• Article Tools
• Print
• RSS

Faith and the Former Guerilla

by Alejandro Bermudez 

Ricardo, a Mexican spoiled brat looking for personal redemption in the Peruvian Andes, met Scipión in the Yanamayo Prison.

Visiting inmates in one of the worst prisons in the world was one of the duties the Italian missionary priest mentoring Ricardo assigned him as a way to “wake him up from his worldly dreams.”

Ricardo only knew that Yanamayo, a cement prison located in the middle of a cold, rocky plateau in the Peruvian Andes at 14,500 feet, was the home of hundreds of the most cruel and bloody members of the Maoist guerrilla “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path) group, condemned to life in prison.

Scipión didn’t look threatening at all; he was short and thin. And the day Ricardo met him in the conference cell, he was bleeding profusely from his mouth.

“Oh, I just pulled out a bad tooth … it is better than letting it rot in your mouth,” Scipión explained to Ricardo, almost matter-of-factly.

Very quickly the once spoiled Mexican college boy learned that the Peruvian state was making the Senderistas pay a hefty price for their murderous brutality: 22 hours of confinement a day in cold cement prison cells; no medical attention; no access to any source of information – TV, radio, magazines – and restricted access to books; visits from immediate family members only and by means of a listening booth with no direct contact.

The draconian prison policy established by then-President Alberto Fujimori was meant to make the Senderistas’ life in prison a living hell. Worse yet, the vast majority of Peruvians wanted them to rot in such a hell.

There was a reason for their hatred. The Senderista rides punishing innocent Andean peasants for “collaborating” with the government were incredibly vicious. They would not only kill at will, but to set an example, they would behead the peasants, empty their chest cavities and put their heads inside.

Please forgive such a graphic description, but without it, it would be impossible to understand what kind of man Scipión was. He was one of them.

Ricardo was puzzled by why Scipión would agree to meet with him on a daily basis. At first, he though the Senderista would be interested in the things he would bring: food, soap, toothpaste and candies.

However, Scipión would take the package, politely thank Ricardo and put it aside without interest. Ricardo sometimes had to tell Scipión to take the package back to the cell with him.

He then thought that, since Scipión had no family members visiting him, his almost daily meetings would be better for him than walking around the tiny prison yard all by himself.

But Scipión’s growing interest in the Catholic faith, in the Bible and the teachings of the Church was evident and sincere.

“His eyes, always somber and dark, would light up with surprising intensity only when we were talking about God, about redemption and the Sacraments,” Ricardo told me, remembering the days of his own personal conversion.

Indeed, Scipión, baptized Catholic but never formed in the faith, didn’t know that he was learning all things Catholic almost at the same time that his visitor was.

Finally, the dam of pain, guilt, shame and internal conflict broke inside Scipión when, crying for the first time, he told Ricardo: “If I would have known … if I just would have known!”

He never finished the phrase. He just broke into intense sobbing.

The following week, Scipión requested to be prepared for the Sacraments of Reconciliation,   First Holy Communion and Confirmation.

RCIA was a task way above Ricardo’s head, and his time in Peru was almost over. But he left Scipión in good hands and, two years later, he received a letter in which Scipión shared the joy of his new life as a devout Catholic in prison.

The letter made no mention of the improved prison conditions after Fujimori’s resignation, or the fact that he would most likely die in prison without ever having the chance to go back to his Andean town, to his forgotten family, or to have the opportunity he longed for to ask forgiveness of the relatives of his victims.

Scipión seemed still detached from things surrounding him, but this time it was the detachment of joy, not of despair.

It was just the simple joy of finding Faith, the Faith he was supposed to have known all along, the Faith that, like St. Augustine he felt he, alas, loved too late.

I admire Ricardo, my good Mexican friend. He has renounced a guaranteed life of comfort and luxury to serve the poorest Mexicans in the southern state of Chiapas. His wife, whom he met in Peru, is equally committed in helping the poor.

But Ricardo always makes sure that they engage in true Christian charity and not mere “philanthropy.” He learned from Scipión a lesson he will never forget: Faith is not only a great gift, but the greatest gift of all. A gift that many of us take for granted too easily.

---

(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)