Terry Dugan
Amigos reflections
Motivations to join
I’m not sure why I got involved in Amigos. It was late 1964, the start of my junior year at USF, and I was involved in various campus activities already. But something about Amigos captured my attention. I’d spent a summer in Colombia in 1961 so had a sense of the Latin American culture and had a certain attraction to it. Amigos seemed like a good and convenient way to continue that connection while also giving of myself in a way that might do others some good. It certainly would be an educational and growth experience personally. (And it didn’t hurt that I was interested in someone who was already involved in Amigos and would be going back to Mexico in 1965.)
Nevertheless, I can’t say it was a very deliberate or conscious decision to join Amigos and go to Mexico. Looking back, it feels more like I was moved or guided to Amigos by some external force (Spirit?), and that feeling continues even to this day. I still wonder how all the Amigos experiences came about in my life, but I certainly am grateful they did. They have been and continue to be formative in ways I don’t fully grasp or appreciate.
And as a parent I have often wished that my own children could have their own “Amigos” experience that would provide them with such an insightful, formative and supportive experience they could carry throughout their lives. It would not be like mine; it would have to be theirs. But it would need to become a part of their soul, guiding them in all they did. That would be a wonderful gift to give to our children.
Preparations
Some of my earliest recollections of what real community is came in the preparation sessions we did with Amigos. Joining with a hundred or more other students from various other colleges to study the Mexican culture and history, to learn about community building, and to begin to get a sense of what was ahead was in itself a powerful and energizing feeling. I always looked forward to those Friday evenings or Sunday afternoons at UC or SCU when we would become a group greater than its parts. I felt swept along, a part of something bigger that was well worth being a part of. We have trivialized some of that feeling by describing it as “wanting to save the world.” Perhaps it looked like that from the outside, and maybe it was just that. But it was visceral. It became an integral part of us as we focused on something other than just ourselves. While we thought we might do some good in Mexico, deep down I think we sensed we ourselves were involved in a self-transformative process even if we never affected a single life in Mexico.
These preparation sessions provided a chance to do some reflection and probe into my own values and motivations and goals. While I don’t recall realizing any clear answers during that preparation experience, I do know that my questions were sharpened and my values tested and tempered in ways that have served me to this day.
Amigos liturgies and the sense of community
The Liturgies that were and are a part of the Amigos experience have been the most meaningful and powerful in my life. They were and are what true liturgies should be. None of the typical canned Sunday pabulum. Real divinely human experiences as they should be. Truly a case of “where two or more are gathered in My name…” They were what community is all about. I miss them. I miss the sense of being with others who share a common purpose and vision and energy and commitment. I miss the mutual caring about something greater than myself and my immediate world. I miss the music that spoke what was in our souls.
It was the time of Vatican II and there was a visceral sense of life, both in the world and in the church. There was a rising tide of concern about what was evolving on the world stage, particularly in Viet Nam. There was a sense that something needed to be done to make things better, to bring a different set of values out front and center. Things were bubbling up all over, almost spontaneously and with energy and vision that wrote new rules for all institutions. There was Hope.
The Amigos liturgies seemed to bring all these feelings, concerns and energies into useful focus, and instill a sense of possibility and purpose. They gave me a feeling of being part of a community that shared a Love – The Love that our God is and gives that brought the entire Cosmos into continuing being and which teaches us daily that we were made in the Image and Likeness of that Creator. And isn’t that what a real liturgy should do?
Lessons from a rain storm
We could set our watches by the afternoon rainstorm. We learned to time our walk back to our hacienda for comida so as not to get caught in the daily deluge. At least most of the time we did.
One day I must have gotten immersed in whatever I was doing in San Pedro Tenango and lost track of time. As I headed out of the village, hopscotching along the alternating patches of cobblestones and mud, it hit, it dumped. I pulled my cheap nylon windbreaker over my head and resigned myself to getting thoroughly drenched in the warm tropical rain.
But within seconds, a kind Madre beckoned me to come into her home and get out of the rain. I gladly accepted her invitation, and she taught me a lesson that is with me to this day.
We Norteamericanos have been seduced into thinking that happiness and kindness are largely material. That afternoon I learned the truth.
