Missionary With A Vision or Visionary With A Mission?
By: Amos Goodall
In Cuzco Peru, if your husband loses his job and you have had no employment experience, your family’s future is bleak. Jobs are scarce, although there is always the Shining Path gorilla movement, which reputedly pays a small stipend to the families of its “soldiers.” Opportunities for women without work experience are few and far between.
Enter Gloria Escobar, a native of Peru who lived in State College from 1966 until the retirement of her late husband, Gabriel, from the Penn State anthropology faculty. The couple returned to Cuzco in 1988, although Gloria returns to State College every summer for a lengthy visit.
In Cuzco, Gloria organized a mission, Manos Juntas (Hands Together) to help Peruvian women learn the skills necessary to make a living.
Cuzco, which has been a population center for three millennia, was a major commercial center when the Spanish arrived. Its pre-Columbian population was roughly 300,000. Shortly after the Spanish arrived, most of the Inca buildings were demolished (although the foundations originally laid by the Incas are still used as bases for churches and other buildings) and the population was reduced to about 30,000 people. It has regained its pre-Spanish population, tripling in size over the past twenty years. One of the main industries in Cuzco is tourism, and skilled craftsmen with commercially appealing products can make a good living.
Manos Juntas provides training, access to equipment and a small consignment outlet for women who wish to learn a trade. We visited this center recently and can report that after more than a decade, Manos Juntas is alive and well. The store is filled with attractive and well-made items, many of them works of fabric art, and Gloria reports that her program has had several “graduates” – women, who through Manos Juntas training, have become independent supporters of their families, through their own ventures.
Roughly thirty women are presently participating in the Manos Juntas program, and they all turned out to welcome us in our visit from State College. Gloria had planned a celebration, including TV coverage. It was interesting that when I provided short answers to the reporter’s questions, Gloria’s “translations” took much longer. She clearly had more details that she felt the public needed to know.
There are women with ill children, with husbands who have simply been unable to find work or who have abandoned their families, or who cannot, due to circumstances beyond their control, support their families. Gloria’s mission, as she sees it, is not to supply their needs, but to help them find ways to meet their needs themselves. The smiles and bonhomie made it clear that these women enjoyed what they were doing and respected Gloria and the mission. Although the nearest congregation of the American Baptist Church is far away, Gloria has forged relationships with some of the local Protestant denominations, and her minister said the blessing at the pot luck where refreshments were served.
Gloria is indefatigable. In Cuzco, she worries about the small converted garage which is both a workshop and a storefront; she worries about the space in her own home which is taken up with several looms and other pieces of equipment that do not fit in the rented space. She worries about the future of Manos Juntas, when she is no longer around to be its driving force and is concerned that the organization’s location in a rented space leaves it subject to the vagaries of the market. She also uses her annual visits to State College to see her many friends and to “pump up” the many Manos Juntas supporters in State College. Proudly framed on her wall of the Manos Juntas storefront is a list of the founding sponsors, a majority of whom are names that would be familiar to most State College readers.
Contributions to Manos Juntas can be sent to the University Baptist and Brethren Church, Gloria Escobar Fund, 411 South Burrows Street, State College, PA 16801.