Dear friends: 
     When Christopher Columbus arrives at long last to a sandy beach in the Bahamas, he steps majestically ashore, striding regally through the last of the waves. He leads a company of his underlings, the flag of Spain and the cross of the Church not far behind. The small caravels that brought him across the Atlantic float at anchor in the background. 
     For us, as citizens of the U.S., the image of that incident imparted from grade school on shows Columbus as the center of attention. Out of focus in the lower corner of the image, a barely defined spectator or two lurks in the bushes. They are the native people who watch Columbus wade ashore, kiss the ground, behead a few bushes with his sword, and then raise the flag, claiming their mountains, beaches, coral seas, parrots, jungles, and rivers for Isabella, Ferdinand, and God. These somewhat out of focus aborigines are almost incidental to the scene, of lesser importance than the Admiral, obviously. We learned little of them in elementary school, except perhaps that they were somehow grateful to Columbus for having "discovered" them. We are told nothing of their highly developed mathematics, engineering, farming, or community life. They remain out of focus. Our ignorance is often equal to, well, that of Columbus himself:  

     Luis de Torres translates Christopher Columbus' questions into Hebrew for the laurel-skinned people who have gazed dazedly at the scene of the Admiral's arrival: "Do you know the kingdom of the Great Khan? Where does the gold you have in your noses and ears come from?" 
     The naked people stare at him with open mouths, and the interpreter tries out his small stock of Chaldean: "Gold? Temples? Palaces? King of kings? Gold?" 
     Then he tries his Arabic, the little he knows of it: "Japan? China? Gold?" 
     The interpreter apologizes to Columbus in the language of Castile. Columbus curses in Genovese and throws to the ground his credentials, written in Latin and addressed to the Great Khan. The naked people watch the anger of the intruder with red hair and coarse skin, who wears a velvet cape and shiny clothes. 

     The relationship, as they say, goes downhill from there. Before long, cross and sword control the hemisphere, having conquered, massacred, and converted the indigenous populations. Throughout the process, the church plays an absolutely essential role in providing the ideological underpinnings for genocide. 

     Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher's brother and lieutenant, attends an incineration of human flesh in 1496. 
     Six men play the leads in the grand opening of Haiti's incinerator. The smoke makes everyone cough. The six are burning as a punishment and as a lesson: They have buried the images of Christ and the Virgin that Fray Ramón Pané left with them for protection and consolation. Fray Ramón taught them to pray on their knees, to say the Ave Maria and Paternoster and to invoke the name of Jesus in the face of temptation, injury, and death. 
     No one has asked them why they buried the images. They were hoping that the new gods would fertilize their fields of corn, cassava, boniato, and beans. 
     The fire adds warmth to the humid, sticky heat that foreshadows heavy rain. 

     This year, 500 years after Columbus brought his New World Order to the inhabitants of what would soon be called the Americas, much of what is being spoken and written concerns the brutality of the European conquest, mass murder carried out in the name of economic expansion. Many are criticizing it, a few are defending it. 
     What is often overlooked in the focus on 500 years of domination and oppression is the counterpart to the officially-sponsored violence: 500 years of resistance from those who refuse to submit to new empires. It's important for us to see history from this perspective, the underside of history, the part usually left out in history textbooks. 

     In the islands, in these Calvaries, those who choose death by hanging themselves or drinking poison along with their children are many. The invaders cannot avoid this vengeance, but know how to explain it: the Indians, "so savage that they think everything is in common," as Oviedo will say, "are people by nature idle and vicious, doing little work. For a pastime many killed themselves with venom so as not to work, and others hanged themselves with their own hands." 
     Hatuey, Indian chief of the Guahaba region, has not killed himself. He fled with his people from Haiti in a canoe and took refuge in the caves and mountains of eastern Cuba in 1511. 
     There he pointed to a basketful of gold and said: "This is the god of the Christians. For him they pursue us. For him our fathers and brothers have died. Let us dance for him. If our dance pleases him, this god will order them not to mistreat us." 
     They catch him three months later. 
     They tie him to a stake. 
     Before lighting the fire that will reduce him to charcoal and ash, the priest promises him glory and eternal rest if he agrees to be baptized. Hatuey asks: 
     "Are there Christians in that heaven?" 
     "Yes." 
     Hatuey chooses hell, and the firewood begins to crackle. 

