Dear friends:  
     They came marching slowly down the street, a commanding image of reconciliation in a region where hatred has long reigned. A decade's worth of wounded veterans in wheelchairs, on crutches, with wobbling protheses and the dark glasses of the blind, they marched in unison to demand their rights under El Salvador's heralded peace process. Bitter enemies in times of war, hundreds of former guerrilla combatants and government soldiers linked arms in times of peace to flesh out what reconciliation can really mean for this violence-plagued isthmus.  
     Yet the image was fleeting. As the May 20 march neared the presidential palace in San Salvador, a confrontation with riot police escalated into an exchange of rocks and tear gas. Within seconds, police fired automatic weapons into the crowd, killing three demonstrators and wounding several others. The dead included a former soldier and a former guerrilla combatant. The vision of healing incarnated by the physically challenged vets quickly dissipated under the frenetic response of those who serve the powerful. Peace is short-lived and elusive in Central America.  
     In the last three years, the world has turned its eyes away from Central America. After all, in Nicaragua, the contra war had ended and President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was leading the country down a rocky but nonetheless one-way road toward national reconciliation. In El Salvador, former enemies embraced over a piece of paper that declared the war over. In Guatemala, a democratically-elected president dialogued with leaders of the armed insurrection. Across the region, neoliberal economies were constructed, offering new opportunities for foreign investment. The region seemed well on the road to peace and stability, and so people in the north—including many in the church—turned their weary eyes and solidarity elsewhere.  
     Yet events throughout the region in the last three months belie any notion that all is well. In Nicaragua, a moribund economy, exacerbated by President Chamorro's broken promises about land and credit, has stirred former contras and others to pick up the arms they once laid down. On May 18, she declared a month-long state of emergency in the country's mountainous north, suspending most civil rights in an action she would have lambasted had it been carried out by the former Sandinista government. By mid-July, combat between the military and a plethora of armed groups was raising the body count almost daily.  
     Nicaragua is rapidly becoming a sort of Lebanon, with armed factions arising both right and left, and the Chamorro administration increasingly frustrated by the country's ungovernability. Yet the real tragedy here lies in the lack of an alternative vision. The Sandinista leadership, whose popular legitimacy suffered greatly from a property grab during the 1990 transition period, frequently ends up supporting the president's policies because they are unable to come up with anything better. As ancient Israel's wisdom literature puts it, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It's an observation that aptly describes the daily reality of a country that now fights with Haiti for last place on the hemisphere's list of social indicators.  
     In El Salvador, the government has repeatedly dragged its feet on implementing reforms established under the peace accords and the report of the U.N. Truth Commission. Protecting the lucrative carreers of those named as accomplices in a decade of murder—be they generals in the military or justices in the Supreme Court—has proved to be more important to President Alfredo Cristiani than keeping his word to the Salvadoran people and the international community.  
     Following an early morning blast that rocked Managua on May 23, El Salvador's Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front doesn't seem to be playing by the rules either. Three people died and more than a dozen were injured when a secret arms cache—hidden under an automobile repair shop—blew up in a neighborhood on the east side of the capital. One of the five groups that make up the FMLN eventually accepted responsibility for the arsenal, arguing lack of confidence in the government's compliance as rationale for maintaining a sizeable stockpile of arms outside the country.  
     The blast embarrasses the FMLN just as alliances are being drawn for next year's general elections in El Salvador. FMLN leaders, intent on placing well in the contest, are relying on military-style organizing as a way to build an electoral base quickly. Yet many former FMLN combatants and supporters, especially women, turned off by the continued top-down style of the comandantes, are wandering off to form dozens of new popular organizations, forging a civil society in a country marked by its dramatic lack of democratic institutions. In the long haul, such organizing bodes well for laying the foundation of peace, namely justice. Yet the struggle for justice was what gave birth to the insurrection in the first place, and the recent increase in death squad-style disappearances and killings illustrates that some powerful people in El Salvador, not yet jaded of brutality and war, are content to run the risk of sparking another revolution in order to maintain their positions of medieval privilege and power.  

     Guatemala got the world's attention for a few days recently after President Jorge Serrano—troubled by rising street protests and worried about an impending investigation of his personal finances—suspended the constitution and fired the Congress and Supreme Court in a May 25 "self-coup." A combination of rare consensus inside Guatemala and rapid condemnation and economic reprisal abroad led to a relatively speedy resolution of the crisis, and the election of Ramiro de Leon Carpio as the new president. Ironically, de Leon had been the government's Human Rights Ombudsperson but was fired by Serrano when he announced the coup.  
