Pastoral Arts Associates of North America
Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi was brutally killed on Sunday, April 26, 1998. His assassination is as significant to Guatemala as Monsenor Romero's murder was to El Salvador. It is the highest level murder in the history of the Guatemalan Church. It is especially troublesome that it has occurred after the signing of the Peace Accords and after Guatemala's recent removal from the United Nations list of worst human rights violators. All those in solidarity with Guatemalans should make action on this case a priority in order to denounce this terrible death and protect other human rights workers.
Speech Made By Monseñor Juan Gerardi The REMHI project has been an effort within the Human Rights Ministry
which is part of the Social Ministry of the Church. It is a mission of
service to people and to society.
When confronted with political or economic issues, many people react by
saying "Why does the Church get involved in this?" They would like us
to dedicate ourselves strictly to spiritual ministries. But the Church
has a mission to accomplish in terms of bringing order to society, and
that includes ethical, moral and evangelical values. What do the
commandments tell us? They say, "You shall love your neighbor as
yourself." And it is precisely to that neighbor that the Church has to
direct its mission.
Speaking to lay people, Pope John Paul II said, "An essential task of
the Church is to rediscover the dignity of the human person." This was
also the evangelizing labor of Jesus. The Lord put the dignity of human
beings at the center of the Gospel.
Within the pastoral work of the Church, the REMHI project is a
legitimate and painful denunciation that we must listen to with profound
respect and a spirit of solidarity. But it is also an "announcing." It
is an alternative aimed at finding new ways for human beings to live
with one another. When we began this project, we were interested in
discovering the truth in order to share it. We were interested in
reconstructing the history of pain and death, seeing the reasons for it,
understanding the why and how. We wanted to show the human drama and to
share with others the sorrow and the anguish of the thousands of dead,
disappeared and tortured. We wanted to look at the roots of injustice
and the absence of values.
This is a pastoral way of doing things. It is working with the light of
Faith to discover the face of God, the presence of the Lord. In all of
these happenings, it is God who is speaking to us. We are called to
reconcile. Christ's mission is a reconciling one. His presence calls
us to be reconcilers in this broken society and to try to place the
victims and perpetrators within the framework of justice. There are
people who have died for their beliefs. There are executioners who were
often used as instruments. Conversion is necessary and it's up to us to
open spaces to bring about that conversion. It's not enough to just
accept the facts. It is necessary to reflect on them and to recuperate
the values lost.
We are gathering the memories of the people because we want to
contribute to the construction of a different country. This path was
and continues to be full of risks, but the building of the Kingdom of
God has risks and only those that have the strength to confront those
risks can be the builders.
On June 23, 1994 the parties that negotiated the Peace Accords expressed
their conviction that, "all of the people of Guatemala [have] the right
to know the full truth" about the events that occurred during the armed
conflict, and that "this clarification will help to ensure that the sad
and painful pages of history will not be repeated and that the process
of democratization in the country will be strengthened." They
emphasized that [knowing the truth] is an indispensable condition for
achieving peace. This is part of the preamble of the Accord which
created the Commission for Historical Clarification whose important work
is also is the process of being concluded.
The Church resonated with this desire and committed itself to the
search to "know the truth," convinced as Pope John Paul II said that
"truth is the strength behind peace." (World Day of Peace, 1980). As a
Church, we collectively and responsibly assumed this task of breaking
the silence that thousands of war victims have kept for years. We
opened up the possibility for them to talk and to have their say, to
tell their stories of suffering and pain, so they might feel liberated
from the burden that has been weighing down on them for so many years.
This has been the essential objective that has motivated the REMHI
project during its three years of work: to know the truth that will
make us all free (John 8:32).
In the Historical Clarification Accord, we, as people of faith,
discovered a call from God to our mission as Church that truth should be
the vocation of all of humanity. Coming from the Word of God, we can
not hide or cover-up reality. We cannot distort history, nor should we
silence the truth.
