Lucia Lantero - the power of one woman

Before the Hellenic myths told you Persephone was raped and abducted by Hades to live in hell as his consort, the Goddess Persephone in origin was a Goddess of the Underworld.

The old, pre-hellenic myth tells something like this: long ago Earth had no winter, Demeter ruled over both worlds and her time and attention was mostly given to the living and tending of the land. One day, her daughter Persephone, tells her mother that she had seen the spirits of the dead roaming the lands lost and confused, some humans could see them too. She says she spoke to them and felt they really needed them (Demeter and Persephone), but because her mother has already a lot to do for the living, she will go live in the underworld and rule over the dead. Demeter isn’t happy but understands and accepts her daughter’s decision, however, there shall be winter for every month Persephone will spend in the underworld. *Very brief summary of the myth as narrated in the book, ‘The Lost Goddesses of Early Greece’ by Charlene Spretnak.

I wanted to tell you this myth as an introduction to Lucia’s story because myths give clues about our nature. Believing that the Olympian stories - where the Goddesses are portrayed as weak, victims of rapes and abductions, cold and masculine, disagreeable and jealous wives, or frivolous sexual creatures - give women a true portrait of the nature of being a woman is very misleading and damaging to the psyche of the woman.

When I spoke to Lucia, I perceived Persephone: as a young woman who directly witnessed one of the worst crimes of humanity, spoke to the victims, and out of pure compassion decided to stay and help. Not because she had a complex. Not because she was manipulated. Not because she needed to prove anything to the world. In fact, it’s quite the opposite… Lucia is pretty reserved and doesn’t advertise to the 4 Winds her mission. Perhaps she should, but she doesn’t.

There’s light and a lightness of being that is so rare and so pure, and so beautiful to experience coming from someone who chose to live in hell because of the responsibility she decided to take upon her shoulders.

When she and I met, I was in my first year of University and she was in her last. We never really hung out, and back then I was intimidated by the strength she exuded mixed with her wild beauty - I now regret having missed out on getting to know a remarkable person. However, we do have a friend in common and that’s how I found out about Lucia’s endeavour. Brace yourself for a touching story, unedited and raw. I will catch you on the other side…

How did you go from the University of Gastronomic Sciences to opening an orphanage in Haiti?

You know how this university was, so full of values and great ideology, great ideas, vouching for sustainability and all these pompous words that meant a lot but we really didn’t know the reality. So after I graduated, I went WWOOFing. I wanted to know firsthand the lives of those we are asking to cultivate the land in a certain way and produce the seeds we deem important culturally and biologically. I gave myself 6 months to discover whether their life and their happiness were sustainable in the long term, after this experiment I would start to work at a new university that had just opened in San Sebastian. 

I went to France and WWOOFed at a few places, there I met some people who worked for the organisation Kokopelli - which shares the values of Slow Food but their work is focused on the protection of biodiversity, medicinal plants and seed sovereignty. In 2010 when Haiti got hit by the earthquake, they wanted to support and partner with the organisation Sadhana Forest, so I got a call. Sadhana Forest was going to start a project in Haiti and needed people who knew food conservation methods - as you know I was a chef trained at the Cordon Bleu prior to starting the University of Gastronomic Sciences. I agreed to go for 2 months, I had already gotten my answer from my sustainability quest anyway. 

I left for Haiti with a backpack for what I thought was going to be just two months.

I started the project but got quickly disappointed - though I won’t get into the details because it’s not important. So I started planting orchards in the school on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti - there are 4 border points in Haiti and that was the poorest area for both countries, in the South. There are two towns living next to each other: the one on the side of the Dominican Republic has electricity, toilets, restaurants and supermarkets… it’s quite rich despite being extremely poor; then the town right across the border, on the Haitian side, has absolutely nothing, no electricity, and no concept of a toilet. When I arrived, there was a major outbreak of cholera. I just stayed and started helping out in a school, where the food they were getting from the international organisation wasn’t arriving due to a flooded road. Kids go to school in Haiti to eat one meal a day, and on average people in my area of Haiti, in Anse-à-Pitres, eat one meal every 2 or 3 days - one of the reasons is that they have a few boats for the community at the pier, and the men cue to use it, so the day the father goes out to sea, is the day his family eats. Another reason is because that’s the time it takes to go to the mountains to find a tree for fuel - Haiti is also one of the most deforested countries in the world.

