wfn.org | Wounded Missionary Refuses to Be Deterred

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.apc.org>]

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." 

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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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