Hear the pain of those who have no voice

An abandoned newborn

Two days ago an infant, less than a day old, was found in a field here in Plan Grande. He was found by a woman who informed the police. The police came (and perhaps the advocate for children and women from a government office in Santa Rosa) and took the child who is now in the Santa Rosa hospital. The medical personnel names him Leonardo David. Yesterday the police were investigating here in Plan Grande and in the nearby health center. They came in an unmarked car.

Photo from LaPrensa

I heard about this from a friend but I also heard about it on a Facebook news source. The young man reporting the news was full of indignation. How terrible and inhuman this was, he repeated over and over again. I agree it is horrible. But I also wonder what drove the mother to do this? Or did someone else do this or force her to do this? What would drive a woman to abandon her own child, the fruit of her womb? She might have been a very desperate woman, even a victim of abuse.

I will not justify what was done, but it is important to understand such horrors in light of the whole society. The number of women killed in Honduras is horrifying; domestic abuse of women and children is an epidemic. The poverty, the oppressive society which relies on violence, the macho culture are among the factors that contribute to a society where a newborn can be abandoned. Children and women are not valued – and this horror is just a sign of a problem of the entire society.

A police murder of a black man

Last night there were riots in Minneapolis, protesting the brutal police murder of George Floyd, a 46-year old man of color. The death was brutal and a sign of the racism in the US society, especially in some sectors.

I have become a bit more conscious of this recently when I read a Facebook post of a friend married to a Haitian woman. He is concerned about his young son going out on the street to play or run – and rightly so. People of color are suspect in many places in the US (and the world.)

Some have been quick to condemn the riots. I won’t justify them but I wonder where the desperation comes from. There have been more and more reports of violence, discrimination, and harassment of people of color recently. Note that I wrote “reports.” I don’t think this is a completely new phenomenon, but it appears that the US culture has changed in the past few years. Hatred, discrimination, and even violence against “the other” seem to have become more “acceptable” in a nation where the public discourse, even of people in power, is marked by its harshness and even hatred. I am a bit relieved that I don’t live there; I might be filled with a continual rage.

And so I can understand, without justifying the violence, which is a response to the violence of the murder and harassment of people of color as well as to the use of violence by police and security forces.

I was thus challenged by something Martin Luther King, Jr., said in 1966:

“And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? ... It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

Can I hear the voices of those who are without a voice? Can I look at what is happening from the perspective of those who suffer the effects of a world that values power, violence, machismo, racism, and more?

Can I look at those who suffer with the eyes – and the heart – of a God who became flesh in a place of oppression, occupation, discrimination, violence and more?

Can I see history from the bottom, where, I believe, God walks and suffers?

Can I remember the witness of the martyrs, especially those in Central America?

Yesterday I read, with great joy, that another martyr of Central America has been recognized. On June 14, 1980, in the church of San Juan Nonualco, El Salvador, Franciscan friar Cosme Spessotto, a  Italian missionary, was killed – martyred, as  the Vatican acknowledged. He may soon be beatified, joining the ranks of Central Americans in Guatemala and El Salvador and missionaries from the US, Italy, and Spain who were martyred for their faith and their loving commitment to the poor.

Central American Franciscan martyrs, Cosme Spessotto and Blessed Tulio Marruzzo

There is hope.

As the US poet Maya Angelou, who died six years ago, wrote:

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope."

Let us be people of love, filled with hope, listening to those who are unheard – forging a new world of justice, love, peace, and solidarity.

Honduras and Martin Luther King

Monday, on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., I spent most of the morning reading, writing, checking the internet (too much), and translating an open letter of the Honduran bishops to the two candidates of late November’s election.

In the course of my reading, I came across several amazing quotations from Martin Luther King that made me realize his perennial wisdom that could help us here in Honduras. I’d like to share some quotes from Dr. King – as well as from a few others, to help us reflect on how we Christians who live here are called to live and respond.

Why the demonstrations?

      The current barrage of demonstrations throughout Honduras arose after the November 26 election, but there have been other demonstrations in the past few years, most notably the marches of los indignados, the indignant, in 2015, against corruption and impunity. The presence of the young among the demonstrators was and is notable. What is also interesting is the lack of leaders calling people to the streets, at least in the initial stages. There was a spontaneity in the

      Some people are upset with the disruption of traffic, the blocking of highways, the marches. A headline in a newspaper, supportive of the government, characterized as “chaos” the opposition’s notice that they will not recognize any public authority after the swearing in of Juan Orlando Hernández as president on January 27. I have some reservations about the way this was expressed, but I think the statement and whatever happens must be seen in context.

      The marches are not the problem. I think Martin Luther King was right when he defended the demonstrations in Birmingham:

"Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

      Is the non-recognition of public authority just lancing the boil and bringing it to light so that some healing might happen? I don’t know. But I do feel as if Honduras is already in a situation of chaos and tension – much of it under the surface.

 In that same letter from the Birmingham City Jail Dr. King wrote:

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist.”

      Is what is happening in Honduras the surfacing of a long-standing system of governments – under different parties – where the law is used to uphold the authority of those in power and to keep the political and social elites in control?

Why not negotiate? Why not dialogue?

      Many people are calling for dialogue. President Hernández whom the Electoral Tribunal declared the winner of the presidential elections, is among the most vocal. The Honduran Catholic Bishops have also called for a dialogue which is ““sincere, effective, creative, without conditions, and involve all sectors of society.” Salvador Nasralla, whose supporters consider him the “president elect,” has agreed with some conditions. The opposition Alianza has called for talks with a mediator before January 27, when Hernández is scheduled to be sworn in as president.

