Violence, insurrection, Honduras

Lest anyone misunderstand what I am writing, I want to make it clear that I am a Christian pacifist, rooted in the witness of the early martyrs Marcellus and Maximilian, of Saint Martin of Tours, of Saint Francis of Assisi, and, in our days, Dorothy Day.

Lest anyone think that I believe in a passive pacifism, my heroes include Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and the many people who peacefully risked their lives in campaigns for justice and the poor throughout the world.

Lest anyone think I am a hypocrite, my evidence is that I am prone to impatience and anger and have a hard time forgiving others. (Call that hypocrisy, if you will.) For these and other sins that are at the root of violence and are still in my life, I beg God’s forgiveness and help to

Lest anyone think I speak from an ivory tower, they should know that I speak from a nice house in a village in Honduras, a country with a reputation for violence, trying to accompany the people as a deacon, a servant.  I also spent time accompanying people in El Salvador during and after their civil war.

I condemn all sorts of violence. But I have to say that the most pernicious violence that I see finds its roots in the structures of power, domination, and institutionalized violence, that many states use to consolidate their power and to protect the interests of the moneyed few.

I understand why people may resort to violence but I do not justify it. I understand it, partly with the help of the word f Pope Saint Paul VI, in Progresio Populorum – The Development of the Peoples (30-31):

30. There are certainly situations whose injustice cries to heaven. When whole populations destitute of necessities live in a state of dependence barring them from all initiative and responsibility, and all opportunity to advance culturally and share in social and political life, recourse to violence, as a means to right these wrongs to human dignity, is a grave temptation.
31. We know, however, that a revolutionary uprising--save where there is manifest, long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country--produces new injustices, throws more elements out of balance and brings on new disasters. A real evil should not be fought against at the cost of greater misery.

For this reason, I am disturbed about the recent meeting in La Ceiba, Atlántida, Honduras. of LIBRE, the opposition part formed after the 2009 coup.

As reported in Noti Bomba, Former president, Mel Zelaya, stated: ““Tenemos derecho a la violencia, a la guerra y a la insurrección”- “We have the right to violence, war, and insurrection.”

He has called before for a peaceful insurrection – and I have few reservations about that. I do believe, however, that this must be the initiative of the people and not of political leaders and needs to be the fruit of grass-roots efforts of organizing and solidarity.

But I fear that Honduras is suffering from efforts of the elite to control the people and use them for their gain.

For me, it is obvious that the party in power, the National Party, is expert at this. Their consolidation of power in the three branches of government, their use of government jobs and services to assure (to buy off) their power base, their demonization of their foes, the massive militarization are way they “instrumentalize” their supporters, using them as pawns to maintain their party in power. And I won’t detail the variety of attacks on human rights supporters, environmental activists, and opposition journalists – including deaths – that have happened during their years in power.

But to call for insurrection, without facilitating the development of a critical consciousness in the people, can be another way for political parties to “use” their supporters. It can also be a way of putting them in danger for their lives.

What then?

Gandhi started with purifying and strengthening the people in the villages. Martin Luther King worked in the light of years of organizing and consciousness raising in the African-American communities.

Central to Gandhi’s protests was the constructive program, the efforts at the village level to make changes. This is empowerment from the base.

But what is also needed is a voice from the church that speaks from the side of the poor, that speaks clearly against all the forces that degrade the other, that resists all forms of violence while placing itself against all the forces of injustice.

In 1948, Albert Camus spoke to a group of Dominicans in France. When I first read his words when I was in college during the Vietnam War, they challenged me and I pray that they may still challenge me:

“What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest [person]. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.”

And thus I reject all violence as I will try, in many small ways, to do what I can. As Camus said in the same speech:

“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.”

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The photo is not of Honduras, but of Bethlehem from a house in a Palestinian refugee camp that had been blown up by Israeli forces about December 1, 2004.