wfn.org | PCUSANEWS] Church leaders develop strategies for accompaniment

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

04420
September 23, 2004

As Colombia's violence worsens, church leaders develop strategies for 
accompaniment

Ufford-Chase goes to Colombia as the first accompanier

By Alexa Smith

BARRANQUILLA, Colombia * The telephone call that reported the shooting 
death of activist Alfredo Correa De Andreis only confirmed what Rick 
Ufford-Chase already knew: The worst fears of the Colombian church are 
being realized.
	 Now, there is one more dead man. One more dead man on a long list 
of dead men and women.
	 In the past three months in this sprawling Carribbean city, at 
least three human rights activists with ties to the church have gone into 
hiding. A Presbyterian minister whose name turned up on a hit list has 
temporarily left the country. A 24-year-old law student, Mauricio Avilez 
Alvarez * who helped refugees in Colombia apply for government aid and 
document the human rights abuses that pushed them off their land * has been 
jailed for the last three months, accused of heinous crimes that those who 
know him deny, including guerrilla activity. Avilez staffed a Presbyterian 
Church of Colombia ministry.
	 Correa shared a cramped jail cell with Avilez before Correa was 
released from prison. A university professor, Correa, too, was accused of 
guerrilla activity in a justice system that requires proof of innocence 
rather than guilt. While jailed, authorities investigate if accusations 
made against the accused are substantive enough to be filed as formal
charges.
	 Correa's case, however, ended Friday as he walked off of the 
campus of Simon Bolivar University. He died like many in Colombia nowadays, 
with a bodyguard at his side. Both bodies were riddled with bullets fired 
by a passenger on a motorcycle that pulled close and then sped away.
	 Ufford-Chase * who is the moderator of the 216th General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church (USA) * got the news while he was sitting in a 
government prosecutor's office. His companion, the Rev. Milton Mejia, the 
executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, answered his 
cell phone and began sobbing. Both men were on an official visit, checking 
on the status of the Avilez case.
	 But Ufford-Chase was doing something else, too
	 He is, informally, the PC(USA)'s first accompanier in Colombia. He 
was sticking by Mejia's side in hopes that his presence might deter 
violence against Mejia and other church leaders whose lives have been 
threatened by Colombia's clandestine killers. And he was visiting one 
government official after another, making it clear that the international 
church is paying careful attention to the troubles of its sister-church here.
	 In Barranquilla, those who kill are often members of 
paramilitaries who are waging a vicious war against real and suspected 
sympathizers with the country's peasant-led Marxist insurgency, the FARC 
(Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The paramilitaries have close 
ties to factions within Colombia's military and are so deeply embedded in 
the country's infra-structure that they allegedly control nearly one-third 
of the seats in its Congress.
	 "The church here is being church," said Ufford-Chase in an 
interview in Mejia's office. Mejia sat in a nearby chair, with Alice 
Winters, the PC(USA)'s longtime missionary there,  at his side, 
translating. "So there is need for accompaniment. When a church acts like a 
church, it is an apolitical act. But when a church acts like a church here, 
there are huge political repercussions.
	 "In this case, those repercussions include a growing level of 
intimidation because of a very real threat. And the more it grows, the more 
likely people will be afraid to be church. Our role is to provide whatever 
confidence we can so that people can be church."
	 Forty Protestant pastors were murdered last year by armed 
factions. That figure doesn't include kidnappings, arrests, detentions or 
the names of those who have fled the country to protect their lives. 
Fifty-seven Roman Catholic leaders have been killed in the last decade, 
according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
	 The major international aid organizations call Colombia the worst 
humanitarian crisis in the hemisphere, undeniably. While the U.S. 
government has spent $3 billion in Colombia since 2000, more than 75 
percent of it is military aid, not developmental assistance.
	 In Barranquilla * which is under paramilitary control * the 
threats appear to surround the Presbyterian Church's work with Colombia's 
displaced, the more than three million refugees who've fled violence in the 
countryside only to find themselves without work, shelter or food in 
shantytowns on the edges of this sweltering tropical city. With little hope 
for jobs, these slums are ripe grounds for recruiting left-wing guerrillas 
and rightist paramilitaries.
  But most people are just trying to survive.
	 Church leaders * like Mejia * understand helping the poor to be a 
biblical mandate, not a crime. "If you say that the work of the church in 
helping the poor gets you identified as part of an illegal group, well, 
that's a scandal that stretches logic," Mejia said. "Human rights work is 
the legal way to defend the poor.
	 "If you don't do it that way, how do you do it?"
	 But right-wing hardliners say that charity to the poor is 
sympathizing with, or, abetting, the enemy.
	 It does appear that the Presbyterian Church of Colombia is getting 
inordinate attention from government agencies, including the military. It 
is reportedly under video surveillance. Government agents took the 
identification numbers of its office staff. Individuals who are arrested 
are repeatedly questioned about church leaders and church ministries.
	 This week, the General Assembly Council is weighing whether to 
begin sending U.S. accompaniers to the Presbyterian Church there, as part 
