February 2002

Dear friends and family,

Greetings from Guatemala. I hope all is well in your lives.

I am writing in commemoration of an event that happened 20 years ago in my church's sister village, Santa Maria Tzeja. I have been thinking about parallels between the violence that happened there and the state of our world today. I share these reflections with you in an effort to draw connections across the globe and in hopes of fostering peace in our one shared world.

February 15 of this year marked the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Santa Maria Tzeja. In 1982, the Guatemalan army stormed the community, burning houses, killing livestock, and slashing crops. People fled into the jungle. They had no weapons, no defense against the troops. Those who managed to escape fled with only the clothes on their back. They were men and women, children and elderly, some sick and pregnant. Some were found and killed. Others were found and tortured. Their crime? Being indigenous Mayas. Being suspected of links with guerrillas.

One five-year-old boy managed to survive the Santa Maria Tzeja massacre on February 15, 1982. He hid and watched in disbelief and horror as his mother, grandmother, and siblings were killed by the army. As part of the war against communism, US-supported Guatemala troops shot the young boy's mother and grandmother and stabbed his nine-month-old baby sister to death. These innocent civilians were just a few of the many "casualties"—deaths—done in the name of eradicating a political position that the US opposed. In Guatemala alone, 200,000 people were killed for this reason. Many of them worked for social change and justice in the face of profound social inequalities and repression; for this they were labeled insurgents and killed or "disappeared."

In war, people are killed for their political or religious beliefs, their ethnicity, nationality, or class. In any far-reaching war, innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with the conflict get killed. Guatemalans killed in the 1980s, US Americans killed on September 11, Afghans killed during the US strikes, and Colombians killed in civil war have been unarmed, unwitting, and innocent victims, unjustly killed as part of some government's or some group's cause.

As part of the war against communism, our brothers and sisters in Guatemala were killed during 36 years of war with the help from the US government through a pattern of planned, grossly inhumane attacks.

As part of the war against the West, our brothers and sisters in New York and Washington, D.C., were killed on September 11, 2001, in a series of planned, grossly inhumane attacks.

As part of the war against terrorism, our brothers and sisters in Afghanistan have been killed by our government's bombs (including two bombings of the Red Cross) and blockage of food supplies.

As part of a war against drugs, our brothers and sisters in Colombia have been killed by paramilitaries indirectly supported by the US, and hundreds of Amazon rainforest and families' food crops are destroyed by US-sponsored fumigation.

Survivors of the Santa Maria Tzeja massacre have brought legal proceedings against those who ordered the killings of their relatives and neighbors. After seeing their loves brutally killed, Guatemalan war survivors call out for justice and reconciliation, rather than war and revenge.

How is it that we will kill people to teach people that killing people is wrong? By killing unarmed and innocent people in the Middle East and Latin America, we become like the terrorists we oppose.

Nearly two decades after the massacre in Santa Maria Tzeja, the US government admitted wrongdoing in Guatemala's war.

Twenty years after an atrocious massacre shook Santa Maria Tzeja, and five months after heinous attacks devastated the US, what the world needs is impartial justice, mutual understanding, and true peace.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. . . . Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. . . . Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"An eye for an eye only makes the world blind." — Mahatma Gandhi

"I only ask of God that I not be indifferent to injustice.
I only ask of God that I not be indifferent to war.
I only ask of God that I not be indifferent to the future."

— León Gieco, "Sol Le Pido a Dios"

"Some day, when everyone understands that nearly all of us truly want the same kind of world, it will take surprisingly little time or effort to have it." — Donella H. Meadows

Peace,

Ali Durbin
BVS/Global Mission Partnerships
Guatemala