Nearer to Gaza November 15, 2023
He couldn’t have been more than 17 seated across from a
middle aged man scrutinizing an Arabic newspaper
at the clothed table facing the
entrance “A snack” he responded quickly to my question about a
spinach/cheese roll wrapped in a delicate pastry dedicated to
protecting his mother from embarrassment with her timorous
perfectly constructed English “Two minutes” she assured me
holding up fingers as her husband made his appearance to
ask something before rushing back to the kitchen in an
effort to avoid messaging impatience I ambled over to
the tea sets displayed on a table under a Palestinian flag
spanning the length of the table and a t.v. tuned to Al-Jazeera
Arabic reporting on a protest at Democratic headquarters and
I said I hear Al-Jazeera English is very different from Al-Jazeera
Arabic the boy said he watches the Arabic only at the restaurant
for his mother the cook assistant to her husband and receptionist
because you know mumbling something “I don’t know if there’s
a difference” and I left wondering why the Arabic restaurant and
grocery also Palestinian owned and managed at the back of the
compound does not have a flag on the wall and whether it takes
courage.
What Congo Gets for Mining Its Cobalt
Before buying an electric vehicle you may want to consider the cost in human lives and environmental ruin at the first level of the EV battery’s supply chain. Congo (DRC) mines 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt and despite the claims of the hi tech corporations, the mining of its cobalt is destroying Congolese lives and their land. So goes the summary of Siddarth Kara’s findings reported in his 2023 book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Kara pulls back the cover on cobalt mining laid by the beneficiaries of this rare, essential mineral’s supply chain.
Demand for cobalt accelerated with spiraling sales of smartphones, laptops, I Pads and Pods, etc. in the 90’s but the digging for cobalt rivals the U.S. gold rush with the demand created by EV manufacture in the new century. EV battery packs require over 1000 times more cobalt than smartphones. The forecast of how and where the demand will be met is tragically familiar.
Beginning with the trade in African slaves through satisfying the global demand for ivory followed by rubber, palm oil and in supplying strategic minerals for modern warfare, the systems of resource extraction initiated by Belgian King Leopold’s Congo Free State then restructured by the colony of Belgian Congo are now implemented by the neo-colony of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each system of governance has positioned Congo to contribute the preponderant share of critical resources to the global economy. Relevant to the mining of cobalt is the attempt of southern Congo’s Katanga Province to secede from the newly independent nation in 1960. Plotted and financed by Belgian copper mining interests, when the elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba defied foreign control of Congo’s resources in 1960 he was flown to Katanga to be tortured and assassinated by the Belgian military.
The Katangan copper mines with their byproduct of cobalt are now managed and partially owned by Chinese companies. As a side note, it is important to state that U.S. companies depend on China for the bulk of their cobalt supply. In 2016, a Chinese company purchased from a U.S. mining firm the largest copper/cobalt mine in Congo.
In his tours of cobalt mining in southern Congo, Kara focused his attention on the individual miners, haulers and washers of the “artisanal” mines. Supplying an estimated 30 percent of Congo’s annual cobalt production the ravages of artisanal miners’ lives and their environment are as appalling as they are hidden by the multi-leveled supply chain and white washing of the extraction practices. With little to no provision for their fair payment or miner safety, Congolese President Kabila urged citizens in the late 90’s to reap the bonanza brought about by the increasing global demand for cobalt.
But it was Kabila’s son Joseph whose mining deals with the Chinese to produce an essential element for EV’s brought about the unprecedented growth of artisanal mining by entire families. An elderly woman observed that the President and other Congolese who exploit villagers’ labor fabricated tales of riches to be made from cobalt and then sold what the diggers extracted at a price much higher than what the miner received. After recounting incidents of children being maimed or killed in mining accidents the grandmother concluded in despair, “this is what cobalt has done to Congolese children. They have no more future.”
In their quest for the highest grade cobalt, and a higher payment received, some artisanal miners dig tunnels in the mineral rich earth. With some tunnels up to thirty meters below the surface, the miners accept staggering risks in wagering their labor. Rarely are beams used in tunnels and while air blowers may be installed the dust stirred up and breathed is toxic and stifling. In his interviews with miners, Kara listened to gruesome accounts detailing the loss of life and limbs brought on by common artisanal practices.
Why would villagers dig for cobalt when fully aware of the danger and sure erosion of their health? There are simply no other opportunities to earn a cash income and contrary to the government’s pledge of free public education through middle school, fees must be paid to the school to employ a teacher and enroll a child. The goal of providing their children an education was shared with Kara by many of the artisanal miners.
For a nation endowed with abundant sought after resources, it is shocking that the national budget cannot meet the bill for free education in the primary grades. Kara cites that the entire 2021 national budget totaled $7.2 billion, comparable to that of the State of Idaho with a population one fiftieth the number of Congolese. The budget increased very little from 2019-21 in spite of the 100 percent increase in the global price for cobalt. Clearly the structure of Congolese resource extraction supplies only a few nationals with massive wealth. There has been no accounting for the billions paid by the Chinese for southern Congo’s mines and processing plants during the administrations of the Kabilas, father and son.
