Dear friends:   
    The villagers knelt at the bottom of the muddy pit, facing the three newly revealed skeletons which had just been covered with flower petals and burning candles. A Maya priest intoned prayers in K'iche'. A young woman swung a rusting tin can sending off clouds of incense. Then Manuela Toj began to weep, and Rigoberto Pérez, a Catholic priest from the nearby town of Santa Cruz, placed his arm around her shoulders. When the Maya priest finished the ceremony, Pérez led the group in reciting prayers. He then asked Toj to pray, and the indigenous woman prayed in K'iche', the only language she understands. Pérez then stood up and bid the group to go in peace.  
    In April 1982, government soldiers came to Tabil, a tiny village in the western highlands of Guatemala, and murdered 17 people. Among the dead were Toj's husband Anastasio García and her 19-year old son Juan García Toj. According to Toj and other survivors, the soldiers came to the village with a list. They marched straight to Toj's home and asked for her husband, a Catholic catechist, one of few people in the village who regularly travelled to meetings outside the area. When Toj told the soldiers her husband was working in a nearby corn field, they searched the couple's humble house and then set it on fire. They proceeded to the field, where they murdered Toj's husband and son. Neighbors remember hearing García cry out, "What have I done to offend my brothers?" just before the soldiers shot him. The soldiers then dragged the two bodies to a spot near the river that flows through the village, hurriedly burying them in a shallow grave alongside 11 other community members who'd also been selectively assassinated. As the troops marched out of the community, they found three women and two girls making tamales in their kitchen on a ridgetop to the west of Tabil. They killed the five right there, digging a shallow grave in the kitchen floor to bury them. Then they marched on toward their base in Santa Cruz.  
     In July, forensic anthropologists working for the Catholic church unearthed the skeletons in Tabil. Paul was there the day they uncovered Manuela Toj's husband and son. He knelt in the mud and prayed along with the villagers. The following day, the skeletons were removed from the muddy pit and taken to the capital for positive identification. They were then returned to Tabil for proper burial in a manner consistent with Maya cosmovision. With her husband properly buried, and with the church helping her obtain documents, such as a death certificate, that could never be acquired during the war, Manuela Toj can get on with her life in a land that after 36 years of armed conflict is finally at peace.  
     Paul had travelled to Tabil as part of an investigation into how churches are nurturing reconciliation in post-war Guatemala, part of a larger project sponsored by the Life and Peace Institute in Sweden. The project is examining how churches in ten different countries are working for reconciliation and justice during post-war transitions to democracy. Yet as a U.S. citizen, kneeling before the three skeletons in Tabil was for Paul also an act of penitence. The soldiers that killed Manuela Toj's loved ones were equipped and trained by foreign governments, including those of Israel and Taiwan. Yet most significant among the overseas sponsors of the state-sponsored terrorism was the government of the United States.  
     The wars are over in Central America. Yet for reconciliation to flower, the truth about the past must be told if countries like Honduras and Guatemala are going to step away from the cycles of violence that have plagued the region for too long. Telling the truth won't be easy, but it's essential. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has noted: "Memory is bound by fear, and it's very difficult to break the ligatures of fear. Some have suggested that to remember is dangerous, because by remembering history will repeat itself as a nightmare. Yet experience suggests that what happens is exactly the reverse. It is amnesia that makes history repeat itself . . .A good memory permits us to learn from the past, because the only reason to recover the past is so that it serve to transform our present life."  
   As part of this work of remembering, a United Nations-supervised truth commission in Guatemala has been searching for official records about the counter-insurgency war of the '70s and '80s. Not surprisingly, the Guatemalan military hasn't been cooperative. According to Christian Tomuschat, the German law professor who heads the Guatemalan truth commission, that bodes poorly for peace. "An army that doesn't want to talk about its past is cause for fear," he said in January. A similar conclusion could be made about the U.S. military, given that the Clinton administration has so far made only empty promises to Tomuschat's commission.  