     Columbus didn't have the last word. Indigenous peoples resisted, and continue resisting today, despite the incredible violence visited upon them by conquerors of all types, from Spanish misfits who arrived in sailboats to well-clad executives of U.S., European, and Japanese transnationals who arrive in corporate jets. The point is, all have arrived to exploit the labor and natural resources of the indigenous communities. And in every case, despite the overwhelming technological and economic advantages of the conquerers, the conquered haven't given up easily. The spirit of resistance is alive and well throughout the Americas. 
     We want to share with you a brief glimpse of this resistance in the lives of three indigenous women that Paul interviewed in recent months. All happen to be Methodists. That's not because Methodists have some corner on resistance, far from it. But we are linked to them in the church, and their testimony reminds us that we in the church are struggling with trying to change sides in history. We struggle to leave behind an antiquated and erroneous conception of the church in order to participate in a community of faith that deliberately chooses to take sides with the poor and oppressed--precisely because we have learned that it is with them that we will find God. 

     Felicia Santos loves her land. A member of the Ngóbe Indian tribe in Panama, Santos waves her hand at the hillside that slopes away from her thatched-roof house. "The land is our mother," she exclaims, "it produces the food we eat, it feeds our children, it gives us rest when we die." Yet Santos, caught in the middle of an invasion of indigenous lands, is forced to struggle to keep her small patch of earth. The elderly woman--she doesn't know her age, but other villagers claim she is over 70--is fighting back. 
     Santos lives in Potrero Palma, a small village in Panama's western Chiriquí province. The collection of huts nestled into the hillside shelters some thirty families, a small part of Panama's 120,000 Ngóbe Indians (also known as the Guaymí). Ngóbe communities stretch across the isthmus, dotting the forested slopes of the central highlands and encompassing huge sections of the provinces of Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro.  
     Since the Ngóbe's deadly "discovery" by the Spanish, they've had to survive the spread of banana plantations, the construction of the Pan-American Highway through their land, the giveaway of their land to transnational oil and tourism companies, and the continuing appropriation of communal lands by mestizo peasants and cattle-raising oligarchs. 
     When a wealthy local rancher siezed some of Santos' land and put his cattle on it, the Methodist Church of Panama--which started a ministry with the Ngóbe in Potrero Palma three years ago--stepped in and provided legal assistance. The rancher removed his cattle and hasn't bothered her since. Santos drinks cacao in the shade of a orange tree and surveys her land. "Our ancestors shed their blood to defend our land," she declares. "It is sacred for us. Like our ancestors, we are willing to fight to keep it." 
     The Methodist ministry with the Ngóbe focuses on valuing indigenous culture. In study sessions and in support for traditional crafts, especially those of Ngóbe women, the church helps community members counteract the prevailing message of western culture that indigenous ways are somehow primitive or pagan. Encouraging a reclaiming of cultural roots, community leaders retell the stories and sing again the old songs that form an oral tradition that is the cultural foundation for Ngóbe life. For the Ngóbe, crafting a traditional woman's dress and wearing it with pride is an act of simple resistance to a dominant culture that seeks to do away with the Indians or, if that's not possible, domesticate them into something acceptable, such as a tourist attraction. 
     In Panama's educational system, indigenous children are often not allowed to wear traditional dress in the classroom. Many poor Ngóbe families cannot afford other clothes, so the children stay home. School teachers often forbid children from speaking anything other than Spanish. The Ngóbe are tired of being told in both obvious and insidious ways that they are second-class citizens. In church-sponsored study sessions, they reflect on what God wants for them and how that often clashes with how the dominant society perceives them. 
     Rosalia Montezuma, a neighbor of Felicia Santos and a member of the Methodist community in Portrero Palma, recalls how when she used to go to the market in town the mestizos would make fun of her when she talked in Ngóbe. "They would point at me at say, `Blah, blah blah,' and then laugh hysterically," she says. "For a long time, I was ashamed. But no longer. Now I know I have value." She says that when anyone in town laughs at her now for speaking Ngóbe, she confronts them and says in Spanish, "You aren't so smart. When you talk I can understand you, but when I talk you cannot understand me." 

     María Tomasa lives in the village of Chontolá, a Quiché village in the western highlands of Guatemala. María has experienced intimately the violence directed against indigenous peoples. Her husband was hacked to death by government paramilitary forces in 1982. María fled the village to take refuge for a time in a slum in the capital; she later returned home, living at first in a government-run "model village," a kind of concentration camp for indigenous people. 
     Today, María is a deaconess in the Methodist Church. She has spearheaded her church's efforts to organize economic programs to benefit other widows and orphans in the community. While small in numbers, María and the other Methodists of Chontolá--like the followers of Jesus in the early church--have worked hard to ensure the survival of the most vulnerable members of society. The church sponsors a self-help group for widows, providing consolation and spiritual guidance as the women make the difficult adjustment to life without their partners. The group helps the women survive economically, not by handing out charity, but rather through supporting the women's own organizing efforts to better their lives and the lives of their children. The congregation sponsors a weaving cooperative, of which María is the president. 
     The women of Chontolá are engaged in a project of cultural survival, in which the church--so often guilty of disparaging or exterminating traditional culture--encourages its nurture and promotion. Kneeling in the shade of their apple trees to weave, the women of Chontolá actively resist the notion that their culture is somehow backward or uncivilized, something primitive that's only of value for tourists to behold. As they delicately manipulate brightly-colored thread into huipiles and trajes--featuring designs passed down from their Mayan ancestors--the widows work with pride, honesty, and respect for both their history and themselves. They may not be able to read a book about their traditions, but they can receive and pass along their thoughts, feelings, and culture through the cloth they fashion. 
     As their fingers send the shuttle from one side of the weave to another, their bodies flexing to alternately tighten and loosen the warp, the women are determined that their families, their villages, and their culture will survive. It is a quiet yet urgent struggle, for the women and their families contend with one of the worse forms of cultural imperialism, the entrenched and deadly racism that makes Guatemala the South Africa of Central America. 
     The wealthy elite of Guatemala has exploited the Indians since the Conquest, stealing their land and exploiting their labor. Today, two percent of Guatemalan families own 70 percent of the land. Nine of ten indigenous families in the highlands live on plots too small to meet basic needs--what Eduardo Galeano terms "plots the size of graves." Some 100,000 people have been killed in the last two decades in order to maintain that criminal status quo. 
     In a country where the dominant culture has made the word "Indian" a degrading insult, the equivalent of stupid or brutish, the church offers indigenous people, especially women, an affirmation seldom available to them elsewhere. Declares María, "When people don't consider me important, I just remember that I'm important to God." 
     María, 34, defines herself against what it means to be a ladina, a Spanish-speaking non-Indian Guatemalan woman. "We're not all that different underneath," María claims. "Both kinds of women have the same bodies. The ladina eats meat while we eat only beans. The ladina gets a better job because she's gone to school and learned to read. But she's got just one job that she knows how to do. We indigenous women have to do everything. We can make our own clothes; the ladina can't sew. She can't cook either, she has to hire a maid--usually an Indian woman--to cook for her. 
     "The ladinos have marginalized us, but God hasn't done that. We're daughters and sons of God. People may say other things about us, but God takes us seriously." 

