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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 23, 2016)
News Street Roots • Dec. 23-29, 2016 city was before the earthquake, how the city was after the earthquake,” Cristina said. “I an unconventional teenager. She listened to remember seeing my city coming out of that rock music in English, wore dirty tennis and becoming stronger and becoming bigger shoes and never styled her hair. and nicer, the kind of city where everybody When she was a senior, she said, she was wanted to live.” “forced” to join the Girl Scouts. In the years that followed, Cristina “You have to do social work in your last attended the Technological University of year of high school. You can either go to a Pereira, working toward a degree in ethnic community and teach them how to clean education and community development. their toilets, which is ridiculous,” she said. She graduated in 2008 and began seeking “The other option was the Girl Scouts.” government contract work in rural areas But it was her troop leader, Elias Pino, around Pereira. who would ignite her passion for helping “I didn’t want to stay at a typical nonprofit others. He was a social worker from a rough in the city,” she said. There were too many area in Medellin, hometown of the infamous communities in remote areas that had far drug lord Pablo Escobar. fewer resources and were in more urgent One afternoon, Elias took his Scout troop need. to the children’s section of a local hospital. Her last job in Colombia before she came All the walls were a bland and lifeless white, to the United States was in the sugarcane- and it was all the children had to look at. An producing valleys north of Pereira. She artist himself, he thought his troop should traveled to remote villages where she would paint the walls bright colors. perform tests and confirm children’s There was an orphaned baby boy at the disabilities so their schools could access hospital who was skinnier than the other badly needed funding. children. Hospital staff told Cristina and her She would educate parents and teachers fellow Scouts not to touch him because he about their children’s medical needs. She was dying and they could catch his virus. had one case where a child who was labeled Two weeks later, Cristina visited Elias’ as defiant was actually deaf, and she met a home and was surprised to see that he had teacher who had labeled a child’s light skin adopted the sick little boy from the hospital. as a disability. Some children she confirmed as disabled because their “That was the first starvation had advanced to shock for me,” she debilitating. said. “This is social She had learned in work. This is what it college about the problems means. Working with "This is social work. This faced by these kids and creating a is what it means. Working communities, but to change. Do with kids and creating a actually see it was something - not just change. Do something ~ not different, she said. say it; not just think just say it; not just think it." Bountiful fruit trees it.” CRISTINA CASTAÑO HENAO lined the roads leading to The little boy lived these areas, and fields until he was 4 years were full of livestock. But old in Elias’ care. upon arrival,* she could see Cristina’s youngest the children were starving. uncle, Carlos Augusto Villagers told her that Castaño, was always guerilla fighters would force their way into involved in some sort of community project, their homes and steal food from them. whether it was fixing a soccer field for local Then, right-wing paramilitary would come in children or helping out single moms. So afterward, only to accuse the family of when she decided she wanted to go to helping the guerillas even though they had college to pursue a career helping people in no choice. This could result in punishments need, she told her Uncle Carlos right away. such as the rape of a daughter or execution Upon hearing her plans, he took her to of a son. the outskirts of Pereira where he was “There were areas where the helping a community of hundreds of paramilitaries wanted part of the money displaced Colombians living in a shantytown single mothers were making with their built out of scrap wood and cardboard. micro-organizations, and if they didn’t want “There was no law, no electricity, or to pay, they would kill their kids in front of water, but they were running away from them,” she said. violence,” Cristina said. These same paramilitaries guarded the “He showed me all the things that were crops of rich land owners. happening,” she said. “The night before, a little girl was raped, and he was trying to figure out what was happening and how he n Colombia, government contract jobs for could help. And I was like, ‘But you are not social workers frequently involve long the attorney,’ and he was like, ‘No. But you hours in dangerous and unforgiving are supportive, you are a friend, you show environments. For this reason, workers are that you are willing to help and support. If encouraged to take six-month breaks you can do it with the little you have, just go between contracts so they can rest and for it and see what happens.’” regroup before taking another assignment. In 2012, Cristina had been out of work for eight months. Unable to secure another artel violence de-escalated following contract, she was starting to wonder how Escobar’s death in 1993, but the civil she would pay her bills. war intensified, and Pereira took another On top of that, blackmailers had recently blow on Jan. 25,1999, when a magnitude targeted her, threatening to hurt her mother 6.1 earthquake struck. It killed more than if she didn’t give them money. They knew 1,200 Colombians, and 250,000 people were where her mother lived, so she had to left homeless. relocate her. She explained matter-of-factly “I remember all that change - of how the Page 5 CRISTINA, from page 4 I C PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTINA CASTANO HENAO Cristina Castano Henao was sent into the Andes to work with people such as this farmer, whose family had been living near the Ruiz Volcano for three generations. that such threats are a common way for people to make money in Colombia. As is kidnapping. But she never paid, she said. It was around the same time that she was surprised to learn she had an opportunity to leave her country. Unbeknownst to Cristina, one of her aunts living in the United States had added her name to an immigration wait list in the 1990s. Back then, guerilla warfare in Colombia was intensifying, sending the country into another peak of violence. Seventeen years later, Cristina had made it up the list. She was 29 when she got the first call from the U.S. Department of State, letting her know she could begin the application process for an immigrant visa. But at first, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to leave her country. Life in Colombia was not easy, but that’s part of the reason she wanted to stay. She thought to herself, “Where would I find homeless children in America?” But, considering that she was unemployed and under threat when the application process was completed, she decided she might as well give life in the U.S. a shot. “For me, it was like, I have to do something - I have to survive somewhere,” she said. She had family in Naples, Fla., so she went there. She didn’t Eke it, and she wondered why everyone was so old - and so overweight. “It was shocking to see people using wheelchairs because of their weight,” she said. “Everyone is really big, everyone is really white - huge cars, no people in the streets, which was boring for me.” She soon accepted a cousin’s invitation to come to Portland to stay with her. While Cristina has found that many things in the U.S. bear little resemblance to Colombia, one of the greatest adjustments was in social work. In the U.S., degrees earned in other countries are usually worthless. She would have to start all over if she wanted to earn similar credentials here, and it would come with a financial burden. Luckily her experience was enough to get her back in her field. After a brief stint as a server, she took a job at a family shelter run by Human Solutions, and that was soon followed by a job offer from JOIN, where she continues to work today. JOIN is a nonprofit that serves the needs of people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable communities in the Portland area. It needed someone to -work with Spanish-speaking families seeking services, and she came along at just the right time. Her co-workers at JOIN say they were immediately impressed with her ability to jump right in, as well as her dedication to the people she serves. “She can work with people from a broad range of countries,” JOIN outreach worker Quinn Colling said. “And she understands what it’s like to be an immigrant here, and she has gone through the immigration process. It opens up knowledge for folks she works with that other workers don’t have.” Street Roots asked Cristina to compare her experiences as a social worker in Colombia with the way things are done in the United States. “Both are governments and systems that push people away, but in different ways, and you see different shapes of it,” she said. “The common thing is individuals - they are alone.” One thing she said she wasn’t prepared for in the U.S. was seeing homeless faimlies. “Here, seeing kids with their families living in their car? That is something I never thought could happen,” she said. “In Colombia, I dealt with kids who were living by themselves in the street, who were survivors, who were fighters, probably drug addicts - but you never see them with their families.” In Portland, where it’s common to hear advocates and politicians say there aren’t enough resources to go around, Cristina saw an abundance. The first time she walked into a donation closet at a local charity, she said she was shocked. She couldn’t believe there were so many donated clothes that people could choose their favorite styles and colors. See CRISTINA, page 7
