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Colombia. Distant peace.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Despite the peace accord signed in Havana, Colombia is still caught in the crossfire between FARC and ELN guerrilla groups. The death of the former FARC leader Jesús Santrich casts a dark shadow over the future of the Colombian conflict.

When the Havana peace agreement was signed in 2016, few people believed the fifty-year-long conflict would end. Today, as in the past, the fight goes on in many parts of Colombia. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Gulf Clan are the three groups fighting for control of the main illegal businesses of the country: trafficking in drugs and precious metals. At this moment in time, dissident FARC groups control most of the cocaine plantations on Colombian territory. At the same time, dissent against the peace agreement has spread to various parts of the country, especially along the border with Ecuador where the dissidents have allied themselves with the paramilitaries of the Comando de la Frontera.

Colombian Air Force Sikorsky UH-60L Arpía III

It is here that, in recent months, there have been new clashes with the ELN, the guerrilla organisation trying to gain control of the drugs trade in Colombia and Ecuador. However, it is on the border with Venezuela that the decisive contest is taking place. There, the ELN is facing up to the Gulf Clan, a group of former paramilitaries of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), that aspire to gaining the monopoly of the Colombian coca market.
The strength of these three groups lies in the support they are assured. The members of the Central Command of the ELN (COCE) were given political asylum in Cuba, one of whom was Pablo Beltrán, and in Venezuela, like the supreme leader alias Pablito. Havana is also the place where the ELN is engaged in peace talks with the Colombian state. Any eventual agreement with Bogota might fragment the organisation even more. In fact, the Fronte Domingo Laín which is active especially in the home town of President Maduro, has no intention of suspending the terrorist strategy practised in Colombia.

Colombian President Iván Duque.

There are reports from the Venezuelan border of new attacks on the oil pipeline such as that of Caño Limón-Coveñas, which bear all the hallmarks of Pablito. The combatants of the ELN demand millions from the foreign companies that manage these installations, guaranteeing in exchange the protection of the pipelines. A refusal to collaborate would be punished by the destruction of the oil pipelines. This is how the Fronte Pablito finances the war against the state of Colombia. For example, the Fronte Pablito was probably behind the bombing of the military barracks in Bogota, the attack on the Plaza de la Macarena or the Modelo Quarter of Barranquilla. The national police have been tracking him for some time but the base of Pablito is located between Guasdualito and El Perolin in the Venezuelan state of Apura, a stone’s throw from the border with Arauca (in 2020, the authorities confiscated a record 4 tons of marijuana there). The Fronte Domingo Laín has become one of the guerrilla groups most involved in drugs trafficking in Colombia. For this very reason, it has no intention of reaching a real peace deal with Bogota.

FARC leader Seuxis Paucias Hernández Solarte, also known as ‘Jesús Santrich’

The Colombian guerrilla war is now just a question of money. Suffice it to say that even the dissident FARC groups (such as El Primer Frente and the Segunda Marquetalia) have become drug trafficking cartels, strategically allied with elements of the regime of Nicolas Maduro. It was in Venezuela that Jesús Santrich, the second in command of the Marquetalia, disappeared in suspicious circumstances: this is said to have happened during a secret operation by the Colombian army. Other sources say it was the Guardia Bolivariana that did away with him.
Jesús Santrich was one of the outstanding exponents of the now extinct Colombian Revolutionary Forces (FARC).
For some time, the Colombian President Iván Duque claimed that Venezuela was even offering protection to the exponents of the Segunda Marquetalia, the armed group created by Santrich and Iván Márquez after they rejected the peace accord reached in 2016 between the FARC and the Colombian government.
The announcement of the death of the leader came by way of a communique issued by representatives of the Segunda Marquetalia in which it was stated that the ambush took place in the territory of Serranía del Perijá, a zone between El Chalet and the village of Los Laureles, inside Venezuelan territory, on the direct orders of the arrogant tyrant Iván Duque who “will not escape the already aroused anger of the people”. The communique ends with an invitation to all Colombians not to give up the fight until there is “a new government of the people and for the people, with no corruption or state thieves, as the fallen commander wanted”.

Mattia Fossati/CgP

Honduras. The Pech people. “We belong to the earth and to the earth we shall return”.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

The indigenous Pech people (one of the original peoples of Honduras), is one of the few with nomadic roots in Central America.
Their vision of the world is closely connected to the care and conservation of the Earth.

Their origin is not known for certain, but it is believed that the indigenous Pech group is descended from the Chibcha indigenous group of South America. It is believed that they first arrived in Honduras about 3,000 years ago from South America and settled in the territory at present occupied by the department of Colón and they gradually spread to other parts of the country. History tells us that, at the time of the Spanish conquest, the Pech were well organised socially, economically and politically, almost like the rest of the indigenous groups of Honduras such as the Tolupanes and the Tawahkas.

According to the accounts of the elders: “For four centuries, the Pech wandered in the jungles of Agalta, looking for hiding places to avoid being found by the colonisers and the Zambos who hunted them to sell them as slaves in the Antilles”.
The advantage of being a nomadic people and their strategy of ethnic-cultural survival allowed them to survive and keep intact their cosmogony, their social organisation, and their alimentary tradition.
Members of the Pech indigenous group of Honduras are also known as Payas, Poyers or Pahayas; nevertheless, these terms are not accepted by them as they mean ‘savage, uncivilised or barbarian’, words used by the Spaniards. They call themselves ‘Pech’ which in their own language means ‘people’ and, to refer to the rest of the population, they use the term Pech-akuá which means ‘the other people’ or Bulá which means ‘Ladino’.The Pech of Honduras, like the other indigenous groups of the country, despite having been culturised by the Spanish, have yet kept alive their traditions, culture, and language.
Their native Pech or Paya language belongs to the Macro-Chibcha linguistic family of some indigenous peoples of South America. Only half of the remaining Pech still speak the Pech language. Some efforts have been made by the community leaders to revive the language, but it is said that there has been insufficient help provided by the government.

They are at present reduced to 11 territorial communities (8 in the department of Olancho, 2 in Gracias a Dios and 1 in Colón), plundered and threatened by greedy cattle ranchers, woodcutters and Mestizo landowners. They number about 5,200 people, many of whom experience great difficulty in obtaining the necessities of life since they no longer have rivers to fish in or forests where they can hunt, gather wild fruit, or find medicine.
They do not preserve their customs as they never developed them like sedentary peoples. Eternal wanderers, they have never built, and even now do not build impressive buildings. They have never cultivated orchards or fenced-off gardens because both plants and animals were always at hand in the rivers and in the mountains. To grasp and understand the spirituality of the Pech people, it is necessary to see it with nomadic mental and spiritual categories. From the sedentary viewpoint, they will always be seen as ‘lazy’, ‘beggars’ and indifferent to prosperity. In one of the local assemblies, Adrián Fiallos, president of the Pueblo Nuevo Subirana community stated: “They say we Pechs are lazy because we do not strip the mountains to raise cattle like the Ladinos but we do not cut down the forests because we are children of the mountains. We cannot live without the mountains”.

