January 1998-99 efforts
in the U.S., Mexico and Honduras

Strategic Pastoral Action's
Annual Report: 1998-1999

• Working for human rights
  
• and justice with dignity

In the midst of lethal human rights struggles and deadly storm damage, Strategic Pastoral Action completed its eighth year of human rights and social justice work with a strong presence of support and solidarity in regions of conflict in Mexico, Honduras and the United States.

Representatives from Strategic Pastoral Action and its companion affiliate, Shoestrings & Grace, led delegations to the war zones of Mexico, to the flooded and oppressed zones of Honduras, and to the zones of struggle against U.S. economic and military policy that provide armaments, equipment and training used to suppress popular causes for equal justice with dignity.

Strategic Pastoral Action (SPAN), from its local base in upstate New York, carried through the following projects among its efforts in the past year to share in local, national and international causes for peace with justice:

• Led a delegation to the Dec. 22, 1998 commemoration of the massacre in Mexico of 45 Tzotzil Indians while they were at worship in Acteal, in the state of Chiapas, exactly one year earlier. This delegation accompanied refugee community members to the commemoration and also traveled to other zones of conflict in Chiapas. Two SPAN board members were cited by Mexican immigration authorities during the 1998-99 Christmas holiday season for presumed foreign interference in Mexican politics, and one was barred by Mexico from re-entering the country for two years.
• Coordinated the 86-member Mexico Solidarity Network delegation in Chiapas in July 1998, which sent 10 teams into 30 communities struggling in the face of paramilitary and government attacks and a Mexican militarization effort that has placed 70,000 soldiers in Chiapas, equipped with U.S. supplied tanks, vehicles, equipment and armaments.
• Sent three delegations to Honduras, two last January and one this January to visit with human rights workers living under death threat, to help build the second women's shelter in the country, and to help in the construction of two health clinics as well as in Hurricane Mitch storm relief.
• Sent two truckloads of clothing and other goods, and raised funds for relief efforts in Honduras after the Hurricane Mitch debacle that killed thousands of mostly poor Hondurans and devastated homes, roads and croplands; the ecumenical project also supported relief for communities suffering storm damage in the Pacific coastlands of Chiapas..
• Shared in local and national efforts to close the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, including participation and the risk of arrest at the School of the Americas Watch vigil at Fort Benning in November as its representative joined the 2,319 activists who "crossed the line" to enter the fort in protest against the school's training of Latin American dictators, torturers and death squad leaders.
• Raised funds and continued efforts to work with Christian base community coordinators and human rights workers in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, where eight base communities continue their struggle against malnutrition, illiteracy, storm damage and crop losses, and the outflow of migrant workers to U.S. west coast agricultural lands
• Led or shared in dozens of upstate New York workshops, meetings, vigils and demonstrations that centered on international and national human rights and social justice issues as part of its effort to remain a local grassroots ecumenical organization committed to developing links and bridges with other local efforts in the world and in the region.
• Continued its effort to help share funds with other struggling human rights projects and to help strengthen alliances and communication between local, national and international human rights and social and economic justice efforts, including responding to numerous calls for faxes, letters and efforts to lobby legislative and government officials.
• Launched a project to help support work with street children in Honduras and Mexico, focusing on the more than 2,000 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and the more than 70 who live in the Mexican municipality of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas.
• Continued and expanded its work with the Radical Philosophy Association's Latin American Solidarity Group project to build a health clinic in Chiapas, fund an organizer in a progressive Mexican union, support international academic freedom and increase awareness of the United States government's oppressive role in the hemisphere, especially in Cuba and Mexico.
• Expanded its advisory board beyond the four initial coordinators to include persons with experience in various national and international organizational efforts.
• Helped in the organization of the Mexican Solidarity Network following a weekend meeting in Washington, D.C., attended by more than 200 representatives of dozens of organizations, with continued support for this network as well as for the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico and those seeking to develop a tribunal on genocide in Chiapas.