Call me the Grinch, but I give up the “mas” bit

Yes, for good, and it´s official: I retain Christ, and give up the mas part of the whole affair. No more Christmas and all it has come to represent, except for what I can consider as fundamental and valuable. Let me explain myself.


In the very short time I´ve been on this world (well, you know, in historical terms, less than 50 years is just a blip), there´s been a huge change in my immediate environment regarding the celebration of the so called Christmas. I must admit that carols and Santa, and gifts and all that stuff was already there when I realised something was going on, but the whole atmosphere was one of just being together and joyously celebrate the Saviour´s birth (regardless of everyone´s attitude towards the same Saviour the rest of the year, of course).


But things have changed a lot and fast; I still remember how I stood, paralysed with unbelief one morning in Moyobamba, maybe in 91 or 92 seeing a big billboard announcing a “Christmas party” organised with a band called “Los Cuervos” (The Crows), a bunch of local guys (not even kids), who represented the very worst of the town at that time, as their parties were well known by the presence of drugs, debauchery, violence, and its members for a libertine lifestyle. What did they have to do with Christmas? ... nothing to do with Christ, but all to do with all the rest, the mas (which incidentally means "more" in Spanish). I think that in a way I knew that day that Christmas had died in my heart... it would never be the same.


Now of course that´s not an isolated phenomenon; in “my days” Easter was a time of silence, only deep and solemn music in the radio, no cartoons on TV, and although my folks never forbade us to play or anything, it was required that there was some show of respect at home, allegedly for the sufferings of Christ... but we knew that the following Sunday´s expressions of joy would bring the extended family, a big lunch, and the return of a spirit of celebration all over... whereas nowadays, at least here in Colombia we can see people organising their “Easter parties” by buying booze, and drugs and deciding whether they will decide who sleeps with who or it will be just random.


Coming back to the so called Christmas, it´s not that I have always liked it. As a child I had huge expectations about my presents, of course, and I still can remember some wonderful ones I received 40 or so years ago, but i also remember that for some reason or other, sometimes the melancholy around this celebration was overwhelming, and that I never liked, but then again we met with uncles and aunties and cousins and there were fireworks and good food and the festive mood took over and covered the melancholy one... covered it but never doing away with it completely.


All that was alright though; it was manageable and even enjoyable. However, the associations I make with this season these days are almost invariably negative. It´s time again for the city to collapse because of all the public exhibits made with millions of light devices. First it was the avenue that runs along the Medellin river (possibly the most important in the city) that was closed for this purpose, and that was bad enough, but now they are putting that stuff all over the place, and every night from Dec 8 to Jan 15, there are millions of people just walking along seeing the lights, and the streets are closed and any 20 minute journey can become a 2 or 3 hours one.


Then there is all the commercial orgy, as if a demon were constantly shouting in people´s ears: buy buy buy, spend the money you have, the one you don´t have, the money you could hopefully one day have and also spend the one you know never will have, but buy and spend. And be merry... get drunk, get killed, get HIV, get arrested... but do something, the nastier the better, the more outrageous you can!.. and all that in Christ´s name?... please!!


And there are the carols... if it is bad in the English-speaking world (don´t tell me you can sing “Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches” without having to repress a wave of nausea... and don´t make me say anything about Jingle Bells, or Rudolph and his very runny nose...). And even Silent Night, with its definitely Christian message, has such a depressing melody that I wonder how can one listen to that over and over and not cut his wrists! Anyway, if it´s bad in English... you should hear the Spanish ones (Spanish in language and in origin) . Those carols, called “villancicos” (something like little tunes from the village... whatever that may mean)... dear me!! Basically, it´s a matter of saying something as meaningless as possible (and we are real masters for that, let me tell you) with a tune as annoying as you can manage, and when they go over and over on the radio, on TV, played by your neighbour very loudly, and as background noise at the supermarket, you wonder if the whole thing was not invented as a torture system...
but there are exceptions of course, and I have just found one sung by Diego Florez with the Vienna Boys Choir (see below).

And we could go on and on; there´s the fat guy laughing as an idiot all the time, the fake snow and reindeers (in a country sitting on the equator, bathed by the Caribbean, for goodness sake!!)... but there´s no need for that, we all know what it´s all about. And I finish by saying that all that present-exchange thing makes me feel terribly uncomfortable too. I don´t mind giving or receiving presents in an on itself, of course... but I fell I need to get out of all this commercial orgy I mentioned above; I need to mark a difference, I need to jump that boat; I want to establish a distance with the merry and drunk crowd that celebrates and burns money and gives less than half a penny for the alleged real reason why we celebrate.


What would I keep other than being thankful for the birth of my Lord ? (who in all probability was born in a very different date, of course). I´d keep it as an occasion for family reunions, for inviting friends over for a special meal, particularly those who could feel lonely in such a time because they are far from their loved ones or do not have many loved ones to speak of... and not much more.


As from now on I won´t say “Merry Christmas”, won´t have anything to do with hanging stuff or decorating for the occasion (well, that I haven´t in years!), and no presents please. If you want to make me a present, do it in any other moment, just give me something one day because you wanted to, because you remembered me and decided to express your appreciation of our friendship, because you got a little extra and wanted to share it with me, or because you thought I might want or need what you are giving me, invent an excuse, create a reason, but not because it´s Christmas time and it´s what everyone is supposed to do.


I wonder why we don´t have in the Scriptures a mandate to celebrate Jesus´s birth, important as the occasion was; he himself commanded us to commemorate his death until he comes again, but did not mention his birth at all. Luke 1:14 says that many will rejoice at his birth, and many did, and surely we do rejoice because his birth fulfilled our only hope for salvation, but let´s listen to what the heavenly host said praising God in 2:14: Glory to God in the highest, and in the earth peace, good will toward men.


