by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

Harriet Denison

Marie Taylor

Ann Zawaski

A service given October 22, 2006

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Reading

“They Have Threatened Us with Resurrection” by Julia Esquivel

There is something here within us

which doesn’t let us sleep, which doesn’t let us rest,

which doesn’t stop the pounding deep inside.

It is the silent, warm weeping of women without their husbands.

It is the sad gaze of the children fixed there beyond memory . . .

What keeps us from sleeping

is that they have threatened us with resurrection!

Because at each nightfall

though exhausted from the endless inventory

of killings for years,

we continue to love life,

and do not accept their death!

In this marathon of hope

there are always others to relieve us

in bearing the courage necessary . . .

Accompany us then on this vigil

and you will know what it is to dream!

You will then know how marvelous it is

to live threatened with resurrection!

To live while dying

and to already know oneself resurrected!

Marilyn Sewell

Guatemala is a land of great beauty—the land itself and the brilliant colors that you see everywhere, in the architecture, in the hand-woven fabrics—and the people have a warmth and a dignity that is hard to put into words.  Guatemala is also a land of intrigue and mystery and danger, where there is no rule of law to speak of, and where “hidden powers” move in mysterious ways to get what they want.

I went there for the first time the summer before last on a human rights delegation with Charlie Clements, the head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC)—which is the human rights arm of our movement.  The UUSC has had relationships with various human rights groups in Guatemala for many years, and we continue to go there, to show our support in various ways.  I came back changed and uplifted.  It was hard to hear the stories I heard in Guatemala, and it was even harder to know that our country had supported the government that perpetrated the over 600 massacres that took place there, mainly in the 1980s, but I did not return feeling sad and bereft—rather, I returned full of admiration for the people I met and the work they were doing for human rights, some risking their lives to do this work.  Being there inspired me—I mean, if they can do their work under the conditions of sacrifice and danger they face, I should be able to do my little thing here in my relatively safe corner of the world.

So when I returned, I wanted to take a group from our church back to Guatemala, which I did this past summer, again with Charlie Clements and the UUSC.  I wanted to do this to support our Guatemalan brothers and sisters, yes, but more important, I wanted some people from our congregation to experience the spiritual growth that this trip would bring them.  Ten of us went, and four members of the group are here this morning to participate in the service—Helena Lee, to assist me, and three others to tell their stories:  Marie Taylor, Ann Zawaski, and Harriet Denison.

You may not be able to go to Guatemala, but you can support the organization that sends groups to Guatemala—and to other places in the world where human rights are being violated.  Last year Charlie led a delegation to Chad, which is as close as he could get to Darfur.  I know that he’s very much concerned about the genocide in Darfur.  I want to encourage all of you to become members and support the UUSC, the human rights arm of our movement.

So now let us begin, with the sharing of these moving stories.

STORIES

Sometimes we wonder—do our actions ever bear fruit?  Do these trips, these marches, these letters, these petitions—do they even matter?  Yes, they do.  As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “The arc of the universe bends slowly, but it bends towards justice.”  While we were in Guatemala, we were overjoyed to read in the newspaper Prensa Libre that twenty U.S. congressional representatives—including our own Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio—had asked the U.S. Department of Justice for its total cooperation in bringing to justice eight military and civil leaders accused of genocide and terrorism in Guatemala.  The list included the notorious Rios Mont, who was responsible for more of the massacres than anyone else.  The crimes they were charged with included torture, terrorism, and genocide.  The arrest order was given by Judge Pedraz of Spain—and by virtue of this order, the congress persons requested that the assets of the accused held in the U.S. be seized.

Charlie Clements commented when he saw the article:  he said, “This article could not have been printed last year at this time—this is how much the climate has changed—last year the newspaper office would have been burned down.” 

The truth has power.  These people, who have so little, have their truth, and they stand in that truth, and their power is growing from that.  It is not the power that comes from the end of a gun—it is the power of justice, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, and it is this spiritual grounding on which they stand and on which we, too, can stand.  We need to speak our truth, in love, and know that the arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice.

Harriet Denison

We traveled to Rabinal to meet Juan Manuel Geronimo, President of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, a UUSC partner. The organization was formed to help Mayan victims of the massacres and displacements pursue justice through the courts.

Charlie Clements has known Juan Manuel for a long time and prepared us at breakfast for our meeting. We learned that after 25 years of unrelenting work in a hostile environment, Juan Manuel and his associates have recently been winning human rights cases in international courts.

