This past week I
spent with 27 other staff members of Caritas throughout Honduras in a
construction of peace workshop, led by a facilitator from Caritas Colombia,
Rosa Inés.
Rosa Inés |
This approach is not merely conflict resolution but is basically a process of transformation of conflicts. Resolving a conflict may still leave behind the conditions that may generate other conflicts. How to respond to conflicts so that the way is open to a peaceful and just society.
We did a lot of
group work, analyzing five different types of conflicts – family, community,
worker-boss, youth, women’s place.
Central to this
approach is not merely dealing with the conflict but working on the relations
between people, seeking to create a culture, a society, where there is real
peace, with justice and equity. It means breaking accustomed ways of looking
at events and of dealing with
conflict.
What I like most is
that this approach goes beyond the black and white, either/or way of looking at
situations. It demands “moral imagination”, as John Paul Lederach, who has
inspired and led much of this work, has written.
A tree of commitments during morning prayer |
The workshop has inspired me to try to begin something, not only in Caritas, but also in the parish of Dulce Nombre. I talked with Padre Efraín of Dulce Nombre about this on Saturday afternoon. More on this later.
I was moved by the
work, just beginning, of one Caritas worker with youth in the north of
Honduras. With a killing shortly beforehand, with the entrance of armed youth
from other barrios to buy drugs. The worker lives in the community and has been
working with the church for years. I marvel at his courage.
In a very different
way I was moved by the story the facilitator told of a child who was recruited
by paramilitaries and made to kill someone as a rite of initiation. By killing
a person in cold blood the paramilitaries planned to make him more open to mass
killing. The man to be killed was kneeling before the child who was somewhat
reluctant to kill. But the child remembered a song that he had learned in
religious education – “Kill the devil” which included stomping on the “devil”
like you might stomp on an ant. And so he saw the victim as a devil and went
ahead and killed him, hearing this song in his head. What a sad commentary on
what unconscious messages we sometimes send in our teaching and raising of
children.
During the
workshop, listening to people I became aware of another way to look at the
violence here in Honduras.
What happens when a
family member is killed? In some cases the family says we’ll take the law in
our own hands since the law does nothing, neither the police nor the public
prosecutors will follow up. This is one cause for the violence. The breakdown
of the juridical and police systems are really part of the reasons why there is
so much violence between families. The structures do not work and in may ways
work against peace – especially considering violence done by police or
permitted by police. (In this, I am thinking of the complicity of the police in
killings of civilians in Bajo Aguan and the failure of the police to respond to
drug violence, because they are often receiving monthly gifts from the drug
forces.)
A lot needs to be
done, especially in terms of structural changes. There is a lot that can be
done at the grassroots but often something more needs to be done.
When the legal
framework doesn’t work, what way is there to deal with the problems, especially
when there is inequality of the actors involved. Our facilitator share the case
of women fasting to get a law to compensate victims in Mexico. Their actions
arise from the moral reserve of the people, as Rosa Inés called it.
The workshop gave
me much to reflect on and to try to implement in Caritas, the parish, and in my
personal life.
Mothers Day
Mothers Day
This Sunday
Honduras, as most of the world, celebrates Mothers’ Day.
On the way back I
picked up some people looking for a ride. One was a teacher in a PROHECO school,
teaching all six primary grades. PROHECO schools do not always get the best
teachers and are sometimes politicized, dependent on party affiliations. But
they are often the only school a community might have.
We talked a bit
about mother’s day, since she had arranged a celebration in her school. She’ll
be celebrating with here two daughters and with her grandmother who is ninety-seven
and still active, making tortillas every day. The grandmother has over 400 nietos, she told me, meaning
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I think. Many will arrive to celebrate
with her.
I let her off a few
kilometers before San Juan Intibucá, marveling at this woman and her family.
During the Caritas
Honduras workshop we had a celebration of the mothers present on Wednesday
night. There were prayers and the choosing of a Caritas Mother, and the singing
of a special song for mothers. Neither I nor the Colombian facilitator knew the
words, but everyone else sang heartily. I was quite surprised.
Saturday, while in
El Zapote de Santa Rosa for a church zone meeting, I dropped in on the Mothers
Day celebration by the Maestro en Casa program. The room was decorated and the
students had prepared songs, dances, and skits.
Mothers and children in El Zapote de Santa Rosa |
The role of mothers is important here, even though it is a society where women’s equality is a struggle. At times it seems to be just a sentimental feast. But it could be a way for people to begin to work together for women’s equality.
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More photos of the
workshop can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/johndonaghy/sets/72157629698470626/
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