They grow cassava, maize, beans and bananas to survive. The extraction of liquidambar balm was one of their main sources of income until the Ladins invaded the forests. They are a nomadic people who are forced to live in small villages or hamlets invaded and attacked by the mirage of modernity. They have the Federation of the Pech Tribes of Honduras (FETRIPH) which unites them.
They assiduously attend church just as once they would go to their hierophantic places (natural places where transcendence is manifested), but they are neither Catholic nor Evangelicals. This is due not only to their freedom from dogmatism but “also because we are unable to explain how a God who is Father could allow the mountains to be taken from us and our rivers killed, all in the name of God“, comments Antonio from the Pueblo Nuevo Subirana community.

Liquidambar balm, a heritage of the Pech
The nomadic peoples did not need to domesticate plants or animals, but they discovered the medicinal and nutritional properties of the wild plants and animals.
The liquidambar is a tree that grows in the mountains of Central America between the altitudes of 700 and 1,400 metres, but there is no bibliographical documentation to show that any of the peoples of the region besides the Pech ever utilised the properties of this tree.
Colonial historians and anthropologists of the last century affirm that the Pech were extracting the aromatic balm of the liquidambar tree for ceremonial and medicinal purposes and bartered it among the Mesoamerican civilisations. In the Pech language, ejtamá signifies the liquidambar tree and ejtamatastá signifies the person who extracts the balm. As far as is known, no other native language of the region has a proper linguistic name for this precious tree, and still fewer use it either commercially or ritually.

In the course of time, western civilisation recognised this aromatic contribution of the Pech people and, ever since then, part of the perfume industry depends upon the ejtamá, though the main ejtamá extractors and traders are Ladins who use ancestral Pech technology and knowledge to extract this balm from the wild tree.
The Pech people of Honduras still keep alive their uses and customs. Music is an important part of their culture, especially among the elders who jealously guard and hand to the children and the young their ancient songs in the Pech tongue.
The songs are accompanied by music played on some of their native instruments such as: the Tempuka (a sort of long drum), the Arwa (a sort of Quena) or the Camachá (similar to maracas).
The organisation of the Pech indigenous group is exercised mainly by the women who have a very important role in the economic, religious, social, and working life of the community and their homes. The Pech women are also healers, shamans, tribal heads, priestesses, and counsellors. Within Pech society, the female figure is as important as the male but, after the conquest, the women lost much of their social values, even though they still have a role in the Tribal Councils.

Pedro Santacruz

The hard road towards Nation-Building.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Kazakhstan achieved independence in December 1991 at a time when the dissolution of the USSR was inevitable. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Soviet leader of Kazakhstan since 1989 and President in 1990, was reconfirmed in 1991 following the independence of the country.

Nazarbayev, in taking on the leadership of the new state, was obliged to face all the problems inherited from the Soviet period; the first of these was the abundant nuclear arsenal that Kazakhstan possessed after the Soviet implosion, making the Eurasian country one of the major world nuclear powers. The new President immediately began a vast campaign of denuclearisation and disarmament that ended in May 1995 with the complete restitution to Russia of a large part of the armaments. Nuclear missile firing ranges on Kazak territory were closed and an attempt was made to take measures to manage the damage caused by the explosion of nuclear and hydrogen at the Semipalatinsk launch pad.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the founder and the first President of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Besides the nuclear question, Nazarbayev had to deal with the problem of the ethnic minorities remaining in Kazakhstan, as well as religious groups. According to the previous Soviet census in 1989, the Kazaks did not make up an absolute majority of the population (40.1%), while the Russians numbered 37.4% (they are now 30%). These, together with the Ukrainians (5.4%) and the Byelorussians (1.1%), brought the Slavic inhabitants of Kazakhstan to 44.2%. This minority exerted a strong influence during the first years of independence on the internal as well as the international politics of Kazakhstan. To be precise, the high Slavic percentage of the population constituted a powerful unifying factor between the internal environment and foreign policies, especially as regards Russia, besides being a threat of separatism.
This, obviously, was not a simple challenge to be faced by the new President who found himself with a Kazak population reduced to less than half of the total and, to boot, a heavy migratory flow of Russians coming in from other former Soviet republics. The latter, since they did not find favourable conditions for re-entering the Russian Federation, took refuge in Kazakhstan since it was considered one of the most modern and flourishing centres, economically speaking, within which one could enjoy European culture.

Members of the Kazakh Parliament during a plenary session. (Photo Akipress)

From an economic point of view, Kazakhstan is the leading economy in Central Asia as well as the largest producer and exporter of oil within the ambit of the Community of Independent States (CEI-CSI). The riches of the country are closely related to income from its natural resources, mainly gas and metals. Apart from the divisions between Russians and Kazaks and other minorities present in the territory, the nascent state had to come to terms with its ethno-historic divisions. To tackle these questions and to avoid the break-up of the population, Nazarbayev immediately adopted a policy of national unity with which he sought to rebalance relations of power between the two parts, as well as to build up a model of Kazak society capable of harmonising greatly differing linguistic, cultural, and religious realities.
One of the chief acts taken in this vein was that of the transfer of the capital from Alma Alta – up to that point the main centre of the institutions – to the small village of Akmola where the modern capital Astana was subsequently built and now renamed Nursultan in honour of the former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The transfer of the capital, apart from conferring symbolic power on the inhabitants of the area, also slowed the separatist Slavic groups that were germinating in that area so densely populated by Russians and Ukrainians.

Astana © Can Stock Photo / ivz

Astana, the work of the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa in collaboration with artists and intellectuals, was intended to represent, despite its usually low winter temperatures, the perfect model of the city of the future and to celebrate the growing power of Kazakhstan. A revolutionary city which, besides expressing the vision of its planner according to which humankind governs and guards nature, incarnates principles of environmental sustainability by breaking with the structure of cities of the past. Astana was planned, and built, in sectors with the quarters in a line, starting from the industrial district built around the railway station to avail of the transport facility. This was followed by residential areas with parks and gardens, the administrative areas of the government and the area reserved for the embassies.
Open photo: © Can Stock Photo / pincasso

Graphite at the centre of new political equilibrium.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Besides lithium, another mineral occupies a central role for its use in high technology. China controls 70% of this mineral. In pursuit of the electric machines market.

Computers, tablets, smartphones, and high-tech instruments, together with the principle of electrical energy transition, of the transformation of cities into ‘smart cities’, and the spread of electrical vehicles, have made lithium-ion batteries (which power such instruments, and the minerals which render possible the creation and function of such instruments) occupy a central role in the world of economics. This applies above all to the vehicles of future generations, which will soon become widespread.
Apart from lithium, about which much is said, another mineral that occupies a central role within this process, operating as a co-leader, is graphite. It is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity whose chemical-physical characteristics render it essential in various kinds of industries, among which are: the nuclear industry; the composition of lubricants, paints, and electrodes; and, last but not least, pencil production (continuous since 1550). According to some estimates, world production of graphite for batteries is around half a million tons per year and, by 2050, demand will reach 23 million tons.
Other data state that the amount of world stock needed in terms of minerals like cobalt, lithium, and graphite, which at the end of the nineteenth century was around 2GWh per year, could reach 2,000 GWh in 2030 and a quota of 30,000 GWh by 2050.