The home I was invited into for shelter from the rain was magnificent in its love and simplicity. Its one room was walled by rocks from the nearby fields. Its windows were the many spaces between those rocks, of course with no glass or even plastic. One wall was the adobe side of the neighbor’s home. The ceiling/roof was a combination of corrugated metal and plastic sheeting and tarps, all supported by the branches of the tree that grew in the middle of the room. The floor was packed dirt. There was a mattress on the ground, and a simple ring of rocks formed the fire pit in the corner. That was it for Mom, Dad, and three kids.
Yet the home was filled with the spontaneous generosity and love that we here seldom see. As the rain subsided, I was even offered the simple plastic sheet the family used as a rain coat so I could finish my journey. That would have left the family without even that bit of outside shelter.
That afternoon, I had in my pocket more chump change than the family saw in a week. But then money isn’t everything…
Digging foundations and latrines
Two of the projects in San Pedro Tenago ’65 were to help the village start a long-desired community center next to the church, and to build a community latrine.
It took most of the summer to get the villagers to agree to a basic design for the community room, but it finally happened. After much planning, organizing, discussion and excitement, by mid-August the ground-breaking day finally arrived. Men and boys from all around arrived and started digging the trench for the foundation of the new community hall, a foot or so wide and a foot and a half deep, about 20’ x 40’. Nearby a pinata was strung up, the village band played, and the women and girls served food and drinks. It was a celebration as only Mexican villagers can throw a celebration. In the ensuing days we used our Amigos pickup, an old but reliable Jeep, and helped haul sand and rocks from a nearby stream bed to make the foundation itself. Unfortunately, I had to leave shortly thereafter, and the Amigos involvement in the project ended for the summer soon after that. We never did learn whether or not the foundation was finished and the hall built, but I heard it was not. While some projects took root, others did not. Guess that’s life…
Once we navigated the bureaucracy of Salubridad to acquire the two pre-cast cement panels with holes in the center that served as the floor of the latrines, the rest was rather easy. We just dug deep holes out behind the church and placed the panels over them. But then it got a bit trickier. We had to engineer seats. Since one of our purposes was to design the latrines so that others could easily copy and build them themselves, we determined to use local materials, namely rocks. After numerous experiments we managed to find and pile rocks sufficiently securely (and comfortably) that at least for the “test flight” they held up. We never got a report on if and how the latrines were accepted, but I have often thought of different experiences people might have had with those rock piles. I suspect that for the locals these latrines became the talk of the village and the main memory of that “Summer of the Gingos.”
The Amigos Spirit
From, the beginning in Amigos, I had a sense of being part of something bigger & more important, a feeling of being moved by the Spirit. It’s hard to describe, but from the beginning it just felt like the right thing to do. Maybe I had an unconscious void that was seeking fulfillment. Maybe it was a desire for adventure in the safety of the college environment before the unknown future descended. Maybe I saw it as a “legitimate” spring break trip. Or maybe it was just a justifiable way not to take a job or summer classes and yet still learn something.
Whatever my motivation, I still wonder about it and wish that all young people could find their own “Amigos experience” that would be so formative and be with them for the rest of their lives.
We all need to be open to and find those opportunities. I am confident we each have them; the trick is to recognize them and have the courage to embrace them. Granted, we may have obligations and restrictions in our lives that seem to make grasping these opportunities impossible. Maybe those obligations and restrictions are the opportunities in disguise. Maybe it is how we look at our life situations. Maybe if we can find a way to adjust our perspective and attitude we can find in our lives the opportunities we haven’t seen before. Maybe it sometimes comes down to how we react to our own life situations. Maybe we are not creative or imaginative enough to see the opportunities that are present in our daily lives to transform ourselves. Maybe we need a different kind of “attitude adjustment hour.”
Or maybe this is all too unrealistic and just a sixties flashback of Hope and optimism…
Was Amigos just a Creature of the times?
As we have looked back on our Amigos experience, and looked forward to the future of our children, we’ve often talked of trying to share Amigos with them. But even as we talk of that, we know it can’t really happen. All we can do is model the Amigos Spirit and hope that some of it can rub off on them.
