February 2005
This month we are presenting a guest letter
for sustainers. This letter written by Rosemary
Radford Ruether reflects on her recent trip
to El Salvador with nine theological students
from Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley,
CA. She is the Carpenter Professor of Feminist
Theology at Pacific School of Religion and is
a world-renowned theologian known for her work
and writings on women and social justice in
theological history. The SHARE Foundation assisted
GTU in their recent delegation to El Salvador.
SHARE Delegation Trip to El
Salvador:
January 3-9, 2005
Rosemary Radford Ruether
A group of twelve traveled together to El Salvador
and Nicaragua January 3-15 from the Graduate
Theological Union. This group included nine
GTU students, a professor, Rosemary Ruether,
and spouse, Herman Ruether and Ron Morgan, a
board member of SHARE. Although only in El Salvador
a week, the experience was so rich that it could
easily require many pages of reflection. This
letter summarizes some of the high lights of
the El Salvador part of the trip.
The group spent two days in the Chalchuapa-Santa
Ana area meeting with the Baptist churches communities
of Shalom and Shekina, and visiting women's
cooperatives. We spent a day and a half in San
Salvador visiting the sites of the martyrs and
hearing of the struggle against the by-pass
road by environmental activists and the problems
of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Two and a half days were spent in the lower
Rio Lempa area where we stayed with the Sisters
at Nueva Esperanza, met with municipal leaders
of Tecoluca, a women's cattle cooperative and
a pastor and leaders of the Catholic community
of Tierra Blanca. We managed to get in a swim
at a sports complex and shopping for artisanias
as well!
My overwhelming impression was one of two
sharply contradictory realities. On one hand
is the enormous history of violence and injustice,
expressed in the still stifling grip of the
rich elite of El Salvador buttressed by the
military and economic power of the United States.
This was expressed in the terrible war of the
80's in which 75,000 died. The martyrs of that
era live on as vivid presences in base communities
who proceed up to the altars with their pictures
and display their images on their walls. A long
wall in a park in San Salvador lists the tens
of thousands of names of the murdered and disappeared
year by year from 1972 to 1992. Our translator
Tania pointed out the name of her sister, and
we could pick out the names of the famous, such
as Msgr. Romero and Ignacio Ellacuria, among
the many others.
This violence continues today in the brutal
subversion of the hard won democracy by the
United States and the Salvadoran elite and enrichment
of the few at the expense of the vast majority.
We were told of the dependence of most Salvadorans
on remittances from the émigrés
and how the political right used this reality
to threaten the populace that if the FMLN were
to be elected to the Presidency then the U.S.
would subsequently cut off remittances and expel
Salvadorans from the U.S. The ARENA party even
paid for calls from the US to tell relatives
to vote for the ARENA party, and also calls
to relatives in the US to vote for Bush! The
upcoming Central American Free Trade Agreement
will not only deepen the impoverishment of the
majority, but is designed to set each Central
American country against the others as competitors,
preventing Central Americans from working together.
Against the sickening story of violence and
oppression is the extraordinary creativity and
organizational energy at the grassroots. While
prevented from winning at the national level,
the FMLN is winning at the municipal level.
Studies show that of the 17 best-run municipalities,
all are run by the FMLN. Meeting with municipal
leaders in Tecoluca gave us a taste of the enormous
capacity of Salvadorans for communitarian democratic
organizing. Divided into regions, each municipality
has its many local teams for health and welfare
continually working to improve daily life and
groom leaders for local and regional leadership.
Cooperative farming at the local level creates
local exchange economies that enable survival
against the hegemonic economy coming from the
system of global domination.
Everywhere there are women's cooperatives
and mutual support groups. From a women's cattle
cooperative with 263 members to a group that
has developed a store and a corn grinding mill,
to literacy and gender training groups that
teach women skills, self esteem and resistance
to domestic and sexual abuse, women are enormously
active working together to widen their horizons.
These women are also writing their own stories.
We carried off an elegant pamphlet from the
women's cattle cooperative detailing their history
and work in illustrated texts.
Last but not least for students of theology
and ministry there are admirable examples of
liberation theology-inspired base communities.
Breaking down the long divisions of Catholic
and Protestant, they work ecumenically with
"all who share their vision." Among
our many acquisitions were three powerful study
guides created in workshops in Nueva Esperanza
for pastoral training of local base communities.
One focused on women's issues, one on Jesus
and one on the family and society. All followed
a methodology of "see", "reflect",
"act" and "celebrate". Each
chapter opens with a story, based on Salvadoran
experience, often illustrating the realities
of suffering, poverty and violence. This is
followed by Biblical reflection and suggestions
for action in the community, as well as liturgical
expression. These texts were stunning in their
clarity and power,
One member of the delegation hopes to do her
Master's thesis in religious education based
on these texts. Thus does the creativity of
the Comunidades Eclesiales de Base de la Zona
Oriental de El Salvador flow back to enrich
the theological work of the Graduate Theological
Union of Berkeley, California.
Rosemary Radford Ruether
©
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Campaign for Peace