Let me shout no to parties, no to mindless accommodation to pagan rituals and traditions, no to brute consumerism... “just” peace and good will toward men... that´s all I want to say to everyone in this time of the year... peace and good will toward men... from God... can there be anything better that that?

You can´t teach an old dog new tricks... can you?

I had not realised it, but it had been some time since I really learned something... slowly, sacrificially, painstakingly. Until just a few years ago, that had been a part of my whole life; always studying something, always facing new challenges, but since I took responsibilities at the seminary as Dean first and Principal later, and had to stop teaching as a direct consequence, I also virtually stopped learning... at least consciously.

I must admit that as I assumed my new responsibilities I had to "learn to learn" in a different way, on the job, everyday, almost at every moment and I can´t deny that I have learned a bit about administrative education this way... an informal way, which although is highly efficient, does not have the sense of achievement that setting a specific goal and reaching it has.

Earlier this year I tried to learn German, but for many different reasons the experiment had to stop. More recently I have had to face 3 different experiences, that are challenging my own self esteem.

First, I enrolled in a course to learn how to tutor and monitor students through e-learning; that is on completely virtual environments. And if you think that´s the future of education, you´re wrong; that´s more like the present. The problem is that for folks like me (“people from last century” as my kids love to constantly call me), the whole thing is hard to grasp. Interestingly, it´s not the technical element that bothers me; I´m fairly comfortable with computers and still can learn to handle new software with relative ease (in all truth, I do feel comfortable around computers, but not around cell phones... they are a mystery to me. My children still call me to fix their computer problems, but I have to ask them to tell me how to do something in my cell phone... we´ll call it a tie).

So if technology is not the problem... what is it? It is that the whole idea of virtual education is completely alien to my way of thinking. To begin with, there´s no classroom, no people to look at, no eye contact. There you are, alone in a room with your computer, interacting with people who are not there in space and mostly not there in time (because there´s synchronic and asynchronic virtual interaction... you see, I´m learning!). Then, for me as a teacher, I feel the lack of spontaneity. Now don´t take me wrong; I always prepare my lectures and all that, but also relish the opportunity of just throwing at the students a question that comes to mind, or vice versa, having them stop the lecture and come up with an idea, a comment or a question that may even sidetrack the whole thing into a line of thought I had never considered... I find that absolutely delicious, and it´s not there in virtual education, not as far as I have looked into it anyway.

There´s also the learning mechanisms. Virtual education does not mean typing into your computer your old hand written class notes on Church History, for example, and put them up in a web page, peppered with pictures of Israel, video clips of old Easter-time films and audio clips of sheep bleating... I´m afraid virtual education has to be seen as something completely different from what I had known --good and bad-- from traditional education. The process of learning is different, the pace is different, the basic tenets are different, what you expect from the students is different, the way to stimulate them and to keep them interested are different, and now I´m assuming that the way to evaluate them has to be different (we haven´t got that far in the course yet).

I used to have serious doubts about the efficiency of virtual education, because I do not have the student “there” in front of me, and because I thought interaction is poorer. But then I had to reflect on my many many years as a traditional student and my not so many years as a traditional educator, and realise that there is no way to escape in the new system, as there was in the old one. I can recall so many of my former students who never spoke a word, never uttered an opinion in class, wrote the necessary assignments, and disappeared from the horizon. Can I honestly say that I had with them the proper, meaningful, formative interaction now I say I long for? No, I can´t. One of my former classmates (and I won´t say any more, as he has to remain anonymous... we´re still close friends and I want that to go on), got good enough marks in a course where, judging by the time he spent sleeping, we could safely say he was barely present. I myself slept a lot at the same course, and even being awake, so often it happened that my mind wandered away... that doesn´t happen with e-learning; and that bring us to the greatest paradox, and perhaps the most valuable thing I have learned so far: actual interaction is much more real in virtual education. You can´t sleep; you can´t let your mind wander away, you can´t hide behind your classmates´ heads... you have to read, you have to answer, you have to acquire the necessary knowledge or skill and if you don´t, your tutor will notice immediately and ask you to fix it.

But I do miss the other type of interaction... the one that can´t be replaced: a cup of coffee in between lectures, a good laugh, a “can I talk to you for a minute?” type of thing, or someone landing in my office with a silly question about nothing that leads to a deep, often tearful opening of the soul. Among those who have been my students in years past, I count not a few of very good friends... and I can´t see that happening through the mediation of emails and electronic chats.

Anyway, I like what I´m learning, I like to see that I´m more open to trying it, to take advantage of its pros and live with its cons... that is making me feel younger, one way or another... let´s see what happens.

Sadly, there are other things pointing in the opposite direction: for the first time in my life I have been prescribed reading glasses, and as I have always had glasses for far sighting, now I am learning to wear those progressive things that let you either read or see far depending on the way you position your head... a nightmare!! Mine are not bi-phocal but so called “progressive”, with about two million different options available depending on the position of the head in relation to what you want to see. The instructions tell me to point with my nose to what I want to see clearly... can you believe that?!! As you can imagine, this is not making me feel any younger of course...

And then, there was last Friday. Out of the blue, a couple from our church asked Paty and myself to clear up that day because they wanted to give us a surprise (and they didn´t know we were dog tired, that we were celebrating 20 years of our civil marriage, that we haven´t had a proper vacation since the earth was still hot... they didn´t know a thing)... and took us for a day out. We were taken to places that were off limits until recently but are now clear of guerrillas and battles and kidnappings... you only have to be careful with land mines. We had a picnic by the river, walked and talked surrounded by beautiful scenery and some wonderful birds, saw magnificent waterfalls, had a great demonstration of off road driving... and I was invited to try fly-fishing.

