Urban Church, Global City: Montevideo

10/14

with the people of la Iglesia en Montevideo

Our journey with La Iglesia Valdense del Rio de la Plata comes to an end in Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay.  It's arc of high rise apartments and hotels along la playa are reminiscent of Miami as are the well preserved streets of art deco, more than any other city in South America.

Montevideo Deco

It's appearance is expressive of the most secular and progressive country in South America. And the safest city. It is a bit surprising, then,to learn of Uruguay's high suicide rate. 

This is the  context for the ministry of la iglesia valdense . in Montevideo.  While our plan was to have  a workshop similar to what we did in Argentina, it became clear to me that the Montevideo Church may be the most important to look at because of it's history of having followed the cardinal rule of urban ministry, namely to be aware of and informed by its context. In listening to the stories of long time members, there was a conscious intentionality in how the church's ministry was lived out in the urban context.

Łux lucet en tenebras

Located in the central heart of the  city, its architecture is classic postwar modernist with the largest sanctuary I encountered in Rio de la Plata. 

La Iglesia

It's interior is classic Valdensian, filled with bright streams of natural light. The light is another expression of the  Valdensian motto, Lux lucet in tenebras, light shines in the darkness...  

The church began with a fellowship of young people in 1952 and by 1958 the church building was erected.  It's worth noting that the church is  directly across the street from the military hospital

Military Hospital

which during the junta years 1973-85 became a place of detention and torture. (On reflection, I would have liked to  have heard more from the church members about what these years were like. It must have had a chilling effect on church life to be so near.)

There were a good mixture of older members, "legacy" valdensians, a former Methodist, an Argentine and an American.  At least one through mrriage and one by choice, attracted by its history, ideas and its living faith. And one member, the President, responded wit a sigh that he had been there "800 years."

Gathered for conversation

Among concerns of the people were the suicide rate and increasing refugees/migrants from the Caribbean, especially Cuba and Republica Dominicana.

One of the richest resources of e congregation is its building, which was built to provide not only student housing but also housing for transients. And there is an appropriate sense of pride in having wanted mission as part of its  original design.

(It's also interesting that the walls outside the downstairs fellowship hall of the church have painted murals of the history of la iglesia valdense in Uruguay.) 

Historic murals

There is also a strong sense of pride in their interfaith commitments and relationships, their women association and especially the musical and choral programs of the church. Known as the "home of choirs."

Sunday was a bit of a different worship day in that Pastor Hugo Armond Pilon's ministry was up for a renewal vote and he was not there. It was also a special women's led service. Although larger in attendance than  most, the sanctuary still had a lot of empty pews. 

Sunday the women led worship

In my conversations after the workshop and on Sunday, I discovered that the original plans were even more visionary. The idea was to have a building that would essentially house all the members of the congregation as an intentional community. For its time, this was a truly unique and creative expression of urban ministry.

Although that never actually happened, a number of families did initiate the process and one current member has war memories of growing up there and the sense of community and being able to move freely from floor to floor and apartment to apartment...a true sense of community. 

Hearing some of this story helped me to understand  some of the weariness I felt from some members. They had opened their minds and hearts and had dreamed big. And there is that sense of aging with the dreams unfulfilled and wondering who new dreamers will be. 

This is a story that needs to be gone into more deeply and recorded as it was a very important experiment in urban ministry.  Something of that vision can inform and inspire a new time of visioning.

Certainly the building and its student and itinerant housing could be further developed in a number of different creative ways. Perhaps even related to refugees and migrants. It also strikes me that in this highly secular culture, the suicide rate may be expressive of a spiritual hunger. My impression of the Valdensians is that their unique spiritual culture may be especially consonant with the spiritual needs of the progressive secular culture in which they live. 

The basis for a creative progressive urban ministry that could revitalize the church and be an even more valuable presence in the city is clearly  there. 

Lux lucet in tenebras.

Urban Church in the Global City: A visit with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

10/5

Marching with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

On a sunny afternoon we go to march and visit  with the Mothers of the Plaza Mayo. We gather in the Plaza, with  the Casa Rosa (Pink House) or presidential Palace at one end, now with more security fence between the palace and  the people.

La Casa Rosa

At first I am surprised to.learn that 40 years later, the Mothers are still marching.

Flags and signs are being passed out.

