Annotations for Subject-headings: Religious Institutions

In the poverty-stricken South Bronx, a controversy has erupted over the alister of an activist Puerto Rican minister. Supporters of Episcopalian priest, Father Luis Barrios, who preaches liberation theology want him reinstated at St. Anne's Church. But his superiors say Father Barrios has gone beyond the boundaries of a good Episcopalian minister. From the South Bronx, Mandalit del Barco reports.

[Background--Sounds--Crowd chanting] Supporters of Reverend Luis Barrios have been rallying with protest songs and prayers in front of the city's episcopal cathedrals, St. John The Divine. On May 19th, the popular priest was suspended from his parish at St. Anne's Church without explanation by Episcopal Bishop Richard Green. Parishioners of the mostly working-class Puerto Rican parish are furious over Barrios's suspension from a church that's been politically active since the 1960s.

Es una injusticia y te lo que estan hacienda con el porque el padre barrio… [Translation--Dub--English]

Other priests have been doing exactly what Luis Barrios has been doing, and they have not been removed, they have not been taken out, they have not been suspended, and that's our concern that it's because he is the Puerto Rican priest at South Bronx that he's being removed.

Episcopal Bishop Richard Green, who notified Barrios of his suspension in the letter has been unavailable for comment and he reportedly refused to discuss his reasons with St. Anne's vestry, but his spokesman told the New York Times that Barrios had displayed vocational immaturity when he blessed the unions of gay couples and when he allowed a Roman Catholic priest and bishops from so-called schismatic churches to use St. Anne's. [Background--Sounds--Crowd chanting] On a recent Sunday, Barrios's supporters calling church leaders homophobic and racist rush the altar of St. Anne's Church chanting in solidarity and forcing a replacement priest to cancel mass. Meanwhile, this protest continued, Father Barrios has been waiting it out in another church, St. Mary's in Harlem. Looking back, Barrios says his troubles began in January after he delivered a sermon critical of the church.

My concern in that a particular moment in that sermon was that we talking about justice and transforming this society and the church need to play a very important role in changing society and getting into something that we call justice, but we need to start doing some cleaning inside the church. So my biggest concern, and it's still my biggest concern, is that we are in a church that is racist and homophobic, and if we are not going to deal with this, how we going to deal with the society preaching what we are not really practicing.

As a black Puerto Rican, Barrios wonders of his work for independence of the island led to his suspension, or perhaps he says it was his support for gay and lesbian rights, but being politically active is something he's always believed in, even as a child in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

The whole point was that I grew up in a church where the priest was a member of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and at the same time a very respectful priest in the denomination. And I never saw the contradiction between politic and religion. And of course he always told me that do not believe that there is a separation between politic and religion. So I grew up with that in my mind.

Barrios is still waiting for church superiors to communicate with him directly. He also believes church leaders underestimated the impact of their action on St. Anne's worshipers.

This is a Latino Black priest. Nobody's going to do nothing or sometimes is this racism that do not let you see that this person has some capacity or some organizational skill. So they took it for granted that nothing was going to happen and said, oh God, that's very dangerous to commit that kind of stupid mistakes.

Supporters say they plan to keep the pressure on until Father Barrios gets a public apology and is reinstated. Church officials, meanwhile, still decline to comment on the case. For Latino USA, I'm Mandalit del Barco in New York.

75 year 75-year-old Rosada Vaquerano calls Barrios's suspension an injustice, saying his work has empowered the South Bronx, one of the poorest communities in the country. As a proponent of liberation theology, Barrios believes it's a church's duty to work for social justice. Besides establishing a gay and lesbian ministry, Barrios created programs for Puerto Rican political prisoners and immigrants. He helped start a needle exchange program to fight AIDS and protested a medical waste incinerator in the neighborhood. St. Anne's church runs the only soup kitchen in the South Bronx and it's the home of the Pregones Theater Company. United Methodist Reverend Eddie Lopez is one of many clergy supporting Barrios.