     María Sumire, a Quechua Indian from the Andes mountains of southern Peru, was born into a family that for generations has had to struggle to survive. Her grandparents were assassinated when they protested the seizure of their ancestral land by a large landowner. Her father was persecuted for organizing a union at a local textile factory and for demanding an end to the seizure of peasant land. 
     María and her family suffered the results of her father's activism. When he went into hiding to avoid arrest, she and her mother and siblings were beaten by the police. She remembers the days of hunger when her father, a leader of the Peasant Federation, was imprisoned by the wealthy.  
     Her father's discipleship had a big impact on María. "Father taught us the importance of loving your neighbor as yourself," she recalls. "He taught us how we're all brothers and sisters and we have to help each other. He drilled this into us." 
     María's father was a pastor in the Peruvian Evangelical Church, but was eventually expelled for his political activism on behalf of the poor. The vocation seems to run in the family, however, for María is today a local pastor of the Methodist Church in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital in southern Peru. 
     For several days each week María journeys out on the altiplano, where her husband serves as a part-time local pastor. Together, they share the good news of God's love in remote Quechua villages. "The church has a lot of work in the southern Andes," María reports. "Our objective isn't to capture this area for the church, but rather that these communities, so persecuted by death, will know hope, will be able to have life. We're only going to achieve that by uniting, men and women together, making our rights be respected." 
     Upon arrival in a community, María quickly confronts the problems faced by her people. "When I arrive, someone usually offers me alcohol to drink. Alcohol is bad news for both the family and the community. I explain to them that it's alright for medicinal purposes, but beyond that it causes violence, something that God doesn't want for us. We don't show up and start preaching, or trying to start a church, but rather dialogue naturally with the people about what's good and bad. They ask us why we talk that way and we respond, `We're Methodists.' That's how the church gets involved. The love of the Lord is expressed in what we do to help our people survive. We're doing all this for life, because God doesn't want death, but rather life--abundant life--for people." 
     María's ministry has a special focus on education. She works with rural residents, teaching them to read and write. (Over eighty percent of indigenous women in Peru are illiterate.) She coordinates campaigns to help families better care for their health, and to appreciate their traditional agricultural products. "We've been taught by our commercial society that our products weren't worth anything, that the only things worth eating are manufactured, imported foods, things we had to buy, like noodles or rice. We've been told that we are nothing but ignorant brutes for eating the food we grow on the altiplano." María and other members of the pastoral team--all lay people--encourage the "revaluation" of traditional products. They also encourage people to supplement their diets by planting organic gardens to provide vegetables like carrots and onions. When the land doesn't produce enough to survive, María assists in setting up workshops to produce simple jewelry for marketing in the city. 
     "People ask us what they can do for their children," María, 40, reports. "Many children are malnourished or dying of hunger. What can we do? We look for alternatives for survival. That's our work. We aren't interested, like some evangelical groups, in opening churches all over the altiplano. They'll know we are people of God by our work." 
     In the struggle for survival, the church works closely with popular organizations. "The church is not separate from the popular organizations," says María. "The sisters and brothers of the church are often leaders in their communities and in the popular organizations. For example, I work on the legal assistance team of the Peasant Federation; that's a lot of work these days since so many peasants that are being taken prisoner. One brother in the church is a leader of his union. Another sister is a leader among the postal workers." 
     María claims motivation makes a difference in one's participation in the community. "Some leaders in the popular organizations are motivated by their participation in political parties," she says. "The leaders who come from the churches aren't motivated by party politics, but rather by the politics of Jesus, simply, the demand for justice. The difference between these two types of people is demonstrated by their acts, their love, their dedication. The leaders from the political parties respond to the agenda of the parties, which is at times contrary to the interests of the people. We Christians have to be lights within the organizations." 
     The church works closely with other indigenous organizations in confronting the racist assault against indigenous culture. "At times I think that from the perspective of the government, of the wealthy and the authorities, being indigenous is a sin," María states. "They just don't consider us as persons. We are marginalized at every level. They've never shown concern for the quality of life on the altiplano. They aren't interested in getting electricity for us, yet they want to tax us on everything, on our land, on boxes of matches, on salt. But the roads have never arrived to our communities. If we have roads, it's because we've built them with volunteer labor from the communities. We don't have medical posts, nor doctors or nurses. If you want to go to primary school, you're lucky if there's one you can walk to in three hours. If you want to go to high school, you have to go to the provincial capital as I did." 
     Despite the obstacles, María is hopeful. "We indigenous have hope that someday things are going to change," she says. "Although we're not going to see it, our children and grandchildren will. Yet we have to continue united, struggling together, although the voice is so weak that no one hears it, we have to continue speaking out, demanding change. We cannot keep quiet before the constant violations of our humanity. If we kept quiet we would be accomplices in the violence. 
     "We have to keep struggling, and some day the world will change. The Lord taught us that all is protest, all is pain, all is suffering, because that's what he suffered. And it wasn't the poor that crucified Jesus, but the rich and powerful. The peasants and indigenous didn't kill him, but rather the governors of that country. The same is happening with us, we are being crucified, our leaders are being assassinated, and as Moses fought for his people we will fight for ours. 
     "God has promised us that the reign of God will come to us here on the earth. That's our hope. Some people have become conscious and started struggling to defend life. That gives us hope. Both sisters and brothers have become organized and are fighting back. There is hope. God is at work among us." 

