I first read the following correspondence between Yvonne Dilling (b. 1955) and Mary Jo Bowman (b. 1955) many years ago, in a 3″ × 9″ pamphlet published by the A. J. Muste Institute. I thought then, and think now, that it was the greatest American conversation on violence: the most searching and respectful and dialogic, the least pretentious and dogmatic, and in my judgment, and in the judgment of the many students I’ve read it with, the most productive.
At the time of writing, Yvonne Dilling was a resident of Tabor House, a “contemplative political action and Third World dialogue center for hospitality” in Washington, D.C. She attended Manchester College, majored in Peace Studies, traveled extensively in Central America. Mary Jo Bowman was director of a Church of the Brethren Peace Education and Evangelism Program. She too had attended Manchester and majored in Peace Studies. The two were friends and remain friends.
The dialogue is typical of its time; all across the peace movement, activists were grappling with the question of revolutionary violence. Fine, they felt, to oppose imperialist wars, colonialist wars, wars of geopolitical calculation, wars of oppression. But what if the wars were being conducted by the colonized against the colonizers? They all read Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), with its implacable denunciation of nonviolence, and they all were on the side of the colonized in their struggles for self-determination. So what should one do or think if the colonized turned, as Fanon had told them to, to violence? Barbara Deming’s 1968 essay “On Revolution and Equilibrium” deals precisely with this question.
But the dialogue is also unique: a dialogue between equals, Platonic in its intensity and leisureliness. Dilling was working with the Sandinistas, supportive of their cause, and—to oversimplify—supportive also of their revolutionary violence. Bowman held more closely to the commitment to nonviolence that she and Dilling had shared. Each respected the other, was curious about the other, but not deferential or passive in relation to the other. Their shared inquiry is animated by both zeal and love.
Dear Mary Jo,
The Peace Studies Institute has heard of our lively suppertime discussions about violence and nonviolence, and has asked us to chronicle some of our reflections over the past two tumultuous years. In retrospect, trying to synthesize my past with my personal involvement in the lives and anguish of the Nicaraguan people has been at once frightening and exciting, painful and joyful. Now a year after the Sandinista victory, I need to talk with you again about where I (we) find ourselves. What I vicariously experienced of the revolution through the Nicaraguans here in D.C. and then in Nicaragua in September ’79 has deeply affected me. I found myself working in solidarity with their struggle without thoroughly understanding its implications for my pacifist position. The praxis came into my life before the reflection and analysis. Diving in without first calculating the consequences has made all the difference, for I do not think my involvement would have happened any other way.
How can I explain the process through which I’ve come? I grew up believing that the definition of violence could be reduced to the use of guns or other direct physical attack. I now see that the limited options for change, violent or nonviolent, for most of the peoples of the world are directly related to the unlimited options offered me as a North American—in terms of health, education, food, shelter, meaningful work, a life basically free of fear. I must come to grips with the fact that my freedoms have not been acquired without struggle. The blood and suffering of native peoples, slaves, immigrants, and people of other colors from around the world have paid for our “liberty.” They continue to pay, and as a Christian I must admit that reality and work with it.
I came to the Nicaraguan liberation struggle with all the academic and theological lessons down pat: thou shalt not kill; violence always breeds more violence; the oppressed historically have overthrown evil powers only to become oppressors themselves; those who live by the sword will perish by the sword; means must be consistent with desired ends; all life is equally sacred; one single life is too great a sacrifice for any cause.
My perspective on the writings of well-known proponents on both sides of the question has been altered: Christ; Gandhi; M. L. King, Jr.; Ellul; Helder Camara; Camilo Torres. I am different from the white, middle class, concerned North American, Brethren-educated Christian who two years ago came to a new job from Manchester College. I’ve been moved by the life, the struggle, the spirit and vision of the poor of Central America, moved to examine my own life and attitudes critically, to examine the priorities and intentions of my government. I have to begin to live those changes within me here in the city.
I came to support the Sandinista armed struggle. I understand why the Salvadorean people have resorted to armed struggle, and I support them. It is still hard for me to write that on paper, especially to be published in the Peace Studies Bulletin. I cannot at this point in my life say lightly, without stumbling that I am a pacifist. But I do say more humbly and more confidently that I am seeking to be a disciple of Christ, and understand the hard choices required of me as a North American.
The classical principles of nonviolence I quoted earlier are still important to me; they still hold their truth. But there are many supplemental “truths” which have acquired great significance: peace and justice are inseparable; be wise as serpents but gentle as doves; greater love shows no one than the one who lays down her/his own life for another; real change comes from the bottom up; the rich will not listen even to one who has risen from the dead.
Even if I had not had the personal involvement with the Nicaraguan struggle, as a Christian and a believer in nonviolence it would be important to study and analyze revolutionary Nicaragua today and look for evidence of the development of new forces for constructing a changed Nicaragua. The Gospels tell us time and again to “look for the signs” that proclaim the coming of the Kingdom. We must get beyond the rhetoric of “marxist Nicaragua” fed us by the U.S. press and look for the signs in Nicaragua.
Everyone who holds high the values of social and economic justice, of people-before-profits, of basic inalienable human rights for all, should be excited about Nicaragua today.
The promise of genuine change for workers and peasants has gone far beyond rhetoric in Nicaragua. “The poor will inherit the earth” resounded in my mind as I traveled through Nicaragua seven weeks after victory. The entire country seemed a chaotic, but fervent horizon of hope. I was awed by the contrast between the beautiful, natural terrain and the destruction wrought by Somoza’s bombs. But amidst that devastation I saw and came to know an empowered people full of revolutionary creativity, destitute in material things, but as their victory hymn proclaims, “owners of their own history, architects of their future.”