Graphit rough mineral stone. © Can Stock Photo / pasiphae

Today, China controls 70% of graphite mines whose production is around 780,000 tons. Other countries with much lower production are India, Brazil, Canada, North Korea, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe. It is now clear that the growth in demand for graphite, correlated to that for batteries, is conferring unquestionable strategic importance on that industry, with China being the foremost both in raw material deposits and the creation of batteries and electric cars. In particular, as regards the electric auto market, China is reaching high numbers both in production and sales, due mostly to government incentives which enabled the Chinese industry to achieve 45% of the global market in 2019, amounting to 1.39 million units. According to some estimates, in 2025, sales ought to reach around 6 million vehicles, in line with the carbon elimination objectives set by the government of Peking. With such quantities, forecasts speak not only of exponential growth in the demand for graphite and other material for batteries in the coming years, but also for Chinese exports destined especially for the electric auto industry.

Charging electric vehicles © Can Stock Photo / welcomia

Therefore, it is clear that whoever controls these minerals, as well as knowledge of the engineering processes and design, has a net economic advantage. The advantage is also geopolitical since the new equilibrium is increasingly defined by the processes of technological innovation, and in particular, at this historical moment when the possibility of mobility is being gradually transformed and moving in the direction of electric motors. President Biden, in the USA, has already announced the construction of half a million electric stations in view of conversion in the short term. It is evident that this process will not reach full speed in less than a decade, but an analysis of the policies of the automobile companies shows that the evolution is in full swing. Volkswagen, for example, has decided that, in 2026, it will establish the final platform for thermic motors, the base onto which the auto industry will be grafted. It is obvious that if these trends become reality, the phenomenon of the electric car will soon expand on a large scale. It is not by chance that the three great blocs comprising the United States, Europe and China are developing their own strategies on how to manage the production and acquisition of batteries. Such competition is to be expected in the fierce contrast between China and the United States that has been animating the international scene in recent years, and has been strongly accentuated by the advent of the pandemic. The contrast is continually escalating and, despite approaches by three different presidents of the USA – Obama, Trump, and Biden – shows a line of continuity which is today culminating in a selective embargo as well as the development within the United States of new technological processes.

Electric cars © Can Stock Photo / Trimitrius

Meanwhile, whose market is envied by both the others and which, in 2020, overtook China in sales of electric cars, has drawn up a plan for the provision of strategic materials, one of which is graphite. To this end, some companies like Volkswagen intend to develop a closed-circuit production process that aims not only to free the consumer from the burden of disposing of batteries, but also to recuperate the material in them which could certainly represent the direction to be taken to achieve the desired European self-sufficiency.
For its part, China is aiming to create synthetic graphite and an agreement was recently signed between Shenzhen XFH Technology, a Chinese company that produces materials for lithium-ion batteries and the Chinese county of Pengxi, located in the south-western province of Sichuan, to build a production plant capable of manufacturing around 60,000 tons of graphite per year.
According to reliable analysts, the contrasts between these great blocs will lead to a progressive process of the dismantling of globalisation with the reorganisation of the lines of production on a regional scale where such materials as graphite will be at the centre of the new equilibrium.

Filippo Romeo

What was all that Biden-Bashing about ?

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

President Biden has taken a lot of stick over Afghanistan, some of it justified. From Tony Blair to the Tory back-benches, in Parliament and on the BBC, we have been treated to days of passionate denunciation of American withdrawal – announced, of course, long before the current rush to blame. A miasma of unreality and theatricality rose from all the understandable political emotion and anguish.

It is as if in Clausewitz’s account of the nature of war, his mixture of emotion, chance and rational calculation, the rational can simply be ignored. “War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”, Clausewitz wrote – to balance his war as ‘politics by another means’. The Taliban applied his lesson successfully.

From Trump to Biden, as a consequence of chains of policies, decisions, and mission-creep, and as a result of a successful insurgency against a corrupt government and foreign invaders, the US was finally forced to submit to the Taliban’s will, negotiating and implementing its own exit from Afghanistan. It is not Biden’s decision that will determine the outcome for thousands of fleeing Afghans seeking but the Taliban’s.

According to Aristotle, a dramatic tragedy needs to obey the three unities of place, time and action. Reacting to the retreat into Kabul airport, the flights and chaos of the last week in and around it, we find political leaders playing their parts in such a tragedy.

The G7, calling for the USA to extend the withdrawal time to allow more Afghans to escape, pitted NATO members against an American President, a President who rationally calculated that this course of action would escalate into a disastrous fire-fight with the Taliban lobbing mortars into the airport and fierce ground assaults on US forces trying to hold a perimeter (as Daniel Johnson indicates TheArticle 25/08). It is and was a tragic dilemma. But it was Biden who behaved like a rational statesman and refused.

It is perfectly understandable that denial and raw emotion prompted the positions taken up by MPs who had served in Afghanistan and played military roles in the tragedy. But it is not obvious why so many others took the opportunity to scapegoat Biden. Did they seriously think that more troops flown into Kabul airport would have kept it open for flights without it becoming a modern Alamo? Did they advocate a position they knew would be untenable to put pressure on the Taliban? Were they just ‘virtue signalling’, or in the case of Britain just trying to ‘punch above its weight’? And doesn’t the appalling ISIS terrorist atrocity at Kabul airport suggest at least one area of common concern between NATO and the Taliban that will require cooperation?

Perhaps the Biden-bashing sprang from deeper causes than his misjudging the resolve to fight of the Afghan National Army who in many instances fled the Taliban without firing a shot, or even his failure to foresee the corrupt government would collapse like the proverbial house of cards. Given the lack of clear and up-to-date intelligence from rural areas, a hasty withdrawal was inevitable.

The CIA can claim to have presented the Commander in Chief with sudden collapse as one of several possible scenarios depending on the amount of American force available on the ground and in the air.
But in a matter of a week or two abandoning a vast armoury of US military equipment?

Apart from Canada, all the loudly lamenting G7 members have at some point passed through a significant period of imperial ambition, and some have experienced imperial grandeur. Their dream of defying the victorious Taliban seems a post-imperial fantasy. Perhaps these Prime Ministers and Presidents still believe in some inviolable right to order the world and export Western values, and couldn’t recognise their own hubris and its consequences. Or perhaps we were watching a – deflected – fear of a US isolationism that long preceded Biden.

It is not as if US isolationism versus intervention was a new issue. Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff then US Secretary of State, and Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defence, along with Tony Blair and his chief of staff in the UK, Jonathan Powell, had debated the issue before 9/11 including drawing up criteria such interventions must meet.

Tony Blair’s wide-ranging 24 April 1999 speech in Chicago after the atrocities in Kosovo – justifying intervention and bombing – was a significant contribution. There was also the UN World Summit in 2005 on ‘The Responsibility to Protect’ that defined circumstances that required international intervention, looking back on the failure of any world power to intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Blair, in a recent speech opposing American withdrawal called Biden’s use of the slogan ‘forever wars’ as ‘imbecilic’. But didn’t Biden’s decision to leave by 31 August comply with the very criteria for military action which Blair had proposed in his Chicago speech? In Chicago he had said “Third, on the basis of a practical assessment of the situation, are there military operations we can sensibly and prudently undertake?” Breaking the agreement to leave by the end of the month concluded with the Taliban would have been neither sensible nor prudent. It could not have succeeded without massive military re-engagement and loss of life.

