News 1 --Brazil, 1977; El Salvador, 1986

The first item you will find here is Larry Rosebaugh´s testimony about his experience in jail in Brazil in 1977.
Then follows Newsletter #1 from El Salvador in 1986 and other newsletters in the following posts.


ARREST IN BRAZIL

[The written testimony of Father Lawrence E. Rosebaugh, O.M.I., concerning his detention in a Recife Brazil Jail from the morning of May 15 through the morning of May 18, 1977.]

On the 15th of May, while we were pushing our cart on Avenida Sul in the direction of the open market in the "barrio" Afogados, we were stopped by two well-dressed men, identifying themselves as police officers. My friend, Tom Capuano, a Mennonite volunteer from the United States and I were on our way to the market to receive from a friend working there any and all vegetables and fruits otherwise discarded because partially gone bad or perhaps somewhat damaged. The hour was approximately 11:30 a.m. when the officers stopped us to demand our documents of identification.

Though our I.D.'s were in perfect order, the two men began promptly to question us: "Whose cart is this? Where is your commercial license? What do you do to earn money with this cart? What are you doing in Recife?" They didn't wait for us to answer their barrage of questioning. When we finally found an open space to speak, we tried to respond adequately.

We explained our professions to them -- I, being a Catholic priest, and Tom, a member of the Mennonite Central Committee, both of us assigned to Recife to work. We described our present work together amongst the poor on the city streets of Recife, that we ourselves had chosen to live and work -- speaking very rapidly, trying to get our whole story across to our unexpected visitors.

Each evening, we went on to say, we prepared before an open fire a large pot of vegetable soup. We extended to those who gathered to watch an invitation to join us. One quality that these people had in common, whether young or old, was that they were poor--and as we were to discover, quite hungry. Our vivid description was interrupted. "You're a priest...you both look like dirty hippies...This cart is stolen most likely and with this string of keys in your pocket and you (pointing to Tom) who are in the country only two years and speaking Portuguese better than us... a pack of lies, this whole story...the long hair, dirty clothes and the story about working with the poor... you must be communists.”

With this said, we were ordered into their car. The handcuff on my wrist was painfully tight. But there was not time to complain, as we continued to hear on our ride to the jail strong indictments against our persons. On arrival at the jail, one of the men who arrested us informed the clerk at the desk the reasons for our arrest. The clerk was surprised and asked if he really thought it so strange that a person in the country two years spoke Portuguese so well. He certainly didn't.

While we were standing and listening to this conversation, a car pulled up outside the front entrance and three or four young police officers jumped out. Pulling their pistols from their holsters and with yelps heard often from kids at play, they fired two or three rounds into the open air. While still not over this startling event, two older men entered the room, one carrying a shotgun, and without giving us any warning bumped Tom with the barrel of the gun on the side of the head and then into the ribs pushing him against the desk. In the same motion, he swung toward me and jabbed his gun into my stomach, sending me against the wall. "You'll be going to the Department of the Political and Social Order (DOPS, the department dealing with political prisoners), when you are released from here."

After registering our names with the clerk, we were ordered into the adjacent room where we were told to strip nude. While doing so, a man came from the area of the jail proper and began going through our clothes in search of items therein. On the day of our release, fifty cruzeiros from my pants and eight or nine from Tom's were missing. The man doing the searching of the clothes, we discovered, was an inmate like ourselves. Promptly we were escorted to a room where fourteen or fifteen men were being detained. The door was shut behind us. A voice spoke up telling us to sit down. We did so within the middle of the room--the only space available in the over-crowded jail cell.

