1
September 6
El Vigía, Venezuela
“Gracias, Hermana. Dios te bendiga.” Thank you, Sister. God bless you.
Sister María Catalina stood in the shelter of a timber awning outside the Mission of Our Lady of Coromoto, helping distribute food to the hungry. She handed a woman, a mother of four, a box that held a pound of rice, a pound of dried beans, some potatoes, powdered milk, and bananas. It would last only a few days, but it was something.
“God bless you and your family,” she said.
The young woman was so thin and undernourished that María thought she might need help carrying the box. She and her children had arrived at the mission this morning, their eyes dull from hunger. They hadn’t eaten in four days.
Somehow, the young mother shouldered the box, her thin arms wiry and strong.
“You must eat, too.” María handed a banana to each of the woman’s children. “Who will take care of your little ones if you become too weak or sick?”
“Sí, Hermana, but I cannot listen to my children cry. We are on our way to Colombia, where my husband has work. Life will be better there.”
It had been the same every day since María had arrived at the Mission outside El Vigía six months ago, a stream of desperate humanity in need of food, medicine, and, most of all, hope. More than a million people had fled to Colombia, while millions more had gone elsewhere—to the US, Europe, or other nations in the Americas.
It broke María’s heart to witness the suffering of Venezuela’s people. So many going hungry. Families left destitute and divided as people sought refuge in whichever nation would take them. Cancer patients like her Grandmother Isabel dying without treatment or pain relief.
When her parents had been in college in the 1980s, Venezuela had been a wealthy country with a robust middle class. After theCaracazoin 1989, when government troops had killed hundreds of protestors on the streets, they had emigrated to the United States with their three older children. María had been born Gabriela Aliana Marquez a year later in Miami. She’d grown up in Florida, speaking both English and Spanish and getting her love of Venezuelan food and culture through her mother’s milk. She had visited her grandparents every year—until her parents decided it was too dangerous to return.
Now, Venezuela was an economic ruin.
But that’s why María had come. She wanted to do her part to change things, to help make life better in the land her parents had once called home.
She picked up the smallest child, a little girl who needed a bath. “You should stay for a few days, rest and eat, and then move on when you feel stronger.”
The woman stared at her, fragile hope in her eyes. “Is that possible?”
María smiled and tried to convey a serenity she did not feel. “With God, all things are possible.”
She called to Oscar, a boy of twelve who’d come to stay with them when his parents had been killed in the crossfire of a fight between protestors and el SEBIN—Venezuela’s intelligence service that behaved more like death squads orladrones con placa—criminals with badges. “Oscar, can you run and speak with Sister María José and ask her to find a place for this woman and her four children?”
“¡Sí, Hermana!” Oscar jumped to his feet and dashed off.
María settled the woman and her children indoors and went back to distributing food, the line dwindling at last. As the newest member of the mission, it was her job to do whatever was asked of her. Mostly, that meant cleaning, working in the kitchen, and helping to feed the people who came to them for help. Her day started before dawn with prayers and ended only when the work was done, long after dark.
From behind her came the sound of American English.
The journalist.
Dianne Connolly was visiting today with a photographer and two bodyguards. Mother Narcisa escorted them around the mission, answering her questions in heavily accented English.
Mother Narcisa stepped outside, the reporter, photographer, and their bodyguards following. “This is where we distribute food to those in need.”
María made eye contact with Mother Narcisa, who gave her a slight nod, granting her permission to go. María couldn’t risk being interviewed or photographed.
Mother Narcisa’s words followed her as she walked inside. “That was Sister María Catalina. She came to us from a cloister of Poor Clares in Peru. In keeping with her vows, she prefers as hidden a life as possible.”
“We can’t interview her?” the reporter asked.
“No, but there are other sisters here who—”
The roar of a car engine. Shouts. Gunshots.