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Call of the
Christian Continental Network for Peace
IN THE NAME OF GOD:
STOP VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE!

Pronouncement of the Christian Continental Network for Peace (RECONPAZ)

Fundamental biblical premise:
«Our struggle is against principalities-against the darkness of this century»
(Ephesians 6:12)

The Continental Christian Network for Peace (Reconpaz), a group of Christian Protestants and Catholics that adds its voice to brothers and sisters of other religions and with civil society organizations from 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries, attentive to the violence that permeates the borders of our countries; lifts today, a warning voice against the winds of war that blow in our region.

The Latin American and Caribbean region, which has so keenly suffered the Cold War and still relives cruel images of it, seems to be once again being turned into a scenario of war.

HAITI & VENEZUELA
Everyone on the Insular Caribbean and in the Continental Caribbean:
Let’s safeguard the future of Peace

We call attention to events that disturb the stability of our Latin American-Caribbean region, and we express ourselves openly and directly about the tense situation that two countries of the Caribbean basin, Haiti and Venezuela are going through.

• It seems that Washington wants to do in Venezuela what it did in Haiti. The twice elected president of Haiti (1990,2000), Jean Bertrand Aristide, an anti-imperialist, militant of Liberation Theology, suffered 2 coups d’état (1991, 2004). Obstructing the democratic post-dictatorship trial, the USA-Haitians used General Raoul Cedras, Guy Philippe and Gerard Latortue. Those two blows were followed by military occupations and other electoral coups. Effects still felt now due to these coups. Today, the USA-Venezuelans intend to set a coup against Maduro, using (read manipulating) their puppet Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez.
• On January 11, 2019, Washington presented at the Organization of American States (OAS) the motion to declare illegitimate the Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, who, in May 2018, won the elections with two thirds of the electorate in his favor. It is worrying that a foreign country violates the institutions and laws of another and forces to solve internal problems with external criteria.
• Washington threatens to intervene militarily in Venezuela and pressures the countries of the Caribbean basin to side with them in the face of the conflict.
• Trump names Elliot Abrams as special manager to what he has called the Venezuelan crisis. Apparently, this person represents the worst of US foreign policy: drug trafficking for purchasing weapons, money laundering and atrocious murders, massacres and genocides associated with death squads and battalions trained in the United States.
• International interventionism disguises death and dispossession behind humanitarian speeches. The invaders will never say that they will bomb, kill, destroy the road, housing and communication infrastructures of the country. They will never say that they murdered innocent children. They will never be honest, transparent to what they are going to do. Rather, they will hide their perversity behind false speeches: they will say that they will take humanitarian aid and favor national reconstruction. They will never make public that they are going to create the conditions to expropriate the subsurface resources; they will always deceive, distort and seek to confuse.
• We call for an alert on the situation in Haiti. It is heard that, in the face of social discontent and hunger, it is urgent that aid be sent to Haiti, instead of to Venezuela. Let us listen carefully to the reasons why Haiti raises its voice, and we are aware that, with the help offered, death comes.

If the war that Washington wants to foster in the region is successful, there would not be a country left untouched.

IN FACE OF THIS THREAT THE CONTINENTAL CHRISTIAN NETWORK FOR PEACE (RECONPECT) IS PRONOUNCED:

CONSIDERING:

1. That the fruit of justice is peace and that peace means good living, and good living is the fruit of harmonious coexistence among humans, the Creation of God and all that exists; (because we are not owners / masters of the created, but useless administrators who have neglected God’s command to be salt and light in the world).

2. That we are witnessing the increase of people who are located at the extremes of life; on the one hand, those who fight without respite to defend their principles, their values, their resources, such as water, rivers, basins, food, identity, peace; and on the other extreme, those who believe they are masters of the world and who have resources like money, twisted laws, purchase of wills and greed for wealth, power in their favor, attempt against the people, kill, steal, plunder, destroy, eliminate with absolute impunity and complicity of those who govern.

CONSEQUENTLY,
Having heard God’s call to be stewards of creation,

• We condemn foreign military interventionism that violates the sovereignty of peoples and is violence to humanity.

• We affirm human reconciliation and we condemn the bloodthirsty, the inhuman, the insensitive, the immunization to the massacres, the barbarism, and the massive cruelty against the defenseless.

• We declare ourselves against fanaticism and intolerance, and in favor of letting the peoples solve their internal problems, dialoguing and exercising their right to demonstrate, without external interference.

• We confirm that we are a region that announces peace and reconciliation, which seeks its inspiration in the martyrs, the challengers, the poor and oppressed and massacred majorities.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27 New International Version