Haiti means mountains in the old language of the Taíno people - the indigenous people of the Caribbean, who inhabited the islands before the Spanish intrusion. The history of Haiti is quite crazy, but in short: it was the first black country to become independent in the times of Napoleon. And because Haiti was a French colony, Napoleon agreed to give them independence only if they could buy back their freedom. Imagine this, Haiti has 14 African ethnicities whilst Brazil has 6… it was the slave market exchange center. So they had to buy themselves back and to do so they began chopping down their forests. They finished paying these debts to France around the 1960s - nuts!

Basically yesterday!

The issue now is that they don’t have trees and the open land being an area of hurricanes creates a lot of damage. Of course, it would be ideal that the few remaining trees would be left to grow, but people need to use wood to cook. It’s a vicious cycle. 

Basically, the situation was fucked up and I decided to stay there and help out with a little orchard, other people from the project started doing the same… we began helping the community in whatever way we knew. I spoke French and Spanish so learning Creole came exceptionally easy for me. I kept thinking that I would finish this project and go home to my life. I had so much planned: skiing for Christmas, a party for New Year’s Eve in Switzerland, then starting my new job…and I was looking forward to all that. 

Unfortunately, it seemed that my reunion with my life was to be delayed. Hurricane Tomas was about to hit the island and the UN Blue Helmets came to warn us: all foreigners had to cross to the Dominican Republic and wait for its passing. So I crossed to Pedernales…

I was staying in a hostel, and although it was pouring rain I’d get out every day to get food. On that occasion, I began to notice children roaming the streets, searching for food in the garbage bins. These children were dressed in scraps, if at all, and barefoot. I asked them if they were hungry and they said yes, so I did what everyone else would do in this situation: I bought them a sandwich and a juice. This I repeated every day and every day they would stay longer, sometimes they’d take the sandwich and run other times they would tease me.

So I’d see them every day and I thought, I was sure, they were Dominican since I heard them speak Spanish. 

One day, one of these children was eating the sandwich sitting next to me and he asked me a question I didn’t understand, “Do you know where my parents are? Would you help me find my parents? Do you know what my name is?” And I couldn't believe he was serious, I asked him what did he mean and if he was teasing me again. 

I started asking questions and I realised that those children were all slaves.

Haiti holds the 9th place among the top countries with the most slaves (the ranking changes every year), but there’s no official data about the number of children that cross over to the Dominican Republic from Haiti to live as slaves. They are called “restavek” (reste-avec, translated stay with), and it’s partly a cultural phenomenon due to the fact that when Haitian parents fear their children will die from starvation they make the decision to give them away with the hope they will survive and live, knowing they will be treated as slaves. The children I was meeting every day had crossed over to the Dominican Republic and were living as slaves. 

What age are we talking about?

At the time within that group, the smallest one which I called ‘Chiquitin’ was six years old, but we had children who were 2 years old - though at that age they usually end up in the hospital. Whereas in the streets you find the children who misbehave, they either escape from slavery or are thrown away not useful anymore because as they grow up they become hard. 

I was just shocked.
When you’re in a context without any points of reference and you don’t know what reality is because it’s all so overwhelming…

It’s one thing to read about child slavery and know there is child slavery in the world, and it’s another thing to be sitting with a child slave who asks you if you know what his name is.

I immediately went to talk to a Spanish priest who’s been living in the Dominican Republic for 14 years at the time, I entered the church and asked him if those children were taking a piss out of me because it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be true. He said, “Lucia that’s the reality, don’t judge the mothers for what would you do in their place if your children were starving? There’s no other option.”