     While de Leon has earned the respect of many observers for his courage in taking on the Guatemalan military in his previous post, his early performance as president cautions against believing he will move rapidly to change things, despite the fact that Guatemalan society has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the deeper problems that have beleaguered the country for the past four decades.  
     Guatemala is one of the most unjust, unequal, and violent societies in the world. About 87 percent of the population lives in poverty. Four out of every five Guatemalan children are malnourished, over 60 percent of the population is unemployed or underemployed, and 67 percent is illiterate. Barely 30 percent of the population has access to adequate health care and running water.  
     At the roots of this impoverishment is an extremely unequal distribution of wealth and one of the most backward patterns of land tenure in the hemisphere. The richest 20 percent of the population receives 55 percent of national income, compared to the poorest 20 percent with only 4.5 percent. Although 60 percent of the population labors in the agricultural sector, fewer than 2 percent of landowners own 65 percent of all arable land. At the other extreme, 78 percent of the rural population—composed overwhelmingly of the country's indigenous majority—subsists on just 10 percent of the land.  
     De Leon takes over a government whose revenue amounts to only 9 percent of GDP—among the lowest rates in the world. The Guatemalan oligarchy has for decades vetoed any attempt, not only to redistribute wealth, but to minimally improve the government's revenue base through income and property taxes, something that would allow the government to improve social conditions.  
     The neo-liberal structural adjustment program implemented by Serrano, under the supervision of international lenders and the US Agency for International Development, only exacerbated these inequalities. Indeed, Serrano launched his self-coup partially in response to an escalation of protests over a new package of austerity measures, including bus fare and utility rate increases.  
     De Leon, in his first weeks in office, proclaimed that it was time to forgive and forget. He backed an amnesty for those who participated in the Serranazo, and affirmed that there would be no changes in the structural adjustment program. Subsequent actions further confirmed the heavy hand of military influence in the new government. Apparently, the new president, by himself, does not have the maneuvering room, or the will, to undertake the broad political, social, and economic changes that Guatemala desperately needs.  
     Whether progress will be made, therefore, depends on the extent to which Guatemala's popular movement—a loose coalition of labor unions, student groups, church and indigenous organizations—can take advantage of the new opening following Serrano's failed coup. Those groups had claimed more political space in the wake of last October's awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Rigoberta Menchú and January's first return of refugees from Mexico. Those two events had encouraged the poor to speak up for what is rightfully theirs, despite vivid memories of the price they paid for their activism in the early eighties. When Serrano attempted his power grab, the emboldened popular organizations took to the streets to demand publicly that the country not merely replace one corrupt politician with another corrupt politician, but rather look for someone willing to make profound changes in Guatemalan society. Responding both to the popular movement's demands as well as to the business community's need to choose someone who would instantly solve Guatemala's serious "image problem" abroad, the reinstated Guatemalan Congress chose de Leon.  
     Thus partly responsible for his election, the popular movement plans to keep the heat on de Leon. Among its demands are an end to military impunity and human rights violations, full subordination of the military to civilian authority, an end to drug trafficking and corruption, and a serious dialogue with the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) to put an end to a 33-year civil war. Church-mediated talks between the government and URNG have been bogged down since they began in 1990, with both sides—habituated as they both are to the modus operandi of war—seemingly comfortable talking without getting anywhere.  
     Members of the popular organizations want things to change, and are willing to risk their lives to make that happen. Their stepped-up activism in recent months has brought with it an increase in repression. Yet the poor in Guatemala are losing their fear. I witnessed that very process in the teary eyes of a young Guatemalan woman who carried a wreath behind the coffin of Abner Hernandez, a Guatemala City high school student who was shot and killed by a government security agent during a May 11 demonstration. On May 14, after a funeral in the Metropolitan Cathedral, thousands of mourners walked slowly through the streets of the capital, accompanying Hernandez' body to the cemetery. Less than a block from the cathedral, while taking photos of the event, I crowded close to the students walking immediately behind the coffin. With their young, tear-marked faces and wreathes of flowers, I considered them worthy photo subjects. Yet as is often the case in Guatemala, most covered their faces when they saw my cameras; such is the nature of fear. Then I caught the eyes of one young woman. She stared at me for a moment, then lowered the wreath that covered her face, looked openly at me, and tearfully announced in Spanish: "Tell the people of your country about the repression here, how the government killed Abner. Tell your people to stop supporting the repression here. Tell them that we are no longer afraid!"  
