Bus violence

We drove on the way from the seminary to the bus station (but we in the seminary lodge's van with Jeff driving) down a four lane urban highway that was the source of some of the news that made us pause about the trip earlier in the week. Besides some attacks on intenational buses coming from or going to other countries, killings of intra city Guatemala City bus drviers whose companies or who themselves do not pay protection money to organized crime elments have increased nearby, especially on the highway in which we drove and especially at a major interchange we drove over. This past Tuesday, March 24, bus drivers protested the killings by driving their buses down this highway and then all stoppinig and parking the buses on the highway near this interchange. This brought traffic to a standstill and disrupted some traffic throughout the city. It was apparently this protest that triggered a phone call to one of us that caused us to study and assess the security situation.

(Pictured below are the red intra-city buses, on the highway where they are often attacked, with the bus drivers being killed.)

On top of the attacks on ¨social undesirables¨by police, paramilitary forces, and others that many Guatemalans support, and on women, this bus violence may be tolerated because it creates instability and further undermines the government of President Colon, who won the presidency in fall 2007 as a center left candidate by carrying the rural areas. The candidate who carried the city but Colon narrowly defeated nationwide was an Amy general with links to paramilitary activities, including to the assassination of a Guatemalan bishop. The general ran as a law and order candidate, which is somewhat ironic given his possible support for the bus attacks. In Guatemala, it´s hard to know about any links among the country´s leading families, the miliary and th epolice, gans, drug traffickers, and even former anti government rebels. The rebels and Army were active in the 30 year civil war that eventually evolved into an Army campaign against the country´s originally rural Mayan indigenous population. Tens of thousands of people died, and many others were displaced, some into sprlaing barrios in Guatemala City. (Pictured below - from a bridge during the intercity bus drive out of town - is a barrio like the ones that many indigena internal refugees from the civil war first built.)

Peace accords negotiated in the early 1990s were supposed to end the civil war. The government, however, has not lived up to all of the terms of the accords. And some call the whole Guatemalan government a ¨failed state¨in which social undersirables are killed and the powerful and connected to unpunished and untaxed while many public services are de facto privatized, for those who can afford to pay high prices for them. Hence, the private security guard at teh house of Jennifer´s host-landlored´s house, the school uniforms and textbooks that families in El Estor must buy if their kids are to go to ¨public¨secondary schools, and the bottled water that El Estor families that can afford it drink while others drink the unsanitary water from the public water supply, if and when they can even access that.

In a sense, Guatemala reminds me of what I´ve read about Haiti. It´s difficult to have a functioning government and even a functioning government, with the rule of law, when there is a massive chasm in welath and status between the rich, lighter skinned people who speak one language and the poor, darker skinned people who speak other languages, when there is such a cultural and economic divide. Foreign visitors of course cannot expect to swoop down here and quickly turn the situation around. Others in the Amigos de Kékchi associaiton have worked on water projects with Kekchi congregations and communities in the Northern part of the country. We are trying to start out getting to know Kekchi evangelical Presbyterians in the Izabal area and facilitating all of us learning more about each other that may yield new insights, new energy, and perhaps joint endeavors.

One thing we may have to share with Kekchi Presbyterians in Izabal is some different ideas and practices we have related to gender roles, with our female pastoral and lay leadership and also other gender practices. We expect to learn plenty ourselves about congregational change, faith and spiritual, youth and young adult ministries, and even personal relations including relations between women and men, among many other things, over time, from folks here. May it be so.

Written on Saturday on the bus between Guatemala City and Rio Dulce, by Perry