Paz Mucha Paz

Haiti: What Not To Do

2010-03-02T17:41:00.006-06:00

Baraderes.

I returned early yesterday morning (about 3 am) after a grueling day of travel. There was severe flooding in the South parts of Haiti on Saturday as a result of torrential rains. Baraderes was deluged and people fled for the mountains. When we drove out of Les Cayes early Sunday morning we could see the devastation: the road was passable but still full of mud and rocks in places, crops were destroyed, trees were down, and animals were dead. News reports said that some people were also killed. Then just after we finished driving through the flood-ravaged areas we got into the earthquake-ravaged areas.

Six weeks after the eathquake, many people are living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets.

A lot of people ask me why Haiti is so poor. There are no easy answers, and the history is complicated, but the question is worth reflecting on, especially now that we see that Chile has suffered an earthquake of a greater magnitude than Haiti's but with far fewer deaths, and with a greater ability to recover. What follows is my reflection on one aspect of Haiti's poverty: the role of charitable aid.

In the last 25 years or so, numerous international aid organizations, churches, and governments have sent vast amounts of aid to Haiti. However they have mostly been reluctant to funnel that money through the Haitian government. As a result, aid institutions operate mostly outside of the government, and this has led to a weak underfunded government that does not have the resources or capacity to build the infrastructure that Haiti needs. In many other countries, U.S. development assistance is funneled through governments.

I know that there are a lot of people reading this who do not care too much for government (and truthfully i think that i am one of them) but we need governments for some things, including roads, electricity, water treatment, public health concerns, enforcement of building codes, protection from the greed, violence and stupidity of others, etc.

The problem with outside aid institutions, whether governmental or non-governmental, is that they tend to have their own agendas, and those agendas are often what is best for the sending countries or institutions. For example, the USAID project I mentioned in my last post was bad for small farmers all over the world, but it was good for the United States, because it brought coffee prices way down.

Another problem with aid institutions is that they come and then they go. An example of that is the hospital located about an hour and a half from Baraderes. It was run by a U.S. Baptist group, but then about a year or so ago they pulled out. Now the hospital is there but barely functions. It was the only hospital in the area.

In general, I have lost all confidence in charitable aid as any kind of solution. It often is based on the agenda of the giver, rather than the receiver. It fosters a dependency that over time becomes hard to overcome, because people come to believe that their only recourse is getting things from others. This kind of mentality leads to corruption. Charity also does not recognize the human dignity of the receiver, because human dignity requires us to be able to take care of ourselves: to enjoy the fruits of our own labor, to pay for our own school fees and health care, to provide food, shelter and clothing for our families, and to form communities that develop the structures that sustain life.

What makes sense to me are capacity-building and income-producing projects that are led by and benefit the communities they are in, and the evidence for this would be that the comunities start to be able to take care of themselves. Income-producing projects benefit everyone, because if one group of people has more money, they then spend it at the local stores, and the local schools, and the local clinic. Then the doctors and nurses and teachers and shop-owners get paid, and then they spend their money...etc. What is required by outside organizations in this case is to invest in the income-producing projects of the community and to help them with capacity-building so that they are able to sustain those projects, and then to pull out when the community does not need them any more.

Capacity-building is a term that encompasses training and formation and the creating of structures that can sustain a project.

Is charity ever the answer? For example, what about supporting schools? I think this is a really hard question. I asked myself this question when I was responsible for the St. John the Baptist (SJB) sister parish project, which sustains a lot of schools. The secondary school we built in Baraderes is one of the best schools in the country, and the whole community is proud of it. But at the end I asked myself what we had accomplished. If SJB pulled out, that school would close. What if SJB got a new pastor, or the demographics changed and the parish could no longer sustain the project? We need the community to be able to sustain its own school (and orphanage, medical clinic, and nutrition programs). In other words, it does not make sense to build programs that over the long term communities cannot pay for by themselves.

But then you end up in going in circles, because you need educated people for successful income-producing projects, and you also need training and formation for those who lack formal education. I think the answer has to be that you need both together, and not to support a school without working with the community on how they will sustain it in the long run. Education, training, and income-producing projects go together.

In the U.S., public schools get paid for by taxes, and private schools get paid for by fees and endowments. Taxes, fees, and endowments all come from people who have income. It feels good to outside donors to build something for someone else, but it does not help the community if they cannot sustain it themselves.

The problem is that it is not so hard to find people willing to start up or support charitable aid projects, including schools (or orphanages, or feeding programs, or homeless shelters), but really hard to find a genuine community-led income-producing project that benefits the producers and the community they are in, as opposed to one that primarily benefits some multinational corporation and its stockholders in developed countries. Just Haiti is a lot of work and it will take a real investment in time and money before the growers are independent. But we are working for that day.

But now the conversation gets even more complicated. Those multinational corporations and their stockholders are providing the income that enables the high standard of living in developed countries. One of the ways that they do that is to pay producers and laborers in underdeveloped countries wages that do not provide a sustainable living. In other words, they keep them poor. So actually those income-producing projects that benefit producers in underdeveloped countries that we are talking about are not in the interest of wealthy people in developed countries if they want to maintain their current standard of living.

Hmmm. So now we begin to understand why there is so much more charity than justice. Charity keeps people poor and dependent, and poverty makes people willing to accept substandard wages, and then they take more charity, and the cycle continues. And because of Haiti’s history (which I have not gone into) Haiti has been on the receiving end of charity in the extreme. As such, Haiti becomes a case study in what not to do.

My deep frustration (to the point of sarcasm) with this lies in the fact that so many of the charities providing aid are church-based, including the vast network of sister parishes in Haiti. The people involved usually do not understand the difference between charity and justice, and have not been educated to understand the difference or how it connects to their faith. Many church people want to be heroes, swooping into Haiti to save the day. I think that this feeling is fine and normal, but needs to be channeled in a more productive way.

Many people, including church people, are suspicious of income-producing projects as somehow threatening to our capitalist culture. And it is true: if everyone did as i am suggesting, the incomes of those who profit from the labor of others would go down, or prices would go up (which amounts to the same thing). This is what gets people really upset: my view is that would be fine. People in the U.S. are not accustomed to paying the full value of the goods they consume, because they get them from cheap labor that does not sustain life. And just how many houses and cars do people need?

Catastrophes are the one time that institutional charity makes sense to me. People need help to pick up the pieces (and to pay school fees) after everything has been destroyed. But it should not end there, and ususally it does. And there is something seriously wrong with our system of disaster relief: why are there so many relief workers driving around in new jeeps, while Haitians are still living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets?

Baraderes and Coffee

2010-02-25T17:23:00.004-06:00

Celebrating the bank account with a beer and a lobster dinner on the beach.

Baraderes, a town located in the southern part of Haiti, received 10,000 refugees from Port-au-Prince, about a 25% increase in population. The schools and medical clinic have been inundated, and many families are housing extra people. We were treking through the mountains visiting coffee fields and stopped at a home that was taking care of two sick babies from Port-au-Prince. The main problem there is food. Baraderes has no food security in normal times...people often do not eat regular meals. The additional people have turned it into a crisis for some families.

Sr. Denise, the superior of the local community of Catholic sisters, was in Port-au-Prince during the earthquake. Hers is an indigenous Haitian congregation, called the Little Sisters of St. Teresa of the Child Jesus. Like many survivors of trauma, she wanted to talk about it. She was on the third floor of the convent when the house came down. She was buried, but survived because she was on the top floor and not the bottom floor. One of their employees came looking later to see if there was anybody in the rubble, and they found her and got her out. She emerged with her prayer book and the clothes on her back, and that was all she had for more than a week. Later some people went to the rubble to dig out her personal items, and they found most of it. I wonder if many of the stories about looting we saw on the news were really just people trying to retrieve their own stuff.

Their congregation's school collapsed, and they lost many students and four nuns. Six of the students from that school have been moved to Baraderes. They are also moving their entire noviate to Baraderes. The Catholic seminary in Port-au-Prince collapsed, and they moved four students to the school in Baraderes. This is happening all over the country..everybody has to figure out how to absorb more people.

And now on to my favorite topic: coffee! I had some great meetings with the coffee growers' association (called KDB) and feel optimistic about what is happening there. I brought them their first check of profits from coffee sales. The way the project works is that they get a fair trade price for their coffee, and then after taking out expenses from the sale of it, they also receive the profits. The profit they made was higher than the original price we paid for the coffee, and the origial price was much higher than market price. It just goes to show that somebody is making a lot of money in the coffee business, and it is not the growers.

I went with them to open their bank account, where they decided that three people should be signatories, and at least two have to sign before money could be removed. They were so proud...it is the first time for any of them that they have money to open an account!

The growers are working to expand the association to include more people. During a meeting, one of the growers said to the people that we are not only just growing coffee in this project: we are regenerating the coffee business in Baraderes. Until the mid-1980s, coffee was the main industry in Baraderes. It was destroyed when the coffee market crashed all over the world. It is a long story about why it collapsed, but basically it was because of an ill-conceived USAID project that funded large plantations of poor quality coffee in Vietnam and Brazil, thereby lowering the prices all over the world and thus putting small farmers out of business and exascerbating poverty in some of the poorest places in the world, including Haiti. We are regenerating the coffee industry in Baraderes, but in a way that benefits small producers, and not planatation owners or large multinational coffee companies.

Another person talked about how the association was not just about coffee: it is also about forming community and becoming like family for each other. With their profits, one thing they have done is to create a fund that will provide money for health care if people get sick, and they are also talking about ways to provide an advance to growers on their coffee sales so that they can pay their childrens' school fees. They are also using part of their money to provide food to needy families after the earthquake (Just Haiti is also helping with that). I am proud to be a part of this, and I know that many of you are supporters in one way or another, and you should all be proud, too.

Haiti Earthquake

2010-02-20T15:45:00.004-06:00

I arrived in Haiti without incident, but there was definitely something more emotional than usual about the flight. Mine was one of the first commercial flights. Usually planes to Haiti are filled with U.S. church people on one kind of mission or another (it seems like everyone and their cousin has some kind of project in Haiti, and that was before the earthquake), and you can tell which ones they are because they often wear matching hats or t-shirts...and sometimes great big crosses. There was one such group this time, but there were also groups with t-shirts that said things like "hazmat team," and there was one obvious medical team as well. The one church group had matching combat vests, and i saw one of them reading a manual entitled "hostage survival." I think they have been watching too many sensationalistic news reports. And you can imagine that i have some choice words to say about equating church ministry with combat.

But the vast majority of passengers were Haitians visiting their relatives, all of them carrying stuff. Many people had tents and sleeping bags as their hand luggage...maybe for themselves but more likely for relatives who are still sleeping outside. People were also carrying bags of toiletry items...probably because their checked bag was overweight, and so they had to take it out and carry it on (i did the same thing...i had 150 pounds of luggage and had to stuff things into my carry-on while at the check-in counter so they wouldn't charge another 100 bucks for being overweight). Several people were carrying on giant teddy bears. That was what nearly moved me to tears.

As we were landing in Port-au Prince I could see from the window vast tent cities. The nicer ones were relief workers, complete with supplies piled high. When we were driving through Port-au-Prince, i could see that some of the Haitian tent cities had matching canvas tents which were obviously donated by some agency or another. But many of them were tents made of any kind of thing: tin, plastic, cardboard, sheets...whatever. They were packed into places where the rubble had been cleared. There was plenty of substandard housing like this in Port-au-Prince before (something that many relief workers likely do not know) but now it has multiplied and is located in places where it never was before. And they are all suffering from lack of sanitary facilities, clean water, or food.

You have all seen pictures of the devastation, so there is no need to repeat it here. Basically, there are piles of rubble everywhere.

I am in Les Cayes now and leave for Baraderes tomorrow. I am staying with my friend Pascal, who is also housing a group of medical relief workers from Mexico. I had an interesting discussion with them this morning. They were telling me about their work, which involves treating amputees and all kinds of injuries from the earthquake. Some people were lucky enough to make their way to Les Cayes for treatment, and they are still arriving. Many of them have received no medical treatment whatsoever since the earthquake. They say the hospitals here are saturated.

They told me the story of one man who was trapped under the rubble and he cut off his own arm to escape. He arrived at the hospital some time later, with his arm wrapped but the bone and muscle hanging out. And they said there are many such stories.

Then we got into a discussion about what they have learned from being here. They are horrified at the extent of the poverty, and that it is the whole country, and not just isolated or small pockets. They don't understand why it is like this, but by and large they blame the government. They said they felt "impotent" here...that they could not even make a dent in the need. (I have heard medical people say that before. I think they are used to being able to fix things.) They are amazed at the resilience of people (like someone cutting off his arm, and then surviving for several weeks before making his way to another city because he heard there were foreign doctors there). They said it made them think about their own lives in Mexico. Haiti does that to people.

They said that they learned that life is short, too short to just conform to social norms and live a life according to the expectations of status and success. They said you have to do at least one good thing with your life. One young nurse told me that she thinks this trip was not that thing...that she has to think of something to do with her life that will affect others long term... not to save the whole world, but affect some small group or groups where she is. It was good to reflect with them. I hope those sentiments last.

Tiquisio and World Peace

2008-12-10T11:10:00.013-06:00

Main Street in Tiquisio

Tiquisio has been hit hard by the long-running conflict in Colombia. A long list of people from the area have been killed or "disappeared" by all three types of armed groups: guerrilla, para-military, and Colombian armed forces. In 2003, instead of displacing, which many communities in their situation feel forced to do, under the leadership of their creative parish priest, Padre Rafael Gallego, Tiquisio decided to take matters into its own hands.

The community launched what they call "The Citizens' Process," and, with the accompaniment of a number of outside groups, they developed a plan to stay on their lands and kick out the armed groups. They say that as a result of this process, the activities of armed groups have decreased dramatically, and now they have opened up the space for economic development. They have a well-thought-out plan for doing so; they just don't have anyone to invest in them.

Like everywhere in Colombia with natural resources, they are under threat by large multi-national corporations who want to come in and exploit the resources in away that benefits investors, but will displace the people. In other words, after kicking out the armed groups, the threat of displacement is not over, because the multinationals are a new threat. They feel that the solution is a development project of their own which does not leave any space for the multinationals to enter.

After awhile, everywhere I go it starts to feel like the same story. The multinationals are a catalyst for more violence, because they are a threat to peoples' identity and way of life. One of the things that the conflict resolution literature of the past few years has taught us is that people resort to violence when their identity is being threatened in some way.

I asked a number of people why they thought people joined the armed groups (whether guerrilla, para-military, or military). The answer was uniformly the same: unemployment. People are not joining for ideological reasons; they are joining to deal with poverty. This should give all of us pause, since US tax dollars are paying for the Colombian military. What would it be like if US tax dollars paid for small-scale development projects that brought work and dignity to poverty-stricken communities, instead of paying for the military to violently rout out the other armed groups only to open up space for the multinationals to come in and do so-called "sustainable" development projects?

Another interesting thing I learned was that prior to the beginning of the Citizens' Process, there was a goup of Franciscan missionaries in Tiquisio who fled as a result of threats from the Colombian military. This happened in the early 90s. Padre Rafael also displaced for a short time this past spring due to threats from para-militaryforces (which is basically the same things as the military in Colombia). But as a result of the Citizens' Process, Padre Rafael and others dialogued with the Colombian military and created the conditions for him to return to Tiquisio.

I have learned that processes like the one in Tiquisio, which rely on accompaniment for a variety of things, end up opening up space in a conflict zone both for dialogue with armed groups and for economic development. The key to a lasting peace are economic development projects that don't just lead to further poverty and displacement for local people.

What the people said confirms a lot of what I already thought. For one thing, lasting peace will not come from above; it will come from below, village by village. If we want to build a lasting peace, we have to invest in these villages, one-by-one. Now I think you can understand the rationale for Just Haiti. We have to invest in them, but not with our charity, which gets them nowhere. We have to invest in them so that they receive training and leadership formation, so that they can come up with their own development plans, and then we have to invest in their plans. I wish it was as simple to put in practice as it is to write about here. Where are the people who want to put their money here?

In my view, what Tiquisio really needs right now is a sister parish (and people said as much, but in different words). They need the friendship and solidarity of a community that is walking with them, and regular investment of funds from a parish in the north. They don't need huge investment; they need small-scale investment. They would be an awesome candidate for it.

Colombia's Indigenous Raise Their Voices

2008-11-24T19:25:00.006-06:00

Ten thousand representatives of Colombia's indigenous peoples marched into Bogota last Thursday and are camping on the grounds of the national university. Friday morning we marched from the university to Bogota's central square, the location of Colombia's national government offices.

Marchers have named the mobilization "La Minga" which, loosely translated, means a gathering of the peoples. As I understand it, indigenous leadership call for La Minga only very rarely. The reason for calling La Minga this time is to be "caminando la palabra" which means "walking the word."

I have been listening to people talk about what the "Word" is, and here is what i have learned: It is the Word of dignity, meaning it is an expression of the dignity of all the native peoples. The Word is a recounting of the history of the peoples, especially their subjugation and oppression, and an analysis of what it means for today, and then acting on the results of the analysis. Walking the Word means living out what the Word calls one to do. The Word has called the indigenous of Colombia to raise up their voices together to appeal to all of Colombia.

I wonder if all of you see what i see: Christians were not the first, or the only, to show reverence for the Word. Scripture is also the story of the oppression and subjugation of a certain people in a certain time and place, and what they then did with their oppression that brought new life. Christians see our this story something universal, because it tells the story of all oppressed and subjugated peoples in all times and places, and helps us to know how to act. We are also supposed to analyse that story based on our own time and place and act out of that analysis. But Christians are not the only ones with a story to tell.

There are two main messages that the marchers brought to the people of the Colombia: First, that all the victims of the war in Colombia, the indigenous, the afro-Colombians, the campesinos, and the laborers, must raise their voices together to end this war and build a new Colombia that serves everyone. Second, the government must stop giving their lands away to multinational corporations that exploit the nation's natural resources for profit to investors outside of Colombia. The latter will lead to the former.

There are a number of specific actions that the march has called for in order to fulfill both of those demands. They include: not signing a free trade agreement with the US, forming a joint commission to investigate and proscecute human rights abuses against the victims of the war, honoring all past agreements with native peoples, rejection of "Plan Colombia" which is US military assistance to Colombia, and a number of legislative and constitutional reforms. This march is really, really organized and clear about their goals. For all you theologians out there: it seems to me they had a very good process of practical theology.

As I reflect on my own participation in this march, I feel that it was a significantact of solidarity, but that there was no real danger of violence, and that violence was not why we were present. There was violence when the march began, because it took place in the more remote lands of the indigenous peoples, far from the public eye. It never seemed likely to me that anything like that would happen closer to the big population areas. But as an act of solidarity it seems pretty important, because of the ugly history that Christianity has as having taken part in and enabled the subjugation, enslavement, and genocide of native peoples in the Americas.

I don't know if any of you have an interest in solidarity with these marchers. Most of their proposals are specific to Colombia, but there are two that US citizens have enormous influence over, which are the free trade agreement and military assistance. If you are interested, Latin American Working Group is working on a petiTion to hand over to Obama on his inauguration. You can find it at http://www.lawg.org/. You can also learn a lot more about these issues. LAWG is a pretty good organization, located on Capital Hill, made up of a coalition of mostly faith-based groups.

FYI, there was a prominent banner that read: Obama: We Don't Want the Free TradeAgreement. The silent majority, who are the poor people around the world, have placed a lot of hope in Obama.

Liturgy From Bogota

2008-11-18T17:13:00.003-06:00

I am in Bogota accompanying the last stage of a long march of the indigenous peoples of Colombia. The mobilization of Colombia's indigenous peoples started on October 10, just before I arrived. A few days after I got here, it made national headlines because Colombian police opened fire on the marchers. As of today, they have reported 130 injuries and 3 deaths among the marchers.

After that happened, I heard national television reports quoting the president of Colombia saying that the indigenous were being manipulated by the guerrilla and are terrorists. The march began in the Cauca region of Colombia, home to many of its indigenous peoples. After being fired on, the group decided to take their concerns to a national audience, and began marching from Cauca, through Colombia, ending in Bogota this week.

As I understand it, Colombia's indigenous have a similar situation to those in the US. Most of them were murdered by European settlers. Those that remained are living on their ancestral lands under agreements with the government that they will have sovereignty. Apparently the government is trying to take away those rights. In addition, the government is nationalizing sources of water, which has led to contamination from multinational companies exploiting natural resources.

One of the things I hear them talk the most about is preserving the quality of their waters, a resource that belongs to all. The march began yesterday with a water ritual. There were two presiders, a man and a woman, both high-level national indigenous leaders. They began with what amounted to a sprinkling rite, meaning that everyone in the circle was sprayed with a little water. Then elders from several of the communities present performed water rituals from their own traditions. The presiders talked about the importance of water as a source of life and as foundational to their traditional way of life. As such, there is a need to preserve the waters and keep them from being contaminated.

I was thinking about the importance of water in Catholic ritual as well, and that water is one of those symbols that crosses cultural boundaries. Although Catholics might talk about it differently, at the root of our water rituals is the understandingthat water is the source of life. Wouldn't it be awesome if during our own sprinkling rites, or at baptisms, presiders talked about it in those terms, and made the connection between water and environmental integrity?

I was also thinking that the ritual that started the march is something that Catholics can also identify with: the importance of ritual as foundational to all our actions. And I was thinking that the this particular ritual was a good example of how to honor all traditions without taking anything away from any of them. And I was thinking that so often Catholics go to "mission" lands and try to force Catholic rituals on people who already have their own very meaningful rituals. And I was thinking that it would be great if the Catholic Mass could be "inculturated" by indigenous water rituals so that we could appreciate in the same way the need to honor water as the source of life. And I was thinking what a great witness it was to have a man and a woman presiding together.

Reflecting on Colombia

2008-11-10T17:02:00.004-06:00

I have been continuing with the same work that I described in my last post. We went back to the mining zone for a few days last week. The Federation of miners was trying to meet with the government over a host of issues, including human rights abuses, and their insistence on receiving benefits from the exploitation of natural resources on lands they have lived on for decades. The government met with them, and some agreements were signed. Everyone was elated after this meeting...the results were not perfect, but it was good news after two frustrating years of work getting them to the table.

One important conversation took place about human rights abuses. Lawyers for the miners presented a document detailing human rights abuses that amounted to one abuse every four days on the part of the Colombian military. There have been recent high-profile arrests and resignations of Colombian military officials (for the killing of civilians). The Colombian government has also made international news over suppression of a peaceful protest of indigenous peoples over rights to their territory. The miners have been arrested, threatened, and intimidated, and we are accompanying them because they feel safer with outsiders present.

We also returned to another community organizing process with the organization "Programa"that i described last time, the one founded by the Jesuit. In this case, I did not feel that there was any real threat of violence or abuse. This was more an accompaniment of solidarity with campesinos struggling to organize, grow legal crops, and stay on their land in the face of enormous pressure to displace, or to grow coca.

When I reflect on the work here in Colombia, and who is to blame, and what are the solutions, many paths lead back to the United States. I am sure that all of you recognize that the reason they produce cocaine is to meet the demand in the US. In other words, as long as there is demand, there will be cocaine. I recently read that from 2000 to 2007, the height of the US "war" against coca growing in Colombia, production actually went up, not down.

A big part of that "war"has been crop fumigation which kills everything, not just coca. And after killing everything, the US does not offer alternative crops or a lucrative market to the farmers whose lives they have destroyed. We will end coca production in Colombia when we tackle the demand for it in the US, and not by military assistance to Colombia, or crop fumigations. Note that our military assistance to Colombia is paying for human rights abuses against civilians. If we were not paying for their military, they would not have the resources to oppress their own people.

It is complicated, but much of this war has to do with natural resources exploitation and who has control over the land. Campesinos do not want want big multinational companies to take over and displace them, butwhen they stand up for their rights, they are accused of being guerrilla. Most of the products of the exploitation of natural resources go to sustain our lifestyle in the US: gold and palm oil are two big products here. Palm oil is a substitute for deisel fuel, and is being planted here by big agro-conglomerates, replacing food crops.

It is important to realize two things: that the campesinos want development, but they want to control it themselves; and that this issue of resource exploitation and how it is done and who benefits is one of the roots of almost every armed conflict plaguing the world today. On the issue of who controls development: they don't want a big company to come in, force them off their land, destroy their traditional lives, and take all the profits. Usually these companies hire outsiders for the decent jobs, and may hire some local people for the menial, low-paying ones that do not bring them out of poverty. Usually these companies have bribed local and national officials. In Colombia, paramilitary groups, working as an arm of the military, are forcing displacement through intimidation.

This was the same story in Guatemala, where I worked two years ago. It is also at the root of what is going on in the Congo right now. They always want to call it something else, instead of placing the blame where it belongs: on the lifestyle of developed countries. These companies see dollar signs, and those dollars go to their investors.

I am pretty convinced that at least part of the solution is projects like the one I helped to start in Haiti, and which you all have heard a lot about, so I don't need to go into it here. We won't make money from it, the coffee growers will. Since it is the poor people who will benefit, it is really, really hard to get people to invest. But people are happy to invest in big companies that exploit poor people in order to make money for investors. In US culture, we want the dollars for ourselves. If i had the capital, iIwould do the same thing in other places that I am doing in Haiti. "Unfortunately," I have never lived my life in a way that made me any money.

When I reflect on the theology of this, I always end up going back to the concept of solidarity and what it means concretely. Etched in my mind is a picture of the family of Teo (the mining leader we accompany) as we climbed into the back seat of the cab with him. His wife was telling him to sit between us, because it was safer. His sons were smiling at us, and there was relief on their faces that he was not travelling alone. Teo kissed his toddler and his wife as he got into the car. If that accompaniment wasn't pastoral ministry, then i don't know any more what it is. It may have been dangerous, but so was the life of Jesus.

I think that sometimes as theologians we get lost in the concept of solidarity on a macro level, meaning like the global work of Catholic Relief Services, or something like it. Solidarity is also being present to individuals, families, and communities that are suffering the daily impact of dreadful US foreign policies. I was at a judicial hearing for a leader of a campesino group that was arrested recently, accused of being a guerrilla. There was nothing I could do except just be there, but I could see that it mattered a lot to his family and to other members of the group. I think it helps to not feel like you are alone in the struggle. I think that feeling like you are accompanied gives strength to continue the struggle. It is how we feel about God, right...that one's relationship with God gives one the strength to carry it on...and we are supposed to be the hands of God.

