A Demand for Sanctuary
Feb. 15th, 2018 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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A Demand for Sanctuary:
chamerionwrites:
In response to the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent victory of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) against the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the United States scaled up its support for anti-communist regimes in the region. Under the Carter and Reagan administrations, the United States sent military advisors and hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and military aid to the right-wing dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador.
There, US-trained armies responded to leftist insurgencies with unspeakable campaigns of sustained violence against the civilian population in the form of massacres, death squads, torture, rape, and disappearance.
In Guatemala, the decades-long civil war would eventually claim 200,000 lives, with state forces responsible for 93 percent of the violence, according to a UN report; in El Salvador, 75,000 were killed, with state forces responsible of at least 85 percent of the crimes. The Reagan administration also covertly and illegally armed and supported paramilitary “contra” forces against the Sandinista government, financing this illicit venture through clandestine arms deals with Iran.
As these anti-communist proxy wars ravaged Central America, a massive grassroots response arose in the United States.
This movement, sometimes referred to as the Central America solidarity movement or the Central America peace movement, encompassed a vast and diverse amalgamation of organizations and tactics fighting to halt US support for the wars, defend the revolutionary projects of Central American popular movements, and protect Central American refugees seeking a safe haven in the United States…
The sanctuary movement built on a rich US tradition of religious communities engaging in principled civil disobedience out of a belief in a higher moral righteousness, from the Underground Railroad to the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. The groundwork was laid in the 1960s, as US church-people traveled to Latin America as part of the Alliance for Progress, Kennedy’s reformist initiative to fight the perceived rise of communism in the region.
There, many were exposed to and radicalized by the growing Liberation Theology movement, which brought together Marxist and Christian doctrines to advance a “preferential option for the poor” in the face of devastating inequality and increasingly violent repression. These sympathies were strengthened as atrocities against religious leaders in Central America began to draw international attention, particularly in El Salvador in 1980 with the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the rape and murder of four North American churchwomen, and again in 1989 with massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Central American University.
The sanctuary movement emerged as a desperate response to the politicized inequities of US immigration law. Migrants fleeing violence and persecution were dying in the southwestern deserts, and congregants seeking to aid these refugees were horrified to learn that the US government’s response to the survivors was deportation, not provision of shelter.
This was because granting asylum to refugees of the violence from US-backed anticommunist regimes would imply a recognition that those allies were indeed committing human rights abuses, thus endangering their US funding and support. As a result, asylum seekers escaping Sandinista Nicaragua were received with open arms, while the masses fleeing violence from right-wing military regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador were all but summarily denied.
As they became aware of the perils that refugees would risk in their home countries, many of them dissidents fleeing for their lives, religious communities began to open their doors…
In addition to providing shelter and basic services, sanctuary activists were instrumental in the legal battles to shield refugees from deportation. Following the indictments in Tucson, religious groups and churches joined Central American organizations providing immigration support services to sue the government for discriminating against Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers in the American Baptist Churches v. Thronburgh (ABC) class action law suit, which was finally settled in 1991 to allow new asylum hearings for certain applicants who had been rejected.
Sanctuary activists also helped push for the 1990 Immigration Act which created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain migrants, in particular those from El Salvador, as well as the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), which allowed Salvadorans and Guatemalans included in the ABC suit to apply for a suspension of deportation and granted legal permanent residency to Nicaraguans (still, we should note, a vastly unequal resolution).
Sanctuary churches would often develop sister relationships with counterparts in Central America, organizing delegations to travel to Nicaragua, El Salvador, or Guatemala to witness the violence of US-backed forces and “accompany” the social justice work led by the Liberation Theology-inspired congregations. These experiences, together with refugee testimonies, strengthened the transnational bonds between communities and consolidated opinions against the wars…
The role of Central American refugees in the movement was by no means limited to that of victims and witnesses.
“You can really see the influence of the refugees of Central Americans themselves, the role that they played in building both the solidarity movement and the sanctuary movement,” Angela Sanbrano emphasizes. In Los Angeles, “the refugees started to do marches and they were doing pickets and they were letting people know about the war. […] I started going to the rallies. […] They would see that I was interested so they started talking to me to help them get [access to] facilities at the school so they could have meetings. I got involved by them recruiting me.”
In fact, the Central America solidarity movement was founded in large part by Central American exiles in the 1970s. Revolutionary Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, particularly, formed political groups and organized to denounce the escalating violence in their home countries. These activists drew US citizens to their cause, and helped facilitate connections between the emerging US movement and leftist insurgencies and social movements in Central America.
As the waves of migration increased in the 1980s, refugees also formed mutual aid organizations like CARECEN and El Rescate in Los Angeles that played key roles in the legal battles to protect asylum seekers from deportation.