Kara describes how the structure of corruption benefiting the Congolese elite is matched by the foreign companies’ rigged accounting and white washing of the cobalt mining practices. In exposing the truth of what he witnessed in artisanal mining of cobalt, Kara’s book offers dramatic evidence to be used in lawsuits and reform movements deployed to save Congolese lives and enhance the country’s future.
are “trafficked” by entrepreneurs and soldiers
to work in the mines.
From a Congolese child’s digging of rocks laden with cobalt to the battery in our home computer, Kindle and electric vehicle is a circuitous route. As Kara writes, “The realities (of the mining, ed.) are hidden behind numerous layers of multinational supply chains that serve to erode accountability”. On parting with his translator in Congo after a visit, Kara asked what he would like him to write. The man replied, “Please tell the people in your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.”
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This book review is posted in recognition of Congo Week October 15-21, 2023. Congo Week has been organized anually for more than a decade to “break the silence” on the ongoing injustices of the extraction of Congo’s vast resources. For more information on Congo Week and on Congo in general go to friendsofthecongo.org. For more on cobalt mining in the country and court cases brought against its practices do a search for more posts on the topic at the blog lokoleyacongo.org .
U.S. Expansion of “Christian Nationalism” as a “Theology of Empire”
Among all the nation states now dominated by a form of religious nationalism – be it India, Afghanistan or Myanmar or others – there is only one nation in the world today beholden to a “theology of empire” and it is the U.S. The nation shaped originally by a theology of “exceptionalism” of a chosen people has today become the most far reaching, dominant military power in the history of the world. With over 800 bases in 85 countries, the U.S. capacity to influence and intervene in the politics of other governments is unprecedented. The fact that U.S. armed forces have conducted or led 211 deployments since 1945 (How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwaher, 1945) reveals the nation’s aim of enforcing its worldwide economic and political dominance.
What began as leadership of the opposition to the expansion of “godless communism” has evolved since WW II as “endless war” in defense of the nation’s “national interest”. Contrary to those expecting a “peace dividend” after the break up of the Soviet Union’s republics, the 1990’s brought further growth of the U.S. armed forces and presence around the world. The Arabian peoples and the Muslim religion replaced Communism as the primary, most insidious threat to our way of life.
Following the 9/11 attacks, while the Bush and Obama administrations resisted subscribing to a “good” versus “evil” depiction of the U.S. and its allies’ actions, the ferocious conflicts and costs incurred did signal extremist views as justifying the empire’s invasions. Characterizing Arabs and the Muslim religion as congenitally hostile to the “infidels” dominated popular media and even academic discourse. The leading scholar cited and interviewed most often in the early 2000’s, Princeton’s Bernard Lewis, had long made elucidating his theory of the “conflict of civilizations” the basis for his scholarship.
The “theology of empire” of U.S. evangelical Christians touts Christianity as the only pathway to individual salvation and social coherence. In their eyes, every military campaign aimed at a Muslim society representing a religion with over one billion adherents worldwide is a precursor to the final Armagedden. Such a view helps justify a military budget of nearly 900 billion dollars, and brings hubris based on our status as the lone “superpower” in the world and the leading defender of free and democratic nations. Considering the nearly one trillion dollars spent on U.S. Middle East military intervention and the hundreds of thousands lives lost in those wars, the theology proclaimed by U.S. evangelical Christianity seems worthy of Pascal’s observation generations ago. “Men never do evil so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction” the philosopher wrote.
With billions of dollars to broadcast, fund evangelism tours and support like-minded church bodies, the U.S. “theology of empire” has been imprinted on the minds and communications of evangelical Christians outside the U.S.. Ten years ago I was distressed during several tours of Protestant churches in Mexico by the anti-Muslim comments of some of the laypeople. More disheartening, however, is how conservative evangelicals have sided with foreign companies extracting Latin America’s natural resources when opposed by the local citizens most affected.
Evangelical pastors and laypeople have been encouraged to scorn protestors of foreign seizure of natural resources as socialist-leaning trouble makers. The evangelical Protestant President of Guatemala Gen. Rios-Montt was the notorious adherent in the early 80’s of the U.S. evangelicals’ theology. Trained by U.S. advisers and espousing a virulent anti-communism, in a short lived rule the Gen. led a campaign that took the lives of thousands of indigenous Guatemalan villagers. During his two years as President, Rios-Montt delivered what were called weekly “Sunday sermons” deploring cheating, stealing, lying and promoting individual values. This emphasis, joined by an “otherworld” emphasis on the social plane, is characteristic of many evangelical groups throughout Latin America and holds special appeal in association with law and order politics even when accompanied by state violence.