I also cannot get out of my mind the picture of Haitan coffee growers calling our project "God's grace." I feel like that is what mission is really all about...facilitating the experience of God's grace.

Introduction to the Blog

2008-11-01T19:08:00.003-05:00

Planting an Olive Tree in Palestine

These blog entries are a compilation and cataloguing of emails I sent to family, friends, and colleagues from 2004 to the present. They are my stories and reflections from the “field,” meaning stories from my work around the world, in regions wracked with violent conflict, or poverty, or both.

They are catalogued by subject, and then later by date. If you use the subject index, the blogger program I am using automatically posts them in order of most recent first. This can be confusing, because at times the reader seems to be getting the end of the story first. If you are reading these stories for the first time, I suggest starting at the beginning, meaning with the earlier dates, instead of the end.

The stories from Palestine, Colombia, and the U.S.-Mexico border come from my work with Christian Peacemaker Teams. CPT sends teams of trained volunteers to zones of violent conflict to accompany unarmed communities who are at risk of violence. The idea is that those of us who believe that solutions to conflict are both more just and more effective if nonviolent, are willing to take the same risks as soldiers. The hope is that with the presence of outsiders, who document abuses, unarmed civilians face less risk of violence. As you read my reflections, you can judge for yourself what we accomplish.

The stories from Bolivia are reflections I wrote during time spent in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I was studying Spanish, but I was also observing a considerable amount of social change. The story from Kosovo I wrote while observing a CPT-type accompaniment project developed by an Italian group, Operation Dove.

The stories from Guatemala come from time spent accompanying a small, indigenous community at risk of losing their lands and traditions as a result of the arrival of a large, multinational mining company. I did that work independently of CPT. I had hoped to be able to develop an ongoing accompaniment presence there, but so far have not found sufficient people to organize a project.

The stories from Haiti are about developing a fair trade coffee project in one community, Baraderes, that I have been working in for a long time. I originally became involved when I took the job of social justice minister in a large Catholic parish in Silver Spring, Maryland, that had recently agreed to a sister parish relationship with Baraderes. Together with the Haitian pastor, over the course of nearly 8 years, we developed education, nutrition, and public health programs that we are still very proud of. Along with some others, we founded the “Just Haiti” project as a deepening and expanding of that anti-poverty work, in a way that empowers the community to work for its own survival, rather than remaining dependent on the good will of outsiders forever. As we all know, that good will can be withdrawn at any time. A link to the Just Haiti website can be found on the left side of the blog.

I also worked in the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, right up until it fell apart and became Russia and a slew of smaller states, including the stans. Among other things, during that time I compiled stories of Soviet Jews and former political prisoners who had suffered human rights abuses under communism, and advocated that the United States accept them as refugees. No written stories survive from that time, but I occasionally make reference to the Soviet Union, or the fact that I speak Russian, in my current reflections. I now regret that I was not writing more then.

The work continues, and the stories continue. I have put them on a blog because I feel they need to be told, because they challenge the dominant worldview in the global North. They are not my stories, but the stories of communities struggling for life. I am the vehicle, because I have allowed my own story to become tied to theirs. I welcome your comments.
Kim Lamberty

God's Grace in Haiti

2008-10-04T17:22:00.004-05:00

I returned last week from an excellent trip to Haiti. The idea was to iron out shipping procedures, meet with the coffee growers to evaluate the project so far, and see what our next steps will be. We got a good sense of what we will need to do for shipping, and anticipate testing the system this fall. That is, if the road between Port-au-Prince, the capital, and Les Cayes, the nearest city to where the growers are, gets repaired. It is currently covered with water from the recent flooding. If there is a road, then we feel prettyconfident we will be able to get a good-sized shipment in time for Christmas sales.

Check our website regularly (www.justhaiti.org), or sign up for our mailing list, if you are interested in buying the coffee for Christmas. We will have special packages and cards and all kinds of things!

The evaluation from the farmers was awesome. They talked about the importance of the training we gave them, and also of the agronomist we hired to work with them.They have put into practice new production and processing methods, which has led to increased yield and higher quality beans. They are now no longer using the "fermentation" method of processing, but the wet method common to most coffee purchased in the export market. I tried it...it is really good!

But the wet method is very labor intensive, and so now they want the machines that will make it easier. We are planningto give them a no-interest loan to purchase the machines, once everyone figures out the cost and how to get them there. We are trying to raise money for our loan fund right now as well.

For me, the trip was really rewarding. The growers referred to the project as "God's grace." I felt so proud to have started something that they perceive of as God's grace. I was also proud that in the mission statement of their association, they wrote that they want to improve their own situation, but also the situation of their neighbors. They are returning generosity with generosity. I was also excited to see how empowering the formation of the association has been for them. They talked about how they are developing relationships with each other that they never had before, sharing ideas, meeting regularly, and working together for a common goal. It is awesome to be a part of this, and I know that many of you who receive my emails are also a part of it. I hope that in reading this you also feel proud of what you are doing and the difference we are making in this little corner of Haiti.

I know that many of you are wondering how hard they were hit by the hurricanes and flooding. Baraderes was flooded, worse than usual, I think. (As many of you know, the river in Baraderes floods after every major storm.) By the time I got there it was a sea of mud, but the waters had receded from most of the town. The rivers were still very high, and the ground saturated, and there was widespread fear of a malaria epidemic. I know that there is some emergency aid flowing into Haiti, but I doubt much of it will get to isolated Baraderes.

I often think about how much emergency aid has flowed into Haiti over the years, and how little it has accomplished. After 50 years of international relief, Haiti is still the poorest country in the world. I feel very confident that projects like ours are a better solution. We want people to gain the self-sufficiency needed in order to build their own infrastructure and take care of their own medical needs. Relief leads to dependence, and people seem to lose the ability to come up with their own solutions.

It is one of the most exciting things about our coffee project: for the first time, these growers have hope for their own futures. They are planning for themselves, and talking about how they will use their newly-earned income. They never had any reason to hope before, because no-one was ever willing to invest in them. Investment is a lot different than relief.

Announcing Just Haiti

2008-02-22T17:22:00.004-06:00

It's official. We filled out all the forms for non-profit status last spring and were granted it this fall. We are officially Just Haiti, and you can find us at http://www.justhaiti.org/.

Our broad mission is working for justice, peace, and poverty alleviation in Haiti...but our project right now is working with a group of subsistence farmers in Baraderes (where we have a long-term relationship with the community) to help them form a legal cooperative, improve the quality of their coffee, and sell it for a higher price in the organic fair trade export market.

Why Haiti? you may be asking. Partly it is due to our relationship with the community. When I left my position at St. John's I did not want to just forget about Baraderes, and it seemed clear that St. John's was not going to further expand their work in the community. Another reason is that Haiti is still the poorest country in our hemisphere, and perhaps in the world. It seems to me that we have a chance to facilitate the bringing of a more dignified life to this community, and I do not want to let that chance pass by.

I also have enormous admiration for Haitians. They were brought to the island from different parts of Africa through the Atlantic slave trade..in fact, at one point half of the slave trade went to Haiti. Out of disparate tribal origins, in an environment of incredible violence and cruelty, they formed a new culture, religion, and language, and came together as a people to overthrow the slaveholders and to become the first colony in the Western hemisphere to declare their independence. An interesting fact is that the reason so many slaves were sent to tiny Haiti was because they had to keep replenishing the plantation workers: they died too quickly to reproduce.

We traveled to Baraderes in January to begin a process of formation for the farmers so that they will understand better what they need to do to produce coffee for the export market. We brought with us a team from the Mexican cooperative Cafe Justo, which I had encountered while working on the U.S. Mexico border in 2005. The Cafe Justo folks formed their cooperative, with the assistance of the Presbyterian border ministries, as a way to help subsistence farmers stay on their land, so they would not have to make the dangerous migration north, across the border, in search of a liveable wage.

The Cafe Justo model not only guarantees their cooperative members a fair trade price, but it also owns the roasting business, where most of the profitis made in the coffee business. As a result of the money brought in by the roasting business, Cafe Justo has provided health care for all its members, a water purification system for their community, and improved buildings and infrastructure. Note that the community is providing this for itself, as the fruits of their own labor, rather than through charity from the north. We want to use their model in Haiti, which is why we brought them with us.

The Cafe Justo guys conducted a two-day training for about 25 Haitian farmers representing 18 very small rural communities. They basically went through a step by step process of explaining everything they did to create a successful business. Imagine this: the guys from Just Coffee spoke in Spanish, and then it had to be translated into English, and then from English to Haitian Creole! What was exciting for me about this was the idea of campesinos from one country supporting campesinos from another country. The guys from Mexico, who are rural poor themselves, were shocked at the extent of the poverty they witnessed in Haiti. At the end, they said they would like to remain involved.

One thing we learned from the whole thing is that the Haitian farmers are growing the exact same type of coffee under very similar weather and shade conditions as the Cafe Justo farmers. The difference is that in Haiti they are using a fermentation (dry) process of drying the beans that saves time and requires less equipment (and therefore less expense) but leaves the coffee with a slightly unusual taste. This is okay forthe domestic market, but internationally people are not used to the taste. So in order for this to work, the Haitians will have to change their production methods.

An interesting side note is that in the 18th century Haiti supplied half of Europe'scoffee.

They now know what they have to do, and we heard over and over again how pleased they were with the training. These are the methods that their forebears used, but had been largely forgotten. We have hired a local agronomist to work withthem half-time, and we have told them that once they are ready we will provide them with a very low or no-interest loan to buy the machinery they need, to be paid back out of coffee sales. Meanwhile, we are working on our side to figure out how to get the coffee out of Haiti and where to sell it. As they pay the loan back to us, we will be able to do the samething in other communities, which is what Cafe Justo has done.

Damage from the Marlin Mine

2007-05-27T16:32:00.004-05:00

During my walks around the city of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, I am continually acosted by young boys who want to shine my shoes. The shoes are so covered with dust, and who knows what else, from trekking around San Miguel and Sipacapa that the boys cannot tell that they are not the type of shoes you polish. They are a metaphor for what the people of those municipalities have to put up with.

A couple of days before I left San Miguel, I finally had the chance to visit the Marlin mine. It takes up about 100,000 hectares, which have been completely deforested, and is scarred by a huge hole in the middle, which gets bigger by the day. While I was there, workers from the mine were cutting down more trees around the outside, preparing for further expansion into land abutting the current property. In the middle of the mine property is a huge lake filled with contaminated water (because they use water and cianide to process the ore).

Locals say that lake was never there before, and that they keep making it bigger. The mine says it can contain the water, but can that really be true? Can they really keep the lake from getting into the groundwater or rivers? One independent study has already been done that shows one of the local rivers is contaminated with runoff from the mine.

Worse, the mine uses some preposterous amount of water daily. I have read 250,000 gallons. A day. During the dry season, which is 6 months, that water is not being replenished. So in conversations with the locals, they told me that their underground springs are drying up. I saw only one of the dried up ones, but they say that 6 have dried up in one town alone. These springs are their water source for crops and animals. They also told me that trees are dying, and I had already noticed that. It is weird...just driving around the area you can see dried up trees.

The mine paid 4,000 quetzales (about $530) per cuerda (I have no idea what a cuerda is, but it is a small plot) of land. Even though the government and the mine already knew that there was gold and silver on the land, the people were never informed, so they sold their land for market price, but for far, far less than what it was really worth. They also say that the mine pressured them into selling..told them that they had already signed agreements with the government, and if the people did not sell, they would be forced off.

The bottom line is that if the water depletion continues, the people around the mine will be forced to dislocate, and where do you think they will go? I had a meeting on Friday with representatives from the diocesan peace and ecology commission and with the organization representing indigenous rights in the area, because they wanted to talk about whether permanent accompaniment would be feasible, because they have all been threatened with violence by members of the mine security force, and the Guatemalan military is in San Miguel, and the US military is in San Marcos.

Anyway, during the course of the meeting the guy from the diocese told me that in the San Marcos region they are also facing US-funded aerial crop spraying that is killing all the plants in its path, according to local campesinos who have lost their crops. The military says they are combatting the Mediterrean fruit fly. So they just fly overpeoples´ land and spray everything, without the knowledge and consent of the people living there. Just like Colombia. I am sure they suspect coca or marijuana, and are using the fly as an excuse.

It feels like the same story everywhere I go. And the US government is never the good guy, much as we wish and think we are. We are not the only evil party...the Guatemalan government comes off pretty bad, too, not to mention the World Bank and Canadian mining companies. But the US government is my government, and we are a democracy, and therefore I am responsible.

"Development" and Mining in Guatemala

2007-05-16T11:08:00.001-05:00

Hereis the story of the Marlin Mine.

Goldcorp, the Canadian company that owns it, spends about $207 per ounce of gold in production costs, meaning all the costs associated with this particular mine in Guatemala. The price of gold on the world market right now is $665 per ounce. They are producing over a million ounces a year. You do the math.

They call it a development project for the local community. However, they employ about 800 local people, and about 500 more from the outside. Local people receive as a salary on average 2,500 Quetzales per month,or about $300. This will not bring them out of poverty. Compare that wage to the profit the company is making. And the company is leaving a giant hole in the ground and an environmental disaster in its wake, once the mine ceases to be productive, in about 10 years.

The World Bank funded this project to the tune of $45 million, because it would bring "development" to Guatemala. Yet I have read several reports showing that the World Bank violated it own policies in funding this project, because it does not actually benefit the local community. Also, the World Bank´s own documents show that Goldcorp did not need the loan. They only wanted it to give the project more prestige, as a so-called development project. The United States is a major funderand major controller of the World Bank.

Here is some more interesting information. The area where I am, and where the mine is located, is economically poor, campesino, and indigenous. Most people have small plots of land which they farm in order to feed themselves, but they do not plant enough to sell on the open market. The reason for this is that it is more expensive to grow the crops than the money they receive for them. The reason market prices are so low is because United States agricultural policies subsidize US farmers so that they grow too much and flood the market. So the campesinos are living on their land, but not living on the crops.

How are they living? Almost everyone from Guatemala has a relative in the United States, and these relatives send back "remesas", or monthly payments to their families. This is what people here are living on. And their relatives in the US had to make the dangerous trip through the desert, only to arrive in the US as "illegals", taking whatever low-paying jobs that are available. But the Guatemalans are leaving in the first place because US policies essentially force them out. In other words, our agricultural policies favor our own farmers but cause poverty elsewhere, and so-called development projects enrich big companies that do not need the money while paying low salaries to local people. Then we penalize those who flee searching for a better life by making them illegal and forcing them into low-paying jobs.

Outraged yet?

The Guatemalan miltary and the private security forces from the mine maintain a strong presence in San Miguel in order to prevent civil unrest over this injustice. The US military also maintains a presence here, and most people think this is why. The dispute that people fear could turn violent is over who has control over the land: big companies with the backing of big government, or poor campesinos who have lived here for countless generations.

I have noticed that it is the same in every underdeveloped country: the land remains in the hands of a few rich people, and US policies favor that. An interesting side note is that the US helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 because the new government had promised--and was carrying out--land reform and redistribution. Calling it communism, the US helped arrange a military coup that lead to more than 30 years of civil war, fought over the issue of land.

My friends in Colombia will recognize this story as very similar to what has been going on there. The wars are over who has control over the land and its resources, with the backing of big money from the United States, because it seems to me that in the end, we are determined to control the resources of these countries in order to maintain our own very high standard of living. The people making the money from the Goldcorp mine are employees and investors in the United States and Canada. Colombia is one of the largest recipients of United States foreign military assistance.

Ministry and Power

2007-05-11T19:19:00.003-05:00

I have come to think of all ministry as accompaniment; whether one accompanies someone who is dying, or accompanies someone in spiritual direction, or accompanies a community in their struggle for human rights and justice, it is all ministry. And those of us who are in the role of accompaniers have a lot of power, and we need to spend a good bit of time thinking about how we use it, or do not use it.

When I was in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, in Guatemala, I stayed with a Mam woman named Maudilia. Maudilia is a lay pastoral worker for the Catholic church there, working mostly around empowerment of women. It is hard to find an empowered woman here, in this machista society. Most women seem like not much more than slaves to their husbands and children. Anyway, I consider Maudilia to be a peer, and was really happy to be staying with her, for reasons I probably do not have to spell out. Just nice to have a woman to connect with.

On my first day in her house, which is a parish house, Maudilia asked me to pay for the gas to operate her stove, which I did. On the third day she asked me fora loan of 200 quetzales (truthfully, I am not sure how much that is in dollars--a little more than $25). I gave it to her, even though I was sure it was not really a loan, because I felt that I was in her house and did not have much choice, and because I did not know what else to do. Then I thought about it, and realized that I was going to have to talk to her, because the requests for money were likely not going to end. An important fact is that I was already paying her a nightly rate to stay in her house (which is only fair, although somewhat foreign to our North American culture).

So I talked with her, and although I think it went okay, she was upset afterward. I told her that I was there as a volunteer and that I also have limited funds. Truthfully, the whole thing made me feel like nothing more than a money tree, which is not the same thing as friendship. So neither of us was feeling very good. Plus, I was having a hard time in the town, lots of really ugly sexual harrassment, and at one point a group of three extremely drunk or drugged out teenagers harrassed me and asked for money. I thought they were going to rob me. And because the situation was tense with Maudilia, I was mostly going around by myself.

On Sunday I went to Mass, where Maudilia does practically everything except preside. (Perhaps some of you can relate to this?) It was awesome, bilingual in Mam and Spanish, great music. The pastor denounced the presence of the US military in San Marcos from the altar. He said what everyone here says: what are foreign troops doing on our soil? It would be like if Mexico dropped 1000 troops in Seward, Nebraska (the rural area where my grandparents live). There would be a massive public outcry, but here Guatemalans feel they have no power in the face of the massive economic power of the United States.

Anyway I did pray and reflect in Mass about what to do about my relationship with Maudilia. And a funny thing happened later in the day. I was fixing my bed, with the door in my room open to the back yard. I was fixing my bedding because there was a massive bug problem and I am literally covered with bites from God knows what (but that is another story). The back door was open, and I noticed that there were some sheep back there grazing, and I got worried that they were going to come into the house--and I really did not need any more critters in my room. So I went to close the door, and instead of just closing it, I stepped outside and pulled the door closed, thereby locking myself out.

Good move! Luckily, I knew that Maudilia was still at church, preparing for the last Mass of the day. So I went over there, sat through another Mass, and then told her what happened. She was enormously entertained, as was every member of her extended family, all of whom were present to hear the story. They made fun of me all the way to her sisters house (where the extra key was). At one point I said something about appreciating that they were saving me from my stupidity, and her brother-in-law looked at me and said: It is not stupid, it is normal. And ever since them my relationship with Maudilia, and her entire extended family, has been great.

So it made me think about what the barriers are to friendship in this multi-cultural situation, and I realized that the biggest barrier is power, in this case represented by their perception, true of course, that I have vastly more money than they. But what broke down the barrier was me doing something really human and "normal."

Introduction to the Marlin Mine

2007-05-03T19:29:00.000-05:00

I have now moved from Antigua to the village of San Miguel, located in the western highlands, with a population of a few hundred.

San Marcos is the regional center in the highlands. The region is sparsely populated, poor, and mostly indigenous. It is also full of mineral resources. When I got to San Marcos, one of the first things I noticed was 2 humvees of US soldiers driving around. I wondered to myself what US soldiers were doing here, when we are fighting 2 wars and supposedly have troop shortages, and as far as anyone knows, we are not at war with Guatemala.

I found out that there are around 1000 of them, and that they are here for "humanitarian reasons". No-one in San Marcos believes this, and it has served to dramatically increase the fear among the people who live here. People have all kinds of guesses about why they are here, none of them good. The Catholic Diocese of San Marcos sent an open letter to President Bush complaining about it, but I doubt anyone ever paid much attention.

From San Marcos I went to Sipicapa, where I spent 2 days. To get to San Marcos, I took a fairly decent bus from Guatemala City, the capital. But to get to Sipicapa, I had to take what folks in Antigua call "chicken buses", but up until this ride I had never seen any chickens on them! The chicken buses are old, beat up, and repainted yellow school buses that get driven down from the US when we are done with them. This ride was packed with people, chickens, and even a small herd of sheep roped to the top. Being the only gringa for hundreds of miles, the conductor let me ride in the front, where I shared a seat made for two, situated over a tire, with a pregnant woman, her toddler, and an old man on crutches. It was a good adventure.

I was dropped off at a crossroads, where the road turned off for Sipicapa, but the bus went another way. There I waited to get picked up. I was not too worried about being found, being the tall gringa in pink (stop laughing).

In Sipicapa I stayed in the parish house with 2 Italians. There are always Italians in every accompaniment...I think I mentioned that before. Anyway, the Italian in charge of parish pastoral work is a lay person, what we would call a lay pastoral coordinaor, or something like that. He has been in Guatemala 11 years,and at this parish for 7, appointed by the bishop. Through his Italian connections he has managed to build a school and formation center, and the school trains teachers to do bilingual education, in Spanish and Sipacapense. The Sipacapenses are a small indigenous community that only live in this one place. Roberto, the Italian in charge of the place, is also heavily involved in diocesan support of the resistance of the indigenous communities to the gold mine next door. The other Italian, Manuel, is teaching at the school.

There are 3 municipalities, what would be a county for us, within the region of San Marcos, that are affected by the mine and are involved in resisting it. They are Sipicapa, Concepcion, and San Miguel. As I mentioned earlier, I am in San Miguel. Sipicapa already has accompaniment, and I think there is no-one doing accompaniment in Concepcion. The diocese is doing awesome work supporting the communities here, putting out a lot of information, educating folks about the mine, etc. Like in Colombia, the Catholic Church is active and on the right side, at least in this diocese. For this they have been called "communists" in the press.

One of the main thing the diocese has been doing is organizing the community consultations that allow the indigenous communities to vote on whether they want the mine or not. So far they have done 14 in all the communities surrounding themine. Only one has voted for it. They still have not done one in San Miguel, whereI am, because San Miguel is the municipality most affected by the mine, and people have received threats and harassment, and so the people are afraid that if they did a consultation, there would be violence.

The mine established itself in San Miguel about 2 years ago, without doing any community consultation, which is contrary to Guatemalan law. So the consultations have taken place after it is already a fact. The reason that people do not want it is because it has caused enormous environmental destruction. It is an open pit gold mine, meaning a huge hole in the ground, that uses cianide as part of its processing. It has caused a huge dust problem, but aside from that, so far 57 houses have been cracked or damaged in some severe way, and people are reporting illness, animal deaths, and contaminated water.

Representatives from the mine came in and bought up property without the people knowing what was going on---ie that there was gold underneath. So they sold their property for a song compared to what it was really worth, and they feel deceived. And the final problem is that the company, based in Canada but with heavy US investment as well, only has to pay 1% taxes to the Guatemalan government, while making hundreds of millions in profits so far. So the people feel that their resources are being exploited in a way that benefits a foreign company, but not in a way that benefits them.

It has created some jobs, but not as many as promised, and not enough to outweigh the disadvantages, according to most people. Many of the best jobs go to foreigners, or to people from outside of the area. And according to the diocese, the mine bribes local officials and organizations to keep them from opposing it. So the indigenous feel they are alone in this, except for the diocese, but are planning on mounting as much of a resistance as they can. And they are very clear about it being non-violent.

There was a big protest in January over some big part being transferred to the mine, and the people blocked roads. The police opened fire, and 20 people were injured, one person killed, and 14 arrested. Soyou can see what they are dealing with.

This is what I have put myself in the middle of. I am helping them by putting together a complete report of what is going on in San Miguel. One exists for Sipicapa, which is more organized, thanks to the Italians, but not for San Miguel. And I am accompanying the indigenous organization that is providing leadership to the resistance in San Miguel. I have told them I can be here a month, and then I need to return to the US. But the reality is that there is enormous potential here for a much larger project, and I am going to have a hard time leaving. I am thinking about the possibilities.

Grass Roots Democracy in Guatemala

2007-04-21T14:19:00.002-05:00

A municipality (like a county in the US) located in the region of Ixcan put out a call for accompaniment and observers for what they called a community consulation. Ixcan lies on the border with Mexico and it's population is mostly indigenous. There are 75,000 total inhabitants, and 12 distinct languages are spoken, other than Spanish.

This region took a big hit during the Guatemalan civil war. Because it was a region where guerrilla were located, there were a total of 37 massacres in this municipalty alone, with more than 1300 extra-judicial executions and 500 documented cases of torture. According to eyewitness accounts, the massacres and tortures were of unarmed civilians, primarily.

As a result of the massacres, many of the people fled to safer areas, only to come back and find that the government had given their land away to other landless campesinos, claiming that the territories had been abandoned. The area is currently settled by a mix of the people who were there before the war, and those who came during or after.

Simiilar to Colombia, the issue for this regional consulatation is so-called megaprojects. One important difference is that Guatemala is in a post-war situation, with peace accords signed, whereas Colombia is still in the midst of its civil war. But some of the issues are similar. The people in Ixcan have gotten wind of planned petroleum exploration and exploitation, and of plans to build a huge hydrolectric dam in their municipality. According to their information, the government plans to sell the exploration and exploitation rights to foreign companies, asking only a small percentage of the returns, which will not go to the local community but instead will go to the central government. As in Colombia, land ownership appears to mean that you own what is on top of the land, but not what is below it.

With respect to the dam, it would mean the flooding of 18 villages, with the government giving all kinds of promises of recompense. However, past experience with another dam, called the Chixoy, showed them that the government does not follow through with its promises. In addition, they are convinced that the electric power will not help them, but will be sold to outside cities or even Mexico. In short, they want to control development of their own resources.

So this week the region decided to hold a community consultation, which amounted to a county-wide voting on the topic of the dam and petroleum rights. They asked for accompaniment because there had been some threats, and one person had already been killed. Also, they wanted to have objective information, from outsiders, about what happened during the voting. Most of the observers were Guatemalan. There were a handful of internationals, and I was one of them.

After the voting, each local mayor turned in his results to the county seat, and the county seat will turn in a report to the national government about what the people want. It is not clear yet whether this will help them get what they want, but at least there is some ground to stand on in their fight.