This is Maria Hinojosa. It's estimated that in the United States alone, there may be as many as a million practitioners of the religious tradition known as Santería. The Afro-Cuban religion, whose followers turn for guidance to deities called Orishas, recently came into the spotlight when the US Supreme Court ruled that Santería's practice of sacrificing animals, such as roosters, is protected by the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. With us from Miami to speak about that ruling and what it means to practitioners of Santería is anthropologist Mercedes Sandoval, author of several books on Santería and an expert on Afro-Cuban religions. Welcome to Latino USA, Mercedes.

Thank you very much.

Now the ritual sacrifice of animals for the Orishas or the saints was banned in the Florida city of Hialeah in 1987. What was the impact of that ban, and how do you think things are going to change with this Supreme Court ruling?

Since the very moment that the Supreme Court, for instance, has lifted that ban, it means that santerians are not going to be persecuted for sacrificing animals, and it takes that stigma out, and I hope that the authority will be more interested in persecuting real criminals than people that are practicing a religion that doesn't have to have any connotation of antisocial behavior.

Were people in fact persecuted because of practicing animal sacrifice?

Not really, but they could have. Sometimes they were arrested not only because of that ban, but because of complaints that the authorities received from different association for the defense of animals, and so, or for neighbors that were nervous. You have to have in mind that there is a lot of other repercussions outside of the actual sacrificing of animals.

Now in Spanish, the word Santería means the way of the saints, and in fact, the religion has a very holistic spiritual interpretation of human beings and their environment, their surroundings. But in fact, many misconceptions exist about Santería, that it's like a black magic or it's voodoo. How much do you think those misconceptions played into the original banning of animal sacrifice in Hialeah, and how much do those misconceptions still exist?

Well, first of all, Santería, does have a reputation. It is an African religion. A lot of the rituals are carried out in a way that is practically secret. Then, there is some reliance in magical practice, much more so than other more European type of religious systems, and therefore a lot of people go to this religious system looking for protection. And in some instances magical practices are, try to be used to protect yourself and even to attack an enemy. This is actually true. However, I believe that because it is an unknown religion, because it has an African origin, they have been misunderstood and suffered a lot of discrimination.

Do you think that the Supreme Court ruling, which basically is now protecting the sacrifice of animals under the First Amendment, the freedom of religion clause, do you think that this is going to have an impact on how people see Santería and how people see the issue of animal sacrifice in this country?

Yes, I believe that. I believe that first of all, it has a practical impact. It gets the authorities off the back of the santeros. All right? That's very important. I think it legitimizes their practices. That's what it's doing. If the supreme law of the land takes off the ban, it's legitimizing these religious practices, and then Santería will not be in any way associated with satanism. That has nothing to do with Santería.

Thank you very much, Mercedes Sandoval, who is an anthropologist and an author of several books on Santería and is an expert on Afro-Cuban religions.

I'm Maria Martin. Today on Latino USA, the administration's plans to crack down on illegal immigration.

The simple fact is that we must not and we will not surrender our borders to those who wish to exploit our history of compassion and justice.

Also, a possible change in US Cuba relations and a religious group's challenge to the Cuban embargo.

We're taking such dangerous things as powdered milk, pharmaceuticals.

And updating the Latin American folk music called La Nueva Canción.

There's always somebody out there trying to produce new stuff, and that's what Nueva Canción is all about.

That's all coming up on Latino USA, but first, Las Noticias.

More than 30 years ago after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the failed US backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the United States government imposed an economic embargo of that island. Trade and travel to Cuba were prohibited under most circumstances. Under the Trading With the Enemies Act, that policy has softened and then heartened over the years. Most recently, it was tightened under legislation sponsored by Representative Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, the Cuban Democracy Act. Now that policy is being challenged by a group led by several religious leaders. It's an effort known as Pastors for Peace.

I'm Sandra Levinson. I'm from New York, but I started on the Duluth route.

Joe Callahan from Minneapolis.

I’m Henry Garcia from Chicago.

Latino USA caught up with a group Pastors for Peace in Austin a few days before they defied US government policy by taking medicines, food, and other aid to the economically strapped island of Cuba.

