Eyes from the Outside

Christian Mission in Zones of Violent Conflict

Lamberty

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630872793
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Christian mission has often been a project allied with colonial powers and conquests. Contemporary theologies of Christian mission, however, call for a new approach. In Eyes from the Outside, Kim Lamberty suggests using the metaphor of accompaniment to describe one such approach to Christian mission. She explores international protective accompaniment--eyes from the outside--as a constructive way to do Christian mission in conflict zones. Christian missionaries today frequently find themselves in isolated and poverty-stricken parts of the globe, places where violence is common. Based on a case study in Colombia, Eyes from the Outside argues that international protective accompaniment empowers communities, reduces the risk of violence, and corresponds with contemporary theologies of mission.

1

The Colombia Context

This chapter provides an overview of the factors—historical, cultural, geographical, and religious—that impact, and have impacted, Colombia’s long-running internal conflict. Understanding the conflict’s actors, as well as its causes, enables the reader to draw conclusions about the role of outside accompaniment later in this investigation. The assumption is that we cannot determine an appropriate role for Christian mission without first understanding the context within which we plan to place the mission. Indeed, while I was conducting the interviews for the case study presented in chapter 2, many Colombians told me that international organizations should not send people to Colombia who do not understand the situation, because they can do more harm than good. Although this overview is brief, the analysis here is needed in order to craft an appropriate response for Christian mission in this zone of violent conflict.

Brief Sketch of Colombia

Colombia, the fourth largest country in South America, shares borders with Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Panama and Ecuador, and has coasts on both the Caribbean and the Pacific. It boasts a highly varied geography, including coastal lowlands, mountainous highlands, fertile valleys, plains, rainforest, and more than twenty thousand kilometers of rivers. More than 95 percent of the population resides in the valleys and along the rivers within the western, mountainous, part of the country.

Colombia’s largely urban population of more than forty million is estimated to be made up of approximately 58 percent mestizo (mixed Spanish and indigenous), 20 to 30 percent white, meaning that they identify themselves as fully Spanish or with other European ancestry, 10.5 percent Afro-Colombian or mixed African and white or indigenous, and 3.4 percent indigenous peoples.12 This breakdown is taken from a Library of Congress profile completed in 2007, but the article makes clear that the ethnic breakdown is approximate. One finds different percentages in other publications, especially with respect to the percentage of indigenous people, which varies from 1 percent to the 3.4 percent found in the Library of Congress profile, and with respect to the number of people with African ancestry, which is sometimes estimated at nearly 20 percent. The upper class, approximately 5 percent of the population, mainly identifies itself as white, and the middle class, about 20 percent of the population, is mostly mestizo or white. Thirty-four percent of the population lives below Colombia’s poverty line, and these are mostly mestizo, indigenous, or Afro-Colombian, and most of them live in rural areas.13 About 75 percent of the population resides in urban areas, largely concentrated in four major cities: Bogotá, Medellin, Cali, and Barranquilla.14

Colombia is traditionally a Roman Catholic country, although the Constitution of 1991 gives Colombians the right to freely practice other religions. At least 87 percent of Colombians identify as Roman Catholic, and estimates go as high as 95 percent.15 The Catholic Church has played an extraordinarily active role in working for peace in Colombia at all levels: local, regional, and national. At a formal level, the Colombian Conference of Bishops (CEC) has advocated for a negotiated settlement to the conflict that involves dialogue with all of Colombian society. The CEC itself has participated in formal dialogues and negotiations, sometimes publicly and sometimes behind the scenes, for an end to the violence. One Church activity important for our investigation involves sponsoring what are called pastoral dialogues. Under Colombian law, only government officials and Catholic clergy are permitted to negotiate directly with armed actors. Members of the clergy hold these dialogues locally and regionally and can thus create the space for encounters between warring factions, or between armed groups and threatened communities. These dialogues have assisted threatened communities with removing blockades, eliminating threats of displacement, and returning kidnapping victims.16 Pastoral dialogues played an important role in the resolution of Micoahumado’s problems with armed groups, which is discussed in detail in the next chapter. Because of their deep involvement in Colombian conflicts, numerous Catholic bishops, priests, and pastoral workers have been threatened, displaced and killed.

Map of Colombia

Historical Factors in the Conflict

The roots of the conflict in Colombia are complex, and a complete history is beyond the scope of this investigation. In fact, no consensus exists within Colombian society as to the root causes of the violence. There are multiple actors and historical processes at play, a reason for the difficulty in reaching a negotiated solution.17 Some context, however incomplete, is necessary so that the reader can understand references made in the interviews in chapter 2.

One can find roots of the present-day Colombia conflict in the history of Spanish colonization. From the beginning of the sixteenth century, the most isolated and peripheral areas of Colombia were settled by groups marginalized by the Spanish conquerors: mestizos, Afro-Colombians, people of mixed African and other heritage, and poor whites. These mostly subsistence farmers fled to the periphery to escape a situation of land ownership highly concentrated in the hands of the elite in other areas. Traditionally, the Colombian state has not been present in these peripheral areas, and control was left to local authorities. These isolated areas were never well integrated into the rest of the Colombian state, and this lack of integration is one factor that has contributed to the present-day conflict.18 As noted earlier, even today 75 percent of the population is concentrated in just four urban areas.

Even after the end of Spanish rule, in 1810, concentration of rural lands in the hands of a few continued. These large landowners formed part of the governing elite, but remained distant from the people who actually lived on the lands. The campesinos living and working on the lands did not hold title to them, leading to a precarious existence and regular violent clashes among groups competing for control of the land.19

The current armed conflict can be traced to a period called “La Violencia,” a civil war between the two ruling parties, Liberal and Conservative. Dur...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Colombia Context
• Chapter 2: Sustaining Life
• Chapter 3: Constructing a New Mission Paradigm
• Chapter 4: International Accompaniment as Christian Mission
• Chapter 5: Accompaniment as Peacebuilding
• Conclusion
• Bibliography