Seeking the Hidden Face of Christ

Jeremiah did not choose to be a prophet. God thrust the role upon him as the fulfillment of who Jeremiah was called to be. Neither has the evangelical church in Peru chosen its present prophetic role. Rather, brutal political and military realities in the nation's Ayacucho region have compelled the church there to claim its birthright and to fulfill its own prophetic heritage.

The church's steps into the current maelstrom of life in Ayacucho were at first clumsy and even unintentional. But its more recent actions have been deliberate and bold.

In an area with 500,000 people, where more than 4,000 Quechua Indian peasants have been killed in the past two years and almost as many have been "disappeared," there also is a certain amount of self-preservation involved.

"If we don't stop this, tomorrow we may be the disappeared," evangelical leader Esteban Cuya explained in a recent Sojourners interview. Yet, when pressed, the 29-year-old Peruvian allowed that the very work he and others are doing to prevent further disappearances and deaths increases the likelihood of their own.

As a journalist who reports and writes a column for a major daily newspaper in Lima, Cuya is closer than most Christians to the horror that is enveloping his nation. And as a worker with the Peruvian and Latin American divisions of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, editor of a magazine for evangelical university students, journalism professor, and member of the evangelical Peace and Hope Commission and the Service for Peace and Justice, he works with Christians, development specialists, and human rights groups seeking a peaceful solution to the centuries-old problems in Ayacucho.

"We've opened our eyes to see Ayacucho as a world of poverty, misery, and injustice," Cuya remarked. "We must see with eyes of mercy. These problems originate from poverty and injustice."

POVERTY AND INJUSTICE have prevailed in Ayacucho for centuries, where even today the peasants nestled in the Andes Mountains 250 miles southeast of Lima have a life expectancy of only 48 years. They speak their native Quechua language rather than Spanish, and only 50 percent of the peasants can read or write in any language. Wages are about one-third what they are elsewhere in Peru, and the distribution of land is one of the most unequal in Latin America.

With this legacy, the region proved a perfect working laboratory for the Maoist guerrillas that have moved into the area. Sendero Luminoso, which means the Shining Path, formed in 1970, taking its inspiration from Abimael Guzman, a Peruvian philosophy professor, and its ideology from the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Cambodia's Pol Pot regime. As evidence of its eclectic and somewhat bizarre politics, Sendero Luminoso has thrown bombs at both the American and the Chinese embassies in Peru.

Sendero guerrillas began working in Ayacucho in 1980, the same year that elections ended 12 years of military dictatorship in Peru. Unwilling to wait for civilian reforms to reach the isolated Ayacucho region and committed to follow its "long march to power" in the footsteps of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Guzman—the "fourth sword of Marxism"—Sendero began working and politicizing among the peasants.

The guerrillas' early Robin Hood-style tactics of redistributing land, livestock, and other goods—and even Sendero's more violent actions against corrupt officials and wealthy capitalists—gained enthusiastic peasant support. The guerrillas had begun filling a political vacuum and meeting real needs that had been ignored, by churches as well as the government, for years. But when Sendero began demanding taxes from local villages and forcing young men and women into its service, many of the peasants withdrew their support.

By late 1982 Sendero had claimed control of most of Ayacucho. But peasant resistance was increasing, and in December 1982 Sendero guerrillas executed 21 civilians and government officials. Peru's president at the time, Fernando Belaunde Terry, in effect declared martial law in Ayacucho, sending government soldiers from all forces of the Peruvian military to the region. Then the bloodbath began in earnest.

Government soldiers killed at least 1,000—and maybe more than 2,000—guerrillas in the first five months of 1983. Many of the casualties were unarmed guerrilla "sympathizers." In April 1983 government soldiers massacred 77 men, women, and children in the village of Lucacamarca, and in January 1984 eight Peruvian journalists were killed.

Random killings and disappearances have continued unabated. But the Peruvian army has stopped releasing numbers of dead, and the government denies there are people disappeared. Some 5,000 government soldiers now occupy the region in an all-out effort to eliminate the guerrilla force, estimated to number between 2,000 and 4,000 members.

Amnesty International and the local human rights groups with which Cuya works say both the government and the guerrilla forces are to blame for the violence and death. But, they add, the peasants are more afraid of the military, whose killing is more wanton and ruthless.