My father taught me to fish when I was a kid, and I have delightful memories of afternoons spent fishing by the sea, in spite of the pain (no fishing rods... too expensive..., just the nylon line and your bleeding fingers!). Then, by the quiet lochs of Uist, I learned how to to use a rod and experienced wonderful times watching my children get excited hooking worms, casting lines and retrieving trouts, patiently taught by Iain MacAskill... I will never forget the tons of priceless pictures that could have been had Iain put a little film in the camera.

All that was OK but fly-fishing?... that´s real sportsmanship for well off folks, that´s the stuff people spend a lot of money in, books are written about that, and magazines published... and yes, this friend is a dedicated fly fisher. He gave me the option of either fishing with a normal rod or give a try to fly fishing and this old dog said “I can always learn something new”... of course I didn´t get one single fish, but instead lost half a dozen flies to trees, bushes, fences (not to mention that I hooked myself three times!), and 3 days later I still have a sore arm, but boy, did I enjoy that! My friend gave me some exercises to begin with so that I could get used to whipping the rod without any weight at the tip, then guided my arm, showed me how he did it, talked about angles, timing, and waves, and currents... my arm was too extended, the rod was not vertical enough at a certain point, less shoulder, more wrist... and so on... by late afternoon, after a whole day of doing that in 4 or 5 out-of-this-world spots in 2 or 3 different rivers hearing only the water splash and the birds chirp, I was sore and soaked, but had got the basics right...well, more or less... absolute bliss!

Three different learning experiences, with very little connection one with the other, but they make me reflect that perhaps most of the enjoyment I get in life comes from learning (stuff like this I have just told you about, trying a new recipe, driving a vehicle I have never driven before...whatever). Trying hard, fighting frustration, taking pride and joy in even small achievements, and one day... perhaps... being able to say “I did it”... “it” being something that looked or sounded almost impossible initially , all that make for a lot of good. I can only wonder what it will be like in God´s very presence... the sheer lack of limits in what we can learn, the absence of limitations and shortcomings, the absolute beauty and goodness of anything we can discover or explore, bathed in the light of God´s smile. If standing in the middle of a shallow river in the Colombian mountains, casting a line, bathed in sunshine and listening to the birds was such an incredible experience that moved me to worship, I cannot imagine what it will be like when enjoying the new heaven and the new earth... I almost can´t wait.

Meanwhile, it´s time to go back to work... there´s a lot to learn there too.

Global warning... or is it too late?

More than a month without posting?... OK, call it holidays then.

I may be wrong, but looks like it´s true; looks like it´s after all our generation the one that will pay nature´s bill and reap the consequences of a couple hundred years of our unbriddled, unreasonable, perversely greedy and technologically-aided depredation of natural resources. Looks like the party is over and it´s time to nurse the hangover and do the picking up after the horde of drunken partygoers has gone, leaving everything quite silent, reeking of cheap smoke, vomit, and alcohol... not to mention other more serious stuff. Glaciers are evidently shrinking, the North Pole will lose completely its ice cover this summer for the first time in who knows how many years, and so on and so forth... we all read the papers, I assume.

What all that will really mean in practical terms is anybody´s guess. Surely some coastal regions will have to be abandoned in the best of cases and will be violently wiped out by tsunamis or similar phenomena in the worst; several species of plants and animals will disappear faster than expected as their habitats change dramatically, too quickly for any form of adaptation to develop, and all that will happen without any possibility of us doing anything to stop it. We could have prevented it, but seems to be too late, and we certainly can´t stop it (and even now, with catastrophre breathing on our necks, our so called world leaders spend days together sipping whisky just to come to the agreement that CO₂emissions will be cut down in 20% in the next 20 years!?... do give me a break!).

Anyway... at this point, we might as well speculate and imagine that not everything is or will be a natural catastrophe; just as Iwrite this, food prices have soared everywhere in the world, and that which is a nuisance to you and me, or at the very worst a cause of concern and of family-budget readjustment perhaps, means literal starvation to millions upon millions of people who were already walking a very tight rope along the lines of survival. Jut now, for example, the international oil prices and –even worse-- the international food prices are artificially high today with the result that a very few will get incredibly rich and a very many will get incredibly dead.

Trying to get a panoramic view of things, as if we were out of planet earth, it would seem as if there are two situations coming into a clash: our global system (economic, social, political and philosophical) and our numbers. Being as many as we are on this planet and demanding the impossibly high levels of prosperity that we all demand as birth rights, the situation is no longer viable. In other words, there is absolutely no way that this planet can support almost 7 thousand million people having cars and consuming wood and food and fun and producing garbage and polluting streams and stealing habitats from other species indefinitely... and that is considering the ideal situation in which all 6,700´000,000 of humans have enough comfort and can indeed consume those resources... which is not the case (but as if to compensate, the relatively few who do have resources, use, spend and waste them so enthusiastically, that it does not matter if others don´t). And that takes us to a second dimension of the problem:

Apart from the merely natural crossroads we have reached just by the arithmetical problem of consumption being greater than nature´s capacity for renewal and that pollution is far greater than nature´s capacity for assimilation of those pollutants –and as if that were not enough to threaten our survival-- there´s still another problem: there is enough food on this planet for everyone to eat well; there are enough economic resources for everyone to have a basically comfortable life; there is plenty of room to live in, at the same time sparing great areas for animals and other forms of life, but there´s not enough room or resources in the universe to satisfy man´s desperate hunger for accumulation, status, recognition, power and so on. As a result of that, hundreds of millions of the poor and destitute of this world have started a slow but

steady and strong movement towards those areas of the world where there seems to be more than enough for everyone. Illegal immigration has become a huge problem for the US or the EU, and the response has been clear: walls, fences, strict policies, all say “Go away... we don´t want you!”, but the boats won´t stop, “tourists” won´t go back after a couple of weeks of crazy spending (yes, with the money that you pay for the simplest hamburger in a European city, a whole family can eat for more than a couple of days in other parts of the world). So those people will stay up north and start dreaming of preposterous things like eating properly, sending their kids to school, living in a comfy place, getting medical attention if needed and a bit later, if things go well, their crazed minds will entertain absurdities like cars, holidays, theatre, travelling, sports, hobbies, books and stupidities like those. Therefore, they and their ridiculous dreams have to be kept away or, if they manage to sneak in, have to be found, detained, confined andsent back to their countries where they can properly enjoy all the benefits of being a legally entitled citizen there: starvation, persecution, abuse, disease, lack of opportunities, lack of education, and so on and so forth.

