wfn.org | Argentine bishop faults foreign debt

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Feb. 6, 2002      News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
10-21-32-71B{041}

NEW YORK (UMNS) - Looting by desperate citizens after the bank failures in
Argentina was not nearly as serious as the "systemic pillaging" of that
Latin American country by foreign interests.

That's the opinion of Bishop Nelly Ritchie of the Evangelical Methodist
Church of Argentina, who spoke about her country's crisis during a Feb. 5
briefing with staff of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

Argentina's fertile lands and abundant natural resources have made it a
"juicy market" for foreign capitalists who have no regard for the people
there, Ritchie explained through a translator.

The economic slide began last summer, according to Umberto Shikiya, an
economist and project coordinator for the Methodist church there. By the end
of November, the withdrawal of $30 million to $35 million from Argentina by
foreign investors, coupled with the government's insistence on paying the
interest on its foreign debt, had led to the peso collapse and
destabilization of the banking system, he said.

Since then, the country's financial system has remained unstable, with the
discredited political parties facing chaos. "We're going to be in the
Guinness Book of World Records," the bishop quipped. "We had five presidents
in about 48 hours."

But the decades-long decline into impoverishment and the current problems of
unemployment and fiscal failure are no joking matter to Ritchie, who
considers the foreign debt shouldered by all Latin American countries to be
"not only unpayable, but illegal and immoral."

A recent survey of church members found that one-third was unemployed, even
higher than the national average. Ritchie noted that those attracted to the
church in recent years more often have represented the poor rather than its
traditional middle-class base.

In addition to its membership, she said, "more people are coming to the
church asking for help. People need to eat. They need to work."   

One positive aspect of the current fiscal crisis, she added, is that it has
motivated a formerly complacent middle class into action, joining groups
such as the unemployed and retired who already had been trying to get their
voices heard. "All the town squares have become spaces of liberation," she
said, explaining that people are trying to determine their destiny on a
local level.

A former schoolteacher, Ritchie was elected as the first female bishop of
the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina in 2001. Active in ecumenical
work, she served as a vice moderator for the World Council of Churches'
Central Committee from 1991 to 1998.

The Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina became autonomous from the
U.S.-based church in 1969 but still retains a relationship.

# # #

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org