BETHESDA, MD — The pastor’s voice was quiet and somber as he spoke. For two years he couldn’t speak at all because of what happened one July afternoon in 1997.
The sun-soaked laborers had returned from the fields and families were preparing for supper. With no warning, 350 para-military soldiers swarmed into town and ordered all the men, women, and children at gunpoint to gather in the town square.
No reason. No exception.
Two years earlier, an elder in the pastor’s Presbyterian congregation had been shot by the para-military because he sold medicine from his drug store to a guerrilla who had wandered into town. In Colombia, any suspected sympathy with the guerrillas is an invitation to death, so the town had become very careful. But on that July afternoon they had begun to relax, which made the massacre all that much worse.
As the men cowered in the courtyard awaiting the worst, the children were quickly corralled by the women and taken to the safety of the Catholic church — the only building with secure walls in the village. The pastor, along with all of the men, was lying, face down, frozen in the plaza.
That is, until one of the soldiers — one with a heart — whispered into the pastor’s ear, “Run, man, run!” The pastor ran, followed by others. In the end, the number murdered was only twelve instead of the sixty it could have been.
Hidden in the woods, the men watched as their village and church were burned to the ground. They hid for three days, not knowing if their families were dead or alive. Soon thereafter, the 3000 people who survived buried their dead. And then they left the mountain village, taking with them only what they could carry.
They wandered toward the big cities that were already overflowing with four million refugees, displaced by the futile violence that is destroying Colombia — a violence that has been made worse by the billions of U.S. dollars given to Colombia in military aid.
Our money is supposed to help fight drugs and terrorism; but there is more coca being grown in Colombia and more cocaine being snuffed on our American streets than when the “war on drugs” began. The only terrorism visible in Colombia is the desperation of four million people who have only fear to fill their stomachs.
Yes, the pastor is speaking in quiet and somber tones. For two years he couldn’t speak at all. Today, in the wilderness of Colombia, he is quietly pastoring the refugees, refusing to give in to the temptation of despair. And in the shadow of all the crosses of death, he lives in the hope and the promise of Resurrection. |