The neighborhood block organizations, called Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), provide a forum for individual participation in building the new society. The CDSs are offspring of the neighborhood Civilian Defense Committees formed by the people to protect themselves from Somoza. In the desperation of the struggle, they accumulated experience and developed new forces which opened the way for the people to take greater charge of their lives.
I visited a CDS that had only recently stopped organizing clandestine first aid clinics and had begun distributing emergency food. On a week day evening they discussed the health hazard of the street’s stagnant water puddles, as well as what it meant to elect a committee member to represent them at a city-wide meeting. They also discussed a proposed four-year national priorities plan and sent their opinions with their representative to the city-wide meeting.
That kind of grass-roots democratic process was and is happening in factories, schools, large farms and small towns. At the national level in the Council of State, every sector is guaranteed a voice—the church, the trade and peasant unions, the women’s association, the council of private enterprise, the traditional political parties. The death penalty was abolished immediately after Somoza’s defeat. Peasants now have access to land, and agricultural credits are weighed according to a balance between personal need and the country’s larger agricultural needs. (For example, last spring the rent per hectare for land planted in corn or beans was lower than the rent charged for land cultivated for tobacco.) In spite of the destruction of 90% of the industrial capacity and a $1.5 billion foreign debt, and other enormous problems, at the people’s bidding, the Government of National Reconstruction made a literacy campaign the national priority of the first year. A year later, Nicaragua’s illiteracy rate has been reduced from a historically high 53% to less than 13%.
I present all these examples because it is important to ask how such human-oriented social values and priorities surfaced from the hate and violence of an armed insurrection. Probably the single most important thing for a North American pacifist to learn from the Nicaraguan liberation struggle is to put the concept of violence into its proper perspective. Institutionalized violence is not something we North American pacifists readily comprehend. We equate the violence of a military dictatorship and the violence of a people’s self-defense.
The decision to use armed struggle in Nicaragua has to be viewed within the context of the brutality of the Somoza regime. Anastasio Somoza ran the country as a private estate backed by a private army. He owned banks, the air and shipping lines, the fishing industry, construction companies, factories, and 50% of the arable land. Following the 1972 earthquake which destroyed the capital city, his construction companies got the bids to rebuild on his land, using the international aid and assistance which flowed through his banks. He maintained his stronghold on the life and economy of the country through military terror: torture, “pacification” maneuvers, assassination of opposition leadership, slaughter of innocent youths and children. I cannot be surprised at the aggression and violence of the Nicaraguan people’s eventual outpouring of anger. It was understandable.
After months of studying and translating reports of human rights violations, of seeing the Latin American press photos, of comforting the anguished friends who lost family and friends at Somoza’s hands, of discovering that the National Guard learned its torture techniques from U.S. military advisors, how could I not but re-think the assertion that all violence is the same?
It becomes clear to me why those who die of malnutrition and disease, who hunger and thirst for bread and justice speak of revolution and why those who hold the reins of wealth and power speak of “gradual and peaceful change,” or “working through the system.” I realized last year that anything that was legal in Nicaragua was absolutely non-threatening and meaningless to the Somoza regime. In such a situation, the passage of power to the opposite hands could come only through organized popular resistance. The holders of power forced that resistance to resort to violent means. In many parts of Latin America today, the means of the resistance are no longer determined by the common people.
I do not know that any of the popular opposition groups in Nicaragua practiced nonviolent resistance on principle. However, the fact that they all foresaw armed insurrection as inevitable does not negate the significant fact that for many years, their resistance was de facto nonviolent: the crippling national strikes carried out jointly by owners and workers, the funeral services which were often silent mass protest marches, the women who occupied the United Nations building in Managua, the hunger strikes organized by health workers or by mothers of the disappeared, the occupations of churches, the preaching of sermons against the state violations.
If Nicaraguan archbishop Obando y Bravo had preached what Salvadorean Archbishop Romero preached he would have also been slain. In a Sunday homily last May, Oscar Romero spoke directly to the Salvadorean National Guard:
Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God should prevail that says “do not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law . . . I beg you, I beseech you. I order you, stop the killing.
Archbishop Romero was assassinated the day after he preached against the guardians of the ruling class in Nicaragua. The women who staged a sit-in at the UN office were tear-gassed, jailed, beaten. Peasants who asked for decent wages were murdered alongside their families in their sleep. Students who protested because the poor could not afford a bus fare hike were assaulted, tear-gassed, imprisoned, tortured, their genitals ripped off . . . I could go on.
I shall never forget the story recounted by a North American nun of two 14-year-old boys taken by the National Guard from their home beside hers, shot in the vacant field behind her street, laid on the ground with red and black FSLN kerchiefs tied around their necks, pistols placed in their hands. Their bloody photo with the accompanying article claiming to have captured and killed “communists,” appeared in Somoza’s newspaper the following day.
I cannot ask why after 40 years of oppression those people did not try a massive nonviolent resistance against Somoza. Rather, I ask why they tried nonviolent tactics at all. They did try them. They began with them, and never ceased trying to use them. The people suffered with one another and—out of love for their comrades—could not but resist, even when it meant armed insurrection.
