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PERU: Evangelicals send protest letter to Congress for discriminatory decree [more] COSTA RICA: Catholic Bishops will only support FTA if it has a social agenda [more] NICARAGUA: Government lobbied to stop crimes against women in Esteli [more] BRAZIL: The World Cup is a type of simulated war, said anthropologist [more] PANAMA: Religious representatives taken on a struggle for peace[more]
PERU
Evangelicals send protest letter to Congress for discriminatory decree
LIMA, June 30 (ALC(). The National Evangelical Council of Peru (CONEP) protested before the Peruvian Congress after it approved a decree that excludes Evangelical Churches from delivering domiciliary certificates in places where there are no public offices or notaries while Catholic Parishes are authorized to do so.
In a letter sent to the president of Congress, Marcial Ayaipoma and the head of the pertinent congressional committee Luis Iberico, the CONEP affirmed that the bill, to be shortly discussed by the plenary, is discriminatory.
The project modifies the authority of the police to expedite domiciliary certificates and proposes an article in which these can ?be expedited by the parish priest.?
The letter was signed by CONEP Executive Director Victor Arroyo. The CONEP is an institution with more than 65 years of history and represents the majority of Evangelical Churches, missionary and service organizations that carry out pastoral work in the country.
According to the CONEP, if the text is approved, Congress will be ?consecrating a situation of discrimination regarding religious confessions that are not Catholic which, similar to the Catholic Church, are present in those places where there are no notaries, local governments or justices of peace.?
The Evangelicals argue that the approval of this proposal will negate the process of democratization that Congress is called to develop and therefore it expects a legislative amendment to ?correct this observation.? <mhtml:mid://00000008/#>[top]
COSTA RICA
Catholic Bishops will only support FTA if it has a social agenda
SAN JOSÉ, June 30 (ALC). Costa Rican Catholic Bishops announced that they will only support the Free Trade Agreement with the United States if it includes a complementary ?social agenda? dedicated to protecting the poorest sectors of the country.
In a letter sent June 21 to the secretary of the Vatican State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a day before his resignation was confirmed, the Costa Rican Bishops reaffirmed their position regarding the FTA. The document contains an implicit warning to President Oscar Arias that they are willing to act as a collegiate body that does not accept policy pressures from the government.
The letter was signed by Msgr. José Francisco Ulloa Rojas, diocesan Bishop of Cartago and president of the Costa Rican Bishops? Conference; Msgr. Hugo Barrantes Ureña, metropolitan archbishop of San José y vice-president, as well as by Msgr. Oscar Fernández Guillén, diocesan bishop of Puntarenas and secretary general of the bishop? conference.
Some Catholic sectors in Costa Rica were critical of a visit that President Oscar Arias made to Rome two weeks ago when he accused the bishop of opposing the FTA. After his trip, Arias announced that the Vatican would send a letter to the Costa Rican Bishops so that they support the FTA.
?What Arias did was extremely clumsy and underestimated the power of the Church. What he did was an unprecedented indiscretion, to go to Rome to seek a type of censure against the Costa Rican Bishops? Conference,? said the former minister of culture, university professor and former Catholic priest Arnoldo Mora.
Journalist and former Catholic Priest Javier Solis said that Arias? behavior was a ?major clumsiness.?
?He thinks that because he is president and a Nobel laureate he can twist the arm of the Catholic Church,? he said.
Costa Rica is the only Central American country that has not yet ratified the FTA with the United States, something that let Arias to seek help from the Pope. However, his move troubled bishops who, rather than aligning themselves with the FTA, reiterated their objections.
The letter from the Bishops to Cardinal Sodano said explicitly that President Arias should understand that there can be no FTA with the United States if a ?complementary agenda, with legislative projects that guarantee that the weakest sectors compensation for the possible negative effects of the treaty? is not democratically elaborated.
At the same time, they emphasized the need to conform a ?social agenda? materialized in a body of laws that promotes and help the most impoverished affected sectors in the country.
?The FTA with the United States (?) should be configured in the context of an adequate moral perspective. We judge, therefore, that it is imperative to give a human face to economic globalization, globalizing solidarity between people and among peoples,? said the letter. [top]
NICARAGUA
Government lobbied to stop crimes against women in Esteli
Por Trinidad Vásquez
MANAGUA, Jun. 28 (ALC). The Women?s Network Against Violence in the city of Esteli, 154 kilometers north of this capital, where in less than two months four women have been murdered, called on the government to stop this crime wave against women and to recognize the dramatic situation as a public health problem.
The women announced a protest march for the events and demanded that the government place priority on their demands after calling on private business to support control and security actions in the area.
The last four victims of this criminal wave were professor Lucinda Rosa Videa, sister of Catholic priest Julio César Videa; Brenda Noelia García, strangled by her partner Carlos Alberto Maradiaga Andino; Marjurie Sara Zeledón, strangled by her partner Edwin Antonio Aguilar, and Adilcia Peralta, shot by her husband José Miguel Talavera.
The person responsible for Videa?s death, Oscar Danilo Ramírez, who pretended to be a Catholic missionary, was slated to go before the courts at the end of June.
Students from the Nuevo Pueblo Institute, where the victim was the director held a homage and a march of protest, demanding punishment for the murderer.