A few of the men, all of whom were also nude, began asking us questions as to why we were arrested, where we lived, and what we did for a living. Within minutes of initiating this conversation, a young man, identifying himself as a spokesman for the group (by his very manner), stood before us ordering that we two stand up. Striding back and forth across the room, extending his chest and flexing his muscles, he began to kick and jab ferociously into space. Without a moment´s warning, a foot came smashing into my shoulder and another with lightning speed into the pit of Tom's stomach. With this spectacle of blows into our bodies by our specialist friend, we were both about driven through the cement floor as we received the final 'chop' to the top of our heads. "Sit down," we were told. "Take a place against the wall." The other prisoners, interestingly enough, had watched on almost as if it wasn't occurring, so bored were their expressions.

A conversation was then started between this apparent cell leader and one of his colleagues. "You like men?" we were asked. "You better, because in here everyone has their 'woman' and you better have a 'woman' by tonight. And you know what, if you don't cooperate you will be eating shit. You got that, Shit!" I was momentarily shook. Not only scared to the core by thoughts so descriptively real, my knees were still trembling from the encounter with the physical thrashing. (I had forgotten to mention that at the end of our beating, Tom and I were both ordered to strike a blow into the face of a youth, which we refused).

While still sitting with our backs against the wall and as if nothing at all had transpired, we were asked to sing an American song for the group. Somehow we pulled ourselves together enough to sing a song in English. This was followed by others (especially friends of the so-called leader) who sang with much gusto songs of their own liking. The Karate expert and illustrious cell chief then arose to initiate dancing among members of the cell. Beats and rhythms sounded from various corners and two by two men rose and so entertained the others with their high stepping--Tom and I were called forth and did not refuse.

The dancing came to a halt. Meal time was approaching. We took our positions in the line, awaiting what we would soon learn was the extent of the morning and noonday eating-- a small handful of mashed corn meal and a piece of small raw meat, the size of one's thumb. Passing down the corridor to obtain our portion of food, we realized the presence of women prisoners within the same confines, but in separate rooms. Nude, they yelled cat calls at us only to provoke the situation. Later in the day, they would shower in the corridor in full view of the male admirers.

But as we returned from the line with the corn mash and observed how the men picked the last crumb from the floor, we also witnessed another excruciating happening. A young man was told to go to his knees, and as a dog, ordered to lick some corn mash from the floor. Tom and I had now witnessed this hierarchical line of authority existing in the prison...the power that lay in the hands of this young man and extended at will to whomever he chose. Outside in the corridor again when lining up for showers, the so-called prison guard, a prisoner himself, our young leader and the deputy ruling it over the men [note: several lines of this text are missing - a blank space on the sheet.]

When in the cell again, I was informed by our "commander" that he had been in this jail well over a year--impossible! Men here twenty and thirty days were showing signs of dehydration and hunger. But as I pondered, it became rather clear that our 'prison guard' and the keepers within the cell were not ordinary prisoners. Getting extra food and water passed into them, perhaps they could survive. And further, it entered my mind, that these special collaborators with the front office, could they by chance be officials in disguise?

The evening of the first day, we were placed in a cell at the end of the corridor. There, 37 men stood while others splashed water on the floor. After this partial cleaning of the cell, we sat down as questions as to who we were and what we had done to deserve jail began once again. Men were dozing off. The heat was stifling. Bodies were literally jammed in like sardines. One person was obliged to curl his body around the hole in the squared off toilet seat, atrocious odors exuding. I found myself standing a good part of the night as the heat close to the floor was more than I could bear.

Fist fights broke out sporadically, as someone's hand landed on another's face, or someone crowded too much space from that of their neighbor. In the morning a man very well built was brought into the cell. His body was covered with what appeared to be wounds inflicted by a coarse rope or bits of metal. His conversation led us to believe that this brutality was received at the hands of the police.

We asked to contact the American Consul on three different occasions while imprisoned -- Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. All three times we were denied this right.

But on Wednesday, after asking to contact the American Consul, Tom was shouted back to his cell in words equivalent to "you S.O.B." We then figured we might well be stranded in this "inferno" (as one cellmate described the jail) for a long time to come.

