by Tobias Roberts
International Development Worker
(reposted from the Huffington Post)
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 $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 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. Continue reading “Catholic bishop and Mennonite Central Committee worker in Guatemala join to resist dam project threatening Maya Indian land”
Bridgefolk participant and board member Darrin Snyder Belousek has just published a major new book on atonement. The book develops a biblical theology of the cross in connection with justice and peacemaking. Published by Eerdmans, the book is entitled Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of Cross and the Mission of the Church. Belousek notes that “one chapter focuses on ecumenical peacemaking in the church and is directly influenced by my experience in and reflection on Bridgefolk.” Here is the publisher’s description and a link to purchase online:
