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Making a Common Cause with the Poor and with the Common Home.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

About thirty members of the Comboni Family (Lay, Secular, Religious, men and women, from Africa, America and Europe), met from July 27 to August 3, 2022, in Belém, capital of Pará, Brazil, on the occasion of the X Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (X FOSPA) and the Comboni Meeting on Integral Ecology. Here the Letter they sent
to the Comboni Family.

We opened our ears, hearts and minds to the groans of Mother Earth, of the Amazonian peoples and of the communities we work with, who cry out for the complete regeneration of the daughters and sons of the God of Life (cf. Rom 8, 19-23), present throughout all of Creation. We did this in continuity with the long journey of the Comboni Forums and the mapping of social ministries in our Comboni Family and mission.

We are inspired by the spirituality of native peoples and their strong interconnection with the primary elements of the cosmos: water, rivers, air, forests, land and all beings. Through them, Jesus of Nazareth continues to invite us to “contemplate the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field” (Cf. Mt 6, 26-28) in order to learn and assume together the Bien Vivir (Good Living).

Through attentive, respectful and compassionate Listening to the reality of many peoples:

We see that the climatic, socio-environmental and political crisis – derived from the dominant and unsustainable economic model, which separates, excludes and kills – seriously endangers human survival and the full life of all Creation, in the territories where we live our vocation and mission at the service of the Kingdom. It is the indigenous peoples, traditional communities, women and young people who still nourish hope, in their resistance, in defense of the Amazon!
We understand that the gravity of the situation urgently demands that the Church and our Institutes initiate processes of ecological conversion.

We feel it is necessary:

to review and unlearn many of our concepts and experiences in relation to God and Nature, the relationship among men and women, about inculturation, pastoral practices and liturgy;
to integrate in our missionary activities the defense of the bodies of those who fight for respect for the environment and of the territories where we are present;
to cultivate and share eco-spirituality, biblical re-readings and the link between faith and life;
to adopt a missionary methodology that allows us to have a greater connection and an effective immersion in the values, languages, cultures and sacredness of the peoples and territories with which we interact;
to review and correct, in our projects and structures, styles of life and consumption, often incompatible with ecological and evangelical sobriety;
to invest in basic and continuous training that integrate, in theory and in practice, the principles of Integral Ecology;
to inform and encourage the local Churches and our Comboni Family about events, means and processes that help us to assume and deepen the experience of synodality and social ministeriality in an ecological perspective;
to strengthen solidarity, participation, mutual care and networking with indigenous peoples, lay people, congregations, social movements and inter-ecclesial and extra-ecclesial bodies.

We propose to the coordinators of our Institutes, to the councils of the circumscriptions of all continents, to sectorial leaders and to all the members of our Comboni Family:

– adopting, as a common inspiration, the Comboni Pact for the Common Home and, as a transversal axis of all our missionary activity and presence, Integral Ecology;

– promoting the permanent sharing of reflections, lessons learned and practices among the members of the Comboni Family;

– exchanging personnel among communities and circumscriptions that operate in the same territory;

– qualifying our training processes with research, sharing of methodologies for intervention and social transformation and the definition and the theoretical-practical integration of Integral Ecology in line with Laudato Si’ and Querida Amazonia by Pope Francis;

– participating in the discussion and elaboration of pastoral plans in dioceses and parishes that assume the principles of Integral Ecology;

– promoting our qualification and participation in the field of advocacy and political decision in defense of the Common Home;

– supporting and investing in the mechanisms and practices of inclusive economy;

– welcoming and defending people at risk or threatened because of their struggles.

We assume, as participants in this Comboni Family Encounter and in this rich experience of listening, the commitment to:

▪ publicize and support the Pan-Amazonian Declaration of Belém, which integrates the Knowledge and Feelings shared in the X Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (X FOSPA);

▪ continue the reflection and sharing of insights that emerged during these days of meetings;

▪ translate and live, in the different contexts of our mission, the charismatic inspiration of Comboni (Regenerate Africa with Africa) and the slogan “Amazona-te!”, which had a strong repercussion among us in these days, always respecting and promoting the protagonism of the traditional peoples.

We entrust all this path that we want to travel to the intercession and protection of the Martyrs of the Amazon who encourage us to radical witness and fidelity in our following of Jesus of Nazareth and in living out our charism.

From the flow of life on the banks of the Guamá River, in Belém do Pará, August 3, 2022.

The identity ‘card’.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

The latest census of India, that of 2011, indicates that 79.9 per cent of Indians identify themselves as Hindu, 14.2 per cent as Muslims and 2.3 per cent as Christians (about 30 million, divided almost equally between Catholics and those belonging to other Churches or denominations).

However, while Muslims and Christians seek in their identity an element of self-protection and egalitarianism barely touched by socio-economic differences, also present within them, for many Hindu leaders and their political references the priority task is to bring back to the Hindu ‘common home’ the ‘exiles’ who by converting to other religions have sought above all greater equality opportunities but who in so doing would threaten the unity and ‘purity’ of India.

The religious element has acquired more and more a political value.

The identity ‘card’ has been increasingly played, but while in the long period of power of the Congress Party, almost uninterrupted from 1947 to 2012 under the leadership of the Gandhi dynasty which still directs it in the figures of Sonia Gandhi (party president) and his sons Rahul (congressman) and Priyanka (member of the All India Congress Committee), its impact has been relative or localized. With the return to power in 2014 of the pro-Hindu nationalists led by Narendra Modi, now in his second consecutive term as head of the government, the religious element has acquired a political value, exacerbating divisions and underlining the desire to bring back the various religious experiences present in a single traditional vein, with reconversion where possible, with a path of convergence on shared points in other cases, and with forced assimilation or expulsion in others.

The Taj Mahal is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra.

In a country known for its tolerance and assimilative capacity that cannot ignore the conflicts that have repeatedly been inspired by religious diversity, the official sponsorship of Hinduism has imposed constant pressure on religious minorities. This is partly the expression of a broad discriminatory movement towards traditionally marginalized groups, partly the manifestation of a ‘governing’ nationalism which, by promoting national unity and identity, indicates the destiny of every religious expression that has historically emerged in reintegration into the Hindu stream or has differentiated from it. A promoter of this line is the largest party at the federal level and at the head of many states, the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bjp, but it is deferred to – providing important banks of votes – by militant Hinduism movements, starting with the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a leading organization of Hindu nationalism that advertises one million adherents and for which the theory of Hindutva (‘Hinduity’, or rather of a natural belonging to Hinduism of anyone born in India) must be the primary objective. ‘At any cost’, because where direct coercion or the threat of violence do not reach, propaganda and lies do. ‘Destructive lies’, such as those that give the title to the latest Open Doors report which aims to shed light on ‘disinformation, incitement to violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India’.