Even programs today that may seem similar to Amigos really can’t compare. While they may be excellent and appropriate for today, they are for today, and Amigos was for yesterday. In so many ways it was a creature of its time, and time has largely moved on.
Amigos grew, lived and died in the 60’s as did so many other things. The chemistry of the decade not only made Amigos possible, it almost demanded Amigos happen. We needed a vehicle for the frustration, fear, idealism, hope, energy, values and visions of the decade that roiled in so many college students then. If programs like Amigos had not happened, who knows what some of us would have done, or where we’d be today – in another country, in jail or dead? But not likely where we are today, doing what we are doing.
So if that is true, what obligation do we have to use our Amigos experience? While I believe each of us has used that experience every day of our lives, do we keep it alive enough to continue to carry it into our daily lives and the lives of other we meet? How can we do that?
Life at San Cristobal
Where the San Pedro ’65 Amigos stayed was about a mile out of the village, and that may have been the good fortune of the people of the village. We all – 7 gals and 4 guys – lived in a hacienda owned by a man who lived and worked in Mexico City. This little hacienda community of maybe a dozen families was San Cristobal, and it had a magnificent, though mostly unused, cathedral. There, when one of the Amigos priests visited, we would have Mass and the entire community would join us. It was wonderful, with a rich mix of Mexican and American music and ritual blending into singular prayer and community. That is what liturgy should be about.
We shared the hacienda with the owner’s caretakers and their families, so yes, we were “chaperoned.” While our rooms were at opposite ends of one wing, we all did have to share a shower, and that meant we had to share a water heater. And in those days before full women’s lib, the guys were responsible for firing up the water heater early if anyone wanted anything but a cold shower. But the gals at least saw to it that the crib of dried corn cobs we used as fuel was always full. I’ve no idea how many stories floated around the hacienda and village about the goings-on of the Gingos, but I’m confident any such stories were not true. (Darn!)
We were blessed with relatively modern facilities, and the resident cook and housekeeper who worked for the help at the hacienda managed to see to it that we were sufficiently cared for as well. In fact, we lived comparatively well. But there were unique features in the place. Like a large loft over our living quarters that was filled three feet deep with fresh garlic. Or the pigs stys out back, frankly the cleanest I’ve seen. And the other farm animals that made their contributions of sound and smell to the place. A memorable highlight was the time one of the gals opened the refrigerator and came eye-to-eye with the face of a recently slaughter pig. It took us all several rounds of rompope and cuba libres to settle down after that delight.
At the hacienda, Mariella and her daughter Amalia (if I recall names correctly) were employed daily in making fresh tortillas for the staff. They prepared the maize dough and then sat for hours in a dark, smoke-filled, 15 x 15 room with a high ceiling, tending and stoking a small fire pit with a metal pan on top and cooking the best tortillas we’d ever eaten. The smoke rose and filled the room, slowly escaping through a small hole in the ceiling. As their one reward, a beautiful shaft of sunlight came pouring back through that hole, providing the little light they had to do their work. The dramatic effect of the shaft of light made the room seem like a cathedral as they knelt there on the stone floor pounding and flipping the tortillas. The photo I made of that scene brings back so many memories, and I’ve often thought of those two women, wondering how their lives turned out – and how long they actually lived after all the smoke.
Continuing Amigos involvement & spirit
One of the benefits of being an Amigo is that it stays with you – a life-long payback for relatively little investment. Some of us have been more involved “after” Amigos than we were in the 60’s. I was just a one-timer, but the experience has stayed with me and continues to pay dividends. The recollections alone would have been worth it, but many of my best friends today are Amigos, and we share so much more than just old time memories.
We have something of an informal support group, there whenever we have a need that only a true amigo can meet. Priceless.
In good times we share ideas and stimulate each other to new insights. We break bread together, literally and liturgically. Our kids are friends, and we celebrate together.
Some people find that kind of camaraderie with classmates or fraternity or sorority kin, or work or social contacts. But Amigos friendships are a bit more akin to the friendships made when people share deeper, more visceral experiences together, like a long and healthy marriage, or many years of many common experiences, or harsh military times, or sometimes just “soulmates” who click. In some ways, the Amigos experience is the gift that keeps on giving. What a blessing! And who’da known 50 years ago that could happen.