In discussing my personal background with a Sandinista woman my age, she was puzzled by both the “Historic Peace Churches,” and a “Peace Studies Major.” On explaining those, she commented, “We’re all nonviolent, you know, but we did what we had to do.” As in that young woman, there was an amazing lack of hatred or vengeance in the people following victory. The people told me out of their own experiences that hate is counter-revolutionary. They knew that hate and vengeance will not bring about a more equitable and just life for the poor.
Why does hate immediately come to our minds when revolution is mentioned? Is it possible to plan a military strategy, to take up arms out of love? (I ask that question still very much opposed to the Christian Crusade theology.) The Sandinistas were not hate-filled terrorists. They were motivated by human solidarity, by compassion for their people. The important aspect of the revolution was not the armed struggle. Granted, that was chosen as the only possible means to get rid of the dictatorship. However, the emphasis of the insurrection was always the carrying through of the revolution to its ultimate goals: constructing a society based on economic, social and political justice. That translates into democracy for all, not just the few; equitable distribution of goods and services; freedom not only to walk the streets at night, but to do so with a full belly; freedom from fear of death or torture for speaking one’s mind; and the opportunity for full time, meaningful employment.
I would venture to say that those FSLN objectives grew out of the Sandinistas’ knowledge of and experience in the life of the poor. The FSLN was the vanguard in the insurrection, but it was grounded in the people. How else, and why else, could the Sandinistas reject the excesses of post-victory retaliation which characterizes some revolutionary struggles, such as Iran? The first post victory slogan I heard proclaimed was, “Unyielding in war, generous in victory.”
FSLN leader Tomas Borge, soon after being placed in charge of the prisons holding the National Guard after victory, came face to face with the man who had tortured him during seven long years in Somoza’s dungeons. Before the entire crowd of Guardsmen and Sandinistas in that prison he said, “You will live with my forgiveness. That is my only revenge.”
I must ask how Nicaragua kept from being a hate-filled individualistic nation after four decades of somocismo and so many years of organized armed resistance. The importance of cultural revolution is clear. The people—both leadership and at the grassroots—experienced a change of consciousness through the long period of civilian resistance. The Sandinistas came to realize that the rank and file National Guard were as much victims of U.S. imperialism as were the civilian poor. Many in the middle class learned that too. By joining with the poor, they learned that the few material benefits they had known were achieved at the expense of the poor, and that the system represented by Somoza had raped them all alike. Two months after victory, I rode through the poor barrios of the capital city with an upper-middle-class, 20-year-old woman. Unlike anything I had heard from her class in any part of Latin America, she said, “You see those shacks? Somoza got rich by squeezing them dry. It is precisely for those people that we made the revolution, and with them we will build the new Nicaragua.” I was humbled by her passion and willingness to sacrifice. She had carried a weapon with the Sandinistas.
The experiences of Nicaragua have left me with a political realism. I have learned a great deal about U.S. imperialism. By that I mean that the ruling class in our country will support any kind of regime in order to maintain the economic and political position of power it has built in the world. The United States refused to accept the will of the Nicaraguan people expressed through their full involvement with the FSLN. The United States, in fact, refused to accept the political will of the people until the moment when it became clear that the FSLN would shortly achieve a military victory. One form of power spoke to the United States: military might. The U.S. government would not even acknowledge the existence of the FSLN until they had captured enough arms and gathered enough forces to hold power once taken. When, at that time, the FSLN announced a provisional government of five representatives of the main political opposition groups, the State Department’s reaction was to attempt to divide and weaken them. Self-determination for other peoples is not a priority of U.S. foreign policy.
I have had fantasies in the past about how a massive nonviolent mobilization against Somoza might have defeated his regime. The love, determination and courage of the people in the face of the National Guard could have converted the soldiers to see the evil of Somoza and the wrong of killing their own people. As a Christian, I must allow for that kind of hope for conversion. Even if that conversion had happened, though, I don’t believe even that would have been enough to stop U.S. political and economic intervention. If, through nonviolent resistance, the people could have converted Somoza, I still believe the United States would have used its economic and military might to override the will of the people, installing a new face on the same repressive system.
Coming to that realization has shed a different light on my understanding of “wise as serpents.” It verifies what I believe of Brazil’s Helder Camara: as a well-known believer in nonviolent resistance, he is dangerous to the powerful because his nonviolent charisma is coupled with political and economic sophistication. I believe much the same of Gandhi. It is not as true of many of the believers of nonviolence in our country today. We are ineffective nonviolent resisters. Our ineffective nonviolence in this country allows our government to carry out the policies which support military dictatorships and illegitimate governments all over the world. Our ineffective nonviolence must take part of the blame for the starvation, suffering, death in most of the rest of the world. Gandhi said that, given a choice between violence and cowardice, the violence would be preferable. I believe it was preferable in Nicaragua. It will be the only viable choice in El Salvador and Guatemala unless we change in this country.
So where am I today, Mary Jo? I tell you about Nicaragua, but my concern is me (us). How do I translate the experience of these last two years into my life and work? “Nonviolence, when preached by the rich, is treason” (Arturo Paoli). In Yahweh’s purpose of bringing humanity to its fullness, where does my lifestyle place me, oppressor, or with the oppressed?
Facing hard questions,
Yvonne
* * *
Dear Yvonne,
You know how I’ve grappled with the questions raised by your support of the Sandinistas. At times during the past year and a half it may have seemed that I was mercilessly playing devil’s advocate in our frequent conversations about violence and nonviolence. But I must confess to you and to all our friends who will read this article that I, too, no longer glibly say I’m a pacifist. And I suspect I squirm just as much as you do to see that in print, especially now that I’m employed as a peace advocate for the Church of the Brethren. I have shared the day-to-day struggle with the moral ambiguities you discovered amidst the revolutionary situation in Nicaragua, and have found myself trying to gain perspective on what it means to be committed to peace and justice in the face of such tyranny. I have drawn some painful insights, also, from my own exposure to the sufferings of the poor in this city.