For him, it was old news and he was treating me like the European who discovers water. But I was so shocked and I was so young at the time - 25 years old. I mean I was already a seasoned traveller, I’d seen poverty, and I’d been to many fucked up places but the reality I was put in front of was something else and I couldn’t bear it.

I kept seeing the children day after day during the storm. Then one day… Chiquitin, who was a bit like Gollum in Lord of the Rings in the sense that he went from smiley to crazy from one day to the next, got raped. I had to take him to the hospital. Basically, the kids used to live on the rooftop of a club in the Dominican Republic so they could jump and escape during the night if someone came for them, but the youngest always got caught.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t look away. I went to Padre Antonio again and I told him I would give him all the money I had in my bank account, 6000 EURO, and he had to give that money to an orphanage…. because there had to be an orphanage somewhere, of course, only I didn’t know where. It’s the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, I couldn’t believe there’s no place for these children. 

Was there an orphanage?

There wasn’t. I thought there was because come on we’re in 2010… the world went crazy about helping Haiti so I thought that somewhere there was an orphanage. I told Padre Antonio, “I give you the money and you deal with it,” and I go home to my life. ‘I don’t want to give up my life’ - I kept thinking. 

He sat me down and gave me a lecture. There was nothing. There were 4 NGOs who, I don’t want to get into that but who basically receive millions and play football with children 3 times a week as their activity and don’t function as orphanages. So I asked if the Dominicans had an orphanage or something. In that regard, he said actually the Dominicans have a problem because they expect tourism to arrive in Pedernales for its unbelievably beautiful and entirely untouched beach. The authorities are concerned about the children in the streets and want to do something so that the tourists won’t see them and get scared. As a matter of fact, tourism never arrived, despite their expectations.

However, he invited me to go with him to the meeting with the authorities, and I found myself at the table with representatives from both countries - the Dominican Republic and Haiti - of the most famous NGOs in the world, plus the UN. What they said is because those children could have parents they couldn’t stay in an orphanage, and because they could be without parents they couldn’t stay in a hostel. So they left the situation suspended in limbo.

Well wow, if the reason to get these people together in one room to find a solution to child slavery is actually the concern that some tourists will be disturbed during their vacation in paradise… is a little concerning. Moreover, it’s absolutely shocking how bureaucracy comes before humanity - even when those rules were written by people.

Yes exactly and the worst is to get them all there together and think of course this will be solved - they will solve this!
I really was looking for the peace of mind that I could leave the country and these children in safe hands… I went to that meeting hopeful that I’d see millions thrown at these bullet points, and then I would go home knowing that these 6 children I started relating to were going to be fine. I didn’t want to miss my New Year’s party, I needed that reassurance these people in suits would solve this. 

But no, they said no, it wasn’t going to happen.

So I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t stop thinking that I could provide them with a base where they would be safe and no one would rape them at night. It was the only thing on my mind, that no one would rape them. I didn’t know how or for how long, but I know myself and I’m fucking stubborn and I knew that if I start I would never give up.

But people don’t see that, all they see is this posh European girl who wants to give herself a shower of poverty and write about it on Instagram. It’s okay, I understand people judge… but it was very hard to listen to my own voice at the time, because everyone I spoke to about what I wanted to do, threw at me their own limits and frustrations. People puke at you all they think that cannot be done in the world.

And also, ‘you’re just one little woman, if “they” couldn’t do it and they’re so rich and powerful… how can you possibly think you can save these kids’? 

I was actually told you have a saviour complex, you’re not Mother Theresa, go to the psychologist, they gonna rape you, you’ll never gonna get married, who’s gonna ever love you…

But the worst that I heard was, ‘You gonna hurt them even more, because you’re not strong enough, you’re a girl and one day you gonna give up and leave them back in the street. And you would’ve taken away from them the only tool that they have to survive the streets, which is resilience. If you offer them safety and make them believe they’re safe, they put the guards down and so when you leave you will make even more damage.’

‘Realise that you’re weak, you can’t bear this… you’re a cute girl and are so sweet that you want to do this, but this is for grown-ups.’