I left Antigua on Wednesday and arrived in Playa Grande, the seat of the munipality, or county, Thursday late afternoon. It was an arduous trip over really rough and dusty roads. This place is very isolated, making the people all the more vulnerable. Because they are right on the Mexican border, many folks crossed during the war, becoming refugees in Mexico. Migrants also cross here now on their way to the northern Mexico border with the United States. This border is not particularly tightly controlled, to say the least.

We went to a meeting on Thursday afternoon giving us instructions about our role, and then set out Friday morning to villages even more isolated than Playa Grande. The first community I was supposed to observe had decided to abstain from participating. Apparently local politics got in the way, and a former mayor was telling them that if they voted against the projects, they would not get electrification and other promised benefits to their village.

I ended up in another village where the people only spoke Kekchi, and the one person in the village who had decent Spanish had to translate into Spanish for me. But I observed the process. There were a total of 43 adults present. 35 voted against the megaprojects and 8 voted for them. The voting was done by a show of hands. It took place in the community hall, and was conducted by the local mayor. After the show of hands, voters had to sign their names and provide ID numbers on forms provided by the organizers of the consulation. The organizers are an umbrella group of indigenous human rights activists. But the right to hold this type of consultation is guaranteed to them by national law. After the voting was over, observers had to fill out a form and hand it in to the organizers.

Although the voting only took a couple of hours, getting to and from the communities took the better part of three days. I arrived back to a larger city last night (Coban) and will travel back to Antigua tomorrow. My plan is to do one more week of Spanish, and then I am working out a arrangement to go to the mining region of Guatemala, where the communities are organizing a resistance to multinational mining corporations exploiting their resources---in this case gold.

Similar to Colombia, the government is ready to sell the mining rights to multinational companies, reaping some benefits for the central government, but displacing and leaving the local population landless and unemployed. I will write more about this as it develops.

Abaondonment, Love and Forgiveness in the Desert

2007-02-06T11:02:00.000-06:00

On September 29, 2004, masked Israeli settlers attacked and brutally beat me and a colleague while we were walking Palestinian children to school in the West Bank village of at-Tuwani. Using sticks, chains, and their boots, these Israeli extremists critically injured my knee, fractured my elbow, punctured my colleague´s lung, and inflicted cuts and bruises on our faces and hands. We were accompanying the children as members of a Christian Peacemaker Team violence reduction project in the Palestinian community.

I still feel a good deal of anger toward Israeli political culture that allows a gang of Israeli settler men to target Palestinian school children and their escorts with impunity, and toward my own government, which continues to look the other way in the face of massive human rights violations against Palestinians from Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But I also emerged from the experience with a much more profound trust in God, and a greater understanding of what it means to forgive. Getting beat up so badly in Palestine may have been the most profound spiritual event of my life.

In those moments right after the attack I was the most vulnerable I have ever been. I was bleeding, scared, and could not walk. My colleague made his way over to where I was lying on the ground, and we prayed for the attackers. It was his idea, and I am amazed that either of us was up for it emotionally. He could barely breathe and I could not stand up. But when I look back on it now, I think that our initial offering of prayer was crucial to the process of letting go and forgiving later. In a moment when we felt alone and abandoned, prayer focused us on the presence of God, who never abandons us.

I am certain now that God never abandons us; it is we who abandon God. In the Latin, “abandonment” is the root for "desert;" e.g., to desert someone. We act as though God does not exist, and instead believe that we can remain in control. We do not trust God. In Christian spirituality, the desert is a symbol for abandonment of self, of ego, of control, and of our inordinate attachments to things, or money, or success. In the desert, through prayer and penance, we turn ourselves over to the will of God, which by definition means service of others. I think of being in the desert as bringing the interior self, who is one with the will of God, to the surface, to become that person on the outside that we all are in our deepest interior selves. But instead of abandoning ourselves, trusting in the desert, we abandon God.

The attack left me with a much more profound trust in God. Perhaps it was because I went through what most would describe as their worst nightmare. I could have been killed. I think we often order our lives around the fear of something like that happening. We fear death, pain, suffering, loss of control, or something happening to our children. So instead of seeking what God calls us to do with our short time on this earth, we make decisions based on our fear of loss, clinging to our lives rather than abandoning them to God.

I have been liberated from much of my fear. I imagine that it does not take getting beat up to get to this place. I think that is what it took for me.

In the aftermath of the attack, I had to let go of the illusion of control over my life. I certainly was not in control at that moment. I know now that I cannot control whether I live or whether I die, that life is short, and that all I have that matters is my time. At the end of my life, whenever that is, I know all that will seem important is that I loved, I gave myself away, without counting the cost. And that is exactly what we were doing with the children that morning.

Someone told me shortly after the attack that I “had” to forgive the attackers. I think that this nudge, in combination with my Catholic faith and its emphasis on forgiveness, got me thinking about forgiveness really quickly. I think if I were not Catholic, meaning that if forgiveness was not deeply ingrained into who I am and what I accept as true, then I probably would have been angry instead of accepting the early advice to forgive. And I think that if we do not forgive, then the offense, whatever it is, takes us over and prevents us from moving forward with our lives. The offense, or the offender, is in control of us, instead of God. So I wanted to forgive.

I had no idea what forgiveness would look like in a situation like this. I felt I understood what it meant to forgive, or not to, in personal relationships, with people I know well, or in a work situation. But I had never experienced the need to forgive people whom I had never met and could not identify, and who had committed a crime against me. As a first step I decided to reflect on my feelings toward and about the attackers.

When I probed my deepest feelings, I realized that I did not feel anger toward the individuals directly. I wanted them caught and prosecuted, not out of a desire for revenge, but because I hoped that it would deter other Israeli settlers from equally violent actions. I tried hard, for as long as it seemed to make sense, to get the US Embassy to pressure Israeli authorities to continue to investigate the crime. In the end, I was told they had no leads, because we could not identify the attackers.

I think that the reason I have not felt anger or desire for revenge is that I have been able to understand the attackers as victims. Jews have been systematically murdered for centuries, and I see the violent actions of settlers on the West Bank happening as a result of their collective trauma. So I could, in a sense, empathize and identify with them.

When I experience forgiveness in personal relationships, I experience it as love. I do not feel love for the attackers. I feel compassion, though, and empathy, and I wonder if compassion and empathy are the same thing as love when it comes to a person one does not know. I want them and their government to accept the responsibility and consequences for what they did, and for what they continue to do in the West Bank, but I do not want them harmed or destroyed emotionally or physically.

I returned to at-Tuwani nearly 6 months after the attack, to continue the work of accompaniment. For me, it was important to return to at-Tuwani that first time, because I needed to know that the attack, and the attackers, had not taken control of my life. I was still me, still able to do the same work, still good at it. The night before I returned to at-Tuwani I had a dream in which I felt embraced by God. I knew then that everything was okay, that no matter what happened, God would never abandon me.

On Dying

2007-01-01T16:06:00.001-06:00

I am back in Omaha now, to be with my family for the holidays and with my grandmother during what are probably her last days on earth. I experience this time with her as graced time, and it is a blessing to be able to be here. It is the same way I felt two years ago, when I was able to be with my grandfather as he was dying. My grandmother and I have had some great conversations about the meaning of life and death which are a comfort to both of us.

The dying give us a great gift which we may not be aware of, and that they also are not aware of. They invite us to be better than we are, to face our fears ofour own mortality, to set aside whatever "issues" we may have with them, and be present to them during the most vulnerable part of their lives.

In this context, I have been reflecting anew on the Mary-Martha story in Luke 10:38-42. I remember past scripture reflection groups, where people got upset about this passage, because Martha seems to be the one performing the most useful tasks, while Jesus claims that Mary has taken the better path. This scripture has been problematic for me for a different reason: because I identify most with Mary, who sits in the living room while her sister does all the dishes. Even though Jesus claims that Mary has chosen the better way, what is a Mary supposed to do with her life that is useful? And you cannot spend too much time sitting in the living room while someone else does all the work without getting people mad at you. Anyway, it seems that Mary's is a ministry of presence, which is how I experience being with my grandmother, and is also how I experience accompaniment work. In the end, ministry is fundamentally about presence. Yes, we have to get the dishes done, but Jesus understood that Mary had chosen the true path of ministry.

For Love of Coffee

2006-11-04T16:22:00.002-06:00

I cannot describe in words the economic poverty in Haiti. I have worked and lived all over the place, and still never seen anything like Haiti. I thought Bolivia would compare, but it does not. I notice that I now use Haiti as the benchmark....arethe roads as bad as in Haiti? Are there as many people living without clean water, electricity, and something besides an open fire for cooking? Is adult illiteracyas high? Are there as many houses that look substandard?

The answer is always no. I hate writing this, truthfully, because I feel like all my Haitian friends who receive these emails will be horrified. Haiti is much more than economic deprivation. As I write this, I am drinking Haitian rum and thinking about past fun times in Baraderes (...singing Haitian folk songs in the rectory in Baraderes at the top of our lungs, teaching the middle school students how to sing "We Are Marching in the Light of God" in 5 languages, drinking Prestige beer on the balcony...). Haiti remains in my heart, which explains why I spent 9 days of my vacation there.

And yes, it has more to offer than just fine alcoholic beverages.....When I was working on the US-Mexico Border last summer, one of the groups CPT worked with was called JustCoffee, which is the brand name of a cooperative of coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico. The organization buys the coffee from its members at a fair trade price, then roasts, bags, markets, and ships it to the north. Providing a just price to the farmers and keeping the jobs in Mexico is way of facilitating people being able to stay on their land, instead of migrating through the dangerous desert heat and the Border Patrol in order to findbetter wages up north, in the US.

I began to think that perhaps we could replicate the JustCoffee model in Baraderes. I knew from past work that there are coffee farmers in Baraderes, and also that at one time Haiti produced some of the best coffee in the world. I also knew that St. John's has done awesome work in Baraderes with education and public health, but while the children are being educated and staying healthier, there are still no jobs. Anyway, long story short, a group of us assembled to test out the idea, and found it warmly received by the coffee producers in Baraderes. So we traveled in October to talk to the farmers and see the coffee farms.

The trip to the growers involved a long and grueling hike in the heat and humidity. When we reached the top of the mountain, the site of the home of one of the growers, his wife greeted us with freshly-prepared coffee served on fine china. This was in a home with no sanitation facilities and with dirt floors.

We are all learning a great deal about coffee production. These are useful things that they do not teach you in seminary, such as what color the berry has to be when you pick it, how to husk them by hand, and what is the most common coffee bean pest. I am now the proud owner of two manuals about management of the commoncoffee borer.

We are still processing what we learned in Baraderes and have not made any decisions about how we will proceed next. We brought back about 25 lbs. of green beans for quality testing and will evaluate the results. As the project continues to unfold, I will write about it.

Mobilization of Miners in Sur de Boliver, Part 2

2006-10-06T17:11:00.002-05:00

See Part 1 before reading this.

There are a few important stories that actually belong with the first part. When we entered the village where the miners were gathered, after climbing up that mountain, for the second time for me since working in Colombia, the campesinos started applauding as we walked in.

It is moving and embarrassing at the same time, and for that reason it made me think. It feels to me that these little towns are so isolated...the only way you can get there is by mule...and that increases their sense of insecurity, and their sense that the armed groups can do whatever they want to them with impunity. For that reason the presence of outsiders brings huge relief. Later, in talking with one of the community leaders privately, I felt that my sense of this was confirmed. He said that before the accompaniment group arrived, the people were really agitated and talking of taking up arms, not able to think of another option to defend their rights. But once the accompaniment arrived, they calmed down.

Another useful bit of information is that the mining region has been used for growing coca as a cash crop for the past number of years, and artisan mining is the community's answer to replacing a cash crop with something else that brings in cash. But now the multinational mining companies have made a deal with the Colombian government, and so the campesinos are being forced out. And, on top of everything else, there are fumigations going on in the same area, which kills off the coca, but also kills off everything else alive in its path.

Like other campesinos I have talked to, these folks just want to be kept out of the government's war. They want to preserve their way of life on the land with their human rights respected, and they would like to do it peacefully. But what they say is that the military assumes that all campesinos are guerrilla, and they use that as an excuse to abuse them, when the real reason for the abuse is that powerful Colombians stand to make lots of money when the multinationals take over the mining operations. Not to mention powerful North Americans.

To continue from part 1: we accompanied about 140 campesinos to Santa Rosa, the regional center, and about 400 more came the next afternoon, and by Sunday there were over a thousand. Sunday night they held a candlelight march and vigil in the central plaza to remember their assassinated leader and other assassinated and disappeared leaders. It was that night when I overheard one of the miners say "Que multitud tan linda," because a group of them that size had never gathered together before to do a public action.

Early in the process they started lobbying high level government officials to come to Santa Rosa for a dialogue about military abuses in their region. The Catholic diocese was heavily involved in these negotiations, and also with accompaniment of the mobilization to Santa Rosa. The miners stipulated that they did not want elements from the military at the table with them. They said that Colombia is supposed to be a democracy, and in a democracy the civilian authorities are in charge of the military authorities, and they wanted to talk to the bosses. When the delegation arrived from Bogota, and it was a high level delegation, there were generals aboard the helicopter. The communities said they would not meet with the miltary, and they took to the streets again. This was Tuesday. The delegation from Bogota left without dialogue.

The miners again marched for justice, and at the end they occupied the central plaza, staying there through Tuesday evening. They decided to draft a letter to the government expressing the urgent need for dialogue and repeating that they did not want military at the table. They said they planned to stay mobilized in Santa Rosa until they get a meeting. As of today, they are still there.

We returned Wednesday night to Barranca, because we felt that they were likely not under threat of violence in Santa Rosa at this moment, and we could be of more help to them from Barranca, where there are functioning computers. We have written our own letter to Colombian authorities, and have put an urgent action out on CPTs listserve inviting others to do likewise.

When think about the miner demand to meet only with civilian authorities, I think of it as them refusing to negotiate with their abusers, but rather holding the abusers accountable to a higher authority. At first I could not understand it, but after thinking of it in this way, it makes sense to me that they would not want to meet with them.

I was at Mass one night in Santa Rosa--they have one every evening at 7:00--with my required CPT shirt on, and afterward two women from the town who were sitting next to me and who had read my shirt followed me outside because they wanted to give me a blessing. They made the sign of the cross over my chest and prayed that the Holy Spirit would stay in my heart so that I would be able to work for peace.

Mobilization of Miners in Sur de Boliver, Part 1

2006-09-28T16:38:00.002-05:00

I returned yesterday from an accompaniment that was supposed to be three days and turned into a week. On Wednesday of last week we learned that a leader in one of the mining communities in the Sur de Bolivar region of Colombia had been found dead, killed by the military.

This region is home to small-scale gold miners and subsistence farmers. The area is mountainous, really beautiful, sparsely populated, and poor. But large multinational mining companies are interested in the area, and the campesinos believe the Colombian government is trying to force them out. The area is highly militarized, but like other campesino areas of Colombia that I have worked in, the residents complain that the State is there in the form of the military, but not in the form of basic services, such as roads, schools, and utilities.

When we started to call around we learned that the army was accusing the deceased of being a guerrilla and that the miners were mobilizing in the small village of San Luquitas. Groups that we really trust, such as the Catholic Diocese of Marangue, one of our local partner organizations called Programa de Desarrollo y Paz, and the Defensoria del Pueblo, a department of the Colombian government charged with defending human rights, were going up there to investigate and to accompany the miners, and they asked if we would be a part of the accompaniment commission.

On Thursday I left with one other CPTer. We got to the regional capital, Santa Rosa, that evening, after 3 hours in a car and 2 hours in boat. Then we got up at 3:30 am on Friday, drove 3 hours through the mountains to the small village of La Toreda, and then proceeded to walk and ride--by mule--the rest of the way up the mountain. It was a lovely 3-hour hike, except that it was straight up, no switchbacks like our well-manicured national parks have. And there are guerrilla in the mountains, so one cannot stray far from the mule path. I walked part of the way and rode part of the way. Both were hard for different reasons. The walk left me out of breath, but the mule left my knee nearly unusable, because the stirrups were too short and the knee was left in an awkward position.

Around 10:30 Friday morning we got to San Luquitas. There were hundreds of miners there from several dozen villages, all gathered to discuss what they were going to do. They confirmed that Alejandro was not a guerrilla, that he was a miner and a leader in his community. Trust me, the campesinos know who the guerrilla are...that is why they get into trouble from the paramilitaries and from the military. Just for knowing. But if you collaborate with one side, you get killed by the other. So they cannot tell what they know.

I read the official military comunique about his death. It said that they had killed an unidentified armed guerrillero in the place and time that Alejandro was killed. By the time the comunique was released, the body had already been identified, returned, and buried. I heard a radio interview with a general two days after Alejandro was buried saying that the person killed in that time and place was not yet identified but was certainly a guerrillero. I interviewed personally the person who was with him one-half hour before he was killed on the road, who said Alejandro had just attended a meeting of miners, was in civilian clothing, and was on his way home to his wife and children.

The miners said that the death of Alejandro, a young man in his late 20s with two small children, was the most recent of years of abuses from the Colombian military, including threats, assassinations, disappearances, intimidation. They also said that the army had come through San Luquitas the day before, telling them openly that there were going to be more deaths. The people were really frightened.

So they decided to unify and organize. They decided to converge on the regional capital, Santa Rosa, to demand a meeting with national government officials asking them to investigate the death of Alejandro and to tell the truth that he was not a guerrillero. They created the Assembly of AgroMiners and planned to have their first official meetings in Santa Rosa. They decided to send one group to Santa Rosa immediately and another the next day. The two CPTers were to accompany the first group back down the mountain, and other accompaniers waited until morning for the rest.

This meant we had to go back down that mountain on the same day, after getting up at 3:30 am and basically not eating all day. I nearly did not make it. There were no mules this time, and the knee gave out completely. The leader of all the mining communities, Teofilo, stayed with me on the trail and helped me down the mountain. I made an embarassingingly late appearance at La Toreda, where everyone was waiting for us and the cars to take us back down to Santa Rosa. We finally arrived in Santa Rosa at 1:30 am, a 22 hour day.

As I understand it, the reason the miners wanted our accompaniment was that they were afraid of the army and what they might do to them on the mountain. It is risky to organize in this country. Colombian union leaders get assassinated in high numbers, hundreds each year. Most union leaders live with death threats. Colombians seem to feel that our presence provides a shield.

Reflection on the Colombia Accompaniment

2006-09-11T16:28:00.002-05:00

This week CPT won an award from the Catholic Diocese of Barranca for our peace and justice work. It is a reflection of how much CPT is respected in this community and how valuable they consider our accompaniment work. How the local and regional human rights workers view our work feels important because it makes me feel like we are accomplishing something, even when we ourselves are not sure what that might be.

Human rights violations on the part of the Colombian army are staggering. Two of us did an accompaniment in another region this week which was a community process to verify human rights violations on the part of the army and report them. The community was afraid to do the verification process without our presence. We learned that the army came into town, accused some men of being guerrilla, and the men put their hands up in the air to surrender and the army killed them. This was verified by numerous witnesses. They also shot a child who was running away from fright.

I have reflected a lot on why I am here, what it means to me. Part of it is that we--meaning citizens of the US--are paying for this war. And it feels to me like this war looks like all the other wars that we pay for. We hear something in the news about US soldiers being killed, or so-called terrorist actions, but we never really hear about or think much about the real human costs of what we are paying for.

The cases of mistaken identity. The families forced to flee. Violations of women. Poverty. Refugee camps and homeless shelters. Random assassinations. I think that most of us do not know what our money is doing. We have dehumanized the "enemy."

CPT organized a workshop the last couple of days for women of the region to learn about the process of documentation of all the abuses against them in this armed conflict. Listening to women talk about what they have been through was powerful. They all told stories about spouses being assassinated by one group or another, or one of their children. Of displacements, and not being able to support their families in the city. Of verbal abuse from soldiers or paramilitaries. Of sexual assault.

I often feel inadequate. We are so few. I felt this way in Palestine as well...that if there were 5,000 of us, we could transform the conflict. Right now we are 5, and about to be 4. And the regular team members who are leaving for retreat do so very reluctantly, because people are dying and displacing here, and our accompaniment might prevent some of it.

Reflection From the Desert II

2006-08-17T11:08:00.003-05:00

Reflection From the Desert
On September 29, 2004, along with a colleague, I was attacked and brutally beaten by Israeli settlers while walking Palestinian children to school in the West Bank village of at-Tuwani. Using sticks, chains, and their boots, these Israeli extremists severely injured my knee, broke my elbow, punctured my colleague´s lung, and inflicted cuts and bruises on our faces and hands.

I could write a whole article about the politics behind what happened that morning, about the extremism that permits a gang of Israeli settler men to target school children and their escorts with impunity, about my own government´s support of a failed policy. But that is not this article. This article is a reflection on my spiritual journey subsequent to the attack.

Getting beat up so badly in Palestine may have been the most profound spiritual event of my life, and my hope is that my reflections will help all of us to think a bit about the spirituality of trauma and forgiveness.

In those moments right after the attack I was the most vulnerable I have ever been in my entire life. I was bleeding, scared, and could not walk. The first thing that happened was that my colleague made his way over to where I was lying on the ground, and we prayed for the attackers. It was his idea, and when I think of it now I am amazed that either of us was up for it emotionally. He could barely breathe and I could not stand up. I remember feeling irritated about the obligation of having to pray for those who had left me in this condition. But when I look back on it now I think that offering of prayer was a key to the process of letting go and forgiving later. Also, in a moment when we felt alone and abandoned, prayer focused us on the presence of God, who never abandons us.

I am certain that God never abandons us; it is we who abandon God. I have reflected a lot on that word "abandonment," because in the Latin it is the root for "desert," (i.e. to desert someone) and desert has symbolic meaning for Christians. And the attack took place in the desert. And because there is reference to abandonment in the Passion.

We abandon God, over and over. We act as though God does not exist, meaning that we must control what happens because we do not trust God. So in that sense God is always in the desert, always abandoned. In Christian spirituality, the desert is a symbol for abandonment of self, of ego, of "attachments" as Ignatius would say, and of control, and turning ourselves over to the will of God, which by definition means service of others.

I think of being in the desert as bringing the interior self, who is one with the will of God, to the surface, to become that person on the outside that we all are in our deepest interior selves. This can happen only through abandonment of that exterior self, and abandonment can only happen through prayer. This prayer that leads to liberation from our attachments is the desert. But really, just as God is always in the desert, so must the person of faith be always in the desert, always in that prayer of abandonment of self in order to attach to God. The minute we leave it, all our old desires, attachments, and impulses to try and control everyone else come back.

We do not trust God--we think we are in control--and therefore we do not trust each other. Instead of trust, it seems to me that we spend our time trying to get everyone else to be different than who they really are, and trying to get them to do our will. Just as we are afraid to abandon our self and allow God to work in us and become us, we are afraid to trust God to do the same in others.

For reasons that I cannot explain, I walked (well, actually, was carried) away from the attack with a much more profound trust in God. Perhaps it was because I went through what most would describe as their worst nightmare. I could have been killed, and had the attackers wanted to kill us they would have. I think we order our lives around a lot of fear--fear of death, of pain, of suffering, of not being in control, of something happening to our children, of not being valuable or valued. Most especially the latter. So instead of trying to reach for what God calls us to be doing, we make our decisions based on that fear. And I have been liberated from much of my fear. I imagine that it does not take getting beat up to get to this place. I think that is what it took for me.

In the aftermath of the attack, I had to let go of control over my life, because I certainly was not in control in that moment. I know that I cannot control whether I live or whether I die, that life is short, and that all I have that matters is my time. At the end of my life, whenever that is, I know that all that will seem important is that I loved--gave myself away--without counting the cost. And that is what we were doing that morning.

Someone told me shortly after the attack that I "had" to forgive the attackers. I do not know if this was helpful or not. I know I resented anyone telling me I "had" to. But I also think that this, in combination with my Catholic faith and its emphasis on forgiveness, got me thinking about forgiveness really quickly. I think if I were not Catholic, meaning that if forgiveness was not deeply ingrained in who I am and what I accept as the truth, then I probably would have been angry instead of accepting of the early advice to forgive. And I think that if we do not forgive, then the offense, whatever it is, takes us over and prevents us from moving forward with our lives. The offense, or the offender, is in control of us, instead of God. So I wanted to forgive.

I had no idea what forgiveness looked like in a situation like this. I felt I understood what it meant to forgive (or not to) in personal relationships, with people I know well, or in a work situation. But I had never experienced the need to forgive people whom I had never met and could not identify, and who had committed a crime against me. So as a first step I decided to reflect on my feelings toward and about the attackers.

When I probed my deepest feelings, I realized that I never felt any anger toward them. I wanted them (and still do) caught and prosecuted, not out of a desire for revenge, but because I feel that it would deter other Israeli settlers from equally violent actions. I tried hard, for as long as it seemed to make sense, to get the US Embassy to pressure the Israelis to continue to investigate. In the end, I was told they had no leads, because we could not identify the attackers.

I think that the reason I have not felt anger or desire for revenge is that I have been able to understand the attackers as victims. Jews have been systematically murdered for centuries, and the violent actions of settlers on the West Bank is happening as a result of their trauma. So I could, in a sense, empathize and identify with them.

I do not know if all of this adds up to forgiveness. When I experience forgiveness in personal relationships, I experience it as love. I do not feel love for the attackers. I feel compassion, though, and empathy, and I wonder if compassion and empathy are the same thing as love when it comes to a person one does not know. I want them to accept the responsibility and consequences for what they did, but I do not want them harmed or destroyed emotionally or physically. I hope it is enough.

I returned to at-Tuwani nearly 6 months after the attack, to continue the work of accompaniment, to ensure that Palestinian children are able to get to school unharmed, and that Palestinian shepherds are able to graze their sheep unhindered, and that Palestinian farmers are able to plant and plow without the constant threat of violence from the nearby settlement. For me, it was important to return to at-Tuwani that first time, for closure, and because I needed to know that the attack, and the attackers, had not taken control of my life. I was still me, still able to do the same work, still good at it. The night before I returned to at-Tuwani I had a dream in which I felt embraced by God. I knew then that everything was okay, that no matter what happened, God would never abandon me.