Before I launch into a response to your reflection on lessons from Nicaragua, let me remind you of some of the ways that my own pacifism has been tested.
I remember my first significant experience in a large city—Chicago, fall and winter, 1975. I lived in a cooperative student household run by the Urban Life Center on the northern edge of Hyde Park, bordering the solidly black, low-income area of Kenwood. Being on the streets was like a slap in the face—the air of racial and economic tensions, the defensive aloofness most people call “street sense” stung my rural innocence. I was humbled to realize that my zealous pacifism had never really been tested; I had come from the safe Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, from a Church of the Brethren farm family, and from there to the quiet Indiana agricultural town that hosts Manchester College. Aside from tussles with siblings and cousins, and occasional threats of spankings from parents, my childhood and adolescence were relatively free of confrontation. So, ever since that shocking awakening in Chicago, I have been asking myself why I’m a pacifist. With humility and joy, I can honestly say I have come a long way in understanding what motivates me and my response to violent situations.
I have come to see that my upbringing taught me to avoid conflict. The well-internalized dictum, “Don’t say anything if you can’t say something nice” may explain why I’m so quiet! No, seriously, I am coming to understand more deeply how an unhealthy attitude towards conflict and power played into my precocious pacifism. Only in the past five years or so have I begun to acknowledge my capacity for anger and to learn to channel it creatively. And that’s all tied into the process of deepened understanding and practice of prayer and meditation, which compels me to come to grips with my fears and angers and to heed their lessons about personal and political power. My studies in the social sciences have brought me to a more sophisticated understanding of the roots of violence and the varieties of its expression. My experience of living and working with others in situations of inevitable conflict have provided experiences that back up my academic insights.
Living in Washington, D.C. has given me ample exposure to violence. Just being a woman makes traveling the streets in many parts of this city a poignant reminder of oppression. I have not been physically attacked, but I must be always wary when I’m out alone after dark, even in our neighborhood. Verbal abuse from men, even when disguised in ostensibly affirmative language, angers me in a way that helps me appreciate why victimized people lash out in frustrated self-defense. When I remember the news that a neighbor woman was raped at 2 o’clock in the afternoon no more than four blocks from my house, I know what outrage feels like. I am infuriated both because a neighbor has been violated and because I must live with the knowledge that it could have been me.
For over a year, I spent one or two nights a month with women in D.C. who have taught me a great deal about human suffering. During the day they wander from public library to park bench to cafeteria to department store to bus station, often carrying all their possessions in shopping bags. They are the homeless women of our nation’s capital—several hundred of them, we think. They are on the streets because of mental or physical illness, abandonment by family or society’s institutions, a heritage of poverty, or personal misfortune. In a number of overnight shelters provided by churches and religious groups, I have met them and listened to their stories—often amidst their outbursts of anger at men, the government and themselves.
On a number of smelly cigarette-smoke and dirty-clothes nights I’ve been struck with how different my world is from theirs. I can volunteer to spend the night at the shelter and then go home to my own bed to catch up on my sleep. I don’t have to eat their spongy oatmeal and drink their lukewarm tea, or go out into the chilly streets every morning. Yet, I am also reminded again as I see those women on the streets, invisible to most other people they pass, that they have taught me a great deal about sanity, about survival, and about anger. The belligerence of some of the women haunts me—slaps my white, middle-class, educated face—and makes me wonder how I would cope nonviolently with the brutality so many of those women face on the streets every day, and every night when the shelters are full. Their anger is very real, very justified, and I laud it as a sign of their relentless dignity.
Some of my friends live in a nearby neighborhood that is predominantly low-income black. Particularly during the summertime, when folks there take to the streets and front stoops to find some relief from their sweltering, crowded apartments, I have felt an air of tension, a hair’s breadth away from the kind of explosion that leveled much of that neighborhood in the riots twelve years ago. Unemployment, particularly among young black men in that area, is around 70%. Families are rapidly being evicted from their homes to make way for the renovation for upper-income and for higher real-estate profits.
My glimpses into the lives of some of the children in that neighborhood—through my occasional involvement as a volunteer with a day care center and girls’ Saturday recreation program—have helped me understand what poverty can do to the human spirit. Just like the youth I “policed” several summers ago (I was hired as arts and crafts director for the summer recreation program) in a tobacco-growing tenant-farming area near my Virginia home, children in the inner city seem to relate to their peers and to the larger world with cruel suspicion and self-defensive hostility.
I wasn’t surprised to hear a few months ago about the shooting of a policeman in a drug-related skirmish in the riot-corridor area of D.C.; I was even less surprised by the sobering news that the man who shot and killed the policeman was lauded by many in that neighborhood and around the city as a hero of the oppressed.
All of this is to say that your bringing the Nicaraguan revolution to our supper table was not my first exposure to situations in which violence, in one form or another, is a given.
But I still find the issue of armed revolutionary violence a troubling one. It forces me to once again examine my motivations, my ethics, my faith. It brings me face to face with bloody human suffering. I find that my response consists more of questions than of answers. My only conclusive response is one of faith—not of doctrines or moralisms, nor of easy answers or clear conscience. My faith calls me more and more into a life of tension and ambiguity, with compassion being my primary discipline. My spirituality and my politics are becoming more and more deeply wed these days, particularly as I grapple with Christlike responses to injustice and power and as I call myself a peacemaker and a bearer of hope.