Flags for the march

I go over to the Mothers’ tent and am initially taken aback by the level of commercialism. The vast array of books, of course. But also t-shirts, scarves, hats. Officially licensed mates. And even a madres cook book. I think of institutionalization. And the need for funds, etc.

The march begins with appropriate chants.

The march begins ("The power of finance is terrrorism")

But when the speeches begin, there’s a distinct partisan tone. I see another march begin. And then I learn, as is so often the case, the mothers have had a split over political/ideological perspectives. 

The two groups, the Mothers Association and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo- Founding Line broke over the leadership of Hebe de Bonafini. The Founding Line faction prides itself on its horizontal leadership. They see the other group as to top down and having become basically an political arm of Cristina Kirchner and her brand of Peronism, somewhere between Eva Peron and Hillary Clinton with all that implies. The Founding Line are pledged to non-partisanship. They will not align wth any party or leader and will hold all equally accountable until the military files are opened and the truth revealed.

We go to the offices of the Founding Line to meet wth a long time stalwart founder Nora Morales de Cortinas.

Nora

She has been marching since 1977 when her person disappeared. The others courageously came to the Plaza wearing white scarves embroidered with the names of disappeared ones. Those scarves became the visible symbol of their movement.

white scarf monument

Some 30-40000 were disappeared or killed.

With Nora in front of the wall of the disappeared ones

Only 3-400 were released. Mass graves continue to be discovered. Some 500 children were born to detainees and given to military families without children, like something our of Handmaid’s Tale. (Maragret Atwood once said, “Nothing I wrote never happened."). The return of democracy has reunited some children to the families. But one can only imagine the psychic and spritiual pain such a reunion would cause.

And the military still won’t open its files. As an American from North America, it is painful to learn that the perpetrators of the “dirty war”  were trained by the (US)  School of the  Americas in Georgia. 

The significance  of the disappearance of Santiago Maldonado

Donde están Santiago Maldonado?

becomes more important  because it can be seen as the begging of a return to a time o disappearances and terror.  A case from four years ago has not been forgotten.

Th Roman Catholic hierarchy urges the Mothers to forgive and move on, but the mothers know from the experience of people in  places like South Africa, where there has been no truth there can be no reconciliation  and there can be no true peace.. It continues as an open wound.

There is little love lost for the institutional Catholic Church which was perceived to have looked the other way  out of fear for its own survival. Which includes our current Pope. “ A good man, but…”Nora says, lifting up her hands to finish her sentence.

Nora

(The only non-Argentine—and one of two clergy— chosen for the Commission to investigate the disappearances  (Conadep) was courageous witness for human rights  Rabbi Marshall Meyer.) 

Nora wondered what the Gendarme really felt

At the end of the  day, there are “founders” in both groups. And despite the differences, all have lost children. 

Every Thursday afternoon at 3 PM, the march continues. 

                                ****

Also on the edge of the Plaza we find an encampment of Malvinas War veterans. They want equal recognition for those who served in the homeland. They even have a story of a British helicopter attack that touched the main land.  

Malvinas Veterans

On the plaza the unhealed wounds of Argentina’s  past decades continue. As does anxiety of an uncertain future under Macri. 

This is part of the context within which ministry is done. The Waldensians are there with solidarity. 

Urban Church, Global City: Bahia Blanca

10/2-4

Bahia Blanca

Dinner with friends from Bahia Blanca1. The church

We arrive in time for a cafe cortado and media luna before heading to the Waldensian church in Bahia Blanca. The city feels more like my memories of Latin American cities than Buenos Aires. It's smells. A certain feel to a place. As we approach the church, we see someone has graffitied  a conocer dios tendras  que sufrir--to know God, you have to be able to suffer. Wonder where that came from....?

inspired graffiti

 

We're in the manse attached to the church. Maria gives us a true docent's tour as the church's origins as a Scots Presbyterian church show through. The stained glass windows, atypical of the Waldensians, are from Edinburgh.

from Edinburgh

A Magen David in the  window reveals  a Masonic symbol and she tells us of the former prominence of the Masons in the city's political history. In the church house, much original furniture  remains including a wonderful old piano with attached candelabra.

the old piano

The old Scots legacy remains . 