And so I sent a long email to my parents saying I’m looking for a house in Haiti.
They know the type of person their daughter is so there is nothing they could’ve said that would’ve changed my mind.

In my area in Haiti, there aren’t really such things as buildings, 13 years ago there were perhaps 3 buildings made of blocks. I had no idea about NGOs but I assumed Unicef would not allow the children to stay in anything less than a proper house, and the only thing that I found was a “house” of rubble without floors, windows or doors. My plan was to build that thing up, turn it into a house and tell the children to come stay there with me. I tried to do it in the Dominican Republic, but I was told it was illegal and I believed their lie.

So every day I’d cross over from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to feed the children, and the fact that people began to see them with me - a white person - made them more weary of approaching the kids… not because I’m white but being white means you know human rights. When Alexis, a guy I met on the previous project, came back from his trip around Haiti, I asked him to stay to help me until Christmas, the time to build the house - he thought I went nuts but stayed to help me in the beginning and I am so grateful because I wouldn’t have started AYMY without his help and support... The kids were very aggressive, understandably…  but every day I would repeat to them I was building a safe house for them to come, and by that time they already asked me if they could call me mom. 

I was very concerned about the standards of safety of that house. It was my number one concern. So we bought huge amounts of construction material and when we crossed to Haiti to our rubble house, we realised we had all this material and no way to keep it safe. What we did was not something people of NGOs do: we camped around the house to prevent our materials from being stolen. The owners were shocked and they left their nephew and son with two machetes to protect us at night.

I remember I went to the roof of the house to smoke a cigarette, thinking to myself ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ when I heard a group of children scream my name ‘Lucia! Lucia!’ - they have crossed the border at night afraid I wouldn’t come back for them. That night 3 kids slept in the tent of a girl who had malaria and left, and the other 2 kids slept in the hammocks. That day I became a mom of 5 children.

The next morning we woke up and I had to get used to cooking with charcoal. Day after day it started growing, more children came, and more mothers came to leave their children to me hoping I could feed them and raise them. 

Well, it’s been 13 years and it’s been a struggle ever since but that was the most difficult part of the story.

How does it feel to be a mom? And how many children?

It’s the biggest privilege of my life. I thought it was a big sacrifice that I was doing at the time, but actually, it’s a huge privilege to stay and be around them. It’s been the biggest gift. I would not change a bit of everything that I went through. 

They’re the most amazing human beings. They’re my teachers. Everything that I do it’s because they encourage me, I look at them and tell myself ‘How can I not survive this?’ Whenever I wanted to give up, I found the strength to keep going. I lived through lots of shit, life threats, … but I look at them and if they survived, I can do it.

I’m lucky to be in their lives whether for a while or for a little bit, whether as a mom or something else … my eldest is now 23 years old, and actually, I’m already a grandmother. I’ve raised to this day about 300 kids.

Do you get enough help for AYMY? Money wise…

No. Every month is a struggle. I mean I give lots of talks and hold conferences and that gives a good income, but the NGOs world ….

How do few get millions and many get close to none?

One day I will speak freely about this matter. For the time being, I can’t and won’t.

It’s no one’s fault but it’s just the system that is wrong. It’s a very “recent" way of helping and it needs to be pushed to be better.

Basically, within Haiti, there’s a lot of corruption and in Haiti, they believe I’m involved in the trafficking of children’s organs. They came to one of my kids and offered him a bike in exchange for his *false* testimony that I raped him.
Normally people want to donate money for construction so they can see a picture. But we are so far removed from their reality with our European perspective of things … that when they ask whether this thing is sustainable, I tend to reply harshly that people barely manage to make our Western world sustainable so their expectations are quite off the charts. First, the kids need to eat and feel safe, then they need to learn to read… half of the population didn’t even get through the first year of primary school. So AYMY has been judged for not having ambitious enough projects when we strive to give children the basics first: food and shelter. But the way it works with charities is that people worry first about knowing where will the money be allocated once it is given to other countries, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the culture or the situation of those countries.