Our Amigos Students and the Future
One of the most satisfying and gratifying of the Amigos experiences is to see the progress of the students the Fr. Joe O’Looney Memorial Scholarship Program continues to support in the Guanajuato area. Over the years since Amigos stopped sending students south we have provided financial aid and hope to dozens of young students, and have given them a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families. This scholarship program is alive and well, at least for the time being. How long it continues and how many more students it serves is up to us.
But these days it is hard to imagine students heading off to a summer in Mexico, as we did with truck-loads of supplies, including (legitimate) drugs and syringes. We can’t expect a new generation of motley students to be “heading south on a Greyhound bus.”
We’d all be singing in the Tijuana Jail with the Kingston Trio!
As Amigos reach their 60s and 70s, there will be fewer of us to step up and support the scholarship program. To expect our children to join the effort is not reasonable, though some may do so to an extent. But it is not their program or their experience; they need to have their own.
So where is Amigos headed? And who will take it there? Does Amigos need to plan its own demise, or should it plan its own transformation – into what? Can we capture the spirit and essence of Amigos Anonymous and package it in some way for future generations. We learned from it so why can’t others, even if they don’t spend a profound summer in Mexico?
In a small way, these are the questions posed by this little book. We want to churn up your thinking about how the spirit and essence of Amigos can be transmitted into the future. We want to recreate that restlessness and vision that drove us then so that we can find ways to share it with the future. It may not look like what we knew. It may not involve the same kind of work. It may not be college based. But it needs to touch people in ways that help them understand themselves and their place in the world; their own ability to make a difference; and their own sense of values that respects others and the world we live in.
The Amigos dream is in many ways the dream that has driven all the great and important changes in the world over the centuries – and continues to do so around the world even today. So it does remain alive and healthy. We just need to find ways to bring it to the next generations in ways that speak to the needs and times of today.
Are you up to the challenge?
Motivations to join
I’m not sure why I got involved in Amigos. It was late 1964, the start of my junior year at USF, and I was involved in various campus activities already. But something about Amigos captured my attention. I’d spent a summer in Colombia in 1961 so had a sense of the Latin American culture and had a certain attraction to it. Amigos seemed like a good and convenient way to continue that connection while also giving of myself in a way that might do others some good. It certainly would be an educational and growth experience personally. (And it didn’t hurt that I was interested in someone who was already involved in Amigos and would be going back to Mexico in 1965.)
Nevertheless, I can’t say it was a very deliberate or conscious decision to join Amigos and go to Mexico. Looking back, it feels more like I was moved or guided to Amigos by some external force (Spirit?), and that feeling continues even to this day. I still wonder how all the Amigos experiences came about in my life, but I certainly am grateful they did. They have been and continue to be formative in ways I don’t fully grasp or appreciate.
And as a parent I have often wished that my own children could have their own “Amigos” experience that would provide them with such an insightful, formative and supportive experience they could carry throughout their lives. It would not be like mine; it would have to be theirs. But it would need to become a part of their soul, guiding them in all they did. That would be a wonderful gift to give to our children.
Preparations
Some of my earliest recollections of what real community is came in the preparation sessions we did with Amigos. Joining with a hundred or more other students from various other colleges to study the Mexican culture and history, to learn about community building, and to begin to get a sense of what was ahead was in itself a powerful and energizing feeling. I always looked forward to those Friday evenings or Sunday afternoons at UC or SCU when we would become a group greater than its parts. I felt swept along, a part of something bigger that was well worth being a part of. We have trivialized some of that feeling by describing it as “wanting to save the world.” Perhaps it looked like that from the outside, and maybe it was just that. But it was visceral. It became an integral part of us as we focused on something other than just ourselves. While we thought we might do some good in Mexico, deep down I think we sensed we ourselves were involved in a self-transformative process even if we never affected a single life in Mexico.