      But there is a problem. Dialogue is good, important, and necessary. But when the dialogue is called by one who monopolizes power, when the power relations are significantly unbalanced, it is difficult to have real dialogue.

      I think this is why the opposition is calling for demonstrations. Again. Ponder the words of Martin Luther King, writing to his critics:

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

      This helps me think about the dilemma of calls for dialogue, without considering the real situation of the country.

What about the violence?

      There have been cases of violence by the demonstrators, mostly throwing stones. Some have blamed cases of violence on infiltrators, which is very possible. But it is also possible that many who demonstrate come with deep wounds from the structural violence they experience (the hunger, the corruption, the fraud, the impunity, and more) and are reacting with violence because of these wounds. Also, the violence of some demonstrators may arise from the massive show of military force by government police and military as well as the use of tear gas.

      I am not trying to justify violence but we have to consider violence in context.

      The late Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Recife, Brazil, and nonviolent leader, wrote about the spiral of violence. First there is the structural violence, the violence of poverty and injustice; second, there may be the violence of those who revolt; third, there is the violence of repression of those who seek to maintain the structural injustice. To only castigate the violence of those who revolt is to miss the whole picture and excuses the structural violence that provokes the violence of those who revolt.

      Martin Luther King, Jr., saw this clearly and spoke often and pointedly for nonviolent action and against violence.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. (Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community)

      But in his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered exactly a year before his martyrdom, he put the calls to violence of some blacks in context:

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

      King realized that he had to speak against the violence of a system that purveys violence world-wide.

The challenge

      Martin Luther King Jr. offers us in Honduras a challenging way to try to see and understand what is happening.

      Honduras is not the US in the 1950s and 1960s. But his words have helped me begin to understand more deeply what is happening here.

      But I still wonder if something more is needed.

      Jesus said that there are some demons which are only cast out by prayer and fasting. Fanny Lou Hammer said, “You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.”

On the wrong side again?

I ran across an article on a US military related website which has irritated me. This blog entry is my unreasonable response.

The article begins with this paragraph:

During a Honduran and American Anti-terrorism/Force protection exercise, here, Joint Task Force-Bravo simulated a two-fold scenario simultaneously, one a nonviolent demonstration and the other being an attack from a terrorist organization July 17.

Are there terrorist organizations in Honduras? Not that I know – unless you want to consider the drug-lords or some groups that seem to be connected to the Honduran police that have killed civilians.

But the scenario starts with a nonviolent demonstration which is interrupted by a terrorist bombing:

 

"During the nonviolent protest there was an explosion at the front gate, which was mastermind by a local terrorist organization," said U.S. Army Lt. Chad Wallway, Joint Security Force deputy commander. "

First of all, as a pacifist, I am somewhat dismayed by the connection made between two different groups. My concern is that this type of exercise might lead the Honduran military to see every nonviolent demonstration as terrorist. It’s not beyond the mentality of some Latin American military who still live in the 1970s and 1980s where anyone calling for justice was considered a Communist subversive; as a result thousands of people, many people of faith, were tortures, killed, or disappeared by Latin American death squads and military.

Why does a US-sponsored training seem to make this connection? Does the US consider any groups that want social change to be terrorists? (I remember a few months ago that a US military trainer listed Catholics in his power-point presentation as “Religious Extremism” together with Al-Queda, the Mormons, and Evangelical Christians.)

Honduras is a country where there is need for major social change. If the US government is using this type of training for the Honduran military or police, will it lead then to take a jaundiced view of protestors and lead to massive use of violence and deaths of peaceful civilians?

It has already happened. Last week Tomás Garcia, an indigenous leader taking part in an extended protest against a dam project in the department of Santa Bárbara, was killed by the Honduran military. His son was severely wounded.  This occurred two days before the joint US-Honduran military exercise.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,” said President John F. Kennedy. 

I don’t believe in the inevitability of violence, but I do believe that more use of violence which make it much harder for real change to happen here in Honduras.

What the US Joint Task Force Bravo did in this scenario is part of the problem – seeking violent solutions to what are, at root, problems of injustice, inequality, and repression.

Is the US again putting itself on the wrong side again?

Maybe we need to listen again to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “Beyond Vietnam” sermons where he stated:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-centered" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered...

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, expect a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war....  We still have a chance today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

The black Christ

The Black Christ of Esquipulas, Guatemala

January 15 is the feast of the Black Christ of Esquipulas, Guatemala. A black image there of Christ is a site for pilgrimages from around Central America.

There are other images of the black Christ, including one in Intibucá, Honduras. In the parish of Dulce Nombre  three villages celebrate today as their feast day, the feast of Cristo Negro, the black Christ. In some other parts of Central America today is also celebrated as the Merciful Christ, Cristo de las misericordias. 

Thr Black Christ of Intibucá,

I don’t know why, but it never occurred to me how fitting this is since January 15 is also the date of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth.  This black preacher who taught us the dignity of all persons, who helped the blacks of the US liberate themselves from segregation and marginalization, was born on the feast of Cristo Negro.

Of course, the plight of blacks in the US as well as the campesinos in Guatemala and Honduras still is a form of crucifixion, an undeserved suffering, brought on by structures of marginalization and wealth.

But the image of Cristo Negro and the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., can move us to be in solidarity with them and reject all vestiges of racism and marginalization in our lives and in our nations.

May Christ continue to inspire us with the example of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was killed, he delivered a strong message against the Viet Nam War, which still has relevance for the US today. In that speech he spoke these prophetic words:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.  We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.