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The date was December 1981; the place, La Ceiba, Honduras. Oscar Dueñas, a young Mennonite electrician’s assistant, was leaving work with his cousin in the dark, around 6 p.m. As they walked by the high school, suddenly soldiers grabbed them and shoved them into an armored car. The car kept driving, and as the night went on, the vehicle filled with other young men the soldiers had kidnapped from nearby restaurants, discos and arcades. The truck was packed seven hours later when the soldiers returned to the battalion with their new recruits.
Dueñas found himself in a barracks with some 1,200 young men from all over Honduras. There were no beds. After a short, uncomfortable night on the floor, the soldiers roused the recruits at 5 a.m. and told them to brush their teeth with their finger and line up. A military captain lectured them on the merits of military service.
Concluding, he asked those assembled, “Now, who’s willing to serve?” Perhaps 50 young men raised their hands. The captain was disgusted. “Fine, you can get out of service if you’re married, work with the government, attend university or have a venereal disease.”
Dueñas fell into none of those categories. What was he to do? He grasped for options. He remembered his aunt’s cousin worked in a government radio station; he could claim to be an operator there. Since Dueñas’ cousin had also been recruited, his family was ready with an alibi when the soldiers called the station to verify the young men’s account.
“They’re missing their shift right now!” his cousin’s family told the soldiers.
“See, I told you,” said Dueñas, “I have to leave!”
He was free, but it wouldn’t be the last time he escaped military service.
Dueñas’ story is not unique. Those 1,200 recruits were the work of just one battalion on one night of what many Hondurans remember as the “Lost Decade.” Despite not being at war, forced recruitments were the terrifying reality for young Hondurans in the 1980s. In fact, according to Article 276 of the Honduran Constitution, every young Honduran male between the ages of 18 and 30 was already an active duty soldier obligated to render two years of military service. Young men lived in fear they could be conscripted at any time by soldiers who often awaited them outside movie theaters, churches, workplaces and schools. The military would board buses and kidnap passengers who couldn’t prove they’d served their term. If the recruit tried to escape, he would be shot at and often killed. The trauma of this era lingers below the surface of the collective consciousness to this day.
The armed conflicts in neighboring El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala also fed the climate of war in the country. Camps of refugees and internally displaced Hondurans were common in border areas. Responding to the needs of their neighbors, the Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Hondureña (IEMH; Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church) organized itself to provide relief to refugees with aid from MCC. What began as Christian charity led them to conclude: “We are called to lift a prophetic voice and condemn all the violence and injustice which is committed daily against the population.”
Having seen the human cost of war through their ministry, Honduran Mennonites resolved not just to condemn violence and treat its victims, but to prevent it by taking on the culture of militarism itself. In 1983, the denomination took up formal advocacy efforts with the National Congress, submitting a proposal that young people of conscience be allowed to serve their country in civil society. There was no response from Congress.
Over the next decade, the IEMH focused their peace work on equipping young people in the denomination to deal with the existing reality. They coordinated their efforts through Proyecto Paz y Justicia (PPyJ; Peace and Justice Project), which was established as a joint initiative of the Mennonite church and MCC. Theologian Gerald Schlabach was instrumental. Schlabach had begun peacebuilding work with MCC in Nicaragua, but as the Contra War escalated, he moved to Honduras and the PPyJ partnership began to take shape. The idea was that a Honduran Mennonite, in this case a young pastor named Juan Ángel Ochoa, and an MCC staff member would work together on the existing Central American Peace Portfolio; Ochoa would focus on national initiatives while Schlabach would take a regional view.
tPPyJ worked to give Honduran Mennonites the language to defend their Anabaptist peace theology. A series of workshops across the country helped young people wrestle with the hard questions about conscientious objection. These sessions, held in Mennonite churches in each of the denomination’s six regions, taught the basics of peacemaking and helped young men figure out what to do if they were forcibly recruited. After these workshops, many participants chose to sign a declaration of conscientious objection.
These trainings and signed declarations proved their value throughout the decade. During a recruitment raid in Mapulaca in the late 1980s, the military targeted the Mennonite church there. Seeing that the soldiers were waiting outside as the church service ended, the congregants refused to leave the building. The standoff ended when soldiers broke a window and captured all the young men.
“These are Mennonites you have,” they reasoned with the soldiers. “They’re not going to take up arms.”
Hearing the news, several Honduran Mennonites associated with PPyJ came from San Marcos, Ocotepeque, including Oscar Dueñas, still of recruitable age but by then a pastor of the local congregation. When they arrived at the battalion where the Mapulaca Mennonites were held, the army captain lied, telling them that the men weren’t there. This was common, and the San Marcos contingent pressed them.
