came into the factory and asked for the workers' documents. On both occasions the patrón made them hide behind some old machines in an unused part of the workroom.

There had been an agreement that they would be paid USD$.50 per garment. The first month Basilia made USD$85 and her husband about the same. The second month, the patrón stopped paying them: he gave them each USD$8 a week in credit, telling them that he was going to hold the rest of the money to pay the costs of travel and housing. And on top of the sewing they had to clean the whole building on the weekends with the money from their "credit". When Pedro asked for the missing money that he was owed, the patrón and his wife beat him and set the dog on him. That was when they decided to leave.

Some questions to consider:

Have you heard any stories similar to this one? Who was involved? Where did it take place?What happened at the end of the story?

What kinds of problems do you think Basilia and Pedro faced when they fled the factory? Where will they go? What will they do? What has changed as a result of their journey?

What would you do if you found yourself in work conditions like those at this garment factory? What would you do if you were Basilia and Pedro when they walked out?

Where is God in this story and in others like it?

Some links to follow:

US Dept of Labor Report on Argentinian Child Labor

A news article on Bolivian slave laborers in Argentina

News article from THE GUARDIAN about Argentina's slave trade

UN Report on Argentinian Human Trafficking

State Department report on Human Trafficking in the United States (large PDF)

Collection of articles on US Human Trafficking

An article from the AFL-CIO on contemporary US slavery

Weekend and the Mission

Hi from Angela here! We have now been at our placement for almost a month, and homesickness is beginning to wear off a bit, blessedly. This past weekend, we had a brief vacation from our usual placements to accompany some of the young women from the church here to an ecumenical youth retreat in Misiones, a province to the east of El Chaco (where we are). Our journey there was scenic and beautiful--the area is known throughout Argentina for its red earth and agricultural beauty. It reminded me a bit of Wisconsin, with the red soil associated with Oklahoma. A really lovely bus ride.

This youth encounter of sorts involved four or five congregations from the IELU (the Lutheran church associated with the ELCA) and the IERP (a Protestant denomination of German origin). The host church had a beautiful Bible camp-retreat center-like facility, with sleeping rooms and a volleyball court and a massive grill. I really enjoyed getting to know youth leaders from across Northern Argentina and also getting to spend quality time with the chicas from our congregation here!

The retreat´s theme was human trafficking, which I have to admit I initally did not think was a very relevant topic to young people. But to my surprise, it is unfortunately a very relevant topic. Most of the young people knew at least that people from their neighborhood had been vulnerable to trafficking schemes. Underground webs here target both immigrants and native women in bad economic situations, as well as children, for sweatshop-style work, prostitution, and illegal underage work. Here (like in the US, I believe) they use immigrant status and bait-and-switch tactics (i.e. advertising for legitimate jobs, then taking documents and forcing people to illegitimate, demeaning work) to virtually enslave victims, cutting them off from access to authorities and their home communities. It is a very tragic situation, and very unfortunate that it hit so close to home for the people we are living with.

Besides making me realize the immediacy of human trafficking in the community where I now live, the retreat also made me reconsider the benefits of ecumenicalism. The IELU and the IERP were able to share resources towards common goals, making for a great event at which we did not need to focus on doctrinal differences but could moved towards shared understanding. I was really happy to be part of the event.

I also should probably update a little bit about my regular employment here! It seems that my assignments change somewhat every day, but I spend my time working with children ages 1-17ish at a community development center. Thus far, I have been playing a lot of Jenga and "house" and holding beautiful babies while trying desperately to understand the Spanish (or castellano) of the older children. But as my language skills are beginning to stabilize a bit, this week I plan to start leading some workshops on music, yoga, creative writing, and possibly other themes as the Spirit moves.

It is spring here, and beautiful. Yesterday was rainy, but not today, and the climate has been very pleasant. Flowering trees make every walk cheerful and colorful, and drinking mate outside is one of the great joys of life.

Our new friends from the weekend shared a great culinary joy of life with us, too: chipas. These small delights are cheese cooked in cornflour, I think, little puffs of deliciousness about the size of a Swedish meatball. I am not sure how to describe them, but I will do my best to learn how to make them!

Anyway, all is well with us. We really love to hear from home! Keep in touch, and God bless you every one!

Getting to know the base structure

Its amazing how much things can surprise you, even when you're supposedly ready for anything. I've left the country before, and I've played with children from different cultural contexts, but the smiles and laughter that arose from a game of Jenga played in the Mission the other day made me pause.

We had a lot of fun building and redesigning the small wooden tower according to our estimations of structural integrity, or rather, whether the tower looked wonky on that side and when the whole thing came crashing down, we all grabbed as many pieces as we could to get it back into shape for another round. I love board games, I always have, which is why the boys' laughter, finger-pointing, and "helpful" suggestions surprised me... I never expected to see such similar behavior to my own. What a gift to be able to step into a new job and instantly have a point of contact, and once more, not just a point of contact, but a shared connection of pleasure and joy.

If you've never played Jenga before, ask the nearest kid to help you find a set and play, and if you haven't played it in a year or longer, do the same. A collection of small wooden blocks say so much about the way that we relate to each other and our world, both through the building and the rebuilding that takes place over the course of the game. The blocks themselves are ingenius because they are so plain... planks that could come from almost any material on earth, without any complicated silicone chips or protective equipment required. Their simplicity nevertheless is quickly converted into structure by even the smallest hands in the furthest of lands. Can you imagine a location on earth in which you couldn't play this game? After three weeks in Argentina, I find myself asking this question for the first time, gleefully realizing that Jenga has a power to transcend boundaries placed on us by nationality, geography, ethnicity, language, and class.