The aura of unreality surrounding this widespread denunciation of Biden, the assumption that America has only to say the word and the date of the exit could be changed, may spring from elsewhere: delayed recognition that US isolationism is here to stay, or fear that the USA was changing its strategic priorities, turning its back on Europe to concentrate on China. Nothing new here. Blair’s Chicago speech ended: “I say to you: never fall again for the doctrine of isolationism.

The world cannot afford it. Stay a country, outward-looking, with the vision and imagination that is your nature. And realise that in Britain you have a friend and an ally that will stand with you, work with you, fashion with you the design of a future built on peace and prosperity for all, which is the only dream that makes humanity worth preserving”. There was surely some element of fear this was a fading dream lurking behind the attacks on Biden for his failure to consult with his allies.

Some clear and specific reassurances from the American President, if not some apology and explanation for the lack of consultation with his NATO allies, are long overdue. We must now respond to the consequences of the change in US priorities. But like COVID we are going to have to live with the Taliban More tragically, so are the Afghan people.

Ian Linden,
a visiting Professor at St Mary’s University,
London.

DR Congo. The President’s pastors.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

The closest advisers of Tshisekedi are three Pentecostal pastors whom he trusts to increase consensus in the country and establish improving foreign relations with the USA and Israel.

From the time he took over the leadership of the country in January 2019, succeeding Joseph Kabila, Félix Tshisekedi surrounded himself with figures in whom he places complete confidence or, so to speak, unconditional faith.
His faithful advisers are, in fact, three Pentecostal pastors who exercise great influence in the country, and who Tshisekedi not only considers his spiritual guides but to whom he has conceded broad room for manoeuvre in the diplomatic decisions and the decisions regarding the political economy of his government.
The one he probably trusts most is Jacques Kangudia Mutambayi, for years his spiritual counsellor. Formed in the Church of God in Benin City, Nigeria, Mutambayi knows well the centres of Pentecostal power scattered throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Before moving to Kinshasa, he was a pastor in Benin and Burkina Faso.

DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi.

The acquaintances he established over time and the influence which developed in several countries today, enable him to bring the messages of Tshisekedi to the other presidents of the Pentecostal faith who govern in Africa. They are as such: the Ethiopian head of state – Abiy Ahmed Ali – whose party of prosperity takes its name from one of the pillars of Pentecostal theology; or the Ugandan President – Yoweri Museveni – who, despite being of the Anglican faith, has always cultivated close ties with the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches of his country, through his wife Janet.
In recent times, Mutambayi has become increasingly important for President Tshisekedi. He officiated at the funeral of his father Etienne Tshisekedi on 30 May 2019. Three months later, he assumed, by direct appointment, the directorship of the Ccm (Coordination pour le changement des mentalités), a centre established by Tshisekedi to train Congolese functionaries in anti-corruption procedures and, more generally, in more efficient management ‘closer’ to the citizens, of the cumbersome bureaucratic machinery of the country.
A fervent opponent of the widespread corruption that pervades all levels of administrative offices, Mutambayi supervises the vast network of NGOs, both local and foreign, involved on this front. His was the campaign, among many others, conducted to prevent the government from assigning to the Belgian company Semlex a contract for the production of Congolese passports.

Jacques Kangudia Mutambayi. The spiritual counsellor of the President.

In one of the most corrupt and disastrous nations of the world, in the bureaucratic and administrative sense, Mutambayi represents for President Tshisekedi an indispensable ally first, and foremost, with regard to the image he transmits of himself abroad. At home, instead, Mutambayi acts in a more direct way. He never loses an opportunity to turn to the President the sympathies of the vast internal Pentecostal and Evangelical community. This constant pressure on public opinion has shown itself to be decisive in the presidential elections.
Mutambayi admittedly knows how to speak to his people. This he does, not only from the pulpit of his majestic church, but also through the associations that control the means of communication that work in his favour. There are no fewer than six TV stations influenced by him among which are Puissance, Dieu Vivant, Message de vie e Armée de l’Eternel.
Equally influential by the side of the President is the figure of another pastor, Olivier Tshilumba Chekinah, who divides his time between Canada, where his church l’Eglise Nouvelle Vie, is based, and Kinshasa where he fills the role of presidential adviser.
Chekinah is the man who, during the years of Tshisekedi’s mandate, was mainly occupied with showing a positive image of the President in the eyes of the USA administration, using the excellent relations he has with Israel. It was he who had him take part in the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee held on 25 February 2020, in Washington. It was a ‘kermesse’ during which Tshisekedi announced the recognition of the state of Israeli by the Congolese government, and the launch of preparations for the opening of a DR Congo embassy in Tel Aviv, along with a financial office in Jerusalem.
While weaving his diplomatic network, Chekinah also sees to his own affairs, protecting the interests of various Canadian businesses that operate in the mining sector and in infrastructure, by means of his company OL Consult.
According to Africa Intelligence reports, it was he who presented to the President the heads of the Australian company Fortescue Metals Group, which had applied for the contract to develop the Grand Inga dam and is said to have been granted it in September 2020.

Roland Dalo, a pastor of the Centre Missionnaire Philadelphie a La Gombe and head of the Church of State.

In conclusion, there is Roland Dalo, a pastor of the Centre Missionnaire Philadelphie a La Gombe and head of the Church of State. Dalo was the assistant to the best-known Pentecostal in the entire African region, the Swiss evangelist Jacques Vernaud. Vernaud founded the Evangelical Pentecostal Church of the Congo in the sixties and, afterwards, in 1985, the first large church of this creed in Kinshasa, capable of seating 15,000 faithful.He is the pastor to whom the Congolese president entrusts the task of ‘making peace’ with those in the country who do not support him, including his most bitter rival in the presidential elections of late 2018, Martin Fayulu. On 3 February 2019, a few days after the president was installed, it was Dalo who officiated at a celebration in La Gombe to which the two rivals were invited to become reconciled after the battle of the elections.

Rocco Bellantone
Open Photo. Congo Mask. © Can Stock Photo / imagex

Peru. Against human trafficking during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Every two hours a woman disappears due to gender violence and human trafficking. Sister Benjamine Kimala Nanga, a Comboni missionary from Chad works for the prevention and reporting of human trafficking.

We met Sister Benjamine on the outskirts of Lima at a place called Pueblo Libre. She told us: “I am part of the Kawsay network of the Conference of Religious in Peru, a network of consecrated people whose main concern is to fight against human trafficking. ‘Kawsay’ is a Quechua word that means ‘to live’.” The network is composed of more than 38 religious congregations and some diocesan priests. The problem of human trafficking in Peru is increasing both as to the number of victims and the ways and means used to recruit the majority of the women and girls. Poverty is one of the factors that render people much more vulnerable. The precarious living conditions of many families open the door to ‘tempting offers of work’.

Sister Benjamine Kimala Nanga.