Masjid-e-azam is the main mosque in Mysore, a city in India’s southwestern Karnataka state. 123rf.com

Based on field research conducted between February and March 2021 by a group of scholars from the London School of Economics, the report includes data and testimonies collected in various locations in the country where episodes of anti-Christian or anti-Islamic violence are manifested, highlighting how ‘throughout India, Christians live in a state of constant fear’ as a result of ‘a systematic campaign of harassment, violence, rape and murder’. The proposed ‘cases’ are exemplary, identified in areas particularly affected by Hindu pressure such as the rural regions of Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa, which show the inconvenient truth hidden under official policies.
‘Daily life for many Christian and Muslim communities has become an excruciating battle to earn a living and practice their faith’, stresses the report: ‘India: Destructive lies: Disinformation, speech that incites violence and discrimination against religious minorities in India’, which intends to highlight a situation in constant and worrying deterioration which places the largest world democracy face to face with its
obvious contradictions.

Mass at our lady of Lourdes church in Kumrokhali, West Bengal. 123rf.com

‘In India, there is an ongoing work of disinformation and anti-Christian propaganda and against other religious minorities (including Muslims, Open Doors specifies) which makes use of many tools but which now has a leading vehicle in the mass media and in social networking. Underlining that not only do attacks and persecution occur, but ‘they are ignored or even condoned by the authorities – including state and regional governments, police and media’ so as not to antagonize the powerful Hindu organizations that are in fact sponsors of the nationalist government by giving them their votes and receiving immunity from them in their campaign of reconversion to Hinduism and in the often violent action that uses alleged conversions as a pretext that a growing number of states and territories of India are forbidding by law.
The fine for those who convert to Christianity is 25 thousand rupees (about 260 pounds in the tribal areas of the state of Orissa), one of the 9 states of India that already apply anti-conversion legislation with a clear repressive direction towards religious activities, both Islamic and Christian. According to one of the authors of the report, ‘the extent to which state actors are complicit in the violence is shocking. Bureaucrats, policemen and lower court judges are often openly colluding in discrimination and politicians, top religious leaders and powerful media owners are giving very clear signals that this behaviour is appropriate’.
Under this growing pressure, Christians are particularly vulnerable due to their numerical situation but also because they are more exposed to unfounded accusations, given the large number of welfare, educational, social, and cultural initiatives they initiate or manage. They are open to all, without exclusion but are seen by Hindu extremists as also
aimed at conversion.

Catholics during an outdoor mass in the village of Mitrapur, West Bengal. 123rf.com

According to Open Doors, India is in 10th place among the 50 countries where difficulties for the baptized are most acute. Another organization committed to identifying Christians’ difficulties in expressing their faith, Persecution Relief, reported that in the first half of 2020 hostile acts against Christian Indians increased by 40 per cent, mostly reported as ‘hate crimes’, and the subsequent trend showed no significant change. Between lies and fear, the ‘narrative’ of discrimination is almost always one-sided. ‘The main media reporting these attacks literally repeat the reports of the perpetrators, refusing to speak to the victims’ and thus become instrumental in perpetuating violence and discrimination. One example is the accusations made against Christians of deliberately spreading Covid-19 among Hindus.
But other examples of de facto discrimination of those who are not fully integrated into society according to the canons of Hindu extremism are not lacking. While the remuneration for a tribal worker employed in a factory or plantation is 150-200 rupees per day (1.40-2.20 pounds) as against a minimum wage of between 160 and 420 rupees according to the State of residence, 20 thousand rupees (205 sterling) is paid in compensation to the family for the death in a cell of a converted aboriginal.

Stefano Vecchia

Music. Ustad Saami. The Fascination of an Ancient Mystery

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

“The world calls me Ustad, the teacher, but I personally feel I am a Shagird, a disciple of music”. This is how Naseeruddin Ustad Saami, one of the most significant personalities in Pakistan and musical Sufism, defined himself.

His songs and his music are infinitely distant from what is heard in the West; so much so that those unaccustomed to this type of sound would say it is ‘all the same’ or ‘boring’. In reality, his music is closely linked to Sufism and its origins predate Islamic musical culture.
The 77-year-old Pakistani is the last master of an ancient art (dating back to the 13th century) and widespread in much of South Asia: the qawwali devotional chant based on a scale of 49 microtones, from which the modern khayal descends.

Ustad Saami is the last master of an ancient art and widespread in much of South Asia: the qawwali. Photo: Marinella Delli.

Everything revolves around a central note, from which the master moves with great skill, bringing in ancient mystiques and accompanying the song with hand movements as if he were dancing, according to a ritual that fascinates for its almost magical strength.
On the one hand, his style evokes the melismas of Gregorian Chant, and, on the other, is related to that of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, probably the greatest Pakistani musician and the only one able to achieve almost universal fame.
In the West, Saami began to make himself known with a record released in 2019 entitled ‘God is not a Terrorist’ which was followed by the recent ‘Pakistan is for the Peaceful’, two titles that adequately express the essence of his message: the search for peace and serenity implied by values and visions of life very far from those of Islamic fundamentalism which, not surprisingly, has always opposed it.
Fortunately, his fame is recognized everywhere in the country, allowing him greater freedom than that of many of his colleagues. Maestro Saami has sung since he was a child under the guidance of an uncle from whom he learned all about this endangered art, but over the course of his career, he has assembled an increasingly vast and stylistically varied repertoire. And he sings in a variety of languages ranging from Sanskrit to Urdu, from Farsi to Arabic and even the ancient Vedic language.

Photo: 123rf.com

‘Pakistan is for the Peaceful’ was recorded on the roof of his home in Karachi. Accompanying him were his four sons Rauf, Urooj, Ahmed and Azeem playing two drums, the tabla and the harmonium, intoning responsorial voices that occasionally echoed the melodies sung by their father. It was all done in a single all-night session and with the assistance of Ian Brennan, the wise discoverer of unknown sonic treasures of the Glitterbeat House: only three songs that, apart from their emotional strength, are and will remain a precious document of an art that could disappear forever with Ustad. Music from another world, full of charm and ancient mysteries, which nevertheless is a full part of this world. But, perhaps, for just a little while longer. (Open Photo: 123rf.com)

Franz Coriasco

Socio-economic imbalances.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Unlike most countries with a medium or high level of development, India has a population that is still growing rapidly and for the most part young, with an average age of 27.8 years, ten less than its neighbour and rival, the People’s Republic of China.

Consequently, choices must be primarily geared to support employment, education, and opportunities. However, it also has a population divided on two opposing and distant fronts of possibilities and well-being, with a numerical growth of billionaires among the highest in the world, yet has a population that remains for a substantial part close to or below the poverty line. The richest one per cent of the population has the same wealth as the poorest half and a GDP of 2.7 trillion dollars (roughly on a par with that of the UK) corresponding to an average per capita income of around 1,900 dollars a year. Now the economic indicators and social networks are mostly aimed downwards because if it is true that GDP is moving towards a projection of 8.2 per cent for the year, the increase in consumer prices at 6.1 per cent and the variability of the situation make it difficult to reach positive data.