We're taking such dangerous things as tons of powdered milk. We are taking pharmaceuticals because they are actually distilling their own pharmaceuticals out of the herbs and plants in the fields. I've seen that with my own eyes just in April. They don't even have sutures to close surgical wounds.

Like the Reverend George Hill, pastor of First Baptist Church in downtown Los Angeles. Every one of the approximately 300 people involved in the motley caravan of school buses, vans, and trucks that make up the Pastors for Peace eight caravan opposes the US economic embargo of Cuba. So much so that they refuse to obtain the license the Custom Bureau requires in order to ship anything to that island.

We refuse to ask for a license. We refuse to accept the license if the government extends one to us. Our license is really our command from God to feed the hungry, to give clothes to those who are naked, to visit those in prison, to give a cup of cold water. We must do this to the least and even to those with whom we may have differences.

The Reverend Lucius Walker of the Salvation Baptist Church in Brooklyn is the founder of Pastors for Peace. His stand on Cuba has not made him very popular among those opposed to the government of Fidel Castro. And he says he's received a number of threats.

Telephone calls to my office, threatening to come over with a pistol and take care of me.

Still. Walker insists he is not engaging in politics, only in the highest tradition of religious principles and civil disobedience.

Of Jesus Christ, of Martin Luther King, of Gandhi, and all of those who are the good examples of what it takes to make social progress in a world that if left to its own devices could be a very ugly place to live.

[Music] About 30 members of the Pastors for Peace Group sit around a television three days before they're set to rendezvous with more caravan members to cross the border at Laredo. They're watching a video about how the animosity between the governments of Cuba and this country have separated families for as long as 30 years.

No quiero vivir allá, no me gusta vivir allá. Pero me gusta vivir aquí, pero quiero ver a mi hermana, y a mis sobrinos que nacieron allá. Que son familia, que son sangre. [Translation: I don’t want to live there, I don’t like living there. I like living here, but I want to see my sister, and my nephews that were born over there. They are family, they are blood.]

I grew up myself with my family always saying, you know, that the only way to get out is to go to US to have a better life, to live like normal people, to wear jeans, to eat gum, chew gum. It's like very idiotic things to think of when I live here now, and you know, I have to learn the language.

Elisa Ruiz Zamora was born in Cuba. She came to this country with her family when she was 18. She's now a young mother and student making her life here in the States. But when she heard about the caravan of aid to Cuba, she brought her family down to meet with a group. Her mother, brother, and grandfather are still on the island and she hopes some of the caravan's aid gets to them. It's amazing, she says, to see Americans get together to help another nation, one their government has told them is a dangerous enemy.

Tell the opposite to their government. The government's like to me, it's like they want to be the judges of the world. Say, what should happen here? What shouldn't happen, how Cubans should live their lives. And we have a mind of our own and we always have. There's...

The Clinton administration has so far given little indication that it's ready to lift the blockade on Cuba. During his election campaign, Mr. Clinton received considerable support from anti-Castro organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation, but with the easing of telephone communications with the island, some now believe there might be a small window of possible change on other fronts. Sandra Levinson is the director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York.

They are looking, I think, in Washington for a way to change policy, which does not really give anything to Cuba. Of course, we will never do that, but will ease the tension somewhat, perhaps make it possible for more people to travel legally to Cuba. Make it possible for AT&T to put down some new telephone lines and perhaps give some of the 80 million dollars in escrow, which is accrued for Cuba to the nation, which so desperately needs that money. They don't care how much they have to pay for a telephone call. They want to talk to their mama.

As this program went to air, most of the Pastors for Peace caravan had been able to get across the border, except for two school buses and a few other vehicles. Among the drivers of those vehicles was the delegation leader, the Reverend Lucius Walker, who in the non-violent tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, began a hunger strike in protest. For Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin reporting.