I am challenged by the way you allowed yourself to be drawn so fully into the Nicaraguan struggle. I am grateful for how your involvement drew me in, even though I sometimes rebelled against the questions and harsh realities you brought home to share with me. My playful threats to dress as a Sandinista for Halloween last year somehow did not seem funny to either of us. Perhaps I felt the tension most keenly when I came home from a month-long sojourn (with a Manchester College group) in India last January bringing a khadi (homespun, handwoven cotton) banner bearing a Mahatma Gandhi quote: “Nonviolence is the greatest force available to mankind” (sic). Could we live with that proclamation hanging beside your Sandino posters? What would Gandhi have said of our dilemma?
I suspect that he would have concurred with Helder Camara’s notion that commitment to the principle of nonviolence must be coupled with sophistication about the political and economic forces being confronted. Gandhi’s work with the poorest of India’s poor (the harijans or untouchables), his denouncement of unrestrained technology, and his disdain for paternalistic Christian missionary efforts in his homeland indicated that his disciplines of satyagraha were firmly grounded not only in India’s rich, spiritual heritage but in political realism. In other words, he knew what he was up against. And you are right: from what I can gather from his writings, when faced with a choice between cowardice and violence, Gandhi would have advocated violence. His passionate commitment to suffer death before inflicting lethal violence on another still allowed him to see that violence takes various forms and calls for various responses. His compassion and sophistication made allowances for necessary compromise to those who are either ill-equipped for nonviolent resistance or who find their adversary so tyrannical that nothing short of armed defense seems tolerable. But even though he characterized the Polish resistance to the German forces in World War II as almost nonviolent—he still maintained that suffering love is ultimately more powerful than self-defense.
I doubt that any of the classical proponents of nonviolence on your list would condemn the use of armed confrontation in a desperate resistance to tyranny. I surely cannot condemn the campesinos in Nicaragua who took up arms against Somoza. Nor can I condemn my North American friend who, in defense of himself and his Nicaraguan co-travelers, carried a gun through the Nicaraguan mountains where National Guardsmen were hiding soon after the Sandinistas declared their victory. I can empathize with those who seized the U.S. hostages in Iran. I cannot condemn the homeless woman who hurls curses at her passersby as she wanders the streets of downtown Washington.
As I come to understand more deeply the anger that wells up in me when my freedom and dignity are violated, and as I come to share glimpses of the much greater oppression of my neighbors down the street or in the third world, I find I cannot speak of peace without demanding justice.
But the nagging questions remain: What if I had been in Nicaragua during the insurrection? Would I have taken up arms? Or perhaps, less hypothetically what if you had decided to join the Frente? What do I say of the Nicaraguan church leaders who laud the Sandinista victory in July ’79 as God’s victory, or as you suggest—that the FSLN victory is a sign of the kingdom of God? What do I say of the Trappist priest Ernesto Cardenal, who hailed the FSLN’s armed struggle as one not only of justice, but of love? Is it possible to love one’s enemies by killing them?
You point to the lack of vengeance in the victorious Sandinista’s response to the National Guard, to military commander Tomas Borge’s forgiveness of his torturer, to the abolition of the death penalty, the literacy campaign, land reform. But I want to beg caution in placing unrealistic hopes in the Government of National Reconstruction, or any government. If the kingdom of God is any closer at hand in Nicaragua, we must more realistically look for the signs in the grass roots organizations where people are working together for the common good.
Pardon me, but my Anabaptism is showing. I cannot put much hope in governments or militia, even those who show extraordinary signs of concern for the people. The realism you call for in seeing U.S. imperialism for what it is must also be applied as a critical posture towards all holders of political power. Now, I would agree with you that there is a vast difference between a regime backed by the wealth and military prowess like that of the United States and that of a fledgling government such as the Nicaraguan Government of National Reconstruction, or a host of other governments in newly decolonized third world countries. (This is why I consider cooperation with the U.S. military unthinkable, while at the same time confessing my sympathies with the Sandinistas.) But I think we would be politically and spiritually naive to glorify the Sandinista victory as a victory of pure good over pure evil.
This caution nags me most relentlessly as I recall films I have seen about Nicaragua since Somoza was ousted. My stomach rebels as I see women chatting proudly about what kinds of guns they carried during the insurrection. The excitement I feel at all the positive signs of genuine change in Nicaragua stops short as I see film footage of preschool children play-acting combat scenes against the National Guard. I cannot help but wonder how the psyche of a people, and their reverence for all human life, is indelibly colored by their use of lethal violence to declare their freedom.
The Anabaptist in me also rises in resistance to how quickly liberation theologians equate Christianity with socialism, and move from that to proclaiming a just revolution approach to liberation struggles parallel to Augustine’s just war theory. We must be careful that our rejection of the ancient link between Christianity and capitalism and all the other nasty-isms in the world doesn’t lead us to a doctrinaire left-wing ideological position that invokes God’s name to justify our own agenda and our own time frame. We must be careful if we presume to be acting on God’s side, especially when that zeal leads us to support those who are deliberately killing people. Dan Berrigan’s challenge to Ernesto Cardenal is appropriate here: Is not the death of a single human too heavy a price to pay for the vindication of any principle, however sacred? Of course, if I had the choice between actively supporting Somoza or an FSLN, I would choose the FSLN. But I would do so with fear and trembling, much like that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he chose to contemplate Hitler’s murder. He knew full well that by choosing what he saw as a necessary evil he was contradicting a basic principle of his Christian faith. He chose sin for the sake of his people.