I come from a country that traditionally “exports” immigrants, and live in another one that does the same, so I´ve come to know quite a few of them (indeed, I wonder if my fellow countrybear Paddington will be detained and deported back to darkest Peru ... as far as I know, he´s still an illegal alien)... however, the point is that those who leave and let themselves fall in the pit of illegal immigration are not the people who can live comfortably in their own countries; the relatively wealthy, relatively educated, who can live realtively comfortable lives will stay where they are, enjoying fresh fruits and mild weather all year round; the ones who go to play hide and seek with immigration authorities, and the police, polizei or carabinieri are –generally speaking-- the ones desperate enough to think they have no other option.

But I´ve come too far from where I was going to... the thought where my initial digression took me was that if the Lord is not to come anytime soon (and I´m not using “soon” in the biblical sense, that can mean another couple thousand years), but really if the Lord Jesus is not coming in the next 50 years or so, there has to be, inevitably, either a huge natural catastrophe that wipes out a good percentage of the world´s population, so that the planet gets a bit of breathing air, or an equally huge social catastrophe that produces the same result, one besides which both World Wars and the bubonic plague put together will pale in comparison. The rate of consumption of natural resources, the rate of production of contaminants and the depth of the gap between the so very rich and the so very poor have reached their very limits.

What does our theology say about such a plausible scenario? Are we as Chrisians prepared theologically, intelectualy, emotionally for such a thing? Can we get ready and help the world get ready for a partial holocaust? We know how to warn people about the final days and find solace in knowing that whatever happens it´s the doors of heavens opening for our entry, but what about something really big and horrible happening when our Lord´s return is still far away in the future? Do we have the spiritual resources to become this world´s reserve for hope and life when we are surrounded by despair and death? I´m afraid our record is not so good, though: we´ve been so far particularly lame and inefficient in fighting against inequality or against the destruction of the creation of which we are stewards.

I used to think those questions would have to worry my children and their kids, and my heart bled for them... now I´m not so sure I won´t have to think of something myself.

Malice in Wonderland

Back again after a while of heavy traveling and incredible hectiness...

Colombia is in the forefront again. A recent international study concludes that Colombia is the most violent country in the region, followed closely by Venezuela and Haiti. I just visited Guatemala a few weeks ago and several Guatemalans told me then that they think their country should be considered among the most dangerous places to live in, for their levels of violent crime (as people in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro had already told me a few months before). At any rate, looks like our region is far from becoming a more livable place for most people. Now think of this: Guatemala and Brazil are considered the most heavily evangelised countries in the whole of Latin America, to the extent that it is based on what has been happening in those two countries that some ill-informed academics as well as missionaries and national church leaders --probably with obscure intentions-- started talking some years ago of a great "Latin American Revival".


Some people affirm that in Guatemala, for example, a good 70% of the population are Christians, and in Brazil, one single denomination claims to have almost 50 million members (of a total of around 180 million inhabitants in the whole country). If these statistics would be crossed with the numbers of people involved in corruption, drug dealing, or membership of the many infamous gangs that infest both countries and even rule in vast extensions of their territories, there would not be enough "non-Christians" to make up for the difference. Therefore, either those statistics are wrong, or many drug dealers, gang members, assassins and other representatives of the criminal fauna are regular church-goers. Where is the truth? Honestly, I don´t know where the truth regarding this particular issue is, but I will venture a possible explanation for this baffling paradox.

On the one hand, statistics in this part of the world are normally as trustworthy as your daily horoscope, tailored for you by a drunk, half schizophrenic substitute, amateur astrologist (the real professor Kandrix attending unexpected, unforeseen circumstances in his life). In Colombia the die-hard optimists say all non-Catholic Christians put together comprise around 10% ...and apart from the fact that you would never be able to put them together in any real sense, a more real appraisal would put regular attendance to Protestant/Evangelical churches at about 3 to 5% of the total population at best. So yes, numbers are growing, but not at the phenomenal rate that some people report.

Secondly, I would stress that it is very different to speak of a percentage of a country´s population being Christians, and another very different one is to talk about church attendance. Why do I say this? it´s simple: because more and more I meet people who regularly go to church, who religiously bring in their financial contributions, who know all the songs, who speak the language but who --as a whole-- fail to impress me as disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the risen Saviour, the one who lives and is to come. Of course I can´t claim I know that for a fact (and my Lord has told me not to even try to separate the wheat from the weed... that´s none of my business)... all I´m saying is that if we are to know who people are by the fruit evident in their lives and by their expressions of belief (i.e. by their expressions of faith and conduct, if you like), there´s very little there that the average born-again Bible-believing Christian could recognise as part of his or her own understanding of what being that (a Christian) means. Salvation by deeds, liturgy over obedience, experience over truth, religion over discipleship, the mixing of New Age rubbish with evangelical ideas, sect-like attitudes and a mind- boggling lack of knowledge of even the very basics of the Bible´s content and message are the staple diet in most of the so-called Christian churches you can come across around here (the logical result of running around all kinds of signs and wonders, and of preferring "prophecy" over exploring and expounding the Scriptures).

Cash Luna, a very popular "preacher" and televangelist, a very influential guru of Theology of Prosperity, and an idol for thousands upon thousands of non-discerning Christians in the Spanish-speaking world.