These preparation sessions provided a chance to do some reflection and probe into my own values and motivations and goals. While I don’t recall realizing any clear answers during that preparation experience, I do know that my questions were sharpened and my values tested and tempered in ways that have served me to this day.
Amigos liturgies and the sense of community
The Liturgies that were and are a part of the Amigos experience have been the most meaningful and powerful in my life. They were and are what true liturgies should be. None of the typical canned Sunday pabulum. Real divinely human experiences as they should be. Truly a case of “where two or more are gathered in My name…” They were what community is all about. I miss them. I miss the sense of being with others who share a common purpose and vision and energy and commitment. I miss the mutual caring about something greater than myself and my immediate world. I miss the music that spoke what was in our souls.
It was the time of Vatican II and there was a visceral sense of life, both in the world and in the church. There was a rising tide of concern about what was evolving on the world stage, particularly in Viet Nam. There was a sense that something needed to be done to make things better, to bring a different set of values out front and center. Things were bubbling up all over, almost spontaneously and with energy and vision that wrote new rules for all institutions. There was Hope.
The Amigos liturgies seemed to bring all these feelings, concerns and energies into useful focus, and instill a sense of possibility and purpose. They gave me a feeling of being part of a community that shared a Love – The Love that our God is and gives that brought the entire Cosmos into continuing being and which teaches us daily that we were made in the Image and Likeness of that Creator. And isn’t that what a real liturgy should do?
Lessons from a rain storm
We could set our watches by the afternoon rainstorm. We learned to time our walk back to our hacienda for comida so as not to get caught in the daily deluge. At least most of the time we did.
One day I must have gotten immersed in whatever I was doing in San Pedro Tenango and lost track of time. As I headed out of the village, hopscotching along the alternating patches of cobblestones and mud, it hit, it dumped. I pulled my cheap nylon windbreaker over my head and resigned myself to getting thoroughly drenched in the warm tropical rain.
But within seconds, a kind Madre beckoned me to come into her home and get out of the rain. I gladly accepted her invitation, and she taught me a lesson that is with me to this day.
We Norteamericanos have been seduced into thinking that happiness and kindness are largely material. That afternoon I learned the truth.
The home I was invited into for shelter from the rain was magnificent in its love and simplicity. Its one room was walled by rocks from the nearby fields. Its windows were the many spaces between those rocks, of course with no glass or even plastic. One wall was the adobe side of the neighbor’s home. The ceiling/roof was a combination of corrugated metal and plastic sheeting and tarps, all supported by the branches of the tree that grew in the middle of the room. The floor was packed dirt. There was a mattress on the ground, and a simple ring of rocks formed the fire pit in the corner. That was it for Mom, Dad, and three kids.
Yet the home was filled with the spontaneous generosity and love that we here seldom see. As the rain subsided, I was even offered the simple plastic sheet the family used as a rain coat so I could finish my journey. That would have left the family without even that bit of outside shelter.
That afternoon, I had in my pocket more chump change than the family saw in a week. But then money isn’t everything…
Digging foundations and latrines
Two of the projects in San Pedro Tenago ’65 were to help the village start a long-desired community center next to the church, and to build a community latrine.
It took most of the summer to get the villagers to agree to a basic design for the community room, but it finally happened. After much planning, organizing, discussion and excitement, by mid-August the ground-breaking day finally arrived. Men and boys from all around arrived and started digging the trench for the foundation of the new community hall, a foot or so wide and a foot and a half deep, about 20’ x 40’. Nearby a pinata was strung up, the village band played, and the women and girls served food and drinks. It was a celebration as only Mexican villagers can throw a celebration. In the ensuing days we used our Amigos pickup, an old but reliable Jeep, and helped haul sand and rocks from a nearby stream bed to make the foundation itself. Unfortunately, I had to leave shortly thereafter, and the Amigos involvement in the project ended for the summer soon after that. We never did learn whether or not the foundation was finished and the hall built, but I heard it was not. While some projects took root, others did not. Guess that’s life…
Once we navigated the bureaucracy of Salubridad to acquire the two pre-cast cement panels with holes in the center that served as the floor of the latrines, the rest was rather easy. We just dug deep holes out behind the church and placed the panels over them. But then it got a bit trickier. We had to engineer seats. Since one of our purposes was to design the latrines so that others could easily copy and build them themselves, we determined to use local materials, namely rocks. After numerous experiments we managed to find and pile rocks sufficiently securely (and comfortably) that at least for the “test flight” they held up. We never got a report on if and how the latrines were accepted, but I have often thought of different experiences people might have had with those rock piles. I suspect that for the locals these latrines became the talk of the village and the main memory of that “Summer of the Gingos.”