That attitude of humility—of penance, if you will—gets at the distinction I would make between not condemning armed revolutionary violence, but not justifying it either. If I had been in Nicaragua two years ago, would I have joined the Frente? I don’t know, just like I don’t know what I would do if someone was about to rape my grandmother! I hope—I pray—that if I felt compelled to take up arms that I would not do it arrogantly, as if a Zealot bringing in the Kingdom of God. I pray that I would not invoke Jesus’ blessings to justify actions that clearly fall short of his way of responding to evil. (Jesus understood the Zealot appeal and refused it, in the face of Roman repression of his people that was likely as harsh, in many ways, as Somoza’s grip on Nicaragua.) I would hope my choice, however impassioned, would allow for the most definite possibility that I could be wrong.
Perhaps it is a luxury that I even have such a choice.
That realization of privilege is the crux of the moral ambiguity I find myself confronting. My deepest agony on the whole topic of violence and nonviolence comes as I read your reiteration of what I’ve heard countless times about Nicaragua: the people were forced to resort to military resistance because the U.S.-supported Somoza regime gave them no choice. In a very real sense, there is blood on my hands, my bloody pacifist hands. I am guilty of murder. Forgive me if I seem to overdramatize, but consider this: our federal tax dollars have been used time and again to fund thousands of atrocities such as the one your nun-friend described. I have never carried a gun (I even have trouble killing mice), but my money has supported and my silence has allowed some of the most brutal violence in the history of the world. The nation of which I am part has perpetuated the slow, torturous death of malnutrition and disease that our society’s policies have allowed, if not caused.
The more I allow myself to face that truth about my participation in a violent world, the more my faith and my intellect call me to humility and compassion rather than to doctrinaire ethics. I cannot hope for a clear conscience. I can only hope that my ethical choices are motivated by love rather than fear. I can only pray that my increasing passion for justice can be expressed in ways that do not betray the spirit of the Prince of Peace I profess to follow.
The crucial issue for us, then, is not what we would have done if we had been in Nicaragua during the insurrection. We were not there, nor are we likely ever to be in such a combat situation, unless we choose to deliberately place ourselves there. The crucial question is, rather, what does our commitment to nonviolence mean as citizens of one of the most powerful and oppressive nations in recorded history? What does it mean to hold up Jesus’ model of resisting evil by dying rather than killing, amidst a world so permeated with violence—whether it be verbal threats on the streets, psychological violence done to minorities, institutionalized violence inflicted on the unemployed, or bombings plotted to counter Central American insurrectionists?
I confess that I don’t know. The older I get and the more I learn, the more tentative my answers become. The more my faith moves me towards an acquaintance with the mystery of life and gives me an increasing awe at Jesus’ irrational way of confronting evil, the more passionate I become about these questions. It is becoming increasingly clear that the best way to confront the questions is not to invoke platitudes, but to place myself in the thick of the confrontations. And to pray for mercy. I know that a pacifism untested is an affront to those who suffer. I must take sides, on behalf of the victims of the oppressive powers. I must either be willing to take on suffering or keep my mouth shut.
Humbly,
MJB
* * *
Dear MJ,
You’re right.
Love, Yvonne
No . . . thankfully, you won’t let me end with that. The issues you raise need yet another response.
Thank you for bringing the violence issue home to our own soil. That is difficult for me to do. After living a year with my heart in Nicaragua and my body in the United States, it is with reluctance that I bring my heart home to work here. I would rather go to Nicaragua. I am alienated from the dominant lifestyle and priorities of my country, although I love the people.
Yet as you point out so well (and my Nicaraguan friends would agree), the definitive struggle for justice in Latin America and the rest of the oppressed world needs to happen here in this country. The problems in Central America cannot be solved without dealing with their roots—buried within our own affluent lifestyles and economic structures in the United States.
For Christians in Nicaragua, plunging into political life was mandatory; it required a straight yes or no, for or against Somoza. I wish it were that clear in the United States. I raise up your question: What does our commitment to nonviolence mean as citizens of one of the most powerful and oppressive nations in history? We have structured society in a way that allows us to focus on our personal purity and not take responsibility for the poor. Or, worse yet, we can stop at bandaid efforts which help the poor tolerate the inequities of our economic system. We can boycott Nestle’s products, reduce our meat consumption, register as conscientious objectors to war, and mistakenly believe our hands are clean. We can be arm-chair pacifists. Most of us are.
You remind me of the stinging fact that I will always live in luxury by the simple fact that I have a choice. I have chosen to live simply, that is to stay below a certain income level and to limit my consumption habits. Whether out of guilt, clear choice, or martyrdom, the key word “choice” will always divide me from those who are chained in poverty. Only recently have I realized that by becoming a college graduate I joined a very tiny minority of the world’s population. All this is not to lay a guilt trip on myself or my upbringing, but rather to act responsibly with all that my family, my church, my position in society have given me.
So, having thoroughly flogged myself, I agree with your conclusion: my only response to the question of violence is one of faith. But that can be dangerously simplistic. Please do not let me divorce the faith from effectiveness. We are about bringing the Kingdom of fullness which, translated into concern for ending the exploitation of others, means an effective response of faith. It means taking a breath, and stepping into the political arena. The Gospel gives us strength to work for justice. However, in deciding how and where to apply that strength, we come face to face with political choices. It is here that I must step back and evaluate our Anabaptist heritage. I am ashamed to say that our Anabaptist counterparts in Nicaragua would not choose sides. In their passive nonresistance, they supported Somoza.