Thirdly, although numbers are growing --and that is true even in real, sane churches-- this is a far cry from any real revival in history I can think of. Revivals changed dramatically the deepest structures of the communities where they happened, albeit in some cases the results did not last more than a generation, as sometimes one generation was deeply changed and the next returned to its old ways, but in this case, not even the generation currently coming to a real saving faith is generating any visible change in its culture, its community, its country. So there is growth, there is impact, but not any real revival as far as can be seen so far.

The seed keeps on being sown, the truth keeps on being preached and taught. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of not perfect but faithful believers preach with their lives and touch other lives with the message of the Gospel, many men and women sacrificially devote their lives to reach others in situations of need both spiritual and material in the name of Jesus Christ... all that is good reason to praise the Lord, good reason to keep on praying for these countries, good reason to keep on sending our sons and daughters in mission, good reason for joy and hope and work and believe, although the statistics, and the visible realities that surround us may seem horrible enough to make us cry and lure us into the temptation to despair... may God help us not to!

A little extra

Today I have a guest blogger. Her name is Patricia Cuellar; she is a beautiful and smart lady who has written a very interesting piece on how she feels about being Colombian. As a missionary, I feel honoured to be able to share with you this essay written by a native of the country where I serve.

Just in case you´re wondering, yes, she´s my wife but in this part of the world (where we are called chauvinistic, and machistas and who knows what else, our wives --well, one each of course-- don´t surrender their surnames when they marry; some of them do take the husband´s, some others just add the husband´s name and some others sometimes do and sometimes don´t...)

Were it not for...

By Patricia Cuellar

April 9, 2008

To be a Colombian from inside is something quite different to be Colombian abroad, but both circumstances are intimately related. I am 44 years old now, and I can´t remember one single day that I haven’t lived under the threat and sometimes even the reality of our internal war. When I was younger I yearned to see those spectacular places of the Colombian geography I hear about and I could not because my parents said those places were dangerous: the jungles of the east, the endless plains, the little towns along the Magdalena River, Cauca, Antioquia, the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast... and I could name many more. This has not changed much in these last 60 years since the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, the political leader who personified hope for Colombia then, a hope based on an ideology.

Only now I understand the real dimension of what I learnt in my Geography lectures at school: “Colombia is in a privileged geographical situation, in the top corner of South America, the only country in the subcontinent washed by two oceans”. But privileged for what? I ask. Five hundred years ago, this was the place where the Spanish empire accumulated all the treasures plundered from Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia itself, and where the ships were loaded for their dangerous raid to European ports, therefore places like Cartagena were systematically attacked by the British, Dutch and so on, in order to steal the treasures from the ones that stole them from us... so you see:pillage and war since then. What did all that mean? It meant fortresses and castles, but also weaknesses that just as those castles, are still standing 500 years later. The forts are just tourist attractions, but those weaknesses, the conflict, the violence and the injustice prevail just the same. Privileged for what? So that along those two huge coasts so rich in fishing, fishermen can starve and sink in poverty, privileged to export the terrible drug that is so happily consumed in the rich world, privileged for weapons to easily get into the country to feed the black market that thrives in war. That’s when we understand this is not just a Colombian problem. There are and there have been so many hands constantly meddling into this problem, that once you are into it –and however good humanitarian reasons you may have had-- you cannot come now and say “it’s their problem”

This cannot be seen as a simple internal problem when there are so many external expressions that constantly remind us that we are pariahs of world society, when people abroad hear us say “I am Colombian” and do not mention my delicious coffee, or my beautiful emeralds, but cocaine and marihuana; this cannot be seen as just an internal problem when my husband is told to shut up or not to write just because of his nationality or --even worse-- because he’s married to a Colombian; this is not just an internal problem when there are countries in Latin America that would not give me a visa unless I have a US visa... and that’s not to mention other visas. To go abroad or to visit some consulates to get a Visa, as a Colombian I have to be prepared to be looked at with suspicion, to be abused verbally, to bear the eternal sensation that there is something wrong with me even though my own conscience is right.

Recently I had a nightmare: I was in a plane, heading for a European country, and we made a stopover in a country for which I only had a transit visa. As my mother and sisters lived there, I went to visit them, but then I realized that as my visa did not allow that I was an illegal alien. In my anguish I tried to explain what was going on, but “the law is the law”... how many Colombians have not seen their relatives for so many years because of this?

I had a nightmare, but with Martin Luther King, today I have a dream. I dream of not being told to shut up just because I am Colombian; I dream of a country where there is no hunger; I dream of a country that is not peppered with landmines that little children take for toys and are left maimed for life; I dream of a time when I can go to visit my brothers and sisters wherever in Colombia or in South America or in Europe or anywhere; I dream of a country where poor peasants don’t have to beg for a few coins in the corners just because he was evicted form his little plot; I dream of a time when we are not seen with suspicion, I dream of a time when there is no shame at all in saying “I am Colombian”, I dream of a country where there is justice, but specially forgiveness; I dream of a deep transformation that goes beyond the social dimension, that goes from the individual to the collective, from the material to the spiritual; I dream of a country that is capable of finding true hope in Christ. Is it possible that I dream of a Colombia full of God’s Kingdom?

Were it not for the knowledge that my real citizenship is not of this world, that my nationality is in the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of salvation, of love, and true peace and acceptance, I would feel offended for the way in which we Colombians are seen and for what others say about us and I could not have understood that the important thing for me is not that I am Colombian, but I am a daughter of God in the midst of a society of pariahs where we live the shame and the burden of having been born in the “most privileged country of South America”.

El Bogotazo

Even attempting to understand Colombia´s incredible history of violence is a major undertaking. After all these years here I have been unable to do so, but history helps to have little peeks into the mess and to get in hand at least a few more pieces of the puzzle. Today, April 9^th, is a special historical date for any Colombian worth his or her salt... let´s see why.