    In Honduras, the government's human rights commissioner, Leo Valladares, has been trying for four years to get the Clinton administration to release classified documents about the disappearance of more than 180 political activists in the '80s. Valladares started his search for the truth by asking the Honduran military to turn over its records from the period. Yet the generals steered Valladares to empty file cabinets, lamely suggesting they had destroyed all the documents because of space limitations. Valladares then tried to obtain information from the Argentinean government, which sent military trainers in the '80s to teach interrogation techniques to Honduran soldiers and Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras. Wrestling with their own crisis of political conscience over the past, Argentinean officials also refused to cooperate. Valladares then looked north, confident that the U.S. penchant for record-keeping would yield a treasure of documents upon which the past could be reconstructed. "The United States played a unique, and at times dominant, role in Honduras, and therefore has a unique knowledge of events that transpired," Valladares reasoned.  
    Four years later, Valladares says the quest for U.S. documents has been "exceedingly frustrating." Although he's received documents--more than 3,000 pages alone on the case of a U.S. priest who was disappeared here--they've been heavily defaced by the guys at the CIA and State Department who have an unlimited supply of Magic Markers. In many cases, page after page has been blacked out, symbolizing a kind of imposed amnesia. What filters through is "scant, fragmented and vague," says Valladares. The commissioner argues that a September 1997 report by CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz on CIA activities in Honduras in the '80s is "critical to closing the wounds of abuse" in Honduras. Yet the CIA report has yet to be turned over, despite a promise by President Bill Clinton in December that it would be handed over "before the end of the year." Valladares calls failure to turn over the Hitz report "a diplomatic affront."  
    Late last year, several members of the U.S. Congress introduced the "Human Rights Information Act," which calls for a full release of files to the Guatemalan truth commission and to the Honduran human rights commissioner. Given time pressures in Central America, sponsors are really hoping that President Clinton will adopt the language and spirit of the bill and issue a presidential directive ordering the files released. (If you want to let your Congressional representatives know how you feel, the legislation is House Resolution 2635 and Senate Resolution 1220.)  
    Although several of the people at the exhumation in Tabil knew that Paul was from the U.S., no one pointed a finger and accused him of complicity in the horrible violence that took place there. Central Americans aren't interested in casting stones; they certainly have enough sins of their own to confess. They just want the truth, what they consider to be an essential ingredient of both reconciliation and democracy. Part of that truth is in the possession of the U.S. government. Cleaning out the files at the CIA would be a proper step toward healing and democracy both here in Central America as well as in the United States.  

Busy lives  
    Lyda began a doctoral program in international feminist theologies at San Francisco Theological Seminary last summer. She spent four weeks in classes there and has been filing regular papers on her research and work here. In June she returns to the campus for another eight weeks, and early the following year will participate in a seminar in Cuba. If she can get the work all done, including her final dissertation, she'll receive a Doctor of Ministry degree by the end of 1999.  
    Lyda enrolled in the program to help deepen her understanding of the issues involved in her work with the Chris-tian Development Commission here. As an advisor to CCD's department of organization and gender, Lyda is interested in the theological and practical experiences of women elsewhere in the world who are struggling with how to be empowered by the scriptures and by a God who created and loves them, and thus become subjects of their own lives and communities.  
    Lyda returned to Honduras from the U.S. just in time to help with final preparations for CCD's Sixth National Women's Encounter, a gathering of 150 women from 73 rural communities who came together for five days of reflection on women's economic rights, women's political rights, and the rights of women to education, health, and property ownership. It was a celebration of all the work that Lyda and her colleagues in CCD have been carrying out, witnessing the ability of poor yet empowered women to analyze what's going on in their country and then take steps to change it for the better.  
    CCD has also asked Lyda to work with its department of pastoral ministry, helping pastors and other community leaders to become more aware of gender-related issues. And Lyda has been involved in developing a new shelter for women who are victims of domestic violence. There's only one women's shelter in the whole country, so CCD is building one in the countryside where women can stay with their children for longer periods of time in order to learn new job skills and become economically independent. It's going to be a pleasant collection of small cottages an hour outside the capital. (If you're interested in bringing a work team to help with construction, or you're interested in donating money, please contact Lyda.)  
    As if Lyda didn't already have enough work to do, she was also asked to help plan curriculum for a new university that opens here next month. The Honduran campus of the Latinamerican Biblical Seminary--an ecumenical institution based in San José, Costa Rica--will provide university and graduate-level theological education for Honduran clergy and laity, the first Protestant institution to do so. CCD is a co-sponsor of the university, and asked Lyda to help plan it. She's also going to teach a course or two every semester.  
