The United Nations from the Heart

                                                                                                 Ana Martinez de Luco, intern with UNIMA

I’m so grateful for this invitation, so thanks Lucianne. I like the theme you have given me The UN from the Heart!  Beautiful! Hence, it is from the heart that I would want to share. And I would want to concentrate my sharing in three areas:  a) why am I here working as an NGO at the UN; b) how does my organization assist me in carrying out this desire to work for justice, for a systemic change in our World; and, b) Why did I choose to live as a homeless in New York.

a)   I had been living and working in the Philippines for 23 years, from 1980 to 2003.  These were years of a rapid expansion of the so called Globalization.  I had been involved mostly in socio-pastoral work: you enter into a relocation area, or slams/squatters area attracted by the so many children been whole day and even whole night on the street. . .  and you start developing  drop-in centers for drop-out children , formation for mothers, looking after their nutrition and health. . . and trying to develop some income generating programs, cooperatives, day care, scholarship programs, etc. Though I was very much involved in all these activities and in the day to day life of so many people with whom I shared laugh and tears, a lot of affection and friendship, the truth is that the experience of hunger was growing day by day, as well as  the unemployment, or terribly law salaries and unjust work conditions,  violence at home and everywhere, alcoholism, drug addition,  pornography at the children’s hands, the rapes and child molestation –the stories of the children were real hell stories.  In rural areas, massacres among indigenous communities, their incapability to keep cultivating their lands, their hunger and lack of everything!. . .

I was not very much aware of what was going on, but I had the feeling of been drown under a kind of muddy water which was going up and up every day.  At the same time, after so many years of giving myself to those situations with passion and full energy, I felt as if my creativity was getting dry. The question came like so, what more? How to face this situation?, where to start? We are going worse in stead of getting better. . .

My term as leader of our group in the Philippines was ending, and I thought that it would be a good time for a sabbatical year. . .  The congregation had just finished a meeting in India in which one of their decisions was to send to UNANIMA International –the organization I belong to- a member for one or two years, so that, having a direct experience, she may help the rest of the members to get more involved in the programs of the UN.  So, it was given to me this opportunity, and I took it gladly, with the hope that to look at the situations I was in, from a global perspective, would help to find direction towards  future participation in making this world a better place to live in.

b)   The fact that UNANIMA, -as well as the rest of NGO’s here at the UN, has as its priority to work for a systemic change, helps me to focus in the root causes of what I had experienced as a flood of muddy water, or the structural-global ways in which the evil seems to be working today.  UNANIMA International is interested in anything related to women and children living in poverty, in refugees and emigrants and in the care of the planet.  For these years the main focus is to fight against trafficking in women and children especially for sex exploitation.  I do not need to develop more this aspect because Clare Nolan will speak to you more in detail about it.  Right now we have divided our work in three areas: Education, Advocacy and Demand; presently I’m trying to research more in the aspect of the Demand and see how to develop some strategies like campaigns, etc, in which our members –present in 60 countries- can get involved and participate in this difficult struggle.  

 While doing this, I participate in the NGO Committee on Indigenous Issues because indigenous communities are among the most impoverished population and hence with greater risk as victims for trafficking.  I also participate in the NGO Committee on Girls, because their age,  adolescence, is the most attractive age for those on the demand for trafficked victims; I participate in the NGO Committee on Social Development, and specially in a task force to outreach the people from the South countries, because the social integration of the hundreds of millions who suffer in our world is very important; they must have greater wisdom on how to go out of such a muddy water, since it is a survival issue for all of them!  Their voices must be heard at the UN! Just these days, listening, looking at, and feeling the presence of the Indigenous brothers and sisters around the UN, I got a lot of hope from them! they have greater wisdom and courage than any of us!

To tell you the truth during this first year of being at the UN, many times I find myself saying there is almost nothing to do , but I have learned to say immediately, Yes, but if the NGO’s were not here trying hard to change something. . . even the “almost” will be removed, and we will go into despair!  So, it is the ALMOST that keeps me going with hope and enthusiasm!. And of course my belief in the constant and effective work of the Spirit of the Risen Christ with whom we simply cooperate! I believe I was sent here, so I believe he/she is working through me, though many times I may not see how; I just BELIEVE!

c)    Though this is an orientation on the UN, Lucianne added in her note to me:  to share something about how you chose to live with the homeless in the city of New York.  And I’m so thankful for it.  At first it may look as if it’s not very related with the main topic of these days, but actually it is related. Since it is a heart sharing, I will start with a song which had been a theme song for me perhaps since my adolescent years.  It’s in Spanish but I put the English translation. 

To my door a beggar came with a smiling face

Trembling and happy a hand he opened up

Two coins I gave and calmly he asked me: Are you happy?

No I’m not my good friend

What happens to you if you are rich and young and a beautiful lady is in love with you.

I do not know what is it, but I feel quite disturbed

So,  awake my dear friend, let’s go, come with me 

The moon will be your companion while you sleep

You will be rich with the smallest of the dreams

I do not know, I don’t know what to do

We will be free as the flowers in the field

To know that no one will be waiting for your failure

Better I go, I go with you.

I have learned  how to dream and to listen the cry of this old guitar that lives with me

I have learned how to pray and to tremble of coldness

In the chilly nights of the  cold winter

In the nights without light when the wind is freezing

And a start that is twinkling, calls me: BEGGAR

The same that I said I felt sent to work at the UN, I also felt  called and sent to share life, to be one with the millions of brothers and sisters around the world who are Homeless in the Earth, our common HOME given by the Father/Mother.  In the 80’s I -and our Vedruna group in the Philippines, had been handling housing programs: getting funds from here and there and try to build houses for 10, 20, 100, 800. . .families.  But always the numbers of homeless people, homeless families, homeless children were increasing around me and in the world!.  In 1994 I had a month retreat and two themes became one: it was a one month wedding celebration, and at the same time it was a marriage, a call to give myself in love to the Body of Christ thrown in the Streets.  I shared it with the leader of our congregation; she understood it. . . but it seems it was not the moment, and I remained at peace.

I came here to NYC looking for “programs” on how to help people who grow with much hardship in life . . .That’s  why I committed with UNANIMA only 3 full days a week.  I was looking for those possible programs –Covenant House, etc.,  when a young man, living 2 doors away from where I was leaving, shared his ‘vocation’ of being homeless in such a simple terms but from such a deep faith/gospel experience and such a commitment for social transformation, that it was as if I just heard “go and do the same” of the parable of the good Samaritan.  So, after a week I went to live in a shelter. I chose the feast of St. Luke for that step-out (Oct. 18). Last Holy Week I went to live on the Street.

Going back to the song, you can see that it’s not an invitation to hardships, but an invitation to experience joy, freedom and LIFE from a radically different perspective of what our dominant culture proclaims.  And I can tell you the joy, the freedom, the friendship in equality, the LIFE I experience, has no comparison with all the inconveniences I experience too –real as they are.  The experience of the Kingdom is much more available to me now than before.  I understand I little bit more what Jesus wanted to say when he said: Blessed are you the poor, or when he prayed “I give you thanks God because you have hidden these things to the wise and learned and has revealed to the small and simple ones. . . Is this choice related with the systemic change? . . .YES!  And my guess is that we NGOs, we need to effect the change not only through statements, but through our radical change of lifestyle, just living from what we believe!, a lifestyle in God’s style and in opposition to mammon’s or the Empire’s proposed style, a lifestyle in solidarity to the least and the excluded of the Earth.