Witnessing as a sacred trust and vocation |
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Update from Strategic Pastoral Action
May 21, 2003
Compiled by Wes Rehberg Friends – The journey to Mexico to take part in the 25th anniversary celebration of Derhgo – a human rights and Christian base community organization we’ve worked with since 1994 – has been completed, with our alliance reinvigorated by the 12 days there. A report is below. Strategic Pastoral Action is also sending two representatives to the United for Peace and Justice national conference in Chicago the first weekend in June, and from a meeting of members of the Western Michigan team yesterday, is researching grants and continuing its initiatives in the following areas: * counseling and conflict resolution (Jana Messing) * single parent housing and displacement (Eileen Robertson-Rehberg) * immigrant rights and justice (Valentin Beltran) * human rights delegations and nonviolence training (Wes Rehberg) * fair trade, adding amaranth products from Mexican partners (Robin Tinholt) * grant applications (the whole team) Valentin and Jana are registered to attend the Chicago conference. We’ve also applied for a grant from the A.J. Muste Foundation for the purpose of developing trifolds to communicate the themes of our project, for a copy machine, and to publish our own manual for nonviolence training. In the area of nonviolence, Jana and Wes will be attending a weekend facilitator’s training workshop in mid-June in Oakland, CA, for the Pace e Bene From Violence to Wholeness program, a 10-part holistic nonviolent lifestyle training project. And a news note, Wes, a retired United Methodist pastor, has also been asked to serve two Native American churches in Western Michigan on a part-time basis, and has accepted. Regarding the Mexico trip, below are two earlier notes sent by Wes from Mexico. Analiese Richard, a core team advisor, has been with Derhgo in Tulancingo since last August and will return to UC California at Berkeley in July. She and Wes are working out the possibility of people participating in internships with Derhgo in addition to what is covered above and in the following two notes: Below are the two earlier notes on the trip to Derhgo’s celebration: * * * 7 May 2003 Friends -- This is an extended note -- days have been very busy with the celebration of Derhgo's 25th anniversary among the Christian base communities here, people working very hard to make the celebration a success. Which it has been so far -- the trip has been very emotional, considering that we from Strategic Pastoral Action have brought delegations here since Easter of 1994. The trip began actually on Friday when Analiese Richard and I visited with a Mexico Solidarity Network delegation. Annie has been an integral part of our project, traveling with us three times to Chiapas, once to accompany survivors of the massacre of 45 persons at Acteal to a commemoration of the massacre a year later, on Dec. 22, 1998, and three times to Derhgo as well. She's been here for several months doing field work and organizing for her Ph.D work at UC Berkeley. With the MSN labor delegation -- shop stewards and central labor council leaders, mostly from California -- we met with folks at the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center in Mexico City, and later with a deputy Secretary of Labor and Welfare. We got intriguing insight, both from the labor delegation and from those in Mexico whom we met. After this we took a bus to Tulancingo, about 2 hours, and I had an emotional reunion with the core group of Derhgo. We've decided to earmark the donations received especially for five members of this group, each who make $30 a week, and who are the heart and soul of the hard work Derhgo does to help alleviate the poverty suffered yet in the communities. This season has been terribly dry, and the communities can grow very little, which is devastating. Some have built greenhouses to grow tomatoes and peppers, and this latest development has eased some of the difficulties. Still, despite this, a celebration on Sunday that kicked the eight-days off drew 1,000 people to one of the communities, accessible by difficult travel over rutted dirt roads. It was unbelievable -- dancers, lots of things for kids, plenty of food from slaughtered stock -- Derhgo had a soft drink and beer concession, which surely wasn't going to make up for the cost and the tremendous labor that went into the grand opening. Monday was the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, and after morning dances in Tulancingo´s plaza and park, plus obligatory speeches from local officials, the scene cleared, and Derhgo´s moment began at the plaza with the arrival of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, now retired, but a longtime advocate for human rights and social justice in Chiapas. He had conducted the commemoration of the victims of Acteal, mentioned above. Again local officials flocked to have their photos taken with Don Samuel, and after his address in the plaza, there was a reception in the central cathedral, again with food and conversation. We also later had an opportunity to share time with Don Samuel that evening at a priest friend´'s house where he was staying. I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of Jesuits who are working in a human rights way with the indigenous in the states of Veracruz and Puebla, and in the Huasteca region of Hidalgo, where there has also been massacres by paramilitary groups -- none of this ever gets into U.S. newspapers. The indigenous are mostly Nahual and Otomi, and not many speak Spanish, so the two priests have had to learn two very distinct tongues to work for human rights in these communities. Yesterday, Tuesday, was the celebration of a mass, a mixture of formality and informality, and I was invited to sit alongside Don Samuel, with my stole