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December 20, 2001
Dear Family, Friends, and Churches,
Thank you to many who have written notes of concern and support
in the last hours. Argentina certainly does need caring and informed
prayer support in these difficult moments. Please be assured,
at least, that my family here and I are well, and as long as we
keep our noses out of the hot spots, we will be safe.
Yesterday and today are tense days. The executive branch of the
government has shown the Argentine people a brilliant show of
absence. The legislative branch has kept in constant communication
with the news media, and both houses of congress are working overtime,
yet decisions are hard to come by. The major opposing political
party, the Partido Justicialista, and the masses that are gathered
at the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (the Pink House,
which is the home of the executive branch) are clamoring for the
resignation of President De la Rua.
In some zones, supermarkets and other businesses continue to
be ransacked, but there is less news of sacking today than there
was yesterday.
Some legislators are pushing for measures which will ensure free
food delivery in the poorest zones of the country for Christmas,
but from what the news said yesterday, the poorest people were
not asking for food handouts, they were asking for jobs.
One political scientist compared these days in Argentina with
the days of the French Revolution in 1789; I agree that there
are points of comparison, but things are not exactly the same.
So far, thank God, there has been extremely little blood shed
here. The Argentine people in the thousands, and perhaps in the
millions, have taken to the streets banging on pots and pans,
but not wielding weapons. In the French Revolution, Robespierre
put the guillotine into practice in order to control the ruffians
who were rebelling against the established order of the French
monarchy, but in the end, the massive uprising of the people was
stronger than Robespierre and the guillotine. Masses of people
stormed the Bastille prison on the 14th of July, released the
political prisoners, and in the end, Robespierre was a victim
of his own guillotine.
The comparison with Argentina causes us to understand a symbolic
guillotine, which the people understand as Argentina’s international
debt, and the politics of seeking to please the demands of the
international lending agencies, irrespective of the needs of the
Argentine people. De la Rua and the minister of the economy, Cavallo
(who has resigned and whose resignation was accepted by the President
this morning), seem to have ears and eyes only for the International
Monetary Fund. In their efforts to stabilize the Argentine economy,
they have stopped paying or drastically reduced the salaries of
public employees, including school teachers, police officers,
garbage collectors, and many others. They have also reduced or
stopped paying the pension checks and health care services of
those retired people who participate in the State retirement plan.
In protest, masses and masses of people of all ages and social
classes have taken to the streets, defying the state of emergency,
in peaceful but vocal protest. Now, the police in the Plaza de
Mayo are beginning to repress the protests with tear gas, rubber
bullets, and with the very horses upon which they are mounted.
A social scientist was telling the news media yesterday that
the number of indigent people (that is, those who are poorer than
poor) has doubled in the last two years under the presidency of
Fernando de la Rua, whereas in the 10 years that Carlos Menem
was president (December 1989 to December 1999), the indigency
statistics had remained more or less constant. Furthermore, a
vast part of the middle class has become poor in these last two
years. Government statistics, which are always conservative, put
the unemployment rate at about 20%, but the reality, including
the underemployed, must be between 25% and 30%.
I have no idea what Argentina will look like when we wake up
Christmas morning, or even when we go to bed tonight. As each
hour passes, the news changes. Will the President resign? If so,
who will assume office? Will the peaceful protests turn violent?
Will the police attack the peaceful protestors? Will there be
more ransacking of businesses? I imagine that CNN on cable TV
and on the Internet will keep you all informed of what is going
on.
Last Sunday, at one of the churches where my husband is pastoring,
in an extremely poor neighborhood in the western zone of Greater
Buenos Aires, I gave a devotional on Genesis 18, when God promises
to Abraham that within a year’s time, Sara would give birth
to a son. Sara, eavesdropping from inside the tent, laughs at
the impossibility of such a proposal as she is quite old and well
past menopause. The angels of God ask why she is laughing, since
for God nothing is difficult (according to the Spanish, Reina-Valera
translation of Gen 18:14). Can there be hope when all signs of
hope have passed? I wonder if the wildness and chaos of some of
yesterday’s ransacking of businesses comes because too many
Argentines have no hope and therefore do not care. Argentine is
passing through an extremely difficult, and some would say hopeless,
moment. Perhaps this situation in Argentina is not too difficult
for God to manage. Perhaps there is yet hope for the Argentine
people and nation in the face of seeming hopelessness.
As Christians, do we have the strength and conviction to proclaim
God’s message of hope for peace on earth and good will to
all people, and thus, perhaps God’s Spirit, working through
the lived and spoken proclamation of God’s people, can convert
the tremendous amount of destructive and selfish energy into constructive
and selfless energy.
As you sing your favorite Christmas carols of peace on earth
and good will to all, please thank God profoundly for all that
you have, and think of the people of Afghanistan, the Middle East,
and do not forget Argentina.
On a personal note, this has been a busy year for Daniel and
me. I have been writing, travelling, teaching, preaching. Daniel
has been studying, preaching, organizing, building. I have been
incorporated on a part-time basis at the Instituto Superior Evangélico
de Estudios Teológicos - Instituto Universitario (ISEDET
- IU), and have reduced my participation at the Seminario Emanuel
(of the Asociación la Iglesia de Dios) to part-time. I
continue to accompany Daniel in his pastoral activities, when
I can, but that has been harder for me this year as I have adjusted
to the academic rhythm of ISEDET - IU. ISEDET’s status as
a recognized university is new, as of October of this year, and
is a tremendous and unique accomplishment for a Protestant theological
institution in a Roman Catholic country such as Argentina. Needless
to say, the rhythm at ISEDET is entirely different from the rhythm
at the Pentecostal seminary (Emanuel) where I have been teaching
for four years now. The adjustment has been very challenging for
me, and I would not have done even moderately well without the
constant prayers of the women’s group at the two churches
my husband is pastoring.
Daniel’s activities became pleasantly more complicated in
July, when he was asked to assume the pastoral care of a second
church. The church in Padua, where he has been pastoring since
1996, is in a lower middle-class neighborhood, and has had an
active outreach program to children that we bus to church from
some of the near by "villas," which are the poorest
neighborhoods in the area. This outreach program includes Sunday
school and a Sunday soup kitchen. The new church, in Libertad,
is about 30 blocks from the church in Padua, and is in a definitely
poor neighborhood, and the people speak of "living across
the street" from the villa, but not in the villa. The exciting
news is that one of the youth in Padua took up the task of organizing
a new Sunday school program in Libertad, and has been transformed
into the director of a flourishing Sunday school with two other
teachers and between 30 and 35 children from the neighborhood.
We also moved the meetings of the women’s group from Padua
to Libertad, and the women have been inviting other women from
the neighborhood to our Bible Study meetings.
So, there is good news in the midst of the apparent chaos, there
is a light shining in the darkness. Again, I urge you to pray
for Argentina, and for the churches here— that we may be
beacons of hope and of reconciliation as the country rebuilds
itself.
May the birth of Christ bring you surprising gifts of great joy,
and may your holiday season be one of peace and blessedness.
Love,
Katie Griffin
The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 257
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