ALC NEWS SERVICE E-mail: director@alcnoticias.org
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CONTENT
COLOMBIA: For the first time a Latin American is a candidate for the presidency of the US Episcopal Church ARGENTINA: Legal bill to annul the foreign debt incurred under the military dictatorship MEXICO: Evangelical leader accuses President Vicente Fox of preferring Catholic hierarchy ECUADOR: World Vision rejects accusations of Ecuadorian government BRAZIL: Water cistern system changes lives in semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil
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COLOMBIA
For the first time a Latin American is a candidate for the presidency of the US Episcopal Church
BOGOTA, Mar 24 (ALC). For the first time in the history of the US Episcopal Church a Latin American has been nominated as a candidate for the primate bishop of this denomination.
During the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops' Meeting (ECUSA) held in Hendersonville, North Carolina from March 17 - 23, the bishop of the Diocese of Colombia Francisco Duque agreed to run for the position.
The diocese of Colombia, together with Honduras, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Central and Coastal Ecuador form part of the IX Province, an international body linked to ECUSA.
Upon his return from the United States, Bishop Duque told ALC in a interview that he was surprised to receive the proposal. "It was not in my plans and I thank my Bishop colleagues who consider me to be a qualified person to be the primate of ECUSA."
A 55-year-old lawyer and a native of Salamina, Caldas, for 23 years Duque was a law professor at the Libre, Gran Colombia and Catholic Universities. He studied Theology in the Caribbean Seminary in Puerto Rico, the Theological Studies Center and the Pontifical Javeriana University. He has been a member of the diocese of Colombia since 1967 and in February 2001 was unanimously elected coadjutor Bishop of the diocese of Colombia.
The successor to the current primate of ECUSA, Frank Griswold will be elected in the next ECUSA General Convention, to be held in Columbus, Ohio from June 13 - 21. According to ECUSA regulations the primate must be elected with a majority by the House of Bishops and must later be ratified by the Legislative House, made up of lay and ordained delegates.
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ARGENTINA
Legal bill to annul the foreign debt incurred under the military dictatorship
BUENOS AIRES, Mar. 24 (ALC). The Lutheran World Federation's Advocacy Program on the Illegitimate Foreign Debt and other civil society bodies presented a legal project to annul the foreign debt contracted between 1976 and 1983 by the Argentine Military government.
The text of the Legal project declares the
"absolute annulment" of the foreign public debt contracted by the military dictatorship and establishes that this debt is worthy of compensation in favor of the Argentine State.
The project is being supported by Dialogue 2000, the Lutheran Federation's Advocacy Program on the Illegitimate Foreign Debt, ATTAC- Argentina (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens), Ecumenical Space, the Roman Catholic Religious Conference, among other organizations and more than 100 citizens.
The petition maintains that the debt that the military dictatorship contracted "is illegitimate, illegal, fraudulent, and hateful and violates human rights" and that passing the presented legal bill would be "an act of justice."
The organizations supporting the initiative say that the foreign debt incurred by the military dictatorship characterizes the economic significance of the time when a significant part of the country's productive apparatus was destroyed and sovereign decisions were submitted to the power of foreign banks.
The project relates the economic crimes of the dictatorship to the forced disappearance of people, considering that both are crimes against humanity and therefore without a statute of limitations.
The bill was given to the head of the legislature Alberto Balestrini by a commission that included Nobel Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nora Cortiñas and Mirta Baravalle, leaders of the Plaza de Mayo Mothers, former national congressman Mario Cafiero as well as pastors Angel Furlan and Juan Pedro Schaad, coordinators of the Lutheran World Federation's Advocacy Program on the Illegitimate Foreign Debt.
The two pastors, who were active participants in drafting the project, said that letters have also been sent to Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and the head of the Supreme Justice Court.
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MEXICO
Evangelical leader accuses President Vicente Fox of preferring Catholic hierarchy
MEXICO CITY, March 23 (ALC). Abdías Pérez Landín, president of the National Evangelical Defense Committee accused President Vicente Fox and Government Secretary Carlos Abascal of publicly expressing their preference for the Catholic Church and called on them to respect the lay State.
The Evangelical leaders said that Abascal, as well as state and municipal officials should stop "pampering" the Catholic hierarchy and respect the Lay State and the nation's Constitution in order to preserve the thinking of Benito Juarez, according to Milenio.
Benito Juárez is an emblematic Mexican figure. In 1859 he expedited the Laws of the Reform that declared the independence of the State regarding the Chruch, the law on civil marriage and civil status, among others. He was president of Mexico in 1861 and re-elected in 1867 and 1871.
Perez, a lawyer and long standing leader of the Evangelical body addressed hundreds of faithful meeting in the Alameda Central to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Juarez with a message that questioned both the left and the right.
During the speech, Perez staunchly defended what he said was the legacy of Benito Juarez.
He demanded fulfillment of the constitutional norm that consecrated obligatory free lay education after stating that this will "form the men and women who must serve their country without religious fanaticism." The Rosary and the Bible are for the Church and the home, he said.
