Embarking on a Mission of Mercy
Local residents delivering medical supplies to Mexico's Tarahumara Indians

Lorenzo Dominguez and Al Charles pack boxes Saturday morning with supplies for a medical mission to Tarahumara, Mexico. Dominquez helped organize the 10-day trip, which will include three doctors among the 14 other participants. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Fourteen local community members will be making a medical mission to Indian people living in a remote region of Mexico on June 23.

However, through donations of money, medicine, school supplies, and other needed items, the greater Gallup community will be represented on the annual mission.

This is the fifth year for the medical mission to Mexico, a volunteer project that was started by Lorenzo Dominguez, a registered nurse at the Gallup Indian Medical Center who moved to Gallup a little over five years ago.

"This is kind of an inspiration thing," said Dominguez, who explained he was encouraged to start the project after learning about an orphanage in Mexico that is operated by Gallup's Sisters of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Joseph. "I wanted to help do something," he added.

Dominguez said he received a great deal of initial assistance from local physician Steve Heath and his wife, Aida, who helped promote the project to local doctors and nurses. The first two years the group went to assist the Tepeguanes Indians in the state of Durango, Mexico. The last two years the group has worked with the Tarahumara Indians in a remote mountainous region of Chihuahua, Mexico. They will return to the same region this year.

According to Dominguez and other mission volunteers, the Tarahumara live in very isolated communities with no paved roads, vehicles, electricity, or running water. Set apart by language, culture, and geography, the Tarahumara live mostly separate from Mexico's Spanish-speaking mestizo population and its money economy.

Fifteen adults and teens are scheduled to make the 10-day trip this year, which will involve a construction project and basic medical services. The group is made up of 14 Gallup area residents, mostly doctors or nurses, and a veterinarian from Juarez, Mexico. Four teens will act as assistants to the adults, work as gofers, and help with the cooking.

Goals of mission
On Saturday, Dominguez, Al Charles, Dr. Daniel Berg, and three children were working at Dominguez's house sorting through donated goods that the group will be taking on the mission.

This will be Charles' first year to participate. An engineer, Charles said he and his wife, a nurse, had begun their married life years ago with mission work in New York City and had previously volunteered in Appalachia and U.S./Mexican border towns.

"We've been blessed in this country," Charles said. His desire to participate in the mission, he explained, was rooted in the belief that people should share with others in need.

Berg, who practices internal medicine at the GIMC, participated in last year's mission. Although he treats Native American patients here, Berg said volunteering with the Tarahumara is giving him the opportunity to work with native people in a Third World setting. Like people from other Third World countries, he said, the Tarahumara Indians have high rates of malnutrition, particularly in children, and they suffer and die from many preventable diseases.

Because of the brief length of the mission and the limited amount of medical supplies and equipment, the Gallup group will mostly do minor medical procedures, give out prescriptions, and distribute public health items such as food, vitamins, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and toothbrushes.

The group will also be distributing basic school supplies and helping to construct a dormitory in the community of Cuchiverachi.

Because the Tarahumara live scattered across the mountains, Berg explained, parents bring their children to the government school building at the beginning of the week, and then pick them up at the end of the week.

According to Berg, Cuchiverachi's two-room school is a rustic cinder block building with no glass in its windows. The students sleep outside on the grounds of the schoolyard or inside on the concrete floor. The Gallup group will help build a dormitory that can house 80 children and will feature a girls' room and a boys' room with bunk beds, a kitchen, dining hall, bathroom, and a room to store medicine. The building will have running water from an elevated water tank.

Donations needed
The group is still accepting donations before its June 23 departure. Dominguez said blankets, basic eating and cooking utensils (plastic or metal only), and money would be helpful. "Money is always welcome," said Dominguez. "The more people can donate, the more we can help the people."

Donations of clothing cannot be accepted.

Dominguez said all donated money will go to assist the Tarahumara people. Administrative costs, he explained, do not come from donations. He expressed gratitude to the Catholic community of Gallup for its annual financial support and to the Cibola Medical Foundation for its donations of medical supplies. In addition, he said, each year Navajo Tractor lends the group a trailer to haul all the donations and supplies.

Future medical missions are open to interested community members who would like to participate. Dominguez said individuals should contact him months in advance because participants are required to attend planning meetings, promote the trip's mission in the community, and raise money to cover their travel expenses.

"Ultimately," he said, "it's not one person's mission. It's everybody's mission."

This year's participants from the Gallup community include Cyle Balok, Dr. Daniel Berg, Amy Breslaw, Al and Ellyce Charles, Lorenzo and Maria Dominguez, Julio Dominguez, Ulysses Dominguez, Dr. Richard Stam, Dr. Dale Warren, Dr. Ralph Warren, Madison Warren, and Maxine Warren.

For more information, Dominguez can be contacted at 726-9374. Financial donations can be mailed to the Salud para Suchil Medical Mission, c/o Lorenzo Dominguez, 1410 Red Rock Dr., Gallup, N.M. 87301.