wfn.org | Central American Church Leaders Urge Pardon of Debts

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12-November-1998 
98375 
 
    Central American Church Leaders Urge Pardon of Debts 
    in Wake of Disaster 
 
    by Paul Jeffrey 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras-Central American church leaders have appealed to 
international lenders to forgive the foreign debt of Honduras and 
Nicaragua, two poor countries that have 
been devastated by Hurricane Mitch. 
 
    "If we're going to survive and rebuild, we've got to start off with 
complete forgiveness of the debt," said Noemi Espinoza, executive president 
of the Christian Commission for Development in Honduras. 
 
    "It makes no sense to receive massive amounts of international aid and 
then turn around and send money out of the country to pay the interest on 
the debt," Espinoza told ENI.  "We want to keep our resources at home to 
rebuild our country. We still need help from our friends around the world, 
but we can make our own contribution [to reconstruction].  Canceling the 
debt will make that possible.  Otherwise we'll never recover from the 
hurricane." 
 
    Honduras owes $4.2 billion and Nicaragua owes $6 billion, mainly to 
international lending agencies.  Both governments spend more than 50 per 
cent of their income on servicing the debt. 
 
    After Haiti, the two countries are the poorest in the western 
hemisphere.  Hurricane Mitch, described by some as "the worst disaster in 
modern history," has left them in even worse shape.  In Honduras alone, 
6,000 people are dead and an equal number missing.  Sixty per cent of the 
country's infrastructure has been severely damaged or washed away.  Seventy 
per cent of  crops have been destroyed. 
 
    The situation is almost as bad in neighboring Nicaragua.  Without 
massive international assistance, both countries face years of famine, 
epidemic illness, and strife. 
 
    Following a meeting of Central American presidents in San Salvador on 
Nov. 9, Honduran President Carlos Flores declared his country's debt 
"unpayable." 
 
    "In 72 hours, we lost what we had built, little by little, in 50 
years," President Flores declared. 
 
    Espinoza, whose organization is the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
partner agency in Honduras and is also linked to the Geneva-based Action by 
Churches Together (ACT), described her country's debt as "immoral," an 
"obstacle to development and democratization before the storm, and, after 
Hurricane Mitch, it must be cancelled ... if we're to have any hope for the 
future." 
 
    The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Oscar Andres Rodriguez, 
joined Espinoza in calling for the complete forgiveness of Honduras' and 
Nicaragua's debt.  "It may not be economically possible, nor politically 
possible, but it has to be humanly possible," he said Nov. 8. 
On the same day the leader of Nicaragua's Roman Catholics called for the 
cancellation of the debt as "a gesture of solidarity" with the victims of 
Hurricane Mitch. 
 
    "We were poor before, yet our situation is even worse now," said 
Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, Archbishop of Managua.  "The peasants live 
from their corn, their beans, from their pigs and their chickens.  But all 
that was lost in the rains ... The international community should have 
compassion on us and the rest of Central America." 
 
    The executive director of the Nicaraguan Council of Evangelical 
Churches, Gilberto Aguirre, told ENI that his country's foreign debt "has a 
highly negative impact on the quality of life, raising unemployment while 
lowering the availability of education and health services." 
 
    Aguirre called Nicaragua's debt "the biggest obstacle to development of 
the country." 
 
    A coalition of international church workers in Nicaragua has accused 
international lending agencies of pressuring the Nicaraguan government "to 
prioritize paying debts ahead of caring for its citizens." 
 
    In a letter made public last week, the Ecumenical Committee of 
International Church Personnel in Nicaragua pointed out that last year the 
Nicaraguan government spent 2.5 times more on debt service than on health 
and education combined. 
 
    "In the wake of Hurricane Mitch, the outrage of debt bondage has never 
been more obvious," the committee stated.  

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