wfn.org | Violence, chaos reign in Colombia

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Note #7334 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

09-July-2002
02235

Violence, chaos reign in Colombia

Presbyterians wrestle with unanswered prayers for peace

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Gloria Ulloa doesn't have to stop and think when she is asked about the nature of her pastoral prayers.

"We pray ... for the situation to be changed ... for an end to the suffering of the people. We pray for God to give us strength, to not become silent. We ask for the spirit of God to convert us in the midst of sadness and death. We pray for the people who've lost families and land. ... For all that, we pray."

Ulloa pastors a rural community less than an hour's drive from Bogota, Colombia. An outsider might wonder how she and her parishioners keep the faith.

They have witnessed a half-century of "La Violencia," a spiral of killing and chaos that has made Colombia the most dangerous place in the hemisphere.

"The violence began 50 years ago," one pastor says, "and every year it gets worse."

Last year, it got worse again.

The Colombian National Police recorded 98 massacres in the first six months of 2001, up from 84 in the first half of 2000. At least 300,000 Colombians were forced to leave their homes to escape the violence. That's the highest number ever displaced in a single year, according to Human Rights Watch.

Most of the victims are not involved in Colombia's infamous drug trade or political squabbles.

Negotiations between the government and leftist guerrillas have broken down, each side accusing the other of bad faith. Evidence continues to mount that ruthless right-wing Colombian paramilitary groups are aided by military brigades and even police detachments within the Colombian Armed Forces. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Armed Force of Colombia-People's Army (FARC) keeps killing civilians; human-rights groups reported 197 murders in the first 10 months of 2001.

"Life sucks," says Robin Kirk, an official of Human Rights Watch/Colombia. "Things are horrible. Colombia is going backwards in time economically. In terms of murder statistics ... those numbers are back up. The situation is out of control."

So why aren't Ulloa and her parishioners too disillusioned to pray?

Ulloa says the church can't be silent about what is happening. 	

"We have too many people disappear, too many people in exile," she says. "It is important to keep alive - not just breathing. Alive, as God wants us to be."

Her Presbyterian Church of Colombia, an 8,000-member Reformed communion, is split into two synods, as divided as Colombia itself.

One of the regions where the church is growing is Uraba, once one of Colombia's most violent areas, now under paramilitary control. Aside from the occasional assassination, Uraba is officially considered "at peace," or at least, without overt armed conflict.

FARC and the People's Liberation Army (EPL), another left-wing guerrilla group, moved into Uraba region in the 1960s and fed on the anger of small farmers forced off their land by rich cattle ranchers and banana planters and unskilled banana workers paid only a pittance for their labor.

"There are many problems we can't solve," says the Rev. Julio Diaz Leon, who serves as chaplain for nearly 700 children in a Presbyterian school in Apartado, in the heart of Uraba.

Diaz Leon says desperation fuels many of his prayers.

"The children have seen their fathers decapitated, their mothers murdered," he says. 

"And they tell us those things naturally. But we can see in their faces how they've (given up) on life. They don't cry. They just show no interest."

Diaz Leon says almost every child in the school has lost a parent to the violence.

"We know that, most of the time, prayer and support are not enough when you are dealing with poverty, nakedness and hunger. We know that we don't have the answers. And sometimes we don't know what to do.

"In school, I pray for the children a lot. I ask God to bless a child," he says, adding that it is the only thing he knows to do.

Guerrilla incursions still disturb the peace occasionally in Uraba, where countless lives have been permanently altered by the region's chronic violence.

"We pray to ask God to give us strength to keep going," says the Rev. Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Reformed Synod of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia. "We pray to be able to help people, to keep going. We pray that people could recover their hope."

Presbyterian congregations in Colombia help survivors of the mayhem in many ways. They supply food and clothing to refugees, operate pig and banana farms where displaced workers can earn a living, and coordinate after-school programs for kids with nowhere to go. In coastal Baranquilla, for instance, a hose provided by a local church is the only source of water for 250 families in a refugee camp.

"They feed, clothe, and, in general, offer displaced persons community," says Maria Arroyo of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s Worldwide Ministries Division, the denomination's liaison to Colombia. She said Colombian outreach is mostly to children and families. 

And they help the churches, and churchgoers, affected by the violence.

One pastor survived a massacre three years ago in which 18 people were ambushed and killed in northern Colombia. After hiding out for three days, he returned to town to bury the dead.

"It was psychologically, devastatingly terrible," says the pastor, who wishes to remain anonymous. In preparing his homilies and prayers, he says, he kept going back to a verse in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians: "We are ... persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed" (2 Corinthians 4: 9).

He said prayer comforts him in the face of terror and bad memories.

"Lots of us have lots of doubts ... because we see death everywhere," he says, noting that many of his parishioners come to him with questions about God's goodness and God's presence. "But even with all this questioning, it means that God is present in their lives. ... The majority of people do not think that God is causing the violence. Human beings do this."

That's why other human beings cannot keep silent.
The Rev. Bernadino Lopez, for instance, works from "morning until 10 p.m." helping more than 2,000 Uraba families displaced by violence, including 300 Presbyterians who have started a 100-member church in their camp.

"I'm busy, busy finding solutions," he says.

Lopez says the government must be pressured to address the needs of its citizens in provinces far from the capital, like Uraba, where displaced kids are homeless and hungry and have no access to education.

The pastor says he tells his fellow strugglers about Abraham and Jacob, who had received promises from God but had little evidence in their lives to encourage belief.

"We have lots of kids who are depressed, who are alone," he says, "kids without parents. They're aggressive; and they want to go wandering in the streets. They have no house, no parents, and they say, 'Why should I care?' And I start to talk to them about the value of life, of simply being alive, to be a part of this world."

He prays that the children will begin to see God "through us" - the pastors and churchgoers who make room in their lives for them.

Diaz Leon says it isn't always easy to answer kids' questions.

"The most frequently asked question by kids is: 'Where is God? What is God doing for Colombia?'" he says.

Diaz Leon, 41, says he has been praying the same prayer for a long time: a prayer for peace. "Sometimes I just want to say, 'Enough is enough. We need peace and tranquility!'"

But political analysts say the violence shows no sign of abating.

"There is no peace process," says Kirk, of Human Rights Watch, alluding to the country's recent elections that put a president into office with a strong military bent, "and there is not going to be a peace process for the next six years. Just forget about it."

According to Kirk, peace groups are caught in the middle, regarded as enemies by left-wing revolutionaries and right-wing paramilitaries alike.

 "The peace community is still trying," she says. "But every month, people are dying."
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