The Cost of Sharing Sisoguichi, Mexico Medical Mission Trip

by Jim Walton, Project Access Committee chair

I’ve been told that if you want to have your assumptions and biases challenged, just go on an international medical mission trip. A recent medical mission trip to the Sierra Mountain region of Mexico opened my eyes. I now understand that there are at least two Mexicos (and I’m not referring to “old” and “new”).
Our 12-member American medical team was met at the El Paso airport by two vans that had been dispatched by the Secretary of Health for the State of Chihuahua, Mexico. The two drivers were Mexican citizens and conversed easily with our translators during the 4-hour drive to Chihuahua City. We had the good fortune to have our work sanctioned under the auspices of the State of Chihuahua’s Health Department. We had been asked to join several Mexican physicians on an “extramural” surgical mission trip to provide surgical services to Tarahumara Indians living in the Sierra Mountains, 5 hours southwest of the capital city. Our van drivers would stay with us the entire week and a physician director for that area of the state also would join us.

Arriving in the Sierra Mountains, I was struck by how similar the geography was to southwestern Colorado. The native Indians of the area could just as easily have been related to those living in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. Sadly, this area of Mexico was experiencing its 10th year of drought. Signs of distress were everywhere we turned. Stunted corn crops stood in the fields, having been faithfully planted with horse-drawn plows and tended by Indian families armed with wooden hoes. The riverbeds were mostly dry, except for shallow, slow flowing water long since polluted upstream by neighbors’ attempts to wash clothes. Cattle and horses ambled loose along the riverbed, grazing on what little grass they could find, and showing signs of illness and starvation. Among them, death had come to one which birds were quickly scavenging. This scene greeted our team as we began our work in the town.
Over the next few days, we would make the 15-minute walk back and forth from our cabins to the hospital. During our walks, dust from the dry roads filled our eyes, sounds of saws from the wood-furniture industry filled our ears, and the smell of foul water flowing down the streets toward the river caused us to wonder about its origin from under the houses that lined the streets.

This is the Mexico that I didn’t know. This is the Mexico where Indians and their families have lived for centuries, moving from isolated caves and farming plots to small town centers, never intending to leave for the comforts of some far-away land called the United States. This also is the Mexico where Mexican citizens, private physicians, and public servants reach out to establish charitable private hospitals and regional public clinics. The Catholic Church ran a hospital and orphanage here, desperately trying to make ends meet with the limited monies that local citizens and the national church provided. The Mexican government worked diligently to bridge the gap between the hospital and its primary care clinic, providing preventive health education to more remote villages as well as the secondary and tertiary care some citizens needed. It didn’t work perfectly, but it doesn’t work that well here in the United States, either.
I came away with the feeling that private-public partnerships are just as important and meaningful in Mexico as they are in this country. In this case, the faith community needed to work with the public health community to best help the Tarahumara people of Sisoguichi and the Sierras. Their challenge, like ours, is the fine art of negotiating the differing objectives of each entity while respecting each other’s mission and need for accountability. As we assist with the repair of broken people, I am reminded that politics, planning, and negotiation would and probably should always be a vital part of our work, here and abroad. Moreover, one assumption and bias was reinforced: Faith and prayer are not bad things in these situations.

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