wfn.org | North American Christians Try to Protect

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21-Nov-95

95412        North American Christians Try to Protect 
            Guatemalan Presbyterians from Death Squads 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
CHIMALTENANGO, Guatemala--A volcano that looms over Chimaltenango's flat 
rooftops symbolizes the tensions that smolder beneath the surface of this 
seemingly quiet Guatemalan mountain town. 
 
     Six North American Christians -- four of them members of the 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) -- have been in and out of Chimaltenango since 
summer, with at least one of them staying with the Rev.  Lucio Martinez all 
the time, day and night. 
 
     In August, Martinez and two other Guatemalan Presbyterian leaders  in 
Kaqchiquel Presbytery were threatened by what many call a military-backed 
death squad, giving them just 24 hours to leave the country or be killed. 
The North Americans who go in and out of Chimaltenango hope their presence 
helps keep Martinez alive.     
 
     Presbyterians accompanying Martinez have been Marilie Robertson of 
Canoga Park, Calif.; Tom Spath of Houston, Texas; Charles Coultas of 
Havana, Fla.; and Donna Broudy of Albuquerque, N.M., and her husband, David 
Broudy. 
 
     "I was deeply impressed by the work they were doing," says Mennonite 
Gary Guthrie of Des Moines, Iowa, speaking of income-generating projects 
for widows and of education work in Kaqchiquel Presbytery, a largely rural 
presbytery filled with many isolated communities of Mayans, who still 
observe traditional ways of living.  Guthrie spent 10 days in September 
with Martinez, his wife and five daughters. 
 
     "[If these death threats are effective,] who loses out?" he asked 
during an interview with the Presbyterian News Service.  Answering his own 
question, Guthrie said, "The people.  And God's kingdom." 
 
     In Guatemala, intimidation and harrassment are nothing new for 
churches or for the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala 
(NEPCG), according to Dennis Smith, a longtime PC(USA) mission worker in 
Guatemala City.  "Yes, pastors have been killed.  Yes, church leaders have 
been killed.  Yes, rural congregations have been targeted for repression," 
he said.   Presbyterians trying to put Reformed notions of transforming 
society into practice have been and are targets, Smith added. 
 
     But until pressures escalated around the death of the Rev. Manuel 
Saquic in Chimaltenango last summer, he said, the NEPCG had not felt 
unified enough to protest those abuses, much less do so on an international 
scale.  The outcry surrounding the death of Saquic demonstrates  the 
influence of the NEPCG's increasingly organized Mayan presbyteries, 
developed in rural communities well acquainted with threats, intimidation, 
beatings, informers, and, twice in the past year in Chimaltenango, death. 
 
     Eight indigenous presbyteries now compose a bloc within the NEPCG, 
which includes 15 presbyteries overall. 
 
       "These are things we face constantly," said one Kaqchiquel pastor, 
drawing on the historical memory of a people persecuted since the Spanish 
conquest more than 500 years ago. "[Some] say it is because we are Mayans. 
 ... We will always be targeted, killed.  For those who kill us, it is not a 
novelty. They have always done it." 
 
     But others -- like David Son of the Conference of Evangelical Churches 
of Guatemala -- say an analysis built purely on racism is too simplistic, 
since some Mayans have prospered and moved up in society.  The struggle is 
against a social and economic system that keeps privileges for  a few but 
keeps the rest in poverty.   And according to Son, anyone who challenges 
that system -- no matter what their ethnicity -- gets threatened. 
 
      "They don't just go after indigenous," says Son. "They go after 
ladinos' [Mayans who have abandoned traditional ways] also when  ladinos' 
confront the system." 
 
     North Americans in Chimaltenango are hoping to keep the threats at 
bay.  They hope their presence is seen as a witness that those who are 
threatened are not alone in the world, that an international church stands 
with them.  They also hope the message gets across that the U.S. government 
may apply pressure for investigations of crimes against Guatemalans that 
Guatemalan authorities opt to overlook. 
 
     "If a U.S. citizen is hurt or killed in Guatemala, it's big news in 
the States," says Mark Kline Taylor, an associate professor of theology at 
Princeton Theological Seminary who has accompanied Guatemalans during 
previous violent periods. "And Guatemalan leaders have some accounting to 
do.  ... 
 
     "It increases the safety factor when a U.S. citizen is present," said 
Taylor, noting that historically close financial ties between U.S. and 
Guatemalan business sectors give U.S. interests some leverage in 
Guatemala's political realm. 
 
     Such ties are particularly important now, according to Susan Soux of 
the United Nations Mission to Guatemala (MINUGUA), because international 
financing is crucial to peace negotiations under way now in Guatemala.  "If 
they [other countries such as the U.S.] don't see results, they won't 
support [the staus quo] indefinitely," she said.  International communities 
have some leverage, such as sanctions or the option to withdraw 
developmental aid, Soux added. 
 
     But even with those external safeguards, Smith says, it is clear that 
accompaniment is not without risk.  So the reasons Christians accompany 
other Christians are inherently theological.  "It is saying publicly to the 
people who do the killing: 'The persons being accompanied are not alone. 
Though in your society, they are defined among the excluded, among the 
global human family, they are consciously included.' 
 
     "It says: 'These lives here have value.'" 
 
     PC(USA) mission worker Lydia Hernandez says the message has even more 
potent meaning for those accompanied by internationals.  "When they say, 
'God is present and God is present here through you,' they really believe 
that. ... 
 
     "That God's love is expressed through human lives. ... They feel God's 
presence because you are here," said Hernandez, who is quick to add that, 
as a Hispanic woman, she is hassled less in Guatemala when she travels with 
a British mission worker from the seminary there. 
 
     Son, a Pentecostal, agrees that international pressure and pastoral 
presence are crucial in Guatemala.  "It is very important for us ... your 
accompaniment in all this," he told a PC(USA) delegation in Guatemala City 
in mid-October.  "It strengthens us.  It helps us feel a little more 
assured that we are not alone in this struggle. 
 
     "Behind us are many friends, brothers and sisters." 
 
     Despite the risks, PC(USA) mission worker David Winter said presence 
in the midst of suffering is what Christians must do.  "When your brother 
is suffering a life-threatening illness in the hospital, it is immensely 
important for you to be there.  It's deadly business in Guatemala ... 
talking with poor people about improving their lives," he continued,  "but 
it's also gospel."  

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