Despite evangelical Protestant sharing of virulent opposition to abortion and gay rights with the Catholic hierarchy, there is often hostility to the Catholics where there has been significant Protestant growth. Chiapas now claims more Protestants than any other State in Mexico and has been the scene of some violent Catholic-Protestant conflict. During a February Mexico visit, I learned of the massacre of 45 Catholics in the village of Acteal, Chiapas. Pacifist supporters of Zapatista organizing in their village and others, they were attacked in the village’s Catholic Church. Residents of San Cristobal de las Casas 20 miles away described the paramilitary force responsible as having been largely recruited among the Protestant converts.
The prophets of the Hebrew Bible largely ignore the policies of succeeding empires of their times directing their messages rather to the settlers of the nations of Israel and Judea. Jesus also devotes himself to the reform and uplift of the “House of Israel”. The fundamental theme of his preaching and ministry is the treatment of the poor by the leaders of the nation he knows best. His spite and condemnation reaches a peak when observing those who exploit the downtrodden with a guise of piety.
Rev. Dr. King greatly expanded our vision of human rights to citizens of our nation when he declared that a nation that spends more on its military than on the well being of its people is a nation approaching spiritual death. Through the the 1960’s and later, the U.S. lawyer-theologian William Stringfellow called his nation to repentance. He wrote of repentance in a 1984 essay, “Repentance is not about forswearing wickedness as such; repentance concerns the confession of vanity.” Without such a confession, he wrote, “For America – for any nation at any time ……. the very presumption of the righteousness of the American cause as a nation is blasphemy.”
Erasing Borders of Global Acceptance and Agreement
One of this blog’s readers asked recently in the Comments section what I have in mind by the title “erasing borders”. I am grateful for the question enabling a written dialog between this writer and the blog readers.
In responding I begin with the observation that among the tectonic shifts we humans must grapple with today there is one transformation of the global landscape that represents hope for our species as well as unprecedented challenge. With the evolution of the multiple crises forcing themselves on all human beings we are becoming more and more aware that no single nation state can acting alone remedy any of them.
It is, however, equally evident that the history and global politics of the United States is uniquely unprepared and ill fit for participation much less leadership in shaping such global actions. As the world’s remaining superpower of the Cold War era, the U.S. policy-making elite are used to preserving our right to go it alone. When we consider collaboration with nations formerly identified as the communist bloc and with those now stereotyped as Islamic terrorist states heavy lies the crown on the head of the leading “defender of the free world”. What is required of us now entails the kind of change called for by the idealistic vision of “erasing borders”.
“Erasing borders” is not therefore intended as solely applying to a nation state’s immigration policies and border enforcement. Its metaphorical content calls for no borders in our compassion; no borders in our respect and appreciation of other cultures; no borders in our relationships; no borders in building trust. “Erasing borders” was chosen to express with a short phrase the conviction that our “national interest” has now become obsolete in guiding our relationships and agreements. It is now more and more evident that what is in the interest of all nations is what promises to be the best for the U.S.
When the largest U.S. corporations now prosper by means of expanding their “global reach” ** we find little to no evidence that the U.S. national interest is a priority of their manufacturing, marketing strategies, corporate tax planning and so on. All our crises today – whether it be the spiral in the number of refugees and migrants, the threats to species survival dealt us by the production and consumption of fossil fuels, the emergence of global pandemics or the pall cast over our lives by the “strategic deployment” of nuclear weapons – our reliance on national interest and military might as the primary security strategy is as antiquated as relying on an operator to make a long distance call. When has U.S. led military interventions overseas contributed to long term advances in resolving any of the global crises?
The Christian faith serves my interpretation and response to the message of our troubled times. That message urges us to dream and proclaim the kind of radical change – the kind of change represented by technological change from the horse and buggy to interplanatary travel – and to begin thinking about what will improve the lives of all peoples. The handwriting on the wall that “erasing borders” interprets is “work together or perish together”.
All the world’s major religions appeal for unity among all peoples. In the first pages of the Jewish Christian scriptures, the creation of humankind begins with the creation of one family as our shared ancestors. Christianity originally grew from the vision of celebrating our common ancestry across the barriers of language, nation and culture in praise and thanksgiving of our one God, creator of all.
While living in France in the summer of 1963, I learned about the proposal to create a common enconomic network, a “Common Market”, on that continent. The details were still to be worked out and while my informant, a Protestant pastor, referred to serious opposition to the plan he had no doubt such an ambitious change was not only possible but inevitable. Among the fundamental changes he mentioned were abolition or lowering of tariffs and no control over Europeans’ travel across the continent’s borders.
Although we in the U.S. may not be ready to design abolition of our borders, the sudden behavioral changes demanded by the COVID pandemic indicates our general population may be more prepared than our economic and political elite for radical change. The resolution of the multiple global crises through universal dialog and agreement demands change from our unilateral approach that is at least as radical as the opening of borders by all nations.
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** Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations is a 1976 book by Richard Barnet and Ronald Miller which forecast the changes brought about by the cross national operations of U.S. based corporations.