"We must respond to the cry for justice not with weapons, not with horror and death," Cuya said. "As Christians working for peace, we should contribute toward integral development. The challenge for all evangelicals is to be able to incarnate Jesus' message in all its implications, to be true to the crucified one, who is always on the side of life."

Indeed, it is a tremendous challenge to love one's enemies when the church is opposed on all sides, or to care for the "least of these" when any such action may be interpreted as evidence of political subversion. The only way for the church to stay out of imminent physical danger would be to be silent and inactive. But Cuya rejects this course of action, saying, "We must not betray the crucified one," and, "Tomorrow we may be the disappeared."

AS THE SITUATION has deteriorated, a combination of otherworldly naivete and life-giving faith has made the evangelicals particularly vulnerable to attack from both the military and the guerrillas.

Historically, to be an evangelical in Peru has meant being apolitical, according to Cuya. The evangelicals' disdain for politics was so well known that when police and military officials rounded up peasants accused of "subversion," they immediately would release those whose papers identified them as evangelicals, knowing they would not be involved with the guerrillas.

As awareness of the immunity provided by evangelical identification cards spread, attendance in the evangelical churches—especially Pentecostal churches—skyrocketed, Cuya said. The Pentecostal churches, without analyzing the situation, distributed evangelical ID cards to all who asked for them. For a while, both the military and Sendero continued to respect the evangelical cards and the persons carrying them.

But as the military strengthened its grip on the region and the conflict between the military and the guerrillas intensified, everyone's safety was jeopardized, Cuya stated. Then, when the military killed many Sendero members and found they were carrying evangelical ID cards, the government began suspecting the evangelical churches of subversive activity. Military soldiers started going to churches, arresting leaders, beating up young people, and threatening people with death, Cuya reported.

Feeling that Sendero Luminoso had betrayed them and wanting to reassert their political neutrality, the Pentecostal churches began preaching against the guerrilla forces during worship services. Unfortunately, this served only to invite persecution from the guerrillas—in addition to that already coming from the military. "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed," the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. Cuya's message is much the same.

"Some peasants are organized by the army as paramilitary forces. Many evangelicals who are pacifists refuse to participate. Then they are considered friends of subversives and oppressed by the paramilitary groups. Sendero believes the evangelical churches are blocking its ideological work. In the same way, the military forces oppose them, too." Cuya said of the churches.

He added, "The greatest fear of the churches is what the military is doing, because they wipe out everything with no warning. The array attacks and kills right during worship. When the Sendero is coming, the pastors in Ayacucho tell the people so they will have a chance to leave. So, the greatest fear is of the military and of the police."

IN JULY 1984 Sendero guerrillas attacked a Pentecostal church in Santa Rosa, killing six church members and leaving 14 wounded. Five days later government soldiers attacked a Presbyterian church in the village of Callqui, dragging six men out of the service and executing them.

Much of the government's violence is more secretive and insidious, making it harder to prove. Peasants in Ayacucho disappear every day, many never to be seen alive again. With 4,000 people killed in the conflict and as many disappeared, hardly a village or family in Ayacucho is untouched by the conflict.

"The heaviest blows of the military have landed on many innocent people," Cuya stated. "As a result of the struggle, many innocent people—children, old and young people who knew nothing about politics—are suffering. Many of the disappeared are very poor people who with great struggle made it to the university. They were the hopes of their families for a better life. But they have been kidnapped, and they are gone. The disappeared are the hidden face of Christ in Latin America. The magnitude of the problem is huge."

But just as the army has stopped releasing the number of persons killed in the Ayacucho conflict as a way of ignoring the brutal reality and absolving itself of responsibility, the government denies that people are being disappeared.

"Despite all the evidence, the authorities say there are no disappeared in Peru," Cuya reported. "Robbery, rape, torture, kidnapping, murder—they are all openly committed by the armed forces, yet they still deny. They even say we invented the names, that those people never lived."

To counter the government's lies and cover-up, Cuya and the Hope and Peace Commission have begun documenting cases of the disappeared. They have collected birth certificates, report cards, photographs, statements, and notarized documents testifying that these people were born and lived in Peru. So far the group has documented some 2,500 cases.