     I believe her, and so does Guatemala's powerful oligarchy and military. What happened behind the eyes of that young woman has them worried; they want to reinstate fear in its proper place. As long as they have their way, there will be no peace in Central America.  
     Many people in U.S. churches stood courageously by their sisters and brothers in Central America through the difficult decade of the eighties. For a few, such solidarity meant giving even their lives. In the decade of the nineties, despite the region's public image of peace and democracy, the majority of Central Americans continues to be poor, living under governments that are far from democratic and exist only to protect the privileges of the wealthy. Solidarity from U.S. Christians is just as vital today as it was ten years ago.  
     People of faith in the United States cannot coldly observe what happens in Central America today with the detached neutrality of objective outsiders. Although our attention has drifted elsewhere in the world, we continue being key players in this region, if for no other reason than it was the U.S. that either created the repression or served as midwife to the birthing of violent conflicts throughout the region. Today, no less than a decade ago, the people of Central America deserve our friendship and support. As they struggle to build real democracy, they are looking to us for real solidarity.  

Saying goodbye  
     After almost nine years of living and working here in Nicaragua, we are leaving. Although we had planned to remain here until next year, we have agreed to a temporary assignment at our denomination's mission headquarters in New York, where personnel changes have left the Latin America-Caribbean office understaffed for the next several months.  
     As I write this in mid-July, Lyda is already in New York at work on the 15th floor of the "God Box"—the upper Manhatten headquarters of much of U.S. Protestantism for the last four decades. Lucas and Abi are on the west coast of the U.S., spending two weeks with each set of grandparents. At the beginning of August, all four of us will converge at Stony Point, a small town along the Hudson River more than an hour north of Manhatten, where we will live in a house on the peaceful grounds of a Presbyterian retreat center. Lyda will be commuting daily to New York City, while I will work mostly at home, thus allowing one of us to spend more time with the kids.  
     Although everything is subject to change, we'll be in New York at least through October. Following that we'll move to the west coast for three months of visiting family, speaking in supporting churches, and doing the myriad things that make "home leave" rush by so fast.  
About the end of January, we'll move to our new assignment. Although it's not yet official, we'll probably be living in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and working with the Guatemalan Methodist Church. We're looking forward to the change in environment—Quetzaltenango, the capital of the Mayan highlands, lies about 7,500 feet above sea level and is a wonderful place to sleep under blankets at night, wear sweaters, and drink coffee at anytime during the day, quite unlike hot and dusty Managua. We're also looking forward to the new challenges of being in ministry with an indigenous church. Please pray for our family during these stressful weeks of change ahead.  

     It's emotionally difficult to leave Nicaragua. We've lived here during both exilerating and arduous times, sharing with coworkers and neighbors many simple joys—such as finding cooking oil during the economic blockade—as well as the pain of having friends killed by the contras.  
     We have witnessed a country slowly be transformed from what Salman Rushdie described as a "fulcrum point of history" to resembling any old banana republic. When we visited here in 1981, and moved here three years later, people spoke enthusiastically of revolutionary mística—a spiritual sense that they were involved in something historically unique. In those moments of national pride, most ordinary Nicaraguans were proud to be caught up in the heady task of making history and didn't refuse the commitment and shared sacrifice required. They called each other compañero and compañera; it was a way of saying, "We are in this together."  
     In those days women's bodies were not used for commercial advertisements and the government sought to offer new options to women who'd been forced by economic pressure to prostitute themselves. Children on the street begged us for pencils; many of our adult friends went to school in the evening. Revolutionary murals graced the cities.  
     Much of everyday conversation focused on practical details of surviving the embargo: tips of when sugar was coming to the neighborhood store, where Diesel fuel could be obtained on a weekend. In addition, ordinary people engaged in enlightened political discourse, observing the world and offering their opinions as if they were subjects of their own history and no longer the mere objects of someone else's. A peasant farmer told me of William Walker's miscalculations, a Pentecostal pastor psychoanalized Ronald Reagan, a housewife standing in line for beans outlined the contradictions of Soviet socialism. The eyes of even the poorest lifted from the ground to look us in the eye and talk as equals.  