(Your picture was not posted)
A Demand for Sanctuary:
chamerionwrites:
In response to the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent victory of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) against the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua in 1979, the United States scaled up its support for anti-communist regimes in the region. Under the Carter and Reagan administrations, the United States sent military advisors and hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and military aid to the right-wing dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador.
There, US-trained armies responded to leftist insurgencies with unspeakable campaigns of sustained violence against the civilian population in the form of massacres, death squads, torture, rape, and disappearance.
In Guatemala, the decades-long civil war would eventually claim 200,000 lives, with state forces responsible for 93 percent of the violence, according to a UN report; in El Salvador, 75,000 were killed, with state forces responsible of at least 85 percent of the crimes. The Reagan administration also covertly and illegally armed and supported paramilitary “contra” forces against the Sandinista government, financing this illicit venture through clandestine arms deals with Iran.
As these anti-communist proxy wars ravaged Central America, a massive grassroots response arose in the United States.
This movement, sometimes referred to as the Central America solidarity movement or the Central America peace movement, encompassed a vast and diverse amalgamation of organizations and tactics fighting to halt US support for the wars, defend the revolutionary projects of Central American popular movements, and protect Central American refugees seeking a safe haven in the United States…
The sanctuary movement built on a rich US tradition of religious communities engaging in principled civil disobedience out of a belief in a higher moral righteousness, from the Underground Railroad to the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. The groundwork was laid in the 1960s, as US church-people traveled to Latin America as part of the Alliance for Progress, Kennedy’s reformist initiative to fight the perceived rise of communism in the region.
There, many were exposed to and radicalized by the growing Liberation Theology movement, which brought together Marxist and Christian doctrines to advance a “preferential option for the poor” in the face of devastating inequality and increasingly violent repression. These sympathies were strengthened as atrocities against religious leaders in Central America began to draw international attention, particularly in El Salvador in 1980 with the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the rape and murder of four North American churchwomen, and again in 1989 with massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter at the Central American University.
The sanctuary movement emerged as a desperate response to the politicized inequities of US immigration law. Migrants fleeing violence and persecution were dying in the southwestern deserts, and congregants seeking to aid these refugees were horrified to learn that the US government’s response to the survivors was deportation, not provision of shelter.
This was because granting asylum to refugees of the violence from US-backed anticommunist regimes would imply a recognition that those allies were indeed committing human rights abuses, thus endangering their US funding and support. As a result, asylum seekers escaping Sandinista Nicaragua were received with open arms, while the masses fleeing violence from right-wing military regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador were all but summarily denied.
As they became aware of the perils that refugees would risk in their home countries, many of them dissidents fleeing for their lives, religious communities began to open their doors…
In addition to providing shelter and basic services, sanctuary activists were instrumental in the legal battles to shield refugees from deportation. Following the indictments in Tucson, religious groups and churches joined Central American organizations providing immigration support services to sue the government for discriminating against Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers in the American Baptist Churches v. Thronburgh (ABC) class action law suit, which was finally settled in 1991 to allow new asylum hearings for certain applicants who had been rejected.
Sanctuary activists also helped push for the 1990 Immigration Act which created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain migrants, in particular those from El Salvador, as well as the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act (NACARA), which allowed Salvadorans and Guatemalans included in the ABC suit to apply for a suspension of deportation and granted legal permanent residency to Nicaraguans (still, we should note, a vastly unequal resolution).
Sanctuary churches would often develop sister relationships with counterparts in Central America, organizing delegations to travel to Nicaragua, El Salvador, or Guatemala to witness the violence of US-backed forces and “accompany” the social justice work led by the Liberation Theology-inspired congregations. These experiences, together with refugee testimonies, strengthened the transnational bonds between communities and consolidated opinions against the wars…
The role of Central American refugees in the movement was by no means limited to that of victims and witnesses.
“You can really see the influence of the refugees of Central Americans themselves, the role that they played in building both the solidarity movement and the sanctuary movement,” Angela Sanbrano emphasizes. In Los Angeles, “the refugees started to do marches and they were doing pickets and they were letting people know about the war. […] I started going to the rallies. […] They would see that I was interested so they started talking to me to help them get [access to] facilities at the school so they could have meetings. I got involved by them recruiting me.”
In fact, the Central America solidarity movement was founded in large part by Central American exiles in the 1970s. Revolutionary Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, particularly, formed political groups and organized to denounce the escalating violence in their home countries. These activists drew US citizens to their cause, and helped facilitate connections between the emerging US movement and leftist insurgencies and social movements in Central America.
As the waves of migration increased in the 1980s, refugees also formed mutual aid organizations like CARECEN and El Rescate in Los Angeles that played key roles in the legal battles to protect asylum seekers from deportation.
(Your picture was not posted)
