Missionary shocked by Bolivian military

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 6

Missionary shocked by Bolivian military

By

CHRIS TOBIN

The power of the Armed Forces and goosestepping soliders amid enormous poverty was a shock to a Christchurch priest during his first year as a missionary in Bolivia, Latin America’s poorest nation.

The Rev. Geoff Gray is back in New Zealand for a holiday after serving one year of a five-year appointment to the Oruro diocese in Bolivia, a country where there is huge spending on the military each year and little on health.

Father Gray said he saw bishops and the town dignatories lined up in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, which had been brought out of the cathedral, taking a salute from the military who goose-stepped past with guns, tendering their submission to Church and State. “I was horrified that the military would be goose-stepping which for me had all the connotations of Nazis and in front of the statue of the Blessed Virgin. But this is really a classic example of Church and State and the whole position of the military in Latin America,” he said.

Father Gray works with the Rev. John Sullivan in the Paria and Mohosa parishes on the outskirts of the city of Oruro, the centre of Bolivia’s tin mining industry on the altiplano at 4000 metres. The area is dotted with 120 small villages, or pueblos, and all of the parishioners are Indians. Some speak the Aymara dialect and many, Quechua, the language of the Incas. “The people are living basically as they have done for nearly 1000 years. They live in huts with thatched roofs and earth floors, no fresh water, no sanitation and all of their cooking is done over open fires. “Their food is basically potatoes morning, noon and night. They are on the margins of society and totally ignored,” Father Gray said. Forming communities of committed Christians in each of the villages is the main task of Fathers Gray and Sullivan. Each pueblo has a religious leader or catechist, who leads the Sunday prayer services. Both parishes have a deacon who accompanies the priest, assisting at Mass and translating the homily. Father Gray found a “tremendous thirst” among the Indians to know the Bible. “They caught a lot of this from the activity of the Protestant sects which are working down through all the countries of Latin America. “They’re a bit of a mixed blessing. Whereas in the Western world churches there is a move towards unity, the activity of these Christian sects is to divide villages and divide families. “Because of this Bible

influence and the renewal after Vatican II the people are becoming much more aware of the riches of the scriptures. "The old Spanish style religion was very orientated towards celebrating saints’ feast days and pious sorts of rituals independent of the Word and Sacraments. Gradually we are working through all that and in the areas where you have got a good catechist, the people appear to be very aware of their faith and very committed.” However, 400 years of Catholicism has not wiped out some of the ancient rituals and the Indians’ religion remains a mixture of Christianity, Catholicism and old pagan superstitions. The Indians still form piles of stones in their fields as offerings to the nature gods and spirits of the earth. Human sacrifice still occurs. A peasant who lived on the shores of Lake Titicaca was recently hacked to death as an offering to the rain god because of floods in the area,” Father Gray said. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had gone to the local church the week before with an offering for the priest to say mass.” The Indians are extremely poor. The infant mortality rate is among the highest in the world and the adult life expectancy is is only about 53 years. Father Gray runs a health programme in sanitation, hygiene, nutrition and basic medical care

and he also oversees an agricultural co-operative founded by his predecessor which has helped raise the standard of living for several hundred Indian farmers. The Indians expect their lives will be full of hardship. Father Gray, like many priests throughout Latin America, believes in “liberation theology,” an issue in the Catholic Church which addresses social problems and says the Kingdom of God is not just a happiness in an after-life. “The Kingdom of God is justice, love and peace here and now; it is the ability to live a fully human life; it isn’t inevitable or the will of God that one out of every two of the Indians’ children dies. “There will be some clergy who take another view — ‘suffering is our lot but a better future awaits us in heaven’— one of the negative influences in the Church in Latin America is a very backward looking conservation society called opus del ... It is not good news. Some of our priests in Peru have a lot of trouble maintaining an open, progressive social justice-orientated ministry which is all you can do.” Bolivia is so poor many can only survive by bribery. Everyone suffers at the hands of it, even foreign priests. For minor traffic offences people must surrender their licences to a policeman. To get it back they have to buy it from the policeman and the money goes

into his pocket, not the police department’s coffers. "It’s corruption but you don’t have the power to change it In our parish the local prison is within the boundaries. Everyone knows the people in that prison are only there because they can’t afford to pay their way out The poor go to prison, the rich might never get there, they’ve paid off the police or judge. “We don’t basically have problems with the police but the people we live and work with, they’re always having trouble with them.” Bolivia can rid itself of the corruption and try to lift the people out of their poverty only by educating the young to adopt different attitudes. Undoing this Spanish legacy which goes back centuries will take considerable time. Father Gray does not discount the possibility of , revolution. “Not long before I came home there was a report of a woman who went to a lake and drowned her three children. Rather than see her children starve, she drowned them. A lot of people would be in that desperate situation with- ; out trying that desperate step,” he said. 1 "When you’ve got millions of people like \ this, if the Church offers them a message of libera- ' tion which says God is on your side in your i struggles for a better life, > that message is a terribly ; subversive message for « those who have got the ' power and want the : people to be poor, to be • slave labour; and basi- ; cally want them to be quiet and stay in their ' place. \ “Armed revolution • might be the only way to ; change the basic structure -■ in Bolivia. But the people ‘ have not got the money to ? buy the arms. They might ■ have the willpower but ’ they are so poor. » “Yet they are the < people who will make the change. A foreigh mis- » sionary is not going to . change the situation. What ! you can contribute is to ! give them a hope and I , vision and support their < own struggles to change ? their oppressed situation.” . Father Gray will return to Bolivia at the end of J this month.