December 6, 2004
by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Every morning at five o'clock, Sister Crisanta Corvero prays.

She isn't alone. Three other nuns in her order, the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, are with her. For one and a half hours every morning they gather in the hospital chapel near the partitioned section of the building where the women live.

There is much to pray about.

About eight hospitals have closed along Colombia's northern coast - out of money and out of resources.

Twenty days ago, the EKG-machine at the maternity hospital that she administers in Barranquilla was stolen. The hospital is running low on baby monitors and blood pressure gages. There is no working ultrasound machine.

"We have quite a Christmas list," she says in a telephone interview, a flat tone in her voice.

The hospital work is just her day job. After 5 p.m., she volunteers as a human rights worker in Barranquilla, helping a few of Colombia's millions of displaced families reorganize their lives in shantytowns on the edges of this steamy Caribbean city. For months, she visited 24-year-old Mauricio Avilez in prison nearly every day.

Though daily visits stretch the rules Sister Crisanta showed up in her all-white habit, knocked at the iron gate, and usually they let her in.

When the Colombian government freed him after 130 days because there was insufficient evidence to keep him jailed, Avilez went immediately into hiding to escape the armed factions that want him dead. Sister Crisanta hasn't seen him since.

On Nov. 29, she heard that another co-worker, Guillermo Larios - who, like Avilez, worked for a church-related human rights organization called CEDERHNOS - was detained in Bogota, reportedly on allegations similar to those lodged against Avilez by a paid informant.

The charges amount to sedition, rebellion and terrorism.

What Avilez did for CEDERHNOS was help displaced people file for meager government assistance and document the human rights abuses that forced them off their land - either by guerrillas, paramilitaries or factions within the Colombian army itself. Larios, 37, was more of an educator. Both Larios and Avilez, in fact, were named in the same warrant last spring. But Larios disappeared after Avilez was picked up by an elite arm of the Colombian military. Just weeks before Christmas, Sister Crisanta is a little blue. "It's hard. It's sad to see what is happening here. It should be a time for community, for peace, friendship ... a time of hope. But, instead, the people of Colombia have murder. Imprisonment. People going into hiding. People fleeing.

"People say, 'This is not like Christmas of the past.' And they are not sure what it will be like. With no jobs, no money, Parents will still try to find toys for their kids, to make them happy. But for adults, toys won't work. It's just sad," she says.

But will Sister Crisanta - 32 years a nun - continue to get up every morning and pray, waiting through Advent for Christ to be born again?

"Si," she says. "Claro." Which means, "Yes, of course." Across town, Milton Mejia is telling the two Presbyterian Church (USA) accompaniers - who've been in Barranquilla for only a week - to stick close. John Ewers, 69, of Dayton, OH, and Kelly Wesselink, 23, of Tucson, AZ, are here to furnish protection of sorts - to perhaps deter violence by being eyewitnesses who will report whatever happens to the international church and major human rights organizations.

"I've talked with John and with Kelly and asked them to be on top of this, to be here in the office. We need to take care of ourselves," says Mejia, who is the executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, which is headquartered in Barranquilla, and whose campus was home to CEDERHNOS, whose leaders are being rounded up and detained by the authorities.

He's no stranger to threats from anonymous voices on the telephone. The threats are frequent: extortion, harassment, orders to stop his ministry to the displaced or he or his wife or his kids or all of them will be killed.

But Larios' arrest is a blow.

In about seven days, the government must produce evidence to formally charge Avilez or drop the investigation - although it may petition for an extension. It is investigating the bombing of a department store owned by a prominent politician near the church campus last December. A paid informant has apparently linked church workers to the explosion.

Many people believe the odds are looking good for Avilez - if there isn't enough evidence to jail him then it is likely there isn't enough to formally charge him either.

This is what they've been waiting for, full of Advent-like hope. It would be vindication, too - proof that church workers aren't breaking the law, that they are not the guerrillas the government claims, but are working through legal means to protect human rights.

Avilez can't possibly come home for Christmas - he's still in hiding. But he is also still alive. And so far he's evaded the government-supported paramilitaries who exact their own brand of justice with bullets, even if cases get dropped.

His lawyers are pushing to close this one. But then, 27 days before Christmas and seven days before Avilez' case seems ready to wrap up, Larios is detained and another case opens.

The Human Office of Tomas Concha - which is lodged in the office of Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos - has committed to several interviews with the Presbyterian News Service, but no one is available to speak when PNS calls.

It seems like a unending cycle, which is exactly what Mejia has always contended: that the charges are brought to scare and distract the church, to shut down any ministry that touches on human rights.

"They just can't keep investigating, keep bothering us," says Mejia, who unhappily learned during Avilez' interrogations that the church offices in Barranquilla are apparently under video surveillance. "All this that is happening creates fear. We can't relax. There's no mood to celebrate.

"John and Kelly are here until Dec. 21. And then a youth group arrives and we will be accompanied by them. We are here," he says. "Pray for us."

Prayer is something Sister Crisanta understands well in this chaotic reality.

During the Avilez family's worst moments, the nuns in Sister Crisanta's order had Eucharistic prayer with them. When the family departed, they prayed for peace of mind for each one of them, as they have all reported harassment - cars with darkened windows gliding by, phone calls.

When the Avilez' fled their apartment to find new, safer quarters, the nuns prayed every morning.

Sister Crisanta isn't exempt from harassment either. Just after Avilez was released from jail in October, an armed motorcyclist twice pulled up beside the taxi in which she was riding, only to ride away without firing a shot.

Motorcyles are a preferred method of transport for assassins in Barranquilla. Drivers pull up close and a rider mounted on the back fires away, riddling cars or street corners with bullets.

In the face of such constant threats, praying for peace of mind works, Sister Crisanta says. "Yes, yes, it does," she says matter-of-factly. "You can experience the presence of God."

It also helps her remember that she's called to give her life to others. It is when she visits the shantytowns that she sees the face of God most clearly. It happens when she looks into the faces of Colombia's poorest. She finds peace of mind there. "Its in the work I find joy. My work is my lifeline," she says.

That doesn't mean she isn't scared at times.

"I feel fear," she says - the kind that makes the hair on the back of her neck rise, her hands go cold and her stomach churn. "This situation brings a lot of questions. Why is this happening? Why do we have to go through this? Why is it happening to us? Why do the Colombian people go through this ...

"Why not exist in friendship and peace?"

She can't figure it out. So, she settles for these smaller glimpses of God: the poorest who somehow maintain hope in God when it no longer makes sense to do so. What her loving ministry gives to these most vulnerable people, she hopes, is that they, in turn, can sometimes see the physical presence of God in her and in her colleagues.

The Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart was founded Dec. 28, 1804, in Spain. Now as then, its mission amidst war is to help the wounded, visit the prisons and feed the hungry.

Sister Crisanta, 50-ish with a round face, walks briskly and laughs easily and loudly.

But her mind is practical: Avilez is gone for now, she knows, because he needs to stay safe. Human rights work gets done because it needs to be.

She misses seeing Avilez, at the office and on the street. She first met him five years ago when she was working with youth. "Its sad that he's had to leave," she says, referring to his need to hide now and eventually to leave the country to assure his safety. "Its sad that he is not able to pick up his work again. But he needs to be away to protect his life. It is sad that he is not with us at this point.

"But, I hope that something will occur in the future and that we will work together again. In the meantime, we will keep the work going."

So she keeps at it.

"You just have to keep going," she says.

Presbyterian News Service