Mayan Cultivation of the Human Heart
The traditional Mayan today lives by the metaphors inherited not only from their forebears’ poetic imaginations. They are also guided by intense and prolonged study of the night sky. The Quiche Mayan “Council Book”, the Popol Vuh, recounts the first dawning of our Sun, the coming of light, following the appearance of the “daybringer” star Venus in the heavens.
But it is not only celestial events and events in the natural world that take on metaphorical depth and meaning in ancestral Mayan thought. Topographic features of a landscape are, in Christian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “charged with the grandeur of God”. A mountain or a lake is not just seen in geological and geographic terms. It is first and foremost a manifestation of the divine. Pilgrimages are made to a mountain or a people’s abandoned city to honor and enter into dialog with the presence of the ancestral spirits and the divine there.
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains where my help comes from; help comes to me from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth” declares Psalm 121 of the Hebrew Bible. As in the ancient Hebrew scriptures, the Lord is referred to with multiple names by the Mayans. As the name Yahweh gains precedence in the oldest Hebrew passages, “Heart of Sky and Heart of Earth” is favored by the Mayan faithful. There is also agreement in the Mayan and Hebrew traditions that the purpose of human beings is to give honor and praise to the divine presence around and within them.
When the “daybringer” Venus ascended from the underworld to the morning sky, the “Council Book” tells us that human beings had gathered “in unity” to await the sun’s first appearance. They celebrated and gave thanks with lighting of copal incense and with feasting on the sacred mountain and they still do so when the diviner’s reading of the calendar directs. Humanity had to be created, out of water and corn meal, to be present and give thanks and praise for the first light of the sun. According to the Popol Vuh, such praise and thanks fulfill our purpose as a species.
For many Mayans today, every night still reenacts the sowing of seed in the earth, the “Underworld”, when the sun sets to be reborn as a sprout and a new day. Dawn takes on another metaphorical meaning in the human context. Conception of a human being occurs with the planting of seed in the womb and a child’s birth and subsequent growth. While there may be other dawnings in human existence, the dawning of the first sun and subsequent suns, of the plant sown and of a human being are the foremost events in human life and given the most attention in Mayan thought and religion.
Thanks for these “dawnings” are expressed to the Heart of Sky and Earth with offerings of incense and blood, usually deer and bird blood today, at a shrine or sacred site or community altar. In the ceremony of building an altar described in the last blog, incense and smudging also help prepare heart and spirit of the participants with purification and clarity. According to the INESIN handout on the altar’s significance to the community, the copal (or alternatively ocote, heart of pine) “harmonizes the integrity of the individuals and group”.
In the altar ceremony, in Mayan prayer and worship in general, there is special attention to the state of each person’s feelings, or “heart”, as well as to the harmony of the community. The building of the altar, the preparation of the setting, accompanies a self diagnosis focused on our heart, “like when we feel our pulse”. The altar experience aims to enable the heart of each individual to be guided in selecting a personal intention on which to focus in coming days. In concluding the ceremony, candles of a particular color (see the last blog for the colors’ symbolism) are chosen and “planted” around the periphery of the altar. The various intentions may then be shared verbally with the group, with another individual or kept to oneself. They may include a better harvest, healthy relationships in a new house, a safe and worthwhile journey.
The revolutionaries of the Zapatista movement found their defense of the Mayan land and human rights in Chiapas on the hearts of their followers. In one of their manifestos, they include a message to foreigners who are likely to ignore or misunderstand this principal tenet of their position, “The ancestral philosophy of the Zapatistas which declares -without shame or fear- that the place of knowledge, truth and speech is in the heart”. It might be said that their attention to the heart of followers and the opposition has enabled the movement to continue to organize villagers and improve education, health and harmony in rural settings under their control today. In so doing they follow the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu who said, “there are many paths to enlightenment. Be sure to take one with a heart.”
The Heart to Heart Spirituality of the Mayans
The practice and significance of a Mayan community creating a sacred altar is described in what follows. It is based on a handout provided visitors to the Institute of Intercultural Studies and Research (INESIN) in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. All quotations are from the handout written by the Institute’s Mayan staff members.
“The altar begins to take shape as the community gathers” the handout tells us. Most of us have read it before making our group’s altar following INESIN staff member jPetul’s instruction. “Each brings his or her offering from the fruits of their gardens or other labor” the handout continues. Our church group from Kansas City bring our desire to experience at a deeper level the Mayan culture and religion of forty percent of the population of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas where the Institute is based.
So we read in preparation that “In the Chiapan Highlands, we often begin by spreading a bed of pine needles as a base that marks the ritual space with color, sound and smell….” Adorning the altar with their “flowers, fruits, seeds and symbols” the participants create “a representation of the whole community”. Candles of a variety colors are placed at the four compass points on the altar.
“The Mayan altar represents the cosmos and the universe” the handout relates. So the colors’ association with the four directions of our world are a crucial element in the symbolism of the altar ceremony. After the Spaniards brought wax and candlemaking to the New World, the candles’ colors were matched to their location in the “vision of the universe as seen by our grandparents”.
