TRIBUTE TO ROGELIO URQUIZA

Rogelio Urquiza (left) passed away on 9 August. He tirelessly provided support and played a major role in the movement using his detailed vision and well thought-out ideas on issues such as tackling poverty and the importance of involving the most excluded members of society, which have made a major contribution to the development of the movement as we know it today.

The America region paid him a special tribute, as borne out by this personal account by Alberto De Urquiza from Emmaus Burzaco:

“I met Rogelio in August 1981. He introduced himself along with the members of the San Martín district cooperative, which had been part of the Emmaus Argentina national secretariat since December 1980. When it was his turn to introduce himself, he conveyed all the mysticism of Emmaus through his words and he was very obviously one of us.

On 10 October 1982 Rogelio was elected as national representative for the Argentina region in order to support Santiago Balista. During his time as regional representative from 1982 – 1991, when he joined the Executive Committee, he was appointed as the Executive Committee Latin American advisor by the Maine (US) administrative committee. Rogelio took on this role without forgetting his permanent desire to boost the Argentinean groups, with his no-table achievements including the re-launch of Emmaus Cordoba, with this being recognized on a number of occasions by the leaders of the group.

In 1984, his order (the Society of Jesus) transferred him to Resistencia where he found out about the existence and work of the Betania Community, which he invited to join Emmaus. Its members make up the present day Emmaus Resistencia.

In 1988, Rogelio attended the Verona Assembly with Gilberto Ledesma on behalf of the San Martín district cooperative and during subsequent visits to European communities he underlined the importance of having an Emmaus community in San Martín, which resulted in the creation of Traperos de Mendoza.

He had a great affinity with the Burzaco group and shared with us the same vision of what Emmaus should be right from the outset. Rogelio valued the group’s work, both that of the community, the Casa del Niño and the technical school, which was vitally important for us. He defended our educational ethos based on quiet day-to-day efforts working with the poorest members of society. These concepts were mistrusted by most of the Latin American groups at the time, but are now issues for the movement, with many people claiming to have the capacity – including the theory – to run this type of initiative with poor people, without taking into consideration the knowledge provided by years of experience of working in this area.

Rogelio was a key figure at institutional and a more personal level with regard to supporting the community and the rag picking work. He was always able to give the right advice and offer a vision of the future centering on people and the commitment to the poor.

When organizing the 1991 administrative committee in a small working group with him, we coined a phrase, which was the meeting’s slogan and concisely reflected his thoughts and work: “Our objective is to ensure that poor people take charge of changing their lives.”

Rogelio was a member of the Executive Committee for eight years until 1999, alongside Franco Bettoli, another Emmaus movement “great” who has also sadly passed away.

He has always been recognized at international level for his ability to see the fundamental problems and to provide a valid opinion on how to solve them. He was also valued by his “people”, as we saw in his final farewell.”

Brigitte Mary, general secretary of Emmaus International from 1986 to 1991 gives her personal account:

A major Emmaus International figure passed away at the start of August. Rogelio Urquiza is the person whose thoughts and work have most influenced me.

We first met in May 1979 when I visited the San Martín district in Mendoza where he had joined Father José María Llorens. However, they were not in when I arrived. I started waiting in front of the door, but a neighbor quickly invited me into her house. Her limitless admiration for both men shone through as she told me anecdotes about life in the district and their work. Rogelio and José María had come to live alongside the inhabitants of this dis-trict, which was set up by squatters on a former rub-bish dump. The residents were looked down upon for a long time for being poor and had had to fight to avoid being evicted. J.M. Llorens' book entitled Opción fuera de la ley tells the story of these struggles.

Hervé Teule, who was elected as the general secretary of Emmaus International at the end of 1976, met them during a visit to the Emmaus Latin America groups in 1978. The three men decided to re launch Emmaus in Mendoza after many years of inactivity.

Rogelio, a Jesuit priest, had been a psychology professor and then the director of education at a university. In San Martín, he was very close to the residents and encouraged them to create a range of community organizations in order to improve their daily lives, education using specially tailored teaching methods and training for activists, and encouraged them to take collective action. Rogelio was always present, offering advice and encouragement, but never held a management post or a position of power. Unfairly taken away from Mendoza and sent to Resistencia by the order, the protests of the district’s residents enabled him to return to Mendoza after several months away.

A modest man, Rogelio was the main driving force behind the rebirth of Emmaus in Argentina in the mid-1980s. He also contributed to the thinking of Emmaus International as the Argentina region representative on the administrative committee and then as the America region representative on the Executive Committee.