    While Lyda was studying in the U.S. last year, and our kids were entertaining their grandparents, Paul worked on the report we mentioned above about peacemaking by churches in Guatemala. It's the longest thing he's ever written--somewhere over 100 pages. It will be published later this year. (If you'd like a copy, let Paul know and he'll send it to you via email.)  
    Other than that, Paul has kept busy writing about a variety of topics, including street gangs in San Salvador, coral reef deterioration, the impact of large-scale shrimp farming on small communities, the travails of peace in Guatemala, domestic violence in Honduras, Afrocaribbean women in Nicaragua, refugee ministries, women maquila workers, Taiwan's economic influence in Central America, narcotrafficking and political impunity, and so on. In all, he wrote 115 articles in 1997. In addition, early this year he produced the first issue of Enlace, an English-language magazine about CCD's ministries.  
    When we're both not overworking, we're having fun with our kids. We spent four days in September on a small, private island near the larger island of Utila in the Caribbean, snorkeling with sharks and eating fresh fish for dinner, humming the theme song to Gilligan's Island all day. We've made a number of trips to scenic parts of Honduras, including Lake Yojoa (a birdwatcher's favorite), the Maya ruins in Copan, and--when we need a heat transfusion--a swimming pool near Choluteca on the hot southern coast. Paul has taken several treks through the cloud forest above our house, spotting quetzals, trogans, and other elusive and endangered birds. And among the highlight's of Paul's life recently must be included the drama of getting our jeep stuck in a rising river. After two oxen failed to pull it out, he got a giant tractor to pull it out after dark. The inside was full of water and the diesel injection system ended up needing a $1200 overhaul. (Paul now gets nervous driving through mud puddles.)  
    Our kids have enjoyed a pleasant year, despite an overdose of U.S. culture during the magical weeks they spent with their grandparents last summer. Lucas turned 11 in October, and despite our fierce resistance is moving inevitably toward developing a teenage personality. Abi turned 9 last month, and although the littlest in the family, she continues to wake up earliest and tell the most jokes. Actually, honors for the littlest should go to Liz, Abi's 7-month old pet iguana.  
    The adults in the family are evidently getting older as well. Lyda had her malfunctioning thyroid nuked in August, and has been struggling with finding medication that doesn't make her sick. And Paul's bone marrow went on strike in November, leaving him feeling tired. The docs still haven't figured out why his bone marrow cells are not maturing properly. He's going to have some more tests in the U.S. in March. When you remember us in your prayers, throw in a prayer for our aging bods.  

Nourishing hope  
    During an ecumenical gathering of women in the countryside during early December, Lyda was asked to coordinate a service of blessing for three of the women present who were pregnant. Working together, they designed a ritual that borrowed from Catholic, Protestant, and indigenous traditions, since women were present from all three communities. They celebrated their lives in the middle of the four cardinal points. They offered gifts of water, earth, fire, and air--sacred indigenous symbols--and discussed what these four elements mean within Christian tradition. And then they read in the Gospel of the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary, a paradigm for solidarity among pregnant women. They discussed what it meant to be a pregnant woman, especially to be single as was Mary at the time.  
    It was Advent, so talking about hope was natural. It was a time when our family gathered every evening around the Advent candles to talk about what we were waiting for, hoping for. The women in Lyda's gathering also talked about hope, and what kind of world they hope their children will encounter as they grow up. As in Jesus' day, the world is a dangerous place for poor children. We saw that so soon after Advent ended when we remembered the massacre of the innocents--the slaughter of the children in Jesus' Palestine--and prayed for the 15 children massacred on December 22 in Chiapas.  
    Advent doesn't ignore the terror to come. Indeed, such violence against children makes Advent even more important, makes hope even more essential for faith. And so the women in Lyda's group closed their service by gathering around the three women, laying on their hands and praying together for each of them and their babies.  
    As we write this, one baby has been born and two more are coming soon. There is new life, along with a renewed commitment to make the world a gentler place in which these children can grow up.  
    Throughout Central America, women like Manuela Toj are rebuilding their lives in the shadow of terror. Their courage to hold on dearly to life in the midst of death is powerful testimony for all of us. Their witness calls us to welcome and embrace new life, to lay our hands with them on the women who give birth to the future, to work together that all our children might flourish in a more just and peaceful world.  
    
                                                                     Lyda & Paul