Agros Blog

We’re currently in Nicaragua, on our way to the Agros village Futuro del Mañana. While in Honduras we spent two days with the people living in ‘Los Bordos’. Los Bordos is essentially a concentration of 6,000 families living on a series of water dikes on the borders of San Pedro Sula. Most of these families came from the rural areas of Honduras in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, which left tens of thousands of people displaced, homes destroyed, nowhere to go. They came to San Pedro Sula and began erecting temporary shelters on the water dikes, and these ‘temporary’ homes have now have become home to over 20,000 people.

The people of Los Bordos live in enormously difficult conditions. Open sewage, no plumbing, surrounded by contaminated water, mounds of trash, rampant disease, and yet with an unquenchable hope for a better life. These families also live under the threat of imminent eviction. The have been told by the Honduran government that the conditions are environmentally hazardous (which is an understatement) and that the various Los Bordos communities will be developed into roads and highways. The difficulty for the authorities is, of course, where do these families go? There are no good options for them. This is where Agros comes in.

Agros has partnered with a local Mennonite organization who has been working extensively in Los Bordos, with the goal of relocating groups of families into a future Agros village. There are many challenges in this effort, but even more possibilities. The families are driven by an overwhelming hope for a better life, the opportunity to own their own land, to start their own agricultural businesses, and ultimately to provide a better future for their children. It will take me some time to fully understand this contrast of human suffering and extraordinary, desperate, life-affirming hope. Land, Hope, and Life indeed.
Here are a few photos from our time there, shot by Ira Lippke.