There are no official figures but according to the office of the Ombudsman, the chief defender of the Peruvian people, last year about five thousand people disappeared. Of these, 1,506 were adult women and 3,510 were young girls. On average, fifteen people disappeared daily, or one every two hours. According to the police, the disappearances are connected to the gender violence that exists in Peru, to human trafficking, family traumas, and the lack of a standard system of rapidly tracing women who have disappeared. During the lockdown, the organisation for human rights in Peru reported mostly the disappearance of adolescents fleeing a life of violence, who are kidnapped or end up being trafficked. Sr Benjamine explains the aims of her work: “First of all the prevention of trafficking by means of various workshops to strengthen women, developing activities that increase the self-esteem of minors, promoting a culture of prevention, and safeguarding against sexual abuse. My main activity is to hold training workshops for teachers, administrators, managers, assistants, support personnel, authorities (police, procurators, and the personnel of the centres of admission for minors), catechists and parents. I attended a six-month training course organised by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Peru; this helped me to understand the law and to speak from knowledge of the law and not just from experience”.

Her work has led Sr Benjamine to visit various places in the country and to meet people, especially the youth. The religious Sister informed us: “Human trafficking is a crime that hides many other activities that the traffickers use to attract vulnerable people. In many places, most of the victims are young, especially girls under eighteen”.
The missionary Sister dwelt especially upon one particular episode: “I was struck by the case of a girl of seventeen in a jungle village. When she finished secondary school, she went to the city to prepare for the college entrance exams. Unfortunately, she failed the exams as she had not had the same quality of schooling as the young people from the city. When she arrived here, there were many demands upon her finances (lessons, rent, food, etc.). Without realising what was happening, she allowed herself to be exploited sexually. She was given a job in an internet cafe where she would help people to go online. I called her one day and she said: “Please call me later Sister” I knew something was wrong and called her back a few days later she told me she no longer worked there because she had been made to sign a one-month contract to provide sexual services to male clients. I listened without judging her. Due to the added problem of the pandemic, she could not continue and returned to her village”.

The missionary continued: “One problem we have is that many of our target people (young people and teachers) live in remote areas that are hard to reach, which makes follow-up all the more difficult. Another is the fact that, in many cases, people do not know what is meant by the term ‘human trafficking’. Many people confuse the meaning of the words and imagine they have something to do with treating people well. They are unaware of what it truly involves. This is a crime that has no regard for frontiers and is creating an increasing number of victims in Peru. There are minors and adults who are kidnapped, forced to comply, detained, and compelled to various types of sexual exploitation. They are forced to beg on the streets where they live in sub-human conditions and are even robbed of their internal organs. This is a huge problem with many facets. The worst affected are the children and adolescents”.
The country has the highest Covid-19 mortality rate in the world and has had more than two million cases, and 190,000 deaths. Sr Benjamine tells us: “Because of the pandemic, the women have found themselves in a very difficult situation. For this reason, we provide them with basic foodstuffs and items of hygiene, and we use the opportunity to raise people’s awareness and help them to protect themselves from the Covid-19 and human trafficking. In other parishes, we have set up ‘soup kitchens’: we buy the food, and a group of women do the cooking and distribute the food according to the number of members in each family”.

Lima. CCA./ Leon petrosyan

Even though the borders have been closed because of the pandemic, human trafficking has increased. The traffickers are using new ways and means to continue to capture and deceive potential victims, mainly through the internet and social media. “We have recently seen some of the social media – Sr Benjamine adds – carrying advertising to get people to go and work in the United States or in Europe where a person may work and study. Quite a few young people fall into this virtual trap”.
Since it is difficult for them to move around the country due to the pandemic restrictions, Sr Benjamine and her group have organised an online training workshop for young people and teachers. “We work with them to raise their awareness so that they do not accept offers of work over the internet. By way of prevention, we have transmitted videos in which we speak of human trafficking, its causes, and the physical and psychological consequences. Our work has produced results and people have begun to report trafficking more frequently. A short time ago, a young woman told me, “Sister, I recently saw an offer of work online. I remembered what you had told us, and I looked to see if it was true. Two days later, the feature had disappeared. It was all lies”.

Sr Benjamine concluded: “We are very close to the people and work with them. We are dealing with a vulnerable population, and we must involve them in the search for solutions so that they can make some progress. When I end a workshop with young people, I ask them: “Now what shall we do? What will I do to spread the conclusions of this workshop?” Sometimes they want to do something in particular but do not know what. Then I ask them for their ideas, and we discuss them together. Many groups call me to tell me of their activities and encourage me to continue my work. This is what, in the final analysis, our Founder Saint Daniel Comboni wanted: “to form leaders and build up the local church”.” (R.S.)

The Burning And Flooding Of The Planet.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Anyone watching on television the images of burning forests, the raging floods destroying lands and villages, massive landslides burying homes and people have no reason to deny the truth.

The latest UN report on the climate crises by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) signed by 159 nations once again informs us that we human are responsible for this terrible crisis.

We humans are bringing disasters upon ourselves by tolerating and allowing through corrupt politicians the coal, oil and gas energy companies to promote their extraction and continual burning of fossil fuel. By financially supporting the election campaigns of friendly politicians, they are getting massive government subsidies to continue to produce and burn coal, oil and gas.

In the United States, fossil fuel subsidies to the energy industry are massive while money for renewable energy is much less. Worldwide, this is also the case. As much as US$447 billion dollars in taxpayers’ money is paid out in subsidies to billion-dollar companies in the coal, oil and gas industries since 2014 whereas support for renewable energy sources development is a mere US$128 billion dollars.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says: “Yet the continued imbalance remains staggering. In 2017, the costs of unpriced externalities and the direct subsidies for fossil fuels (USD 3.1 trillion) exceeded subsidies for renewable energy by a factor of 19.”

The global warming seen in unequalled temperatures that has engulfed the world is due to one reason: burning fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas extraction and burning has been essential for economic growth and development for the last 100 years.

But now, it must stop. CO2 and methane gasses are trapping the heat of the sun like a blanket around the globe and we are slowly cooking ourselves and all living creatures and plants to death. Over a million animals and reptiles died in Australian fires last year alone. How many more this year in the US, EU and Russia?

Renewable carbon neutral sources of energy has to be speedily expanded: geothermal, wind turbines, solar panels, wave and tide power. These will be generating electricity to drive industry, heat and cool homes and power electric vehicles without damaging the planet. But will it succeed in time to save the planet?

The scientists and environmentalists and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can tell us the terrible truth that if the heating goes on beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade, there will be even worse climate-induced disasters. More droughts, fires, greater floods, and crop failures. Millions will be displaced by violence and war over water, food and arable land. Millions of hungry desperate people will be migrating to safer countries for food and survival.

We have reached and passed the tipping point where the melted Arctic ice and mountain glaciers will take hundreds of years to freeze up again. So, the poor people in coastal towns, villages and low-lying Pacific islands and atolls will have to evacuate and migrate. Some are already doing so.

They are the victims and yet they have not caused any global warming. Besides, the health costs world-wide of the damaging pollution since 2017 is a whopping US$2263 billion dollars, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

If you want the number of dollars spent on renewable energy power sources, here they are: “The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has estimated supply-side support to renewables at around USD 166 billion in 2017. Total support to renewable power generation was around USD 128 billion in 2017, and transport sector support added a further USD 38 billion for biofuels.”