The red candle on the altar’s east side “represents sunrise, the birth of life, strength, love and the color of blood.” It also represents “the birth of God”. Incense is burned on the east side where red flowers, red beans and corn and red fruit are also placed. A guardian of this side is dressed in red.
On the West, a black (or purple) candle “represents sunset, darkness, rest and death”. In the Mayan worldview, darkness and night occur when the sun dies, passes toward the underworld, walks in other worlds and finally is “born again as a new, radiant sun.” This passage and its color signifies “the death of God, who dies to give us life”. For us humans the passage enacts whatever we do to nurture life and “leave behind that which destroys life”. In concrete terms for us humans, the passage signifies sowing seeds “when we bury these in the belly of the mother earth”. Purple flowers, black beans, corn and black soil are placed on the westside of the altar where a guardian would be dressed in black.
In Mayan belief, the colors of the altar also reflect our unity as human beings. Red is the color of our blood; black is our hair; white is our teeth and bones and yellow is the color of our skin. The Mayan tradition affirms that we humans share common traits while every person is also different. Our handout further states that the altar’s colors “represent the diversity of languages, thoughts, beliefs and ways of seeing the world of peoples and cultures”. Participation in the creation of an altar invites us to “ respect and appreciate our differentness and our oneness, our uniqueness and our sameness”.
We learned that the passage from red to black, from East to West, is the way of God. The passage from North to South “is the way of humankind”. The white candle of the North represents the “side of the sky, the wisdom of our ancestors, the peace and tranquility of the heart, the search for truth and clarity in thought and feeling”. The North also tests us: “cold rain and wind, the winter freezes, sickness and death also come from the North”. Bones, white beans and corn, white flowers, shells and seeds, a sea conch may be placed on the North side of the altar. The guardian “and protector” is clad in white.
The yellow candle of the South is associated with the feminine, and the direction from which comes good crops and abundant harvests. “Yellow flowers, yellow seeds and corn, yellow fruits, and water” are found on the South side with a guardian dressed in the same color.
A human’s life passage to maturity and fullness is symbolized in the altar’s depiction of movement from North to South. Intersecting with God’s path from East to West, the Center is where “humankind participates in the divine and the divine in the nature of humanity”. The two paths are also seen as the passage for God and for humankind from life to death and death to life.
In the Center is a blue candle, symbol of the “heart of the sky” and the eternal, “that which does not end”. Water is sometimes placed in the Center and someone may be assigned to wear blue and serve as guardian of the sky’s path. The green candle in the Center stands for the earth, for nature, for life that continues. Along with nature, men and women make up “the community of divine creation”. We, like all of nature, are divine “because we have the ‘ch’ulel’, the spirit that comes from the Sacred, ‘Ch’ul’ (or) the divine breath”. Earth or soil may be placed in the Center. Symbolic elements of the Center remind us that “our grandparents taught us that all that exists has ‘ch’ulel’, spirit and heart”.
In the Mayan view, our spirituality is cultivated and grows from the heart. Before each person plants one or more candles on the altar’s periphery, we were instructed to diagnose the present state of our heart. We were to ask ourselves, “how is your heart or how has your heart arrived in this place?” Our handout notes this question is “asked from the heart to the heart, for we as Mayans speak from there.”
In some villages of the Chiapan highlands, residents greet one another by asking “how is your heart seen or what is your heart feeling?” The response can be “my heart is blooming” or “my heart is full of flowers”. Harmony and good will reign when Mayans say they are of one heart or, in one of the leading Mayan languages, when they say “jun o’tonal”.
The significance of incense and smudging in the altar ceremony, the prayers and significance of placing the candles before concluding will be described in the next and final article on the Mayan sacred altar. It too will be based on the handout “Theological Perspectives on the Mayan Altar” written by jPetul and other Mayan workshop leaders of the Institute for Intercultural Studies and Research (INESIN) in San Cristobal de las Casas. A community’s periodic creation of a sacred altar has contributed significantly to the survival of five million Maya for three thousand years as a people and culture.
The fine Institute website in Spanish and English is at http://inesin-mx.org/
Erasing Borders in Chiapas
I’ve just returned from a week long stay in Chiapas, the southernmost State of Mexico. I went with six other adults from my Peace Christian Church (United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ) in Kansas City. We did not go to “help” those who hosted us in any substantial, tangible way. On what can be best described as a “decolonizing mission” pilgrimage, we went to learn about the legacy of Spanish seizure of land, suppression of indigenous culture and the native resistance to the foreign presence and influence in Chiapas. These all remain sources of the multiple conflicts Chiapas has experienced in recent years. In tandem with the oppression of the indigenous people, religious differences have been used by the Mexican State, foreign corporations and the cartels to stir conflict among the indigenous Mayan peoples and others in the State.
