wfn.org | Latin American bishops eye initiative on children's issues

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 13, 2002  News media contact: M. Garlinda
Burton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.  10-21-32-71BP{518}

NOTE: For related coverage of the Council of Bishops' meeting, see UMNS
stories #517 and #519. Photographs are available.

By M. Garlinda Burton*

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (UMNS) - Each day in Argentina, 8-year-old Rosilla and
her mother walk the streets of Buenos Aires, picking through garbage cans,
looking for food.

Four-year-old Milivy Adams, of Camden, N.J., the child of parents reared
near a U.S. Navy testing site at Vieques, Puerto Rico, is living with
cancer. According to some reports, incidents of cancer are 25 percent higher
on Vieques than in other parts of Puerto Rico - the remnant, critics say, of
60 years of U.S. weapons testing on the island.

In Brazil, Eduarda, 11, has worked at a Methodist-run dental clinic as a
receptionist, proudly helping other children - and adults - register for
services there. Born into a poor family, Eduarda says she wants to be a
dentist herself and work in the clinic someday. 

In the mountain city of Portism, Bolivia, children as young as 7 and 8 -
descendants of indigenous tribes - go into the silver mines with their
fathers, as have generations before them. The region's silver has made many
in the world rich, but the riches have not translated into a better life for
most of Portism's children, says Bolivian Methodist Bishop Carlos Intipampa.

"You could build a bridge from America to Europe with the bones of the
children who have died in the mines over the centuries," the bishop
declared. But today, he said, a new Methodist church is bringing hope,
spiritual strength and a new sense of dignity to the working poor of
Portism. 

Bishops of the mainly U.S.-based United Methodist Church heard these and
other stories of children and families living in poverty throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean during an historic Nov. 4 dialogue with leaders of
autonomous Methodist churches from Puerto Rico to Ecuador. The dialogue was
held during the United Methodist bishops' weeklong semiannual meeting in San
Juan.

The conversations with Latin American church leaders about the state of
children in their countries comes amid the four-year United Methodist
Bishops' Initiative on Children and Poverty worldwide, said Bishop Donald
Ott, Pewaukee, Wis., who coordinates the initiative.

Leaders of CIEMAL (Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches in Latin
America), a consortium of indigenous Methodist churches, called on their
United Methodist counterparts to join them in addressing the particular
concerns of children - and their families - who live in poverty across Latin
American and the Caribbean.

One of two bishops representing the Methodist Church of Mexico, Juan Velasco
Legorreta said pressing concerns for poor children include hunger,
prostitution and abuse. He said Methodist churches are responding by joining
with churches of other denominations and with social service agencies to
sponsor feeding programs for children - especially among indigenous tribes
in remote communities - parenting classes and church-sponsored schools.

While several Latin American church leaders pointed to the U.S. and European
world powers - and their economic, colonial, political and military forces -
as primary factors causing poverty and strife in developing nations, others
also cited internal social problems.

In Brazil, 60 percent of the nation's 170 million people are descendants of
Africans, said Brazilian Methodist Bishop Luiz Virgilio Rosa, yet much of
the nation's leaders are not black; he said that racial disparity still
colors the social fabric. 

He said enslavement of black Brazilians continued almost into the 20th
century in some areas, and the political and social structures bear the mark
of institutional racism. "We are a black country, and that makes a big
difference in terms of how we are viewed," said Virgilio, who is black.

"Children are discriminated against if they have a black face. Because of
the discrimination, many black adults and children are ashamed of their
African heritage," he said. "We have made a decision in the Methodist Church
to publicly affirm Afro-Brazilians, to help them recover their heritage and
to speak out in political ways on their behalf."

Bolivia's church and society face similar challenges with regard to reaching
out to children and adults from culturally marginalized group, Intipampa
said. He described himself as a member of the indigenous Aymara tribe "who
didn't learn to speak Spanish until I was an older child," and he noted that
the church is realizing its call to mission among Indians in the country's
remote areas.  

He cited the work of a new church in the historical silver-mining city of
Portism, which, in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries was one of the most
important cities in the world. There, Intipampa said, the average life span
only extends to 30 or 35 years.

"There was a time when people would be sent into the mines and never see the
light of day again," the bishop recalled. "Even today, children as young as
10 years old work the mines alongside their fathers."

Cowed by yawning poverty, men often would disappear on payday and spend
their meager wages on drink, then return home and beat their wives and
children, he said. 

However, the Methodist Church has brought hope to Portism in the form of
prayer, Bible study, support and counseling for families and
self-esteem-building programs for children.

Intipampa and other church leaders also combined biblical imagery with
stories of real children to emphasize the social and economic realities
keeping Latin America's children and families in poverty. 

Bishop Nelida Ritchie of Argentina drew parallels with the story of Jesus'
disciples attempting to bar the children from touching the Messiah. In
heralding children as owners of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus was declaring
them critically important in defining the church's conscience and mission.

"Jesus looks at us through the children's eyes. What do they see when they
look at us in the church? What are they saying?

"They are saying, 'Do not prevent us from living. Do not prevent us by
supporting unjust structures and systems, by silence in the face of
escalating foreign debt and war. Speak for us and plant seeds of hope,"
Ritchie said.

Bishop Pedro Grandon of the Chilean Methodist Church took the story a step
further. "The disciples wanted to send the children away, just like they
wanted to send away the 5,000 (whom Jesus later fed with bread and fish),
but God is calling us to bring transformation to our world to save children
and their families."

In Chile, he said, "We've seen powerful nations coming to our countries and
stealing our resources. Today, we have multinational corporations creating a
new form of slavery. Jesus is calling us, the way he has always called us,
to transform the world on behalf of all children."

The Chilean churches are also working on behalf of rural children in remote
areas by supporting three schools for students with mental illness or with
motor or learning disorders.

The triumphs and challenges facing their Methodist kin in Latin America
topped the agenda of the 120-member Council of Bishops of the United
Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the United
States, with 8.4 million U.S. members and another 1.5 million in Africa,
Europe and the Philippines.

Besides the daylong dialogue, the United Methodist bishops, meeting for the
first time in Latin America, joined together at the Puerto Rican island of
Vieques for worship and a demonstration against continued U.S. military
occupation of the island.
#  # #
*Burton is director of United Methodist News Service.

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United Methodist News Service
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