Winter sunshine

Portlander finds warmth by following the story of a former Oregonian now living in Mexico

By Karen Munro
The Portland Upside
December 2009

Juanita Benedicto (center) with two of the madres from the Buen Pastor mission, where she volunteers offering massage therapy, education and encouragement.

Every weekday, like many other Portlanders, I sheathe myself in layers of Gore-tex and nylon and ride my bike to work. In winter my ride is cold and wet, grey and windy. I thread my way around puddles and try not to mind the icy rivulets running down my collar and into my shoes. Oregon in winter is a soggy place, and here in Portland we can go days or weeks without seeing the sun.

But there’s a little bit of sunshine waiting in my office. When I get in I towel off, fire up my computer, and point it to my blog reader, where El Sur Experiment tops my most-read list. There I might see a whimsical picture of a row of ceramic alligators in cowboy hats, a panoramic shot of the rooftops of a sun-drenched colonial city, or a portrait of a young girl walking alone through a courtyard, solemnly reading a picture book. Either way, I feel like my office just got a new window and a little more daylight.

El Sur Experiment is the photojournal of Juanita Benedicto, a former Oregonian who started remaking her life in 2004. While working full-time as an academic librarian and raising two daughters solo, Juanita began training for a new career as a massage therapist. During her summer breaks she traveled to Guanajuato, Mexico, to volunteer at Buen Pastor, a convent that assists poor, exploited, and marginalized women and children. Juanita started offering compassion, encouragement, education, and massage therapy to Buen Pastor’s clients. In 2008 she moved from Oregon to Mexico to volunteer at the convent full-time. She started El Sur Experiment to record the results of the experiment she was making of her life. In her own words, she wanted to find out what happens when “you follow your inner compass, enjoy where you’re at, don’t fret about the future, and remember that every day is another opportunity to practice grace.”

Buen Pastor offers a wide range of social services, including a shelter for victims of abuse, foster care for girls, and a middle school. Some girls come to Buen Pastor because of an abusive relative. Others come because their families can’t afford to feed or educate them. Many of the women at Buen Pastor have been beaten or sexually assaulted. Even the madres (nuns) themselves are growing old and feeling the pains of arthritis, rheumatism, and a lifetime of hard work. Juanita works with all of them, building trust and helping to release trauma through physical touch and attention.

For all that Juanita and the madres do, they’re ambitious to do more. They want to make the convent more sustainable, and are seeking grants to build an organic community garden and install solar panels. They’ve started a Spanish-language library and reading programs to encourage the girls’ literacy. (Olivia the Pig books are very popular.)

Juanita has set up a Buen Pastor website, where she invites readers to sponsor a girl’s education—so far every girl who finds a sponsor has improved her grades, without fail. There are dreams of a bigger, better computer lab and maybe, someday, a paid position for Juanita.
Juanita’s photojournal reflects all of this hard work and goal-setting. She documents the silly, joyful, and somber moments of life at Buen Pastor. In one post, Juanita writes about teaching Madre Patricia to pronounce “kiss my ass” in English. In another she quotes World Bank president Robert Zoellick:

“Investing in adolescent girls is precisely the catalyst poor countries need to break intergenerational poverty and to create a better distribution of income. Investing in them is not only fair, it is a smart economic move.”

And then there’s the rest of life in Guanajuato, filtered through Juanita’s camera lens: shots of incredible, vibrant street art, drawings, painted murals, a classic car show packed with gleaming, iridescent Volkswagens. There are photos of the bluffs and buttes above the city, massive red rocks floating against a blue sky.
Guanajuato is an old, European-style city replete with architectural flourishes, and Juanita’s camera finds every molded lion and scalloped ledge. She captures the brilliant colors of the houses—hot pink, teal, saffron, olive—as well as the crumbling edges of urban decay.

Juanita’s posts sometimes wax sublime, sometimes ridiculous. She has a sly sense of humor and a talent for skewering the absurd. “Tell her how you feel in paint,” she subtitles a photograph of street graffiti that reads, “Hey Alma Te Amo” (“Hey Alma I love you.”) Sometimes the full meaning of a photo only emerges from its accompanying text. A picture of a snowy egret in an alley mystifies until you mouse over it, and read the pop-up explanation. Increasingly egrets sojourn in urban areas like the nearby city of San Miguel de Allende, displaced from their native habitats.

From the posts that make up El Sur Experiment, a world emerges. Vibrant, complex, and fragile, Juanita’s world includes birthday parties, ancient ruins, fiestas and fireworks, sewing machines and saints. It’s a world where a garbage collector can win a muscle man competition, bulking up by eating out of the bins he empties; where a stub-eared guard dog peers down from a rooftop, surrounded by clouds; where rich and poor live next door to each other. In some ways, Juanita’s world is not unlike Portland.

Most amazingly the brightness and power fill me with optimism, even in the face of poverty and injustice. Juanita’s pictures of life in Guanajuato record her worthy work and refract light and energy all the way from Mexico to Portland. After a rainy morning commute to my office, the posts stream sunshine from her southern clime, reminding me that good works tend to send out ripples in all directions, like raindrops falling into a Portland puddle.

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Visit Juanita Benedicto’s El Sur Experiment at http://jblibrarian.wordpress.com Buen Pastor’s website, with more details about ongoing projects and ways to get involved, is at http://buenpastor.weebly.com

Karen Munro is a librarian who lives and works in Portland. Contact her at karenlibrarian@gmail.com