And while the Mission has been a place of joyful congregation, fellowship and play, the social reality of the Barrio and of Resistencia makes me realize that Jenga has more to tell us than we ever could have imagined as children. The Mission where Angela and I will be working (especially Angela) is located in a neighborhood called Barrio Juan Bautista Alberdi (Barrio means neighborhood in Spanish and Alberdi was a president of Argentina in the 19th C.), a poorer part of the city where many people have built lives for themselves in small houses. While this reality is utterly breathtaking for us as privileged US citizens (we have to be honest about that fact, Angela and I have been blessed with wealth, love and opportunity relative to this community, and most around the world) there are communities far worse off in this city and in the surrounding province of El Chaco. Resistencia is the poorest provincial capital in the country, and the capital of the poorest province. As part of my work with the Centro Nelson Mandela, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that studies environmental and human rights abuses, I am bombarded every day with more facts about the dangerous processes that are crippling the livelihood of these communities.

Take, for example, the case of an industrial park in a neighboring town. This town lost most of its factory jobs in 1991 and has been economically devastated by unemployment, inflation and the consequential social service fallout. This town is thrilled to have the opportunity to have an industrial park in their community and are actively campaigning for its construction, which will surely bring jobs and dignity back to a group of people who have experienced a great amount of humiliation and pain. But the first plant that will be installed in this park is likely a Brazilian enterprise that makes steel, a venture that was stopped by their own government because of the dangers that it presented to the environment. If it were to be built, it would certainly mean the destruction of thousands of acres of the natural woodlands and sustain the soils of the interior of the province, destroying the livelihood of thousands of people, forcing them to abandon their homes to move to the city to find work, and the cycle repeats.

So where does Jenga come in? Any tower ever built was constructed according to some kind of plan and with a certain amount of materials. From Babel to the Empire State Building to the new education wing on the church, there is a plan and materials. And as we are told time and time again by both architects and pastors, what we have at the base is the most important. Rock or sand? Reinforced concrete or adobe? Do we build a society by offering employment, or by watching out for the environment? By raising taxes to pay for social services or by encouraging investment that will make those social services unnecessary? These are the questions that divide us politically and ideologically and none of them can be answered by anything as simple or narrow-minded as a blog post. And yet, in our own minds, the solutions to these problems appear as elegant as a Jenga tower.

Seriously, pull the game out of the closet and play a round with a friend. We can learn a lot from the simplicity AND the complexity of a game like Jenga.

Safe in Resistencia!

After two weeks of orientation at home and abroad, we finally arrived at our placement here in northern Argentina on Tuesday.

We left Denver on August 17 for Chicago, where we attended YAGM orientation at the Lutheran School of Theology--Chicago. The seminary is beautiful, by the way, and we had a great week spending time with the other YAGMs going all over the world. Daily seminars there focused on intercultural communication, philosophies of mission, and expectations & procedures, among other things. I found our discussion of the accompaniment model of mission work the most interesting. The ELCA describes this model as "walking together in solidarity that practices interdependence and mutuality." Our presence here is part of our role; we are here to listen and learn, as well as speak and serve. I find the model good and Godly but difficult to describe!

The great departure from Chicago occured on August 25, when we flew to DC and took an 11-hour flight from there to Buenos Aires. There are three volunteers in Argentina (including us) and one in Uruguay, but we are all several hours apart from each other. So we had five great days in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, getting to know one another and the country. We stayed at the ISIDET, the united Protestant seminary there. I was excited to see all the posters for interesting classes, seminars, conferences, etc. going on there! It is, by all appearances, a vibrant academic and faith community, which we will experience in bits and pieces throughout the year. We also spent a lot of time with our country coordinator and her family, who were most hospitable.

We did manage some touristy activities in the city. By far the strangest was the Cemetery of Recoleta, where Evita Peron and other Argentine greats are buried. This "cemetery" is a collection of above-ground vaults, some just big enough for coffins, many small (and some large) chapels where services could be held. It is like a city of the dead, with avenues lined with houses for coffins. Google pictures if you are interested! It is a must see sort of attraction. (Eva´s grave is pictured to the right.)

We also visited a gaucho ranch and ate a whole ton of meat there. The gauchos are (were) like cowboys in the American West, and wear distinctive berets, cowboy-like boots, and pants. The whole town where the ranch was actually looked a lot like the Southwest, with stucco and brick houses.

The IELU (United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina and Uruguay) is hosting us here, and we attended a service at the Buenos Aires congregation on Sunday. The order of worship etc. was very familiar and comforting, and we shared a meal of empanadas with the church members. Empanadas, by the way, appear to be the national food--we have eaten them perhaps eight times already, and they are always good. It is a kind of mini-sandwich, meat and other fillings wrapped in a dough pocket. Several kind people have already volunteered to teach us how to make them.

Finally, on Sunday night we boarded a bus to Resistencia and arrived here the next morning.
(Views from our apartment) Buses here serve meals on long bus rides! Wow! I was pleasantly surprised. The bus-riding experience resembled flying much more closely than it resembled Greyhound. The seats were very comfortable, and they served coffee in the morning as we got close to our final destination!!!

I was delighted to move in somewhere I will not be leaving in two weeks! We have a really charming apartment a few minutes from the town square. But the rest of our Resistencia stories must wait for another post and another day. Chao!