Breaking Down Cultural Barriers
As a 6-year-old girl, Matilde Castiel was one of 14,000 Cuban children sent to Miami by their parents during the early 1960s to find a better life as part of what was known as “Operation Peter Pan.”
And that experience as a young stranger in a strange land has informed her life and career to this day.
Castiel is the executive director of the Latin American Health Alliance (LAHA) in Worcester, a nonprofit organization that she established in 2004. Through her work with LAHA she is an advocate of change, working to bring much-needed support to the city’s Latino community.
Community Immersion
“We need to make sure that the kids in the community are getting educated,” she said. In addition to her efforts supporting the Latino community in Worcester, Castiel is also a physician with UMass Memorial Medical Center. Through her UMass position, she also works with the Worcester Housing Authority to provide health care to more than 1,000 residents.
Castiel first came to Worcester in 1989, but it took her two years to discover the city’s Latino community. Before making that discovery, she strongly considered moving back to California. According to Castiel, that’s how significant a cultural environment can be in providing a happy home life for immigrants here in the United States.
“You have to celebrate the things that are part of your life and that becomes a part of who you are,” the 54-year-old doctor said.
The range of issues that LAHA addresses runs the gamut. One area of focus — substance abuse — came to the forefront for Castiel following the 2004 deaths of nine young men in drug-related shootings. The violence around drugs prompted LAHA to establish a substance abuse treatment facility known as Hector Reyes House that specialized in assisting Latino men.
The advantage of the Hector Reyes House is that it offers a place for rehabilitation tailored to Spanish-speakers. For many Latino substance abusers, Castiel said the language barrier often deters them from finishing a program and ultimately getting the help that they desperately need.
And according to LAHA’s statistics, there are many local Latinos in desperate need of that help. Latin Americans account for 17 percent of Worcester’s population but make up 32 percent of all those admitted to rehabilitation centers. More than 40 percent of the inmate population at the Worcester County House of Correction is Latino—a glaring statistic that Castiel believes is directly related to the issue of untreated substance abuse.
LAHA’s program at the Hector Reyes House aims to tackle that problem by offering in-house medical treatments, cognitive behavioral therapy, and training and employment options designed to not only promote recovery but to reduce the odds of a relapse.
Now in its fourth year, the program is capable of providing services to 25 men at a time, though the venture was not without its initial difficulties.
Most notably, the two largest hurdles involved finding the ideal location for the house and finding the money to create it. To overcome those obstacles, Castiel sought out help from many local foundations, many of which provided her with the funding and labor necessary to turn the house at 27 Vernon St. in Worcester into the safe haven she knew the community greatly needed.
While establishing the Hector Reyes House was not an easy task, Castiel said that the commuity’s support for the project helped her realize her goal.
Her work with the LAHA is far from complete, and she’ll be the first person to tell you that.
But Castiel is confident that the organization is slowly solving many of the social challenges faced by the majority of those in Worcester’s Latino community.
“It’s a work in progress,” she says. “This house is a stride in that direction. As a community, we’ve united to make it happen.”
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments