From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Wounded Missionary Refuses to Be Deterred
From
George Conklin <gconklin@igc.apc.org>
Date
Sun, 30 Jun 1996 20:58:53 -0700 (PDT)
28-June-96
96251 Wounded Missionary Refuses to Be Deterred
by El Salvador Violence
by Alexa Smith
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--If Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker Alejandro
Hernandez had been shot during the war years in El Salvador, it would have
been easier to figure out who wanted him dead than it is now.
So Hernandez, an El Salvadoran who works in a Lutheran community
ministry in central El Salvador, is expecting that his case will remain
unresolved -- like so many others in El Salvador these days.
He was shot twice in the face Feb. 2 after being identified by name by
two unknown male assailants.
"We don't have any idea who shot Alejandro or why," Worldwide
Ministries Division liaison to El Salvador Julia Ann Moffett told the
Presbyterian News Service, speculating on various motives, from a failed
robbery to a politically motivated hit, since both organized and petty
crime are rampant in El Salvador's extremely unstable postwar economy.
"This is how death squads continue to operate ... because of the confusion
of the times."
Ironically, the persistence of violence is exactly why Hernandez is
itching to get back to work in the mountain communities of El Salvador's
Chalatenango region, where he has been assigned by the Salvadoran Lutheran
Synod. "The people I work with know what happened to me. And I know what
has happened to them," he told the Presbyterian News Service. "We've both
suffered.
"With more authority, I can tell them the answer is not more violence.
The answer is reconciliation and forgiveness. ... Reconciliation is the
only way to end the violence in El Salvador, the only way."
But reconciliation in the polarized sociopolitical climate in El
Salvador is easier said than done.
"It's one thing to try for reconciliation on a more global level -- to
say, I forgive the military for what it did,'" said the Rev. Leslie
Argueta-Vogel, a former missionary to El Salvador. "But forgiving the
neighbor next door to you is the harder part. The people close to us have
the most power to hurt us. ...
"There's a tremendous amount of distrust and pain."
Moffett said that an El Salvador laywoman asked her recently: "Tell
me how to forgive. ..."
"This [the war] is still fresh in people's memories. People in the
same town are walking down the streets [today] ... but they were shooting
at each other not too long ago," Moffett said, stressing that people are
struggling to understand what theological words like "forgiveness" and
"reconciliation" mean in these circumstances.
Such raw mistrust not only affects individuals, but it also disturbs
El Salvadoran institutional life. Those institutions include churches that
are no longer bound together in the common cause of seeking an end to a
horrible 12-year war.
"The churches in El Salvador are experiencing some of the aftermath of
what happens in times of violence," Moffett told the Presbyterian News
Service. She said competition for dwindling financial resources is part of
the dilemma for Protestant churches, which are also trying to define what
the role of the church is in a postwar world.
"When the threats start to disappear, churches start looking at
differences instead of what they had in common," Moffett said, adding that
sectors within El Salvador's churches have been accused of too close
alignment with political parties. "So churches are looking for a way to
have a unity in witness during this transition period."
Finding ways to express that unity is what is most difficult,
according to Gary Cozette, a Presbyterian who is director of the Chicago
Religious Leadership Network on Latin America and who worked in El Salvador
for a number of years.
"Tensions -- to the extent they exist -- have to do with differing
visions of rebuilding after the war, but these are not profound
differences," Cozette said, speaking primarily about mainline Protestant
denominations. Some churches are raising funds to aid refugees, to
purchase land or to build water projects and schools. Others, he said, are
pressuring the government to provide that kind of aid.
At the same time, rapidly growing evangelical communities are focusing
almost solely on individual conversions, while many Roman Catholic
communities are working to revive the social consciousness that permeated
church life in the 1980s.
Cozette said El Salvador's churches -- particularly those that spoke
out during the war for human rights and for justice -- have "great
credibility" among the people. "And that gives them," he said, "a great
reservoir of ... support going into the rebuilding process of El Salvador.
...
"The churches were the first to say reconciliation can't happen
without justice, meaning impunity for violent acts has to end and
prosecution of human rights violators has to be assured."
But current violent-crime statistics in El Salvador are staggering.
The homicide rate, for instance, is 10 times higher than that in the U.S.
and at least four women a day report being raped.
"El Salvadorans spent 12 years in a war. ... The economic situation
is worse, the crime level has increased, gangs are a phenomenon," said
Argueta-Vogel. "Across the board, it's unsafe ... and people don't know
where [the violence] is coming from."
Those people include Hernandez. He knows his local church angered
some of the former regional powers-that-be by talking openly about their
misuse of money. He knows that drug traffickers steal four-wheel-drive
vehicles like his own. He also knows that random crime is up. "I don't
know who to accuse directly of what happened against me," he said, adding
that he has been able to forgive whoever attempted to kill him because he
is so grateful for having survived the attack.
"My case is known by many," Hernandez said, noting that he has been
interviewed on television and in print. "That works to my advantage.
"Now those [who tried to kill me] know I was doing nothing to make
them scared of me. So I can go back and things will be back to normal."
------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
phone 502-569-5504 fax 502-569-8073
E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org Web page: http://www.pcusa.org
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