In the years immediately preceding the pandemic, India had emerged as the country with the highest degree of poverty reduction, removing from a state of need – the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2019 estimates – 271 million inhabitants between 2006 and 2016. This is contrary to what is happening now, with India reporting the greatest increase in poverty. The United Nations, which already estimated the number of poor people in 2016 at 364 million (or 28 per cent of the population), now indicates that many millions have joined. These are urban poor who have regressed compared to the recent past but also millions of new poor due to the pandemic.
It is significant that the Pew Centre also estimates that the middle class has shrunk by a third in two years and that many Indians are returning to see the edge of the abyss of poverty.

Socio-economic imbalances, due to medium and short-term contingencies, inevitably end up being connected with the divergences, contradictions, and discrimination that this immense country continues to manifest 75 years after independence (August 15, 1947).
In all this, management and political guidelines have an essential
role and responsibility.
If some negative trends persist (high bureaucratization, inefficiency of the public system, personalistic management of power and nepotism, corruption in certain areas, opportunism and selectivity in the identification and management of problems, chronic inadequacy of funds for innovation, education, health, and welfare), these seem even more acute against the background of the potential, and often ambitious, objectives proposed to the population. This includes the contradictions that are spreading rather than smoothing out.
A case always cited but emblematic is the cancellation in the 1950 Constitution of any discrimination on a social, ethnic or religious basis. The continuous elaboration of laws aimed at the protection and promotion of groups – which are mainly lower-level castes and in some cases even higher or intermediate levels that in the recent history of India have failed to free themselves from a state of economic subordination or have entered it – shows a discordant reality.

It also shows how the support, or lack of it, for the less favoured groups is much used in the political management of the well-being or backwardness of a substantial part of Indians (approximately one third of the population) with inevitable inconsistencies and abuses. The multiplicity and plurality of modern India is a wealth that has its origins in its thousand-year history, but it has also been the main risk to its integrity since the Second World War. The current administrative division into 28 states and 8 federal territories defined on an ethnic and linguistic basis is a reflection of the attempt to coordinate diversity to avoid disruptive effects, but the often-opportunistic management of politics has relativized the benefits and rekindled the rivalries between the communities. (Open Photo: Kolkata. Crowd of people near the new market. 123rf.com)

(S.V.)

Frontier’s Story. In the Shade of the Mango Trees.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

For thirty years, Yeyo wandered from plantation to plantation in southern Mexico. Undocumented, humiliated, and oppressed, he decides with his brothers to return home.

Yeyo grew up looking at the deep scars on his father’s back from carrying bunches of bananas during the hellish tropical days in Chiapas and his mother’s arms scorched from making potato empanadas to sell outside the plantations.
Workers of a thousand trades struggled to survive as undocumented immigrants in Tapachula, southeast of the state of Chiapas in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border and the Pacific Ocean.
Always working at precarious jobs, poorly paid and without any financial help, they would go here and there in the region and always receive the same treatment and payment.

Photo: 123rf.com

They worked on the coffee harvest during the season in the Tapachula part of the municipality, three months on the plantation sleeping in large dormitories with two meals a day.
First, his mother came, carrying him on her back. When he grew up, he would help the others. Yeyo could not go to school because his parents moved from one place to another during the harvest season and this did not allow him to study; he barely knew how to read and write.
In Soconusco, a region southwest of the state of Chiapas, they worked harvesting pineapples, papayas, and coffee. In Huixtla, in the sugar cane season, only his father worked, while he and his mother sold potato pies at the entrance to the plantation.
At the age of six, Yeyo was already making tortillas, grinding nixtamals, collecting chiriviscos for the comal fire, carrying water in two-litre plastic containers and bathing his dog Papayo.
When he was eight his sister Inés was born and he became the elder brother. He was now in charge of making the sauce, chopping wood, and making the dough while his mother fed his sister and finished preparing the potatoes for the empanadas.

Guatemalan workers planting in a Mexico’s farming field. 123rf.com

They slept in huts made of plastic and sheets of cardboard that they managed to take to the plantation loading areas and, like dozens of undocumented immigrants at harvest time, set up camp in the plantations.Yeyo and his sister Inés know little about their parents’ trip to Mexico from Guatemala.
From her mother, he knows the story that she had left her eastern city, managed to reach the capital and found herself at the bus station that went to the San Marcos department on the border between Mexico and Guatemala, with him in her arms and with Papayo, their dog.
Across the river Suchiate, on the border, their father was waiting for them, having gone on ahead a few months earlier to prepare for their arrival. They intended to go to the United States but after using their savings to pay for the trip and the coyote fees, they remained in Tapachula working on a banana plantation where the owners hired undocumented migrants for a third of the cost of Mexican day labourers.
They thought it would only be for two months, but the two months turned into 30 years, moving from one plantation to another. His parents never returned to Guatemala since they left; she was 17 and he was 20. There they had a small brick house with a roof made of palm trees. Her mother Isaura worked in a mill in the morning and in the afternoon, she cleaned various shops on the main street of the town.

Man loading a truck with agave pineapples after being cooked. 123rf.com

His father Clemente worked at harvest time in the fields of melons and tobacco and cutting peppers and loroco, but the rest of the year he was a helper at the slaughterhouse. His job was to clean the skins of the cattle. Even while pooling both their earnings, they could barely make ends meet. Then Yeyo was born and they had not enough to live on, so they decided to emigrate to the United States via Mexico. But they didn’t have any money for the trip or the ‘coyote’ and so his father continued working with another group of friends who also left the city.
Finally, only his father remained in Tapachula as the others decided to continue on their way.
It was in the coastal commune of Suchiate, on the Pacific Ocean side, that the family grew up, working for ten long years on banana, papaya and mango farms. Yeyo was now approaching adulthood, with muscular, fleshy arms, and round shoulders. He joined his father at work, while his mother, along with Inés and his brothers, José and Toño born a few years later, made empanadas to sell on the street.
They never had a home of their own and Yeyo remembers living in at least 15 different places, in different parts of the state, with no other personal effects other than a change of clothes and personal sacks with their clothes and toothbrushes.
In the common sack, they had some alcohol, laundry soap, a pewter jar, plastic cups, ponchos and the mosquito nets that his mother made from some pieces of cloth for a wedding veil she had bought in a market in Tapachula, along with a picture of Our Lord of Esquipulas.

Twenty years have passed and they have not yet managed to get their documents in order, just like the other hundreds of families who worked by the day in the plantations, exploited and oppressed, suffering the vicissitudes of illegal immigrants in a land where the inhabitants had the same skin colour as themselves, were physically very similar, and spoke the same language.
One day his father had an accident at work. They ran to tell him but when Yeyo arrived his father was already dead. The owners of the plantation have never taken responsibility for accidents at work, especially not for those without documents. The only moral and financial support came from colleagues who pooled the money to have the body cremated. It was too costly to send the body to Guatemala and his parents never wanted to be buried in Mexico.Yeyo took charge of the family while his mother and his siblings, who never went to school due to the characteristics of family work, were occupied with selling potato empanadas. Five years later his mother died of a stroke. Colleagues helped by pooling the money to have her cremated.

