D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2010
Hope on the Border
Esperanza Lozoya, founder of La Luz de La Esperanza Outreach of Palomas, in her own words.
Interview by Victoria Tester
Editor's note: This interview with Esperanza Lozoya took place amid the lively, disruptive sounds of her close family life at the Andrew Sanchez Youth Center, a nonprofit organization directed by Esperanza's older sister, Guadalupe Otero, who won a 2003 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation award for her outstanding work on behalf of the community of Columbus. Esperanza Lozoya, who voices her autobiographical story here, chooses to do her own extraordinary humanitarian work on the other side of the US border, inside the far more impoverished and troubled Mexican border town of Palomas. She is founder and director of the secular US nonprofit organization La Luz de La Esperanza (The Light of Hope) Outreach of Palomas, operating on Buenaventura Street. The Outreach works under the umbrella of the Andrew Sanchez Youth Center, named for Guadalupe and Esperanza's father, an inspired Mexican-American social worker whose ideas and example profoundly influenced his daughters' lives.
Visitors to the Outreach are welcome.
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Esperanza Lozoya of La Luz de la Esperanza. (Photos by Victoria Tester) |
We started working in the community six years ago, with the residents of Palomas. Going to the landfill in Palomas one day I passed a drug and alcohol rehab and a for sale sign painted on it. Out of curiosity I called the number. The owner had fled because they'd been threatened, and the rehab was closed. He was very hesitant at first because he wasn't sure who I was, and the price of the building seemed outrageous because it was in the condition it was in and real estate had gone down a great deal. But three months later he called back and asked if we were still interested in the building. It had been ransacked. All the wiring, the doors, the commodes, anything imaginable that could be resold were stripped from the building, so he was willing to sell it at a much lower price.
With the help of a loan from my family, thank God, we purchased the building. They purchased the new wiring, and bought the paint for the building's kitchen and dining area. And we opened La Luz de la Esperanza Outreach of Palomas.
Before we moved into our new building, La Luz de La Esperanza had opened a smaller center next to the Catholic Church. The owner of that building let us use it, but it was in great need of repair. At the time, I received donations from my mother, Magdalena Sanchez, and my sister, Guadalupe Otero, to invest in it, to serve senior lunches. With help, we brought the building inside up to code. But a relative of the gentleman who let us use the building came and insisted the building belonged to her. She wanted to charge us rent. I had to find another building we'd be able to open and own for ourselves and not worry about someone coming and saying, "This is my building. Now that you fixed it, you have to get out."
After my mother and my sisters helped purchase the paint and the wiring for our new building, and everything else we needed to open the dining room and the kitchen area, we opened the doors. I thank God and I thank them. Not only do we serve the senior and disabled meals there, it's become more of a community center. People know whenever they are in need of food or clothing, they can come. And I try to find sponsors for people if they are in dire need of medicine, or emergency food, school registration funds, or other things.
I started serving the senior meals because of a gentleman named Don Ramon. Don Ramon I met when he was walking the streets picking up cans and scrap metal. When I first saw him he was in dire need of clothing because his clothes were full of soot. It was during the winter and just meeting him I could tell he was in real need of help. He wasn't homeless at the time, he did have a home, but it's a home with no electricity and no running water. When I opened the center, it was specifically him, the image of Don Ramon that I had in my mind. And I knew that there were more seniors out there who needed help.
Don Ramon is a great human being. He comes to the center and he eats lunch and he is always saying how great of a meal we give him and that he can never repay us. He sells popsicles in Palomas and he walks around with a little cart ringing his bell and he's always giving the promotoras, our volunteer community workers, and my granddaughters ice cream, because he thinks that he has to repay us for what we do. I am always telling him, "No, Don Ramon, everything is fine." He is an inspiration to humanity. Because if you see this gentleman he is very poor, very humble, but whatever he has he wants to give to us, to repay us in some way for what we do.
The first day we opened there at the corner of the Catholic Church in Palomas, it was raining. It was Thanksgiving, and we only had takeout disposable plates. My sister Guadalupe Otero and my mother Magdalena had donated a Thanksgiving meal for us to distribute to the seniors of Palomas. The promotoras stood on the corner, and every senior that passed by, we gave them a plate. We let them know we'd be opening a senior meal center there. We also passed out flyers, and posted flyers in the stores. To reach those that are illiterate, we went door to door to tell everyone we were starting a senior meal program.
Soon what I saw happening was great: that the same people I helped with food and clothing would come and ask me what they could do in return to help me help Palomas.
In order for these women to help the community, too, they needed training. So I trained them the way I was trained, as a promotora community health adviser for Luna County, to work in the Palomas community. Later on we were able to receive trainings from New Mexico State University and in El Paso. I also went to the Centro de Salud, the health clinic in Palomas, and spoke with the head physician there, and we received promotora trainings from the clinic, too.
Before school starts every fall we try to have a shoe drive and a uniform drive for the children. Some children can be cruel to other children, and children that are from wealthy homes sometimes belittle the children that are poorer. So I want the poor to have new shoes and uniforms.
What we had to do was sit down and make sure the shoe fit the child before they took it, because there was no reason for them to take a pair of shoes that didn't fit. That was the first time Aurelia Quezada, one of our wonderful promotoras, helped, and she was nervous. I told her, "Don't be nervous, you're great!"
Lola Campos is another of our promotoras my heart pours out to. Her mother is Tarahumara. I try to make sure Palomas as a whole is aware of what we do, but some of the Tarahumaras are illiterate or otherwise unable to receive information as to when we give out food and clothing, or when we're having a class on nutrition, diabetes or whatever. Lola goes out and rounds up the Tarahumaras in their language, and they come to the center, which is wonderful. It makes us more multicultural, and goes along with our different denominations. The promotoras are all from different religious backgrounds — Jehovah Witnesses, First Christians, Baptists, Catholics, every denomination you can imagine.
The good thing, and I thank God, is that we all believe in the Creator and that we are all an ejemplo. An example of how we can all work together. No matter what religion, or what sex, no matter what age, no matter what color our skin, we are all able to work together to help Palomas.