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ECUADOR
World Vision rejects accusations of Ecuadorian government
By Carlos Ramos
QUITO, Mar 24 (ALC). The Evangelical body World Vision rejected accusations made by President Alfredo Palacio who accused it of mobilizing indigenous groups against the Free Trade Agreement that the government is currently negotiating with the Untied States.
World Vision, a humanitarian institution that has been working in the country for the past 28 years said that its work consists in overcoming the poverty that the indigenous suffer, according to the president of the Ecuadorian Branch, Pastor Roberto Proaño.
This California-based institution is working in the provinces with the largest indigenous population such as Imbabura, Tungurahua, Cotopaxi y Chimborazo where the most significant mobilizations and highway blockades have taken place.
The Palacio government, after 12 days of protests, announced several measures that, according to analysts, are aimed at showing that they have control over the situation in order to pave the way to signing the FTA.
This include declaring a State of Emergency, a curfew after 10:00 pm and authorization for the police and military to use force to open up the highways.
President Palacio said that NGOs are funding the mobilization of the indigenous and said that according to military and police intelligence, one of these is World Vision.
He also accused three Spanish citizens of agitating the marches, canceling their visa and proposing that they be removed from the country. However, it was not clear whether they had been detained.
This is not the first time that World Vision has been the object of this type of accusation. During the Leon Febres Cordero regime (1984-1988) the institution was also the object of several accusations leading several sectors to call on the government to expel them from the country.
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BRAZIL
Water cistern system changes lives in semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil
RECIFE,March 21 (ALC). The cistern, a simple, low cost water storage system that dates back thousands of years has made life much easier for thousands of farming families in northeastern Brazil's semi-arid region.
Josefa Cabral do Nascimento, age 56, from the community of Rangel in the municipality of Jassanã in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, the mother of four, had a cistern built in the patio of her home under the One Million Rural Cisterns Project (PIMC for its initials in Spanish) spearheaded by the Semi-Arid Network (ASA).
"I spent my whole life carrying water in the drought season. If I counted the hours spent coming and going it would be days, weeks, and months of my life. Coming and going with a can of water in my arms, stealing my time, wasting my energy, my youth, breaking down many dreams, undermining our hope. But I never gave in," Josefa Cabral told Francisco Flavio Felipe, of the Techne Cooperative in Rio Grande do Norte.
Josefa walked an hour a day every day in search of water. And even though she walked for a life time she never gave up hope. When she heard about the Cisterns Project she could barely believe that she would never have to carry water again "or depend on anyone and that the rain alone could fill the cisterns," she said. The miracle of the multiplication!
The project is still far from building 1 million cisterns, the goal set by ASA. However, more than 113,000 have been built, directly benefiting 680,000 people in 952 municipalities in the semi-arid region in northeastern Brazil. The number of cisterns represents 1.92 billion liters of potable water or a vast lake 2 kilometers long, 192 meters wide and 5 meters deep.
As well as storing potable water, the cisterns bring indirect benefits that are also visible in the municipalities in the semi-arid zone: school attendance has increased, diseases caused by contaminated water have declined and employment and income has been generated for area residents.
The "complex" water collection system is in fact very simple: The cistern, an average 16 cubic meters, is half buried beside the house at a cost of 1,200 reales (close to $567). The roof of the house serves to trap rain water which is channeled to the cistern.
Diaconia, together with another 750 NGOs, Churches, associations, unions and social organizations form ASA carried out an investigation in the Pajeu zone in Pernambuco in the Umarizal region in Rio Grande do Norte to measure the roofs of the homes of the small-scale farmers. The vast majority of these roofs are 84 square meters and barely 4% of the homes have smaller roofs in this area.
Diaconia is an ecumenical organization made up of 12 Brazilian denominations.
The information is important as the home's capacity to collected water is determined by the size of the roof and the amount of rainfall. The Cisterns Project adopted a coefficient of 75%, which is to say that 10 millimeters of rain on one square meter of roof will generate 75 liters of potable water.
The semi-arid area covers 974,700 square kilometers, covering 86.4% of the northeast and nine States (Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Río Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahía), as well as northern Minas Gerais and northern Espírito Santo. The region is affected by periodic droughts but there is never a year without rain. The driest years register an annual 200 millimeters of rainfall. The average, however, varies from 400 millimeters to 800 millimeters a year.
Considering this volume of rain, 96% of the families in the semi-arid zone have the capacity to collect and store, using the cistern system, 16 cubic meters of water a year, which provides eight liters a day per family member.
Funding sources for the construction of cisterns in the semi-arid zone are the Ministry of Social Development- Hunger Zero, The Brazilian Banking Federation and the British NGO Oxfam.
ASA was created in 1999 at the initiative of social organizations after the Third Conference of the Members of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and Drought that met in Recife.
ASA's charter affirms that this network, which does not have legal status, seeks to conserve the natural resources of the semi-arid zone and break the monopoly on access to land, water and other means of production. ASA contributes to formulating policies for the development of the semi-arid zone and the monitoring of public policies. It has an agreement with the Ministry of Environment and Diaconia is the NGO named responsible to receive and administer these resources.
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