“They took a bus in Tecún Umán, San Marcos, bound for the Guatemalan capital”

Yeyo was devastated by the responsibility of taking care of his three siblings. The long months seemed like years and one night coming back from work, he spoke to his siblings. They collected all their things. In one sack they placed the two urns with the parents’ ashes and, in another, they put three puppies, grandchildren of Papayo. They turned not to the north but to the south and crossed the Suchiate River. Then they took a bus in Tecún Umán, San Marcos, bound for the Guatemalan capital. Without ever having been in the country, they managed to find a bus going to Teculután, Zacapa, the hometown of their parents.
Tears rolled down the faces of all three as they walked into downtown Teculután and saw people selling Cashasha tamales, the tamales their parents used to long for, the ones they talked about in the evening. They were surprised by the unique smell of the Zacapa quesadillas that abounded in the baskets of the vendors running behind the buses and the drivers who stopped to buy.
They saw bags of tender mangoes, jocote marañon, peanuts with salt, nuggets and chilli, pounds of dry cheese, bagged cream, and cheese with holes.There were children selling bags of fresh tamarind, Jamaica rose and cashew jotote on the streets. They felt the dry heat so different from that of the humid tropics of Chiapas. Thirty years had passed since Yeyo had left his city, carried on his mother Isaura’s back. He was home at last, back in the land of his birth.

“They saw the house that their mother had spoken about so often”

The four of them walked on with the puppies and all their family belongings contained in three bags. The shade of the mango trees cooled their journey.
Finally, they saw the house that their mother had spoken about so often. With a lump in his throat, Yeyo grasped the key and opened the door. They were back home at last, where it all began. Isaura and Clemente’s children. Even Papayo’s little grandchildren had returned.
They dusted down the pine table, spread out the cot, swept the clay floor and admired the manicured patio, with its coriander bushes, izotes, coffee bushes, almond, papaya, and mango trees. All this was a gift from Maura, Isaura’s best friend who never lost hope that her friend would return. That is why she filled with life the place that had begun to look abandoned and overgrown. The next day, Yeyo and his siblings went to the cemetery. Next to the graves of the grandparents, they coloured the urns with the ashes of their parents. They could now rest in peace in their own homeland where it all began. (Open Photo:123rf.com)

Ilka Oliva Corado

Persecuted Church. “Someday, God will dry our tears”.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Death, kidnapping, extortion, and intimidation have become a daily reality for many priests and religious, particularly in Nigeria, Mexico and Haiti.

Father John Mark Cheitnum was found dead after he was kidnapped with another priest, Donatus Cleopas, on the afternoon of July 15 as they were on their way to celebrate a mass in the parish of Gure in the diocese of Kafanchan. Father Donatus, instead, managed to escape
from the kidnappers.
With the murder of Father John, the number of priests who have died in Nigeria since January has risen to four: all in episodes linked to kidnappings for extortion. Twenty-two priests, on the other hand, were also kidnapped in the first eight months of the year.In the state of Benue in the northern centre of the country, however, between May and June, at least 68 Christians were killed and many kidnapped. Over 1.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes.

Father John Mark Cheitnum, left, and Father Denatus Cleopas, killed in Nigeria.

On 1 July, at the funeral of Father Fr. Vitus Borogo, killed on June 25 in the Kaduna Farm, more than seven hundred priests from all over Nigeria protested against the government, asking for security for them and their Christian communities. “We are priests, not terrorists!”, “The government should protect Nigerians”, “Do we still have a government?” These are some of the slogans written on the placards carried by several priests.
In his homily, the Archbishop of Kaduna, His Exc. Mgr. Matthew Manoso Ndagoso, deplored the growing instability in the country and stressed that Nigerians live in constant fear of being victims of violent acts, while the federal government seems to be unable to address the issue.

The funeral of Father Vitus Borogo in the Archdiocese of Kaduna, June 30, 2022. ( Photos courtesy of the Archdiocese of Kaduna)

In the view of Mgr. Ndagoso, Nigerians are being held prisoner in their own country by the incessant violence. The Archbishop of Kaduna expressed his pain at the fact that in a year his community had buried three dead priests in the hands of bandits, adding that the most painful was that of Fr. Joseph Aketeh Bako, whose funeral took place a week earlier without his body, which has not yet been found. “In my 60 years of age, we have never seen so much evil as we do now, not even during the civil war. Something is wrong with the leadership of this country”, said Mgr. Ndagoso. “We no longer have tears in our eyes, because the source of our tears has dried up due to constant crying. We have also lost our voices because when we speak no one listens. If you cry, no one hears you, but we will not lose hope! One day, God will dry our tears”.

Mexico – Haiti
Two Jesuit priests, Father Javier Campos Morales (79) and Father Joaquín Cèsar Mora (80), along with a local tourist guide Pedro Palma were killed on 20 June in Cerocahui, a village in the Sierra Tarahumara, in the northern state of Chihuahua. Palma had sought refuge in the church for fear of being killed.
When Father Campos saw him, he went to meet him, but at that moment a man entered the church and first killed the tour guide and Father Campos. He then killed Father Salazar who rushed in after hearing gunshots. After the murders, a group of armed men entered the church and took away the bodies of the two Jesuits and the tour guide.

Two Jesuit priests, Fathers Javier Campos (left) and Joaquín Mora, murdered in Mexico

Two days later the local police would find the bodies of Father Campos, Father Mora, and Palma. The killer is well known in the area. His name is Jose Noriel Portillo, El Chueco, head of a criminal cell of the Sinaloa Cartel. “The Jesuits of Mexico will not remain silent in the face of the reality that tears apart the whole of society – declared the superiors of the Mexican Jesuit Province. We will continue to be present and to work for justice, reconciliation, and peace, through our pastoral, educational and social works, in favour of the least and the poor”. They then reiterated their condemnation to public opinion that seems deaf to the situation of violence raging in some regions of the country.
Drug-related violence is no surprise, given that dozens of journalists, politicians, social and pastoral leaders who denounce the phenomenon, have been systematically murdered ever since the start of a fierce conflict unleashed in 2006 to achieve hegemony over the drug trade.
There are many priests and religious who are constantly under death threats. In his 10 years of service in Simojovel, Father Marcelo Pérez has received several threats. At first, a bounty of about 6,000 euro was placed on his head. This was first increased to 17,000 euro and then to 40,000 euro. “I denounced generalized and structural violence and I was not afraid to say that the country was ruled by narcopolitics”, he said. Father Marcelo also conducts pilgrimages and activities related to issues such as access to medical care, poverty, and violence.

Father Thomas Gonzalez: “I have received many threats. I know I could be killed, but I am not afraid.”

