Tegucigalpa, Honduras
The Plaza de la Merced of Tegucigalpa, in the heart of the city’s downtown, is an epicenter of history, commerce, political debate, and urban problems that characterize Honduran life. We immediately realized that the experience in Tegucigalpa would be very significant, as quickly evidenced by the great expectation and curiosity that the schoolhouse generated in the plaza. We were surrounded by the homeless that live in there, having taken over the few green areas with metal and plastic shacks, and we engaged them by hiring them to help in erecting the structure. Nonetheless, Bayardo Blandino, our host, advised that we would need to collapse the structure at night because it would not make it “through the night”.
A woman coming out of the next door church of La Merced approached us and asked us if we were evangelists, “because here we all are Catholics, you know?” This was not the first time that the schoolhouse had been interpreted as an evangelical mission. Still, even after I explained the purposes of my presence there, many women approached me telling me their woes, some of heartbreaking nature. “My daughter is in serious condition, and I don’t have money to take her to the hospital.” Another begged me to help her, saying: “we just don’t have access to important people like you”. Most requests were not simply for monetary help: some people presented me with complex family and labor problems, many of them wanted help to leave the country and some of them were even of an existential nature. While we did what we could to orient and help those who approached us, incidents like this were proof to me of the overwhelming need for hope that exists in places like this, and the insurmountable frustration that come with fending with one’s problems while feeling disenfranchised by ones’ own government and social surroundings. There was no room for art in that plaza. In a city of the north, people would have the luxury to ask if this was art, but here, people came in only in search of something to hold on to.
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Tegucigalpa, Honduras
La Plaza de la Merced en Tegucigalpa es el epicentro de la ciudad, el comercio, la vida pública, y los problemas urbanos de la vida Hondureña. Los indigentes que rodean la plaza estaban ansiosos por desmantelar la escuela por cuenta propia para usar los materials para sus chozas. Una mujer me preguntó si yo era evangelista, “porque aquí todos somos católicos, ¿sabe?”. Otra mujer me imploró que ayudara a su hija enferma, “porque no tenemos acceso aquí a gente importante com ousted.” El abrumador río de peticiones era de toda índole, desde monetarios hasta laborales y espirituales. La frustración, la sensación de abandono, era sobrecogedora. En los paises del norte, el público tenía el lujo de preguntar si esto era arte; aquí venía para saber si podian encontrar algo a qué sujetarse.