|
Puerto
Rico Update, February 2002
The Church in Action: Its Struggle for
Peace in Vieques
Interview with Rev. Wilfredo Estrada
By Yvette Rodríguez
Published in Que Ondee Sola, January 2002
Rev. Estrada is an ordained minister in the
Church of God, secretary of the Puerto Rican Bible Society, and
current spokesman for the Ecumenical Coalition for Vieques, made
up of leaders of all the Christian churches in Puerto Rico. On August
5, 2001, Rev. Estrada and four others were arrested in Vieques after
entering the Navy firing range, managing to delay military exercises
for three hours. As a result, the Reverend was jailed without sentence
for 32 days and freed on September 7. The following is exerpted
from an interview published in Que Ondee Sola in January 2002.
Q: Could you explain the history of the
church’s role in the struggle against the Navy in the past,
the present, and what you see its role being in the future?
In the past, the Church was active, but more as
individuals, and since there was no support between all the working
groups, it stayed at the surface, and there were always groups more
identified with political action for independence than with action
of the church as such. This limited somewhat the true action of
the whole church.
|
Photo: Alina Luciano, Claridad
|
When the Ecumenical Coalition came in in 2000,
it entered in a pastoral sense and with unity of different sectors.
So there was the Catholic church, the various protestant churches,
and I am there as representative of the Pentecostal world, all supporting
a single cause. It is a pastoral action accepted by the community
and accepted by the political parties, though there was criticism.
[It was] an extraordinary opportunity for the Coalition to act,
first as a model of unity...
Second, it accompanies the different groups pastorally
and manages to get these groups to lay down violent attitudes for
attitudes of nonviolent, peaceful resistance... Secular society
rediscovered the church as well; it realizes that the church is
not only for singing between four walls... For some reason the church’s
emphasis on piety had become just praying about problems, singing,
and emphasizing personal salvation, without denouncing the injustice
of oppressive structures...
Q: So would you say that the Vieques struggle
gave the church an opportunity to use its voice in a new way?
Definitely... and people who never attended a
church realize there is nothing incompatible between being part
of a confession of faith and struggling for peace and people’s
abundant life... In the future we will maintain that concept of
unity and pastoral accompaniment of the people, and resist attack
by groups who say we are intervening in political affairs.
Q: Could you explain in more detail who
makes up the Ecumenical Coalition and how it started?
The Ecumenical Coalition was organized in January
2000. A vast group with a very simple structure has a spokesperson,
myself. All decisions are made by consensus. No votes are taken:
if we are not all in agreement nothing is done until we come to
an agreement. In this we work pastorally with the people of Vieques.
We don’t decide for them, but we accompany them in their decisions
and help to evaluate and give validity to what has been a nonviolent
peaceful resistance in relation to the Navy in Vieques.
The Ecumenical Coalition was born when the governor
of Puerto Rico decidedto accept the directives of President Clinton
and there is a need to guide the people in a peaceful, nonviolent
direction...
Q: What has been the church’s reaction
to the events of September 11 and how does this reaction affect
its participation in the Vieques struggle?
The events of September 11 shook the whole world
all at once, as it was too much to believe what had occurred. At
first, the people felt as if they didn’t know what they would
do and how to react and suddenly everyone thought there had to be
unity to defend the United States from this big attack. People thought
they had to give up all the civil rights they have earned and everything
else because we’re being attacked by a very dangerous enemy.
In that sense, the struggle in Vieques for the Navy’s departure
was also affected... But after weeks have passed and the war continued
and they didn’t find Bin Laden as was wanted and a government
basically was destroyed, then the waters even out and we look around
and affirm the struggle for peace in Vieques. Those 62 years of
war in Vieques do not allow that struggle to be put aside for what
has happened in the United States...
People have already begun to feel that there is
no contradiction between attending to Vieques and being in solidarity
with the pain of those in Washington and New York, with the pain
of the innocent in Afghanistan, the pain of Palestine, the pain
of Iran and wherever there is someone affected. We feel it is also
necessary to identify with that pain.
Thanks to Que Ondee Sola, Yvette Rodríguez
and Ramón López for this interview.
©2002 Fellowship of Reconciliation
| 
