wfn.org | Bolivian Methodists look for calm after turbulence

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 13, 2003 News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037New York 7 
E-mail:newsdesk@umcom.org 7{553}

By United Methodist News Service

In the wake of political and social crisis, Methodists in Bolivia are hopeful
that country's new interim president will bring stability and change.

Bishop Carlos Intipampa, leader of the Evangelical Methodist Church in
Bolivia, conveyed his support and prayers for Carlos D. Mesa, the new
president, in a recent pastoral letter; he also called upon the Methodist
community to continue to pray for the entire nation.

Mesa is a political moderate and widely respected as a moral leader,
according to the Rev. Wilson Boots, a United Methodist missionary who, with
his wife, Nora, has been based part-time in Bolivia since 1993. At the
moment, there seems to be "a positive view" of his abilities to stabilize the
Latin American country, he told United Methodist News Service in a Nov. 12
interview.

The former president of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, resigned Oct. 17
after violent clashes between demonstrators and army troops resulted in more
than 80 deaths. The widespread protests, which also left more than 400
wounded, underlined the continuing social and political crisis in Bolivia,
the bishop reported.

Although indigenous Indian groups, representing Bolivia's poor and the
majority of its citizens, initially organized the protests, other groups
joined the movement, according to the New York Times.

The Methodist church was involved in joint efforts with the Permanent
Assembly on Human Rights to end the violence and bring about reconciliation.
Several churches served as centers for those who fasted as part of a
nonviolent protest. Three church vehicles were destroyed during the protests.

Clergy and laity donated blood, shared medical supplies with public hospitals
and provided pastoral care to the wounded and family members of those who
suffered death or injury.

The church also made public statements supporting struggles for a more just
society for all Bolivians. "The Bolivian Methodist Church is engaged in
community building and nation building," Boots said. 

While a proposal for a $5 billion pipeline to export Bolivia's natural gas
was a trigger for the protests, underlying anger exists regarding long-time
government corruption there, he explained.

The previous president, Boots said, was forced to bring in Mesa as a vice
presidential candidate "to give respectability to his government because
corruption had reached an extraordinary level." But when Mesa tried to
address corruption issues, the president publicly embarrassed him, he added.

Boots considers it a positive sign that Mesa, who has no political party
affiliation, was able to bring in a cabinet not related to the party of the
former president.

About 60 percent of Bolivia's nearly 8 million citizens are indigenous and
Wilson considers this new shift of political power "a watershed moment." The
Indian groups want a new constitution and would like to dissolve the current
congress and replace it with a popular constituent assembly.

The Evangelical Methodist Church in Bolivia has 169 congregations and about
8,000 members with 85 percent from the Aymara indigenous group. Intipampa,
who grew up in a sheepherding family, is the first Aymara theologian to
receive a doctoral degree.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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