With this introduction, I expected a man larger than life, a man of righteous power. He was late and we were preparing to leave when an unassuming stocky man approached us   followed by a woman and girl in colorful indigenous clothing. His face lit up when he spotted Charlie and they grabbed each other in a happy embrace. He introduced us to his ten-year-old daughter, his youngest, and his wife, another survivor of the violence.

We pulled benches together in the pink courtyard of our motel and settled down under the flapping bed sheets that were drying overhead. Charlie gave a short introduction and Juan Manuel told us his story.

During the height of the violence, he and another man had been warned that they were targets of the government militia. They had fled for safety to the nearby hills. Two days later, they watched the civil patrol and militia surround their village. As the people yelled warnings to each other and ran for their lives, the rifles barked. Juan Manuel watched as his wife, his four children, 17 other family members and their neighbors fell in bloody heaps.

Juan Manuel wiped his wet cheek with a calloused finger.

I was very moved by his story, yet I saw no anger or bitterness in his rugged face.

As we rose to leave, someone asked if it would be alright to take a photo of the three of them. Juan Manuel seemed pleased at the request. When the cameras came up, he said, “Wait.” He drew his daughter from behind and placed her in the center of the family portrait and leaned toward his wife. Then he looked into the cameras with a proud smile. Ready.

During those tragic years, the militia destroyed the indigenous communities by kidnapping village men and giving them a cruel choice: kill who we say or we kill you. Many refused. The ones who said yes, complied, but the soldiers were always watching.

Some of the civil patrol took advantage of their new power to settle old grievances but others gave timely warnings that saved lives.

Soon, members of the civil patrol will be held accountable for their actions during those violent years. Many still live in their villages and the compassion of individuals like Juan Manuel demonstrates their drive to rebuild their communities. Vengeance has no place in the plan. The survivors are pressing the government to consider the coercion on the men who were forced to make that horrible choice to live.

That is just. And that will bring peace.

What I brought home with me is something I’ve heard for years but never really understood. Now I feel, deep in my heart, what I learned anew from a gentle man with a tragic past.

If you want peace, work for justice.

Marie Taylor

The opportunity to travel to Guatemala with Marilyn and Charlie Clements, president of the UUSC, resonated with me on a number of levels: it would expand my understanding of another culture, strengthen my growing spirituality through this church, and honor my late step father, Paul Tanner.

Paul was, among other things, an anthropologist and activist who worked on social justice issues during my youth.  Paul died last November, and shortly before his death he gave me a check for $2,000. I was determined to do something with that money that would honor his memory, and I feel certain that he would applaud both the purpose of the delegation and his daughter’s participation in it.

During our time in Guatemala, daily I encountered courageous individuals working for the greater good of their communities. The Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, a UUSC partner, houses many such people. The workers are exhuming the mass graves of those killed during the armed conflict. The vast majority of those killed were members of Guatemala’s Mayan communities, and these are the communities who are now requesting the services of, and who are thus empowered by, the Foundation.  The Foundation’s purpose is two fold: to honor the dead with a proper Mayan burial, and to pave the way for future legal action. 

The quiet, careful work in this building, done by archaeologists and social anthropologists, is remarkable. Freddy Peccerelli, the Foundation director, explained the daunting task ahead of them – over 200,000 known bodies to exhume at a rate of 6,000 per year, creates work for this office for 30 years.

We observed some of the work happening in the converted patio of the former residence.  The lab workers were handling the bone and clothing with a quiet respect.  The torn, dirty pants of a campesino laid out on a table.  Across the room were the remains of a young girl, her shoes neatly tucked away.  At small tables, workers were hunched over bone fragments and dirt, carefully pulling out recognizable pieces with tweezers.

It is the boxes, however, that will stay with me.  The boxes line the hallways and are tucked away in every unused crevice. They are stacked floor to ceiling, and they each contain the bones and personal effects of someone killed by their government. The boxes are identical except the lettering and indexing written on their sides—Plan de Sanchez, Rabinal, Rio Negro . . . all sites of massacres.  

As we moved from room to room, through the narrow hallways, I gently brushed my fingertips across as many boxes as possible, looking at the information printed on them.  I inhaled the boxes, taking in the scent of the dirt and bone. I gazed at them, wanting more information—tears rolling down my cheeks as I thought about the unlived lives.  Who was this person?  What were her goals?  Was he happy in life? What could this person have accomplished had life continued?  So much human potential, discarded for economic and political expediency.

