(NO) SANTA CRUZ DE LOS NIÑOS - (Un)Holy Cross of the children

By Alfonso Wieland – Peace and Hope International

I have come to visit a neighborhood located near the fifth outer ring of the Bolivian City of Santa Cruz. It is 11 am on a Wednesday, and what stands out most are the young people jam-packed into precarious businesses with games installed on ancient computers. Here there is no police station and there is only one school. A Brazilian minister who does pastoral work in this neighborhood asks us to visit Blanca and her three young children. She and her children emerge from a dilapidated shack.

Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) of the Highlands is a booming Bolivian city; in terms of population it surpasses La Paz and El Alto, with almost two million inhabitants. In 1976 the population reached 325,000 people. Migrants from different parts of Bolivia came in search of land, but above all, they came seeking to take advantage of the economic boom caused by the exploitation of oil, construction and agroindustry. For this reason, the population works in tertiary services, and informal employment is almost 60%. Santa Cruz brings together people of different origins: those of Spanish descent, of Guarani ethnicity, Quechua, and Aymara, etc., as well as migrants from other parts of the world: Germans, Italians, Yugoslavs, Brazilians, Japanese, Chinese, Lebanese, and Palestinians.

As many South American cities, Santa Cruz embodies the contrasts of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and the large number of poor people, surviving on their meager incomes.

Designed with rings that divide the city into six zones, Santa Cruz can cause surprise with its large buildings located within walking distance of slums. The contrasts are also reflected in a lack of protection, especially of children and women living in poverty.

Blanca is a 32-year-old woman with a distant gaze and broken speech. Angie, her oldest daughter, is just 12 years old. The other children seem to be between 10 and 7 years old. The pastor asks Blanca to tell her story. “I got married when I was in love, impressed by how he spoke, his way of helping others, his apparent love for the suffering families,” she began. “But one day I realized he was cheating on me with another woman. I confronted him. I told him that the Bible says: ‘No one can serve two masters, therefore he cannot serve two women either.’ But he ignored me, he told me he was a servant of the Lord, that the other woman made him happy and I did not," she mentioned with pain. She went on, saying that since that time, he started to abuse her physically and verbally. She asked him to leave, to let her be, that all he needed to do was support the children. Later on, she found out that he did not just have a relationship with one woman but with several women, all of them from the church he supported as a co-pastor. Worn out, Blanca decided to talk. She asked for an appointment with the leaders of the evangelical church, she told them her story. They concluded saying: “You should be patient, reconcile with your husband, he has a ministry to take care of.”

As she talks, her legs begin to tremble, and her eyes drop further. Angie, the daughter, says in a firm voice: "Relax mom. Easy. That man will never put a hand on you again. I am taking care of you.”

Then, Angie, the daughter, continues the conversation. One day the man came home furious, bothered by everything and everyone. He wanted to abuse Angie’s siblings and Blanca stopped him. Out of control, this terrible husband took an iron and hit Blanca several times in the head, causing her to faint. Angie just remembers that she went out to ask for help. They took her mother to the hospital. Without money and with the support of neighbors, Blanca escaped from death, but the consequences were permanent. The husband fled, Blanca only knows that he is still connected to a religious group. Since then Blanca almost lost her sanity. She walked around the streets half naked, eating excrement; she sometimes slept in abandoned cars. Her weight dropped to 93 pounds. Angie, when she found her, literally dragged her home. On one occasion, members of a religious group found her in the street and they thought that the best way to help her would be by practicing an exorcism. They took her to the church, and with shouts, hits to her face and making her roll around in mud, they tried in vain to expulse the demons that supposedly had her enslaved. Eventually, Angie was able to get her out of this absurd cult of religious vanity. 

Months later, the Brazilian pastor arrived in the neighborhood. There he met Blanca, Angie, and other families and abandoned children. It was at that point that he helped to obtain medical and humanitarian assistance for Blanca. Her case touched him, and from then on he emphasized the need for the gospel to bring justice to women like Blanca.

“Angie, you have a lot of strength inside you. Do you still believe in God?” I ask her with embarrassment. Smiling, she tells me yes.  But she reiterates, “That man will never touch my mother again. He is bad. He even sold one of my brothers to an aunt that could not have children.”  I look at her and I know that, in her journey, this child was forced by circumstances to become an adult, to be mother to her mother, mother to her siblings, mother to herself.  Some researchers conclude that the stage of emotional formation is between the ages of 7 and 14 years old. Girls like Angie have had to skip stages, to be strong, minimize their feelings, and face responsibilities that are not theirs.  It is the death of childhood at the hands of adults who abandon them.  We all know boys and girls who have had to become adults prematurely. They live around us. They survive.

Santa Cruz bears witness to how women and children have to carry a heavy cross each day; a cross of pain and fear.  According to official statistics, in Bolivia, of every 100 couples, 14 women have suffered serious injuries (wounds and fractures) at the hands of their husband or male partner.  The department of Santa Cruz reports the highest rate of sexual violence against boys and girls in Bolivia.

The media highlights news related to violence provoked by common delinquency, wars or terrorism. Today we know that domestic violence is the cause of more human deaths than those caused by armed conflicts and civil wars. This violence, which occurs behind closed doors in homes, is a crime against humanity and should be of public interest.  Political and civil society and the church can no longer turn their back on this reality.  The struggle, fought for decades almost exclusively by people and groups linked to the feminist sector, intellectual progressives and religious minorities should no longer be this way. It should be a massive, direct, and definitive struggle.

We should never again tolerate conduct justified by misinterpreted Biblical texts, used to uphold the physical, psychological and sexual abuse against women. The abuse of power against women and girls is an injustice that God detests. Those who identify as Christians cannot tolerate stories like those of Blanca and Angie. No more crosses for them. No more.

Santa Cruz, May 1, 2010