One of our partner agencies in global mission today hosted our delegation and introduced us to how they work for inter-religious and inter cultural understanding, reconciliation and peace. The INESIN staff represent and interpret well the diverse cultures of the Mexican State of Chiapas. There is jPetul, a former Catholic priest of Lacandon Mayan origin, who instructed us in the meanings and practice of creating a Mayan sacred altar. His spouse is a former nun led us one morning in moving through the Catholic daily meditation on “the liturgy of the hours”. In his welcome and introduction to the history of INESIN, the director told us he serves too as pastor of a Protestant church in the Chiapas capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez. We worshipped there on the Sunday of our week long stay.
We learned about the sources of the multiple conflicts in Chiapas after the Conquest through three hundred years of Spanish colonial rule from another partner of our denominations’ “Global Ministries”. Sipaz (https://www.sipaz.org) presents workshops designed to free and protect the population from Chiapas’ cycles of violence while other programs aim to educate and encourage advocacy among foreign visitors. The Sipaz director for the past 20 years is a woman who described recent political and economic developments as well as Chiapas’ historical context.
Marina noted that the trafficking in migrants through the State of Chiapas and on to the U.S. is now largely controlled by leading Mexican cartels, formerly primarily engaged in the drug trade. Lax security and immigration enforcement at the Guatemalan border reflects Mexican Government border policy, funded by the U.S., of interdicting undocumented migrants on the roads of Chiapas. The immigration attorney among our pilgrims had prior to our trip discovered that the Guatemalan State and one of the country’s leading banks have profited from their fellow citizens’ migration. Failure to repay loans for the U.S. journey results in loss of a Guatemalan migrant’s land.
Another grim aspect of the situation is the targeting of older children and youth in recruitment by the cartels and local militias. We observed the third of our denominations’ partner agencies in San Cristobal working with poor children, of Mayan families, who are encouraged and trained by Melel Xojobal (“true light” in the Tzotzil Mayan language) to value their earning potential outside the cartels’ grip and to defend their human rights. Melel Xojobal (https://www.melelxojobal.org.mx/ ) meets and organizes groups of children at the markets. A recent series of protests by Melel children won expansion of bathroom facilities in the City’s largest markets.
With a crammed schedule on little sleep, I took a break mid-week and missed the trip to the Guatemalan border with stops at two Precolumbian centers of Mayan culture and religion. The recently excavated ruins were built and flourished during what some scholars refer to as the “Dark Ages” in Europe. Between the third and tenth centuries A.D. the Mayans made their most significant contributions to the advance of our species. Viewing the vestiges of the Mayan legacy in the early 1500’s, and judging them as “pagan”, the Spanish missionaries and soldiers destroyed all they could identify as Mayan. Of the hundreds of books written on scrolls of bark by Mayan scribes, only three remain to instruct us on Mayan civilization.
Oppression of the Mayans under Spanish colonialism and decades of discrimination have led to speculation, even at present, that the magnificent Mayan temples, observatories and stone sculptures were created by members of Atlantis’ lost continent or another fabled people. Sadly there are Mexicans who still hold, along with their neighbors in the U.S., demeaning views of the indigenous people of their country. Anyone today who spends time in Yucatan or Chiapas or one of the four Central American nations inhabited by Mayan peoples today cannot question the resemblance of the figures depicted on the ancient sculptures and the indigenous people around them.
After visit of a great Mayan city of the past like Palenque in Chiapas, one is moved to think that the capacity of over 5 million Mayans to have survived centuries of exploitation and genocidal attack is in itself a remarkable achievement. The leading U.S. scholar of Mayan history and culture, Michael Coe, attributes the endurance of the Mayan peoples to three factors. In the ninth edition of his book The Maya he writes,
“What has kept the Maya people culturally and even phsically viable is their hold on the land (and that land on them), a devotion to their community and an all-pervading and meaningful belief system.” Coe then comments, “It is small wonder that their oppressors have concentrated on these three areas in incessant attempts to exploit them as a politically helpless labor force.”
I had in a 1980 journey through Chiapas been able to spend a day at Palenque which is touted by many visitors as the most dramatic and beautiful of the Mayan centers revealed to date. Our hosts advised against a visit as there is now a relatively insecure and substandard 200 km. plus route from San Cristobal to Palenque. Comparable in my mind to the majesty and achievement represented by the French cathedrals of Mont St. Michel and Chartres, an experience of Palenque insists that we revisit our stereotypes of the Mexican people and the Mayans of Mexico in particular. After taking in Palenque one cannot fail to be amazed and moved that the waiter serving you dinner or the woman cleaning your room comes from an ancestry that created such monumental beauty.
Peace Warrior and Prophet A.J. Muste
Martin Luther King, Jr. commented to Nat Hentoff in the mid-1960’s, “I would say unequivocally that the emphasis on non violent direct action in the civil rights movement is due more to A.J. (Muste) than anyone else in the country.” During the early years of the movement, A.J. Muste as President of the Fellowship of Reconciliation hired the principal organizers of the “freedom rides” on buses in the south. Among them were Bayard Rustin, leader of the 1963 March on Washington, James Farmer founder of CORE and George Houser, founder of the American Committee on Africa.
