wfn.org | ALC Noticias 29 Jan 2006 Bolivia Peru Brasil

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ALC NEWS SERVICE
E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org

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CONTENT

BOLIVIA: Methodist leader is new Minister of Justice
BOLIVIA: Evo Morales fulfills prophesies of Tupac
Katari and the Methodist Church of Bolivia
PERU: AIDS is an epidemia in Peru

BRASIL: Evangelical University students committed
to working with the poor and struggling for justice

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BOLIVIA
Methodist leader is new Minister of Justice

LA PAZ, January 24 (ALC).  The new Justice
Minister of Bolivia, Casimira Rodríguez Romero is
a Methodist lay leader who received a prize from
the World Methodist Council in 2003 and is
secretary general of the Latin American and
Caribbean Confederation of Domestic Workers (CONLACREAHO).

The 39-year-old Quechua woman who combines her
social and political tasks with Anthropology
Studies at the Catholic University was born in
Mizque, close to the city of Cochabamba. The only
daughter of a poor family she began to work as a
maid when she was 13 and therefore has first hand
knowledge about the abuse faced by women who are
domestic workers in Latin America.

There were times when I felt insignificant, she
said. When she met Christ her life began to be
filled with hope and faith because she understood
that the Lord is on the side of the poor and sick
and rejects injustice, she said.

Casimira Rodríguez became a member of the
Emmanuel Methodist Church of Cochabamba. Each
Sunday, her day off, she attended Church and took
sewing lessons. This group later became the
Organization of Domestic Workers, with Casimira as the leader.

She has been Secretary General of the National
Federation of Domestic Workers twice and has also
led the Confederation of Domestic Workers of
Latin America and the Caribbean with branches in 14 countries.

She is author of the legislative initiative to
regulate salaried work in the home. The law has
been approved by Congress but has not been fully
enacted. The law is not enough, she said. Society
must understand it and assimilate it as an act of justice.

Casimira Rodríguez has been the voice of Christ
to help other women who suffer what she went
through. "When I met the Lord, my life was filled
with hope and faith because God is with the poor,
he denounces injustice and cures the sick," she
affirmed. Her voice, since then, has been heard in Bolivia and abroad.

In November 2003, Casimira Rodríguez received the
Methodist Peace Prize in a solemn ceremony held
in the Evangelical Methodist "La Reforma" Church
of La Paz. The Methodist World Council,
representing 39 million Methodists around the
world, rewarded her for her "Courage, creativity
and constancy," in the struggle for the labor and
legal right of domestic workers in Bolivia.

The Methodist Peace Prize, instituted in 1970 has
been granted individuals like Boris Trajkovsky,
president of Macedonia, Nelson Mandela, former
president of South Africa, Kofi Annan, secretary
general of the United Nations and organizations
like the San Egidio Community that impelled peace
in Mozambique and the Grandmothers of the Plaza
de Mayo of Argentina, among others.

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BOLIVIA
Evo Morales fulfills prophesies of Tupac Katari
and the Methodist Church of Bolivia

LA PAZ, January. 24 (ALC).  For the Methodist
Church of Bolivia, which elected the first Aymara
bishop in 1978, the election of indigenous coca
leader Evo Morales as president of Bolivia is the fulfillment of a prophesy.

Methodist Bishop Carlos Poma told ALC that the
presidency of indigenous leader Morales is the
fulfillment of the prophesy of Tupac Katari "I
will return and I will be millions" and of the
Methodist Church "one day what is happening in
the Methodist Church will happen in Bolivia."
Twenty-seven years ago Pastor Zacarias Mamani was
ordained the first Aymara Bishop of his Church.

"I was very excited and I cried," said Bishop
Carlos Poma describing what he felt when the
first Bolivian indigenous president was sworn in.

Since 1975, the Evangelical Methodist Church of
Bolivia has proposed Church unity and the
formation of leaders at every level of the Church
and community "so that shortly we can be free of
all oppressions, exclusions, humiliations, and
religious and political exploitation from
colonial times to the present," said Bishop Poma.

He said that the faithful is "very happen and
thankful to God and the Andean deities for the
return of the great Pachakuti," fulfilling the
prophesy of the majority election of an Aymara indigenous president.