The violence in Nicaragua forced most Christians to move beyond the preoccupation with not compromising themselves in the struggle. Camilo Torres (Colombian revolutionary and priest) suggests that Jesus’ reminder “My Kingdom is not of this world” (often misinterpreted as “not of this present life”) must be held in tension with his prayer that his followers not be separated out of the world, but that they be preserved from evil. Considering all of Jesus’ life and teachings, Camilo questions whether we peacemakers would not better concern ourselves less with being preserved from evil and more with not separating ourselves from the world and its need of redemption.
I am not advocating an end to the long-held Anabaptist doctrine of separation of church and state. The Nicaraguan church certainly wants to retain its autonomy. I apologize for sounding as if the new Nicaraguan government ought to be hailed as bringing in the Kingdom of God. (Though if I were God, I’d certainly choose those beautiful mountains and people in which to do it!) However, I doubt I would apologize if I had lived through the last four nights of Somoza’s vengeance which delivered nonstop aerial bombardment on the major cities. I heard many Christians who lived through the battle describe the triumphal entry of the FSLN into the capital city as the dawning of God’s Kingdom in Nicaragua, and I was neither surprised nor offended by their metaphor.
That does not mean I disregard your caution of losing perspective on the reality that the Sandinistas are an earthly government. A government is still a government, I believe you say. You are absolutely right in pinpointing the difference between the people and the government. I got carried away. But I still cannot help but feel a surge of exhilaration when I see the desires of a people—oppressed for so long—translated into state priorities. That does not mean we cease to view the Government of National Reconstruction with a critical, objective eye.
I want to share some excerpts from a November 1979 Pastoral Letter written by the Nicaraguan bishops. It moves me deeply. We should study it together as a response to your concern for Nicaraguan Christians making dangerous connections between the coming Kingdom of God and the FSLN victory.
They express in the letter the clear-sightedness you are concerned about, acknowledging that the present reconstruction stage is at once chaotic, disorderly, vulnerable to errors and abuses, while it is also a time of profound creativity and bears signs of the Kingdom of God.
We must remember that no historical revolutionary event can exhaust the infinite possibilities for justice and absolute solidarity of the Kingdom of God. We must state that our commitment to the revolutionary process does not imply naivete, blind enthusiasm, or the creation of a new idol before which everyone must bow down unquestioningly . . .
The heart of Jesus’ message is the announcement of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom founded on God’s love for all humanity and in which the poor hold a special place . . . To announce the Kingdom means that we have to bring it into our lives. On that effort, the authenticity of our faith in God is staked, establishing what the Holy Scriptures call “justice and right” for the poor. It is commitment which tests our faith in Christ, who gave his life to proclaim the Kingdom . . . Jesus tells us that the Kingdom means liberation and justice (Luke 4:16–20), because it is a kingdom of life. Our need to build this kingdom is the basis for our accepting and participating in the current process, whose purpose is to ensure that all Nicaraguans truly live . . . By acting as Christians we become Christians. Without such solidarity, our announcement of the Good News is but an empty phrase.
I am remembering something a friend, a Nicaraguan Christian, said about objectivity toward state powers. He said he is ashamed to see part of the church hierarchy in Nicaragua today openly criticize the Sandinista government after having remained silent during Somoza’s terrible reign; Somoza may not have taken so many lives if the church had taken the risk to oppose the dictatorship when to do so promised repression and martyrdom. It took the church hierarchy many years of direct, then tacit support for the Somozas before the suffering of the people evoked a response of faith and solidarity. Where the Catholic Bishops were concerned, it was not until June 1979—six weeks before victory, that they issued a letter acknowledging the right of the Nicaraguan people to engage in revolutionary insurrection. To do what is perceived as the “Christian duty” today and criticize the government is a relatively safe move, given the climate of pluralism. A common denunciation I hear from Nicaraguans is that one must earn the right to criticize the revolutionary process by having displayed—amidst the repression—commitment to the cause of the poor. Hence, there is some eyebrow lifting at those sectors of the population who had very little to say on behalf of the poor but now have much to say on behalf of themselves.
The Bishop’s Pastoral letter reflects the type of dialogue taking place all over Nicaragua. I will not attempt to predict where Nicaraguan Christians will come out. It will largely depend on their ability to remain true to what they have learned about commitment to the poor.
I do not want to make the Nicaraguan people out to be unbelievable in their compassion and love. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that every bullet which flew from a Sandinista-held gun was propelled with love for the National Guard. The reality of the death and destruction from armed struggle cannot be denied. I reluctantly agree with Ellul at that point: all violence is of one kind. It cannot be separated into good and bad, pure and evil. The human reactions of anyone, including the Sandinistas, could only be expected. The vengeance manifests itself. It must. So there are instances where victory opened the way for some to express years of pent-up anger and hatred for Somoza supporters. That was especially true where the volatile issue of land ownership is concerned. For 20 years the peasants had been absolutely denied the power that comes with owning land, and a significantly large percentage of the urban population identifies itself as displaced peasantry. Inevitably, victory brought an excuse to take revenge for the wrongs done to the campesinos.
