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1st and 2nd graders of Colegio Mixto Padre Betanzos with their teachers.

THE DOMINICAN SCHOOL IN GUATEMALA

By Brother Raymond Bertheaux, OP

Dear Friends,

The 36 years of civil war that took place was too much for this small country. Millions were literally annihilated in the most savage ways. In the 1980's, thousands of these mountain people were forced into self-exile to the hot jungles of Chiapas, Mexico, where the Sisters of Hospital San Carlos in Altamirano ministered to them. Many more, who are classified as displaced persons, now live like rabbits in huts around the gullies of our parish here -- a fifteen minute walk from where I am writing this.

One amazing person is the Bishop of Coban, Alta Verapaz, Gerardo Flores. Thirty-two years ago he instituted in the country's Episcopal Conference, the "Pastoral Indigenous Commission," based on what he learned and witnessed of the atrocities then taking place against various ethnic groups of his diocese (which included the famous Cahabon Q'eqchi Youth Center). From this Pastoral Indigenous Commission, a great awareness developed between city folks and many ethnic/indigenous groups of the country. The bishop's famous slogan is: "The faith draws all of us to a social commitment."

But still today, the consequences of that war have left many wounded and agonized. During those frightful years, the military saw communists behind every bush, and as usual, the Church became the scapegoat. Hundreds of missionary priests and sisters (both natives and foreigners) were either killed or desaparecidos (disappeared).

In the archbishop's office, it is recorded that close to 5,000 native catechists were killed. (They were easy targets of the military because they were bilingual.) Those of the warring factions tried to bring the Church down to its knees, but as Bishop Flores says: "...with so much blood of these new martyrs spilled, the Church seemed to be noiseless . . . but it was not."

The blood of martyrs still hasn't stopped flowing. Just last year, Bishop Juan Gerardi was brutally killed in his rectory here in Guatemala City. It happened just two days after he made public his four-volume investigation of atrocities titled Recuperation of Historical Memory. A best seller worldwide and now in its second publication....