I wrote several blog posts in 2020 on the pioneer U.S. organizer of non-violent protest A.J. Muste. Following the police killing of George Floyd that year, the human right to demonstrate publicly against the actions of government and powerful institutions was exercised repeatedly as the most effective counter force to policies of the outgoing Trump administration. Civil disobedience and non-violent resistance had at the time already proliferated with the spread of authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Although the life and work of Rev. A.J. Muste has yet to be celebrated in a comprehensive biography, I want to share news of four videos made recently focusing on the leading U.S. revolutionary non-violent resister of the 20th century. The videos total over 6 hours recounting the progression of Muste’s life from his pacifist opposition to WW I to Trotskyite labor organizer, his return to the church and subsequent leadership in civil rights and anti war movements.
The videos’ interviews with trainers and organizers of non violent resistance such as civil rights leader Rev. James Lawson and founder and head of the War Resisters League David McReynolds establish Muste as having introduced non violent theory and practice to key U.S. protest organizers in the last century. In his eighties he continued to organize or serve as lead consultant for anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and draft resistance public actions. His role in shaping the civil rights’ struggle’s reliance on non violent civil disobedience is emphasized by several of the interviewees.
All four videos were made by David Schock, former English professor at Hope College in Michigan, Muste’s alma mater, in collaboration with Dr. Kathleen Verduin also of Hope College. Here is the link to an excerpt, the final minutes of the second video “The No. 1 U.S. Pacifist”, which concludes with Muste’s dream of a peacemaking U.S. foreign policy:
The four complete videos can be accessed on the web site A.J. Muste: Radical for Peace. Also on the site is a request to donate to help cover the video project’s costs covered by the two creators of the film.
In another tribute to Muste’s prominence as the leading opponent of the U.S. war machine and foreign interventions, Professor Noam Chomsky in 1967 wrote at length about the recently deceased Muste’s contributions in the Sidney Lens/Muste Liberation magazine. It is at:
A Shared Risk
The clock read 2:46 on March 11, 2011 when the quake shook Japan’s biggest island. It was the most severe jolting ever experienced on the islands of earthquake-prone Japan. Some registered the impact as over 9 on their scales.
The teachers and students of Okawa Elementary School 400 kms. north of Tokyo knew this was not like former earthquake And they knew to duck under their desks as they had been instructed to do first. They then had to evacuate the school buildings and head out to the expansive playground whose new shoots of grass had just begun appearing. What the occupants of the buildings did not then know was that the real danger was yet to come.
Less than 4 kms. away the Pacific Ocean seethed in turmoil as though angered by the quake’s insolence. A massive wave was gathering force for a pounding of the land. The river close to the school fled in a mad rush inland from its estuary. Students and teachers gathered closer as they listened intently to the playground’s speaker amplifying the announcement that a tsunami was preparing to strike the area.
Although the word “tsunami” is derived from the Japanese language and many “tidal” or “harbor” waves have repeatedly struck modern Japan, school personnel and officials of Okawa’s prefecture were not prepared for the 2011 disaster. The evacuation measures following a quake were familiar and unambiguous. What to do to escape a tsunami of such size and power was yet to be decided.
With no directive coming from the radio, the teachers began a frantic discussion. It was clear they were divided. Bordering the school grounds stood a hill rising in a steady incline over 1000 feet. Even the school’s smaller students had partially climbed it. They had planted and harvested mushrooms there and upper level students enjoyed running or ambling up the hill. When teachers rejected a climb as the best escape route, at least one sixth grader voiced his disagreement. The teachers feared multiple injuries among younger students sliding on the light snow covering the hill.
No one on the playground knew they had 51 minutes between the quake’s first jolts and the wave’s appearance. Or that it would rise above them 30 meters high one minute after the loudspeaker warning. When the river suddenly overflowed its banks and roared as its water surged inland, a handful of sixth graders fled the playground. Four of them along with one teacher survived when the river water began slamming the playground and school buildings. 34 students and 5 teachers perished. When the earthquake occurred, most of the student body had already gone home. The victims were preparing to board the last bus whose driver was also killed. There were over 200 fatalities in the houses near the school.
The tsunami terror left the newly organized Church World Service Japan with a valuable lesson. At a coastal elementary school in a Sendai suburb there were no fatalities. There, immediately following the shock of the quake, students and teachers followed the school stairs to the roof. They witnessed and heard around them the ghastly destruction. But there were no injuries. For Church World Service it was as though the disaster had scrawled a message to guide its future. Disaster Risk Reduction would be their emphasis in preparedness work across Asia.
A variety of measures for risk reduction have been introduced by CWSJ in multiple countries of Asia. Working through local partner non-profits Church World Service Japan implements Disaster Risk Reduction projects in Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and elsewhere. In most instances, the locale’s evacuation planning is first assessed. Some areas of DRR demanding specialization in expensive technology, such as radiation control measures, are addressed in international conferences CWSJ has helped organize.