There’s a case study that has been done of a situation that happened in an African country, I don’t remember which one now. Basically in this Muslim village, women had to walk every day a great distance to fetch water… so the international committee came with big funds and out of generosity built a pipe to save women from walking. In reality, the women were extremely upset because that was the only time in the day they could all be together to talk and walk - it was a shared moment of connection. From our European perspective we did them a great favour, and were so proud to know where the money raised went… regardless of the negative impact on their community. Everywhere, everyone assumes to know what’s best for women and what’s best for those communities so far removed from our reality.

I made such a mistake years ago when I got my first girl, Diana. I was teaching her the same way I was teaching the boys, and one day I saw her crying. She had already grown up a bit, I went to her to ask what was making her sad and she told me, “I will never get married, no one will ever love me”. I asked her why was she thinking such a thing when she is so amazing and loving, but she replied, “You have not given me the tools to be able to live in Haiti, as a woman.” That was 2 years into the project and was a big slap in my face that made me reconsider the way I was running things. So I gathered a group of strong women from the community to decide what was best for the girls because I was not in a position to do that. So 100% of the money goes into the project and paying the local people who work here. I don’t pay anyone else, not even myself. I find this is the only way to empower the project in loco and the people… their culture is so different and even after 13 years of living in Haiti, I find myself shocked at times. Haitian people need to decide, but good decisions are made once you know enough, feel safe, and are able to use your voice. So it takes time to build an environment in which they feel safe enough to open up and trust you.

Not everybody who wants to help can help. They need to feel that you are patient, only then can they open up and tell you all the things that matter. But there are still those who come with 6 million euros to build a project for water, and maybe water is not the fucking problem… but that’s the money you got for that specific thing, and you write the project in 15 days because the country is too unsafe and insurance companies won’t cover Haiti. 

But you have to stay in order to really really help. 

————- Follow up by email

Who is Lucia today? What do you like doing, what do you love? And... Do you like her?

Lucia is the luckiest person alive! Very joyful and grateful. I think she’s been able to get rid of many identities that she or society had put upon her and prove that there is no limit to who you are and what you can do.

I like the freedom of being coherent, I love the feeling of being at peace with my actions.

Lucia is so full of flaws! She actually drives me nuts!

She is very clumsy and absent-minded and loses her keys and cell phone 20 times a day, and she is a disaster in optimizing her time.!!

The only thing that makes her bearable is that she has a sense of humour and a great capacity to laugh about herself. 

But I always say, I know it sounds weird but… I do admire her legs and feet for taking her on and sustaining her through this path she has chosen, her hands for the hands she has been able to hold, and the things her eyes have seen and not looked away.

So yes, I do like her!

How do you take care of yourself after caring for so many people? 

For a very long time, I didn’t. I had no time. I had forgotten that I was someone who needed my attention too. I mean I was the mother, the judge, the police, the provider, the doctor, the firefighter, and the president of an NGO. Basically, everything my children and the project needed me to be in a country like HAITI where there was nothing.

There was literally no time, or space living in the orphanage during the first years, to even find time to go to the toilet (not in a figurative way). I didn’t look at myself in the mirror for a very, very long time, so long that I had actually forgotten what I looked like. I mean, I did know I had big eyebrows, dark eyes, and freckles, but I couldn’t see my face in my head anymore.

It was a very deep and beautiful way of existence, but I simply couldn’t survive. I had so many diseases and had to learn how to take care of myself. 

Obviously, I had post-traumatic stress disorder more times than I wished for, especially with the cholera outbreaks, and I had psychological help. What I discovered in that process was that, during all that time, Lucia had not existed as such.

I was giving and it is through giving that we nourish the deepest most important part of our being. It’s funny how it works, by giving I was receiving.

I then learned how to make giving sustainable and not die in the process, and created a space where I could dance, meditate, read, and listen to music.

How are you?....

I am grateful for your help, I am very worried and sad about the situation we are living in Haiti.

