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Guatemalan Students Bring Life Experience to Pitzer
Some of the neighbors back home call Luis Enrique de Leon "the Mother Theresa of Guatemala" because of his work with orphans and burn victims in the rural, impoverished area of Quetzaltenango. The Boy Scouts he directs in his 8-year-old son's den, on the other hand, nicknamed him "wolf's mother." And now Pitzer College freshman Oscar De Leon-Baer (of no relation) has added a third title to Luis' name: friend.
It's a long story, but basically these two remarkable men, who are both studying this year at Pitzer - Luis is here for one semester through the College's PACE program, and Oscar is a full-timer who plans to major in communications - have known each other since the latter was in diapers. Thanks to the efforts of Pitzer and the grass-roots organization Xela Aid (founded in Guatemala in the mid-1990s by Leslie Baer, who currently serves as the executive director of college relations at Harvey Mudd), Luis and Oscar are sharing an educational opportunity.
"I'm really thankful to the people who made it possible for me to be here," a grateful Luis Enrique de Leon conveyed in his best English, with some translation assistance from Oscar. In exchange for his semester scholarship, Luis Enrique de Leon is assisting Pitzer faculty members Ethel Jorge with Spanish and Ann Stromberg with a midwife program. Much of the help thus far has been relaying stories about his country to students and showing them pictures from a thin photo album he packed for the trip. One of those stories goes back to how he met Oscar.
Oscar De Leon-Baer, a burn victim who was legally adopted by Leslie Baer and her husband, Wolfram Anderson, nearly five years ago, was first introduced to Luis Enrique de Leon while still an infant with massive, fresh burns across the right half of his face. The combination of a plastic toy and a lighted candle at the foot of the youth's bed (as many Guatemalan homes don't have electricity) was logged as the cause of the disfiguring injury. Luis was on staff as a nurse and social worker in the same hospital where Oscar's mother also was working. And through a doctor there, Luis became involved in Oscar's treatment. In later years, this meant bringing Oscar to the attention of Baer and her husband, who were seeding Xela Aid in Quetzaltenango, a volunteer outfit that has provided education and health care to an area devastated by 33 years of civil war.
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