So many thoughts, none of them fully formed. I can feel these shadows clashing, bouncing apart, and chinking together, like magnetized puzzle pieces desperate to find an opposite charge. How do I meld them?
I wander through the glass-walled displays, 800-year-old ponchos and gold llama diadems and squat, crazy-eyed idols arranged in tapestry of history. Our guide’s explanations weave together the ancient pre-Incan legends that I’ve read in Peruvian Literature. This culture, relics of which live on in the nooks of the Andés and isolated Amazonia, fascinates me. Perhaps because of the missionary biographies that have been a steady part of my literary diet since childhood. Perhaps because it’s where I pictured myself as a girl- lost in some jungle or desert region with a tribe no one had ever contacted before. Perhaps because no matter how much I study, I will always have more to learn.
The whirling shadow thoughts suddenly spin into perspective.
Indigenous peoples have been fighting for the freedom to occupy their homelands and preserve their culture for centuries. They have taken the brunt of injustice, violence, and prejudice in exhaustingly repetitive manner. Targeted for systematic destruction in every former European colony in the Americas, it is a miracle (literally God’s protection) that any remnant of their race or culture survive. Now they are being heard by the world, presenting a combined rhetoric of indigenous rights, environmental protection, and human and minority rights. Prejudices are finally being written out of law. Indigenous peoples are being recognized as exactly that- people, complete with souls, power, and a voice. I love it.
But yet . . .
Many want special rights to land or autonomy based upon their ethnicity. Is that just for society at large? They want their culture to be protected, guarded, untouched. Yet no one is forcing them to have TVs in their homes. A deep attachment and appreciation for their ancestors’ traditions and lifestyle also keeps them in the poverty that they rail against. Many hate being excluded or marginalized in society at large, yet their own community-oriented culture has very clear insiders and outsiders. The past should not have happened the way it did. Yet, continual rehashing of past victimization can cease to be legitimate and begin to be manipulation, particularly in countries like Bolivia or Ecuador where indigenous parties have the power to topple presidencies. Do they want reconciliation? Should they?
The contradictions leave me frustrated. Torn between fascination, empathy, and a desire to see all people treated fairly. Knowing that forgiveness can heal prejudice and pain. Knowing from personal experience that human nature clings ardently to pain and bitterness because it feels safer than forgiveness.
Images flash before my mind’s eye. Washing my face in a stream in San Cristobal, pretending not to observe the highland women in their bright skirts and braids and Tzotzil chattering. Guatemalan villages tucked away in folded shores of Lake Atitlan. Rigoberta Menchú’s story, which has brought this inner conflict to the surface again. Hakani. The anger at those who extort ignorance in the packing plants of Maneadero and in the maquiladoras of Juárez. My friend, Roxana, who keeps house for the family I live with in Lima. The poignant photos of indigenous groups betrayed and caught in the crossfire of the Peruvian civil war. My own perhaps selfish frustration of being lumped into the same group as the conquistadors because of my race, whose actions I pray I would not have taken part in. The conclusion that each ethnicity and each person has played the role of both victimizer and victim at some point.
But where the heck does that leave us?
Broken, selfish, hurting- human.
Perhaps in need of divine intervention. Scratch that- definitely in need of a just, compassionate, impartial God. One whose heart delights in myriad cultures, but whose Truth transcends them. A God who extends grace and asks us to do the same. Who requires a surrender of control and of self and offers unconditional love in return. A King who broke social norms and spent his time with the marginalized, and then forgave his killers with his dying breaths. A God who rose with the right to say, “I’ve lived it. I get it. I’ve overcome it.” A living, active, engaged God who whispers, “Follow me.”
What if we actually did?
I wander through the glass-walled displays, 800-year-old ponchos and gold llama diadems and squat, crazy-eyed idols arranged in tapestry of history. Our guide’s explanations weave together the ancient pre-Incan legends that I’ve read in Peruvian Literature. This culture, relics of which live on in the nooks of the Andés and isolated Amazonia, fascinates me. Perhaps because of the missionary biographies that have been a steady part of my literary diet since childhood. Perhaps because it’s where I pictured myself as a girl- lost in some jungle or desert region with a tribe no one had ever contacted before. Perhaps because no matter how much I study, I will always have more to learn.
 |
| Protests against foreign mining projects in Cajamarca, Peru. Photo from culanth.org |
Indigenous peoples have been fighting for the freedom to occupy their homelands and preserve their culture for centuries. They have taken the brunt of injustice, violence, and prejudice in exhaustingly repetitive manner. Targeted for systematic destruction in every former European colony in the Americas, it is a miracle (literally God’s protection) that any remnant of their race or culture survive. Now they are being heard by the world, presenting a combined rhetoric of indigenous rights, environmental protection, and human and minority rights. Prejudices are finally being written out of law. Indigenous peoples are being recognized as exactly that- people, complete with souls, power, and a voice. I love it.
 |
| Ruins of the Mayan culture outside Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. |
But yet . . .
Many want special rights to land or autonomy based upon their ethnicity. Is that just for society at large? They want their culture to be protected, guarded, untouched. Yet no one is forcing them to have TVs in their homes. A deep attachment and appreciation for their ancestors’ traditions and lifestyle also keeps them in the poverty that they rail against. Many hate being excluded or marginalized in society at large, yet their own community-oriented culture has very clear insiders and outsiders. The past should not have happened the way it did. Yet, continual rehashing of past victimization can cease to be legitimate and begin to be manipulation, particularly in countries like Bolivia or Ecuador where indigenous parties have the power to topple presidencies. Do they want reconciliation? Should they?
The contradictions leave me frustrated. Torn between fascination, empathy, and a desire to see all people treated fairly. Knowing that forgiveness can heal prejudice and pain. Knowing from personal experience that human nature clings ardently to pain and bitterness because it feels safer than forgiveness.
Images flash before my mind’s eye. Washing my face in a stream in San Cristobal, pretending not to observe the highland women in their bright skirts and braids and Tzotzil chattering. Guatemalan villages tucked away in folded shores of Lake Atitlan. Rigoberta Menchú’s story, which has brought this inner conflict to the surface again. Hakani. The anger at those who extort ignorance in the packing plants of Maneadero and in the maquiladoras of Juárez. My friend, Roxana, who keeps house for the family I live with in Lima. The poignant photos of indigenous groups betrayed and caught in the crossfire of the Peruvian civil war. My own perhaps selfish frustration of being lumped into the same group as the conquistadors because of my race, whose actions I pray I would not have taken part in. The conclusion that each ethnicity and each person has played the role of both victimizer and victim at some point.
But where the heck does that leave us?
Broken, selfish, hurting- human.
Perhaps in need of divine intervention. Scratch that- definitely in need of a just, compassionate, impartial God. One whose heart delights in myriad cultures, but whose Truth transcends them. A God who extends grace and asks us to do the same. Who requires a surrender of control and of self and offers unconditional love in return. A King who broke social norms and spent his time with the marginalized, and then forgave his killers with his dying breaths. A God who rose with the right to say, “I’ve lived it. I get it. I’ve overcome it.” A living, active, engaged God who whispers, “Follow me.”
What if we actually did?
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