But the manner in which local Sandinista authorities handled these cases is what I find so hopeful. Their complete dedication to not only understanding and responding to the historical context in which the people operate, but in enabling the people to work out their own solutions, however long and arduous, impresses me. Along with that, they openly admit that they are new to this business of governing and will make mistakes.
I may be too distant to see clearly, but bear with me for one more example. In the southern town of Rivas, townspeople in a local restaurant told me that immediately after victory the people gathered in the town square to elect a provisional municipal government. They elected the same “patrons” of the town whom they had elected for years—the Latin American custom of class relations. After a few weeks in which the elected patrons proved they had learned nothing through the insurrectional process, the townspeople protested. Sandinista representatives then called the people together to talk about elections under Somoza and why certain people had always been elected. They discussed how during the struggle for self-determination, leadership rose out of personal involvement in the lives of the poor. The Sandinistas then noted that it had nothing to do with wealth, or formal education, but rather was a matter of commitment to serve the people and to be with the people. Subsequently, when new elections were held, those elected to office were ones who had already proved their commitment and leadership capability during the insurrection.
All this is to say that the new Nicaragua is a scene of rapid change. The single overwhelming impression that the people gave me last September, and continue to exude, is one of a people constructing their own history. But I sway from our theme . . .
I am not so naive as to be surprised if Nicaragua became a militant society where the power of weaponry is idolized. The first anniversary celebration included a display of weapons which will be used to fight off a U.S. intervention if necessary. Nicaragua took up arms to overthrow an unjust and repressive tyrant; they did not lay down those weapons upon achievement of their goal. Rather, they organized a standing army in the traditional sense of the modern nation state, in order to defend what they have won. I did not really expect anything different.
It becomes very difficult to know how to bring this to a close. As I said at the outset, your conclusion strikes home: my only response to violence is one of faith. I don’t know what I would have done had I been in Nicaragua two years ago. I think my support of the Sandinistas would have stopped short of my carrying a gun, but I would have collaborated with them, I am sure. But that is not the real issue. The question is what am I doing in the U.S.? Are there parallels in the experience of Nicaraguan Christians which can help answer that question?
One friend in particular, a Baptist pastor who did not take up arms but who collaborated fully with the Sandinistas, shared with me the memory of the day Arlen, a young woman from his parish, left to join the Sandinistas in the mountains. She asked for a book from his library to take with her: Fuerza de Amar (Strength to Love) by Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps she reached the point which Ellul seems to say is the best we can do: acknowledge that the historical moment we are in demands of us an action which does not hold up to the ideal set for us in Christ’s response to violence by turning the other cheek. Arlen must have been able to accept that tension as she pulled on her boots with King’s book tucked under her arm. She was killed brutally by the National Guard, so I cannot ask her. They tell me she was the most joyful person in the mountain camps. I pray we can accept the inevitable tensions in our lives with the joy that is promised in living with faith.
Adelante!
YK
* * *
Dear YK,
You have left me nearly speechless. As I review our verbose confessions, I cannot help but remember one of the most disarming moments during my travels in India last year. At a tea with several Indian religious leaders there arose considerable controversy about religion and ethics. After Muslims and Hindus and Christians and Sikhs had argued for a while about the true interpretations of their various faiths, the eldest in the crowd, a modest Gandhian whose appearance brought the Mahatma himself to mind, spoke words that brought the zealous religionists and their audience to a humorous, humble silence. He simply said, “Friends, let us remember that nonviolence is not talking too much.”
And so, my dear friend, lest I further taint my conscience with acts of violence, I will be brief. It seems only fair to our readers to confess that we find ourselves hard put to pose as proponents of opposite points of view. We initially thought we would call this article a “dialogue between a Sandinista and a Gandhian.” But the more we have talked, agonized, and laughed over the questions we address here, the more we have realized that we basically agree; those characterizations would deny the ambiguity we both bring to this discussion. Our temperaments and our experiences over the past two years are perhaps the most basic differences between us.
Our conclusions are few, our questions many. Let us hold the questions before us: With concern for personal purity aside, is not the refusal to inflict harm on another the most revolutionary approach to life? And, if we say “yes” to that, what do we as North Americans have to do to clean up our bloody hands? Rightly or wrongly, the Sandinistas did what they had to do. But what of those of us North Americans who join the Nicaraguans and other struggling people in the quest for self-determination? From our side of the border, what are we to do? What can we learn—about democracy, economics, and faith—from liberation movements in the Third World? How can we direct our energies in ways that truly break the cycle of violence which the United States propels by its inflated self-image and perverse foreign policies and domestic priorities? How do we take sides and still love our enemies? (You mean I must love Reagan?) Are we, too, so blinded by our riches that we will not listen to one who has risen from the dead?
We both say that our conclusions come, in the end, from our faith. You challenge me not to be apolitical. I challenge you not to become too invested in effectiveness. I would hope that we both—and all of our friends who share these questions—will learn more and more to live creatively with the tension between patience and zeal. You have taught me a lot about responding with abandon to the urgent call for justice. I hope I have helped you to remember the part of revolution which is patience.
With affection and respect, I close with excerpts from a letter between two friends who no doubt shared aspirations and questions similar to our own. Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and prolific writer on prayer and peace-making writes the following to James Forrest, now secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation:
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything . . .
The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.
You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.
. . . If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ’s truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments. Because I see nothing whatever in sight but much disappointment, frustration, and confusion . . .
The real hope, then is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand.
Yes, enough of this. We must either be willing to take on suffering or keep our pens silent and our mouths shut.
Shalom,
MJB