Can collecting helps poor in Honduras

By Dan MacArthur
Correspondent

Sister Mary Garcia's can-do determination has enabled her to survive primitive conditions and even imprisonment during a lifetime of attending to the spiritual, physical and educational needs of the poor in Central America.

Now she's counting on cans to do even more providing for the poor of Honduras while promoting conservation and environmental awareness locally.

When Garcia returns on her annual mission to Honduras in December, she will distribute proceeds realized from the recycling of aluminum cans.

Garcia started collecting cans soon after she returned here in 1997. It started out small. Garcia carried a plastic bag with her when walking. She used it as an opportunity to talk about not polluting while earning a few dollars to distribute.

The effort really took off five years ago when parishioners saw Garcia collecting cans discarded at Holy Family's annual fiesta, and they built a collection box.

Garcia this year hopes to raise $1,500. While that may not seem like a lot of money to many here, "it looks pretty good down there," said Garcia, diminutive but still formidable at 80.

For Garcia, her efforts are a natural extension of a life of working for justice and serving the poor.

"I think they all have a right to dignity," she declared.

Garcia speaks forcefully and with conviction about the plight of the poor and oppressed. It is perhaps in part because of her own humble origins.

Her parents moved here in 1916, escaping the revolution in Mexico and seeking greater economic security. Her father worked at the Ingleside quarry north of Fort Collins. After he lost three fingers in an explosion, her parents took to the road as migrant farmworkers, bringing along their family of a dozen children.

She and her sister were called to the religious life in 1939 while attending school at Holy Family Church. Garcia joined the School Sisters of St. Francis, a German-based order in Milwaukee. She completed high school there before being dispatched to Honduras in 1945, teaching there for eight years in a girls' orphanage.

"I wanted to be a missionary, go out to other lands and help other people," said Garcia. "I loved it. For me it was an adventure."

After a stint back in Milwaukee to complete her education degree, she was sent to Costa Rica to establish a girls' high school. Then Garcia returned to Honduras in 1960 to direct the country's first co-educational parish elementary school. From there she was sent to head a remote mountain school and then to work in a hospital. In1968, she was again sent into the hinterlands to carry out the church's renewed commitment to serving the poor and oppressed. It would prove to be dangerous work that further fueled Garcia's quest for social justice.

She and other church workers taught the villagers how to read and write, provided training to the women, helped establish a cooperative and developed leadership among the men.

"They were making a lot of progress," she recalled. "But this was a threat to the government because we were educating the poor."

In 1972, six village leaders she knew and had worked with were killed by the military. Three years later, 14 more villagers were killed, and Garcia was taken prisoner.

She was flown to the capitol and told to retrieve her passport from that parish office so she could be deported. Soldiers drove her there, but the secretary was at lunch. Garcia used the opportunity to slip away and call other sisters in the city who called the archbishop, who in turn called the president.

When her plight became public, Garcia was placed under house arrest. She remained there reporting on conditions until returning to the United States to visit her family and recover from a medical condition. Garcia returned to Honduras in 1978 but left again the next year to minister in a low-income New Orleans parish.

In 1988, she was elected vice president of a U.S.-based team of four overseeing the worldwide efforts of her order's some 1,000 sisters. Then in 1996, she traveled to Central America once more to meet with sisters serving there.

Sister Garcia's adventure continues, collecting the refuse of Fort Collins' streets so that human lives in a less fortunate part of the world are not thrown away.