I am frustrated and angry at the NGO world.

I am proud of my children and the team of AYMY ‘s family that are working so hard in Haiti to keep our children safe and help our community.

I am happy I can be part of their lives and learn from them. 

I am at peace with my actions as I have learned that I can’t control everything, all I can do is push myself to give the best of me, to give it all, and then let go of the outcome. Although it is so painful oftentimes.

I just wish I could be more effective with my actions, and get people to understand just how much their help is needed! How much can change with so little! That generosity translates into life and hope!

But overall as you can tell I am very full and very lucky!

In conclusion…
Lucia has a unique ability to not place guilt upon you when you talk to her. She tells the facts as they are, and leaves it to you to decide what to do once you know. Will you look away? Or will you do something? … If you notice, our society has a way to overwhelm us with high-adrenaline news. Unless there’s a disaster: there’s no need to help, there’s not even a need to think or remember about certain people.

Haiti is so distant… Removed from our reality, easy to overlook. Very easy to not care - because let’s be honest: we’re asked to care about way too many things, people, and causes. Right? We therefore tend to brush away quickly anything that disturbs our daily life because we are unable to choose what to care about because it would imply us doing something. Most of us still believe being too small and insignificant to do anything about the world, so this is the reason why I bring you Lucia’s story: see her as an example of ‘you alone, have enough power to make a difference’, and if you keep seeing things over and over again…. it’s because you can do something about it if only you decide. This is AYMY, the organisation that gives food, shelter, protection and hope to children who otherwise would end up as slaves or trafficked for organs. She did it because she believed the world was not set in stone.

————————— Further notes….

*From the book ‘Toussaint Louverture and The Haitian Revolution: Two Talks by Paul Food’

The same year, or the year after, that Columbus discovered America for the Spanish… he discovered an island that to him looked like paradise, and he named it Hispaniola. The Spanish pushed away the indigenous population and established themselves there, going from imperialists to colonialists. Sometime later, the French came and wanted it all for themselves… instead, Hispaniola was split and renamed. The empire of Spain owned the eastern part of the island, which was called Santo Domingo. The empire of France owned the western half of the island which was called Saint Domingue. The Spanish part was left to rot. But the French part of Saint Domingue by 1789- fyi this island is now called Haiti and is today among the five or ten poorest places on earth - in terms of production, was the richest place on earth. It produced two-thirds of all proceeds of the trade of France: sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo, tobacco. France was perhaps the richest or second-richest country in the world, one of the biggest empires in the world, whose vast wealth was entirely dependent on one phenomenon: slavery. Between 1500 and 1800, 30 million slaves were taken from the continent of Africa to the West Indies and to the New World aka the USA.
Flash forward to August 1791, three years after the French Revolution, Saint Domingue witnessed the biggest slave revolt ever… different from others because this time there was a leader: Toussaint L’Ouverture. To make it short (but I recommend a few books below because this is a remarkable story) Toussaint and his army of slaves, defeated the French, the British, the Spanish, and the French again. Saint Domingue gained their independence but Toussaint was then caught by the French and left to die in a dungeon in Switzerland. In 1825, France demanded five annual payments of 30 million francs (source the New York Times) - way above its capacity - to leave Haiti its independence and freedom. And this is how we got to where we are…. What can be left of a country that was forced to pay back the aristocrats across the ocean for their loss of revenues?

I became interested in Haiti’s history and after reading a book and multiple articles I began to wonder: did the world forgive Haiti for emancipating itself, for being the world’s first black independent country and thus setting up a precedent? I think - and this is my personal opinion - that Haiti will have another renaissance…. and this may piss off some people who might not benefit from it, anymore. It’s important to understand the roots of certain world situations, so as to read through why certain things, and only certain aspects, are brought to our attention in the news.

Recommended readings:
- Article 'The Greatest Heist In History': How Haiti Was Forced To Pay Reparations For Freedom link

- Book ‘Black Spartacus’ by Sudhir Hazareesingh (Penguin Publishing)