of a joint program operated by the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) and 
the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. The Presbyterian Church of Colombia 
has been clamoring for a full-time accompanier for months now.
  Ufford-Chase is the first flesh-and-blood Presbyterian to arrive and to 
visit government and military leaders.
	 As it is being conceived, the program would send 
two-to-three-person delegations to Colombia to live within the church and 
to visit government officials and church programs. A job description is now 
being drafted by WMD to hire a full-time accompanier who would double as a 
delegation leader, beginning in January.
	 Mejia admits that drafting the job description has been the 
hardest part of the task. "I"ve been talking with Rick about this," he 
said, still pondering what skills are essential for an international 
entering this tortured reality. "An accompanier would be a presence that 
would guarantee we're not alone here. And they would help us in a given
moment.
	 "Help us reflect on what's happening. Evaluate what's happening. 
And, our pastors sometimes need someone to give us pastoral care, someone 
to give us advice."
	 His wish list seeks a politically savvy candidate who is capable 
of understanding, documenting and interpreting Colombia's realities for the 
international community. He'd like a hands-on human rights worker, someone 
who not only observes, but participates in the work. Organizational 
qualities are a must, he said, since part of the job will be leading U.S. 
delegations. But pastoral skills are absolutely essential, too.
	 As Mejia talks, a wall full of crosses is visible over his right 
shoulder. Tacked against a richly colored indigenous fabric, there is the 
stark PCUSA symbol, the cross of the Latin American Council of Churches and 
an enameled Salvadoran one, filled with springtime colors of green, pink 
and white.
	 It was in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, that U.S. churches 
successfully used accompaniment politically and theologically. U.S. 
Christians traveled to Central America in the 1980s to get a first-hand 
look at the U.S. role in the region, which was essentially bankrolling many 
of the wars waged by repressive regimes against peasant-led insurgencies.
	 But the PC(USA) has demonstrated ambivalence about putting U.S. 
accompaniers on the ground in Colombia because of the escalating terror. 
The International Peace Brigade, a London-based group, and the Christian 
Peacemaking Teams, headquartered in Chicago, are both working in Colombian 
communities now.
	 The ties forged with Latin American Christians were galvanized 
into a movement opposing U.S. involvement in Central America in the 1980s.
	 It was during the 1980s in El Salvador that Ufford-Chase had his 
first taste of Latin American theology and politics. He has been hooked 
ever since.
"What's similar here is the growing level of fear in Colombia. I've had 
numerous people talk about how afraid they are. It's the same kind of 
palpable fear that was evident among church-people in the 1980s in Central 
America," he said.
	 What is different in Colombia is the vitality that life still 
holds, said Ufford-Chase. The streets are full of people after dark. The 
music is loud. The dancing is sultry. "That wasn't the case in El Salvador. 
No one went out after dark. They were too afraid. There was so much 
violence that you couldn't tell the difference between who was targeted and 
who died in generalized violence."
	 "That's true here, too," said Winters, speaking up for the first
time.
	 But it is often painfully clear who is targeted here.
	  Mejia said that an insidious fear is creeping into church and 
human rights circles, wrecking work that it has taken years to build. He 
thinks that may be the goal * to just scare church workers, union leaders, 
journalists and other activists into silence.
	 While Mejia was in the U.S. this summer learning English, warrants 
were issued to arrest several human rights workers. Intimidated by the 
crackdown, the city's human rights coordinating council * which includes 
the church * stopped meeting out of fear. With Avilez in jail, several 
pastors began questioning whether the church ought to drop its human rights 
advocacy and avoid trouble.
	 "There is risk and the risk is great," said Mejia, who'd just 
returned from the jail where he and Ufford-Chase visited Avilez. "What's 
happening to Mauricio in the jail is significant. But of all (damage) this 
isn't visible. (Fear and intimidation) breaks up processes that it took 
many years to put into place. And this is as serious as arresting someone 
and keeping them in jail.
	 "It is an attack on the cohesiveness of the social fabric. The 
damage is immense," he said, adding that starting over will take time.
	 Ufford-Chase concurred. It is hard, he said, for people to 
understand that arrest itself may be a tactic used to wreck coalitions by 
implying guilt, creating suspicion and escalating fear. The accused 
individual, he said, doesn't have to be guilty of anything * because that 
isn't the point. But that is a hard message for people to understand. 
"People can't understand that somebody could not be guilty when you're 
accused of something like terrorism or guerrilla activity," he said.
	 Mejia said a full-time accompanier in Colombia has to offer both 
political and pastoral skills because the church reflects some of the same 
wounds as the society. "It has to be holistic," he said.
	 As Mejia left the room to meet other reporters, Ufford-Chase sat 
quietly with Winters. He paused, "This is a gift from God * to do exactly 
what Jesus' words to us say, 'Take up your cross,'" he said, speaking of 
accompaniment of the Colombian church. "It is an opportunity to be with 
people and to be a witness to who Christ is *
	 "It is life-affirming."
	 Winters nodded. "And when we do, we find joy," she said. "Where 
death abounds, life is abundant."

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