They tried to exterminate the indigenous and they
couldn't, said the religious leader, because we
are the axara, a small Andean seed that never dies.

He said that now everything will be a reality,
there will be friendships, good manners, work for
everyone, happy children, there will be no
corruption, no favoritism, no more "come back
tomorrow or the next day". The authorities will
talk to the people in their native language, as will the president.

"The future of Bolivia is in good hands and we
are all committed to constructing a new Bolivia
through the Constituent Assembly," he said.

The Methodist Church of Bolivia is more committed
than ever and the time has come to restore and
dignify human life in the construction of the
great Pachakuti, of the Kingdom of God, he said.

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PERU
AIDS is an epidemia in Peru

By  Rosa Málaga

LIMA, January 26 (ALC). Fiorella, a 4-year-old
died on Christmas Eve from AIDS without being
able to open the present she had been longing
for, a doll. Her death lead the Rosa Blanca
Ecumenical Parish Center to begin the FIO
(Fiorella) Programme to accompany children who life with HIV.

Like Fiorella, there are many Peruvian children
who have been affected by AIDs through vertical
transmission (mother - child), which according to
data from the Health Ministry shows a sustained
growth of three percent and to a lesser degree,
from blood transfusions. Together with health
complications, these children suffer from social discrimination.

According to Luisa Parra, technical coordinator
of CPE Rosa Blanca, the increase of HIV/AIDS has
been notable in the past few years, to the point
where it is possible to talk about an epidemic.
According to official figures between 55,000 and
144,000 people have the virus and it is estimated
that there is underreporting of at least 30 percent.

The cities with the highest number of cases are
Lima, the capital and the port city of Callao.
Both concentrate 70 percent of the cases. Border
towns like Tumbes, Piura and Tacna have an
increasing number of cases as do cities in the
interior with commercial activity like Huancayo and Ucayali.

Parra said that the epidemic does not distinguish
between gender, age, social condition and affects
"engineers, professors, businessmen, housewives."
The highest number continue to be men, who make
up 82 percent of cases, in particular men aged 20 -39.

The average time between infection and the
appearance of HIV is between age 10-15, which
allows experts to conclude that adolescence is
the critical time to take preventive action.

"This is the crucial stage, these are mainly
adolescents who do not know safe methods or the
use of the condom and they are not prepared for
stable relationships. This lack of information is fatal," said Parra.

While public health policies seek to promote the
use of the condom, the message that is heard in
some Churches and many families allude to the
prohibition of its use, under the argument that
it will increase sexual promiscuity among young people.

The Rosa Blanca Parish Center, which currently
works with 30 mutual help groups in hospitals and
jails is willing to take a major step with an
awareness raising program for school children
that will begin in religious schools run by diverse confessions.

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BRASIL
Evangelical University students committed to
working with the poor and struggling for justice

VIÇOSA, January 26 (ALC) Young people who
participated in Mission 2006, the Student
Missionary Congress of the Biblical University of
Brazil Alliance (ABUB) committed themselves to
working "intimately with the poor, with fugitive
pilgrims in wars, with the slaves of the systems
and the ideologies," emphasizing God's love for humanity.

Mission 2006 met in the Federal University of
Viçosa, Minas Gerais, from January 3 - 8 under
the theme "Hope lives in Jesus." The official
letter of the event entitled "Responding to the
call: the beginning of our new walk" was published this week.

Nine hundred university student and recent
graduates from more than 130 cities in Brazil and
16 countries in America, Africa and Europe participated in the Congress.

"We understand that the failure of the Church is
also our failure. We perceive that we have lived
a rachitic and sickly Gospel that converts us
into a conformist and passive mass," the young people said in the letter.

However, despite everything, the love of God
trains us for the missions and His grace makes us
stand. The event helped them understand that "a
body cannot be healthy if only some of its organs prosper."

The young people committed themselves to struggle
for a united Church, to rethink the type of
Gospel they are living, to establish dialogue
with society, to struggle for justice and to
convert to Jesus of Nazareth to living
Christianity "simple, practical that brings us hope."

The members of ABUB were challenged to find our
"brothers in places where, for our limitations,
the Gospel has still not reached them" and left
the Congress committed to proclaiming the Gospel
to those who are excluded for economic or social
reasons, for illness or because they think differently.
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