Thee are stories of the saints of he church. The last pastor raised hopes when he started a youth group and young people came to the church again. His leaving was a blow to the sense of forward movement. They continue to be burdened by building issues and questions about future pastoral leadership.  But much remains:

1. They have in their number lay people with a high capacity for theological discourse and pastoral commitment.

2. New parents have been attracted and continue to come.

3. A solid core of the teenagers who had come to the youth group continue to come and can bring friends.

4. They have added to their number new people from outside the Waldensian tradition, even choosing one to represent them in the weekend work shop. 

5. They are actively engaged in their community, serving on the council called into being by the municipality to bring representatives of a wide variety of faiths together. They are about to propose to the council that Bahia Blanca declare itself to be a city of interfaith engagement and dialogue. ( This council did not hesitate to remove a member who used a public prayer as an opportunity for proselytization

6. The part time pastoral work of Yanni keeps people focused and involved until her next visit.

Despite all the challenges, Bahia Blanca has reason to have hope for the future.

2. The city

I am intrigued to find a city off over 300000 people.  Almost the size of my hometown Pittsburgh  To me it feels much more like a traditional Latin American city. We’re lucky to have a history teacher/student and a professional driver as our guides. 

We see: 

• The train station.

  

  the train station

  Where the city began. Gateway to the south. The train station is being restored but much of Argentina’’s train system is unusable
• The beautiful performing arts theatre with it statue honoring  Italian independence leader Giuseppe Mazzini. A poster about urban renewal in Bahia Blanca has been invaded with an  image of Santiago Maldonado, whose story I will learn and  whose face is becoming ubiquitous as I experience Argentina.

  

  Santiago Maldonado

• The University the South. Silhouettes of women on the sidewalk give witness to the issue of femicida, the murder of women because they are women,.

  

  for victims of femicide

  Argentina is the first place I am aware of to name this lethal phenomenon of domestic violence in a t culture of machismo that feels itself threatened.
• We learn here about the reality of the junta outside of Buenos Aires. The fountain by a Peronist woman artist removed during the junta.

  

  the fountain

  Discovered hidden way and reinstalled. The mosaic portrait of David “Watu” Cillercielo, assassinated student leader.

  

  David "Watu" Cillercielo

  Apparently the rector of the University had given over a list of professors and students who were ‘subversive.” 
• We visit the location of the clandestine army detention center known as “la escuelita”:  the little school.

  

  remembering "la escuelita"

  Special roads led directly from the city to here. A silhouette of a blindfolded pregnant woman recalls the number of pregnant detainees who had their babies snatched from them and delivered to wives of military officers, Handmaid style. The reuniting of children and families over the years has been a complex and painful process. A tree marks the spot near where a torture dungeon stood.

  

  site of the excavation

  Volunteers spent weeks in an archeological discovery process verifying the stories the had been told. Our guide was one of those  volunteers.
• We visit a Malvinas War memorial.

  

  Malvinas War memorial

  Regardless of political ideology, Argentines felt united in this conflict. And the quick and humiiating loss was the beginning of the end for the junta. 
• We visit the port, the major agricultural export center of the country. See the power transfer station, built in Gothic style. By the British, with a carved relief of St. George along the roof line. Large silos for grains, increasingly mono crop soy. 

  

  Gothic electric transfer center

• A museum honoring generations of workers.

  

  workers museum

• La casa del espia where a dispatcher reportedly informed Nazi submarines off shore as to what ships were headed where

  

  Casa Espia

• We stand at the  end of the pier looking at the harbor. There are still fishing boats though changes in the harbor have pushed the fishers further and further out to sea, their work increasingly vulnerable. 

  

  patron saint of fishers

  

  from the pier

• Back at the city plaza, the monument honoring the contribution of the Jewish community to the city on its centenary in 1928, On has to admire the courage and tenacity of the Jewish community to remain all these years through various periods of antisemitic reaction, juntas, nazi immigrants, etc.

  

  honoring the Jewish community

• We visit a traveling  Bible exhibit honoring the Luther quincentennial with a comprehensive lecture by Dr. Renee Kreuger, author and professor at the late lemsented Theology School. Its closing was especially  painful to Waldensians as it was a place that both trained young passports and provided continuing theological education for lay people. A group of Jewish young people has come tonight with their teacher. Even though the Waldensians preceded Luther by centuries, they saw in his movement a place for solidarity so they celebrate fully th beginning of his revolution. 

  

  Dr. Rene Kreuger

The Waldensian church has an impact in the city way beyond its numbers. It is engaged and visible and despite its challenges can clearly claim a future.