Elliot Abrams, War Criminal

I am in a national Indigenous Issues group which is driving me absolutely bonkers.  I need to make a disclaimer.  I recognize the need for working together to build intimacy and community in a group.  But I am driven to distraction by groups that want to spend all their time doing head knowledge and spiritual practice that does not drive down on the political.  Spiritual practice that is ethereal and sampling at the progressive buffet without ever going deep is in keeping with an imperial narrative. 

Faith shrinks into the private sphere.  We never expand the balloon to create space.  And the literal meaning for the Hebrew word for “salvation” is creating a broad place (or space) for community life and conduct.  Inevitably, then, it deals with power narratives.  Conflict and risk are inevitable.  Courage and challenge are required. 

One of the reasons I am going absolutely bonkers is I have been triggered by the appointment of Elliot Abrams as the envoy to Venezuela.  If you are not familiar with United States involvement in Latin America, let me tell you that Elliot Abrams was the devil.  He is a war criminal.  What we continue to do, especially to the indigenous people of the Americas, is profoundly evil. 

When I would share my mission experience in southern Mexico and Guatemala, I would try to relate just how deeply evil our policies and practices were in Latin America.  How does one do that?

In the early 1980s, General Efrain Rios Montt took over the government through military coup. Montt may have kept things relatively quiet on the surface of Guatemala, but underneath the surface, mass executions of the indigenous in rural areas were being carried out by an ever-stronger military presence.  Montt said:  “We are not killing Indians, we are burning Communists (maybe I should insert Jews here).”  It is not hard to imagine for whom such a statement was intended during the years of the Reagan administration with Elliot Abrams in charge of carrying out U.S. policy in that region. 

           

Whole villages were massacred by the military, 440 villages just wiped off the face of the map, claiming to eliminate the subversives, the communists, and/or guerillas.  The following story is one I told often in those presentations because it led to my conversion, bore deep within my being and made me accountable.  It is taken from the amazing book, Granddaughters of Corn:  Portraits of Guatemalan Women (Marilyn Anderson).  I have never told this story in any sermon because I knew people in our country could not digest them.  So, as someone lacking courage, I have failed to share.  Here is that story now:

In the early 1980s in the village of San Francisco, the municipality of Nenton, department of Huehuetenango, the government of soldiers of Guatemala came to look through the village.  They told the people of San Francisco that that they were there to take care of them and look out for them and that the people should not fear them.  The soldiers returned two or three more times, sharing how happy they were that things were so quiet in the village of San Francisco. 

One day, the soldiers came and told the people that the colonel wanted to have a discussion with them and they all should go to the courthouse.   When the villages of San Francisco arrived at the courthouse they were separated.  Men were put in the courthouse and the women and the children were put in the Catholic Church.  When all the houses were empty, the soldiers went back to look through them and take all the villagers’ things.  They stole clothes, tape recorders, radios, watches, and money, whatever they could.

The village cooperative had 10,000 quetzales (perhaps $3,000 to $4,000 dollars at that time).  Some of the villagers kept their money there also; some had 50, 100, or even up to 1,000 quetzales, but the army took it all.  Whatever they saw, they stole.  The villagers watched them carrying around chickens, eggs, baskets, and pots.  They were gathering more and more things on the school patio.  They even took all of the tortillas more things on the school patio.  They even took all of the tortillas they could find in the houses, the ones made by the women of the village.

           

After the soldiers had taken all of the villagers’ things, they came asked the villagers for a cow.  The cattle arrived and were killed.  The army wanted them for nothing—they did not even pay the villagers.  The villagers were afraid because they carried arms and many of them had bayonets.  The villagers were merely farmers.

           

The soldiers killed and skinned the cattle on the school patio.  They ate the meat with the tortillas they’d found in the houses.  When they had finished, they closed the doors of the courthouse with the men inside, but the men were able to see through two or three holes in the windows.

The soldiers took the women out of the church in groups of ten or twenty.  Then twelve or thirteen soldiers went into the houses to rape the women.  After they were finished raping them, they shot the women and burned the houses down.

           

All of the children had been left locked up in the church which was about 20 meters from the courthouse . . . they were now crying, the poor children were screaming.  They were calling after their fathers and brothers in the courthouse.  Some of the older ones were aware that their mothers were being killed and were shouting and calling out to the men in the courthouse.

The soldiers took the children outside.  Only the little ones were left together inside the church.  The soldiers had already brought out all the mothers and killed them.  Then they brought out babies—two, one and a half, three years old.  The children were all holding on to each other.  The 10-, 12-, 8-, 5-, and 6-year olds were also brought out in groups.  The soldiers killed them with knife stabs.  Then men could see them.  They killed them in a house in front of the church.  They yanked them by the hair and stabbed them in their bellies; then they disemboweled the children of San Francisco.  When they finished disemboweling them, they three them into the house, and they brought out more.  Elliot Abrams is evil.  He is a war criminal. 

The men could see it all.  The men were very frightened because they realized that they and their families were being murdered.

           

Finally, they brought out the last child.  He was a little one, maybe two or three-years old.  They stabbed him and cut out his stomach.  The little child was screaming, but because he wasn’t dead yet the soldier grabbed a thick, hard stick and bashed his head.  They held his feet together and smashed him against a tree trunk.

Then they took the old men out and killed them with dull machetes.  They began to take out the adults, the grown men of working age.  They took them out by groups of ten.  Soldiers were standing there waiting to throw the prisoners down into the patio of the courthouse.  Then they shot them.  When they finished shooting, they piled the bodies up and put them into the church.   The man who witnessed all this saw the flames from the church as he escaped. 

I have told this story, not for revulsion, but that you also might become tellers of the tale. 

Meredith Kruse was an accompanier among the people in Guatemala, and the daughter of great friends I have made.  Meredith spoke of the incredible poverty, oppression, and hope that continues in Guatemala.  Meredith’s last day in Guatemala, one of the young children in the village was dying of malnutrition.  In keeping with who these Guatemalan people are, the women of the village were passing the child around to feed the child from their breasts, because the young mother had nothing left to feed her child.  One of the women of the village, Meredith’s dear friend, turned to her and said, “You have a responsibility now.  You must tell others.”  Meredith promised she would. 

You now know the story—about what our country created and what people like Elliot Abrams have done to create immigrants and refugees in Latin America.  Tell others.  Struggle on behalf of these people.  Do not forget. Courage and challenge are required.  No more San Franciscos, El Mozotes, or Acteals.  No more.