Pope John Paul II made his first visit to the United States since 1987. The pontiff along with 170,000 Catholics from around the world came to celebrate World Youth Day. A commemoration of Catholicism and religious worship. American Catholic clergy are hoping that as a result of the fanfare, traditionally Catholic Latino communities will renew their interest in the church. But as Ancel Martinez reports from Denver, many Catholic parishes are confronted with apathy and a church parishioners feel is sometimes too conservative.

[Church Bells]

One parish that wants to avoid the image of state Catholicism in apathy among Catholics is our Lady of Guadalupe. It's Adobe and Brick colonial style church and courtyard is just across the railroad tracks from Denver’s sleek office buildings. The pastor just ended a three-week fast to protest gangs that dominate summer street life around here. Our Lady Guadalupe is housing, hundreds of pilgrims celebrating World Youth Day. Church Deacon Alfonso Sandoval says for Mexican Americans it should be a time for reflection.

If anything, like I say, part of their culture is their faith in going to church. I think that the presence of the Holy Father is going to be significant for the youth in the sense that they were starting to drift away, not attending mass and not attending sacraments wasn't important for them, it just was not a priority. There's a lot of other priorities going on in their lives, but with this visit, I think it'll help a lot of them just take stock of what their faith's really all about.

The Pope chose Denver as the biannual World Youth Day site because it's a relatively young city and its Hispanic population represents the fastest growing segment of the church in America. But the nearly all Anglo national conference of Catholic bishops only grasped in the 1980s how important Latinos are to the survival of the American church. Father Lorenzo Ruiz works these streets reaching out to Chicanos and Latin American immigrants.

This is an area where the American church, the Anglo-American church and the Hispanic church met. The American church took over this area and again, they were not sensitized or aware of the church already existing here, totally unaware of the fact that there was a church here and people with a different culture and different values and a different way of expressing wonderful and beautiful Catholicism.

When Mexican Americans were ignored, that's when the separations began with the traditional Catholic Church, such as the new Mexican set known as the Penitentes decades ago. And even today, evangelical churches are making inroads to a once all Catholic culture.

[Church music and signing]

The Church of Christ Elam holds thrice weekly services in the basement of the circa 1900s Methodist church in the center of Denver's Latino neighborhood. Furnishings are minimal, fold up chairs, linoleum floor, and a small stage, several teenagers sing, a few dozen followers wave their hands and clutch Bibles, Pastor Manuel Alvarez, explains Catholicism simply isn't spiritual enough for many, so they seek other faiths.

They found something that is not a religious but a new experience with God when they can talk to God and have a relationship with God, not with religious or not with that organization, but a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Vatican is now paying special attention to Latinos in the United States because in part of their support of conservative issues like the ban on women serving as priest and opposition to artificial birth control and abortion, but there are even schisms among Latinos. Sister Irene Muñoz works for the Denver Catholic Archdiocese Hispanic outreach program.

I know women are speaking out and saying we want a fuller role in the church in many ways, and I truly see that. I truly believe that women are called to do more than perhaps what we're doing. And I know there are many of our sisters, my sisters that are called even more into become ordained priest and they were saying, look at us, listen to us.

The challenges facing the church in its quest to resolve these issues as well as retain Catholic Hispanics will remain long after the excitement of the pope's visit to Colorado in this continent subsides. For Latino USA I'm Ancel Martinez in Denver.

A drama has been unfolding for more than two weeks now in the border town of Laredo, Texas. On July 29th, a group known as Pastors for Peace defied the US trade embargo against Cuba by taking dozens of vehicles carrying food, clothing, medicines, and other aid to Cuba across the US border. But one of those vehicles, a yellow school bus, was stopped by the customs service. Today that bus sits in a federal compound in Laredo. It's occupants refusing to leave the bus and now starting their third week of a hunger strike. From Laredo, Latino USA's Maria Martin reports.

I see a whole bunch of semis waiting in line to go to Mexico, and in the middle of all that mess, there's this little school bus and I feel sorry.

