Fredericton July 2014

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The Desire to “Do” Something: the ULAJE Conference of 1966

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In the summer of 1966, we went to the ULAJE conference [World Council of Churches Youth] in Puerto Rico. It was a tradition that ULAJE would invite Americans and Canadians, and the Canadians who had gone down, when it was in Mexico – which would maybe have been in ’62  were just sort of tourists. So, Oscar Bolioli, the Youth Secretary for ULAJE who then became Youth Secretary for the World Council, said afterwards, “We’re not going to invite anymore Canadians.” But George Cram said, “Give us another chance. We’ll get another delegation that will be serious.” And so it was myself, Hugh and Judy Miller, and the president of the Anglican Youth, who went to the next ULAJE gathering.

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There had been a very good speaker on China, but China was both far away and it was also difficult to learn the language. Anyway, we decided that Latin America would be our focus.

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Most of the young people were pretty fundamentalist, except for the Dominicans, because they had just gone through the invasion by the Americans in ’65 and then, Bosch had run again for elections in ’66, but wasn’t allowed to campaign and Balaguer won the election. I wouldn’t say the people from the DR were anti-American culturally; they were anti-American politically.

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So we decided that we would ‘do something’, and that we would meet at Christmas time in 1966 to finish the planning. I went down to the DR for a summer work project which lasted for about 3 weeks or a month. We didn’t get it finished in time but we got most of it done. There was a group called “The Christian Left” which Brewster Kneen had organized. I was a member. John was a member. I can’t remember all the other people. It was based in Toronto and we held our meetings at Brewster’s. In that summer of ’66 when we had gone off to ULAJE, some other people had got NACLA formed. The people who went to NACLA were just blown away! Because all the books they had gathered  – and meeting Fred Goff and so forth, like, they were there!! A lot of them were journalists, and their story was that anything they sent about Latin America that was the truth to their newspapers, was never published.

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So they formed NACLA, and then we formed the Latin American Working Group and we started trying to gather some literature. The idea was, we didn’t want to be solely a “study group”, nor did we want to be just an actionist group. The concept of “working group” seemed to combine theory and practice together in people’s minds, and of course we were focused on Latin America. We had a vague concept … I mean, we rejected the notion of converting people, and the idea that we were involved in paternalistic charity. There was a necessity and a need to reform our society just as they were already struggling to reform theirs.

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Being Arrested in DR

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When I was in the DR, there was one time when a group of radical American journalists came to our community, because there had been a land invasion and they wanted to interview the people who were involved. We didn’t have anything to do with them but told them where they could find these people.  So these guys had gone up into the mountains to talk to the people who were invading land and the information came back to the local lieutenant about two white guys going up into the mountains to talk to the invaders. And he thought it was us! So, we were arrested while we were building the schools, along with the mayor of the town, the local organizer, and another member person who was involved with the party. So we were marched through the rain, from the place where the school was being constructed, up to the soldiers’ barracks, and were thrown into jail.

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But at one point the lieutenant said, “I’ve got something to do and I can’t leave these people here. I’ve got to take them to the Fort in Puerto Plata.” So he pulled us out and he wanted us to pay for the taxi to take us to the jail in Puerto Plata! While we were being marched up, all the men who had been involved in the construction project fled: the mayor escaped, and the other men escaped, so there was only Ron and I and this Augustin who were still under custody. But the women did NOT flee. They followed the lieutenant up and the soldiers, and just … nagged at him continually. So, when I said, “Look, it’s up to YOU to pay … we’re not paying the taxi!!” We got into this screaming match, and he ordered the corporal to put his machinegun to my head. And he took the safety off. I didn’t know enough about guns to know how dangerous that was. When he did that someone reported to others that this argument was going on and my wife, arrived on the scene just at that moment. When she saw that, she screamed. It could have resulted in a bullet in my head. But anyway, at that moment I realized I couldn’t fool around like this anymore. So, finally, one of the local big landholders came by and he said, “What’s the problem? Just go along with them.” I said, “He’s invited us to the Fort and he doesn’t want to pay the taxi fare.” So this guy was a very cultured man. And the culture in the Dominican Republic is, if you invite somebody, you pay. So he starts to lay into the lieutenant, saying, “You uncouth, uncultured bum, you. If you invite somebody you’re supposed to pay!”

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Anyway, his son offered to take us in his pickup and so just to be really nasty, I said to the lieutenant, “Look, the guy – who was the Communist – has a cold. He’s got to go in the front seat. You’ve got to get in the back with us!!” And he blew up again. So we ended up in the backseat in the back of the pickup truck. And Ron and I are talking about what we’re going to do when we get to the Fort. And so we said, “We’ve got to reverse everything. Just the opposite. We’ll be the nicest guys you ever met.” So the lieutenant started to explain why he had picked up an American and a Canadian to bring them into jail. I said, “Look, we’re very sorry that this has happened. You’ve got a very good lieutenant here. We’re not asking for his transfer, except that he lacked a bit of courtesy.” The lieutenant didn’t like that and he started to argue with me and the colonel said, “Shut up. This is resolved!”  Because, you see, the government had a policy of having literacy training, ok? As we were leaving we explained to the lieutenant that it wasn’t us who had gone to talk to the land people but two reporters from the States. And then Ron, this was the coup de resistance, says, “You know, tourists don’t get to come into this Fort, because this is a jail. But this was constructed in the time of Colombus, could you take us on a tour of it!?” So he took us on a tour of the Fort.

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LAWG Was Always an Adventure

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I think what I learned with LAWG, was it’s not an academic thing about proving this theory’s “true” or it’s “false”, it’s a question of having the right set of questions that focus you on what needs to be focused on, in order to transform it. We were a working group in the sense that we weren’t just academia, or just actionism. That the two fed each other.

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I can remember situations where I felt out of it, and people in LAWG would reach out in the discussion, to me, but I think it did that for other people, too. And so, no matter who you were, we found a way to keep you. It had something to do with the church background, whether it was the YPU or AYPU or some of the other groups, or the SCM and so forth, unlike formal school, these groups allowed people to do their own project, where in formal school, everything’s sort of dictated to you. “Group process” sounds so mechanical, but it is about making sure that everybody fits.

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And the other thing LAWG did it well was … well, it was always an adventure!! So people never lost interest.