“I have received many threats. I know I could be killed, but I am not afraid. I have dedicated my whole life to defending the weakest. I always wonder what Jesus would do in this situation”. These are the calm but determined words of Father Thomas Gonzalez, a 46-year-old Franciscan, director of a house for immigrants called ‘The 72’ in Tenosique, in the state of Tabasco, in the south-east of the country.
Anyone who takes the side of immigrants becomes the preferred target of drug traffickers and organized crime, who see this as a threat to their lucrative human trafficking business, which has an annual profit of $32 billion worldwide. Human trafficking is the third most profitable business after arms and drugs.
Sister Juana Ángeles Zarate, of the Conference of Major Superiors of Religious of Mexico, said that concerns about the violence and the response of the Church were expressed in local preparatory meetings for the 2023 Synod of Bishops on synodality. She also said that many clerics work in isolated areas where violence is rife and security is deteriorating.
“We have suffered threats”, said Sister Juana, a member of the Carmelites of the Sacred Heart. “There are communities where we have had to welcome people who have been shot or attacked. We are always in a vulnerable situation where they can attack us”.
A report by the Mexican Catholic Multimedia Center (CCM) shows that from 1990 to 2022, violence in Mexico resulted in the deaths of a cardinal and 57 priests.
In just three and a half years of the current López Obrador administration, more than 121,000 murders have been recorded in the country. In the eight months of this year alone, there have been more than 14,679 murders.

Sister Luisa Dell’Orto killed during a robbery in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti.

On June 25, Sister Luisa Dell’Orto, a 57-year-old Italian nun belonging to the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Gospel of Charles de Foucauld, was killed during a robbery in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti. The missionary had been on the island for twenty years and worked in a poor suburb of the capital, in the Kay Chal Center (Casa Carlo), which receives poor children from the city, in a building that was also rebuilt thanks to her, after the devastating earthquake. For some time, the Bishops of Haiti have been launching appeals and reminders of the difficult crisis at all levels that the country is going through. Violence and corruption are spreading everywhere; the population is falling deeper and deeper into poverty and is now exhausted. The natural disasters that have frequently hit the island and the Covid-19 pandemic contribute to this situation, as well as political instability, which saw the assassination of the President of the Republic, Jovenel Moïse, a year ago. (Open Photo: 123rf.com)

(C.C.)

The real importance of Ethnicity.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

“Tribal wars”, “ethnic conflicts”, “racial conflicts”. To explain the reasons for the violence between different communities, identity and cultural oppositions are brought up. But there are always economic reasons and ambitions for power at the basis of any disagreement. The divisions of human groups have no scientific basis.

According to the French anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle, it was often colonial administrators and anthropologists who created ethnic groups in Africa, both driven (with different purposes) by the desire to classify local groups. Then, by applying different policies to different groups, they are born, become concrete, rigid and become real wherever they were characterized by fluctuating identities.

In Mali, some Peul settled down over time and gradually assumed Bambara identities and surnames. Then, due to historical or ecological events, they resumed nomadism and with it the old Peul identity.

However, if monographs are written where the Peul is defined as a nomad, pale-skinned and with Hamitic features and if different policies are applied to the alleged different groups, the difference is consolidated and everyone ends up being condemned to be what the others
think they are.

The increasing emphasis placed on cultures and identities, and their alleged roots, which characterises the current debate leads to growing attention to the local and localisms.

It then happens that some localisms, challenged by some elite with sufficient power, are inflated with global aspirations: regions want to become states, dialects languages and so on. All this is in the name of the so-called peoples or local cultures that claim autonomy from the nation-states. This is how many of the “ethnic conflicts” that seem to characterize our age arise and that often conceal, under the veneer of culture, very different impulses, very different interests.

South African apartheid has always appeared in our eyes as one of the most aberrant examples of ethnicisation in relations between groups. However, the French anthropologist Claude Meillassoux offers us an interesting and pointed reading of this device thanks to which South African capitalism has managed to make the most of local labour at minimum wages. Rather than South African blacks being ethnicised, they have been proletarianised.

The Tutsi / Hutu dichotomy was created by a differentiated colonial policy, which favoured one at the expense of the other. The conflict then becomes social, political and not ethnic.

In Africa there is often talk of the ethnicisation of politics, meaning that parties often express the interests of an ethnic group. In reality, those parties express the interests of some lobbies as such, not as ethnic groups. We are therefore faced not with an ethnicisation of politics, but with a politicisation of ethnicity.

The competition for resources in many cases gives rise to organisational models that express, behind an ethnic guise, the demands of an interest group. In many countries, the economic decline and the consequent loss of jobs have caused the weakening of the political subjects who traditionally represented the workers and, in many cases, the discontent of the latter has been catalysed by political movements that have led to a class solidarity that could be defined as ethnic.

Humans rarely enter into conflict because they have different customs or cultures; usually, it is to conquer power, and when they do so, following ethnic alignments, it is because ethnicity becomes the most effective means to do so.

Marco Aime/Africa
Anthropologist

India. A Country in Transition.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

With an evident crisis in the availability of widely distributed agricultural production from Ukraine as a consequence of the conflict, India has emerged on the world stage due to the potential consequences of the choice to reduce or stop the export of wheat, first, and then of sugar with a limit on that of rice and other foodstuffs, with programs for further reductions.

At a time when there was a serious threat of what was also a conflict for essential resources with potentially devastating consequences for a substantial part of the world’s poor population, India has thus imposed its own strategic role.
First by denying the intention to proceed with restrictions on exports, then by activating them and finally by indicating that they will be maintained only for existing contracts or for special needs.

The Asian country is the world’s largest producer of wheat, with 109.5 million tons in 2021 but is far behind in the ranking of exporters with only 7 million tons destined for sale abroad. Faced with a drastic drop in Ukrainian (and partly Russian) exports, it was expected that India could intervene, both towards the countries that are used to receiving its wheat as well as other products (we are talking about Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Turkey), and to at least partially balance the shortcomings of others, starting with Egypt, the first world importer.
New Delhi has confirmed that the established commitments will be kept, but many of the recipients in need of every contribution to feed their population could suffer serious consequences. Especially Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh have a need without alternatives in importing from their large neighbour. Faced with the prospect of less consistent harvests due to an extensive drought and then an anticipated and violent monsoon, the government of New Delhi has sought to ensure the near future needs of its population which has reached 1.4 billion, now close to that of China. But also – several observers suggest – New Delhi needs to highlight its own role in a sector in which it can impose choices that do not involve the choice of a strategic field, particularly difficult due to its historical proximity to Russia.

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Gov.Media

Its commercial relations here are relatively reduced (5.93 billion dollars of Russian exports to India and 2.87 billion in the opposite direction in 2020-21), due to the geographical proximity to China, on which it depends for many products. But it is also a strategic rival, due to the growing proximity to the United States and the West, which is necessary in terms of the partnership for infrastructure and development, technology and production and, last but not least, in commercial terms.
The climatic situation, and the need for ‘a presence’ on the international level (in some way consistent with India’s still current role as flag-bearer of the Non-aligned Movement), have carried some weight in the drastic choices of the Indian government, but also in the internal situation, even more subject to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic which cost 525,000 deaths out of 43.3 million registered cases. For the executive headed by Narendra Modi, who is openly nationalist but has, on the economic level, been able to play the game of protectionism and liberalism, it was essential to continue to guarantee adequate remuneration to the strong producer lobbies, especially the more aggressive groups close to the capital, which between 2020 and 2021 waged a severe tug-of-war over the liberalization of wholesale sales of wheat, rice, and other heavily subsidized essential products. The New Delhi government, at risk of losing consensus, was forced to back down. (Open Photo: Elephant with Indian symbols. 123rf.com)
(S.V.)