“The European Union accounted for around 54 % (USD 90 billion) of total estimated renewable subsidies in 2017, followed by the United States, with 14 % (USD 23 billion), Japan with 11% (USD 19 billion), India with 2 % (USD 4 billion) and the rest of the world with slightly less than 9% (USD 15 billion). Subsidies for renewable power generation were dominant in Japan (99 %), China (97 %), the EU (87 %) and India (76 %).
Subsidies for biofuels dominated in the United States (61 %) and the rest of the world (71 %).”

Big oil corporations Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Total and their lobbying groups have tried to influence EU law in their favour by watering down laws that would curb the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Their DNA corporate culture and goals cannot condone or support renewable energy.

They are ferocious influencers and a report in The Guardian shows that they spent € 253.3 million lobbying and influencing politicians and EU institutions between 2010 and 2018, according to a report by Corporate Europe Observatory, Food & Water Europe, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace. That spending is just the tip of a massive iceberg of additional spending which has not been officially reported and kept secret. Let me quote the impact they have had in expanding the climate crises on the world.

The Guardian article of one year ago says: “The report comes after the Guardian’s Polluters series, which revealed that 20 oil and gas companies – including BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Total – can be directly linked to a third of greenhouse gas emissions since 1965. The companies – which include multinationals and state-owned firms – are continuing to expand their operations and driving the climate emergency, despite having been aware for decades of their industry’s devastating impact on the planet.”

There is a global conspiracy, it seems, to deny climate change, to play down the urgency of the crises for the sake of getting more taxpayers money as payouts to billionaire oil companies when millions of people are suffering the drastic effects of the climate change. We have to do all we can to get political and influence the decisions that will save the planet and get out there and stop polluting and plant more trees.

Fr. Shay Cullen

The man-in-the-moon and his wife.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Long, long ago, the man-in-the-moon and his wife Atai, had a quarrel which led to very strange results. These two were the royalty of the skies once the sun had gone down. The man you all know, he looked then as he does now.

Sometimes he was smiling, sometimes he looked grim. His wife was the greatest and brightest of the stars, all the other stars were her servants. When she came out, they grouped themselves round her, and secretly they thought she was just as splendid as the moon, and that she was very much more useful, and that they were also.

They had some reason on their side, for sailors guided their ships by the position of the stars, and many wise men believed they could foretell the future by studying them. This included not only events of great importance, but the future of human beings according to the stars that were shining when they were born. The moon on the other hand could only travel through the heavens and shed light.

After some time, the man-in-the-moon began to hear whispers of all this, and he became jealous. He had been shining long before people thought of building ships, or foretelling the future, and he didn’t like these new-fangled notions which threatened his supremacy.

So, he became very angry, and decided not to shine at all, or to allow the stars to shine either. In order to prevent them doing this he sought the support of some of the elements. He sought out the rain, and thunder and lightning. “The stars are becoming conceited – he told them-. They think they have command of the heavens, and they have
to be taught better!”

After a good deal of talk of this kind he persuaded the elements to do their worst. The rain poured down, thunder crashed, and lightning flashed. The earth darkened, the rivers were flooded and over-ran the earth. Trees were swept away, low lying country was overwhelmed with water, animals and birds were drowned, and the people of the earth were driven into caves and on tops of high mountains, where they led the most miserable existence.

Days passed in this way. The people starved and froze because even the sun could not make any impression on the deluge, and it seemed as if the whole world must be destroyed. The man-in-the-moon didn’t care, however. He retired well content because his wife and the other stars couldn’t shine.

Atai was furious, and sulked, and vowed that the deluge could go on for ever as far as she was concerned. Her husband had prevented her shining, but he couldn’t shine himself either.
In fact, being idle didn’t improve either of their tempers, while the stormy elements who had never had control over the world before, were thoroughly enjoying their power.

Down below, man, the unfortunate victim of this celestial quarrel, was in terrible straits. He prayed and made sacrifices, and everyone blamed everyone else for offending the Gods, and as a result people began to quarrel and make war among themselves.

Their troubles were increased by the fact that they were preyed upon by wild animals, and had to keep great fires burning in the caves to frighten the beasts. At night, beyond the ring of fire, men-could see the eyes of fierce lions, tigers, and wolves, waiting to attack them. This was not because lions, tigers and wolves preferred to eat men, they did not, but the animals they usually stalked were becoming more and more scarce.

At length the little stars became very perturbed at the deadlock. They approached Atai and petitioned her to abandon the quarrel. They suggested that there should be some agreement between the moon and the stars. When the moon was at his brightest the stars could remain in the background, and when the moon had retired the stars could have the heavens to themselves. They pointed out that if the stormy elements continued to hold power, there would be no light on earth, and that indeed after a time there would be no earth left.

Atai, who was by this time very bored with the quarrel, at first pretended indifference about what happened in the future, but eventually the little stars persuaded her to allow them to go to the man-in-the-moon, and make peace offers. Their reception was better than they expected because he was in no way happy about his own position. He wasn’t ruling the heavens, and he had lost his wife. When the little stars put their suggestions before him, of course, he had to pretend a certain amount of indifference.

“I am very glad that you come in this spirit – he informed them -. It cannot be disputed that I am the real ruler, but I do not wish this foolish quarrel to continue. For my own part, I am prepared to remain in retirement, but I feel I have responsibilities to the earth. If the present state of affairs continues the earth will be ruined.”

The little stars enthusiastically supported this view, and were very complimentary about his unselfish spirit. They then went into possible terms of settlement, and after a great deal of discussion the moon agreed. It was arranged that the new plan should start forthwith. But the man-in-the-moon found himself with another problem on his hands. The elements having been given control were not prepared to abandon it. Finally, a three-cornered agreement had to be made. Sometimes the moon would shine and the stars would be comparatively dim.
When the moon retired the stars would come out in their full splendour, but there was to be a third period when there was complete darkness with rain and storms.

The man-in-the-moon and his wife patched up their quarrel, and have remained on the best of terms ever since. Some people consider that there is nothing more beautiful than a full moon slipping across the skies, others love the splendour of the stars. Wise men write books about them, sailors navigate by them, and astrologers claim to read the future in the starlit heavens.

But no one is happy when rain and storms sweep the earth. Gentle rain is welcomed, of course, but not the floods, and thunder and lightning, but man has had to accept them, for they come as regularly as night and day. In the rainy season man has to take cover and exist as best he can until the storms pass, and the fine weather returns once more.

Folktale from Tanzania

Colombia. Dreaming of a land free of the drugs trade.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

It may be a small and insignificant place but Tumaco, in the south west of the country, has its ‘importance’ on the world stage: the city is the largest producer with 19,546 hectares under cultivation, 11% of the country’s production. In recent years, it has held the dubious record of the city with the most murders in the Latin American region.

The Comboni Missionaries first went to Tumaco in 2004 with the aim of accompanying a country inhabited mostly by African Colombians in an area of armed conflict. As soon as they arrived, they settled in the outskirts of the city in a parish of displaced people who had left their homelands due to the violence of armed groups.
Tumaco territory was unfamiliar to most Colombians but has recently become well known for its violence and drug trafficking. It is not only far from the large centres of Colombian power, it is also anthropologically distant: the African Colombian population lives there, having been marginalised and excluded for many centuries.

