Requiem for a Heavyweight

This Saturday the Central American community in Southern California officially will lose one of its most effective advocates. The Southern California Interfaith Task Force on Central America is disbanding after 14 years.

We have not agreed with every position taken by SCITCA over that time, but we freely acknowledge that repeatedly this tiny group has raised a cry of alarm over tragic events in Central America that otherwise might never have been heard.

Its October newsletter is typical, passing along a report from Guatemalan peasants in the Peten region “that soldiers have surrounded their villages in what they fear is the beginning of a ‘major offensive’ against civilian communities living in hiding from the army.”

The particulars of the Peten case aside, SCITCA has been outstanding in its ability to keep channels of communication open between Southern California and the often forgotten poor of Central America.

Churches are international organizations with their own kind of foreign relations, but Southern California’s churches now are being called on as never before to meet the needs of a local population caught between rising unemployment and declining state relief. It is no great surprise that SCITCA’s shoestring budget, funded in large part by local churches, has lost out in the social triage.

Still, Executive Director Mary Brent Wehrli is right to claim, “We haven’t outlived our usefulness.” Central America, though not quite the battle zone that it was in the 1980s, is far from stable. The indigenous peoples of Guatemala, in particular, continue to suffer grim, racially tinged state terrorism. Though the SCITCA farewell party will be held Saturday night at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church, we note hopefully that three SCITCA-sponsored, Guatemala-related events scheduled for next week have not been canceled. The voiceless of Central America still need a Southern California voice.