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04420
September 23, 2004
As Colombia’s violence worsens, church leaders develop strategies for accompaniment
Ufford-Chase goes to Colombia as the first accompanier
By Alexa Smith
BARRANQUILLA, Colombia – The telephone call that reported the shooting death of activist Alfredo Correa De Andreis only confirmed what Rick Ufford-Chase already knew: The worst fears of the Colombian church are being realized.
Now, there is one more dead man. One more dead man on a long list of dead men and women.
In the past three months in this sprawling Carribbean city, at least three human rights activists with ties to the church have gone into hiding. A Presbyterian minister whose name turned up on a hit list has temporarily left the country. A 24-year-old law student, Mauricio Avilez Alvarez -- who helped refugees in Colombia apply for government aid and document the human rights abuses that pushed them off their land -- has been jailed for the last three months, accused of heinous crimes that those who know him deny, including guerrilla activity. Avilez staffed a Presbyterian Church of Colombia ministry.
Correa shared a cramped jail cell with Avilez before Correa was released from prison. A university professor, Correa, too, was accused of guerrilla activity in a justice system that requires proof of innocence rather than guilt. While jailed, authorities investigate if accusations made against the accused are substantive enough to be filed as formal charges.
Correa’s case, however, ended Friday as he walked off of the campus of Simon Bolivar University. He died like many in Colombia nowadays, with a bodyguard at his side. Both bodies were riddled with bullets fired by a passenger on a motorcycle that pulled close and then sped away.
Ufford-Chase – who is the moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) – got the news while he was sitting in a government prosecutor’s office. His companion, the Rev. Milton Mejia, the executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, answered his cell phone and began sobbing. Both men were on an official visit, checking on the status of the Avilez case.
But Ufford-Chase was doing something else, too
He is, informally, the PC(USA)’s first accompanier in Colombia. He was sticking by Mejia’s side in hopes that his presence might deter violence against Mejia and other church leaders whose lives have been threatened by Colombia’s clandestine killers. And he was visiting one government official after another, making it clear that the international church is paying careful attention to the troubles of its sister-church here.
In Barranquilla, those who kill are often members of paramilitaries who are waging a vicious war against real and suspected sympathizers with the country’s peasant-led Marxist insurgency, the FARC (Fuerza Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia). The paramilitaries have close ties to factions within Colombia’s military and are so deeply embedded in the country’s infra-structure that they allegedly control nearly one-third of the seats in its Congress.
"The church here is being church," said Ufford-Chase in an interview in Mejia’s office. Mejia sat in a nearby chair, with Alice Winters, the PC(USA)’s longtime missionary there, at his side, translating. "So there is need for accompaniment. When a church acts like a church, it is an apolitical act. But when a church acts like a church here, there are huge political repercussions.
"In this case, those repercussions include a growing level of intimidation because of a very real threat. And the more it grows, the more likely people will be afraid to be church. Our role is to provide whatever confidence we can so that people can be church."
Forty Protestant pastors were murdered last year by armed factions. That figure doesn’t include kidnappings, arrests, detentions or the names of those who have fled the country to protect their lives. Fifty-seven Roman Catholic leaders have been killed in the last decade, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The major international aid organizations call Colombia the worst humanitarian crisis in the hemisphere, undeniably. While the U.S. government has spent $3 billion in Colombia since 2000, more than 75 percent of it is military aid, not developmental assistance.
In Barranquilla – which is under paramilitary control – the threats appear to surround the Presbyterian Church’s work with Colombia’s displaced, the more than three million refugees who’ve fled violence in the countryside only to find themselves without work, shelter or food in shantytowns on the edges of this sweltering tropical city. With little hope for jobs, these slums are ripe grounds for recruiting left-wing guerrillas and rightist paramilitaries.
But most people are just trying to survive.
Church leaders – like Mejia – understand helping the poor to be a biblical mandate, not a crime. "If you say that the work of the church in helping the poor gets you identified as part of an illegal group, well, that’s a scandal that stretches logic," Mejia said. "Human rights work is the legal way to defend the poor.
"If you don’t do it that way, how do you do it?"
But right-wing hardliners say that charity to the poor is sympathizing with, or, abetting, the enemy.
It does appear that the Presbyterian Church of Colombia is getting inordinate attention from government agencies, including the military. It is reportedly under video surveillance. Government agents took the identification numbers of its office staff. Individuals who are arrested are repeatedly questioned about church leaders and church ministries.
This week, the General Assembly Council is weighing whether to begin sending U.S. accompaniers to the Presbyterian Church there, as part of a joint program operated by the Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. The Presbyterian Church of Colombia has been clamoring for a full-time accompanier for months now.
