By Russ Dilday
Under a warm sun, Lluvia Citlalli Hernandez Aguilar, the sole Buckner social worker for the Chiapas state of Mexico, makes her way down the steep gravel and rock road that descends into the Tuxtla-Gutierrez neighborhood known as Trituradora, or “Rock Crusher.”
The colonia, a mixture of small one- or two-room tin and wood homes, is a rough-and-tumble area on the side of a mountain overlooking the city of Tuxtla. It received its name because of a large gravel crushing machine at a nearby quarry, but the colonia, one of the poorest in the city, might as well be named for its ability to crush dreams.
Hernandez passes several homes before entering the fenced yard of Selene Castellanos, 19. Her home is remarkable among its dreary, unpainted neighbors. It’s a mix of cinder block, a more durable construction material, and tin. The house is painted a bright aqua color. The front garden lining the gravel driveway is alive with color.
As Hernandez walks up the small drive, she’s greeted by Castellanos and her mother, Guille, who are selling fruit and vegetables from the racks of their miselanea, or small store, in the home’s front. On the left, adjacent to her home is a large, open room, where she beckons Castellanos to join her. It’s another feature that makes Castellanos’ home so unique among others: Not only is it her home, built by local Buckner volunteers, it’s also the Buckner Family Hope Center that serves her neighbors.
Feeling safe at home
Castellanos’ story is also unique. Earlier this year, Castellanos came to a nearby location where Buckner was conducting a project, asking for help for herself and counseling for her family of five, who she said were “stressed.”
“I met Selene sometime in May, 2014,” Hernandez recalled. “I had seen her before at other events. Her family previously lived in a very different physical way; their family structure was broken. When they came to the Buckner project, we helped them so that the family could be integrated – they could have better relations between father, mother and children – and they all wanted to improve and grow as people.”
Castellanos also wanted help with the family’s home, which she described as “a disaster.”
“Well, physically, with what we had we were making it work; we were trying to succeed,” she said. “Yes, as a family we needed more. We didn’t like the conditions we were in.”
The conditions were shelter-like and it practically flooded because of the slope of the land.
While the structure was in poor condition, her family life was similarly distressed. “It was very conflictive. We have always had our faults, but then we had more because of those conditions. We were more stressed because we didn’t like how we were living.”
Castellanos went to the project, which was being run out of a nearby building, for help with her education.
Buckner volunteers began tutoring her, and the change was immediate. She began to succeed in school and, before long, started to help the children around her.
“Selene began to work with the Homework Club for the children; she would do it herself in the afternoons and then take care of and help the children,” Hernandez said, noting “the majority” of parents in Trituradora “don’t know how to read and write.”
Juan Carlos Millan, country director for Buckner Mexico, said he’s been following the family’s progress since they were among the first helped when work in Chiapas began two years ago.
“Her family is really different,” he said. “Her father … was never involved in things like Buckner and never involved in their home. Now they can tell you they all have more communication. They can be a family, more comfortable; they feel safe at home.”
Complete transformation
The Castellanos family success story is indicative of what Buckner Mexico hopes to do in Chiapas: help residents achieve self-sufficiency emotionally, physically, economically or educationally. It’s also the organization’s goal in Chiapas.
The ministry there was started in 2013 without direct financial assistance from the U.S. To date, Buckner Chiapas is a model of frugality when it comes to donor-based self-sufficiency.
For Castellanos, giving back not only means volunteering as a tutor, it means serving as the host family for the Hope Center and as a donor for the land it sits on. It was her mother who suggested, as volunteers built their home, that the Hope Center could have the front part of the land.
“For me it is a great joy, a great happiness, a blessing … a great blessing,” she said.
One of the goals of the Hope Center is to provide something for each part of the family in order to strengthen the whole through workshops and discussions among parents, Hernandez said.
“Part of our project is to strengthen the marriage of the father and mother,” Hernandez said. “We understand that they work, but we program the activity so that they can ask for time off.”
Looking at the Hope Center and the neighborhood it serves, Hernandez reflects on what the place means to the community and moving families from clients to those with servant hearts.
“To build this, everybody helped. I mean everybody,” she said. “I feel it really helped Selene’s family to be more united, because it was everybody doing everything.”
Perhaps the biggest transformations aren’t just in the community, but in the life of a 19-year-old woman who stepped up and asked for help for herself and her family more than a year ago.
“Because of the work here, I am more social,” Castellanos said. “I am usually in a better mood. I am more tolerant. I was the kind of person, my mother says, ‘would walk by with my head down and wouldn’t talk to anybody.’”
But her “biggest” transformation, in her words, is the change in her faith.
Prior to working with Buckner, she said her spiritual condition “wasn’t very clear. I did not know about Christ. Yes, I had my own concept of God, but, like everyone says, ‘I know God and so I believe in God.’ …His love, only his love, is what transformed me completely.”