| A Visit With Jim UPDATE
Today, October 1 2006, Jim is presiding at a Mass of Celebration at the completion of C.A.N.O.A. (Centro de Atencion a Ninos de Otras Aptitudes), a center for children who are developmentally challenged or, as he prefers to identify them, Children with Other Aptitudes.It serves the poorest families and children in the southern hills of Tijuana, offering them an array of social, psychological, and developmental services that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.
MY VISIT AT THE BEGINNING
He strode down the long hotel driveway: tall, slender, a big smile on his face. He had just come from doing a blessing in Ensenada, and he was wearing the only thing that could be identified as formal attire -- an oversize felt hat, necessary for the conditions and the work he does. It has been many years since I last visited him. He holds his age well, still robust and cheerful for his now 60 years.
Jim spoke thoughtfully and slowly in describing his projects to myself and my daughter. Jamie, my daughter, is 18 years old and on a school break. When I asked her what she wanted to do, she said, "Go to Mexico to see Jim." Jim Hagan is an almost mythical figure around our house. He personifies the Christianity, liberation, and commitment to the poor that he preaches as a priest.
Jim lives in a simple wooden house with a tin roof, that he built himself. It is much like those of his neighbors in La Gloria, a colonia on the hillside above Tijuana. Jim described his current projects. We went to see the beginnings of El Centro de Attención a Niños Incapacitados (Center for the Care of Handicapable Children). It is even further out on rutted dirt roads that threatened to tear the bottom off of my '01 Camry. Four people are doing the manual labor -- Jim, an old sun baked gentleman named José Hidalgo, and two younger helpers. They hauled tons of hand-dug hard clay away and, to this point, have built a large encircling retaining wall. Seeing the slow pace of their work, and the amount of negotiating, resourcefulness, and delay it takes to get anything done, it's amazing they can make any progress at all.
But I remember when the St. Vincent de Paul hospital for the poor in Tijuana was at the same stage of development. Jim brought us to see it now. The building has been completed. The quality of construction was awesome! Jim had including an elevator, a nuns' quarters, operating room, dentist office, an isolation unit, a pharmacy, a labor and delivery room, and a back-up power generation system. (A few years earlier a doctor from Peru had visited and, at his invitation, Jim went and built in the Andes residential center for profoundly developmentally delayed children, whom Jim calls the "poorest of the poor".)
The part of Tijuana where Jim works is growing by leaps and bounds, and Jim has plans to build three chapels in the area. But he does not want to erect buildings where there is not community. So "paraliturgicos" are ministering with the Word and Jim is striving to bring people together. He explains that it is through community that people begin to experience liberation.
I asked Jim, "Who are your sponsors?" Jim takes no wages, and he says people give him money, land, and "we just had a taco sale after Mass yesterday." There is a nonprofit group, De Colores Foundation, that supports his work. (I would be happy to forward any funds to the Foundation. See information on the Sign-Up Page) "When will you leave?" I asked. Jim has ministered in the alredadores of Tijuana for a good 20 years now. His blue eyes twinkled and he said, "I think I'll be here for a few more years."
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