Guatemala's new evangelists

Natural History, May, 1998 by Rachel Cobb

The counterinsurgency penetrated communities through the organization of civil defense patrols, known as PACs, to root out guerrilla sympathizers. In Cotzal, the first PAC was formed with the help of an Evangelical pastor, Nicolas Toma. His brother was one of sixty-four men killed by the army in a massacre that took place on the morning of July 28, 1980. The massacre was a reprisal to a guerrilla attack on army barracks. Pastor Nicolas claimed that, caught between the army and the guerrillas, he was forced to choose sides. The information he provided helped identify the guerrilla infrastructure in and around Cotzal, and the PACs were instrumental in breaking the insurgency in the area.

It was about that time that Father Federico first visited Guatemala. He traveled north through Quiche and across the border into Chiapas, Mexico, where he saw Guatemalans arrive "marked by the massacres, by death, by violence." Guatemalan forces crossed the Mexican border and continued killing in refugee camps. "This experience had a very, very powerful effect on me," he says. "Since then, in all my work, the Quiche has always been, as they say, el mundo de mis ojos [die world to me]."

Speaking of Cotzal, he says, "Here, twenty-six of the twenty-nine small villages were leveled, practically on top of the people. We calculate about 1,200 civilians were killed, not counting the hundreds who fled to the mountains afterward and died of hunger... Many felt forced to change to another religion to save their lives. With an Evangelical identity card, they could pass freely [in and out of town]."

By 1989, when Father Federico came to Cotzal, the situation had eased, but he claims that "the Evangelicals, the military, and the civil patrollers didn't want the Catholic Church to reestablish itself in the parish." Shortly after his arrival, six Jesuits were killed in El Salvador. "The following Sunday, the commander said, in a meeting with 400 to 500 patrollers, `In El Salvador they killed six priests, and here we don't respect them either.'"

Before long, Father Federico started roofing projects and then livestock projects. "They were always for everyone. The people were used to each church favoring only its own members:' he asserts. "We didn't want to divide the villages by being able to recognize the Catholic houses by their roofs. That was, practically speaking, the point at which those who had opposed me before changed their viewpoint."

Six years ago, his church began to commemorate the 1980 massacre. Father Federico recalls that the widows in town came to him saying, "Father, we have to do something and ask God for forgiveness for the wrongs the army did to the sacred corn."

"In the time of the violence," he says, "the army destroyed the corn, they cut and burned the corn--everything, everything--to take the food from the guerrillas. That is the theory of Mao: to take water from the fish. The fish is the guerrillas and the water is the people. So they massacred the people . . . and they destroyed the food, the basic nourishment, which is corn. That, for the people, is criminal, because the corn is sacred. So the widows told me, `Father, we have to do something.'"