Evangelism and the Guatemalan Civil War

Day 110 I stayed in Sololá
Day 111 kt:19.7 ta:1925 gps:N14°43.150' W 91°07.262'

I spent an extra day in Sololá doing a bunch of nothing. It was great. I wondered around the marketplace, which was a short distance from where I stayed, watching people interact and finding out the names of fruits and herbs that I did not recognize. The town in very small and walkable so I didn't even touch my bicycle. I walked around for a little bit longer and then spent most of my day in an internet cafe. I had neglected transcribing my blog and ended up typing until my fingers hurt. There was still a lot of work to do when the man who ran the internet cafe kicked me out so he could close up shop. I got a late start in the morning because I wanted to finish transcribing my blog.
Guatemalans do, indeed, drink atole in the mountains. This pleases me to no end even though my only two options are arroz con leche and arroz con leche con chocolate. I do love atole.
El Lago de Atitlan is a place of celestial beauty. It was created when a volcano blew its top. It is a natural lake that is high in the mountains and flanked by several dormant volcanoes. The clouds here seem so close to the ground that you can almost reach up and touch them. They fly by at very high speeds as this is a very windy place. I have no doubt that the ancient Mayans considered this a very sacred place. I took many pictures in many different lights. I am even camping in the mountains close to an overlook so I can savor the beauty of this place for one last time in the morning.
I have done a little research into the prevalence of Evangelism in this country. The Christian Childrens' Fund(CCF) is, indeed, one of the players in the history of the growth of Evangelism but it is not the only one. To understand the growth of Evangelism in this country one has to learn a little about the civil war that began in the 1960s and didn't officially end until peace accords of 1996 were signed. I have seen estimates that some 200,000 people were killed during the fighting. An independent inquiry declared that 93% of the atrocities were committed by government troops. Some might argue that the civil war is not quite over as many of those who played an active role in the slaughter of mostly Mayan campesinos are still in positions of power and have not been brought to justice.
There were Evangelical and Protestant missionaries in Guatemala as early as the nineteenth century thought they didn't rise to prominence until a century later during the civil war. The watershed event that led to an explosion in Evangelism here is the earthquake of 1976 that killed some 20,000 people. Christian aid organizations began flooding into the country and aggressively proselytizing while helping with the rebuilding effort. They ended up staying in the country and helping rebuild the country during and after the civil war.
During the civil war, the Guatemalan troops, with the help of paramilitaries, razed about 400 villages. They killed the livestock and burned the crops. This was total war. Those who weren't killed were relocated to concentration camps where they were often forcibly conscripted into the army or paramilitary troops. I remember how I was surprised that I did not see any centuries-old Catholic churches or colonial architecture when I entered the country as almost every town in Mexico abounds with these old churches. They are absent because they were burned to the ground along with the rest of these villages. They have all been replaced by recently built Evangelical churches.
In the early 1980s an Evangelical minister by the name of Efrain Rios Montt rose to power after a coup d'etat which was supported by Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority. Pat Robertson, delighted that Latin America had its first "Christian" leader, even flew in to interview Rios Montt five days after the coup. Robertson's television network C.B.N. even had a telethon for the same Guatemalan military that was responsible for most of the atrocities during the civil war. Rios Montt, like almost all outwardly religious leaders, turned out to be a bloody hypocrite. He presided over one of the bloodiest periods of the civil war.
It should be mentioned that this was the time in which liberation theology was in vogue with many of the Catholic parish priests of Latin America. Liberation theology is the idea that priests should not just help the poor get into heaven but actually help them improve their lives. This is the same time period in which priests were being executed by the Salvadoran military just to the south in El Salvador.
Anyone who has ever been to an Evangelical church knows that Catholics are viewed with suspicion and are sometimes even regarded as a cult among Evangelicals. Combine this with the fact that so many Catholic priests were practicing liberation theology in the time of the Cold War, it can be seen how an Evangelical such as Rios Montt would view these priests as communist sympathizers while the government was at war with a communist insurgency. Being a "good" Evangelical, Rios Montt allowed many Evangelical aid organizations to come in and feed, clothe, shelter, and "educate" those who were displaced by the war. Many Mayan campesinos, who were previously Catholic, converted to Evangelism at the time because they did not want to be viewed as communist sympathizers when the Evangelical dominated government was waging a brutal war against the communist. It was an act of self-preservation much like when Jews converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition.
Here we are today. The conversion of Guatemala continues. Many aid organizations only aid those who are Christian (read Evangelical and not Catholic). Rios Montt not only has not been brought to justice but is a Guatemalan congressman and heads a political party known as La Frente Republicana de Guatemala or FRG. A huge American-style church has been built in Guatemala City. Remember that wide-eyed little girl who the bald guy from the CCF commercials of the 1980s would always trot out when asking for your money. I am willing to bet that she probably has about five children by now and is probably as poor as ever. She probably takes all of her children to an Evangelical church, too. It sometimes seems like every woman between the ages of 18 and 35 is carrying a baby in the rural parts of Guatemala. We all know that Evangelicals have their heads up their asses when it comes to the effect that overpopulation has on the impoverishment of the developing world. I can't excuse Catholics for their intransigence on this issue, either.