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27 September 2001
Dear Friends,
The tragic events in the United States on September 11 hit Peru
like a painful case of "déjà vu." More
than a dozen Peruvian friends called our family the day of the
attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to express
their concern for our extended family members back in the States.
"Was anyone in your family hurt?" they asked.
Most folks here in Peru know what they’re talking about
when it comes to terrorism. During the years of civil war between
the Shining Path Liberation Army and the Peruvian Armed Forces
(1980-92), acts of terrorism became a daily occurrence in most
parts of the country: car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations,
bomb scares, and the gnawing fear that it could happen today to
someone you love.
Because of this experience, many Peruvians have learned to look
behind the symptoms for the deeper causes of violence. Hardly
anyone here condones the extreme, sadistic methods of the Shining
Path Army—the beheadings, the disembowelments, the use of
innocent children with backpacks as walking bombs. Yet most of
the Peruvians we know understand why the violence began. "Abject
poverty breeds anger, and anger breeds desperate measures,"
says Nelson Figueroa, a Catholic radio journalist and member of
the Presbyterian Hunger Program-sponsored "Joining Hands
Against Hunger" program. Sure enough, it was precisely in
the poorest area of the country where Shining Path terrorism bred
and grew to infect most of the country. Twenty-six thousand people
lost their lives, most of them innocent civilians.
What happened at the World Trade Center was red-hot, senseless
violence. Inexcusable. But many experts believe that what is happening
in many of Peru’s rural areas and urban shanty towns is also
a form of violence. The former president of the International
Monetary Fund, Michel Camdessus, agreed recently when he said,
"The most profound form of violence is poverty."
Just days after September 11, I (Hunter) lost a friend to this
more subtle form of violence. Juan Carlos Salas had been my "uncle"
when I was a college student at the Catholic University here in
Lima in the late 1970s. He was a kind man with a ready smile and
an abiding interest in the gospel. And he died a preventable death—for
two reasons: he didn’t have much money, and the Peruvian
Government must pay more than $3 billion in interest each year
on its debt, and thus cannot staff and supply the public hospitals
that are the Peruvian poor’s only recourse. To see someone
you care for struggling against death without the aid of basic
medical supplies is enough to tear your heart out—or make
you very, very angry.
The disturbing symptoms of this subtle and profound form of violence
are all around us:
- Ads appear daily in the Lima newspapers’ classified sections
with the desperate offer: "Kidney for sale. Call for inquiries."
(How hungry would my family have to get before I would consider
selling my own kidney?, I ask myself).
- Levels of domestic violence, alcoholism, and child abandonment
in Peru are all at a 20-year high (as long as national statistics
have been recorded). The number one reason given for child abandonment:
the mothers simply did not have enough money to feed their child.
(How angry would I be at the system that forced me to give up
my child?)
- "Violence begets violence": the Shining Path Army
is once again recruiting young people in Peru’s poorer
regions to fight back against the violence of hunger. (I recall
Nelson’s words, "Abject poverty breeds anger, and
anger breeds desperate measures". What would my desperate
measures, motivated by my love for my family, look like I wonder?)
How are Peruvians working against the violence of hunger? Often
with creativity and chutzpah! Members of the "Joining Hands
Against Hunger" network in Peru are working against hunger’s
symptoms, and also its causes:
- Under the Fujimori government’s neo-liberal economic
policies, the environment was sacrificed to lure large mining
interests into the country. The Land and Sea Institute is helping
fishermen who have lost their jobs because of the toxic run-off
from gold and silver mines and pressing the government to enforce
existing environmental legislation.
- The "Peace and Hope" association, a small group
of Christian lawyers and therapists working with the victims
of Peru’s years of terrorism, was instrumental recently
in winning governmental approval for the establishment of the
National Truth and Justice Commission, which will investigate
the many atrocities which have gone unrecognized and protected
with impunity.
The Joining Hands Network has teamed up with Giddings-Lovejoy
Presbytery (St. Louis, Missouri) to break hunger’s power
in their communities so that the cycle of violence does not begin
again. Perhaps you would commit to supporting this Network in
prayer (we can e-mail you a profile of each of the 15 institutions
in the Joining Hands network so that you can pray more specifically
for their work) and financially. Perhaps in the future you would
be willing to raise your voice to help end hunger in Peru through
advocacy with the U.S. government and international institutions
such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Thanks for caring!
Hunter & Ruth & Ndaya & Billy & Andrew
The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 262
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