Author Archive
Tobias Roberts
Reverence for the Sacred Land: A Response to Endemic Violence in Central America
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
For five years I lived and worked in the outskirts of San Salvador with an organization supporting marginalized families living with HIV/AIDS. Though the agonizing combination of poverty and HIV formed a part of my daily experience, AIDS was not the main epidemic that surrounded my life. The World Health Organization considers more than 10 homicides per 100,000 residents to be at epidemic levels. From 2004 to 2009, El Salvador ranked first in the world with 62 homicides per 100,000 residents. After five years in San Salvador, having a pistol pointed at your head during an assault on the public busses became a common experience.
Church Leaders Join Fight Against Italian Energy Giant in Rural Guatemala
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
Tension filled the cramped, block-wall room in the Guatemalan highlands as indigenous leaders sat across from negotiators for ENEL, an Italian-based energy company building a US$228-million hydro-electric dam in the area. Local Mayan Ixhil leaders hoped the presence of a renowned Catholic archbishop, a prominent Presbyterian clergyman and a Mennonite development worker from the U.S. – me – would improve their chances in the high-stakes negotiations.
Community leaders in the heavily Catholic area first invited us to be part of the talks in May, 2011, when ENEL agreed to sit down with indigenous peoples on whose ancestral lands the Palo Viejo Dam is being built. Guatemalan Archbishop Alvaro Ramazzini, an internationally recognized defender of human rights, and Dr. Vitalino Similox, head of the Christian Ecumenical Council of Guatemala, helped facilitate the talks. I sat in as an international observer, having been sent to the area by the North American-based Mennonite Central Committee.