Human Rights Accompaniment, Part 2

2006-08-11T16:17:00.002-05:00

See Part 1 before reading this.

Just as we were leaving the last village--the one with all the applause--someone handed us a packet of pictures and said it was proof that they were fumigating in the area. Crop fumigations are part of US drug policy and are US funded to eradicate coca. They do flyovers spraying this toxic chemical which kills everything, including legal crops, and makes people sick. The only thing is, everyone agrees that there is no coca in this area. It is a drug corridor, meaning that coca is transported through there from the mountains to the ocean, but it is not grown there, so why the crop fumigations?

In the famous meeting with officials (more about that below) they vehemently denied the fumigations. But we showed the photos to some other officials, and they said, yep, it looks like fumigations. They killed avacado trees, which is the main cash crop of the region. The officials who denied the fumigations said the trees had been infected with a fungus, and later we learned that, in fact, they are now fumigating with a fungus. So nobody lied. Presumably the military killed the avocado trees in order to target the guerrilla, who are active in the area, and probably own some of the avocado plantations. But by doing so they also target small subsistence farmers.

The meeting came as a surprise to everyone involved. The group of lawyers had invited a small group of civil and military functionaries from the region, and when we got there, about 50 had shown up. They brought with them two truckloads of campesinos to contradict the complaints we were about to present. The lasted all day, and became a shouting match at times, and at times I was afraid it was going to get violent. When we met separately with the campesinos planted by the government, they did not contradict anything we had to present. Rather, they came to make statements that the guerrilla do bad things, too. Apparently the miltary had told them that we were there to denounce the military on behalf of the guerrilla!

It seemed to us that the authorities were doing everything possible to prevent the group from presenting and pursuing the complaints. One of the main points of contention at the meeting (aside from fumigations) was over the presence of paramilitary in the region. All of the civil and military authorities in the room flatly denied the presence of paramilitaries. However, the Defensor de Pueblo, the government authority vested with human rights protection, confirmed to us privately that they know paras are present, despite the famous demobilization program.

And, we know better. We have heard too many horrific reports of paramilitary activity from other communities in the region. People talk about massacres when paramilitaries cut people up alive with chainsaws and use their heads as soccer balls. Your tax dollars at work, because it is widely understood that paramilitaries act on behalf of the Colombian military.

Human Rights Accompaniment, Part 1

2006-08-03T16:04:00.002-05:00

I just returned from a 10-day trip accompanying a group of human rights lawyers from Bogota into a very high conflict region up north, called Montes de Maria. The area we traveled to had been experiencing open combat between the guerilla and government troops just days before we went. Both guerilla and paramilitary are present in the area, each holding part of the territory, though the government troops deny the presence of the paras (more about that in part 2). The area is littered with antipersonnel mines placed by the guerilla, and there are many reports of deaths and maimings. There are also widespread human rights violations on the part of government troops and paras.

Basically the campesinos (small subsistence farmers) are caught between all armed groups, are being pressured from all sides, and say they just want to be left in peace. The message I heard over and again from them is that this is not their war, and they are determined to stay on their land and preserve their way of life and their culture. The purpose of the accompaniment was to provide an international presence with the delegation, which Colombians feel gives it some protection. In other words, with us there, the lawyers were less likely to be subjected to violence or to be prevented from going.

I have lots of stories to tell, but here is a brief summary of what we did. The lawyers were traveling to the region to hold meetings telling the campesino communities what their rights under the law actually are, and to collect complaints of human rights violations perpetrated by government troops. They collected the complaints in writing, created a document, and submitted it to the appropriate authorities and legal processes.

To sum up, they found three classes of human rights violations in every single community and on a large scale. They are: blockades of food and medicine, prevention of travel along the roads, and massive and arbitrary detentions without due process. The military is preventing food and medicine from moving between communities because they claim that the campesinos are feeding the guerrilla, and the military is also preventing them from moving freely because they claim that they are aiding the guerrilla. To accomplish this the military has set up road blocks and check points, which we had to go through and so I can vouch that they exist.

There was one set up in the middle of town, placing the residents at risk of being caught in the middle of armed combat. We got detained at them but ultimately were let through. Detentions take place because some paramilitary informant will claim that some campesino is guerrilla, and then they get arrested and held, sometimes for years, without trial. According to government statistics 80 percent are eventually released for lack of evidence.

On our way in to one of the communities we got stopped at a road block where there had been fighting the day before. It was about 5 in the afternoon, and was going to be dark by 6, when it is dangerous to be on the roads due to guerrilla presence. The military held us for 45 minutes, so we ended up traveling the last 45 minutes in the dark on some of the worst roads I have ever seen, rivaling even those in Haiti.

It may have been one of the most dangerous things I have ever done. In addition to the bad roads, the darkness, the jungle, and the presence of armed groups, I was sitting on the passenger side of a jeep with no front door. It was a knuckle-whitening experience. But when we got there, we were greeted by 5000 campesinos lining the road, applauding ing wildly. They had come from all over the region, and had been waiting for us for hours. This was the first visit of its kind to this region. If I did not know before, I knew then how important our mission was to the communities, because it would allow them to file formal complaints against their abusers.

We visited four seperate campesino communities, doing the same thing in each one. Each meeting had representatives from several campesino communities present. At the end of the presentations by the lawyers, people could submit their complaints in writing. Every community insisted on some kind of cultural presentation at the end of the meetings. They were determined to let us know the value of their cultural heritage and their desire to preserve it. We heard over and over that this is not their war, but they feel they are bearing the brunt of the punishment for it.

They also said that they feel abandoned by the government. The roads are not passable, they have no electricity, running water, schools or health care. And unlike Haiti, Colombia is a fairly developed country. The campesinos feel that the government is doing it on purpose, in order to force them off the land.

I asked a lot of different people why there was fighting over this land. We know it is a drug corridor--meaning that although no coca is grown there, it is a corridor between the river and the ocean where drugs are shipped, and all sides seem to profit from control of the corridor. We also know that it is rich agricultural land. There is speculation that there is mineral wealth underneath, but we have no proof. One of the lawyers in our delegation told me that the president of Colombia (Uribe) is buying up parcels of land in this area--through intermediaries-- in order to profit from future large transnational corporations who want to locate there. Obviously, I have no way of verifying that.

Colombia is the second or third largest recipient of US aid, and 80 percent of that is military aid. So our tax dollars are going to fund human rights abuses against small subsistence farmers, most of whom are either Afro-Colombian or indigenous. I felt that this was a very important accompaniment, and I felt that we were right where we were supposed to be, which is making it possible for the most marginalized groups in this country to raise their voice against abuse that is financed by my own country.

Introduction to Barrancabermeja

2006-07-19T14:27:00.003-05:00

I arrived in Colombia almost exactly 2 weeks ago, on July 4. I spent 2 nights in Bogota trying to get a bus ticket to Barrancabermeja, where I will be working with CPT for the next three months.

Barranca is the site of the largest oil refinery in the country, and for that reason strategically important in the civil war that has been going on here for 50 years. There is a gas cartel that operates here by stealing gas out of a pipeline that runs from the refinery. They put holes in the pipeline and fill up containers, and transport the stuff in small boats along the Opon river that runs into the Magdalena river, which runs through Barranca.

The gas cartel is currently operated by paramilitary groups, who fund themselves by selling it. In the past the cartel was in the hands of the guerrilla, but paramilitary forces have taken over this area in recent years.

In very general terms, the guerrilla are a left movement that supports land rights for campesinos and labor organizing, but by violent means. The paramilitaries are private forces, often supported by large companies, such as mines, gas, and oil, that put campesinos off their land by force so that the companies can move in, and who are also responsible for high numbers of assassinations of labor leaders. In general the paras support government policies and most believe that at minimum, the goverment allows them to operate.

About a year ago the main para forces signed a demobilization agreement, but as far as anyone can tell they are not really demobilizing but reconstituting themselves as private security forces. In this area, nobody has any doubt that the oil company, ECOPETROL, knows that their gas is being stolen by paras.

When CPT first came here 5 years ago, it was to accompany 2 small campesino communities along the Opon River that had been forcibly displaced due to the gas cartel and wanted to return to their homes. The people who live there farm small plots of land and fish for their livelihood. When the communities first returned CPT had a presence there all the time, with a team rotating in and out of Barranca, because the level of violence was quite high. It was not uncommon to see bodies floating down the river. It was our main work.

But in the last year or so the communities have stabilized, so much so that other kinds of organizations have come in with development assistence. We are now phasing out of the Opon work, at least that what it looks like to me, and gathering information about other communities who need the same kind of accompaniment. Very recently, a community member from the Opon was assassinated and another was displaced due to a threat on his life. It seems that they were somehow involved in the cartel. So the violence continues, but the communities seem to be able to maintain themselves as long as they are able to refrain from being involved with either side.

Reflection From the Desert I

2006-06-19T11:17:00.002-05:00

I have been using this time in Bolivia for reflection on the events of my life in the past 2 years or so and what they mean for my future and vocation. For that reason I have not spent a lot of time sending analyses of the political situation in Bolivia (although God knows, I am capable of that).

So, here goes. Getting beat up so badly in Palestine may have been the most profound spiritual event of my life (I say "may" because really, there have been a lot of profound spiritual events, and who can place a value on them?). I have talked to many of you about different things, but I feel it is time to write something down. Maybe I will throw in a few comments about the political situation in Bolivia alongthe way! My hope is that my reflections will help all of us to think a bit about the spiritualityof trauma and forgiveness.

One thing I have spent a lot of time thinking about is why I did so well emotionallyafterward. I have never exhibited any symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, never had any bad dreams or flashbacks, and did fine when I went back to Tuwani later. I have only ever had one dream about the attack, and it happened the night before I left to return to Tuwani for the first time. I will spare you the details, but it was a healing dream, a survival dream, a dream that made manifest the presence of God. For me, it was important to return to Tuwani that first time, for closure, and because I needed to know that the attack, and the attackers, had not taken controlof my life. I was still me, still able to do the same work, still good at it.

But why? On the one hand, I have no clue, but on the other hand, I have some ideas based on some of the things that happened right afterward. One thing I think I understand is that in those moments right after the attack I was the most vulnerable I have ever been in my entire life (I was bleeding, scared, and could not walk), and so what happened right then was really important. The first thing that happened after Chris made his way over to where I was lying on the ground (and called for help) was that we prayed for the attackers. It was his idea, and when I think of it now I am amazed that either of of was up for it. He could barely breathe and I could not get up. I remember thinking something like "why the hell would I want to do that in this moment." But anyway, we did, and when I look back on it now I think that was important in the process of letting go and forgiving.

It also helped us to focus on the presence of God,who never abandons us. I am certain that God never abandons us; it is we who abandon God. It seems likea paradox, but I was never so aware of the presence of God, the love of God, than I was in those moments after the attack. Part of that was the prayer, but another part was Diane and Piergiorgio reaching us as quickly as they could. (Some of you may remember this part of the story from when it happened.) I experience, then and now, their act of coming out to be with us while we waited for an ambulance to be a profound act of love. Waiting for them was when I was the most frightened, because I knew that our attackers could be lurking in the trees, and that they could get the 2 of them as well. They were in serious danger, and unlike me and Chris when we set out to walk the kids to school that morning, they knew the danger theywere in and they came anyway. It was an abandonment of the self for the sake ofthe other. It was like Jesus going to Jerusalem.

I have reflected a lot on that word "abandonment," because in the Latin it is the root for "desert," (i.e. to desert someone) and desert has alot of symbolic meaning for Christians. And the attack took place in the desert. And because there is a lot of reference to abandonment in the Passion. We abandon God, over and over. We act as though God does not exist, so that we can and must control what happens because we do not trust God. So in that sense God is always in the desert, always abandoned.

In Christian spirituality, the desert is a symbol for abandonment of self, of ego, of "attachments" as Ignatius would say, and of control, and turning ourselves over to the will of God, which by definition means service of others. I think of being in the desert as bringing the interior self, who is one with the will of God, to the surface, to become that person on the outside that we all are in our deepest interior selves. This can happen only through abandonment of that exterior self, and abandonment can only happen through prayer. This prayer that leads to liberation from our attachments is the desert.

But really, just as God is always in the desert, so must the personof faith be always in the desert, always in that prayer of abandonment of self inorder to attach to God. The minute we leave it, all our old desires, attachments,and impulses to try and control everyone else come back. All this from the fact that I did not get abandoned in the desert!

Love and trust are also important here, meaning what they are and why they are so hard for us. We do not trust God--we think we are in control--and therefore we do not trust each other. Instead of trust, it seems to me that we spend our time trying to get everyone else to be different than who they really are, and trying to get them to do our will. I will spare you all the dreadful stories of me doing this--but I think we all have similar stories. Just as we are afraid to abandon our self and allow God to work in us and become us, we are afraid to trust God todo the same in others.

In CPT work, we have to trust each other, because our lives are at stake. But Iam not sure we do, and I am not sure that as an organization we are doing the inner work that would make it possible. I did not experience that happening in training, nor have I experienced it in our so-called retreats. The thing is, not only do we have to trust, but we also have to be worthy of trust. In other words, we all have to be willing to not abandon the other in the desert, and I am uncertain that I could be sure of that with every CPTer.

I think it is the reason that sometimes, it seems to me anyway, CPTers are unwilling to take the risks that we say we are willing to take in our projects. We do take the risks in Tuwani for sure. I am interested to see how much of it we do in Colombia. I know that I am willing to take the risks, but not if I cannot trust the people I am working with. And therein lies the heart of the problem in CPT right now. For the CPT Palestine folks reading this: I have come to understand that the heart of my problem with Luna was that--for good reason and with hard evidence--I did not trust her not to abandon me in the desert.

For reasons that I cannot explain, I walked (well, actually, was carried) away from the attack with a much more profound trust in God. Perhaps it was because I went through what most would describe as their worst nightmare. I could have been killed, and had the attackers wanted to kill us they would have. And....? It is all okay.

I think we order our lives around a lot of fear--fear of death, of pain, of suffering, of prison, of not being in control, of something happening to our children, of not being valuable or valued (most especially the latter). So instead of trying to touch what God calls us to be doing, we make our decisions based on that fear. And I have been liberated from much of my fear. I imagine that it does not take getting beat up to get to this place. I think that is what it took for me.

Not to say that I am not dealing with some issues. I have an irrational reaction each time I see someone running toward me on the street, whether or not they are wearing a black ski mask. There are kids in La Paz walking around polishing shoes,and they all wear black ski masks, and for that reason alone they scare me. People holding anything that looks like a stick or a chain scare me. Etc.

But for some reason, insteaad of the attack making me more afraid of trusting other people, it has made me more willing to. I think it is because I have had to let go of control over my life (I certainly was not in control in that moment) and to accept that as a fact. I am not in control, of my own life or the life of anyone else. I am doing the best I can, and so is everyone else. I know that I cannot control whether I live or whether I die, that life is short,and that all I have that matters is my time. At the end of my life, whenever that is, I know that all that will seem important is that I loved--gave myself away--without counting the cost. And that is what Chris and I were doing that morning.

I feel like this is way too long, but I also feel like I need to add something about forgiveness. Someone told me shortly after the attack that I "had" toforgive the attackers. I do not know if this was helpful or not. I know I resented anyone telling me I "had" to. But I also think that this, in combination with my Catholic faith and its emphasis on forgiveness, got me thinking about forgiveness really quickly. I think if I were not Catholic, meaning that if forgiveness was not deeply ingrained in who I am and what I accept as the truth, then I probably would have been angry instead of accepting of the early advice to forgive. And I think that if we do not forgive, then the crime, or the offense, whatever it is,takes us over and prevents us from moving forward with our lives. The offense, or the offender, is in control of us, instead of God.

So I wanted to forgive. I realized that I had no idea what forgiveness looked like in a situation like this.I felt I understood what it meant to forgive (or not to) in personal relationships, with people I know well, or in a work situation. But I had never experienced the need to forgive people whom I had never met and could not identify, and who had committed a crime against me.

So I decided to reflect on my feelings toward and about the attackers. I realized that I never felt any anger toward them. I have no idea why. It just is not there. I wanted them (and still do) caught and prosecuted, not out of a desire for revenge, but because I feel that it would deter other Israeli settlers from equally violent actions. I tried hard, for as long as it seemed to make sense, to get the US Embassy to pressure the Israelis to continue to investigate. In theend, I was told they had no leads, because we could not identify the attackers. I do not have any strong feelings toward them one way or another. It so happened that randomly Chris and I were the ones walking the kids that morning. They were not targetting me but my presence.

I have also been able to understand them as victims. Perhaps that is due to my previous work with Soviet Jews denied permission to emigrate (the amusing irony is that so many settlers are former Soviet Jews whosecause I took up for several years). Jews have been systematically murdered for centuries, and the violent actions of some settlers on the West Bank is happeningas a result of their trauma. So I could, in a sense, empathize and identify withthem.

I do not know if all of this adds up to forgiveness. When I experience forgiveness in personal relationships, I experience it as love. I do not feel love for the attackers. I feel compassion, though, and empathy, and I wonder if compassion andempathy are the same thing as love when it comes to a person one does not know. I want them to accept the responsibility and consequences for what they did, but I do not want them harmed or destroyed emotionally or physically. I hope it is enough. For those of you with the stamina to read all this, I welcome your comments and reflections.

The Jesuit Reducciones

2006-04-16T11:14:00.004-05:00

Last week a big group of us are travelled to the Jesuit reducciones in Eastern Bolivia. If you have seen the movie The Mission, you know what they are. They were an experiment in community established by the Jesuits partly as a way to protect the indigenous of the region from the horrible violence and enslavement perpetrated by the Spanish conquistadors.

They were successful early experiements in socialism that worked until the Spanish king, feeling threatened by the power that organized indigenous folks had (and the Jesuits armed them as well), kicked the Jesuits out of South America. The reducciones in Paraguay are in ruins today, but the ones in Bolivia have been preserved and are still functioning towns, with vestiges of their founding principles still present.

The most interesting thing to me about the reducciones is that apparently, according to an article I am reading by the liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, the reducciones influenced the thinking of Marx, whose writings appeared somewhat after the Jesuits were thrown out of South America. When I was reading Marx, Engles, and Lenin in university, I never saw the Jesuits mentioned, but I am sure all three would have been embarrassed to admit that some Catholics influenced them, since they had no use for religion.

What is interesting about this is that the birthplace of modern socialism is not Europe, but South America, and that it was not designed according to scientific principles, but in fidelity to the Gospel.

My own pilgrimage to the Jesuit reducciones was exhausting but worthwhile. We visited 6 different missions, all built in the later 17th or early 18th century. The Bolivian missions were the last of the reducciones to be built and were functioning as part of the Jesuit experiments for only about 75 years before the Spanish king became jealous and kicked the Jesuits out. But the Bolivian missions remained active even after the Jesuits were expelled and are still functioning villages.

A Swiss architect came here in the 1970s to begin restoration work on the Bolivian missions, all of which were functioning but in poor repair. The restorations were finished in the late 90s. In the process of restoring them, this architect found the music archives. Some of the Jesuit missionaries were also composers, some of them well-known in Europe. They composed music in the reducciones, taught the indigenous to compose, perform it, and even to craft their own instruments.

The music archive, which is now housed in the basement of one of these churches, contain 5000 original pieces of music that were previously thought lost. According to the story, this architect found it in the bathroom. They are painstakingly restoring and cataloging each piece of music, and have finished with 1700 of them.

The choirs in the missions are still performing these pieces of Baroque music. We went to a concert and were awestruck. There we were, in the middle of nowhere, in a village of no more than 3000 people, and listening to a choir of local children singing Baroque music like I had never heard it performed. Some of the pieces were written in the native Chicitania or Guarani languages.

There are so many interesting things to tell about these missions, but I will restrain myself and just mention a few more. Over 100,000 native people were housed in the reducciones at their height. The native people of this region were nomadic, but willingly moved to the reducciones to escape the slavehunters, who were capturing them to work in the Bolivian silver mines. The silver was all sent back to the Spanish crown. Slaves from Africa were also imported for this work, but the story goes that most of them died, which is why there are so few Afro-Bolivians today.

The reducciones were idyllic communities in many ways. Community members worked 6 days per week--three days on communal land and three days on their own. Communal land was used to grow the herb tea they exported in order to pay their taxes to the Spanish crown. When the head of household died, the private land reverted back to the community for redistribution. In this way no-one was able to to inherit wealth and all had what they needed. It seems that often when poor people are empowered, the elite became concerned about their own wealth and put a stop to it.

Adventures with Coffee and Colonialism

2006-02-19T10:50:00.004-06:00

I have had lots of adventures with coffee. Bolivia is a coffee-producing country, so there is no shortage of good coffee here, and the one brand that I really like is also organic. But Bolivians do not tend to drink their own coffee; they drink Nescafe instant coffee. That's what they put in front of me in my house when I arrived, and many conversations with many people have confirmed that Nescafe instant is what almost everyone drinks.

Of course, when I travel, I always carry my little one-cup Melitta coffee maker, the kind you just have to pour boiling water through, and a supply of filters, so after one day of Nescafe, I introduced the real thing to my host family. They have fallen in love with their own coffee, and now I will need to leave my little coffee making device with them. Luckily, I have some friends who are sending replacements, because I prefer not to do without real coffee, and I have a feeling I will be needing to leave them all over South America.

I had an interesting, and revealing, conversation with the family I am staying with about their attachment to Nescafe. I said I could not understand why they would drink Nescafe when they have their own, much better, Bolivian coffee. Not only that, but Nescafe is more expensive. I said that Nestle is a multinational company, and they are...they are...I couldn't come up with the right word in Spanish. Lupe jumped in with ladrones, the Spanish word for thieves.

Yup, that's the right word. How else can you describe businesspeople who pay the producers next to nothing, pay the factory workers who process it next to nothing, and keep enormous riches for themselves?

But the bottom line is Bolivians think that North American and European products are better than their own. It is this weird sense of inferiority that connects with the race issues I mentioned in my last letter.

I just finished reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, and he talks about the same thing. He says that Africans struggle with a sense of the inferiority of their own culture, and even of their own abilities, when compared to the European occupiers, and only when this is conquered can Africans really be liberated from colonial oppression. He says that he struggled with it himself, always assuming that what was British was better. I recall that Gandhi said the same thing in his autobiography.

What I say in response is, how can a culture whose main export is war, be superior?

On a lighter note, we are preparing for Carnival here. In some parts of Bolivia it is just an excuse to drink for 24 hours straight, like anywhere else. But the main Carnival festivities take place in Oruro, in the heartland of indigenous culture, and where I will be going with other language students. There the celebration is a big dance fest that depicts a battle between good and evil in a mixture of Catholic and indigenous religious symbols.

A main feature of Carnival is throwing water balloons at each other. I don't think this has much to do with religious symbolism; it is just an excuse to cut loose. The water balloon throwing started at the beginning of this month. People just randomly throw water balloons, called globos, at unsuspecting pedestrians anywhere in the city. In Cochabamba they use a Spanish verb that means to throw water balloons, globear. I have been hit a few times, but most times they miss. I am trying to have fun with it, but mostly it feels like dodging bombs in a war zone. Harmless bombs, but bombs just the same. It makes me wonder why people think this is fun.

Morales and Social Division

2006-01-22T11:03:00.002-06:00

Today Bolivia inauguerates its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, who is Aymara. The Aymara make up less than half of the indigenous majority in Bolivia; the Quechua are more numerous.

Yesterday I watched on TV as he was installed by the Aymara first, before the official government installation today. A crowd of tens of thousands of the Aymara people gathered at Tiahuonaka, an Inca holy site just south of La Paz. They believe that Tiahuonaka is a portal of the sun. They vested him with poncho and staff, and he wore a four-cornered hat to signify the four corners of the Inca empire. Such an installation has not happened in more than 500 years, since the Spanish occupation.

The family I live with is middle class with Spanish ancestors, but Lupe, the head of the household, supported Morales. Lupe explained to me that Bolivia has had 5 presidents in four years, and it seems that Morales was able to win over some of the middle class because they believe that something needs to change. Her family suffered at the hands of left-wing guerrillas, and so originally supported the right-wing dictatorship of a man whose name I cannot remember right now. She had a conversion after she left her husband and read about all the abuses of the government.

In speaking with others, it sounds like many in the middle class share her views. They are wary of Morales and his socialist ideas, but anything is better than what they have been enduring. In the last 5 years there have been several major uprisings over gas and water rights. However, I have noticed that the middle class seem to spend a lot of time worrying about how Morales dresses! They want him to wear suits and not sweaters.

In my little household live Lupe, divorced and in her fifties, her daughter, Gringa (more about that below), her daughter's two sons, Francisco (4) and Leonardo (7), Elena, the housekeeper, who is indigenous, but I don't know if she is Aymara or Quechua, and Rodrigo (13), Elena's grandson who is chief babysitter to the two boys. Elena's daughter, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's two younger sons are also often at the house.

So what we have here are five grown women, including me, and five boys. Half of us have European ancestors and the other half are indigenous. None of the boys have a father in their lives. It seems that most middle class household retain servants who are indigenous. In most cases the servants go home at night and maintain a distance from the family. They do not eat at the same table, for example. In our case Elena and Rodrigo live with us and we all eat together and the boys all play together. However, in no way are Elena and Rodrigo equal to Lupe and her family. There is a hierarchy, and they are at the bottom.

Last Sunday I went to the cemetary with Lupe and her brother to visit their parents. They do this ritual every Sunday. At the gate to the cemetary stands a group of 20 or more indigenous people waiting for someone to buy flowers from them or hire them to clean up the gravesite. Lupe and her brother did both. They paid a girl a single Boliviano, about 15 cents, to sweep around the grave and pick up leaves by hand.

I was thinking that these are the same people who are desperately trying to get in to the U.S., but when they get there, they end up doing the same kinds of jobs. I think the difference must be that they get paid more in the U.S., and there is much more hope for the future of their children. Morales brings some hope that Bolivia's poorest, all indigenous, can find a sustainable future in Bolivia, because he promises to pursue policies that are in their interests.

I understand that the average salary in Cochabamba is around $200 per month, but that is for people who are working. Unemployment is high and jobs are scarce. There is a lot of begging, mostly women and children, and I have also seen many men passed out on the street from alcohol. They are just left there. There is also a problem with addiction to glue-sniffing, because there is a shoe factory and it is easy to get. This leads to a problem with homeless children, because their parents succomb to addiction.

