After 25 years, what now?
Crispaz cofounder points the way...
A message to kick off Crispaz's 25th anniversary year
from Father Peter Hinde

Dear Friend,

Anniversaries are a time to look back—and to look forward. As we prepare to celebrate 25 years of Crispaz in 2009, I want to do a little of both.

First, a look back. As one of the three founders of Crispaz in 1984, I want to share with you what led me to join the important Crispaz endeavor and why, at 85, I am still committed. I hope my story will renew your own support for Crispaz and your willingness to partner in mutual accompaniment with the people of El Salvador. 

I was living in Tabor House in Washington, D.C., when the March 24, 1980, murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero brought the situation in El Salvador into a high relief. The following week I gathered in vigil with friends of the Tabor House Community in front of the White House. There we mounted a huge banner echoing the words of Archbishop Romero’s dramatic letter to President Carter one month earlier: “President  Jimmy Carter, I implore you: No military aid. No U.S. intervention in El Salvador.”
 
Seven weeks after Romero’s death, 600 people were massacred by the Salvadoran army at the Sumpul River on the Honduran border. At the end of June, Sister of Mercy Betty Campbell and I visited the site of that massacre and spent several days on the Honduran side of the border with Salvadoran refugees who had fled their villages before the army  “sweep and destroy” operation. The U.S. State Department, backing the Salvadoran government, managed to wrap this crime in silence.

In August, Betty and I entered Salvador, consulted with Romero’s successsor, Arturo Rivera y Damas, and arranged for Betty, a nurse, to set up clinics in parishes and in a seminary where thousands of people from the rural areas were seeking refuge from the Salvadoran army. My role was to help in parishes where priests had either been killed or driven out of the country. Working with the Salvador Human Rights Commission, we also sent reports back to the Religious Task Force on El Salvador which Tabor House had helped start two years before Romero’s death. 

Our work with refugees brought us into close association with Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kassel and lay missioner Jean Donovan. The worsening situation was climaxed by the murder of six political opposition leaders on November 28 and then, on December 2, by the murder of these four North American church women who had become our friends.

When we realized how the work of Maura, Ita, Dorothy and Jean was being misrepresented to the U.S. public by Secretary of State Alexander Haig and United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, we returned to the U.S. I was determined to hold up the lives and witness of Romero and our friends murdered by government agents. 

For the next two years Betty and I traveled the U.S. giving talks in parishes, schools and universities. In between, we made return visits and consultations in Central America.  In the fall of 1983, we moved Tabor House to San Antonio where we met Lutheran Pastor Dan Long and Quaker Paddy Lane who, like us, were trying to protect their churches and to minister to the thousands of persons displaced by war.

Dan and Paddy suggested we join together in an ecumenical effort to assist the Churches in El Salvador and to get their testimony out to U.S. Churches and the U.S. public. In October 1984, Dan and I went to consult with the churches in El Salvador that were receiving people displaced by the war and whose pastoral agents were at risk. The churches we spoke with—Lutheran, Emmanuel Baptist, Episcopal and the Catholic Archdiocese—welcomed what we suggested: programs of educational delegations from the U.S., long-term volunteers to live in Salvadoran communities, and an ongoing line of communication back to the U.S

When we returned to San Antonio, Dan, Paddy and I immediately rallied U.S. churches and church-related organizations to recruit staff, volunteers and a board of directors. Paddy Lane became the first Crispaz volunteer coordinator working out of Dan Long’s office in San Antonio—and Crispaz was  launched.

From the beginning, this project was understood in the context of what Monsignor Romero had asked his priests and religious to do before his own death: to accompany the people in their struggle for a new society. Over the past 25 years, whenever Crispaz reflects on what it is doing and why, it always returns to this core mission: to accompany the people of El Salvador. What does this mean?

“Accompaniment” is a pastoral style intended to replace the paternalism that characterized so much of U.S. missionary work in Latin America. In a kind of reverse mission, North Americans who accompany the people of Salvador and witness their faith-in-action are themselves changed—evangelized—and they become seeds of change for U.S. government policy and church policy to El Salvador.  Thus a new society gradually will emerges both in Salvador and in the United States.

Like pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Crispaz delegations to El Salvador have brought an enlightening faith experience and understanding to thousands of North Americans over Crispaz’s 25-year history.  Because, as the martyred Jesuit Ignacio Ellacuria has said, “In Archbishop Oscar Romero, God has passed through El Salvador.” And the presence of God is made palpable in the witness of the martyrs of El Salvador.

Now, a look forward. At this anniversary juncture, Crispaz is being challenged to plumb new depths of what accompaniment can mean. At the Crispaz Board meeting this past October, Salvador coordinator Antonio Canas laid out a challenging vision of the kind of accompaniment needed by the Salvadoran people today. He presented an analysis of Salvadoran culture—a culture deeply confused by the impact of U.S. culture and mass communications and increasingly distanced from the legacy of Romero and the other martyrs of those war years.

Antonio challenged Crispaz in coming years to find ways to facilitate greater sharing between delegations and the Salvadoran communities they visit.  He stressed the transformational potential of  Archbishop Romero’s life and message both for Salvadorans and North Americans as we walk together into a shared future.

The Board agrees that  we must embrace the vision—and the challenge—laid out for us by our first Salvadoran coordinator.  Exactly how Crispaz will respond is not yet clear, but the specifics will be spelled out during the coming year in Salvanet. So please stay tuned!

Over a hundred volunteers and staff plus scores of Board members have sacrificed over the past 25 years to make the dreams of the Churches of Salvador, under the inspiration of Archbishop Romero, a reality. Please continue your generous support of Crispaz so that the work of the next 25 years can begin! Make a donation now.

For solidarity and peace in Christ,

Peter C. Hinde, O.Carm.