Economic Hard Times 
     Here in Nicaragua, life for the poor gets harder everyday, yet it doesn't seem that way when you look around Managua. The signs of prosperity abound: new restaurants, workers painting lines on the streets, beer in aluminum cans, lots of new cars, cable television, supermarkets full of Weight Watchers frozen entrees and imported orange juice, a scratch and win lottery. But underneath the façade, the poor find each day a bit harder to get through. 
     The benefits of democracy accrue to the few. The many are out of work. In Nicaragua, about two of every three people of working age don't have a steady job. They live in houses of cardboard, thrown up in any vacant field around the city. Their neighborhoods lack water and sewage; cholera rages through their families. Yet necktied government officials who supervise the economy regularly sit down at airconditioned press conferences, backed up by full-color computer-generated graphs and pie charts, to explain how the economy is improving. 
     The news isn't getting down to those who wait for a word of hope. Last month a night watchman at the Palacio de Gobierno was laid off from his meager job. In his fifties with several small children, the man couldn't find work, and committed suicide after two weeks of looking in vain for a new job. He left a letter saying he could no longer stand to look at his malnourished five-year old son knowing that he could do nothing to help get food for him to eat. 
     Such desperation is not unique to Nicaragua. Throughout Latin America these days, governments are rushing to implement "structural adjustments" ordered by the International Monetary Fund and other international agencies that are setting the tone of national economic policies. These neoliberal policies are good news for the rich and bad news for the poor. Social tensions are rising throughout the hemisphere as a result, and disturbances in recent months in Venezuela and Peru are signs that true political democracy may not be possible when accompanied by undemocratic economic policies. 

The "Scrambled" 
     This social tension manifests itself differently in every country. Here in Nicaragua, amidst the myriad post-war problems the country faces, a fascinating phenomenon has emerged: many rural peasants are putting ideological differences behind them and forming a united front against the neoliberal economic policies of President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. 
     Throughout the Nicaraguan countryside, peasants are joining together, at times with weapons in their hands, to pressure the Chamorro government to provide land, credit, and social services. Former mortal enemies are forgetting their past disputes in favor of a new project based on solidarity among the peasant class. 
     In a land torn by more than a decade of impassioned ideological conflict, the new alliances break down customary political divisions. "It's something incredible, but it's how things have worked out. Our problems are the same," said one veteran Sandinista who took over Ocotal in early March along with fellow Sandinistas and former contras. "The great politicians have always used us, so we have to work together," said a former contra and a leader of what's come to be called here the revueltos--those who are "mixed together" or "scrambled." 
     The revueltos, who made their first appearance in the seizure of Ocotal, are composed of recontras (former contras) and recompas (former government soldiers) who are tired of the government's repeated failure to keep its promises to the former combatants and other rural residents smarting under the government's economic austerity programs. While shiny new private banks open throughout Managua, government financial institutions are being withdrawn from small towns throughout the countryside, making it more difficult for small farmers to get credit. 
     Although the government negotiated a settlement in Ocotal, it wasn't long before the revueltos struck again. In mid-April they seized Estelí, Matagalpa, and Jinotega, erecting street barricades reminiscent of the 1979 insurrection and literally shutting down the mountainous north of the country. In Estelí, the government sent in riot police, and in the resulting combat one revuelto was killed and several revueltos and police were injured. Six members of the police in Estelí deserted rather than obey orders to combat the revueltos, whom they see as fellow citizens struggling for what's just. 
     Making new promises, the government convinced the revueltos to put away their weapons and take down their barricades. Before long, however, they were at it again; in recent weeks the government has used tanks and armored helicopters against revueltos who seized farms in Chinandega province.  
     In a development that complements the struggle of the revueltos, several leaders of a Sandinista farmer's union joined with former contras in February to form a new organization dedicated to "democratizing the rural economy." One of the group's leaders, Daniel Núñez, claims the government's "neoliberal model of structural adjustment has converted us into consumers, sellers of cheap labor, illiterate and unemployed." He says that after a "cruel and unjust war in which we, as always, provided the dead," the peasantry has remained "marginalized, struggling to survive." The group is demanding that the government provide peasants with land titles, access to credit, and markets for rural products. 
     We find the development of both groups to be basically positive. Although in the Nicaraguan context, people have learned to pick up a gun before exhausting other solutions--more than eighty people have been killed so far this year in incidents related to the recontras, recompas, and revueltos--the poor clearly have learned that if things are going to change they will have to make such change happen themselves. No rich person sitting in a government office is going to solve their problems. 
     Pray with us for the people of Nicaragua, whose land and life remain devastated in the wake of the long and cruel contra war that the U.S. government forced upon them. Pray that the poor of this land will continue to thirst for justice. Pray that they will discover nonviolent means to struggle for authentic democracy in the countryside, a democracy that means food on the table, the right to own land to farm. In short, as the prophet Micah said, the right to sit under their own vine and mango tree, in peace and unafraid. 