Some decades ago, they began to take part in the political, social, and economic spheres of the country. The first reason for this is that they are not a minority but represent 20% of the population; the second is that they are increasingly entering areas formerly designated for whites only. Also, within the Church, the Afro American people have gained strength in a lengthy process of inculturation and respect. Progress has been made recently after centuries of marginalisation and repression. Colombia, however, has not yet an African Colombian bishop.
The diocese of Tumaco is vast with few access roads. Most of the region is accessed by sea using the rivers flowing into the Pacific. The rural communities have no electricity, water supply or basic services. The schools are few and far between and there are no well-run health centres. The seriousness of the situation emerged with the Coronavirus. Uncounted thousands of infected people fell victim to the virus.

Father Daniele Zarantonello, a comboni missionary.

Since the year 2000, various paramilitary groups have competed for the territory using the threat of arms to control the drugs trafficking, provoking many victims.
The Combonis chose to live in an existential periphery and this has put them to the test. Father Daniele Zarantonello who has lived in Tumaco for 17 years tells us: “It is hard to see signs of progress from the human or pastoral point of view; it is hard to speak to young people about ‘dreams’ when the situation does not allow them to dream. It is a complex matter to think of making investments or setting up social projects when one will be immediately subject to extortion by armed groups. We have chosen a different way of being here: we are a presence, a light and we are also the ‘anonymous resistance’.”
At least 271 leaders of the community in Colombia have been killed since the peace accord was implemented early in 2017, while armed groups continue to force their way into territory abandoned by the FARC, especially in Tumaco. Many have been killed while trying to defend their territory against mega-projects (palm oil, oil, gold, timber, water) or for having dared to dream of a land free of narco-trafficking. It was the instigators of those projects who brought the paramilitaries to Tumaco – unscrupulous mercenaries who for years have violated an entire nation.

At the service of the Local Church
Father Zarantonello recalls when he first went to Tumaco: “We wanted the people and the country to be the inspiration for our presence here. We therefore began to organise a parish with all it structures. Over the years, we created three youth centres in the more violent quarters of the parish. In the Viento Libre quarter, together with the leaders of the family groups, a small school was created to work in the field of ‘education in a time of emergency’. The project is entitled ‘Educating on the Streets of Viento Libre’ and aims at accompanying the more problematic and vulnerable children.

After the paramilitaries left the area, we began to work with the leaders of the community in the Panama quarter to set up a ‘small trade school’, also providing school classes, personalised accompaniment, and formation in Christian and community values using the pedagogy of tenderness, skills, dancing, music, and art.
In the Nuevo Milenio quarter, we created an African Colombian Youth Centre. It is a meeting point for the quarter providing formation in spirituality, culture and peace using dance, music, a library, youth groups, catechesis, family groups, the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist and the ‘Afropacífico’ football school.
The parish church is located in the El Carmelo quarter and there we have organised the Saint Daniel Comboni youth Centre with a library, school assistance, an internet room, a group of extraordinary women and the singing group Buen Vient.
They sing their lullabies that speak of the problems of the community and the hope and faith with which they face them. We provide spiritual assistance to everyone who comes to the parish with all the required catechesis, family groups, devotional groups and movements”.
Besides the parish work, the Combonis seek to accompany the diocese of Tumaco by reinforcing the coordination (EDAP, College of Consultors, Vicariates) and some pastoral areas (catechesis, youth and vocational ministry and social media).

Fr. Zarantonello continues: “It is our wish to reach the human existential peripheries where ‘life cries out’, as the Latin American Confederation of Religious (CLAR) says. We therefore try to reach the rural areas of our diocese regularly, visiting them and keeping in touch by means of the diocesan radio ‘Mira’, or by promoting three-monthly courses of formation for animators and catechists”.
The missionary concludes: “All these activities involve many people, and we are not afraid of hard work because, in every ambit and every project, we are always small communities of faith and action. The whole orientation of our work is to create a committed community of lay people within a Local Church that is both missionary and prophetic”. (D.Z.)

Bolivia. Apthapi, a time for sharing.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

Among the indigenous peoples of the Andes, every detail of life has a fundamental meaning because it strengthens one’s identity’. One example of this is the Apthapi: sharing food.

The coexistence of the Andeans is interconnected with three existential spaces: Janaq Pacha (sidereal space), Kay Pacha (local space) and Ukhu Pacha (the space of depth) and all of these make up the cosmos.
To express this interconnection: with the cosmos, nature and other transcendental beings, various ritual activities are carried out such as that of sharing food as a community.
For the Andean peoples, every detail of life has a fundamental meaning because it strengthens and regenerates one’s identity. One example of this is the Apthapi which involves the sharing of food between the members of a community, friends and others.
The term Apthapi comes from the Aymara language and means gathering the first fruits of the harvest. It also refers to the collection of food by the Mallku and the Mamat`alla (indigenous authorities of the Andes) who are the ones who organise this activity of sharing. The protagonists of this practice are the women who cook various sorts of food to be shared during a community encounter.

The Andean Apthapi has its exact times and places such as marriage feasts, baptisms, funerals, patronal feasts, and even social gatherings. It therefore has its organisers who see to the preparation.
They may be individuals or families. During festivities, funerals, baptisms and other feasts, it is organised by the head of a family along with the members of the family.
A particular Apthapi is the Andean anata (the feast of flowers or carnival), which is usually a time or period of days for sharing the first fruits of the work of each family. For this reason, a specific day is chosen for this communitarian Fraternity. For this purpose, people gather at a sacred spot which may be the Tacawa (a reference point made of stone) or the chapel of the community. Here the indigenous authorities, together with the achachis (wise old people of the community) and other important figures such as the ch`allan, chew coca and offer the wajt`a to the Pachama and the achachilas, where the first fruits are offered, in thanksgiving for the multiplication of the animals, for maintaining life, for the wellbeing and the good coexistence of the community. People dance to the rhythm of the pinkillada (traditional Andean music) and the pututo, for it is a day for enjoying the blessing of Mother Earth and the harmony among Andean brothers and sisters.

At mid-day, the women, together with the Mamat`allas (wives of the authorities) start to prepare the Apthapi and spread on the ground their aguayos or long garments on which they place the food they have prepared. Among the foods to be savoured there are: jawas phusphu (boiled beans), kanka (roast meat), chuño phuthi (cooked dried potatoes), qhatit ch’uqi (a sort of potato), jallpa wayk’a (yellow peppers already minced with pieces of onion).
In this communitarian sharing, there is no shortage of fruits of the plains or the valleys such as the saramut’i (cooked shelled maize), millk’itika thixi (fried creole cheese), puquta phuthi (cooked bananas) and other typical dishes of the community.
When everything is ready, the community authorities invite everyone to come to the table. When all the mallku and the Mamat`allas are present, they ask the achachilas to say prayers. The pray spontaneously, thanking the Pachamama (Mother Earth) for having given new fruits to sustain life. They thank the Apus and Samiris (protective spirits) for having given their protection and assistance in the process of producing the fruits.
The Andean Apthapi is a communal sacred banquet since there is good food in abundance, enough to take some home. It is a community meal and not a dish or a recipe but a family and communitarian meal coming from the ayllu of the Andes.

