Aguchita of Peru: Martyr
This piece comes out when Pope Leo XIV has barely touched down in Peru, his adoptive country, where he had spent some two decades of missionary life as American Augustinian priest and bishop Robert Prevost, now on the last leg of his 12-day, three-country papal visit in South America. This is the land whence sprang the ancient civilization of the Incas who built the Machu Picchu, but also a nation that bred revolutionaries and violent armed rebels as well as notable saints and martyrs.
Speaking of martyrs, Sister Maria Agustina Rivas (born Antonia Luzmila), fondly called Aguchita, of the Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 2022, 22 years after she, along with several others, was publicly executed on Sept. 27, 1990 by the communist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels in La Florida in Peru.
Allow me to jump the gun, so to speak, with an account from the book “Aguchita: Mercy and Justice” published in 2019.
“Moments later, the executions began. Those whose names had been called out formed a line and were executed one by one. In front of the local people who looked on in terror. When it was Sister Aguchita’s turn, a young subversive girl shot her five times, twice in the left side of her body, twice in her left arm, and once in the left side of her skull … Their bodies remained there all night in deathly silence, accompanied only by the hollow gaze of disbelief from the local people who stared out from behind their windows with grief-stricken hearts.” Aguchita was 70.
I thought I would not have enough information to write about Aguchita when Catholic Christendom’s gaze would be on Peru while the Pope with both American and Peruvian citizenship is there now. Then the Good Shepherd sisters said they have a book on her and sent it to me pronto, along with an ID-size card with an Aguchita picture and relic embedded in it! A surprise, yes, but also because the foreword was written by no less than Dominican Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, proudly Peruvian, famously known as one of the fathers of liberation theology. (I interviewed and wrote about him when he came to the Philippines in the 1990s. He died in 2024.)
Wrote Gutierrez: “This is what Jesus experienced: his proclamation of life led to his death. Sister Aguchita also died for what she devoted her life to. She was a disciple of the Good Shepherd who laid down her life for her sheep, she never abandoned her flock. May her murderers fully grasp that they, and all those who abuse the poor, will encounter other ‘Aguchitas’ along their path of death.”
One needs to do some rewind to see that Aguchita’s death by bullets was not a single stroke that would solely define her saintly life. Reading the accounts and testimonies of those who closely knew her—not only the Good Shepherd sisters but also those she had worked with—one could see how intentionally she was laying down her life for others. Her religious life was marked by constant giving of self in whatever job she was assigned to do. And with so much joy.
The eldest of 11 children, Aguchita was not highly educated before she entered the convent, but she taught herself and learned so much along the way. She studied nursing, she learned cooking, baking, and sewing, she became a teacher to women and girls suffering abuse and neglect, a caregiver to the infirm. She was always there.
In the book’s introduction, Sister Eliana Guisa, Peru’s Good Shepherd province leader, gives context: “The Congregation has a clearly defined position on several important themes: namely, migration, the girl-child, female trafficking, economic justice, prostitution, and ecology. These themes, which constitute our apostolic mission, were embodied in Aguchita throughout her lifetime, and since her martyrdom, remain relevant today.”
But here is what struck me in a profound way. Aguchita wrote! Discovered after her death was a “Notebook of Meditations” that contained her reflections. Her thoughts on obedience, chastity, poverty, humility, among many. These are quoted extensively in the book. See, there is nothing like the written word.
“Aguchita: Mercy and Justice” is a well-written straightforward, chronological, almost reportorial account with lots of photos. Although a small volume, it provides much context dealing with Peruvian history and society, the politics at play, the clashing ideologies, the Catholic Church amidst conflicts, people in the crossfire. The book (2019) does not include the process involved for Aguchita’s beatification in 2022.
But Global Sisters Report has a 2022 article by Good Shepherd Sister Yvette Arnold (“My Journey with Aguchita, newly beatified in Peru”). How about adding that to a second edition of the book?
Father Gutiérrez notes that Aguchita’s dream was “to work in the jungle,” in a neglected part of Peru. He compared Aguchita and those who serve humbly to “flowers that grow without a hint of pride and, occasionally, one blooms suddenly and, without warning, filling us with hope, as happened in La Florida.”
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