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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 25.10.2002 |
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| FEATURE: Enough of Playing Politicians’ Puppets |
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Argentinean Churches Empower Civil Society through Awareness Raising
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina/GENEVA, 25 October 2002 (LWI) – A politician’s role in popular Argentinean drama depicts a character who takes money from the pocket of the poor. In reality the Argentineans are deeply suspicious of their politicians.
According to opinion polls, the ordinary person does not feel represented by any political institution, neither by the government nor parliament or Supreme Court. The current crisis in the country is not just an economic one, it is above all one of democratic institutions.
Politics is considered a corrupt and dirty business. “The state is regarded as booty,” says Gustavo Driau, project director in a joint office of the Evangelical Church of the River Plate (IERP) and United Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELU). “People think that the state belongs to politicians and not to all the people of Argentina.”
The two minority churches in the predominantly Roman Catholic country share the conviction that they can counter this political disaffection, and move towards a more democratic society, at least at the local level. They organize workshops that bring together representatives of city authorities, local associations and non-governmental organizations. The workshops consist of five modules, each complementing the one before, and run from September 2002 to June 2003, although to date only in the far northeastern part of Argentina.
The workshops aim at motivating the participants to join in shaping the future of the local government. “We envisage our country differently than it has been so far,” Alejandra Vieitez, one of the two workshop leaders, tells a group of 50 participants. Her colleague Graciela Maiztegui adds: “For years we have regularly gone to vote and then gone home to protest at some other time.” Now the point is to become active in society with constructive criticism. The precondition for this, according to Maiztegui, is to understand properly how the present crisis came about. “There is great poverty and high unemployment here. What are the reasons for that? Things don’t just happen.”
“We feel duty bound to help people to understand their own problems,” stressed Gustavo Driau, outlining the motivation of the churches’ involvement. The participants need to get to know their rights better, particularly their economic, social and cultural rights that include the right to work, food, clothing and housing. The church representatives see the workshops as a contribution to sustainable community development. Economics, social policy and environmental protection are to be given equal consideration.
On the theme of the July 2003 Tenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), “For the Healing of the World,” Driau said that the churches could not provide an answer to all questions. They could, however, offer suggestions. “What we are doing is like a small seed for a better society, so that our country does not fall into such a crisis again.”
The discussions during the workshop showed that it is not at all easy to develop common goals for local government. Everyone places their priorities somewhere else. The owners of small plantations with mate trees are interested in securing good prices for their product and will not allow large-scale farmers to spoil them. By contrast, environmentalists think that the most important thing is not to pollute the bogs of Iberá, the largest fresh water reserve on the continent.
Even if everything seems to take priority, says Graciela Maiztegui, the representatives from each city and rural municipality should agree on the amount of money that should be spent, when and on what. “Where do we want to go? If we do not decide, others will do so for us, and will say, “Go there, and we will go there. Then we will only be puppets.”
The IERP has 47,000 members and joined the LWF in 1991. The 7,000-member IELU has been an LWF member church since 1951.
(Contributed by LWI correspondent Alexandra Jaenicke, currently supporting IERP’s public relations work in Buenos Aires.)
This contribution is the third in a Lutheran World Information (LWI) features’ series on the 2003 LWF Tenth Assembly theme, “For the Healing of the World.” The aim is to highlight the understanding of the assembly theme in the different regional and local contexts of the worldwide Lutheran communion. Focus is on projects dealing with reconciliation and healing. The 21-31 July Assembly will take place in Winnipeg, Canada, hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
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