Twenty centuries ago, Saint Paul made a statement that our recent
history has confirmed unequivocally that "the wrath of God is revealed
from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who suppress
the truth with injustices." (Rom 1:18). The truth in our country has
been twisted and silenced.
God is inflexibly opposed to evil in any form. The root of the downfall
and the disgrace of humanity comes from the deliberate opposition to
truth that is the radical reality of God and of human beings. It is
this reality that has been intentionally deformed in our country
throughout 36 years of war against the people.
That's why in our Bishop's pastoral letter entitled "True Peace is
Urgent!!", we stated that historical clarification was "not just
necessary, but crucial to ensuring that the past, with all of its
serious consequences, would not be repeated. As long as the truth is
not known, the wounds of the past continue to be open and do not begin
to heal."
As a Church, we do not have any doubt that the work we have carried out
in these past few years has been part of a story of grace and salvation,
a real step towards peace as a result of justice. It has been a soft
scattering of the seeds of life and dignity throughout the country --
and the advocates and participants in the work have been the suffering
people themselves. It has been a beautiful service of veneration for the
martyrs and a dignification of the victims that were the targets of the
plans for destruction and death.
To open ourselves to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with
our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be
accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and
all societies that seek to humanize themselves and to be free. It makes
us face our most radical condition as humans; that we are sons and
daughters of God, called to participate in our Father's freedom.
Years of terror and death have displaced and reduced the majority of
Guatemala to fear and silence. Truth is the primary word, the serious
and mature action that makes it possible for us to break this cycle of
death and violence and to open ourselves to a future of hope and light
for all.
REHMI's work has been an astonishing endeavor of discovery, exploration
and appropriation of our personal and collective history. It has been
an open door for people to be able to breath and speak in freedom and
for the creation of communities with hope. Peace is possible -- a peace
that is born from the truth that comes from each one of us and from all
of us. It is a painful truth, full of memories of the deep and bloody
wounds of the country. It is a liberating and humanizing truth that makes it possible for all men and women to come to terms with themselves and their life stories. It is a truth that challenges each one of us to recognize our individual and collective responsibility and commit ourselves to action so that those abominable acts never happen again.
This project has made a commitment to the people that gave their testimonies, to gather their experiences in this report and to support all of the demands of the victims. But our commitment is also to return the collected memory to the people. The search for truth does not end here. It must return from where it was born and it must support the role
of memory as an instrument for social reconstruction through the creation of materials, ceremonies, monuments etc.
Pope John Paul II tell us, "It is necessary to keep alive the memory of what has happened. It is a specific duty. We've been better able to comprehend what World War II has meant for Europeans and for the world during these 50 years thanks to the acquisition of new information that has allowed us a better understanding of the suffering caused." (50th Anniversary of the end of World War II) This is what the REMHI project has done in Guatemala.
Discovering the truth is painful, but it is without a doubt, a healthy and liberating action. The thousands of testimonies of the victims and the recounting of the horrific crimes are the current day manifestations of the figure of the "suffering servant of Yahweh," who is incarnated in the people of Guatemala. "Behold my servant," says Isaiah, "..many were
afraid of him. He was so disfigured he was beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of sons of man. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. (Isaiah 52:13 - 53:4)
Bringing the memory of these painful events into the present leads us to confront some of the first words of our faith, "Cain, where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know", he answered. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Yahweh replied, "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." (Gen 4: 9-10)
Translation by: Founded in 1968, the Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA), is an independent nonprofit organization serving a diverse U.S. constituency of churches, grassroots organizations, and individual supporters.
On The Occasion Of The Presentation Of The REMHI Report
Metropolitan Cathedral of Guatemala City, April 24, 1998
EPICA: 1470 Irving St., NW Washington, DC 20010
Tel: 202/332-0292
Fax: 202/332-1184
Email: epica@igc.apc.org
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