The Apthapi is a meeting where bread is shared among all, where joys and sorrows are also shared. The Apthapi is a time and a space for sharing family life, harvests, problems and hopes. On that day, people also savour very special flavours and aromas. There where the table is the same stone, the same land, where the act of sharing with everyone is daily bread. With the passage of time, the Apthapi has undergone many changes and much reorganisation. Despite all that, the Apthapi continues to be an act of participation and complementarity, since it is part of one’s identity which gives meaning to the cultural and spiritual existence of the Andean peoples.

Jhonny Mancilla Pérez

Talitha Kum. Stop Human Trafficking.

Wednesday, 1 September 2021 8:00

A worldwide network of consecrated life determined to put an end to the trafficking of persons by means of collaborative initiatives centred upon prevention, protection, and social reinsertion. The network is present in 92 countries.

Joy is a young girl from Benin City, the capital of Edo state in the south of Nigeria. A beautiful and elegant girl, she is computer literate and competent in braiding and manicure. One day, a girl friend of hers suggested she go to Italy where she would find work and so be able to assist her family at home. Joy thought it over and believed it was a wonderful opportunity and not to be ignored. She said goodbye to relatives and friends and started out on her journey. She went to Niger where she crossed the desert to Libya, experienced the horror of the camps, and finally made the great crossing of the Mediterranean, together with a large group of travelling companions. After many ups and downs, she arrived in Italy. The person there to meet her was not her friend but a man who said it was he who paid for the passage and wanted his money immediately. That was how she fell into the hands of organised criminals who forced her to become a prostitute. There followed months of violence and abuse.

Joy recounts: “The journey to Italy was traumatic. Anyone falling from the vehicle was left behind; we never turned back. We spent almost two weeks in the desert”. She spoke of her arrival in Italy. “They told me I had to work on the streets to pay my debt of 35,000 Euro”. Joy walked the streets for almost a year, even when pregnant. “They forced me to have an abortion”, she said, her voice breaking with emotion. She prayed every day: “Jesus, help me to find people to help me. I cannot manage on my own”. “I prayed, I prayed all the time – Joy recounts – and I heard a voice telling me not to be afraid but to have courage. I made a phone call and the very next day, the police came and freed me”.
Joy’s life has changed for good. Not only did she succeed in escaping from abuse, but she is also able to tell her story, becoming the voice of thousands of people of various cultures, ages and nationalities who are subdued and silenced by the violence of human trafficking. There are more than forty million victims of human trafficking in the world. Of these, about 72% are women and 23% of them are minors. The main purposes of trafficking are sexual exploitation (more than half) and forced labour (more than one third); the business is worth about 150 billion dollars every year. The pandemic has rendered the victims of trafficking even more vulnerable. The traffickers are taking advantage of the situation by exploiting the financial difficulties of their victims.

The Talitha Kum Network
It is in the context of exploitation and oppression that Talitha Kum finds its role. The Network placed at the centre of its existence the people who are deeply wounded by the violence of human trafficking. Talitha Kum is an initiative of the International Union of Superiors General (IUSG) of Catholic Sisters. It was founded officially in 2009, as a milestone of an initiative that was started years previously. Right from the start, Talitha Kum was based upon processes of dialogue and discernment sustained by Sisters involved in the field.

Comboni Missionary Sr. Gabriella Bottani, Talitha Kum’s international coordinator, far right, speaks in front of a panel addressing sisters involved in Talitha Kum.

The religious women immediately realised the breadth and complexity of the phenomenon and started a dialogue with the aim of mobilising the most resources possible and of sensitising their congregations about what was happening. During those years, the International Union of Superiors General of Catholic Sisters, aware of the new emerging problematic, asked their Commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) to study the phenomenon by means of events and gatherings. One of these meetings was held in Rome in 1998 with the participation of Sr Lea Ackermann of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa (‘White Sisters’). Sr Ackermann had worked for years with women affected by sexual tourism and forced prostitution. In 1985, she had founded the women’s project SOLWODI (Solidarity with Women in Difficulty) in Mombasa, Kenya. By offering counselling and education, it helps affected women to get back on their feet again. Sr Ackermann afterwards founded SOLGIDI (Solidarity with Girls in Difficulty).
The meeting gave rise to an anti-trafficking work group (Atwg) of the Commission for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC).

In 2001, the Atwg group presented the phenomenon of human trafficking to the General Superiors of the female congregations gathered in Rome for the plenary meeting of the Catholic Sisters who, having received the request, declared: “We, who are around 800 Superiors General, are the voice of about one million members of Catholic congregations all over the world, publicly declare our determination to work together in solidarity with our religious communities in the countries where we work to insistently condemn, at all levels, the sexual abuse and exploitation of women and children, with particular attention to the trafficking of women, which has become a lucrative multi-national trade”.
This subsequently confirmed commitment opened the way for broader intercongregational collaboration in the field of anti-trafficking and led to a training project for a network of Sisters that commenced in 2004 in partnership with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The project ended in 2008 with a proposal for international coordination, with its headquarters in Rome at the offices of the International Union of Superiors General (IUS). That is how the idea of Talitha Kum was formed.
From the start, the initiative took the form of a network of consecrated life with the purpose of promoting collaboration and coordination between the female religious congregations. Their objective is to: welcome those who succeed in escaping the trauma of trafficking exploitation; offer them protection; care for and assist them in the process of social reinsertion (by expediting access to juridical and psychosocial services as well as educational courses); ultimately facilitate their entry into the world of work.

Pope Francis inaugurates Super Nuns, an initiative of Talitha Kum. The Super Nuns community is an project launched by Talitha Kum that aims to reach a whole new range of potential supporters.

Subsequently, the networks began promoting groups for reflection and study, based upon the various cultural contexts, to promote preventive action against the systemic causes which lead to this crime, despite the countless efforts to bring the phenomenon and its victims to the fore, and to implement laws for the protection of the victims. Organised as a network, Talitha Kum has neither a centre nor a periphery, but seeks to coordinate a new mode of leadership in a process of dialogue and constant tension between the model of leadership of the ministerial network experienced by the Sisters involved in the fight against human trafficking, and the traditional model of leadership in the Church reproduced in the religious congregations. This dialogue/tension has as its foundation the centrality of the mission of service, in contrast with human trafficking, and the promotion of real areas of collaboration and feminine leadership shared in the service of the mission of the Church.

The model was also acknowledged by Pope Francis during the general assembly of Talitha Kum on 26 September 2019: “I congratulate you for the importance of the work you are engaged in in such a complex and traumatic area. It is a work that unites the mission with collaboration between Institutes. You have chosen to stand in the front line. For this reason, the numerous congregations who have worked and are still working as the ‘vanguard’ of the missionary action of the Church against human trafficking deserve recognition. And working together: this is exemplary. It is an example for the whole Church and also for us: men, priests, bishops… This is exemplary. Carry on like this!”
Talitha Kum is present in 92 countries on five continents: 14 in Africa, 18 in Asia, 17 in America, 41 in Europe, 2 in Oceania. The Talitha Kum networks: 44 National Networks: 9 in Africa, 11 in Asia, 15 in America, 7 in Europe and 2 in Oceania. 7 regional coordinations: 2 in Latin America, 3 in Asia, 1 in Europe and 1 in Africa.

Gabriella Bottani

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