Retired Laredo social worker, Manuel Ramirez sits on a sidewalk near the border wearing binoculars. He's trying to get a better glimpse of the scene across the street, there off to the side of the Lincoln Juarez Bridge. in an enclosed lot where semi-trucks wait to be inspected by the custom service sits a yellow school bus with a sign which reads ‘End The Embargo Against Cuba’. Inside the bus, 12 people ages 22 to 86 wait out the blazing hot August days. They've refused to leave the vehicle and to take any solid food, since the bus was seized by the customs service on July 29th. Among them is Pastors for Peace leader, the Reverend Lucius Walker of Brooklyn.

We see a nation that is threatened, a nation that is not our enemy, with which we are not at war. We were asked by the churches in Cuba to take this mission on and having responded affirmatively to their request, we have come to see for ourselves the importance of what we are doing.

What the Reverend Walker and Pastors for Peace hope to accomplish by their hunger strike and their attempt to take aid materials to Cuba is to call into question this country's 32-year old prohibition against trade and travel to that island. Pamela Previt of the Customs Service says her agency tried to help the aid caravan get through the border smoothly, but that this bus clearly violated US Law.

Customs detained 29 boxes of prescription medication, four computers, and five electric typewriters, which are prohibited items according to the embargo. The group specifically claimed that it was the vehicle itself that was to be exported. And because of that customs seized the bus.

The Reverend Walker says he was actually surprised when the bus he was driving was seized. Even though the group stated they were making the trip to challenge the embargo against Cuba.

They simply were not able to stop it because this was a human wave and a vehicular wave of people who were determined that this is a law that can no longer be enforced.

The law Walker refers to is the Trading with the Enemy Act enforced by the Treasury Department. So far that government agency has not responded to a proposal from the Pastors for Peace to allow someone from the World Council of Churches to escort the yellow school bus to Havana. On the 10th day of the hunger strike, there was a rally, in Laredo to support the hunger strikers and an end to the embargo against Cuba. A microphone was passed across the fence and the strikers told the crowd they were prepared to stay indefinitely.

We are all determined to stay on the school bus until the school bus goes to Cuba.

Cuba is not perfect, the government's not perfect, but it's way better than what they have in Latin America. And I realize that…

That among the 12 people on hunger strike is 32 year old Camilo Garcia who left Cuba four years ago.

And I decided that I will do everything I can to help the revolution to survive, and I will stay in here as long as it take no matter what it take, even if it take my life. So what?

The 100 degree heat, the exhaust fumes and the liquid only fast are taking their toll on the health of the hunger strikers. Doctors brought in by the Customs Service and by Pastors for Peace are monitoring the group's health condition regularly. For Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin reporting.

Nearly 500 years ago when the mighty Aztec empire was in trouble, early one December morning, so the story goes, a humble Indian named Juan Diego had a vision, a brown-skinned goddess appeared to him. Today, she is known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Virgen de Guadalupe. Her image is one of the best known Latino cultural icons, and she's venerated throughout the Americas. Maria Martin prepared this report.

Every people at certain historical moments that marks them, that allows them to be that people. Guadalupe stands at the very birth of Mexicanidad.

This music is from Eduard Garcia's opera, Our Lady of Guadalupe, performed at the Guadalupe Theater in San Antonio. Like countless other works of Hispanic music and literature, it tells the story of how on an early December morning in 1531, an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego saw an apparition on the very spot where a temple to an Aztec goddess, Tonantzin, once stood.

That night, I was awakened by voices, whirling clouds, rainbows. And finally, the apparition of the Holy Lady, she appeared dressed as an Aztec princess. When I asked her who she was, she told me she was the Mother of God. She also told me that she had come to protect her people, meaning us.

[Background--natural sound--performance] In every sense, you could say that the Indigenous people of Mexico needed protection. Only 12 years had passed since the Spaniards had conquered the Aztec empire, enslaving many Indians. Countless others had fallen victim to war, brutality, and disease. Father Jerome Martinez spoke about this historical period at a conference about the Virgin of Guadalupe in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In a very real sense, one can say that the Aztec peoples lost any reason for existence. Their universe as they had seen it had just come apart. They felt their gods had abandoned them, the cosmic order was out of whack. There was no real reason to continue going on.

