Politics – Tough to remain neutral in a polarized society

As linguists and professionals in SIL we were trained to be “objective” and sensitive listeners and learners in whatever culture we were placed in. And in Peru, Ethnologue counts some 107 languages spoken within almost as many cultures!

However when we arrived in the middle of social, political, and economic upheaval, there were some defense mechanisms which, either by discipline or default, kicked into gear. 

   “Fortress mentality” is one. I’ve seen Peruvians and ex-pats alike use this, in our residence from 1987 to 2002. They’d suggest, “Ok, so put broken shards of glass cemented to the tops of the outside walls of your home or office, then upgrade them to rebar-spikes or barbed-wire coils, or maybe electrical wire with cameras. Make sure there are at least two doors to access the house from the outside; maybe three.” Over the years we learned that the security tactics needed to reflect the real danger present outside, not the fear and speculation. Easy to say, hard to do.

A good example of this mentality is the difference, during the 90s, between the security measures used at the U.S. Embassy and those used at the Canadian Consulate. Both were in Lima, but Canada at the time was very “neutral” in its positions on foreign engagement of its government and military personnel. In fact wearing a Canadian Flag there brought smiles and friendly and open questions from many. The politics of non-interference was very useful to Canada’s Foreign Affairs policies at the time and we tried to follow in like manner.

A separate strategy is to engage in discussion with the authorities, respectfully, and in a way that makes sense… to them. SIL Colleague Ron Fuqua and I were travelling visiting the northern mountain towns of the province of Lima. On our way back we stopped at the Education Ministry office in the coastal town of Huacho, right when they were celebrating the anniversary of Huacho as a province. We were quickly ushered, along with the provincial education officials, onto the street to participate in the parade march, waving to the crowds as we passed by (talk about awkward!). Afterwards we were drinking cokes and coffee at a restaurant, when the education director asked us, “Are you people political?”

Ron knew these people so I was deferring to him. But since he hesitated in answering, I asked for permission to speak, “If you think that recording and transcribing Quechua folklore, training teachers and others to write and publish texts, then training them to use Quechua in the schools—is political, then, yes, I suppose, we’re political!”

The man stood up, shook my hand with a smile and declared, “Good answer!”

However when bombings occurred around us, when a misuse of firearms and grenades took place in our mountain valley by the National Guard, or when members of the Civil Guard were actually caught at night (more than once!) robbing buses on these high summit (puna) roads, while disguised as terrorists, we began to wonder if being “neutral” was always appropriate. 

There came times when I needed to take stand. Three events occurred which rocked my North American sensitivities and biases. The first was when the Iran Air Flight 655, an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai, was shot down on 3 July, 1988 by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes. The incident took place in Iranian airspace, over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, and on the flight's usual flight path. We heard about this on our shortwave radio, in the village of Cajay. Later on I was in a potato field surrounded by Quechua men and teens questioning me as to why the U.S. government would do such a thing. I was in shock, admitted that I had no idea why, and then gathered up my patriotic shame to apologize on behalf of my birth-nation. Whether or not I understood or could ever justify such a hideous act, I publicly denounced it.  Quechua friends, years later, thanked me for my courage at that time. Apparently many eyes were watching how I responded at that moment.

The second international incident occurred on Christmas Day, 1989. Quechuas are homespun and agrarian, but they have a sensibility of what is theirs and yours, often sharing and borrowing with reciprocity. Therefore they could not imagine the U.S. invading a sovereign nation, regardless of the atrocities perpetrated by ex-CIA operative and Panamenian General Manuel Noriega. None of us, of course knew that Noriega had been overtly soliciting and receiving military aid from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Libya, nor that his cronies interfered directly in the peaceful Panamenian elections earlier that year, beating up one presidential candidate and pronouncing it all null and void. Nonetheless I needed to stand in the middle of my Quechua neighbours as a representative of the U.S.

A final incident occurred in the Peruvian Andes. On September 5, 1992, ten weeks after Quechua Pastor Rómulo Sauñe was given the Religious Liberty Award by the World Evangelical Fellowship, he was shot to death on a bus ride on the way to Chakiqpampa in the Ayacucho region of Southern Peru. He was the main translator of the Ayacucho Bible and was my personal friend. I was shattered! Rómulo couldn’t have been a more neutral, peaceable and compassionate person, always praying for both terrorist and military as that each had overrun mountain villages. Perhaps due to the notoriety gained by this award he simply became another name on Shining Path’s (Sendero Lumino’s) Black List.

Due to the increase in Sendero activity in the Conchucos Valley, we were spending time at the SIL Centre in Huaraz in the valley just to the west 160 kms away. One night, two weeks after Rómulo’s death, there came a knock on our Huaraz door. Tension was high in the Huaraz area, so against tradition, I decided to open the barred window of the door and asked who it was. At least three men stood outside, identified themselves as Senderistas and wanted to come inside. I refused their entrance to told them why. “You killed a good friend of mine outside of Ayacucho two weeks ago. A Quechua who was loved by his people. I refuse to speak with you!” They didn’t know what to do with such emotion. I was “in the right” even though I was a gringo and they knew it. They threatened retaliation then left.*  From that time on everyone in Cajay knew where I stood and that my heart was for the Quechua people, enough to risk my life. These cathartic experiences (Rómulo’s death and the threat by night) gave me a certain boldness to continue visiting village schools, even when the situation became even more tense in later years.

Rómulo Sauñe and Samuel Sacsara playing the quena flutes

With the studies and implementations in our field research of Participant Observation (James Spradley et al.), we slowly committed ourselves to engaging respectfully yet wholeheartedly as visitor-members of the Andean society within which we lived. We had suffered and empathized with our friends and even with our godchildren. Edmund Burke once said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." We needed to stand with good men and women where we lived and raised our children and proclaim, "We are against the bad that we see and we agree with the good!" We raised our hands in protest together with the Cajay community. They had accepted us; now we could accept them.

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* In fact our SIL Huaraz team had by then cumulatively received at different times five letters of threat shoved under our residence doors, signed by "El Partido Comunista Peruana" alias Shining Path.