Africa. Under the Threat of Hackers.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Cybercrime is spreading more and more on the continent, causing damage to businesses and people. The urgent need for local laws and agencies for African cyber security.

In hacker jargon, they are called ‘brouters’. They are online scammers who, disguising themselves as images of attractive women, lure people on social networks and dating sites, mostly middle-aged men, promising them love stories in exchange for payments that gradually become larger. Brouters feed relentlessly on the web, raising their bank balance from the comfort of their home.

Photo: 123rf.com

In Africa, the homeland of this scam is Nigeria, where brouters have taken hold for some time, forming partnerships with organizations scattered in other corners of the planet and infecting many African countries. This is the case of the Ivory Coast, the West African nation that in recent years has registered the greatest leap in quality in the field of hacking (that set of operations and techniques aimed at piercing computer hardware or software systems) and IT security.

The threat of cyber-attacks
In a continent struggling with wars and famines, cyber-attacks could appear as a lesser evil ‘imported’ from the West. Instead, the figures circulated at the Abidjan forum say that the cyber threat in Africa is constantly expanding.
In 2021, cybercrime produced losses of approximately 4.2 billion dollars. In the first half of 2020 alone, Africa was the target of 28 million cyber-attacks that caused nearly $4 billion in damage.
More than 85% of financial institutions confirm that they have suffered this type of offensive.

Photo: 123rf.com

Phishing (deceptive emails), ambushes via malware (malicious software that infects computers and the mobile devices they access), and credential theft are the most common attacks. But cybersecurity levels have risen, a market that in 2020 in Africa recorded a turnover of 2.5 billion dollars. The main resource that the continent can make available to the sector is the very low average age of its population. Suffice it to say that in 2050, according to UN projections, more than half of Africans will be under the age of 25. A boundless army of digital natives that many African countries will aim to bring to the side of the state, snatching them from cybercrime.

The rise of Abidjan
Since 2010, Abidjan has been a cybersecurity innovation hub that governments and private companies from the West and Asia are looking at with increasing interest. An ascent supported by clear government policies against cybercrime. In 2011, a forensic science department specializing in cybercrime was created, currently headed by Colonel Guelpétchin Ouattara, a trained electronics engineer. Then a law on the protection of personal data was adopted, which took as a model the General Regulation on the protection of personal data of the EU (GDPR), and an ad hoc governmental authority was established, the Autorité de régulation des télécommunications /TIC de Côte d’Ivoire. This increasingly defined regulatory framework has favoured the birth of many companies specializing in IT security, often founded by young entrepreneurs. These include: Data Privacy Solution Expert, also active in France; Diamond Security Consulting, also present in Togo, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Indonesia; the Camenki Africa Group; and New Digital Africa. There are also bodies that protect the rights of digital consumers, such as the Association des correspondants ivoiriens à la protection des données à caractères personnels.

Unresolved problems
However, the Ivory Coast still has to pass many tests of maturity. Its companies need to invest more in prevention, training, and defence of their nerve centres. In the last five years, cybercrime has cost the country about 38 million euro: a figure released by former minister of the digital economy, Roger Adom, reported by Jeune Afrique.

Photo: 123rf.com

Furthermore, the country has not yet ratified the Malabo Convention on cyber security and personal data protection, adopted in 2014 and whose purpose is to harmonize the laws of the member states of the African Union and regional economic communities. The more cumbersome theme remains in the background, namely that of digital sovereignty. Most of the data of governments, companies and private citizens circulating in the networks of African countries flow into data centres located outside the continent, which refer to giants such as the Chinese Huawei, which for years has made Africa a land of conquest. If African countries do not claim their digital sovereignty more, they may well produce good practices and rise to virtuous laboratories, but they will continue to be the first to serve the interests of the multinationals to which their IT infrastructures are linked. (Open Photo: 123rf.com)

Rocco Bellantone

Tea. From the Leaf to the Cup.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Second only to water, tea is the drink most consumed in the world. Served hot or iced, the infusion favours small cultivators, the economic growth of developing countries, and the health of the people at large.

The origins of tea date back more than five thousand years, but its contribution to health, culture, and socio-economic development is increasingly important. Today tea is grown in very localized areas, supporting more than 13 million people, including smallholder farmers and their families, who account for 60% of world production and depend on the tea sector for their livelihood.
The importance of the drink goes beyond the simple act of pouring hot water over the tea leaves. During the pandemic, tea brought comfort to millions of people around the world, with growing demand, especially among young consumers who have developed a taste for the drink thanks to its hydration benefits and sense of well-being.The tea plant contributes to socialization, cultural heritage, rural development, and sustainable livelihoods. It is one of the main and most profitable agricultural crops for families in developing countries and, as a labour-intensive sector requiring processing, offers jobs in remote and economically disadvantaged areas.
This drink is enjoyed by millions of people from China to Argentina, India to the UK, and each culture has its own tradition of consuming white, green, black, and oolong teas or blends.

Tea plantation in sunset time. 123rf.com

The tea production chain moves over $17 billion annually, in addition to the $9.5 billion generated by the global trade in the product. “The tea sector contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular by reducing poverty and eliminating hunger. It creates jobs, generates income, and improves the living conditions of the communities involved in production activities”, the United Nations acknowledges.
China, India, and Sri Lanka (in Asia) and Kenya (in Africa) are the main tea producers in the world.

Production and consumption
World production of black tea is projected to increase by 2.2% per year, reaching 4.4 million tons in 2027. Green tea production will increase by 7.5% per year, reaching 3.6. million tons in 2027. In China, production is expected to more than double over the period in question, reaching 3.3 million tons. “Consumers are willing to pay more for specialty teas and are curious about the quality, the origin of the raw material and the contribution to sustainable development”, the FAO report underlines.

Indian woman picks tea leaves.123rf.com

On the other hand, European countries with a tradition of importing tea are experiencing a decline in consumption. The region’s market is highly saturated and faces competition from other beverages, especially mineral and spring water, and coffee – a trend that could be reversed by relying on the promotion of special or organic teas. The difference between special products and traditional ones is given by the quality of the leaves, the fuller cut, and the drying process as well as climate change, reveals the International Tea Market 2022 report, promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The study highlights that there will be new income opportunities in rural areas and an improvement in food security in producing countries.

A Young Malawian woman picks tea leaves

Tea consumption has increased rapidly in China, India, and other emerging countries, thanks to rising household incomes and the diversification of production, which now includes herbal teas, fruit infusions, and speciality teas. Global demand is also benefiting from new young Asian urban consumers, which translates into a decrease in exportable production. The increase in production is also linked to greater consumption of tea. After the turmoil in the global tea trade caused by the pandemic, there are new concerns about exports to Russia, the world’s third-largest tea market. “Tea is exempt from economic sanctions. A large amount will likely be imported into Russia from India and Sri Lanka. In the long run, there will not be a major disruption to the trade”, explains Ian Gibbs, chairman of the International Tea Committee. The countries with the highest per capita consumption continue to be Turkey, Ireland, Morocco, and China.