That the twelve year old NGO has assumed a leadership in the DRR field is more evidence that government and other NGO’s have been slow to respond to the need. Although 14 countries in Asia experienced over 227,000 fatalities from the 2004 tsunami centered on Indonesia, Japan appears to be setting the standards across Asia in earthquake and tsunami preparedness. There are two major earthquake fault lines on the main island, with one running vertically through Tokyo.
ANOTHER SCHOOL’S STORY
Climbing the Mountain in Japan
There continues to be surveys and accounts of the decline in attendance and affiliation with churches in the U.S. Although often characterized as evidence of the increasing secularization of the society, I believe this mischaracterizes what is really happening. At the very least, more consideration needs to be given to the trend among persons under the age of 35-40 to adopt practices of meditation and even faith in a power beyond our self from a buffet of beliefs. It is long past time to reject the label secular for any non-Christian or non-Church organized belief or form of meditation.
I am certain that for a majority of U.S. Christians the ten days I just spent in Japan were devoted to a “secular” cause. In accepting the privilege of meeting with the staff of Church World Service Japan for the second time, the first being pre-pandemic in 2018, there was no intention to gain adherents or bolster the churches there. My aim and that of the CWS Japan invitation was for me to assist in developing a public fund raising and outreach strategy for the humanitarian aid agency in a land where 98% of the population is non-Christian. Only one of the six full time staff members, Ms. Yukiko Maki, is Christian and active in the United Church of Japan. Her portfolio as Director of Programs includes cultivating the relationship with the Christian international aid network of the World Council of Churches’ ACT Alliance.
Since its creation in 2011 to help respond to the devastation of the massive earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, CWS Japan has grown significantly in its capacity and programs. Its General Secretary Takeshi Komino is now a leading voice in Japan and across Asia in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction. In a few years Mr. Komino has led other chief executives in Japan’s non profit sector in setting standards of accountability and engaging in partnerships with the Japanese Government and corporations.
So were my preparations and efforts to help further the presence and public support of CWS Japan to be considered as “secular” in nature? Only if we define religious, as do many U.S. Christians and analysts of social trends, as confined to activity advocating or espousing belief in Jesus Christ.
In fact, in my own tradition of the Christian faith, proselytism has for decades been superseded by another aim of “mission” in other lands. The founding of indigenous-governed churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America has made redundant and obsolete mission and “missionaries” primarily focused on conversion. The joint Global Ministries office of the United Church of Christ and Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the U.S. now recruit their partisans to “accompany” Christians and non-Christians in tasks which enhance and protect lives and the land where they are invited to do so.
One may well respond to this “call” to “accompanimiento”, as the Latin American origin of this approach to mission describes it, as a pilgrimage with people abroad and our Creator to restore and “make all things new”. This is, however, a significant historic departure from the traditional U.S. Christians’ view of “mission” in other countries. The Global Ministries avoidance of referring to their personnel deployed overseas as “missionaries” in favor of the term “Mission Co-Worker” grows out of the dramatic changes in the 20th century world. The struggles for independent nation status and self reliance resulting in the decolonization of the Euro-American colonies found support among progressive and aware U.S. Christians and their church denominations.
The new outlook on world mission that emerged in the more contemporary church bodies demanded a wholly different set of skills of their mission “co workers” in other countries. Gone was the emphasis on sending “authoritative” voices on the scriptures and preachers of “the Word” to be replaced by mutual learning, listening, affirmation and “accompanimiento”. To build relationship in an effective partnership with a colleague or colleagues in the foreign setting, one first had to devote oneself to learning about the local context. Never appropriate or needed was someone who, with little listening or learning in the local context, presumed to offer “expert” advice on any activity or program.
My rewards in taking such a posture and approach flow from the sense of solidarity and mutual affirmation I have experienced. Rather than a tally of converts I celebrate the beginning and the growth of relationships with those who fulfill the purpose of their lives with life-enhancing, loving works. Following my recent trip, I am grateful for the meeting of new CWS Japan staff and for the deepening of my relationship with those staff I interacted with in 2018. Vastly different but equally fulfilling have been the relationships enabled by mission assignments in Congo (1969-71 and 2010), Mexico (2012-2015), and with Church World Service US donors in Kenya (periodic visits 2003-2011).
A primary difference in my recent experience in Japan has been the strengthening of my conviction that there are many paths up the mountain of faith. Christians are by no means alone in their life work of seeking and paying homage to the hope, peace, joy and love we celebrate at Christmas as Jesus’ offering to all humankind. During this latest Japan visit, I found new strength and assurance from those of other faith traditions and no faith at all in my own trek up the mountain of faith. As we join persons taking a different path we can all know the solidarity and love of Christmas every day as we climb to the mountaintop.
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Visit the CWS Japan English website at https://www.cwsjapan.org/english/. Make a monthly or one time donation while there!
Erasing Borders 