Gringa, Lupe's daughter, sells overpriced and overrated vitamins to rich people and seems to do well. Lupe told me that the job requires long hours and travel, but that jobs are scarce, even for people with European ancestors, so she had to take what she could get. Gringa's real name is Luz Maria. They nicknamed her Gringa at birth because she has blue eyes, reddish hair, and fair skin. Gringa loves the name and will go by no other. In short, Gringa loves being white and chooses to advertise it as best she can. Her kids are also white. She is very right wing and wants nothing to do with Morales. Somehow, it seems to go with the whiteness!

Olive Trees, Russian Soldiers, and a Bulldozer

2006-01-08T14:17:00.003-06:00

I went back to Palestine on Wednesday, and after the usual hours-long ordeal at the border while they checked and rechecked me, I got in. I spent Wednesday and Thursday in Hebron and went down to Tuwani on Friday. It seems that I cannot be in Tuwani without something happening. Or maybe it is just that something is always happening in Tuwani.

The service van--public transportation in Palestine--dropped us at the bottom of the hill coming down from Yatta. From there we had to cross the bypass road (route 317--open only to Jewish settlers) and walk up the hill to Tuwani. When we got out of the van we noticed a group of people crowded around an olive grove off to the left, before crossing the bypass road and across from the Maon settlement. When we got there we saw that all of the trees had been destroyed. The branches were cut off, leaving only the stumps. They were 102 olive trees planted in 1974. Israeli soldiers were already there when we arrived. CPTers called the police and the media, as well as other human rights groups.

One of my CPT colleagues told me that as she was approaching the devastation early that morning, she saw a group of settlers on the hill overlooking the grove, singing "Happy Days are Here Again." Palestinians told us that the night before the settlers were celebrating the demise of Sharon, and as part of the celebration they destroyed the trees. We learned from another human rights group that the police had found footprints leading from the destroyed grove into Ma'on settlement.

Palestinians tell us that the trees will produce again, but it will take five years, minimum. The trees provide a livelihood for an entire family of Palestinians.

Later that day children ran into our yard in Tuwani, saying that the army was there and they had a bulldozer. I didn't know the word for bulldozer but I understood the rest! In my last email about Tuwani I wrote about new roadblocks due to the murder of a settler in the area. When I returned this time Palestinians had opened all the roadblocks with tractors and shovels. You still have to drive over a big dirt bump, but the rocks were removed. This is important, because people from Tuwani and surrounding villages have to get to Yatta for work, school, food, and medical traetment. Some of them have cars that were bulldozed in by the closures. My admiration for the Palestinians grows as they persevere in this form of nonviolent resistence to clear violations of international human rights law.

Anyway, when we got to the bypass road, we saw Israeli soldiers bulldozing closed the openings that Palestinians had made. These openings enabled them to cross the bypass road and get to Yatta by vehicle (as opposed to donkey). Kristy and I filmed it and then started talking to the soldiers. All but one of them were Russians, so I had a long conversation in Russian with several of them. Really, Russian Jews ought to know about what it feels like to be oppressed. They also know what it means to be occupied, and what it means to be subject to massive human rights violations. But it didn't seem to bother these guys. They said they were only following orders and we should take it up with their commanders. I didn't say, because I was afraid of their very large machine guns, that soldiers serving under Nazi Germany said the same thing in the Nuremburg trials.

We explained that blocking the road prevented movement to work, hospitals, etc. They said that everyone from Yatta is a terrorist and they have to prevent them from killing Jewish civilians. We said that the Palestinians are civilians and that these actions of the Israeli army are creating more terrorism. They said that the lives of Jewish civilians are more important than disrupting the lives of Palestinians. They said they also wanted peace. I said that they don't treat Palestinians the same as they treat Jews, and that they will have peace when they treat Palestinians as their brothers and sisters. They laughed at me; they said that Palestinians are not their brothers and sisters. Only Jews are.

Then we pointed to the destroyed olive grove and asked why the soldiers had not been on patrol the night before, as they typically are. They said they knew nothing about it. We asked why, since the settlers had committed a crime, the army did not bulldoze closed the road into the settlement and destroy all their houses, as they do with Palestinian villages when one person is suspected of a crime. Suspected, not convicted. They replied that the olive trees are not important---the Palestinians don't need those trees because they all have 2 Mercedes. This in a village where most families struggle to put food on the table. In fact, most Palestinians struggle to put food on the table. But the soldiers claimed they know more about it than me.

It went on like that. They wanted us to take their pictures and put them on our website. They all knew who we were and the address of our website. They say they look at the pictures all the time and like to find themselves there. Later we checked out our website and sure enough, the albums with soldiers in them all have more than a thousand hits, whereas the others have only a few hundred.

I learned later that the army is planning to build a concrete wall along the bypass road, permanently separating the Tuwani side of the road from Yatta. It would destroy the communities on that side of the road, which is, I'm sure, what they want. The Ma'on settlement would then get the land by default. The Palestinians are fighting it in court.

I returned to Hebron yesterday morning. Getting back was an ordeal. Israeli soldiers had occupied a house in Kirmil, a village between Yatta and Tuwani, and were doing flying checkpoints on the road to Yatta. Also, a large checkpoint between Yatta and Hebron which is usually closed had been opened. So it took forever. It is the ordeal that Palestinians endure daily, just to survive.

Tuwani Accompaniment

2005-12-17T14:29:00.003-06:00

The School in at-Tuwani

The Situation in Tuwani
It has been quiet this week because all the planting and plowing is done and the rains haven't begun, which means there is nothing green for the sheep to graze on so they stay home and eat grain. During the planting and plowing there were a number of nasty settler encounters. The problem here--and in much of the West Bank-- is a land dispute. Jewish settlers living in the nearby Maon Settlement want to claim and use land owned by Palestinians. We accompany Palestinians to prevent settlers from taking it by force or intimidation.

There was an Israeli high court decision recently that affirmed the right of these villagers to plow and plant their own land, but still there have been problems with settlers, especially in the areas not covered by the court decision. And it seems to us that the Israeli army is more accountable to the settlers than they are to their own court system. We expect the problems to start up again as soon as the rains begin and Palestinians will want to use their grazing land, also coveted by settlers. That should start any day now--the rains are late, but in the last few days winter has been blowing in, and winter brings rain.

We continue to accompany a group of about a dozen Palestinian children to and from school every day. Accompaniment means watching to make sure the Israeli soldiers come at the appointed time to walk with them to protect them from attack by the settlers. It has been going smoothly, and recently they began using the shortest path to school, the one where I was beaten, which takes them only about 20 minutes each way. There have been problems still with settlers; recently they came out even with the soldiers present and managed to hurt one of the children.

This morning we awoke to find Israeli soldiers bulldozing closed the main road out of the village and into Yatta, the nearest larger city. They periodically close it and Palestinians open it up by digging it out by hand, because people need to use the road to get to school and work, and to transport food and supplies to the village. This time the soldiers put such big rocks in the way that they will be nearly impossible to move. But I have confidence that the Palestinians will figure out a way!

The reason for the closure, we assume, is that a settler was killed near Hebron, about an hour away from Tuwani (give or take). In a normal democracy, with normal rule of law, police investigate the crime and punish the perpetrator. Here, Israelis punish all Palestinians through closures, bulldozing, roadblocks, and other measures, before anyone even knows who committed the crime. I do not get this mentality. It is a form of collective punishment, and is evidence of the fundamental flaw in Israeli policies toward Palestine. Until those policies change, there will be no peace here.

Lomas de Poleo

2005-09-29T14:55:00.004-05:00

One aspect of border work that I have not explored with you much so far is violence on the Mexico side and how it relates to US border policies. I received some information from the Columban Fathers (a Catholic religious order) about a violent land dispute in Cuidad Juarez (across from El Paso, TX) that one of their priests was involved in and that was related to US policies in the area.

Last weekend I drove there with another CPTer and learned more about the story. The US has decided to put a new legal international border crossing at Sunland Park, NM, a suburb of El Paso. Sunland Park is rather depressed but is already the site of a casino and racetrack. They think a border crossing will bring economic development. This seems odd to me---in Douglas the economic development consists of retail outlets like Wal-Mart that cater to Mexicans with special shopping visas--hardly large scale economic development.

On the Mexico side they also expect economic development. Right now what is there is a colonia called Anapra, and next to it a settlement called Lomas de Poleo. The people there live in shacks and work in the maquilla factories earning somewhere around $45 per week. Those that have jobs, that is.

A short bit of context for those of you who aren't familiar with this: the maquilla factories make cheap manufactured goods that are sold in places like Wal-Mart. They have them all along the US-Mexico border--on the Mexican side-- and also in places like Haiti, China, etc. International corporations run them and they get closed and moved every time the company finds a place with cheaper labor. In Mexico, people were forced to leave their farms as a result of NAFTA and other US trade policies which dramatically decreased the price of agricultural products and made farming unsustainable on a small scale. The people who left their farms either work in the maquilladoras or smuggle themselves across the border into the US looking for work. Colonias filled with desperately poor people have sprung up around the maquilla factories on the border.

I hope you are still with me! Enter the Zaragoza family. The Zaragozas are a rich Mexican family who seem to own everything (including Corona, which has me highly depressed). Apparently because of the possibility of development of some kind, the Zaragozas have decided they want the land called Lomas de Poleo. It sits atop a mesa surrounded by mountains with a great view of the US.

According to the Mexican constitution, if you settle on unoccupied land for 5 years or more and no-one claims it, it becomes yours. Many people have been there 30 years or more; others for 10 or 15 years. In short, they all own their land. But Zaragoza has decided to claim it, and has surrounded the community with gates, fences and barbed wire, and placed his own guards around the town, controlling who comes and goes. He has so far bulldozed dozens of homes.

About half the village has already fled. About a month ago one person was beaten to death trying to defend the home of a friend. He left a wife and three children. With the support of the Columbans, the village has filed a legal complaint and has established a permanent protest at the office of the Attorney General in Juarez, where jurisdiction lies. They have hung banners from the building calling Zaragoza a criminal and there is a coffin on the front steps calling attention to the man who died. So far they have been there five weeks.

They don't know when the case will be resolved or who long they will have to stay. They do know that so far everything has gone in the favor of Zaragoza.We don't know what we will do yet in response to this situation. We would like to support the protest in some way and also to support the priest who is accompanying the village through this ordeal. For me this trip provided a glimpse of the many different peoples and places who are being harmed by our border policies.

Life and Death in the Desert

2005-09-27T14:05:00.003-05:00

Life and Death in the Desert

Random ID checks. High intensity light surveillance. Low level helicopter flights. Fence and wall construction. Infrared sensors. Vehicle checkpoints. Unmanned drones seek evidence of weapons, or drugs, or people-smuggling. Officers patrol on foot, horseback, or jeep. Police, soldiers, or agents detain lines of people at the side of the road until they complete a computer check of citizenship and work permit status. Some are arrested, some are prosecuted, some are deported.

These scenes describe life in the West Bank, Palestine, where I served with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron this past Fall and Spring. The effects of this high level of militarization in Israel-Palestine are well-known to many religious activists. Israeli army (IDF) militarization of the West Bank has created a virtual ghetto for Palestinians, many of whom have been living in refugee camps since 1948. Militarization prevents Palestinians from freely moving between the West Bank and Israel, effectively separating the Palestinian people from their families, from their historical lands, and from decent jobs in Israel. In the name of national security, the IDF inflicts abuse and humiliation against Palestinians which would never be tolerated in Israeli society.

What is less-known is that this level of militarization also describes life on the US-Mexico border. I have been working with the CPT team in Douglas, Arizona, since I left the Middle East in May. I have found an eerie similarity between what, in the name of security, the Israeli government is doing to the Palestinians and our own government is doing to migrants from Mexico and other places south of the US border.

Israel is building a wall around Palestine, and we are building a wall on the border with Mexico. So far there are about 70 miles of wall, which is constructed of metal landing pad material leftover from the Vietnam War, on the US-Mexico border. Near Douglas and Naco, Arizona, there are many still-unused piles of this material, which has been hauled in from its storage places around the world. On one part of the wall, near Naco, a sign announces that an army engineering company based in Fort Benning, Georgia, is responsible for constructing it.

The Israel-Palestine “separation wall” and the US-Mexico “border fence” divide wealth from poverty and opportunity from desperation. The walls separate people from jobs and family. They separate people, whose ancestors have lived on the land for centuries, from their traditional land and culture. The land on the wealthy side of the walls was taken by force from darker-skinned people by primarily white colonizers. As described above, both walls are constructed in the name of national security and therefore require a high degree of additional military presence to try and secure the border.

This part scares me. Our Border Patrol is not the IDF, at least not yet. And so far, we have seen no Mexican suicide bombers. But is this where we are headed? There are proposals in Congress to increase militarization of the border zone. We have not learned from the experience of Israel. Militarization does not work. On the Israel side, people live in constant fear of violence and have become numb to the invasive presence of weapons and soldiers in their society. On the Palestine side, militarization has increased the sense of desperation among the Palestinian people, because they feel locked in without access to resources, jobs, and opportunity on the other side of the wall. Even inside the West Bank, Palestinians cannot travel freely. Desperation has led some to believe that their lives are expendable. In my view, Palestinian suicide bombings are at least as much about suicide as they are about bombing the Israelis. People do not blow themselves up if they feel hopeful about their future lives.

Since the passage of NAFTA in 1994, desperation has heightened on the Mexico side of the border. The average wage in Mexico has dropped 34%, while the cost of food, housing, and other essentials has gone up 247% (Border Action Network, Militarization and Globalization, www.borderaction.org). Hundreds of thousands of migrants cross the border into the US every year seeking better lives. Increased militarization around population areas has caused migrants to cross in remote and dangerous desert regions. There have been more than 3000 documented migrant deaths from 1995-2005 (Derechos Humanos, www.derechoshumanosaz.net). Many local activists believe that number is likely much higher and that many bodies in remote regions are never found.

In June, I walked through the desert from Sasabe, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona. It took us 7 days to walk 75 brutal miles. During the walk I realized that a person would have to be desperate to attempt this trip. I think it may have been the day that I twisted my ankle. I decided that I was going to try and walk the rest of the way anyway, because that is what a migrant would have to do---or else be left for dead. I imagined a migrant coming to the realization that he or she would not be able to continue. Ever.

If increased militarization won’t work, then what will? The answer is complicated, and includes legislative action for comprehensive immigraton reform, education about border issues, sustainable development on the south side of the border, and many other factors. I hope, though, that people of faith will look deeper than legislative advocacy and education. It seems to me that the root cause of all this militarization is racism---a fear among the white power establishment in the United States of an invasion of people of color from the south who will overrun and alter our way of life and power structure. For the Christian, working to overcome racism is core to our identity. “There is...one God and Father of all, who is above all and in all and through all” (Ephesians 4:6, NRSV). All are equal in God’s eyes. Churches must, to be true to themselves, refuse to allow their believers to live with atrocity.

This particular atrocity is a global issue. It is not just taking place on the US-Mexico border or in Israel-Palestine. Worldwide, the relatively rich and white people can travel wherever they want and access the resources they want. The poor people of color are stuck in places without enough resources to sustain them and cannot travel freely. These people are thus forced to risk their lives to cross oceans and borders in search of better lives for themselves and their families. It is time to name freedom of movement as a human rights issue and border enforcement a human rights violation.

A Few Stories from the Border

2005-08-27T14:26:00.002-05:00

This week the team camped out and fasted for the last three days on the border wall at the place where we paint the crosses. Border Patrol had painted over them again, and we spent three days repainting all 12 crosses, for the 12 who have died in this county this year crossing the desert. While we were there, we came across of number of groups of migrants who were walking along the Mexico side of the wall, presumably to cross farther down the border, where there are fewer border patrol present. We could see and hear them through gaps in the wall.

On Wednesday late afternoon some of us were driving out to the camp at the wall and came across a woman walking along the road. I asked her if she was ok, and she said yes, but then she asked if I would give her a ride. I put her in the van and drove her (past 2 BP jeeps and 2 ATVs with BP agents dressed in jumpsuits, black helmets and gas masks) to our campsite, because Scott has better Spanish and we needed more details about her situation.

We gave her food and water, as she explained that her group left her behind because she was having leg cramps and she could not keep up. She also said that BP agents had passed her on the road and not stopped. Strange as that sounds, we hear stories like that all the time. She was wise to stay on the road, because it is the ones like her that end up dying, left behind in the desert because they cannot walk fast enough. She had no food or water on her. The only thing she was carrying was a copy of the Gospels.

She explained that she was trying to join her husband in Phoenix, that she came from central Mexico on a 30-hour bus trip to the border, and that she had been walking about 4 hours when we picked her up. She had no idea where she was or how far from Phoenix. She did not know whether Douglas was in Arizona or Mexico. She was very young, maybe 21 or 22. We decided to help her make some phone calls to try and meet up with her husband.

Scott and I brought her back to the house (past a large gathering of BP agents and trucks) to use the phone. It was funny to hear her explain to her husband that she was picked up in the desert by "unos gringos" who are Christian. She showered, we gave her some clothes, she ate and drank, and eventually she made arrangements to meet a ride in the McDonald's parking lot. She and I walked there, and there were more BP jeeps, so we had to walk back to the house, where some people picked her up late in the evening. I hope she found her husband and that she is ok.

On Thursday morning at the camp we entertained a visitor from border patrol. He was plainclothes and drove an unmarked car, but would not give us a card, so we don't know his title. He was a talker and stayed for a long time. It was interesting to learn more about him---things like he has two daughters who are drug addicts and one is in jail (crystal meth). He is raising his grandchild. His youngest daughter is at home, and she has "experimented" with illegal drugs because of her sisters, and that is ok with him. Yet there he is out on the border, doing his job to intercept illegal drug shipments, among other things. He is former "Special Forces" and has served in various US wars all over the world.

He is from the area, and he talked about what it was like when he was growing up, when Mexicans came across the border all the time to work, but then went back home. We all agreed that people would rather be able to go home. He also understood as clearly as us that there is a whole system of exploitation going on here, starting with the organized crime syndicates on both sides of the border who are people-smuggling. His view is that there is less risk and more profit in people-smuggling, so that many of the drug smugglers have changed over to doing that.

He also agreed that employers are benefitting from being able to hire cheap labor and not obey US labor laws, because illegal migrants are too afraid to report exploitation. He did not seem to think that it would therefore make more sense to increase enforcement against employers instead of punishing the poor people crossing the border looking for work. That was too much of a stretch for him! He did understand, though, that it is a supply and demand issue, and that as long as there is work in the US (and nothing but low-paying crappy work south of the border), the people will come. But at the same time he thinks that the solution is increased militarization of the border. There is no logic to it.

We asked him what we would have to do to keep BP from painting over our crosses. He said that there was nothing we could do--that they were going to keep painting them over in black. He said he was under pressure from Tucson to charge us with vandalism for it. He acted like he was not inclined to do so, but we were unsure if it was a good cop-bad cop thing and he was just warning us that arrests were about to come down, or if he was letting us know that he was not going to charge us. I guess we will see.

We did make a point of saying that the cross-painting is harmless, so why would they bother to press charges for it. He suggested that we make a proposal for artwork on the wall and submit it to their community relations folks. I asked if we could do that with the crosses, and he said no way. I wonder who defines what is art!

Monsoons and Floods

2005-08-02T14:18:00.003-05:00

The monsoon season has finally arrived. This means we have heavy rain almost daily and the weather is much cooler in the late afternoon. Different from the rainy season in Palestine, where it rains nearly nonstop and is freezing cold, here the rainstorms are short but heavy, just enough to cool everything off a bit but not so much that we actually need rain gear. But the ground is so dry that it takes awhile for the rain to soak in, so there are sometimes flash floods.

I think in my last email I wrote about the arrest of two volunteers from our partner organization, No More Deaths, for transporting a migrant to the hospital. Where that case stands is that the government offered them a plea deal (the exact details of which have not been made public) whereby the charges would be resolved in exchange for 12-18 months of probation. The two turned it down and are going to trial. The government dropped one charge, obstruction of justice, but continues to pursue the felony charge of transporting an undocumented person. It is unclear whether the Border Patrol will continue to arrest for this activity---so far it has continued with no further arrests.

In response to the arrests, NMD launched a campaign to "flood the desert" with volunteers searching for migrants in distress, which we participated in. I volunteered to be on call to transport to the hospital if needed and if the other volunteers did not want to risk arrest. Luckily, it was not needed. Chances are, though, that I would not have been arrested, because I think the BP doesn't want two cases going on at the same time.

We have continued to paint crosses on the border wall for every death in Cochise County this year, and so far we are up to 11. Every time we go to paint a new cross, we find the old ones painted over with black paint, so we end up painting all new ones every time. We do not know who is responsible. So far, the BP monitors our action but does not try to stop it. Presumably they could arrest us if they wanted to (for doing it on government property), but to their credit, so far they have refrained from that. The crosses are harmless, make the wall look better, and are meaningful to those of us painting them.

After we paint the crosses, we always hammer on the wall to symbolize our desire to break down the barriers between people and nations. We may start doing other kinds of symbolic actions at the wall---it is under discussion. At this most recent cross painting we invited local media, and there were a couple of newspaper articles about it in the surrounding towns.

In addition to increasing desert patrols, we have also started more intentional monitoring of the Border Patrol, similar to what we do in Palestine. Although there is no evidence of anything systemic, we do know there are abuses, and abuse can only take place if no-one is watching. With this high level of militarization, I think it is a good idea for them to know they are accountable. There was a case this week where a local BP agent blew the whistle on the deplorable conditions in their holding facility and was fired for it. So locally, although we have not seen any abuses on the street, we think there may be some inside.

I'll be leading a group to DC September 14-16 to lobby for comprehensive immigration reform. If any of you are interested in participating, especially all you nearby Maryland folks, let me know. I can email you detailed information and a registration form. It should be fun---a bunch of our local partners are sending people, all of whom have lots of experience on the border. They have voices that need to be heard in this debate, and it feels good to be able to facilitate that.

Some Mexican documentary filmmakers interviewed me this week about the similarities between the border wall here and the security wall in Palestine. It is so interesting to me that even here people continue to want to talk to me about my experiences in Palestine. What goes on in the Holy Land is important for many people.

No mas muertes

2005-07-12T10:34:00.003-05:00

Two volunteers from the organization No More Deaths/No Mas Muertes in Tucson were arrested on Saturday morning because they had migrants in their car. No Mas Muertes is a faith-based group and key CPT partner in our work here. They staff a migrant camp in the desert south of Tucson on the US side, while CPT staffs a migrant camp, along with our Mexican partner, on the Mexico side. It could have been any of us arrested. I was at the Mexico camp when the arrest took place.

Here is what happened, in the words of the NMD press release:
On Saturday morning, July 9th, two NMD volunteers came on a group of nine migrants in varying degrees of distress. They had been walking for several days, lost in the desert. The volunteers provided food and water to these persons and they washed their feet and cared for their blisters. The volunteers treated these friends as you and I would wish to be treated if we fell into such straits; they showed human compassion to those our government degrades as less than human. Three of these persons reported vomiting, diarrhea, and one reported blood in his stool, all conditions which are symptomatic of extreme and life-threatening dehydration. After consultation with No More Deaths vounteer medical personnel and legal counsel, the decision was made to medically evacuate these persons to be treated by a doctor in Tucson.

Ms. Sellz and Mr. Strauss volunteered to take these persons to be treated by a No More Deaths doctor and they were arrested en route. Upon learning of the arrests, a No More Deaths volunteer doctor and nurse went to the border patrol station where they were being held and asked to see the migrants. The border patrol turned our medical volunteers away and later a border patrol spokesperson said the travelers were "ok" and did not require treatment. We know they were far from "ok."....end of press release quotation

The two were charged with 2 felonies. They are college students volunteering for the summer. One was obstruction of justice and the other was particular to the statute concerning transportation of undocumented persons. The statute reads that you cannot transport an undocumented person if it is "furtherance or abetting" illegal migration into the US. The border patrol has chosen to interpret this to mean any transportation of undocumented person illegal.

If I put an undocumented person in my car to go to the movies, is it furtherance or abetting illegal migration? What about if I am driving them south? Do I have to ask for documents every time someone gets into my car? Do I only have to ask for documents from Hispanic people, or do I have to card everyone? I'm no expert, but the law seems extreme to me. What are we, the Soviet Union?

Militarization of the Border

2005-07-07T12:10:00.002-05:00

On Friday we did a prayer service in front of the border patrol station in Douglas, Arizona. It is the largest border patrol station in the world, they claim. As part of the prayer service, I poured blood (actually, it was strawberry marguerita mix) in the shape of a cross in the soil in front of the station. It was a symbolic way of stating that the desert soil has become marked with blood, making it both tragic and sacred, like the Cross.

It would have been nice to use real blood, but we did not have the technology. This action had some meaning for me beyond the obvious targetting of the border patrol. I marked the sign of the cross in blood in the desert soil here; but my own blood is in the desert soil of Tuwani, and that event and place has become for me both tragic and sacred.

We have had some discussion about why target the border patrol. The reason is that some of the policies of increased militarization originate with them; the other reason is that no matter what the origin, the border patrol is responsible for implementing them. We don't want them to learn to live complacently with atrocity. We want them to think about the consequences of what they do, and hopefully lead them to become compassionate.

Border Patrol militarization includes highway checkpoints, helicopter patrols, video surveillance, infrared sensors, drones, the border wall, and a very high presence of border patrol agents. It reminds me a lot of Palestine and makes me wonder where we are headed. (In Palestine they are called border police. I don't know if they have any stations larger than the one in Douglas.)

Last weekend we heard that vigilantes were going to be out in full force, because of the 4th of July holiday. The Minutemen held a rally in Phoenix, and they had some small patrols in the Tucson area. But the Minutemen are the least of our worries here. They are just the ones who have gotten the most attention. They are minor compared to the ones who claimed on their website that they were going to greet people attempting to cross the border with AK-47s. We patrolled around, but didn't find anyone. These are white nationalist hate groups, primarily. Some of them are local ranchers.