Today Colombia is remembering a particularly interesting and incredibly crucial day in her recent history: on April 9, 1948, Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, the man who has been this country´s most revered political leader of all times, was killed in Bogotá. Minutes later, his assassin was captured and lynched by a mob that very quickly got out of control and almost destroyed the city, in what has been called since “ The Bogotazo”... something like an attempt to depose the President, vent repressed anger, solve old animosities, and just steal as much as possible, all at the same time (see Paul Wolf´s article in English for a detailed account in http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/gaitan/gaitanbogotazo.htm).

Fidel Castro was in Bogotá at that time, trying to “help” Colombian and Latin American students gathered in a Pan American congress to protest against the presence of US Gral. Marshall, who was also visiting Colombia those days. When the violence erupted, Castro thought that the revolution had started and tried to organise the different groups he was in touch with and he knew were against the government (students, workers unions, even the police), but chaos and blind rage was just too much even for him, and the communist party in Colombia was too weak and divided and could not capitalise that “golden opportunity”... in Castro´s own words.

Violence in Colombia was not unheard of. The infamous “War of a thousand days” at the beginning of the XX century had set the tone for the relationships between the two main (and by then almost lonely) parties: Liberal and Conservative, which in turn were the heritage of the deep divide between the main two leaders of the revolt of Colombia against Spain a few decades before: Bolivar and Santander. Anyway... Gaitán, a Liberal, had divided the party a few years before and hence the President at the moment of his death was a Conservative, but it was evident by then that Gaitán would win the next elections by a massive landslide... but three bullets stopped him.

That day, 60 years ago, it started in Colombia a period known as “La Violencia” (The Violence), which says a lot if you think that you can call a certain period as “The” violence in such a violent country. The truth is that during those years (that officially ended in 1957... see below), an undefined but huge number of Colombians were brutally killed all over the country (although the slaughter in some areas was worse than in others; the countryside was notoriously dangerous, not so much the cities). Liberals killed Conservatives and vice versa, with great gusto and sadism. Everyone was suspicion, everyone was suspicious. As Conservatives were associated with the Catholic church (whereas Liberals were associated with the philosophical tradition of French “free-thinking”), religion found itself mixed into the cocktail, and the Colombian Christian church paid more than its share of blood and pain. Liberal crowds just saw religious ghosts everywhere and killed Christians because they were Christians, and Conservative mobs thought that if you were not a Catholic you were a Liberal, and therefore you had to be killed, of course.

In 1957, allegedly as a way to stop the violence that was bleeding the country to death, (and also to stop the dictator General Rojas Pinilla in his tracks, as he had turned into a popular political leader), the Liberal and Conservative parties signed an agreement (called, o surprise!, “The National Front”), in which they agreed to gentlemanly alternate at the helm of the government and have an equal number of MPs for 16 years. So, everyone was happy, except of course those who were neither Conservative nor Liberal or even those who belonged to those parties but were opposed to the National Front (including Gral. Pinilla´s followers). They saw their possibilities of democratic political expression thwarted and so decided to assume alternative roads to power and decided to fight for the transformation of the contry... that´s the moment in history that the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) were born (to speak of those still active), as well as the now defunct M-19 (the boisterous, flamboyant guerrilla that stole Bolivar´s sword, took hostages at the embassy of the Dominican Republic and the Supreme Court), as well as the many other guerrillas that mushroomed in those decades (the Popular Liberation Army, the Revolutionary Guevarist Army, Quintín Lame... and so on).

I think that in honour of historical truth, it has to be acknowledged that all these groups started denouncing and facing a real situation of injustice and wrong. They all started with good reasons for embracing a cause, and by people who sacrificially gave up their way of life and many of them even their actual lives in their attempt to create a better world, very much in accordance with the widespread idea that violence was the necessary catalyst for real, deep, long-lasting change.

Today Colombia commemorates another anniversary of Dr Gaitán´s death, and it still mourns tragically for that brilliant future that was not. Sadly, it was not the last time she would live such a terrible experience... but I´ll tell you about that another day.

Moving?

We have just gone through moving houses once again (the third time since we came to Colombia), and were complaining about how exhausting and stressful it had been. However, to think that moving from a comfy house to another (a bit smaller mind you, but nice anyway) had caused us such stress, made me reflect of the pledge of the millions of Colombians who have had to move in different circumstances. Last Saturday, these reflections came back as we accepted an invitation from the man who works as the janitor of the condo where we live, to go and visit his family and perhaps see a plot of land or two we might want to buy (well, he thinks we can afford such a thing... it´s a good excuse to go to the countryside anyway). We drove half an hour along a good road and another half hour along a fairly reasonable dirt one, peppered with leisure, week-end "cottages", some of which can easily cost 2 or 3 hundred thousand USD. Our friend´s family live very humbly though, but even so they were able to provide us with a hearty lunch with what they produce themselves: a chicken, plantaine, potatoes and herbs soup... delicious! And we even went back home loaded with onions and coriander and mangos. Once we got home, Paty reflected that so many millions in Colombia (around 4 million, they say) are people who one day have that, a small piece of land they can live off, and then, all of a sudden, because of someone else´s greed or hatred or simple evil, they are violently forced to join the army of displaced people that beg for coins at a street corner. One day they can feed their kids with their work, and grow some crops and tend to a couple of cows, and enjoy their mountains or their plains, and the next they sit by the curb, perhaps mourning one or two family members killed or lost as they fled, despised and looked at with suspicion by a city that cannot understand them and does not want to show any sympathy to them... a city that very often does not even want to acknowledge they are there; or does not want to acknowledge their hunger... of food and of justice... a city that so often just sneers and cries "let them work... don´t let them be lazy!".