Problems and uncertainties
The tea sector must face a number of challenges to ensure its long-term sustainability. Plantations are very sensitive to changes in growing conditions and some producing countries will suffer the impacts of climate change, such as floods and droughts. At the same time, it is necessary to reduce the carbon emissions generated by production and processing.Tea is produced in rainy monoculture systems and climatic conditions determine the growth. The Camellia sinensis bush, of Asian origin, can reach a height of 10 meters. In cultivation, it is pruned so that it does not exceed one meter in height.

Tea Plantation in Malawi.

The collection of leaves begins when the bushes reach one meter and ends after about twenty years. The aroma of tea leaves depends on the nature of the soil and the climate. For example, to make black tea, the leaves are left to wilt and rolled and then exposed to the air to continue the oxidation, fermentation, and drying process. To make green tea, the leaves are steam sterilized and then rolled and dried to make tea with a lighter, more herbaceous flavour.
Changes in temperature and rainfall affect not only the quality but also the properties of plant leaves. FAO’s Intergovernmental Group on Tea (IGG) recommends adaptation measures such as planting drought-tolerant tea, the diversification of production with other tree crops, organic farming, and investment in water conservation technologies.
“The tea sector must be environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, from the leaf to the cup”, says Qu Dongyu, FAO Director General, who also focuses on inclusion and promoting market transparency. Product innovation and diversification are also key to expanding the market and increasing consumption, such as flavoured ready-to-drink tea and sparkling iced tea. (Open photo: 123rf.com)

Carlos Reis

Ecuador. The Galapagos Islands. A Maritime Sanctuary.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Designing the ‘Common House’. Overall pastoral care. The Synod: ‘Live the experience of the pilgrims of Emmaus’. We talk about it with Mons. Patrizio Bonilla, Bishop and Apostolic Vicar of the Galapagos.

The archipelago of about 50 volcanic islands is located in the Pacific Ocean 1000 km from the west coast of South America. They are an unspoiled paradise with flora and fauna unique in the world. It is no coincidence that Charles Darwin gave birth to his theory of evolution right there. Since 1959, the Galápagos Islands have been a national park and in 1986 they were declared a ‘World Heritage Site’ by UNESCO.

“Each island has its own beauty, like the flora and fauna that make it unique. Everything speaks to us of Creation, and for this reason we join the call of Pope Francis who invites us to safeguard our common home”, says Msgr. Patrizio Bonilla, Bishop and Apostolic Vicar of the Galapagos. And he continues: “If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to amazement and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of brotherhood and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitudes will be those of the dominator and the consumer, the mere exploiter of natural resources, unable to put a limit on his immediate interests. Conversely, if we feel intimately united to everything that exists, sobriety and care will spring up spontaneously”.
Bishop Bonilla was born in the city of Rio Bamba, in Ecuador. He studied philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Quito, then theological studies at the Studium Teologicum Ierosolimitanum in Jerusalem, and on 10 October 1993 made his solemn profession in the Franciscan Order. In 1996 he was ordained a priest in Jerusalem. He studied Canon Law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. On 7 December 2013 in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno-San Cristòbal, he was consecrated bishop and began his episcopal ministry as apostolic vicar of the Galapagos.

The Apostolic Prefecture of Galápagos was erected on May 6, 1950, by Pope Pius XII, taking its territory from the diocese of Guayaquil. On 4 September 1954, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate the principal patroness of the apostolic prefecture. Finally, on July 15, 2008, the apostolic prefecture was elevated to apostolic vicariate by Pope Benedict XVI.
The seat of the vicariate is Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, on the island of San Cristóbal, where the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is located. The territory is divided into 11 parishes.
Reflecting on the ‘common home’ that is so dear to Pope Francis, the bishop says: “If we consider that the Galapagos Islands contain the largest number of plant and animal species on the planet, we will understand the concern of Pope Francis who invites us to develop a love for and awareness of this Home that we share. Pope Francis calls us to a necessary ecological conversion that leads us to live an integral ecology at the individual and social levels. For this, he calls us to reflect on the fact that living the vocation of protectors of God’s work is an essential part of a virtuous life. With this, we are committed to safeguarding the Galapagos Islands as a ‘maritime sanctuary’.
We ask the bishop what characterizes the pastoral care of his vicariate? What are the priorities and policies you are implementing? “When I took up my ministry, we began to observe the realities that deserved priority in our pastoral action. The fundamental axes of our work are in family pastoral care: we cannot exempt ourselves from supporting it because it is from how families are constituted that we build our society in its fundamental values; and then the pastoral care of young people and adolescents and children, who are the wealth and life of society. There is also the ordinary pastoral care of the parishes, to follow all those ecclesial groups that need accompaniment. Evangelization through the media is a privileged field of work. In our mission we have two radio stations, Santa Cruz FM (Puerto Ayora) and Voz de Galápagos FM (Puerto Baquerizo Moreno) and a television channel TV13 Galápagos, in Puerto Baquerizo Moreno. Finally, the pastoral care of the sea and the protection of creation is one of the great fields of work of the vicariate, especially to strengthen the accompaniment of people who work at sea. To this is added the protection of the common home, respect for the conservation and veneration of nature”.

What are the current needs of the life of the parishes? “First of all, the authentic witness of the faith. The Church cannot be understood without the transmission of the Gospel. Without the encounter with Jesus, there is no evangelization. The task of the Church, and therefore of the Christian community, is nothing other than proclaiming the Gospel until Christ is recognized as the only Lord of human history. Faith is strengthened by giving it, as Saint John Paul II reminded us in the Redemptoris Missio. Mons Bonilla insists on a journey of ‘pastoral of the whole’. With the ‘overall pastoral care’ in the parish, we want to say that all forces are involved and committed to the task of the mission, considering the needs that arise from taking this pastoral choice seriously. Our parish priests and our communities have distinguished themselves in the search to fully live the theme: to love and to serve. In light of the programmatic bases described above, we say that the life of the parishes is quite fruitful; however, we still need to work on the formation of the faithful. For this, we have implemented Biblical, ecclesiological and Marian formation courses and thus update our priests and missionaries”.
The pandemic is still affecting us: how are you experiencing this difficult situation? “In this time of the pandemic, we have had an opportunity to highlight our feelings of solidarity and fraternity with those who have been attacked by the virus. Although the income and economy of the Galapagos are mainly tourism and fishing, these have been reduced. We keep in mind that everything comes from the continent, from Ecuador, and this aggravates our life because we do not have what is necessary. It has been a tough time for all of us, with no flights and shortages of some products. We were isolated from the world. However, providence and fraternity have helped us. Now our challenge is to reactivate the economy of the islands”.

Pope Francis asks the universal Church for a synodal push. How is the Vicariate of the Galapagos implementing this ecclesial thrust? “Pope Francis asks us to live as an outgoing Church, a Church that is a field hospital where everyone can experience fraternity and human solidarity as a distinctive feature of Christians who are committed to the Gospel. Speaking of synodality, my thoughts turn to a Church that wishes to resemble the first Christian communities, where she lived fraternally, without selfishness or envy. I am thinking of a Church that wants to embody the Word of God in life and witness it day after day in open dialogue and attentive listening. For this, to live the synodal impulse, we should live the experience of the pilgrims of Emmaus: let the Lord speak to us until our hearts burn and move us to live charity and mercy in communion, participation and mission”. (L.P.)