made by Chiapaneca lay nuns, from whom I bought it in the besieged community of Chilon in 1998. This was the significance -- a United Methodist pastor shared the celebration of the eucharist with a Catholic bishop and three priests -- which in some quarters would certainly be heretical, but not in the liberation theology circles we've been working in both at Derhgo and in Chiapas. This morning was a breakfast with Don Samuel at the home of the key organizer of Derhgo, the one began the whole thing, Jose Fosado -- an aggressive organizer who left the priesthood because he wasn't permitted to work with the poor in the area he found himself in in Mexico City more than three decades ago. So he started organizing Derhgo. OK -- enough for now. Please forward this, and thanks for bearing with this. I may write an update later, we'll see. Always in peace, with justice, Wes Rehberg *** May 9, 2003 Friends -- In a few days, the trip to Tulancingo, in the state of Hidalgo, will be over. Many things have been encountered, and we were able to designate the donations for the purpose for which they were raised, in two ways -- one as a bonus through Derhgo to each of the five members of the core working team, and the second, as scholarships for their work in their areas of particular concern. One area of their particular concern is the base community of La Esperanza del Monte (Hope of the Mountain). This was one of the first two communities we met with 1994, and the one in which we celebrated Easter that year. At that time, the community was slowly replacing rough-hewn homes of branches and straw with those of cement block, at a very slow pace. There was no electricity, no local water supply, and no sanitation. Education was sought for the kids, but the teacher was often absent, not unusual in rural communities. La Esperanza is a base community of about 70 people. Water was carried by burro from a pond about a mile away. Their means of income was the sale of wool, from a small sheep herd. They were subsistence farmers. The following year we brought an electric generator, and lines were wired to 10 homes, so that during the early night hours they could have power. Radios had been run off auto batteries before this. We had also brought sewing machines for a coop they wanted to start, mostly treadle or adapted to be usable without electricity. This began an association that continues to today. And from that point, in 1995, the community accomplished the following: * It applied for and received public electrification. * It continued to replace branch and straw homes with those of cement. * It kept at trying to better the education possibilities for the children -- many of the older adults are yet illiterate, but now young adults and children are mostly literate. But ... there has been an extended drought in this region of Mexico east and north of Mexico City, and all the base communities have suffered, this one in particular -- the drought has affected food supply and the production of milk, produce and meat that gives members a tiny bit of money. For La Esperanza, they've had to stop raising sheep, they can't feed them, so the income from the sale of wool has vanished. They have to pay for electricity now, so this is a problem too. Their piped in water supply has been cut off, so they are back to drawing water from a nearly dry nearby pond. And of course, life -- which had seemed to flourishing for them -- now has run into heavy obstacles. But three members of the Derhgo core team, in consultation and consensus with community members, have come up with a couple of ideas that they hope they can put into action. By the way, this is a base community that doesn't gain extra cash from migrant workers in the U.S. as other communities have. The plan is to build greenhouses -- (two other communities have started to do this, basically from money gained from migrant work in the U.S. -- growing tomatoes or peppers for market.) One small greenhouse would be used to grow bean sprouts, which would be produced in a small space, and would be used for feed so they could resume wool production. Bean sprouts go a long way for feeding sheep, team members said. The other would be to grow amaranto (amaranth), which is a product more nutritious in its leaf than spinach, and in its grain than soy beans. Amaranth actually grows well in the semi-arid region this is, but starting them in a greenhouse would give the community the advantage of getting amaranth to the market ahead of other growers. [Later addition]: They also seek to bring in a teacher so that education can be more than sporadic for community children, and as well, to have a deep well dug for the community water supply. We've been drinking amaranth milkshakes from time to time here, and, from a fair trade perspective, they are very marketable, really tasty. Derhgo's Cafe Quali -- part of a Mexican fair-trade network -- sells the powder for the milkshakes in vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Amaranth itself is an ancient Aztec product that was suppressed violently by Christian missionaries because it was regarded as sacred by Aztecs and Toltecas and seen in conflict with the Eucharist -- the early missionaries weren't about to allow two sacred breads -- bread can be made from Amaranth flour. During the opening ceremonial meal of the celebration of Derhgo's 25th anniversary I was invited to eat at La Esperanza's table, and did. This is a special privilege, but also an expression of hope that a relationship between Strategic Pastoral Action and this community will continue. So ... a report. In peace, Wes Rehberg ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Strategic Pastoral Action PO Box 3272, Holland MI 49422 USA http://www.nonviolentways.org -------------------------------------- Nonviolent Ways Project http://www.nonviolentways.org/ -------------------------------------- |