You can see them all over Colombian cities(if you decide not to avoid the pain of even looking into their eyes, of talking to them, of asking their names) , you can see them perplexed, confused, disorientated.

Yes, there are so many crying, so many desperately lonely, so many humiliated and vexed... and so many of them are our brothers and sisters... would you believe it?

Open wounds at the heart of a nation

I had thought of a different title: "Scars at the heart of a nation", but I had to change it halfway through. You´ll see why.

After all the noise of the last few weeks, all the scandal has died, the news has moved on, and today this part of the world is out of sight of the world press because (at least apparently) there was no war and we can breath again... but can we? Let me tell you 3 short stories that make me wonder...

Miguel is 22; when he was just 15, a group or heavily armed men, part of a guerrilla column of the FARC guerrilla burst into his family´s flat and kidnapped him, his older brother and his mother, along with a few other neighbours, and took them into the jungle. For three years, they were kept captive in extreme conditions, and one day he and his brother were released, apparently after their father had paid a huge price... his mother remained captive for another 3 years and although he is happy to see her again, miraculously released, his happiness is tainted by the memories of his father, killed also by FARC guerrillas 2 years ago.

Julio is 13, and he can´t believe what he sees and hears in the news, where a jubilant anchorman is announcing that his father was killed by a fellow guerrilla, his own chief bodyguard. He had met his father when he was 6, when there were peace talks and everybody could go and meet the big guys: Marulanda, Jojoy, Raul Reyes... and he went to meet his dad. They spent a couple of wonderful weeks together, getting to know each other, hoping for the best, but the best never came. The peace talks ended 7 years ago, and his father´s life ended last week, shot by his chief bodyguard while he slept, so that he could get a juicy reward.
Julio can´t understand why everyone hates his father, why so many folks are saying that the killer has earned the reward for killing such foul vermin; he can´t understand why everyone is so jubilant that a man has died... he can´t understand why is it that so many Christians seem to share that joy, oblivious to the fact that his beloved daddy has gone to hell... “Why didn´t God save him?” "Why nobody thinks of my sorrow?"he asks... I don´t have any answers.

Maria is 18, and looks like 50 sitting in front of a CCTV set, listening to the confession of a “former” paramilitary warlord, (dressed of course in an Armani suit, reading from a last generation Vaio laptop, looking and sounding imperious, commanding, proud... far from repentant I would say) who talks of thousands of murders, among them her parents´. Her brain just can´t take in so much evil... even pain seems to be numbed as she hears how those men confess to rounding up dozens upon dozens of peasants just because they needed real victims to train their new recruits. She simply can´t believe that the only reason why her sweet, loving mother was cut to pieces with a machete was that a rookie paramilitary had to learn how to do it slowly, careful that the victim did not die soon (the rookie that killed his or her victim faster in the group would be severely punished). She mercifully fainted before she heard what had happened to her dad... but she managed to hear that if one of those rookies refused to do to the victim what he was ordered to, the next one down the line would have to do it to him (or her... no discrimination there). So that´s it; she just has to accept as a fact of life that her parents had been just educational material, tools among thousand other tools for young folks to learn to kill, torture, skin people alive, gouge eyes out, and many atrocities more, in their way to becoming fierce warriors, who would fight against "those evil guerrillas".

There are in Colombia more than 3 million people displaced from their homes, a good percentage of them separated from their parents, children or siblings when they fled, never to see them again. There are also millions now who can mention at least one relative who has been killed, maimed, kidnapped or “disappeared” either by right wing militias, leftist guerrillas, corrupt government forces or just “common delinquents". Some of them cry for revenge; many others just don´t know how to react... incredibly, a few of them work for peace and forgiveness and reconciliation.

Even if all shooting and killing stops today (wishful thinking!), there would still be such a load of pain, rage, thirst for justice, thirst for revenge and who knows what else, that it would take decades for those wounds to heal (so we are very far from the scars, you see?) ... any room for the message of the Gospel, do you think?

Sabre rattlings in South America: Chapter 2 and The End

The good news: they say it´s all over; the bad news: my promising career as war correspondent was nipped in the bud... (good that I kept my day job just in case). But let me at least tell you how it happened.

Yesterday (Friday, March, 7), something really weird happened. In Colombia, people spent hours upon hours glued to their TV sets; at home, in the streets, in shops and bus stations, there were big and small groups of people watching, commenting, aahhing and oohhing, and sometimes even cheering... what was going on? Was a qualifying match for the World Cup going on?... nope. Had the Olympic games in Beijing brought a few months forward?... no chance... believe it or not, everybody was following closely a summit of Latin American presidents (the so called Grupo de Rio, but which was meeting in the Dominican Republic... don´t ask!). Something normally as exciting as watching a dripping faucet, managed to capture the attention of millions and blew all ratings records. Why? Simply because we all felt that our collective futures were being played around that table. The probabilities of an open war were slim, to be honest, but even the perspective of a long, protracted economic war of attrition was worrying enough.

Roundabout midday, it all looked grim. Accusations and even insults, came and went. Positions were so far apart from each other, that whoever thought an agreement could be brokered would have been advised to stop smoking dancing-shoe-leather. However, by late afternoon, those same Presidents were shaking hands and promising to be good boys from now on. The Nicaraguan President even announced there and then that he was establishing diplomatic relations with Bogotá again (after a never-ending full 24-hour rupture!). Ecuador´s President took Uribe´s extended hand, although his face was anything but friendly... but he shook hands nonetheless and when he was coming out of the meeting expressed satisfaction that the beating of drums had not gone anywhere beyond that point.

What is the final result?

That´s difficult to measure, and the best proof that the agreement brokered was brilliant in diplomatic terms, is that everyone is saying they won the standoff, and is more or less right in saying so.