Cuya also has documented cases of persons who have been killed by government forces. On October 31,1984, Haydee Sacsara, 16, and her 14-year-old brother, Raul, both members of the Presbyterian Evangelical Church in the city of Ayacucho, were doing homework in their house. Outside a young man was being chased by the police. When the youth's path was blocked by a soccer game in the street, he ran into the Sacsara house to hide. The police followed him in and took him away, also taking with them the Sacsara children. The Sacsaras were subversives since the wanted youth had run into their house, the police said.

Their mother, pastor, and a lawyer went to the local jail to get the children, but the police would not release them. For a week their mother took them food every day. Then the children were transferred to the headquarters of the investigative police. Later they were moved to the civilian guard headquarters. Their mother continued taking them food every day. Then, after another week, the officials denied they had ever held the youths.

"That is the way the authorities let relatives know to start looking for bodies in rural areas," Cuya explained.

Cuya joined the family and friends, who searched five days before finding three common graves a foot below the ground in an area 15 miles from Ayacucho. There were nine bodies in all, among them those of Haydee and Raul. They had bullets in their backs, bayonet wounds in their chests, wires around their wrists, and iron-shaped burn marks on their faces. Haydee's left breast had been cut off.

MANY HAVE COMPARED the current situation in Ayacucho to the disappearances and violence that swept Argentina during the rule of its previous military government. But when a local magistrate saw the bodies of the Sacsara children, he despairingly pronounced the Ayacucho brutality worse than that of Argentina.

The genocide is part of the military's design to wipe out "subversion" in Ayacucho. Gen. Luis Cisneros Vizquerra has said that the military's success will require killing non-subversives as well as subversives. If, out of a group of 60 persons killed by the military, only three are guerrillas, the deaths of those three are worth the lives of the others, Cisneros said.

In addition to the dead and disappeared, the conflict has produced thousands of refugees and displaced families in Ayacucho. The Peace and Hope Commission is working to provide food, clothing, medicine, and shelter for the refugees.

"There are only one million evangelicals out of 18 million people in Peru, but the church has felt challenged to play a role in society in light of the emergency," Cuya explained. "We are working very openly, and we have the backing of churches in Lima and the rest of the country.

"We must be in agreement with efforts to build justice, but we cannot be in agreement with killing. Our methods cannot betray our goals. As Christians we must respect the implicit dignity of every human being. But the misery of Ayacucho is a reality, and the image of God is being mistreated. As Christians we must be willing to give our lives."

When Amnesty International charged last January that the Peruvian government was responsible for thousands of killings and disappearances, government officials said they would investigate. But they have taken no concrete action. Meanwhile, Sendero Luminoso is escalating its activities and expanding to Lima and other parts of the country.

"Now it's in the government's hands—to hear the cries of the people or to be set in its belligerent approach," Cuya commented, "If the government is determined to deny the disappeared, the torture, the genocide, then things will get worse.

"We have that permanent resource—prayer—so we can intercede for the people of Ayacucho. The church is working to intercede creatively. Pray that the government would be open to the possibility of dialog."

THE RECENT PEACEFUL election of center-left leader Alan Garcia to the presidency provides renewed hope that a new and more liberal government will act to curtail the military abuses in the Ayacucho region. Garcia has made bold statements of his intent to challenge the International Monetary Fund and to follow a non-aligned, Third World foreign policy that would emphasize the development of regional action by Latin American nations.

However, Garcia and his government face significant obstacles. Peru's foreign debt has climbed to $13 billion, and the country is $300 million behind in interest payments to commercial banks. And, despite the national feelings of change and confidence inspired by Garcia's election, the new leader has not specified how he will deal with the serious problems of unemployment, inflation, lagging agricultural and industrial production, and badly needed social reform.

Meanwhile, the residents of the Ayacucho region live almost in another time—mired in poverty, economically underdeveloped, and a culture apart. Cuya understands the myths and hopes of the Andean world that cause the peasants to look for an Andean messiah and have led many of them to follow Sendero Luminoso.

"But we cannot make easy hopes for ourselves—and I speak of the subversives in particular," Cuya said. "There is an awful lot of pride in the human person when we believe that within our own capacity, with no help from God, we will build a perfect and just society. But we have the example of Jesus Christ—his commitment, his sacrifice to give us abundant life. To be on the side of God is to be on the side of life, and we trust God will lead us and protect us.

"Too many times we are looking at the world from a balcony, from a distance. We must get down from the balcony. I invite you to be permanently sensitive to the life of human beings. This must move us; this must shake us."

Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.