This weekend we are part of a migrant camp in Mexico. Our Mexican partners only have the resources to hold it about every two weeks; when they have one, we help to staff it because they believe that the presence of internationals deters violence from gangs, drug runners, and Mexican military. There is violence against migrants on both sides of the border; they are very vulnerable.

The purpose of the camp is to be a safe place where migrants in distress can get water, food, and medical attention. We place it at a high crossing point. Some legal advisors have told us that we could be at risk, even doing it on the the Mexican side, of prosecution by US authorities for aiding and abetting illegal immigration. We can see US border patrol vehicles parked across the fence from the camp.

The biggest problem for me is not the legal risk, but the fact that it is just unbelievably hot.

A System of Exploitation

2005-06-23T11:56:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we received a call from a woman who owns a small ranch about 15 miles down the highway from us and which sits on the border with Mexico. She is elderly and may be suffering from some early stage of dementia.

I had met her once before, last week, when another local activist called us to come out to her farm because she had three migrants there and she was afraid of the border patrol. Last week the three just wanted to make a phone call, which we let them do, and they arranged whatever they were going to arrange and went on their way. But the situation seemed sketchy last week, and even more so today.

Today she called us saying that she had 7 migrants on her property and she wanted our help in getting them to leave. The migrants were staying in a shed on her property that seemed to be set up for that very purpose. When we spoke to them, they said that their coyote (the Mexican guide they pay to get them across the border) told them to go there, and that the coyote said that the property owner was being paid $100 per person. The property owner says she is being regularly hassled by the border patrol and that she is afraid of them and afraid that her employees cannot be trusted not to report her to them.

The migrants say that she is a regular stop and that many pass through her property, and only sometimes does she get concerned, especially when her employees are around. The property owner says that border patrol ride through her property at night on their horses, and buzz her with helicopters, and she doesn't want migrants to stay there.

We finally reached an agreement with the migrants that 6 of the 7 would walk back up toward the mountains until their pick-up arrived. We gave them plenty of food and water for the several hours they would have to wait. The 7th, the one with the cell phone, would wait in the shed until he recieved his call from the pick-up giving the location so the group could meet him or her. The one with the telephone wanted to wait in the shed because he said that he could not get cell phone service in the desert, but could get it if he stood in one corner of the shed.

We brought this proposal to the property owner, and she agreed to it. We waited until the 6 had left, and then we left. Who knows what happened after that. They may have come back. The property owner has recourse--she can call the border patrol. Clearly she did not want to do that, and clearly the migrants knew she did not want to do that.

After they left, I went to talk with the property owner, trying to find out the real story. I asked her if she was being paid. She denied it. But then she spilled at least part of the story. She used to have this Mexican guy ("Martin," coincidentally the same name as the coyote the migrants were calling both times, today and last week) working for her whom she totally trusted. He took care of her and she allowed him to board his horses on her property.

Then one day suddenly she had five border patrol vehicles in her yard. They marched 18 migrants out of her locked shed and arrested Martin. But she emphasized that as far as she is concerned, Martin was innocent. He served a year in jail and now cannot come into the US. Clearly, Martin is now running his business from the Mexican side and steering migrants to her property. She denies knowing who it is that is sending them to her. She also denies being a part of it. Who is telling the truth? I think she is very vulnerable, but I also think she is a party to it.

She hates the border patrol, but I think we need to ask ourselves why the border patrol is allowing this. They know perfectly well what is going on there if they are really patrolling as much as she claims.

I think this story provides some insight into the game that is being played between the coyotes, the border patrol, and even some property owners. The migrants are caught in the middle of a large money-making scheme on the part of everyone, including the empoyers in the US who hire them at substandard wages and benefits in order to increase their own profits. Many property owners are also caught in the middle, not wanting to be a party to migrant deaths or human rights abuses, but also not wanting to break the law. Other property owners, as we see from this story, are part of a complex system of exploitation.

To me it highlights the need to legalize and normalize what is going on here, to get it out of the hands of organized crime and to give migrants legal recourse against exploitative employers. The system has also led to widespread document fraud in the US. The migrants we encounter are coming because they know they have a much better chance of finding work in the US than in Mexico. And bad as the jobs are that they take in the US, they are much better than what they are leaving behind. I try to imagine what it would be like to leave everything I know permanently, to resettle in a foreign culture and land. People do it because they see no better alternative.

Walking the Migrant Trail

2005-06-10T12:14:00.004-05:00

We finished the walk on Sunday. We walked 75.9 miles in 7 days from Sasabe, Mexico to Tucson. It was brutal, but I finished it.

We started Monday morning from Mexico. The first and the last day we walked fewer miles, and the other days we walked between 12 and 16. From Monday through Thursday we were in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, which was lovely. Lovely for desert, I mean. It was hot and dusty, but the surrounding mountains provided some great scenery and sunsets. After we left the wildlife refuge we walked on the highway the rest of the way. The scenery was still pretty, but the highway was hot. I breathed in so much dust during the course of the week that I had to send our support people out to get me more allergy medicine.

The point of the walk was to experience for ourselves what migrants go through to get across the border to safety, and to bring attention to their plight. The way I see it, migrants are coming here for jobs that are available to them at wage and benefit levels that most US citizens won't accept. Immigration policy has led to tightening of border controls around population areas, but has left the border porous in the most dangerous crossing areas--the desert. This has led to about 3000 reported deaths in the last 10 years, and probably many more bodies are never found.

There came a point during the walk where I realized at a much deeper level than before that a person would have to be desperate to attempt this trip. I think it may have been the day that I twisted my ankle and realized that I was going to try and walk the rest of the way anyway, because that is what a migrant would have to do---or else be left for dead.

This realization reminds me of the time I recognized at a deeper level that the Palestinian suicide bombings were more about suicide than bombings. That the desperation of their situation had led them to think their lives were worthless and expendable.

We camped out every night but one. On Friday night we stayed in a church that had offered us hospitality. I can't tell you how great the floor of that air-conditioned church felt. It made me understand the importance of sanctuary (in all the meanings of that word!). By then a flush toilet and water to wash my face seemed like luxuries. I imagined what it would be like for migrants who did not have support vehicles full of water and snacks following them every step of the way. It made me feel even more committed to providing sanctuary when the opportunity presents itself.

The walk was a time of great grief for me. As I walked in the hot sun, breathing in all that dust, I imagined the migrant person walking the same path and at some point coming to the realization that they would not be able to continue. Ever.

I had some time to reflect on the similarities between my desert experience in Palestine and the desert here. Israel is building a wall around Palestine, and we are building a wall around the border with Mexico. The walls divide wealth from poverty and opportunity from desperation. The walls separate people from jobs and family. The walls interrupt freedom of movement. Both walls are highly militarized. The land on the wealthy side of the walls was taken by force from dark-skinned people by white colonizers.

I am struck, and not for the first time, at how you become your own enemy. We should never create enemies for ourselves, because history has shown repeatedly that the most likely outcome is that we will, eventually, turn into that enemy. So the Berlin Wall has now become the wall dividing Israel from Palestine and the wall separating the US from Mexico. Except for the racism part, the same factors are at work.

Freedom of movement is an international human rights issue. The relatively rich and white people can travel wherever they want and access the resources they want. The poor people of color are stuck in places without enough resources to sustain them and cannot travel freely. These people are thus forced to risk their lives to find something better. Seen in this light, border enforcement becomes a human rights violation.

I am still tired, but recovering. I will have to throw away my sneakers. I have developed a strange taste for gatoraide. My ankle still hurts. But it was an awesome experience.

Para-Militaries in the US

2005-05-29T11:47:00.002-05:00

We met with someone from the Minutemen yesterday. It was our first formal meeting with them as a team. Despite press reports to the contrary, they are still here in Arizona and very active at the border, especially on the weekends. They have two main "lines" around here, but are expanding soon into Texas and California. They believe that they have stopped thousands of migrants from crossing the border; of course we know that the migrants have simply gone around them to more remote places, making a dangerous crossing even more dangerous.

The guy we met with is the spokesperson for the Minutemen and second or third in the hierarchy of command. As such, he was quite disurbing! One of the people I was with, who seemed to know something about these things, said he exhibited signs of paranoid schizophrenia. He took small kernels of truth and manipulated them into a complete fabrication. But there is enough of a kernel of truth in what he says that he can convince people.

Some of his claims: Every migrant that crosses illegally is carrying a backpack full of drugs. All the children crossing the border illegally are sold into slavery or prostitution. 3,000 people are crossing illegally each night around Douglas alone. All Hispanic communities in the United States are harboring criminals. He claimed that the organization is nonviolent, trained in the teachings of King and Ghandi, yet his associate who was also at the meeting was wearing desert camoflage and packing a gun.

Rather than trying to prevent migration with guns and intimidation, we would rather address structural causes. One of our local partners is an organization called Just Coffee. Many of you know about fair trade, but this is even better. Other fair trade companies buy the coffee at a fair price but then roast it and market it in the US, which continues to transfer jobs across the border. Just Coffee Pays farmers in Chiapas a fair price, then roasts and markets it in Mexico, keeping the jobs there. Many people we have spoken with say that the migration crisis got considerably worse after coffee prices fell dramatically in the 80s and coffee farmers could no longer support themselves, so they all migrated north. Anyway, the more Just Coffee we buy, the more fair wage jobs are kept in Mexico. Fair wage jobs in Mexico will lead to fewer dangerous border crossings. You can find them at http://www.justcoffee.org/.

Migrant Deaths

2005-05-25T11:58:00.003-05:00

12 people died crossing the border this weekend. One of them was in Cochise County, where the CPT team is living. During the weekend we were camped out on the Mexico side trying to help migrants in distress and about 70 came through our camp for help. There was a group of three women, one with a two-year-old child, who might have have died if not for us.

The man who died in our county was found about 5 miles north of our camp, and may have come through it. We don't know.

This afternoon we held what has become a weekly prayer vigil at the border crossing to remember all those who have died in our county (Cochise) trying to cross the border through the desert. Some of the bodies have never been identified. I was thinking while we were calling out all their names that if I were a family member of someone who died, it would be meaningful to me to know that someone out there was praying and remembering.

Tomorrow morning we are going to paint crosses on the border fence, as a way of calling a failed immigration policy what it is. We have decided to paint one cross for every migrant who dies this year in our county. So far there have been three.

Post-Conflict Accompaniment in Kosovo

2005-05-21T10:51:00.002-05:00

This spring I spent about 10 days in Kosovo learning about the Operation Dove accompaniment project there. Operation Dove (OD) is an Italian group with a mission similar to CPT.

The situation in Kosovo is complicated and I'm not sure that during our short time there we came away with a complete understanding. The region is functioning under a fragile peace agreement with the UN in charge. "UNMIK" is slowly handing over governance to local authorities, but they are probably at least a year away from handing over power completely. The population consists of 80% Albanians, 10% Serbs, and 10% others. Many Serbs fled to Serbia after the NATObombing, which is why their numbers are so low. Both Albanians and Serbs believethe land of Kosovo is rightfully theirs, and both point to history to back them up. Albanians are mostly Muslim and Serbs are mostly Serbian Orthodox.

Most Serbians live completely separately from Albanians, in enclaves or villages away from Albanian population centers. Serbian enclaves are surrounded by UN military checkpoints to prevent random violence. Operaton Dove says that although there does not appear to be any organized violence on either side right now, there is a high danger of random violence, especially of Albanians against Serbs. Serbs are generally fearful to travel unescorted out of their enclaves.

Operation Dove has been working in the region since 1999. They are currently living in a Serbian village called Gorazhdovats. The mission of the team consists of accompanying Serbs when they have to travel outside of the village and cannot get official accompaniment, as well as developing relationships inside the community, and faciliating two groups of young adults, one Serbian and one Albanian, in order to sow the seeds of reconciliation.

UN troops will provide accompaniment if there is an urgent need and there is 72 hours notice. Many Serbs need to travel and cannot give the required notice, and OD spends a good deal of time transporting people and shopping for them. Gorazhdovats has a few small shops, but any real needs have to be met in the nearest city, which is Albanian. Serbs feel they cannot go there unaccompanied.

Starting about a year ago, OD and their partner organization decided to form two small groups, one Serb and one Albanian, to work on analyzing the effects the conflict has had on them and on society, to see what they could do about it. The idea is to eventually join together as one group, working together for peaceful solutions. The project has many phases, and they are now still in the early one, talking about the trauma of the conflict and the effect it has had on them. They recently identified issues of injustice, and each group chose one specifica justice issue to try to think of solutions. Interestingly, both groups chose the same issue: freedom of movement.

The Kosovo accompaniment is a "post-conflict" presence because there is a peaceagree ment and the shooting has more or less stopped. The violence is random, not organized, but could still explode at any time. OD is focusing on how to help the Serbs maintain a dignified life, and on how to sow some seeds to prevent future outbreaks of violence.

Soldiers, Settlers, and Problems

2005-04-07T11:21:00.004-05:00

Settlers coming out of the trees to attack.

I am back in Hebron after a very eventful week in Tuwani. This week I understood my first full sentence in Arabic without translating it in my head: "Kim, there are soldiers in Hafez' house." I think that says a lot about the situation. The words in Arabic that are stuck in my head forever are the ones for "soldiers," "settlers" and "problems."

On Saturday an Israeli activist group joined us to continue cleaning up the poison in the fields, which appears to be far more toxic than we had even feared. We had the usual soldiers come, much negotiation, and finally they let us stay for the clean-up. Then we got a call that the settlers had come out in a different part of the area. They were trying to provoke a confrontation. I wasn't there, but people from Operation Dove said they had to get between the two sides.

A similar thing happened on Sunday, only this time I was there. Three of us were walking toward Khoruba, which is the place where most of the poison was placed. Khoruba is a Palestinian village abandoned several years ago due to settler violence and harassment. It is located close to Tuwani, and is in the fictional military fire zone that the army keeps using to keep the Palestinians away from the land. Palestinians still use it for grazing when they can get to it.

Anyway, on Sunday we were walking toward Khoruba because we had seen the shepherds going in that direction, and we knew it was not safe for them. When we got close we saw that the Maon settlers had come out and were looking across the valley toward Khoruba. When we got closer we saw that there were shepherds there, and I called the police. We hurried closer to the shepherds, and the settlers began walking toward us. I must have called the police about 10 times, but it took them 45 minutes to get there. The place is very remote and hard to find.

The settlers did not have masks and I did not see any weapons, but to me it was clear they were coming to try to provoke a confrontation. They had cameras, ready to take pictures of Palestinians misbehaving. There was a lot of yelling and getting in each other's faces, and I was in the middle of it, trying to pull Palestinians away from settlers. The settlers said horrible things to me in English, and the Palestinians said they were doing the same to them in Arabic. It lasted about 10 minutes, with me eventually ending up between the two sides. We stayed that way until the police finally came. The police refused to talk to the CPTers or the Palestinians on site, and based on what the settlers said, they arrested two Palestinians over the incident.

Both are now out on bail. We had to go to the police station to make statements that neither of them had hit or thrown stones at settlers. It was very scary for me, because I thought it was going to get violent. I am sure that if CPT was not there, it would have been worse.

I also really felt my lack of language skills in that situation. Usually I have someone with me with better Arabic, but this day there was no-one, and it was a real problem, both in calming down the Palestinians and in dealing with the Israeli police. I asked the settlers what they were doing there, and they said they had come to see what was happening on their land. The land is not part of the settlement or even part of the illegal settlement outpost. They said they were filing a court case to claim the land and they wanted pictures. No explanation about why they had to be right up in the shepherds' faces to do that. To my mind, it was a provocation.

On Tuesday we organized a press conference and demonstration in Hebron about the settlers poisoning the land. Almost the whole village of Tuwani came out for it, and it was very empowering for them, I think. They got a lot of press coverage. Afterward the village leadership told me how much they appreciate me and CPT. It was a good moment.

The next day the shepherds found more poison in a different place, another place that the settlement wants to claim for itself. It was the same area where the settlers came out on Saturday. So you can see how it continues to escalate.

It is hard for me to leave, because the work here is incredible, but I am also ready to move on to something else. I feel that it was important for the village that I came back after what happened to me there. Despite my lack of Arabic, I have developed strong relationships, and that feels good. I would like to come back.

An Holy Week of Extremes in Tuwani

2005-03-28T12:57:00.002-06:00

I reached Tuwani on Monday of Holy Week for a "normal" day of accompanying the Palestinian shepherds in a place where they had recently been attacked and beaten by Israeli settlers. It went without incident.

On Tuesday we woke up to learn that during the night Israeli settlers had come down and spread poison on Palestinian land. The poison consisted of barley kernels boiled in rat poison. We later had it analyzed and learned that this particular poison kills instantly if over 300 grams is consumed; but in any amount will stay in the system of the animal for a long time and will be toxic to anything that eats it, even if the contaminated animal shows no symptoms.

The poison was and is everywhere: In little piles under the shrubs that the sheep eat; under rocks; spread thinly all through the grass. We started notifying the press and the Israeli authorities immediately, and on Wednesday, after we got some latex gloves, we started cleaning it up. By Wednesday morning at 5:00 a.m. one sheep was dead. By Wednesday afternoon three sheep were dead and 13 sick. Two gazelles were found dead, along with a variety of rodents and snakes. I have seen the gazelles run wild in this land, and they are an endangered species. This area is also full of storks--you cannot believe how beautiful they are! By Saturday there were four dead gazelles found and I also saw a dead black snake--a big one.

We spent Thursday cleaning it up and talking to press. It became a big story in Israel, because this of course could affect wildlife all over the area, not just South Hebron Hills. To clean it up, we had to pick up the barley kernels one at a time off the ground. It is tedious and time-consuming, and we may never get it all. The Israel Park Service was helping on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday the Israeli authorities came to see the poisoned places: police, army, civil administration (the branch of the army responsible for governance), etc. We were accompanying the Palestinian landowners as they showed the authorities all the poisoned places, because Palestinians are used to being abused by Israeli authorities and they feel safer when we are with them. Anyway, I was walking through the hills when I ran into three young settler men who said they were helping with the clean-up.

They were from a nearby settlement (Suseya), not the one next to Tuwani (Ma'on). They heard about the poison and wanted to help clean it up, because, although they agree that all the land belongs to the Jews, they do not believe that poisoning it is the way to claim it. They also talked about the fact that Jews have all the power in Palestine and they intend to keep it that way.

On Friday morning (yes, Good Friday) we got a call from the nearby town called Kirmil. Five Israeli settlers with machine guns were at the local swimming pool threatening Palestinian children. This was my Way of the Cross for the day. We left to walk up there, and the villagers met us with a car at the road block (constructed by the Israeli army) which prevents free access between the towns.

We got about three-quarters of the way there and met the settlers on the dirt road leading to the pool. They were five young men about college-age. They looked like they could be nice young men, except for the M-16s they carried. We got out of the car to talk with them, asked them what they were doing and why they were there. They didn't really answer, and when I pulled out a camera they turned around and began walking in the direction of Tuwani.

We followed them on foot, because there were a lot of Palestinians farming and grazing along that road. When the five young men reached the paved settler road (off-limits to Palestinians) a car was waiting for them and they drove off in the direction of the settlement. Why did they walk through Palestinian villages and farmland with machine guns and threaten children? I do not know. To me it looked like a display of power.

On Holy Saturday the excitement really started. We had made plans with Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian human rights group that we work with closely, to bring a larger group of people to Tuwani to clean up the poison. They brought maybe 25 or 30 people.

That morning, because there were so many Israelis and internationals present, the shepherds from Tuwani and a nearby village, Um-Fagara, decided to graze their sheep in a place called Khoruba, on a hillside across from the place where much of the poison was placed. Khoruba is an abandoned Palestinian village, but the land still belongs to those who abandoned it. It was abandoned about 4 years ago as a result of settler harrassment and violence.

The village is also located inside something called a Military Fire Zone. A Military Fire Zone is a way for the State of Israel to legally confiscate land from Palestinians. They claim they need it for military purposes and then no-one can go there. There are, however, still Palestinians living inside this Zone, and the army does not fire anything in there. We clarified with the civil administration what this means. They said that the only people allowed inside the Zone are the people who live there, but that the Palestinian landowners can graze their sheep there on Fridays and Saturdays. Remember that we are talking about a Saturday.

So the shepherds decided to test this with this big group present, to see what would really happen. The reason is that if Palestinians abandon their land, then legally Israel can seize it after three years, so they have to keep using the land if they are to retain ownership. After about an hour of grazing, some settlers came down from Ma'on and saw what was happening and called the army and police. The police arrested one Palestinian and a scuffle broke out between a soldier and another Palestinian, resulting in a face injury to the Palestinian. I was not there when this happened--I arrived about 2 minutes after--so I did not see who did what to whom.

The army declared that all the shepherds were detained and would be arrested for grazing their sheep in the Military Fire Zone. They were waiting for reinforcements. I called the civil adminstration and they confirmed that the shepherds had the right to graze on Fridays and Saturdays, and said they would send a jeep. We waited awhile and finally they came and released all the shepherds. But they forced them off of the hillside and into the valley below.

The valley, which also sits in the Military Fire Zone, had been planted with corn by the settlers. So the Palestinians were forced by the army to graze their sheep in a settler field! Note that the settlers are permitted to plant corn in the Military Fire Zone, in land that belongs to Palestinians, but the Palestinians cannot use their own land.

By this time it was afternoon and the second incident of the day happened. While the sheep were grazing the the cornfield we all again started cleaning up the poison from the opposite hillside. I received a call from a colleague who was walking back to the village, who told me to look up at the settlement. I saw a line of settlers, about 30 or more, coming out of the settlement all dressed in white. They were lining up on the road that the Palestinian children from the nearby village, Tuba, use to get home from school.

The army and police were preparing to escort the settlers along the road, and then they all started moving toward Tuwani, where I knew that the Tuba kids were waiting with two people from Operation Dove (OD) for their military escort home. So we all got up and quickly headed toward Tuwani to head them off. We walked very quickly and got there first. Me and two OD people sat down in the middle of the road to try and block the settlers from passing into the village and toward the place where 13 children were waiting to go home. There were a few Ta'ayush people standing behind us as well, but we were in front, sitting down.

The settlers kept coming toward us, but then the army stood between us and them, and then the police pulled a car up and blocked the settlers, eventually diverting them back toward the settlement. After that, I walked a little way (maybe 10 or 15 feet) toward the settler line in order to see that they did not return to the village by another route. I was still very far from them, but had a view of where they were going. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an Israeli soldier came up behind me and pushed me down the hill. No explanation. He did not even ask me to move first. I asked him why he did it, and he refused to answer. Lucky for me, I was not injured.

The children from Tuba were still waiting to go home. So Saber, the mayor of Tuwani, lined them up and began walking them himself; three OD people and me went with him. The army is supposed to provide the escort, but they had not shown up, and instead were escorting settlers. When the army saw that we were going, they sent a jeep to go with us. As we walked, we could see settlers in the trees with their dogs, following us the whole way. At one point one came out and got into an argument in Hebrew with the soldier. The soldier prevented him from coming near us or the children.

When we got the the edge of the settlement, the soldiers left us and we walked the kids all the way home. This is not usually necessary, but things seemed particularly dangerous, so we felt we should. We held their hands the whole way. Then we had tea in the cave of Omar, one of the fathers. Then we had to take the long way home from Tuba (2 hours over rocky hills) in order to avoid the settlement, because it was too dangerous for us to walk there without a military escort.

I was supposed to leave Tuwani Saturday afternoon, but one of the villagers told us he was afraid that settlers would come to the village in the middle of the night, so we kept some extra people there and I stayed. Nothing happened, and I came back yesterday afternoon and was able to go to Easter Mass at 5:00. Today we learned that the settlers put out more poison, this time in the direction of Tuba.

Palm Sunday in Jerusalem

2005-03-27T12:47:00.002-06:00

On Palm Sunday the CPT teams accompanied a peaceful procession of Palestinians from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. It went really well in the sense that it stayed peaceful and prayerful. Most of the CPTers stayed at the front of the procession to try and prevent any clashes, but there were none.

We got to the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and the army stopped us. We sat down in the middle of the road for about an hour. There were about 150 people at that point, because many Palestinians left the procession, wanting to avoid clashes with the army. When the army said we had to move or they would force us off the road, the Palestinian leadership read a statement and then we peacefully left.

Here is the statement:"We in the Bethlehem community have come to you today with a message on behalf of our people. We represent the family members and friends who are imprisoned by these concrete walls and wire fences that now create the Bethlehem open-air prison. You, like the prison guards, control our freedom and ability to live as human beings with dignity in this holy land.

Our strong delegation of civilians comes to you without weapons but with great strength and commitment to deliver this message of peace. In the name of security, you do not permit us to travel to work, to school and to worship in our holy sites in the city of Jerusalem. Your government deprives us each day of the basic human right to self-determination. Each day you keep us from being with our families at weddings, funerals, graduations, birthdays, and religious holidays...

Each day as you come to our city, you serve the system of violence that keeps our people imprisoned and without the ability to live the life of a normal human being. With your guns, tanks, and insults, you teach our children to hate. However, we believe each of you has the power and choice to choose a different ending to this story. We appeal to your conscience and humanity as individuals and as soldiers who may feel there is no way out of this system. Put your guns away, and join us in the fight for peace and freedom."

I was proud to stand behind it.

Settler Violence and Jerusalem Roadblocks

2005-03-19T11:09:00.002-06:00

The Hebron settlers seem to be getting scarier and scarier. I was walking with a few others along a road that leads from the settlements to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the soldiers at one of the checkpoints stopped us, saying that we could go no farther, because the road is not safe for anyone who is not Jewish. It was interesting to hear that from an Israeli soldier.

We had a meeting with someone from the Hebron government who told us about settlers from Kiryat Arba (the largest settlement in Hebron) confiscating some Palestinian land and building a path from the settlement to Worshipper's Way. Worshipper's Way is the ancient path that leads to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. The story is that it was the path that Abraham walked. We went to inspect, and found the story to be true. The Hebron official checked with all the Israeli occupation authorities and confirmed that the settlers do not have any legal claim to the land.

Tomorrow some Palestinian Christian groups in Bethlehem are planning a march from Bethlehem to Jerusalem for Palm Sunday, complete with donkeys. The procession will challenge the Israeli military checkpoint that divides Bethlehem from Jerusalem and makes it impossible for Palestinians to get from one city to the other. CPT is one of the sponsors of this action and we will all be there. I am looking forward to Mass at the Church of the Nativity, which stands over the spot where it is believed that Jesus was born.

