Gustavo

 

 

Gustavo Parajon: Public Health and Peacemaking Pioneer

by Daniel Buttry and Damaris Albuquerque

If you hadn’t known Gustavo Parajon during his lifetime, you might read this book and be skeptical.  You might think, one man couldn’t have been this good, to have changed the lives of so many, been that courageous and showed that degree of compassion for the poor, and yet so humble that he would have been embarrassed by all these accolades.  I knew Gustavo and considered him as a friend, colleague and mentor, and can testify that this book about his faith, work and sojourn through life is true.  He was the most complete example of a follower of Jesus I ever knew. 

On the day I met Gustavo, a week after the earthquake that leveled Managua, Nicaragua, on Christmas eve 1972, he was meeting with a group of evangelical young people and pastors under a mango tree on the grounds of the destroyed Baptist school.  He was encouraging them and sending them out into the city to find out where and what the needs were to bring the few resources they had on hand to help where the need was the greatest.  I had been sent to Managua by Church World Service to organize a relief effort of the churches in the US, and Gustavo greeted me warmly with the smile he always had for whomever he met.  He said let’s take a drive around the city and talk about what we can do together. That afternoon we started talking about how we might put together an organization of the churches of Nicaragua to bring immediate help to the damnificados, the victims of the earthquake, and hopefully beyond.  That organization, CEPAD, still exists and accompanies the poor in Nicaragua today, 50 years later.  The history of CEPAD and Gustavo’s leadership in making it a channel for God’s love to the poor and marginalized of Nicaragua is but one of the stories of Gustavo’s life told in this book.

As a physician trained in US medical schools, including a master's in public health from Johns Hopkins, he could have had prestigious positions in medicine in Nicaragua, but he chose to organize a program called PROVADENIC to bring primary health care and vaccinations to isolated and poor villages in rural Nicaragua.  Judy and I stayed in Nicaragua for over five years and grew to love the people who worked in these two programs. Later I traveled many times to the region and would touch base with Gustavo and hear about the latest challenges he and Nicaragua were facing, which were many. 

Over the next forty years Nicaragua faced a plethora of dauting challenges including earthquakes, hurricanes, corruption, human rights abuses of the Samoza dictatorship, the Sandinista revolution, the “contra” war, and the US embargo.  Gustavo faced all these with compassion and calm, with a special capacity to motivate others. He spoke to the powerful about justice and listened to the poor and those most directly affected. 

In reading this book I learned details I had not known of how he gained the trust of both sides of the war in the countryside and helped bring about reconciliation and disarmament. He was on the National Reconciliation Commission, but while other dignitaries remained safely in the capitol city, Gustavo went into the conflict zones, explaining, “I was afraid of not doing what God asked me to do”.  He encouraged US citizens to come to Nicaragua to see for themselves how US government policy and support of the contras was causing terrible suffering and death in the country, and gave orientation talks to these groups to challenge them to work for justice and truth, always using scripture to back up his points.  The many groups of peacemakers who came and went back home to oppose the Reagan administration’s policies toward Nicaragua might well have averted a wider war and US intervention. 

He was also the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Managua where he used Bible based preaching to inspire many to follow and live out the Gospel, but he used the bible in many other arenas too, such as in meetings with revolutionary Sandinista comandantes, to bring home points about justice and peace, and in meetings with both sides in reconciliation committees in the conflict zones.  Frankly, I have known few others who knew the Scriptures as well and how to apply them to life. 

Gustavo died of a heart attack in 2011.  I think of the scene from the movie “A Man Called Otto”, when Otto is dying of a heart condition in hospital, and the nurse said, “his heart was just too big”.   That cracked me up, but it sort of describes Gustavo’s heart.  It was big and full of compassion, and he must have been tired after all the love he gave out for so many years.  What a way to go, good friend and faithful servant!  I loved you, but, like others in my life, I didn’t tell you that enough when I had a chance. 

Now, here in Albuquerque, we live near his son, David and his family.  David and his wife Laura are both doctors and carrying on the legacy of Gustavo, as are so many others of Gustavo’s family and disciples.  His daughter, Marta, is now the pastor at First Baptist, and wife Joan, an accomplished musician, still sings and sometimes directs a wonderful choir known throughout Central America.

Jim Wallis, the founder of the Sojourners community said about this book, “Please, everyone, this book is a must read if you want to know what it really means to follow Jesus in times like we are in right now”.

Jerry Aaker   Feb.13,2023