The Amigos Spirit
From, the beginning in Amigos, I had a sense of being part of something bigger & more important, a feeling of being moved by the Spirit. It’s hard to describe, but from the beginning it just felt like the right thing to do. Maybe I had an unconscious void that was seeking fulfillment. Maybe it was a desire for adventure in the safety of the college environment before the unknown future descended. Maybe I saw it as a “legitimate” spring break trip. Or maybe it was just a justifiable way not to take a job or summer classes and yet still learn something.
Whatever my motivation, I still wonder about it and wish that all young people could find their own “Amigos experience” that would be so formative and be with them for the rest of their lives.
We all need to be open to and find those opportunities. I am confident we each have them; the trick is to recognize them and have the courage to embrace them. Granted, we may have obligations and restrictions in our lives that seem to make grasping these opportunities impossible. Maybe those obligations and restrictions are the opportunities in disguise. Maybe it is how we look at our life situations. Maybe if we can find a way to adjust our perspective and attitude we can find in our lives the opportunities we haven’t seen before. Maybe it sometimes comes down to how we react to our own life situations. Maybe we are not creative or imaginative enough to see the opportunities that are present in our daily lives to transform ourselves. Maybe we need a different kind of “attitude adjustment hour.”
Or maybe this is all too unrealistic and just a sixties flashback of Hope and optimism…
Was Amigos just a Creature of the times?
As we have looked back on our Amigos experience, and looked forward to the future of our children, we’ve often talked of trying to share Amigos with them. But even as we talk of that, we know it can’t really happen. All we can do is model the Amigos Spirit and hope that some of it can rub off on them.
Even programs today that may seem similar to Amigos really can’t compare. While they may be excellent and appropriate for today, they are for today, and Amigos was for yesterday. In so many ways it was a creature of its time, and time has largely moved on.
Amigos grew, lived and died in the 60’s as did so many other things. The chemistry of the decade not only made Amigos possible, it almost demanded Amigos happen. We needed a vehicle for the frustration, fear, idealism, hope, energy, values and visions of the decade that roiled in so many college students then. If programs like Amigos had not happened, who knows what some of us would have done, or where we’d be today – in another country, in jail or dead? But not likely where we are today, doing what we are doing.
So if that is true, what obligation do we have to use our Amigos experience? While I believe each of us has used that experience every day of our lives, do we keep it alive enough to continue to carry it into our daily lives and the lives of other we meet? How can we do that?
Life at San Cristobal
Where the San Pedro ’65 Amigos stayed was about a mile out of the village, and that may have been the good fortune of the people of the village. We all – 7 gals and 4 guys – lived in a hacienda owned by a man who lived and worked in Mexico City. This little hacienda community of maybe a dozen families was San Cristobal, and it had a magnificent, though mostly unused, cathedral. There, when one of the Amigos priests visited, we would have Mass and the entire community would join us. It was wonderful, with a rich mix of Mexican and American music and ritual blending into singular prayer and community. That is what liturgy should be about.
We shared the hacienda with the owner’s caretakers and their families, so yes, we were “chaperoned.” While our rooms were at opposite ends of one wing, we all did have to share a shower, and that meant we had to share a water heater. And in those days before full women’s lib, the guys were responsible for firing up the water heater early if anyone wanted anything but a cold shower. But the gals at least saw to it that the crib of dried corn cobs we used as fuel was always full. I’ve no idea how many stories floated around the hacienda and village about the goings-on of the Gingos, but I’m confident any such stories were not true. (Darn!)