For me the march has great symbolic significance: the Palestinian followers of Jesus today cannot travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Also, Jesus' own procession into Jerusalem had political as well as religious significance. He knew that if he went to Jerusalem he would likely be killed by the Romans, but he went anyway because he knew it was part of a mission much larger than his own life. I feel there is a parallel when we go to Tuwani: We know there is a high risk that Israeli settlers will attack us again, but we go anyway, sacrificing our safety for a cause much larger than ourselves.

There were three separate incidents with settlers in Tuwani this week. First 12 settlers came out of the outpost, one with a gun, and went after Palestinians farming and grazing. Rocks were thrown, but the army got there quickly and they left. A little later about 100 settlers came out of the settlement and occupied a hillside belonging to Palestinians. Then 50-60 Palestinians came out and stationed themselves on an opposite hill. The CPT and Operation Dove folks stationed themselves between the two groups, along with a large contingent of Israeli police and soldiers. There was a 2-hour standoff, until a high-ranking Israeli officer got them to disperse. CPTers spent their time trying to keep people from throwing rocks at each other. Some of the Israeli settlers are armed, but the Palestinians are not. Then the settlers started walking back to the settlement, when they turned off the road and occupied another Palestinian's grazing land, chasing his sheep away.

There is a nonviolent revolution with sheep happening in Tuwani right now, which is why the settlers are getting so concerned. With our accompaniment, shepherds are starting to band together to go in large groups to grazing land they have not been to for many years due to settler harassment. They are reclaiming land previously confiscated by the settlements, emboldened by our presence. This is important, because when the lines get drawn for the Palestinian and Israeli states, they are most likely going to use the de facto boundaries drawn as a result of settler violence and harrassment. Both sides, I suspect, are fully aware of this.

Who Is In Charge?

2005-03-13T11:51:00.003-06:00

Tuwani is like one big camping trip. This time I brought some of my camping equipment and was much happier for it. I was also happy to have serious rain gear, even though it covered me from head to foot in army green and the villagers kept saying that I looked like a soldier.

Our main mission in Tuwani at this point is accompanying the shepherds as they try to reclaim grazing land that settlers kicked them off of years ago. Thanks to our presence they are now going to places that they have been afraid to go to for several years, even though the land belongs to them. We have almost daily encounters with soldiers and settler security, but this week there were no dangerous encounters with settlers.

There was this week a settler attack against Palestinian shepherds in the adjacent village of Jawaia, across the road from Tuwani. We were not accompanying them, but were called to wait with them until the police came (after over an hour). One woman had a serious punture wound on her forehead and another a fractured hand. They believe that the reason they were attacked is that no internationals were accomanying them, and they will call us from now on when they want to graze there. Their land is located right across the road from the Maon settlement.

We had a few other bizarre incidents as well. Basically, any time the Palestinian shepherds want to graze anywhere near the settlement or settlement outposts, settler security comes and calls the army and the army asks them to move. We ask for the orders and the map which closes the areas legally, but there rarely is one. We are there because it makes the shepherds feel safer when we deal with these authorities.

It seems clear to me, and several soldiers have confirmed this, that the Israeli army is taking their orders from the settlement. When we talk to settler security, they make it clear that they think that all the land belongs to the Jews and the Palestinians have no rights to it. I'm guessing that if peace becomes more of a reality, these settlers will step up their violence, as they become afraid that the settlements and outposts will be dismantled.

Palestinian Land and the Law

2005-03-05T12:02:00.002-06:00

Welcome to my first letter from Hebron! The roads from Jerusalem to Hebron were open when I came in. The next day, Saturday, everything was closed up and the service taxi had to drive through a field to get us out to Jerusalem. There was also an ID check on the road and a new checkpoint coming out of Hebron. This because of a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Friday.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that by Sunday, when I returned, everything had opened up again. This is way different from last fall, when they closed up the entire West Bank for three months after the bombing in Beer Sheva.

Monday I went to Tuwani. You will recall that Tuwani is the small village that we work in and the location of the settler attack against me and Chris last fall. I felt I needed to go there right away because I will be coordinating the project while I am here and I wanted to get a feel for what is going on. I was able to see the nearly-completed medical clinic which happened as a direct result of the attack. I also saw 15 children being escorted by the Israeli army to school past the settlement. It is up from 5 to 15 kids, now that there is less danger to the children. This is also a direct result of the attack.

One of the more exciting things for me is to see the Israeli army protecting Palestinians when their mandate in the occupied territories all along was to protect the settlers, not the Palestinians. What has happened is extraordinary.

Now the main work in Tuwani is escorting shepherds while they try to graze their sheep. Grazing happens in this season, when the ground is wet and green. During the rest of the year sheep are fed barley and other stored-up grains. Anyway, much of the land is located near the settlements, so even though it is owned by Palestinians, the settlers try to chase them off. This is because if they can keep the Palestinians off their land for long enough, the settlers think they can claim it for themselves. They have done this repeatedly and successfully over the years as a way to expand their settlements. The difference is that now there is international accompaniment, so the shepherds are emboldened to stand their ground against the settlers.

Many of you already know that there was a settler attack against us two weeks ago (the week before I got here) while my colleagues were accompanying the shepherds. One of the Italians was hosptialized with a broken jaw. The mask fell off of one of the attackers, so we have pictures, and he was arrested and there was already a preliminary hearing. This, of course, would never have happened if a Palestinian was injured.

We continue to escort the shepherds and there are clashes nearly every day. We joke that yesterday was a quiet day because all that happened is that some settlers with guns chased the shepherds off their land. However, since the attack two weeks ago, the army has established some kind of a base in the trees across from the settlement and now arrives fairly quickly when there is any kind of encounter or clash.

The shepherds have filed a case in the Israeli courts to retain claim to their land. The soldiers, who have seen the deeds, believe that the Palestinians will win their case. It is just a matter of how long it takes. However, we don't think winning a court case will keep the settlers from acting violently. They act violently in Pa;estinian villages all over the Weet Bank, no matter what Israeli law says.

Closures, Olive Trees, and Racial Profiling

2004-11-15T12:11:00.004-06:00

Many of you must be wondering what it has been like here since Arafat died. On Thursday, the day oafter he died, the Israelis closed the West Bank and Gaza, so things were back to the way they were before they caught the Hamas guy in Hebron. Soldiers created more roadblocks out of dirt piles, and more random check points, and made it very difficult to go anywhere.

On Friday the whole team went to Tuwani so we got to experience what it was like. To get out of Hebron we had to take a cab to an enlarged dirt pile/road block. We had to cross the paved settler road and go over another dirt pile to catch a cab on the other side. There was a tank at the paved road and soldiers checking IDs and refusing to allow Palestinians to cross. They let us cross, but we had to convince them, and we weren't sure we would be able to get back later. Palestinians were flying black flags as a sign of mourning, and schools were closed for a week, so people were out and about. Later, when we came back to Hebron the tank was still there, but we had no problem crossing the road. At that point, Palestinians had stopped trying.

One team member went to Jerusalem the next morning and it took three hours (normally a half hour) because the van had to drive all over the place to find a way in. He had to get out and walk several times, because the roads truly were blocked.

It seemed odd to me that the Israelis thought it was a good idea to intensify oppression of Palestinians as a fitting way to mark Arafat's death. All it does is get people angry.

We planted trees in Tuwani on Friday. You may remember in an earlier email I talked about how settlers and soldiers had uprooted olive trees there. The land belonged to Saber, the village leader, or mayor, but the Israeli army confiscated it, naming it state land, because it sits right next to the settlement fence. So as an act of nonviolent resistence, we replanted the trees. We don't know how long they will last, but now that so much attention is being paid to Tuwani, they have a better chance. The team will plant more in two weeks.

There is hope for Tuwani, but it is too soon to tell if the improvements that have been made as a result of the assault will last. They are building the clinic now without disturbance from the army. This is a major victory, because with the infrastructure of a school and a clinic, it will be much harder to destroy. Because of the attention after the assault, Israeli public opinion is less likely to stand for it. I may have mentioned earlier that two small villages close to Tuwani were evacuated several years ago due to settler harrassment. All the people moved to Yatta. The settlers have taken the land and plowed and planted it.

The children are getting to school with a three-jeep escort, but are still getting harrassed by settlers, who do not seem to care if army and civil administration are present. The only time the settlers behave themselves is when police are present, and this is rare.

Tuwani is improving its road as part of the clinic construction, and this is unimpeded by the army. They have been promised water and electricity, but it has not yet been delivered. I have my doubts, but we will keep up the pressure. I'm proud of the progress that has been made, due largely to pressure from US government officials and media attention.

I have no evidence that there is a real investigation of the assault happening. I doubt it.

Meanwhile, one of my teammates was detained again at the checkpoint near our house. We were walking through it to get to the van service the Jerusalem, and they stopped him. He fits a profile they are told to look for: young, dark, male. They detained him for about 30 minutes while they called the police, who came within five minutes. Eventually they let him go, after they realized they had no evidence he is a terrorist. I doubt that the Israelis would appreciate it if similar racial profiling was done against them.

Machine Guns and Holy Sites

2004-11-07T14:23:00.003-06:00

On Saturday the settlers in Hebron were celebrating what they called Sarah's Day. Masses of tourists were here from other parts of Israel, because Sarah is buried here. When we went on our usual morning school patrol, accompanying Palestinian children to school here in Hebron, settlers and tourists were streaming to the synagogue, and there were at least triple the number of Israeli soldiers and military police present. What I noticed was that the Palestinian kids who would normally have to cross the street that the settlers and soldiers were using, were simply not coming out. They skipped school that day because it was too threatening.

As I was standing on the corner monitoring the situation, I noticed a few young men wearing prayer shawls and machine guns coming out from the synagogue. I have learned that this is common dress for many young settler men. One of them walked by me and said "fuck you bitch," in perfect American English. This was a religious Jew, with earlocks, a prayer shawl, and a machine gun, coming home from synagogue.

This was a change from the usual. Most of the Hebron settlers refuse to speak to us at all or even look at us when they walk by.

I had another illuminating encounter with settlers and machine guns in West Jerusalem on Thursday. I was there for a meeting with the US Consulate about holding the Maon settlers accountable for the beatings. Another CPTer and I were standing in line at the central post office to pay my ambulance bill. In order to go into the post office, as with other public buildings in Jerusalem, one has to pass through a metal detector and be frisked by armed security guards. Two young settler men walked in, dressed in prayer shawls and machine guns, and stood in line with us. Apparently settlers with machine guns are exempt from security precautions. The rules really only apply to Palestinians.

Later on Saturday, the settlers continued their celebration of Sarah's Day by organizing a march to some holy stone located outside of their settlement compound. In order to facilitate this, the Israeli army, police, and civil administration shut down the street where the march was to take place, forced all the Palestinians off the surrounding streets, and closed all the shops in the busiest market area of the city. There were six or eight military, police and civil administration jeeps with six people each, plus an armored personnel carrier with a bunch more soldiers enforcing this. I saw two military police officers fire shots into a crowded market, and I saw a jeep drive into a crowd in order to get them off the streets. The street they closed is lined with Palestinian homes and shops. Things remained closed for about three hours. No notice was given.

After they got all the Palestinians out of the way, the settlers lined up behind the military check point that separates their compound from the Palestinians. About 250 of them marched out, singing and clapping. They were all dressed as religious Jews. They were escorted by this large contingent of soldiers to their holy stone where they were to pray, and then escorted back. Many brought their own machine guns as well.

One man stopped to talk with us. He was not from this settlement, but from Tel Aviv. He basically blamed the whole situation on Palestinian terror. I asked him what he would do if the village his family had inhabited for 500 years was destroyed, his home bulldozed, his family herded at gunpoint to a refugee camp, and his land confiscated in order to create a new country. This is what happened to half of Palestinian villages in 1948. He said I was condoning terror. I do not get it. Obviously, I do not think that violence gets anyone anywhere, but one can imagine the desperation that has led to it. I can also imagine the desperation that has led Jewish people to want their own state. What I cannot understand is what they have done in order to get it.

And what they have done in the name of holy sites. My attitude toward holy sites is a bit different. I did see the place in Bethlehem where Jesus supposedly was born, but it is not the actual site that matters to me. They could destroy the site, and it would not affect my faith a bit. It is the spirit of the site that matters, not the actual place. Control over the place is not so important as is the way we live our lives.

Gaza Disengagement

2004-11-01T15:15:00.002-06:00

Palestinians whom I have spoken to are cynical about the Gaza withdrawal plan, for a variety of reasons.

Most importantly, it won't lead to any kind of real independence for the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel will still control the borders, and therefore the economy, and freedom of movement. Gaza is basically one big refugee camp, and this plan holds out little hope for improvement.

Also, they are offering the settlers somewhere between $200,000and $300,000 each to vacate the settlements. This was land stolen from Palestinians originally, for which they were never compensated.

Finally, and probably most importantly, Sharon has stated that along with Gaza disengagement will come consolidation of control over the West Bank, where the majority of Palestinians still live. The settlements here will not be dismantled, but will be allowed to expand "naturally." The illegal expansion outposts are supposed to be destroyed according to a promise made to the Bush administration, but we have seen that this has not happened, and in fact, more are being built.

The roadblocks are supposed to be eliminated, but we have also seen that that is not happening. Israel continues to place more and more restrictions on freedom of movement for West Bank Palestinians, primarily through construction of the separation wall and of roadblocks. This effectively destroys any possibility of real economic life because Palestinians cannot get across borders for jobs or trade.

All of this is being done with the blessing of the Bush Administration, although at this point I don't believe that the Democrats would do much better, at least not according to what they say.

Most of what goes on here is done via negotiations with the U.S. government, because our aid makes up about 15-20% of their annual budget. Most Americans don't know enough about the situation here to effectively influence policymakers, even if they want to.

And so it goes. I do not foresee a successgul Gaza disengagement.

The Role of Accompaniment

2004-11-01T14:37:00.003-06:00

Village of at-Tuwani

Sunday morning the head of the Israeli Civil (Military) Administration for the entire southern West Bank came to Tuwani and met for an hour with village leaders. Such a high-level visit is unheard of, and villagers believe the attention is a result of the efforts of CPT and its supporters.

The high-ranking visitor asked village leaders to, "tell me your needs." The village leaders listed these concerns:

*Water: Villagers draw by bucket from a small spring that only provides enough for drinking and cooking. Water of poor quality from rainwater cisterns is used for washing. A large water supply line for Ma'on settlement passes only sixty meters from the village. The village wants water from this supply line.

*Clinic: The village wants to complete the construction of their clinic, currently under a stop-work order from Israeli authorities.

*Safe passage to the Tuwani primary school for the children of Tuba: The children are currently using a circuitous five-mile mountain path. They are afraid to use the direct one-mile path because settlers from Ma'on attacked them and the accompanying internationals.

*Electricity: Though grid power extends to Ma'on settlement, Tuwani only has power from a diesel generator for a few hours each evening.

*Road access to Kirmil: The Israeli military maintains three dirt barricades blocking the only road from Tuwani to Kirmil, Yatta and Hebron. These barricades prevent the villagers from access to a hospital, secondary schools and stores.

*Improvement of the road to Al Mufakra and villages to the south: Several small villages south of Tuwani have access to Tuwani only through a rough path. They travel through Tuwani to reach schools, stores, and medical care. Five years ago, when the villagers of Tuwani tried to improve this road, Israeli authorities forbade it.

"These are humanitarian needs; under occupation, the Israelis are responsible for these," said one village leader. He continued, "The civil administrator responded to all these concerns. He asked us to provide engineering drawings for connecting our village to water and electricity. He told us to go ahead and build the clinic, and he promised to come for the opening celebration, but we still don't have a permit in writing. He said he would look into the questions about the roads, and that he would send Israeli soldiers to accompany the school children. He did not refuse on any of the concerns."

"This meeting today didn't just happen. We have had these problems, and many attacks by settlers for years, but no one outside knew. Thank you for being here, you have brought us attention. Please thank all the people who have helped us, the media, the US government and consular officials who visited, and the Israeli and international peace groups. Your help made this visit happen."

Of course, today the army did not show up in the afternoon to walk the children home from school, so they had to go the long way again. In the morning, they showed up late, so the CPTers there walked them on the short road. When the army finally showed up, they again called the police and threatened the CPTers with arrest for doing so. So we will see what really comes of all this. But the high-level interest is a good sign.

Roadblocks and Checkpoints

2004-10-31T18:38:00.003-06:00

I just returned from two days in Bethlehem. It looks like many of the other Palestinian cities I have been in, except there are way more Christians, and Christian holy sites. It is not falling apart like Hebron, and there are also more foreigners. But getting in and out is like everywhere else--a huge hassle. Going through military check points and climbing over dirt piles. They are building the separation wall between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and in the process they are trying to claim as much of Bethlehem for Israel as they can possibly squeeze in. Just recently two Jewish settlers grabbed some land close to Rachel's Tomb, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, to turn it into an Israeli settlement. This is likely an attempt to force the wall to go around Rachel's Tomb and make it part of Israel. I have a hard time enjoying any of the holy sites because the people in charge here do not act very holy. I was really glad to see the Church of the Nativity, though.

On Monday I travelled to Tuwani for the first time since the attack. There are two ways to get to Tuwani from Hebron. The way we went on Monday, you take a cab through an industrial area of Hebron to the Yatta roadblock. The roads are blocked by Israeli soldiers. You climb over the roadblock (dirt pile) and walk about a half mile to cross the paved settler road that Palestinians are not allowed to drive on. Across the paved road you climb over another dirt pile and take a van service to Yatta which winds around the hills on narrow sometimes paved, sometimes gravel, roads. We negotiated with the driver to take us through Yatta and Karmel all the way to Tuwani. However, when we got close to Tuwani, we got a surprise: another dirt pile!

On Saturday, the bulldozer had come through on the road to Tuwani from Yatta and dug up the road just before it reaches another paved settler road that the Palestinians can't use. You have to cross that paved road to get to the gravel road that goes into Tuwani. These paved roads are part of a highway system used by settlers, soldiers and other Israelis and foreigners to get around the West Bank. They were funded by U.S. aid. Palestinians can't use them and have to find ways to drive around them, since the army often blocks the access roads as well. So we got out and walked the half mile or so uphill to Tuwani.

This new dirt pile blocks the main and shortest road to Yatta from Tuwani. There are back ways to get there. On Tuesday this week, Naim, a man from Tuwani, was driving his car on one of the back roads and was stopped by the army and handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken to their headquarters, where he was held this way for five hours. Why? Because he was driving on the back roads to Yatta, and they didn't want him doing that. I don't know why. Control? He is also not allowed to use the settler roads, and cannot use the roads that have been blocked. Yatta is the nearest decent sized city to Tuwani, where they go for food shopping and medical care.

The children that we accompanied to school are now going two hours in each direction because the army has branded the shorter roads a "closed military zone." This is in response to the settler attacks on us. The settlers attack, and the Palestinians are punished. I don't get it. It looks like the settlers may also be trying to claim the long road. On Thursday this week the children saw settlers on the long road and ran home, too scared to go to school. We don't know for sure what the settlers were doing there, but the children seemed to think they were planting trees. This is not a good sign, because if the settlers are planting trees, then they are trying to extend the grove of trees which is their outpost even further into Palestinian lands. We haven't been accompanying them on the long road because the army has promised to protect them only if we are not there.

This week some officers from Shin Bet, the intelligence agency, came to Tuwani because they are now in charge of investigating the attacks on us. They spoke a few minutes to the CPTers who were there, and went up and looked at the grove of trees where the attackers came from. But they refused to go in! They are afraid of them, too. Funny, though, a van from Doctors Without Borders was in Tuba at the time, and they drove back on the road that goes right through the outpost without incident. One of my teammates got a ride with them and was able to see what it looks like. They are living in small, rusty trailers and lean-tos made of canvas. Clearly, nobody lives there full-time. People from the settlement itself are rotating in and out in order to retain the land they stole. No question that people from the settlement know who is responsible for what happened to us.

I really don't understand why the government of Israel puts up with them. I guess because they only really adversely affect the local population, the Palestinians, and Palestinians can't vote.

Life With Israeli Soldiers

2004-10-24T18:21:00.002-05:00

On Friday I traveled back to Hebron from Tiberias with one other team member. Hebron is now relatively open since about 10 days ago, when they captured the Hebron head of Hamas. In order to humiliate the man completely, they put him on television in his underwear. It reminded me of what US soldiers were doing to detainees in Iraq. It would humiliate anyone, but in Muslim culture, it is especially degrading.

Anyway, the main road to town is open now, which makes things much easier. But on Friday, our service van went up an access road to get across the main bridge into Hebron, and it was blocked with a barrel. The army commander said he didn't want Palestinian cars blocking the road because then his soldiers couldn't get through. I wanted to ask him, "but isn't it you that is blocking the road?"

A little later we were walking to our apartment in the Old City. We came across a group of eight soldiers, one of whom was breaking down the door of a merchant with a sledge hammer. It was Friday, Muslim holy day, so all shops were closed. So we asked the soldiers why they were doing this. The young Israeli soldier who spoke to us was from the U.S. and spoke English. He said some kids threw rocks at them from the roof. In this part of the Old City, the passageways are covered with tin or with netting, so that anything thrown from the roof would not hit anyone. I asked the soldier, "Did the rocks hurt you?" Immediately he demanded to search our bags. After the search, I asked him again, "Did the stones hurt you?" He hurled an insult at me and walked away. They continued their work with the sledge hammer.

Later, some other members of out team went out, passing through the army checkpoint nearest to our apartment, called Beit Romano. Beit Romano is named after the Jewish settlement that the army is there to protect. There they found a large group of detained Palestinian children. We do not know this for sure, but we guess that they randomly rounded up children in the Old City after the stone incident. The soldiers threatened the CPTers with arrest if they stayed. There was also a group of settlers there, watching the whole thing. Once the CPTers moved out of view of the settlers, the soldiers stopped threatening. A little while later, the children were released. We do not know if it was because we were there.

Yesterday we went out to the checkpoint again because we learned that among a large group of Palestinian detainees was Atta, a longtime friend of the team. The soldiers routinely stop and search any man who looks under 35. The search often includes making them raise their shirts to expose themselves in some way. Atta had refused to submit to this, so they detained him. In the entire time I have been in Palestine, only one weapon has been found on someone going through Beit Romano, and it was a knife, probably not going to be used as a weapon at all.

Also yesterday, the police went to Tuwani and threatened my teammates there with arrest for helping to work on building a medical clinic. The villagers had repeatedly applied for a permit to build, but Israeli civil authorities refused to accept their application. Then, about 10 days ago, the civil authorities granted verbal permission for them to build, but would not put it in writing. Now yesterday the police came and took everyone's IDs and threatened them with arrest. Only the settlers from Ma'on could have called the police. So the police are this responsive to settlers calling, but have done nothing about the settler attacks on us. Eventually the civil authority was called, and he again told the police that Tuwani could build the clinic. The police let everyone go, but told them they could not work on the clinic or they would be arrested.

So, who is in charge? Israeli civil authorities, or settlers? We think it is the settlers, who in fact act like armed paramilitary groups making their own rules. The army and police are afraid of them. Obviously, so are the Palestinians. Settlers control about half of the land inside the green line, meaning inside the borders of the occupied territories, and continue to illegally grab more. We read in the newspaper this morning that Sharon's government is negotiating with the US over dismantlement of illegal settlement outposts, like the one that my attackers came from, and they have agreed to leave large settlement areas alone for the time being. Meaing they will not dismantle them. So you can see how much influence the US government has over this situation. Our government pretty much controls it.

I have been wondering lately how many Israeli citizens vote in our elections. I have come across soldiers and settlers who are American. The Haaretz reporter who interviewed me was from Florida, and she talked openly about voting. The last time I was at the consulate there were several groups of Israeli citizens applying for US social security benefits, because they are also US citizens.

With respect to my case, if we want to call it that, I believe that the US Consulate is pressuring the police to act, but is not getting anywhere. I spoke to the consular official yesterday, and he told me he met with the police on Friday, and the police told him that they do not have the time to pursue this investigation. Notice that they had the time to threaten CPTers and Palestinians with arrest for building a medical clinic. An important fact is that these police officers are based at a station located inside another settlement, Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Kiryat Arba is the oldest Jewish settlement inside the occupied territories. They tell us now that the investigation has been shifted to Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence. We do not yet know what they will do. I think that pressure has to be placed on the Israelis at a much higher level before anyone will act, and we are working with some members of Congress to get that to happen.

I do not know if it will do any good, because it seems that too many people are too invested in keeping the truth about the settlements from getting out. I think that if most Americans knew the extent of the violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians perpetrated by the settlements, then they would be outraged and would not want their tax dollars used to fund it. Tomorrow I go back to Tuwani for the first time since the attack. I will only go for the day, for a team meeting. I cannot yet stay there, because I cannot use what we call the squatty potties and I cannot yet sleep on the floor, because of my knee. But I am walking pretty well, so I can now do most of the things I was doing before. Not ready for a bike ride yet, but I hope to be sometime soon.

The Gory Details

2004-10-11T09:33:00.003-05:00

I was supposed to leave Tuwani on September 29. The evening before,Chris asked who would do the school accompaniment with him, and I agreed to do it before I left. I got up before six, packed my back-pack, woke up Chris, and we set off to escort the kids from Tuba to their school in Tuwani.

Tuwani is a Palestinian village of about 350 located in the hill country south of Hebron. Tuba and Tuwani are two of a cluster of six small Palestinian villages. Many of the families here are shepherds and others tend olive groves or fig trees. Some families live in caves that are part of an ancient way of life. CPT was invited by the villagers in Tuwani to stay with them as a deterrent to the violence they experience from the nearby Israeli settlementof Ma'on.

Since 1967 Israel has built over 200 illegal settlements, or colonies in the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All of this land was confiscated from Palestinian owners, creating terrible economic hardships and despair among the Palestinian people. Even worse, almost everyone in Tuwani can tell a story about Ma'on settlers beating or harassing them. The people are frightened, but they are also determined to resist. They think the settlers are trying to intimidate them into abandoning their land and way of life.