Personal News 
     Perhaps our most common family activity of late has been griping about the heat. We've been waiting for the rainy season for weeks. After six dry months, the whole of creation cries out for water. The fields are brown, the air full of dust; during the last months of the dry season, we have to mop our house twice a day. Two weeks ago, when the first rainstorm came, complete with riotous thunder and lightening, Lyda, Lucas, and Abi ran out the front door and danced in a circle in the rain. 
     We look forward to the rains because they bring relief from the heat and omnipresent dust. Most Nicaraguans look forward to the rains because they mean the planting season can begin. In the last few years, the planting of crops has been disrupted too many times by both natural causes--el Niño, global warming--and by war. Last year's drought left many families in affected zones eating one meal a day of guineo (a kind of tough banana) and salt. Along with many here, we include a petition for rain in our prayer, and give thanks to God when it comes. 
     Lucas began kindergarten in February at the German School in Managua. He's enjoying the new challenges and friends, and also the fact that he only goes to school for half a day, much better than when he spent all day in day care. His first adult tooth came in last month, and he enjoys shooting his homemade bow and arrow in our garage. The cats have learned to stay out of his way in the garage--but also to trust him when he wants to cuddle with them in bed. 
     Abigail continues in a day care center begun seven years ago by Salvadoran refugees. These days only a handful of the kids are Salvadorans, since most of the refugee families have returned home in recent months. Abi is the entertainer of our family; she loves singing, putting on puppet shows, and pretending to be a clown. She was real disappointed to hear they picked someone else for Johnny Carson's job. The cats have learned to run in terror when she appears around the corner. 
     Lyda continues learning about economics in the middle of an almost non-existent economy. As a consultant to CEPAD's women's ministry program, she travels about the country conducting workshops and seminars, struggling to help women live abundant lives as daughters of God. Along with theology, psychology, and biblical studies, which Lyda has some experience with, she's accompaning women trying to establish small businesses: planting beans or squash, raising chickens, baking bread. Lyda has to learn right along with them. It's an exciting process as historically marginalized women become economically empowered. Yet it's frustrating, as well, since small businesses have a low survival rate in Nicaragua's neo-liberal economy. In what spare time she can muster, she reads all the parenting books available, searching for ideas on how to channel the energies of a five-year-old who wants to be Robin Hood and a three-year-old who wants to be a high-wire acrobat. 
     Paul--overworked and happy--continues writing about the how the church ministers in a variety of settings. In February, he spent two weeks in Guatemala and El Salador, the first a country gripped by fear and repression, the later a land enjoying peace for the first time in years. In May, he spent 15 days in Cuba, looking particularly at the effects of last October's decision to admit Christians into the ranks of the Communist Party. In between he covered the eruption of a volcano near Leon and rooted for the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA playoffs (during which time he became good friends of a family with cable television). He's off to Brazil this month to cover an international AIDS conference and the church's ministry with street kids in Brazil's cities. 
     We escape Managua for the beach or the mountain at least once a month. The kids will spend July in the U.S., dividing the time between their grandparents. Lyda will take them north, Paul will bring them south again. Shalom!