On Tuesday i stepped out of my front door at 8 a.m. to go to work, and before i'd walked a block i saw four soldiers in full camouflage with M-16 rifles turn the corner in front of me. I wish i could say i was shocked, but i was more just curious. As the day went on i realized that the neighborhood was full of soldiers, and i found out that the government had begun what they're calling "Operation Lightning Bolt," which has sent the army into high crime areas around the country, including all over Tegucigalpa. As the days have gone on, the military presence has increased. There are regularly truckloads of soldiers outside our building, which is right by the main bus terminal in Nueva Suyapa, and soldiers with M-16s standing in the center of the road spaced about every ten yards.
On Wednesday there were about 5 soldiers lined up in front of the building i work in, where our elementary school, microloan program, dental clinic, and a few other offices are located. I said casually to the woman who cleans our offices, "Look at all these soldiers in front of our building." It's the first time i'd mentioned their presence to anyone. To my surprise, she said, "Yes, how good that they're here." As the days went on, i realized that this is by far the majority opinion among Suyapans; in fact, i have yet to encounter one Honduran who's critical of the military's presence in their neighborhood.
My family explained it to me more or less in these terms: "We're very happy that they're here. They're only here to find the people in gangs or who are involved in drugs. The police never come up here, and it's not safe. It's about time they did something about all the robberies and shootings. Since everyone in the United States is rich, if people want drugs they just buy them. But since we're a poor country, if people want to buy drugs, they have to steal. So the army's here to do something." My host mom said she's glad because the army's presence will push the gangs somewhere else.
Even people whom i've talked to in the ministry praise the operation. One of the loan officers asked me what i thought about the operation. I told him i felt like it was basically trading one form of violence for another for a short time, and asked him what he thought. Very emphatically he told me, "It's amazing. It's amazing. I think in your country the army doesn't do things like this. They only use them for war. I think it's great."
The only somewhat nuanced analysis i've heard was during a conversation i had with the elementary school principal. As i was coming back from lunch Friday, i saw her outside our building. "Look at all these soldiers we have in our street, Mark," she said. "I know," i said. "What do you think about it?" "I told my husband, 'It's good to be able to sleep at night without hearing gunshots outside my house,'" she said. I told her i know that i'm new to Nueva Suyapa and that i don't share most people's opinion and that i can't say it's wrong to want to sleep peacefully, but we have to be honest and say that what's going on is not the solution and that the gang and drug violence might be reduced for the couple weeks or however long the soldiers are here, but it will come back when they leave and that i, as a Christian, don't put my hope in military violence but in God. She agreed that what's going on is not a solution. "Violence is like a termite eating away at the foundations of our society. This is only addressing the problems on the surface," she said. "And anyway," she said. "Jesus is coming soon and this doesn't really matter." She also pointed out that the only reason the operation started was that the son of the director of one of the universities was killed, and that even though the poor have been suffering violence in Nueva Suyapa for years, the government doesn't pay attention until someone important gets killed. But when people forget about the university director's son's killing, they'll forget about Nueva Suyapa too, and things will be like before.
Friday night my 14-year-old host brother came home in the evening and said, "The army was up at the soccer field checking our papers and looking for drugs." My face must have betrayed my disgust. "It's good," he said. "Sometimes the kids smoke after we play, so it's good they're there." "To stop you from smoking?" i asked. "It's fine," he said. "They just check our fingers for drugs and check our papers. And they didn't even search us younger ones. They just made us lift up our shirts."
When i was 14 years old my host brother's experience would have been traumatizing for me, more so than i can imagine. But not only is he fine with it, he supports it. My coworker, who is from the U.S., had a very perceptive comment to make. "I think the people here don't realize just how traumatic their day-to-day lives are. We come here, having grown up the way we did, and it's shocking to see things like this. But they take these traumatic things as being completely normal."
Like i told the elementary school principal, i cannot, from my position, fault my coworkers for feeling relieved to get a few nights' sleep without hearing gunshots. To feel relieved to know that for the time being you can walk your neighborhood without having to fear being robbed is an honest response. What is difficult for me is to hear the violence that the military brings being celebrated. The celebration of violence i've heard over the last few days from my family, neighbors, and coworkers has been troubling. To me, a Christian response to such an overwhelming display of violence in my neighborhood is to mourn. And so i have been, in my own private way, trying to mourn the violence in Nueva Suyapa.
Instead of celebrating the military coming to my community to protect me by beating, shooting, arresting, or imprisoning the "other" - the gang member, the drug addict, the delinquent - i mourn the brokenness of my community, my own sinfulness, and my complicity in violent and unjust structures. I mourn the ways that we as individuals and as a church community have fallen short in collaborating with the inbreaking of God's peaceable kingdom, but instead have collaborated with empire.
"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading [Luke 23: 35-43] shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters." -Oscar Romero, November 20, 1977
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