Africa. Chocolate Can Be Sustainable.

Thursday, 1 September 2022 8:00

Deforestation, exploitation of labour, including minors and the use of pesticides. All too often chocolate has a bitter taste.
Yet, a multiplicity of experiences is succeeding to make the cocoa supply chain sustainable.

‘The food of the gods’. This is the meaning of the Mayan expression ‘kakaw uhanal’ from which the term ‘cocoa’ derives. According to an Aztec legend, in fact, the cocoa tree was a gift to mankind from the god Quetzalcoatl. A plant stolen from the other gods and whose seeds were able to instil strength.
From Central America, the Conquistadors brought cocoa to Europe and the passion for the hot drink that was obtained from it quickly infected all the courts of the Old Continent. Today there is no corner of the planet where chocolate, the main derivative of cocoa, is not consumed.

Every year 5 million tons are produced worldwide. Double what it was 30 years ago. And the figure is constantly growing. While cocoa is used everywhere, there are mainly two production continents: Latin America and Africa. In particular, 77% of the cocoa purchased by the confectionery multinationals comes from the latter. About 65% of the world supply comes in particular from only two countries: Ivory Coast and Ghana. The European Union is the largest importer.
A product whose market is worth 100 billion dollars a year, which only partially goes to producers: 2 billion, or 2%.
Most of the profits remain in the hands of those involved in processing the beans and distributing the processed products.
Why doesn’t cocoa generate wealth for producing countries? Because the big companies that control the market decide the prices. Cargill, Olam, Barry Callebaut. And those that turn it into chocolate: Mars, Nestlé, Ferrero and Meiji. And none of them is African.

The Market
Cocoa, like other commodities, is bought by multinationals through the market. In particular, futures contracts are being purchased. That is, the commitment to purchase an asset that will be used in the future at a predetermined price. There are three places where cocoa futures contracts are traded: ICE Futures US of New York, ICE Futures Europe, and CME Europe of London.

Such contracts have, in fact, been used for hundreds of years to help farmers cope with the uncertainty of harvests due, for example, to unforeseen climatic conditions that can compromise them. Their original purpose was to allow farmers to sell their crops at a future date for a guaranteed price. However, these same contracts can be bought and sold by speculators who have no interest in the actual sale of food. Instead, with futures trading, they can profit if prices change over time. Basically, by betting on the price of food.
In 2019 Ghana and Ivory Coast launched a joint initiative which, roughly like OPEC, the association of the major oil producers, aimed to regulate and protect the cocoa market. COPEC has decided to impose a tax of $400 per ton on cocoa importers, in addition to the market price determined by the stock market prices. After initially agreeing, the multinationals have started a battle to avoid paying the tax. They are now working on the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the exchange where futures of various commodities such as cocoa, coffee, cotton, and sugar are traded. This is in order to use the stored stocks to deal with emergency situations, thus bypassing the two producing countries.Ghana and the Ivory Coast have reacted with a media campaign, accusing Mars and Hershey’s of not paying the negotiated surcharge to help farmers out of poverty, especially now that, due to the pandemic, the price of cocoa has fallen, further reducing the profit margins of farmers.

Last July, major cocoa buyers have agreed to pay a premium and back a price floor on cocoa sold by Ivory Coast and Ghana as part of an agreement to combat poverty among farmers.Cocoa industry players will back a fixed ‘living income differential’ (LID) of $400 a tonne on all cocoa contracts sold by Ivory Coast or Ghana. Buyers will also pay a country premium that will enable cocoa regulators in both countries to reach a target floor price of $2,600 per tonne which should allow farmers to earn a minimum of 70% of the target floor price.
Signatories include Hershey (HSY.N), Mars, Blommer Chocolate, Nestle (NESN.S), Sucden, Mondelez (MDLZ.O), Touton, Barry Callebaut (BARN.S), Cargill, Ferrero, Olam and Ecom Trading.
Yves Brahima Kone, chief executive of the Ivory Coast Cocoa and Coffee Council, said companies had been dragging their feet on LID commitments, hindering efforts to make the industry more sustainable. “The aim of the pact is to allow all actors in the cocoa value chain to play their role and respect their engagements”, he said.

The lack of a processing industry in Africa
Europeans consume half of the chocolate produced in the world (around 48%). North America 24% (United States 20% and Canada 4%), followed by Asia (15%) and Latin America (9%). Africa, the continent in which the main cocoa producers are located, consumes only 3% of the chocolate and other derivatives that are produced in the rest of the planet – a paradox closely linked to the lack of a cocoa processing industry in producing countries. A paradox that some pilot experiences try to break.

In Grand-Bassam, the ancient capital of the Ivory Coast, Choco + was born, a chocolate shop that transforms cocoa to produce 100% Ivorian chocolate bars so as to export finished or semi-finished products, thus reversing the practice of importing bars and spreads produced thousands of kilometres away which generate surplus value elsewhere. But that’s not all: Choco + is also a job creation tool for young Ivorians and it plans to expand production soon to include cosmetics made from cocoa.
The project also makes use of collaboration with Trusty, an innovative platform which, by exploiting blockchain technology, allows products to be traced from the places of cultivation through all the processing stages. The issue of traceability is essential to meet the need for transparency of both consumers and companies by ensuring the purchase of a product made while respecting the environment and human rights. In Togo, on the other hand, there is Choco Togo, a cooperative founded in 2014 that transforms organic Togolese cocoa, producing chocolate for the local market and for export – a reality that employs 85 people, 45 of whom are women.
The SCEB, Société Coopérative Équitable du Bandama, operates in M’Brimbo, a village 130 kilometres north-west of Abidjan, the economic capital of the Ivory Coast. It is a federation of over 250 growers who, together, produce just under 300 tons of cocoa beans per year.
A project that has allowed, for fifteen years now, to eliminate the use of pesticides and deforestation.

In 2008 – says the French newspaper Le Monde – there were just about fifteen farmers who were convinced by Jean-Evariste Salo, promoter of this initiative, to stop logging and using pesticides. Production then amounted to 13 tons of cocoa beans. Today the yield per hectare has not increased. What has grown is the quality of the product, the well-being and health of those who grow cocoa and that of the community as a whole: a shop, a school and a laboratory for cocoa analysis were built in M’Brimbo and a mutual aid fund was set up for producers in difficulty.
Essential for the success of the project was the agreement with Ethiquable, a French company specializing in fair trade products. The latter buys the cocoa beans produced by the members of the SCEB at almost double the minimum price set by the Ivorian authorities: 1,350 CFA Francs compared to 825 CFA Francs on the conventional market (2.05 Euro versus 1.25 Euro).

Claudia Vago/Valori

Photo Gallery – Comboni Youth Movement at World Youth Day

Advocacy

Baobab

Youth & Mission