But the lady who appeared to Juan Diego said she would change all that. "I will be the hope for you and those like you," are the words she is said to have spoken. She addressed Juan Diego in his native language, so the story goes. "Juanito, my son, go to the Bishop," she said, "And tell him to build a church here on the hill of Tepeyac."

When I got to the Bishop, he relentlessly told me to be sane. "Juan Diego, before you utter a single word, let me remind you that lies directed against the church are considered blasphemy," and then he went on and on about rebellions, and inquisitions, things I knew nothing of. Then in my utter frustration, I threw open the cloak and showed him the roses, which they all acknowledge would be a miracle. And there, much to my surprise, was imprinted the image of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

The picture imprinted on Juan Diego's cloak showed a young brown-skinned woman standing on a moon, her back to the golden sun, her cloak covered with stars. Every detail of the image meant something to the Indians, and in a short time, a cult developed. Patrick Flores is the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas.

Our Lady came on December 12, 1531 and within the next 10 years, over 10 million Indians had been baptized. No longer were the Franciscans trying to convince them into persuading, but they were coming trying to persuade the Franciscans to baptize him because they would say, "The Mother of God has appeared to one us," like one of us, And we want to belong to her son, and they wanted to be baptized.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

La Virgen no le hablo a ningun sacerdote, no le hablo al obispo, no le hablo al Virrey, no le hablo a ningun Español, le hablo a un Indio…

Mexican Indian Andre Segura, says the Virgin of Guadalupe did not appear first to a priest, bishop, or viceroy. She spoke to an Indian, he says, in the Indian language. Segura is a teacher of Indigenous religious traditions, an elder who keeps the old ways alive.

En el pensamiento Idigena Azteca, Nahuatl, Mexica, Tenhochca o de todo este continente…. [English dub]

According to the Aztecs and other Indigenous peoples of this continent, there exists before everything a primordial law of duality, which guides all the universe, the positive and the negative, the masculine and the feminine. Therefore, the feminine presence is very important. Our ancestors recognized this concept of a cosmic motherhood which coincides with many other philosophies, including Christianity.

Y pore so huyeron un concepto de la maternidad cosmica. Y que coincide con todos las tradiciones de todo el mundo incluso la Cristiana.

[Highlight--natural sound--performance]

As the ancient Mexican stands to honor the goddess, Tonantzin, or Coatlaxopeuh and later Guadalupe, so today in Mexican and Mexican American communities ritual dances are performed for the Brown Virgin. The dancers, called danzantes or matachines, wear colorful costumes reminiscent of the ancient Aztecs. Men, women, and sometimes children dance a simple two step to the sound of the drum, and the rattle.

The danzantes are inside the church now. They come in and say, "Thank you, God. Thank you, Virgencita." And then when the Virgen appeared, that's where the mestizaje heritage started, the beautiful confluences of the blood of Spain and the blood of the Indian. She came 450 years ago to Juan Diego, and they danced in the spirit of love and the spirit of thankfulness, and the spirit of gratitude, and faith. Sometimes they dance hours and hours, and hours. That's all they have of themselves and their beautiful, beautiful gifts of being alive, thanking them for getting them well, for getting Abuelita well, or getting any type of manda. Sometimes, they don't have anything to offer but themselves, so that's why the dance is very important. Muy importante.

Pues yo le pregunto a ellos, que si yo arreglaba para aca para Estados Unidos yo iba a bailar año por año y hacerles faltar a la Virgen de Guadalupe…

[Background--natural sound--drumming] Jose Antonio Morelos is the leader of a group of matachines, who dance and honor The Virgin in El Paso, Texas. He says he made a promise long ago that if he became a legal US resident, he'd dance to Guadalupe every single year. The Virgen also inspires musicians and poets like Juan Contreras.

[Background--natural sound--drumming] Yes, and we dance, and we dance a dance of universal love, of beauty, of honor, of forgiveness, of being. To you, Madrecita Querida (singing). If only for an eternity. Thank you. [Background--natural sound--applause]