The Bishop of the diocese of Esteli, Juan Abelardo Mata held a mass in memory of the teacher. ?While Christians opt for forgiveness in this horrendous crime, mercy demands all the weight of the law.?
The religious recalled how the murdered managed to trick the Church and lamented the fatal events.
While Esteli demands support to eradicate domestic violence and called for support the victims, in the North Atlantic three criminals raped an 11-year-old girl.
The murders of four women in Esteli are reminiscent of the crime wave against women in Ciudad Juárez, México, where dozens of women have been murdered in recent years and many of the cases have not been resolved. [top]
BRAZIL
The World Cup is a type of simulated war, said anthropologist
SAO LEOPOLDO, June 27 (ALC). The World Cup is a type of simulated war in which nation states ?compete with kicks and not with weapons,? said Arlei Sander Damo, a social anthropologist and professor from the Santa Cruz do Sul university in Rio Grande do Sul.
In an interview with the Humanitas Institute
(IHU) of the University del Valle del Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), Damo maintained that the teams are recruited based on the criteria of the nationality of the players, one of the demands of the International Soccer Federation (FIFA). As such this manipulates ?the symbolism of nation states, taking advantage of commercial partners,? he said.
In the case of the Brazilian selection, he said, a soccer team recruited by the Brazilian Confederation enters the filed, which is a private entity and therefore no official and does not represent the Brazilian state.
If it wasn?t for that rule, he said, it is quite likely that Saudi Arabia would have a star team, using petro-dollars to contract Ronaldinho Gaucho, Beckham and other cracks, without taking their nationality into account.
According to Anthropology and Political Sciences Professor from the Federal Fluminense University, Simoni Lahud Guedes, soccer and the World Cup are ?rituals that have the most possibilities and efficiency in building national identities.?
Soccer in Brazil was transformed into ?this fundamental vehicle for the construction of identity,? said the professor. This is visible in daily life. During the cup season, malls, stores, streets and buildings are decorated in green and yellow and the entire country grinds to a halt when the team is on the field.
The Cup is the most watched event on the planet via television and Brazilian soccer stands out. According to Anthropologist Roberto DaMatta, author of the book ?La bola corre mas que los hombres? is related to the discovery that we can be good at something. It is not about samba, capoeira ? but about soccer. ?
This aspect, DaMatta told IHU reverted the
?trivial and always negative way of reading our identity.? In an article for the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo, published June 21, DaMatta wrote that ?we like soccer because it is the positive opiate of the world,? because on the field ?people lose but do not die; they win but are not eternalized in power? because the ?law enters and its application exists in the sound of a whistle? and ?impunity is the exception.?
He said that ?we like soccer because unlike the social world where we live those who commit faults receive red cards and are expelled from the field. The infractions are visible and punishment is immediately decreed with a whistle. Those who commit faults do not have a habeas-corpus to lie, because in soccer there is no Supreme Justice Court. The judges use uniforms and the crowds confront them democratically,? he concluded. [top]
PANAMA
Religious representatives taken on a struggle for peace
By Tzeitel Allen
Panama City, June 26 (ALC). ?Latin America has joined, a little late but with a great deal of energy, the process in which the religions of the world make an effort in favor of peace,? said Anglican Bishop Julio Cesar Holguin, president of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) at the end of the third meeting of Latin American and Caribbean Council of Religious Leaders for Peace, held in this city.
?This event has served to strengthen this organization which has swiftly taken shape and which has had an admirable acceptance,? said Bishop Holguin, who saluted the participation of representatives from Catholic, Evangelical, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu communities as well as indigenous people and representatives from afro religions.
The inter-religious meeting opened with a session of the Coordinating Committee of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Women of Faith (CCLMF) that elaborated an action plan for faith communities based on overcoming domestic and family violence.
The participants named an executive team to disseminate and implement the agreements elaborated in previous meetings, in particular agreements in Lima in 2003 and those from the regional meetings in Santiago in 2004, Lima and Argentina in 2005 and Guatemala in 2006.
In the Inter-Religious Consultation on Childhood convened by UNICEF and the Latin America and Caribbean Council of Religious Leaders of the World Conference on Religions for Peace from June 20 ? 21, religious leaders reaffirmed the value of all human life, in particular that of children.
Members of different religious traditions and faith expressions manifested the need to join efforts to prevent, educate, disseminate and raise the awareness of society regarding all types of violence affecting children.
The Regional UNICEF Office said that its action priorities for children in the region focus on HIV-AIDs and childhood and the violence that children suffer. ?We have been interested so that Churches can contribute, have an understanding of what is happening and help us make these issues visible,? said the regional director Nils Katsberg.
Finally on June 22-23 an intense discussion was promoted about the issue of Human Safety with the participation of renowned consultants like Dr. Bernardo Kliksberg, general coordination of the Inter-American Initiative of Social Capital, Ethics and Development of the Inter-American Bank and Dr. Raul Leis of the Adult Education Council of Latin America (CEAAL).
Participants expressed great concern about the related issues such as unemployment, the sale and consumption of drugs, HIV-AIDs, gangs, violence and their relationship to poverty.
The meeting was a preparatory event for the VIII Assembly of the Conference of Religions for Peace to be held in Kyoto, Japan August 26-29, 2006 where the Latin American delegation will be around 50 people. [top]
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