However, while sitting staring at the four walls, our names came blurting out from nowhere. We filed out of the cell, but within twenty minutes were back to the same desk where our clothes were issued to us. Not a word indicated what was happening to us. I think that Tom and I were both sent into a state of semi-shock as we approached the area where the clerk was seated. For before our eyes an indescribable scene was taking place. A youth was standing with the palms of his hands extended. A short but very heavy built officer with a thick board, 2 feet long by a foot and a half wide, was coming down with all the force of this plank on the young man's hands. Six, seven, eight or more times. Each time a scream echoed throughout the jail. Another officer standing close by, dark sunglasses and all, moved in and with explosive power bashed a metal waste can to the side of the youth's face. We dressed, signed a book stating our release, and were told to go.

A final word. The brutality most difficult to understand is that practiced by the police -- officers proclaiming themselves defenders of justice. It is just impossible to comprehend how these same persons are able to torture, to wound and to treat their fellow human beings in a manner criminal and not to say, unheard of. Passing these few days in jail, I feel a certain gratitude to be able to share this part of reality existing within our midst. We were obliged to feel in our own skin the violence and humiliation which the poor experience daily.

For all those brothers and sisters suffering in jails and prisons, we shout for conditions more just and worthy of human beings, conditions free of hunger, of torture and all inhumane treatment in jails and prisons. We hope that our cries resound to the ears of those who have the authority and power to change those conditions, to the ears of those who have the duty to promote justice and human rights in the name of the Brazilian people.

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Newsletter #1
El Salvador
Fall, 1986

“Principally, I came here to learn from the people. It takes time to gain the confidence of the people.”

[In some of his letters Larry used the word womyn as his way of expressing the equality of women and men.
campo = farm field or farm region. Campesino(a) = peasant farmer]

Newsletter #1
El Salvador
Fall, 1986

Dear Friends:

By necessity, this will be a form letter, with hopes of reaching as many of you as possible on a regular basis.

I arrived here in El Salvador in the middle of July of this year. I had felt an inclination toward Central America for some time, not knowing where it might lead.

A year ago this past June, I accompanied a group of people from the diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico to Cuauhtemoc, Mexico in the diocese of Chihuahua. It was an attempt on the part of parishioners from Silver City, New Mexico to accompany people in the barrio Emiliano Zapata in their daily life and struggle -- to listen, to learn, to be a presence amongst the people there.

For me it was an opportunity to learn Spanish while at the same time acquainting myself with the life, culture and spirituality of the people in Cuauhtemoc. The church was much alive in this diocese. It presented to me the chance to work along with the people on a day to day basis making adobe bricks and building houses of adobe plus participating in small groups of people applying the gospel to our daily lives.

I include this phase of my life in this letter to you, as I am now seeing for myself the importance this work and life in Mexico is playing in my establishing roots with the people in El Salvador.

CRISPAZ is an ecumenical organization that I heard of through friends from Tabor House in San Antonio. My final decision to come to El Salvador was influenced greatly by my sense of trust and friendship with the people of Tabor and their encouragement in this direction.

They themselves were directly involved in getting CRISPAZ off the ground. CRISPAZ, similar in some ways to Witness For Peace in Nicaragua, offers to volunteers the chance to come to El Salvador on a short term basis or over a period of 6 months or more. Volunteers of CRISPAZ are given the opportunity to work in refugee camps which are set up under the auspices of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Salvador.

Volunteers up to now have been lay people with various skills and backgrounds. I came with the title of priest but as a volunteer of CRISPAZ. When I arrived a priest from Spain took me under his wing, helping to make my getting settled a bit easier and cutting the red-tape surrounding religious from the U.S. -- a little less hassle.

To be a nurse, a teacher or one skilled in land techniques is one thing. To be a priest, and gringo at that, working with the displaced in the camps seemed to present other problems and more red tape.