One community priority is providing safe passage of the children from the nearby village of Tuba to their school in Tuwani. Their path to school passes through the settlement area. We accompanied the children on Monday and Tuesday without incident.On Wednesday morning the 29th I was feeling anxious, because I wanted to finish in time to catch a van to Yatta at 7:30. We were hoping that the kids would meet us halfway, because the settlement area is at the Tuwani end of the path. Although the path is only two kilometers long, it feels like much more in the desert heat and rough terrain, and I was anxious about being late. Chris and I both grumbled about the kids not coming out to meet us.

On the way to Tuba I started to pray. I wish that I could say I was praying for the children, but mostly I was praying because I was feeling anxious. I prayed that I would get back in time for the van. I also prayed that I would be able to accomplish God's will for the morning accompaniment, whether or not that included getting to the van on time. We arrived in Tuba at 6:30 a.m. in plenty of time for my planned departure. However, the children were not yet ready to leave. Some parents offered us tea which Chris politely accepted, but I refused. Chris made it very clear that we were in a hurry and needed to leave, and by ten of seven, I had waited long enough and (stupidly) set off on my own.

I thought that if I left, it would hurry the process along. Shortly thereafter Chris and the five children left Tuba. Due to a previous knee injury, I walk more slowly uphill than I would like, so I hoped and assumed they would catch up with me. Before long the two girls were next to me and Chris was not far behind with the three boys. The girls, Miriam and a-Sophia , and I chatted as best we could with my practically nonexistent Arabic and their practically nonexistent English. I shared my water with them.

As we approached the settlement area, the girls and I were still 20 or 30 feet ahead of Chris and the boys. This did not worry us, because there had not been any problems the last couple of days. On the right side of the path is the settlement of Ma'on surrounded by a chain link fence with barbed wire. Inside the fence is the paved settlement perimeter road. Onthe left side of the dirt path is a grove of trees containing a settlement expansion outpost called Ma'on Ranch. Settlers live there in trailers and mobile homes. The Israeli army prevents Palestinians from entering this area, and none dare attempt to enter for fear of arrest, beatings or worse. It is a strictly settler area; the children are the only exception so they can go to school.

A few minutes after we entered into the settlement area, the girls next to me started to scream. I looked up and saw a man dressed in black swinging a chain coming out of the trees about thirty feet ahead. He had on a black face mask that looked like two scarves, one over the bottom half ofhis face and one over his forehead, leaving a slit for his eyes. The girls immediately turned around and started running back toward Tuba, and I followed them. Just as we reached Chris and the boys, at least four other men emerged from the trees similarly dressed. The children continued to run toward Tuba, and Chris started yelling, "Don't hurt the children, don't hurt the children!"

It seemed that Chris and I were their targets, because they headed straight for us and let the children go. I learned later that the men had thrown rocks at the children as they ran toward Tuba, but that they did make it back safely. We tried to run off the path, away from the masked settler men, but it was hopeless. They were bigger, faster, and stronger. I tried to pull out my cell phone to call for help, but they were on top of me immediately, tripping me, throwing me to the ground and beating me. I don't remember much of the actual beating, or feeling any pain while it was happening. I remember thinking to myself that if I just lie very still and pretend that I am unconscious or dead, maybe they will go away. I also remember hearing Chris scream, realizing that he was taking a much worse beating, and knowingthat there was nothing that I could do for him.

I can piece together what happened from my injuries. I must have fallen on my face, where I have cuts and bruises on my jaw and above my lip. I must have broken the fall with my left arm, which is fractured just below the elbow. They must have kicked or beat me on the left side of my right knee, where I have an enormous bruise, a lot of swelling and pain, and an undiagnosed injury. They also must have kicked or beat me on the top of my head and my left upper arm where I have bad bruises. I also have other minor cuts and bruises on my hands and other parts of my body. I don't know if they used their feet, rocks or chains. I am relieved that they got my already-bad knee instead of ruining my good one.

When they finished beating Chris, they started to head back into the grove of trees. One of them said in English, "Take her phone," and someone came over and picked up my phone from where it had fallen. They also grabbed my fanny pack from around my waist. When I heard them walking away, I ventured a look up. I saw the group go back through the grove of trees and into Ma'on Ranch. One of them looked back at me and I quickly put my head back down.

After a few minutes, I sat up and Chris walked over to me. I do not remember exactly what we said to each other in that moment. Chris' face was streaked with blood and I felt some dripping off of mine. I couldn't walk. Chris pulled out the cell phone concealed in his pocket and called Diane and Piergiorgio, who were back in Tuwani. He told them that we had just been attacked "really bad" by settlers but the kids were okay. I cannot remember what else he said, but I know that Diane and Piergiorgio said that they were coming out to join us, and that they would call the police immediately.

I called Cal in the Hebron office and told him to call the US consulate to report that my passport had been stolen. Looking back, I cannot believe this is what I was thinking about! Chris and I sat alone for 10 or 15 minutes in the spot where we had been beaten. We were both really scared. I knew the attackers were still in the trees somewhere and I was afraid that they were going to come back and finish the job. We heard and then saw vehicles driving along the settler perimeter road and I was convinced it was them coming back to find us.

Looking for a place to hide, I scooted on my butt over to a rock and propped myself up against it. But on that side of the road there was nowhere to hide, nothing but a chain link fence and small rocks. I will never forget Piergiorgio and Diane for risking their livesto come to meet us that morning. A few minutes after they arrived, I finally burst into tears. I was just so scared and so happy to see them. In that moment Piergiorgio did exactly the right thing: he gave me a big hug. I got tears and blood all over his shirt.

Maybe ten minutes after Diane and Piergiorgio got to us, settler security drove up. Every settlement has its own private security force armed with machine guns. None of us had called settler security. The man got out of his car and asked us what happened. We told him that people from his settlement attacked us. He did not offer us any assistance or first-aid, even though we were bleeding and obviously in pain. He said that they attacked us because we had upset the balance of power between the settlement and Palestinians. He understood immediately, as we did, that the perpetrators were settlers attacking us because of our presence in the area.

Five or ten minutes after settler security arrived, the police and army came, and shortly behind them an Israeli ambulance. In all it tookabout 30 minutes for help to arrive, even though the region is swarming witharmy and police and no doubt they could have been there much sooner. TheIsraeli police or the army did not search the grove of trees for our assailants. By taking so long to get to us, they effectively let the perpetrators get away. The police asked us to explain briefly what happened. They gave us a piece of paper summoning us to the Kiryat Arba police station that same day. Kiryat Arba is an Israeli settlement located on the outskirts of Hebron. The paramedics checked us over, put me on a stretcher, and took Chris, who had a punctured lung, and me to Soroka hospital in Beersheva. Diane rode with us and Piergiorgio remained in Tuwani.

I was grateful tohave Diane's steady presence with us during the emergency room ordeal. Later that afternoon the police came to the hospital to take statements from us. The US consular officer was appalled that the police insisted we come visit them at another settlement and instead insisted thatthey visit us. I gave a statement which the officer wrote out in Hebrew. I refused to sign it because I did not know what it said. I do not know what has happened to that statement. I heard later that the police had gone to the court for a search warrant for the settlement but they were denied. I do not know if Ma'on or Ma'on Ranch were ever properly searched.

That same day, two more CPTers went to Tuwani to take our places. Operation Dove, the Italian Catholic group to which Piergiorgio belongs, sent down an additional person. We all agreed that if the settlers were going to escalate the violence, then we would escalate the nonviolence. The next morning the team reported that they did the school accompaniment on schedule, and the police were present to provide security.

About one hour later, an Israeli army jeep drove through Tuwani and soldiers told the villagers that CPT was endangering their children. They threatened that if the children walked home from school through the settlement area,then the violence would be even worse. They blamed CPT for the violence and not the settlement attackers. We have a quality CPT team here in Hebron. Everybody did what was needed: being with us in the hospital, speaking to the press, phoning familyand friends, and bathing and cleaning the blood off of me when I couldn't do it myself. I am grateful for their care. I am also grateful for my extraordinary network of family and friends who have given me much love and support.

Resisting Oppression

2004-09-26T16:21:00.004-05:00

There was another another suicide bombing, this time in Jerusalem. A young woman from a refugee camp in Nablus blew herself up. My God. This has meant that getting to and from Jerusalem went from difficult to nearly impossible, due to Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, and I did not attempt it this weekend.

This week three of us went to a demonstration in Beit Awwa, not far from Hebron, a place where the separation wall is to go up. It was organized by ISM, another international group with a mission comparable to ours but which is secular. (The differences between ISM and CPT are numerous, but I won't bother with them here!) Anyway, ISM invited us.

It was quite a scene. Practically the whole village turned out, except for those who were working and those who were in school. Even one school let the children out of classes to attend. It was a middle school for girls, and they were all there in their school uniforms, and some of them spoke quite passable English. Anyway, we were there to accompany them in their display of resistance and opposition to the building of this wall and the militarization and land confiscation that goes with it. The Palestinians seem to believe that the presence of internationals lowers the risk of violence from the Israeli soldiers.

The demonstration was an impressive display, until a group of young men started throwing stones. I did not see what started first, the stone throwing or the tear gas. I think it does not matter, though. It is like dealing with small children---it does not matter who started it, because both sides were in it.

To give it some perspective (and I saw all this very clearly, because shortly after it started, I was right up front), the stones were no more than about 5 inches in diameter. They were not boulders. The Israeli soldiers had humvees and other armored vehicles, bulletproof vests, M-16 rifles and oozies. The Palestinian men had rocks. I counted 22 soldiers. There were around 500 villagers, I would estimate--although ISM claims there were over 1000--and no more than a couple of dozen stone throwers.

According to my research, no more than 5% of Palestinians are armed, and those who are have very low-tech weapons, no match for the carefully armed (by the United States) Israeli army. This explains why those people who believe that only violence will get the Israeli army out of Palestine have turned to terrorist acts.

So the young men threw stones and the army shot tear gas bombs, lots of them. I learned a lot about tear gas that day. They shot the bombs right into groups of people, right into the groups of girls, who were huddled together. Shortly after, they started with rubber bullets. I counted 12 people taken away in ambulances. They had to be taken all the way to Hebron, because Beit Awwa does not have a clinic that could handle them. Hebron is not far in distance, but bad roads and hills makes it a 45 minute trip. And then there are army checkpoints along the way, and they do stop ambulances.

The injuries were from rubber bullets, and from tear gas bombs exploding into groups of people, causing the people closest to them to collapse. Two of those taken away by ambulance were from the girls school. There were lots of people--in fact, almost everyone--affected by the tear gas, but most did not need medical treatment.

Of course there were no injured soldiers. The rocks are no threat to them. Why not just sit in the armored vehicles and let the men throw stones? Why not just drive away to a reasonable distance, where they can still observe but not be hit by stones? Why not negotiate with the demonstration organizers, made up of Palestinians and internationals, to allow them to demonstrate all they want if they stop throwing stones? Why this extreme reaction? I don't get it.

It was a battlefield, and the Palestinians lost, as they have been doing from the beginning. When it was over, I asked myself what was the purpose of that. The Palestinians gained nothing from the exercise. Because of the stone throwers, the international press will continue to label them "terrorists." Never mind that they were a small minority of the demonstrators, the vast majority of whom were peaceful. Never mind the actions of the soldiers. I worry that when 22 soldiers can so easily put down 500 or so villagers, then the exercise becomes disempowering for the Palestinians, not empowering.

But then I was thinking about the importance of resisting oppression, especially your own oppression. Demonstrating is a way of saying that you refuse to go along with it, that you refuse to just passively roll over in the face of human rights violations on a massive scale. I think that some form of resistance, even if it fails, must be good for the spirit.

During the fracas, I gave out a lot of handy-wipes and Kleenex to crying little girls. I felt like the Sandra Bullock character in the movie "Two Weeks Notice," carrying handy-wipes to a demonstration. Don't ask me why I always have them with me...

Afterward, many people thanked us for being there. One guy told me that they believe that if internationals had not been there, then the soldiers would have used live ammunition. I asked him if that could really be true. He said he had seen it himself. I can't judge if it is true or not, but even if it isn't, the perception becomes important. Because then our presence enables these villagers to mount some resistance in a space that feels safer to them.

Hebron Life

2004-09-20T17:11:00.002-05:00

I am writing from Jerusalem. I came in on Saturday night by myself, because I just needed some alone time. Saturday night I sat on the rooftop of a pizza place in the Christian quarter of the Old City sipping wine and enjoying the view of Jerusalem. I think it was the first time that I really felt I was in the Holy Land. Of course, the scenery is better at night because you can't see the dust... The wine was a treat, because there is no alcohol in Hebron. The pizza was pretty bad, but I also had a salad with lettuce in it! I have really been missing the lettuce. Then I took a hot shower.

Sunday I went to West Jerusalem, the Israeli side. It was my first time visiting this section of Jerusalem. We just don't get over there because we are here for such short time periods, and our business is in East Jerusalem. Going to West Jerusalem felt like going back to the West, with modern shopping malls and fast food. I ate at a vegetarian restaurant and had my second salad with lettuce in it. I also had spinanch lasagne and some tofu on the side! Later we took a service van (pronounced servees, with the accent on the second syllable) to Tel Aviv to visit the beach, and I swam in the Mediteranean in my underwear (forgot a bathing suit).

This morning I ate at my favorite pastry shop next to the internet cafe in the Arab section of the Old City. I would never usually eat so much pastry, but they do incredible things with pistachios, and I have been losing weight, so it probably doesn't matter. I can't think why, because it seems like all I do is eat, and falafel is not exactly low-fat.

Hebron is still pretty well locked down, except that now the Jerusalem service vans are getting all the way through, making getting to Jerusalem much simpler. Somebody dug out a pass through one of the blockades so that the service vans can pass, but no other vehicles are going through. I'm not sure I understand the system; the van driver paid 5 shekels to a Palestinian guy minding the blockade when we went through. There are still "flying checkpoints" on the way, and at one point we were stopped and all the men had to get out of the van to be searched and ID checked. It must be so humiliating for them.

Last week several of us went to visit the Jabbar family. One brother, Atta, has suffered 2 home demolitions. Now he is in his third house, but last year some nearby settlers took over the house at gunpoint and claimed it was their synagogue. After several months the family got a court order and was able to move back in. But the settlers had done much damage to the home and they had to reconstruct parts of the inside. The couple is about my age, but they look older than my parents. The last few years have taken a huge toll.

Another brother, Jaudi, spent twelve years farming a hillside belonging to his family. Then the army came with orders to seize the land for the nearby Jewish settlement, and they built a wall separating him from his land and preventing him from farming it. A few years later he tried to build an extension onto the family home to give more space to his family (he has 7 children and is living with his parents and sister), and the army bulldozed it. They are all living together in a 3-bedroom house.

After the home demolition, someone from CPT lived with the family for three months. Jaudi talked to us about how much that meant to him, just the moral support. He said we have been important to him to talk to, because he needs to talk about it or he will go crazy. He said that with those two actions, all his dreams died, and nothing in life is sweet for him any more. He wanted the farm for his children. There is some farmland left, but now, because of the closure of the entire West Bank, he can't sell any of his produce in Israel, which was the main market.

Last week we set up a regular check point watch at the army check point near our apartment (called Beit Romano). We live between two checkpoints, Beit Romano and Ibrahimi Mosque, and the army base is just behind us. We are spending two hours every day monitoring and recording what the soldiers do. This means recording ID checks, searches, and detentions,and monitoring whether their behavior is appropriate to the Palestinians they stop. The soldiers do not like it, and seem rather intimidated by our presence. Once, when I was there, they repositioned themselves so we could not see them. The Palestinians are pleased that we are there, and the fact that the soldiers are intimidated makes me think it is a good idea.

I had an unpleasant encounter with a soldier the other day. I was doing a street patrol with my teammate on Rosh Hashanah, when there is a lot of settler traffic through the Old City and a higher possibility of confrontation. When we were returning through a checkpoint called Gate 5 a soldier stopped us and said we couldn't pass, that we would have to wait because there was some kind of military exercise going on. In other words, we couldn't walk back to our own home.

Usually I try to be civil to the soldiers but not exactly friendly (why should I be nice to someone who is pointing a gun at me?) because I don't want there to be problems for the Palestinians they are detaining. But this time there were no Palestinians, and he was detaining me. So I told him that he was violating my rights by detaining me. He said he was only doing his job, and I told him that he did not have to follow orders that are illegal. To make a long story short, the encounter upset him, so he decided not to let us pass at all. If we were Palestinian we would probably still be there. As it was, we walked away from him and entered by a different gate, where there was no trouble.

I feel that since confronting the soldiers is something that Palestinians cannot do, but I can do, then I should do it, to try and encourage them to have some kind of conscience. They are still human beings, first and foremost.

Also during the Rosh Hashanah holiday my teammate and I decided to walk along Worshipper's Way. This is an ancient path that leads to Abraham's Cave, now the site of a synagogue on one side and a mosque on the other. The path leads to the synagogue side, and it is said that it is a path that Abraham probably walked. There are ancient houses and ruins of houses there. Recently the soldiers dumped fill dirt on the path in order to widen it, and some think, to pave it. In places the dirt is so high it covers over the doorways and windows of Palestinian homes. When we were there, the place was infested with soldiers, and I was saddened by it. A lot of settlers from a nearby settlement were walking the path that day, and the soldiers were there to keep the Palestinians away.

Desperation and Despair

2004-09-11T11:53:00.003-05:00

It is getting worse here. They have locked down the entire West Bank until after Yom Kippur. What that means practically is that our movement is restricted, and the movement of Palestinians even more so. More people have been arrested and killed, and we hear what sounds like tank fire every night.

The Israelis are doing this in retaliation for suicide bombings. Based on what I have experienced here, my feeling is that suicide bombings are more about suicide than bombing. If you understand it as a suicide, then you will have a clear picture of the situation of desperation and despair that Palestinians are living.

I am feeling angry about Western attitudes. The United States justified dropping nuclear weapons on Japan because of Pearl Harbor---along with fire-bombing Tokyo. We justify invading and occupying two countries after 9/11, killing thousands and torturing many. But we are shocked and appalled at a small number of violent resisters to murder, military occupation, land confiscation, home demolitions, torture, and mass detention? I don't get it.

Just to be clear: As I am sure you all know, I think the Palestinians would be far better served by mass nonviolent resistance in the style of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, and I wish they had the leadership that would take them there. I wish for the same nonviolent leadership in the United States.

On Tuesday we went to the small Palestinian village of Suseya at the invitation of farmers because they wanted to draw water from their well. In order to do that, they have to get a permit from the Israeli army, even though it is their own well on their own private land. In the past, even though they hold a permit, armed Israeli settlers from nearby have stopped them, so they wanted accompaniment.

The water-drawing went without incident, but while we were there we received a call from a nearby village. Israeli settlers were uprooting and dragging away olive trees from the village grove. The olive trees are their livelihood. By the time we got there, the settlers had taken away 40 trees, leaving the grove in ruins. We did manage to get it on Israeli radio, but too late to stop the settlers.

On the way home, we had to do our usual driving all over the place to find a way back into Hebron. We got dropped off at Beit Anun, a place where many come and go. We found the Israeli army there preventing Palestinians from crossing over to the blocked road into Hebron. They were letting people in, but one by one. The men were stopped; the women were let by. One man said to us, "I need a sex change operation. Then they would let me across. I am not a man anyway. If I were a man, I would not be in this situation."

Many Palestinians are now avoiding the roads and cutting through vineyards on the outskirts of Hebron to get in to the city. As we drive by, we can see lines of people snaking through the grapevines. The army does not stop this, proving that the whole thing is more about harassment than actual closure.

Yesterday we were returning from a visit and the cab took us to the only blocked road where there was no army truck. There were vegetable trucks parked on either side of the blockade, transferring their products from outside the city to trucks that could take them inside (see the photo above). The drivers were throwing heads of cauliflower at each other across the barrier.

We have passed a number of ambulances that were detained by Israeli soldiers. The villagers in Suseya tell us stories about trying to get to the hospital in an emergency. They are prevented by law from using the paved road to the nearby city because it is a settler road--Palestinians cannot drive on it. So the ambulance cannot come to them. They have to go to the hospital by donkey.

Have I mentioned the license plate system? Palestinians have green and white license plates, and those cars can't go on many roads (settler roads) and can't go into Jerusalem. Yellow and black license plates can go anywhere. These are for Israelis and the few Palestinians who have Jerusalem IDs. People also have ID cards with different colors, designating where one is allowed to move. This is a lot like the Soviet Union, the very system that many of these Jews escaped from for Israel.

Yesterday we visited two families who have home demolition orders because their land is located near an Israeli settlement. In both cases it is private land, owned by the people who live there. The Israeli army can just demolish homes on private land! One family has three small children. The father is the offspring of refugees from the 1948 occupation. He went to Saudia Arabia to earn enough money to come home to Palestine and buy land and a home for his family. Now he works as a hairdresser, although nobody in his community has any money, so they use the barter system. The mother has a university degree in computer science and speaks beautiful English, but she can't find work. They have lived with a demolition order for four years; they never know when the bulldozer will show up.

The other family is wealthier and has a big plot of land with grapes and fruit trees. But they have to get a permit to harvest their crops, and the army will only let them do it one day each week. They have 30 tons of grapes they can't harvest! But even if they could harvest them, they cannot sell them because of the West Bank closure. The market for them would be in Israel, and they can't get them through.

I hope I am giving you a sense of the despair and desperation here. The Palestinians are not the terrorists.

Lockdown in Hebron

2004-09-07T17:00:00.002-05:00

Hebron is in lockdown. Lockdown is a term used in U.S. jails when inmates are locked in their cells and cannot walk around the common areas or go outside. Sometimes they do it just to get an accurate count; other times it is punishment imposed after some kind of incident. In Hebron, the "incident" was last week's suicide bombers, who lived in Hebron.

The Israeli army had previously blocked most of the roads in and out of Hebron,but now they have finished the job. They have locked us down.

There are currently 4,082,300 registered Palestinian refugees, 32% are living in camps. Refugees make up 32.6% of the population of the West Bank. Over 60% of Palestinians live on less than $2.15 per day, the official poverty level here. There are 98 Israeli army check points and 99 road blocks, and the worst affected areas are Ramallah and Hebron. 50% of the total land mass of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli settlers. This land was confiscated from Palestinians.

This military occupation is harsh, leaving people in despair and without hope. But Palestinians retain their self-respect, and almost everyone here is engaged in some form of nonviolent resistance. Some people are also engaged in violent resistance.

One form of nonviolent resistance involves the roadblocks. We can get out of town by taking a cab to a roadblock, then climbing over the pile of rocks and dirt, then catching another cab waiting on the other side. We have to repeat this 2, sometimes 3, times to get to Jerusalem. Returning from Jerusalem on Sunday, we found that the army had put up yetanother barrier: barbed wire. We took a cab to the roadblock, climbed over it, then took a cab to the barbed wire, then walked around three sets of coiled barbed wire in the road about a half block apart. Then we caught another cab.

The whole town is being punished for the action of two residents. Another form of collective punishment involves aggressive I.D.checks. There are military check points all over Hebron, and Palestinian men are routinely detained. This activity has picked up noticeably since the suicide bombing. Today we witnessed Israeli border police parading aline of 35 or so young Palestinian men toward the check point nearest our apartments. The police made them squat in a line for an hour. When someone asked the officer in charge why the men were detained, his reply was, "because I want to."

The image of Hebron as a jail and the Israelis as our jailers fits the situation here. The violence of the jailer is well-known but rarely punished, while the violence of the inmate results in severe punishment for the whole population. The only difference is that most people here never committed a crime. They landed in this jail due to geography, international politics, ethnic origin, religion, and bad luck.

Introduction to Hebron

2004-08-29T16:44:00.002-05:00

Hebron is home to the buriel site of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, and the worship space above it dates from at least Herod's time. As such it is a holy site. The Old City of Hebron, the location of the buriel site, was for centuries the home of Muslims and Jews who lived there peacefully until 1929, during the time that it was a British colony. In 1929 there was a massacre of Jews by Arabs, and 67 Jews were killed. Over 400 were saved because they were hidden by their Palestinian neighbors (although this is never pointed out in Israeli literature about it). This event is a point of grief for both sides.

After the massacre, the British forced the rest of the Jews out, saying they could no longer be protected. In 1979, the Israelis established their first settlement in Hebron, claiming that it was an ancient Jewish site and forcing out the Palestinians who lived in the places they wished to settle. Today there are 4 Jewish settlements in Hebron, all with confiscated land. One is located right in the Old City, built literally on top of Palestinian homes, forcing the residents to flee.

In 1994 there was a massacre of Palestinians by a fanatical rabbi from New York, who opened fire on Muslims at prayer in the mosque located on top of the holy buriel sites. 27 Palestinians were killed by him, and an equal number were killed by Israeli soldiers who were brought in. The rabbi was killed by 3 Palestinian men who beat him with a fire extinguisher (the only weapon they had) in order to stop the killing. The three men were killed by Israeli soldiers.

Since that time the buriel site has been split in half--one part for Jews and one part for Muslims, with a wall between. Currently, the settlers are bulldozing several 700-year-old Palestinian near the site to make way for a new road from their settlement to the synagogue. Palestinians are forbidden to use these settler roads.

Until just a few months ago, there was constant violence between Palestinians and Jews in the Palestinian market area of the Old City and on a main road in town that was used for commerce, but was also used by the settlers to get to their homes. The CPT apartment is located in the market area, just off that main road. However, a few months ago, the Israelis changed tactics a bit and closed off the road completely to Palestinians and blocked the market area off from the road. This effectively shut down the market and forced most of the vendors out to another part of the city.

The idea is to get all the Palestinians out of the old city altogether, even though they own their homes and shops there. Many have left, of course, but others are staying, keeping their shops open as a kind of nonviolent resistance. Israeli soldiers are stationed around the Old City to protect the settlers, although reports from CPT and other international groups state that most of the violence originates from the settlers.

It seems to me that the settlers are a scary bunch with a lot of political power. They often sit at the Hebron check points, and along with the soldiers, are armed with machine guns. Their large guns intimidate the hell out of me, and I guess that is the point.

I do understand why Jewish people want their own state, because of centuries of suffering violent oppression as an ethnic minority. However, I don't understand getting it by doing the exact same thing to another ethnic group.