     Nicaragua is different today. The eyes of the poor are sliding toward the ground once again. The All Arms to the People Cafeteria is long gone; Radio Shack and Domino's Pizza have opened here, alongside a string of fancy restaurants catering to nouveau riche repatriates from Miami. Terms of personal address are now class conscious; the wealthier and more educated are addressed by their titles once again. Beer and rum are sold by ads featuring women in bathing suits, young prostitutes stand on the corners, and children—and adults—beg at stoplights and at our front door. The murals have been painted over with ads for Panadol and Lucky Strike.  
     The spirit of shared struggle that so impressed us a decade ago is a rare commodity these days. It was erased from the people's spirit by a decade of ceaseless war imposed from without, by an incessant bureaucracy generated within, and by a commitment to grassroots democracy betrayed by a vanguard ideology.  
     In its place remains a daily struggle of the majority to merely survive, to find the food and the will for yet another day. Nicaragua has become a case study of what's happening throughout the Americas, where the poor majority is relegated to underemployment and misery while an elite dines out in restaurants with foreign language menus.  
     Yet we must understand that Nicaragua's slide from revolutionary hope to neoliberal despair illustrates much more than purely tropical realities. The U.S. political system played a critical role in assassinating not just people but also the possibility that Nicaragua could forge a new but imperfect future for the poor majority of this land. Responsibility for the failure of the Nicaraguan revolution rests foremost with U.S. political leaders who sadistically inflicted war on a small land whose people were struggling for a more equitable and peaceful future.  
     We'll never know what would have happened here had the U.S. government decided to leave Nicaragua alone, or even broken with its history in the region and decided in 1979 to help reconstruct Nicaragua after so many decades of occupation and dictatorship. While we may argue about what course the Sandinistas would have taken if our government had treated them fairly, it remains clear that the course the United States took was to shortcircuit democracy both at home and abroad. The powerful in the U.S. did what they wanted with our tax dollars and our institutions, no matter what legal proscriptions or moral precepts they had to violate in the process. The log is in our own eye.  
     In 1986, I visited a small cooperative in Jinotega province just after the contras had attacked and killed three villagers, including a seven year old girl. After an all-night wake for the dead, they were buried the next morning on a shaded hillside. The only foreigner present, I wanted desperately to say something pastoral to the families but could think of nothing very profound. It was one of them who spoke the relevant words to me. When I embraced the dead girl's mother following the burial, I told her that I would pray for her and her daughter. The poor woman looked at me with tired but clear eyes and said, "Don't pray for me nor for my daughter. Pray for the people that killed my daughter, and pray for the people that paid them to kill her."  
     Is that not our foremost task as a church, to pray and work for repentance among those who caused with their actions or their complicity the violence that has torn apart this region?  

     The people of Central America go on struggling courageously to build societies where justice and reconciliation are more than just nice words. Yet they face powerful enemies. We can choose to be on their side or the side of their enemies. It is not always an easy nor a neat choice, and it requires a commitment from us to learn from history, to speak truth to power, and to find a fraction of the courage of our poor sisters and brothers in this region—people like the disabled vets in El Salvador marching together in peace; people like César Rios, the Nicaraguan man we wrote you about in March who is quietly turning a torture center into a place of life; people like the widows of Guatemala who seek only to raise their corn and their children in peace. These people are our sisters and brothers. They want neither charity nor pity from us. They want solidarity, love, and justice.  
     It has been a privilege for us to work with the people of Nicaragua, especially church folks so committed to making the Gospel real in dangerous times. They accepted us—gringo pilgrims from the belly of the imperial beast—with patience, laughter and love, offering us forgiveness and friendship as our country's government deployed the forces of evil to wreck their lives and communities. It has been a painful privilege, as our work allowed us to stick our fingers in the bloody hands and side of this crucified people, experiencing their mortal wounds, yet also witnessing that they were still alive.  
     We leave Nicaragua filled with gratitude for the opportunity to have eaten quesillos and turtle stew, danced to reggae music, known martyrs, witnessed faith purified in the furnace of history, and welcomed two special Nicaraguan children into our lives. We leave truly blessed by our time here. Wherever we go, we will continue to pray for this people and work that they may each be able to sit under their own vine and mango tree, in peace and unafraid.