In many ways during the conflict, the government got what it wanted—land for dams, more land for the wealthy ruling class, and the silencing of the rural community leaders. But this also led to a quiet revolution of the indigenous population.  The mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers in those boxes have quietly demanded that more be done, and that message has been heard.  It is the survivors of these massacres who are pressing for issues of justice, education, land reparations and financial compensation for their communities.  They do this at great personal cost, as their lives are regularly threatened. The people we encountered have inherited the strength of those who lie in the boxes. The memories of the dead and the knowledge that they are pursuing the cause of right sustain them in their daily work.  

The last moments I had with my Daddy Paul reminded me of the strength of character and stamina needed to pursue these kinds of causes. It is the people in the boxes that are forcing me to re-examine my place in the world, my culpability in what occurs in it. The boxes remind me that apathy is not an option.  We must all seek out ways to make a difference in the larger world. 

Many of the people we met in Guatemala asked us to share their stories, to make sure the world knows of their struggle and their strength.  Because of this delegation, there are now ten more people in Portland who can do that. And after today, hundreds more.

Ann Zawaski

I want to share with you our visit with Miguel Angel Albizures.  Miguel Angel is a journalist and the director of CALDH, the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights—a former UUSC partner, now financially stable.

We arrived at CALDH on a drizzly Monday morning. The heavy windowless door was locked. We rang the bell and waited for several minutes. Finally, the door creaked open. We identified ourselves to a cautious worker who then led us past the thick bulletproof glass that protects the workers inside, who still labor under threats to their lives.   

Once inside a young woman led us on a tour of the noisy offices that are filled to overflowing with energetic staff and piles of boxes and stacks of papers. Miguel Angel appeared, tall and dignified. He greeted us with a warm smile and showed us to a meeting room where we settled in around a large table. Charlie asked Miguel Angel to tell us his personal story, but he preferred to speak passionately of the work being done by CALDH.

He explained to us that the poverty rate of 56 percent leads to emigration, and how that exodus will only increase with the recent signing of the CAFTA agreement. Guatemala has a youth gang problem, the result of the breakup of families due in part to economic injustice. Today some of these youth are being abducted and murdered by vigilante groups in what is called social cleansing—frighteningly similar to past atrocities. An increasing number of women are being murdered or disappeared, simply for being women; a new term has been coined for this: feminicide.  Many Mayans work in mining or on the large fincas, where violence and slave-like conditions are the norm. These concerns, along with women’s rights and judicial reform, are the focus of the work of CALDH.

Miguel Angel lost a good friend, a Jesuit priest who taught children to read and write. He was accused of being a Communist and was executed, Miguel told us with sadness.   Miguel Angel organized workers on the fincas and became a national leader in the trade union movement, putting him at risk like some two hundred leaders who were assassinated in only two years. After many narrow escapes, Miguel Angel fled for his life and lived in exile in Mexico where he continued his human rights work, forming an association for families of the disappeared.

As I listened to Miguel speak, I was touched by his perseverance, humility, and soft-spoken grace. When asked, “How can you go on in the face of all these dangers?” he answered resolutely, “You can leave and die crossing the border or you can stay and fight for justice.”  He is sustained by the search for democracy and said, “My actions come not from hate or vengeance, but to find the truth and hold those accountable for what they’ve done.”

Miguel Angel’s story inspires me to look within. I notice my anger. How can I find a way to use that? Because of this journey, I am compelled to step away from my comfort zone and take action instead of only having a reaction. There is work to be done. In Guatemala, I began to truly understand that small acts lead to a greater good. I witnessed the work of our partners and pray that their modeling continues to guide me on my spiritual path.

PRAYER

Will you join me in prayer.

Spirit of life –

Thank you for this moment, this in breath, this out breath,

this beloved community.

Thank you for the life of Marvin; may his family feel love and support at this time.

Thank you for all who show us the compassion, courage, and tireless work toward peace and justice.

And, especially, thank you for the spiritual inspiration from our Guatemalan sisters and brothers on whose lives we focus today.

Amen.

BENEDICTION

Go now, and let it be said of you, that you witness to the truth that you know—and let it be said of us as a faith community, that we ever and always stand on the side of love.

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Copyright 2006, First Unitarian Church.  All rights reserved.