Ufford-Chase is the first flesh-and-blood Presbyterian to arrive and to visit government and military leaders.
As it is being conceived, the program would send two-to-three-person delegations to Colombia to live within the church and to visit government officials and church programs. A job description is now being drafted by WMD to hire a full-time accompanier who would double as a delegation leader, beginning in January.
Mejia admits that drafting the job description has been the hardest part of the task. "I"ve been talking with Rick about this," he said, still pondering what skills are essential for an international entering this tortured reality. "An accompanier would be a presence that would guarantee we’re not alone here. And they would help us in a given moment.
"Help us reflect on what’s happening. Evaluate what’s happening. And, our pastors sometimes need someone to give us pastoral care, someone to give us advice."
His wish list seeks a politically savvy candidate who is capable of understanding, documenting and interpreting Colombia’s realities for the international community. He’d like a hands-on human rights worker, someone who not only observes, but participates in the work. Organizational qualities are a must, he said, since part of the job will be leading U.S. delegations. But pastoral skills are absolutely essential, too.
As Mejia talks, a wall full of crosses is visible over his right shoulder. Tacked against a richly colored indigenous fabric, there is the stark PCUSA symbol, the cross of the Latin American Council of Churches and an enameled Salvadoran one, filled with springtime colors of green, pink and white.
It was in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, that U.S. churches successfully used accompaniment politically and theologically. U.S. Christians traveled to Central America in the 1980s to get a first-hand look at the U.S. role in the region, which was essentially bankrolling many of the wars waged by repressive regimes against peasant-led insurgencies.
But the PC(USA) has demonstrated ambivalence about putting U.S. accompaniers on the ground in Colombia because of the escalating terror. The International Peace Brigade, a London-based group, and the Christian Peacemaking Teams, headquartered in Chicago, are both working in Colombian communities now.
The ties forged with Latin American Christians were galvanized into a movement opposing U.S. involvement in Central America in the 1980s.
It was during the 1980s in El Salvador that Ufford-Chase had his first taste of Latin American theology and politics. He has been hooked ever since.
"What’s similar here is the growing level of fear in Colombia. I’ve had numerous people talk about how afraid they are. It’s the same kind of palpable fear that was evident among church-people in the 1980s in Central America," he said.
What is different in Colombia is the vitality that life still holds, said Ufford-Chase. The streets are full of people after dark. The music is loud. The dancing is sultry. "That wasn’t the case in El Salvador. No one went out after dark. They were too afraid. There was so much violence that you couldn’t tell the difference between who was targeted and who died in generalized violence."
"That’s true here, too," said Winters, speaking up for the first time.
But it is often painfully clear who is targeted here.
Mejia said that an insidious fear is creeping into church and human rights circles, wrecking work that it has taken years to build. He thinks that may be the goal – to just scare church workers, union leaders, journalists and other activists into silence.
While Mejia was in the U.S. this summer learning English, warrants were issued to arrest several human rights workers. Intimidated by the crackdown, the city’s human rights coordinating council – which includes the church – stopped meeting out of fear. With Avilez in jail, several pastors began questioning whether the church ought to drop its human rights advocacy and avoid trouble.
"There is risk and the risk is great," said Mejia, who’d just returned from the jail where he and Ufford-Chase visited Avilez. "What’s happening to Mauricio in the jail is significant. But of all (damage) this isn’t visible. (Fear and intimidation) breaks up processes that it took many years to put into place. And this is as serious as arresting someone and keeping them in jail.
"It is an attack on the cohesiveness of the social fabric. The damage is immense," he said, adding that starting over will take time.
Ufford-Chase concurred. It is hard, he said, for people to understand that arrest itself may be a tactic used to wreck coalitions by implying guilt, creating suspicion and escalating fear. The accused individual, he said, doesn’t have to be guilty of anything – because that isn’t the point. But that is a hard message for people to understand. "People can’t understand that somebody could not be guilty when you’re accused of something like terrorism or guerrilla activity," he said.
Mejia said a full-time accompanier in Colombia has to offer both political and pastoral skills because the church reflects some of the same wounds as the society. "It has to be holistic," he said.
As Mejia left the room to meet other reporters, Ufford-Chase sat quietly with Winters. He paused, "This is a gift from God … to do exactly what Jesus’ words to us say, ‘Take up your cross,’" he said, speaking of accompaniment of the Colombian church. "It is an opportunity to be with people and to be a witness to who Christ is …
"It is life-affirming."
Winters nodded. "And when we do, we find joy," she said. "Where death abounds, life is abundant."
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