We were blessed with relatively modern facilities, and the resident cook and housekeeper who worked for the help at the hacienda managed to see to it that we were sufficiently cared for as well. In fact, we lived comparatively well. But there were unique features in the place. Like a large loft over our living quarters that was filled three feet deep with fresh garlic. Or the pigs stys out back, frankly the cleanest I’ve seen. And the other farm animals that made their contributions of sound and smell to the place. A memorable highlight was the time one of the gals opened the refrigerator and came eye-to-eye with the face of a recently slaughter pig. It took us all several rounds of rompope and cuba libres to settle down after that delight.
At the hacienda, Mariella and her daughter Amalia (if I recall names correctly) were employed daily in making fresh tortillas for the staff. They prepared the maize dough and then sat for hours in a dark, smoke-filled, 15 x 15 room with a high ceiling, tending and stoking a small fire pit with a metal pan on top and cooking the best tortillas we’d ever eaten. The smoke rose and filled the room, slowly escaping through a small hole in the ceiling. As their one reward, a beautiful shaft of sunlight came pouring back through that hole, providing the little light they had to do their work. The dramatic effect of the shaft of light made the room seem like a cathedral as they knelt there on the stone floor pounding and flipping the tortillas. The photo I made of that scene brings back so many memories, and I’ve often thought of those two women, wondering how their lives turned out – and how long they actually lived after all the smoke.
Continuing Amigos involvement & spirit
One of the benefits of being an Amigo is that it stays with you – a life-long payback for relatively little investment. Some of us have been more involved “after” Amigos than we were in the 60’s. I was just a one-timer, but the experience has stayed with me and continues to pay dividends. The recollections alone would have been worth it, but many of my best friends today are Amigos, and we share so much more than just old time memories.
We have something of an informal support group, there whenever we have a need that only a true amigo can meet. Priceless.
In good times we share ideas and stimulate each other to new insights. We break bread together, literally and liturgically. Our kids are friends, and we celebrate together.
Some people find that kind of camaraderie with classmates or fraternity or sorority kin, or work or social contacts. But Amigos friendships are a bit more akin to the friendships made when people share deeper, more visceral experiences together, like a long and healthy marriage, or many years of many common experiences, or harsh military times, or sometimes just “soulmates” who click. In some ways, the Amigos experience is the gift that keeps on giving. What a blessing! And who’da known 50 years ago that could happen.
Our Amigos Students and the Future
One of the most satisfying and gratifying of the Amigos experiences is to see the progress of the students the Fr. Joe O’Looney Memorial Scholarship Program continues to support in the Guanajuato area. Over the years since Amigos stopped sending students south we have provided financial aid and hope to dozens of young students, and have given them a chance to make a better life for themselves and their families. This scholarship program is alive and well, at least for the time being. How long it continues and how many more students it serves is up to us.
But these days it is hard to imagine students heading off to a summer in Mexico, as we did with truck-loads of supplies, including (legitimate) drugs and syringes. We can’t expect a new generation of motley students to be “heading south on a Greyhound bus.”
We’d all be singing in the Tijuana Jail with the Kingston Trio!
As Amigos reach their 60s and 70s, there will be fewer of us to step up and support the scholarship program. To expect our children to join the effort is not reasonable, though some may do so to an extent. But it is not their program or their experience; they need to have their own.
So where is Amigos headed? And who will take it there? Does Amigos need to plan its own demise, or should it plan its own transformation – into what? Can we capture the spirit and essence of Amigos Anonymous and package it in some way for future generations. We learned from it so why can’t others, even if they don’t spend a profound summer in Mexico?
In a small way, these are the questions posed by this little book. We want to churn up your thinking about how the spirit and essence of Amigos can be transmitted into the future. We want to recreate that restlessness and vision that drove us then so that we can find ways to share it with the future. It may not look like what we knew. It may not involve the same kind of work. It may not be college based. But it needs to touch people in ways that help them understand themselves and their place in the world; their own ability to make a difference; and their own sense of values that respects others and the world we live in.
The Amigos dream is in many ways the dream that has driven all the great and important changes in the world over the centuries – and continues to do so around the world even today. So it does remain alive and healthy. We just need to find ways to bring it to the next generations in ways that speak to the needs and times of today.
Are you up to the challenge?