Ecuador played its cards right up to a point and got that the final statement reaffirmed in no ambiguous terms that no country has the right --for whatever reason they may think they have-- to invade another one (that is to take armed actions across the border). If Ecuador wants to harbour FARC or anyone else and Colombia does not like it, Uribe can complain, cry and dance, but not shoot. However, in order to get this far, Ecuador had to pay the price to see its last chance to see Colombia condemned for what she did (something very serious in diplomatic terms), vanish in thin air. It had not happened in previous days in the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), and it did not happen in Santo Domingo either.

Venezuela saw President Chavez sweating because Uribe was accusing him formally before the International Penal Court for genocide, as accomplice of the internationally and officially acknowledged FARC terrorists. Whether he would have been found guilty or not nobody knows, but it would have been nasty enough for Chavez to be dragged to that court, specially as he has been so successful in making himself seen as a public enemy by the US government.

Colombia got reprimanded and also got a slap in the hand, but nothing else... and that was a low price to pay for the risk she took and the trophy Uribe took home: Reyes´ head. Furthermore, just as he was speaking, Ivan Rios --another member of the FARC secretariat and a supposed heir to their top leader-- was announced dead (one of his own bodyguards killed him tired of being chased by the army... and I guess that the 5 million USD offered as a reward worked as a nice incentive too). On top of that, the whole world had heard that the Colombian government has proof that Venezuela´s and Ecuador´s Presidents are helping and supporting terrorist groups within their territories (and will have to go back to their countries to face incensed and belligerent opposition groups who are horrified by this)... I don´t know if anybody cares about this in the rest of the world, but it must feel good to let everyone know your foe is a felon and you can prove it.

One thing that felt historically unusual and really made me proud to be an American (and by the way, America is a continent, not a country, and American are we all from Canada to Chile...this can be theme for another posting now that I´ve run out of news, but let´s leave it there just now. It´s only that I wanted to mention it before my audience goes down to single figures)... as I was saying, it was good to watch the news everyday and see people being interviewed in the streets of Colombian, Venezuelan and Ecuadorian cities, and everybody was opposed to war. No patriotic speeches from their leaders convinced Ecuadorians or Venezuelans that they should go to war with Colombia... even accepting that Colombia had done wrong by crossing Ecuador´s borders. Apart from a handful of inane clowns hired to cheer everything Chavez says, I saw mature peoples, thinking peoples, pacific peoples, just wanting to be left alone carrying on with their lives and facing their own internal problems without resorting to fabricating external enemies... and that is good and reassuring. Now Venezuelans do not have to starve, Colombian workers won´t have to be laid off, Ecuadorians don´t have to see its most important commercial partner close its borders, and won´t have to expel the hundreds of Colombian entrepreneurs and professionals that are such an important part of their economy... so everybody is happy, or should be.

But before we forget, once we have sighed our relief and celebrated that Venezuelan and Ecuadorian soldiers have gone back to their barracks to their normal do-nothing routine, let´s say a prayer for the Colombian soldiers and the Colombian people, who have not seen one day of peace in 50 years. Let´s have a word of prayer for the over 4 thousand people who remained kidnapped (some of them for over 10 years!) just because someone thinks they are economically or politically valuable as merchandise. Let´s mention in our intercession before God the 3 million people who have been displaced, violently uprooted, terrorised into leaving their home because someone just fancied it, people who one day were poor but fairly comfortable peasants, and the next day are begging for a coin in one corner of a city they had never been to before, while their kids sleep off their hunger under the rain on the sidewalk.

Yes, the threat of international war is over, and now Colombia can go back to its everyday war against greed, against corruption, against evil in all its ugly manifestations... a battle that is ultimately against sin...care to join us?

Sabre rattling in South America

Hello everybody

I´m starting this blog thing just because it´s awkward to be sending hundreds of emails and have them returned because an old address, or even worse, to be rejected by some programme that considers my email as spam only because it goes to 2 or 3 hundred folks simultaneously.

Our lives are not that interesting or exciting as to be sending out emails with news very often. Actually, those of you who get a newsletter from us know they only arrive every 3 or 4 years (the time it takes to accumulate interesting enough news). However, the current situation in this part of the world made us cry out for prayer, and we need to keep you informed and updated as far as possible.

So there you are, we are "blogging" now.

General Update:

After deploying troops at the Colombian border, Venezuela has done nothing else, yet. There were some lorries detained, but as they were full of food (something a bit scarce in Venezuela these days), they were allowed into the country. Chavez has announced today that he will cease all commercial relationships with Colombia, ...and that can be good, as today also one of the most important papers in Caracas editorializes saying that the time might be ripe to bring down such an irresponsible President... Bravo!... now let´s sit and wait.

Life in Colombia goes on more or less as normal. Kids go to school, the new house is a mess... by the way, we have moved into a smaller house (we can´t make all the old furniture fit!... time to change it?... uhm ...wishful thinking!). Anyway, our new address:

... I changed my mind and decided not to post it. If any of you want to know it, please email me and I will send it to you in a reply.

All missionaries linked to the seminary are OK: Latin America Mission, Latin Link, Free Church of Scotland, Grace Baptist Mission, OMS, Christians in Action, Looney Tunes... the lot!

Embassies advice wisely not to do anything other than living normally and let the storm die away.

Having said that, remember that "normal" in Colombia could make many of you die of an adrenalin overdose, so please don´t stop praying. Last month millions demonstrated against FARC, and today there are demonstrations being called against paramilitary´s and state´s crimes... polarization all over, tempers going high...

That´s it. I´ll try to post every couple of days during the emergency and see how it goes. If any of you has comments or specific questions, please either leave them here or send me an email... whatever suits you best.

Bye just now.

Part of the Latin Link team in Colombia. Sitting from left: Catalina (with Lord Fitzwilliam Darcy in her arms), Patricia, Noemi, Silvie, and Fiona. Standing: Yours truly, Benji and Simon.