In 1989, Gwen and I went to Cuernavaca, Mexico for four years, where we worked at a retreat center for North American church people, who came for two week programs to be exposed to some of the realities of the Third World. I organized a house building program based on Habitat for Humanity. Building dry latrines, or baños secos, was part of this effort because of the lack of plumbing in the community.
I was introduced to a Catholic sister who lived with her order in a vi
llage where one of the most impoverished squatters settlements was. She was Sr. Panchita Francisca Garcia, a beautiful and joyous indigenous nun. She was devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe, whom she saw as a revolutionary figure who sang the radical Magnificat.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:52-53).
She told me that one of the most critical needs was sanitation. I met an architect who designed baños secos, (see attached design) who came to oversee the building of one, where a family lived in a tar paper.shack. Fausto, the father, was a albañil, or mason.
At the unveiling of the first baño seco, the people of the village gathered around the foundation of the structure and lined up with buckets into which they shoveled the cement that they carried up a little hill where Fausto, perched on his baño seco foundation poured the cement into the wire reinforced frame for the floor of the privy house. Children proudly struggled up the hill with not-quite full buckets of cement, and women wielded their buckets as skillfully as any man. Sr. Panchita did her share of bucket carrrying.
Following the pouring of the cement “losa” (slab) everyone gathered around for the dedication of the baño seco. With Fausto very proudly holding the molded toilet bowl under his arm, Cesar Añorve, the young architect and creator of the dry latrine system, described the benefits of the baño seco for the environment, health and affordable cost. It did not pollute because all of the contaminates were contained in he chamber until composed, where all bacteria were killed in the composting process.
I had asked a member of the community to read in Spanish a passage that could be related to the baño seco from Deuteronimy 23:13-16. Moses, in reciting laws to the People of Isreal in the wilderness declared:
13 With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. 14 because the Lord your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.
You may be thinking how nice it is that people living in such unsanitary conditions can have one form of pollution eliminated until they can get indoor, flush toilets. Don’t think so fast. With global warming due to climate change, future generations may be forced to abandon flush toilets, and other wasteful use of water. Today’s pandemic could seem like a picnic compared with insufferable heat and other unlivable conditions, unless major changes are made to prevent global warming before it is too late. God, and enlightened leadership, help us.