So it was finally decided that I speak with a bishop who has a diocese about 2 1/2 hours from San Salvador and who is considered pretty open to priests from the U.S. The need for clergy and religious is great everywhere in El Salvador

The idea I got from Padre Pedro, my priest friend from Spain, was to accept a parish from the bishop in order to gain his confidence and slowly move in to the area I felt most vital. But first establish a base from which to work.

So that's what happened. I accepted a parish in the diocese of Santiago de Maria, in the department of Usulutan. It is a totally rural setting. The work of the 'Campo' is the life of the people. I'm not the pastor type, but in this setting I've chosen to work in the 'campo' as often as possible and to minister to campesinos living in various 'cantones' or small villages within the boundaries of the parish of San Antonio.

It will take time before I can endure the hot sun and the work in the campo as the people themselves do. But it is truly a blessing and a great privilege to work alongside a people who themselves are truly rooted in a faith and simplicity that has allowed them to sustain themselves over this many war-torn years.

I didn't begin this letter with a tragic story of the war or situation of death and torture, still quite evident and seemingly without an end in sight.

Principally, I came here to learn from the people. It takes time to gain the confidence of the people. Surviving, death, separation, disappearances of family or friends is interwoven into their history and thru their bloodstream. How could such tragedy and deep rooted anguish be shared by one who comes from a land that imposes this grief - with one who to them, life is of material things and comfort.

I feel gifted to learn the life of the campo - even though slowly, to walk the same countryside -- grueling in itself, the unbelievable routes up the hillside, travelled by young girls, their mothers, and grandmothers carrying huge containers of water from the river below, or loads of washed clothing on their heads. The men and boys with loads of corn and kindling wood from the fields. When the sound of artillery fire or the explosion of bombs echo in the distance -- the conversation might unravel a story from my friends, a history of how the war has forced them to come to this part of El Salvador to live.

The government armed forces have taken over the town of Estanzuellos where I live. The church doors open to the plaza where young men in uniform sit armed with rifles in hand. Yes, I have heard some of their story. I consider it a privilege when a neighbor feels free to share some of the reality with me.

For now I must depend on my own incentive. The Jesuits from the university in San Salvador publish excellent material summarizing the weekly occurrences from the conflict area of the country. More analytical and researched articles too are published that help understand why things are the way they are... Why the war continues when those of both sides proclaim an end to the war is their goal.

It seems in fact that a military victory is President Duarte's goal. And it is clear that he moves in accord with the decrees of the Reagan administration which are clearly a military victory for the government forces. To keep the war going keeps the people in the state of misery and the government dependent upon the U.S. And this is what the Reagan party is all about throughout Central America.

Morazan, Chalatenango, Guazapo, San Antonio Abad, a barrio on the outskirts of San Salvador, are areas where the people have known the worst of persecution. Losing their land, their houses and their lives, the people of San Antonio Abad became conscious of the demands of Medellin during the 70's and over 400 people have disappeared or been killed in this barrio. But their spirit lives on and for this reason persons alive with the spirit of the Gospels come forth as catechists to the children, 'animators' among the adults and youth -- and so the 'pueblo de Dios', the living church, continues to grow in love and numbers.

However, as recently as the Spring of this year, a new purge of persecution has hit this community. Many youth have been arrested under the guise of being delinquents -- tortured, incarcerated while sending fear and tension into the lives of all concerned.

There is no way to calculate the level of violence, degradation and fear that penetrates the minds and hearts of those who opt for war -- of those who have been schooled in universities where power and wealth and domination are priorities to be attained with the skills acquired there.

I don't know where things will go for me from here. I sit today in San Salvador writing these last lines to you. In a few hours I will be petitioning immigration to give me the status of 'residency' here. If refused, no telling how much longer my stay in El Salvador will be.

I hope to be able to write a shorter letter each month or so to you depicting the life of one person or one family and what life on a daily basis is for them.

I won't go on any more. For now I can be written to by the address in San Antonio which has forwarded this letter to you. Let's keep each other in prayer as we try to be faithful to our present calling whatever we see that to be.

til later,
Larry Rosebaugh