“These are Mennonites you have,” they reasoned with the soldiers. “They’re not going to take up arms.”
By the late 1980s, especially in the western departments of the country, Mennonites had gained notoriety for their work with Salvadoran refugees and were comfortable taking a political stand and facing off with the military. If declaring that they were Mennonites wasn’t enough, PPyJ had evidence that the young men were pacifists and conscientious objectors. The book of declarations of conscientious objection showed this wasn’t a whim of cowardice; the young men had considered their decision and were serious about what they believed.
“They eventually released them to us,” remembers Dueñas. “Being Mennonite was a serious thing! It had power.”
Being able to rescue fellow Mennonites from conscription was a significant accomplishment, but young Hondurans wanted to live without fear of being hunted. With this goal in mind, 50 popular organizations gathered in a San Pedro Sula Mennonite church on May 28, 1993, to coordinate their efforts and strategize. The Mennonites’ reputation for public opposition to the military made them the natural hosts, but not only faith groups were represented: women’s guilds, university groups, campesino organizations, and human rights groups joined the assembly as well.
The Mennonites proposed that the organizations support a common plan for alternative service. They shared the documents the church had sent Congress in 1983, requesting recognition of alternative service with groups like the Red Cross or Comisión de Acción Social Menonita (Mennonite Social Action Commission). Other organizations countered the proposal, saying it was too timid. “The military needs to be abolished,” they pressed. The director of the Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras) agreed that the Mennonites’ idea wasn’t bold enough but that the alternative was too ambitious and ultimately unrealistic. He suggested the groups push to make military service voluntary.
The assembly agreed. Together they drafted a plan for their advocacy and formed a new organization: the Comité Cívico Cristiano Popular por la Derogación del Servicio Militar Obligatorio (Popular Christian Civic Committee for the Abolition of Obligatory Military Service).
1993 was also an election year, and the Civic Committee put pressure on both major party candidates to adopt their demands. The center-right National Party candidate Oswaldo Ramos made the incredible claim that under his presidency, militarism would disappear from the country. The center-left Liberal Party candidate Carlos Roberto Reina promised to turn the army into a volunteer organization guided by humanist, democratic ideals. The Committee supported Reina and intended to hold him to his word upon his election.
As soon as Reina took office, he began waffling on his promises. The military was powerful and had overthrown presidents before; Reina may have been rightly afraid of a coup. Nevertheless, the Civic Committee maintained pressure on the civilian government to abolish obligatory military service. In response, the government outlined reforms based on Colombia’s draft system. Registration would be mandatory, and a lottery system would determine who served. This was unacceptable to the Committee: even with the reforms, military service would still be involuntary and the consciences of pacifists disrespected.
The Committee escalated its campaign with open-air, ecumenical services calling for peace and praying for an end to militarism. There were vigils, public fasting and press conferences. Even non-religious Committee members participated. With the help of a lawyer, they drafted and submitted documents to repeal or amend Article 276. The crescendo of activism culminated in the occupation of La Merced Park next to the congressional building in Tegucigalpa, where they declared a hunger strike on April 19, 1994, until an acceptable measure was passed.
Tents and awnings were set up in the park and banners were hung. Mennonite pastor Pedro Calix was a coordinator of the occupation and remembers a continual presence of dozens, but usually hundreds, of supporters in the park accompanying at least 10 hunger strikers. The public support was overwhelming, including among business and government leaders. The city’s mayor even got on board. Several large churches, including Amor Viviente which had roots in the Mennonite church, showed their solidarity by joining the crowd. Two weeks into their occupation, nearly a thousand people were gathered in the park, even many congressional representatives.
The campaign’s vast support finally pressured President Reina to introduce a bill to make military service voluntary in times of peace. Representatives approved it without delay on May 3, 1994, and it was ratified according to Honduran law by the subsequent congress in early 1995. By April, the military’s kidnappings and forced conscriptions had finally stopped. As existing soldiers finished their terms or left when they realized they were no longer being forced to serve, the size of the armed forces decreased from about 26,000 to 12,000 without the steady stream of new recruits. In order to attract volunteers, the military started to treat soldiers more humanely, especially in matters of pay and corporal punishment. Less than a year after the initial assembly in the San Pedro Sula Mennonite church, the Civic Committee had achieved its demands. The work of the Mennonite church and MCC through PPyJ to build consciousness among young Mennonites in the late 1980s and early 1990s had borne fruit in a generation willing to wage peaceful struggle for the right not to kill.
Lily Mast served as Digital Media Specialist with the MCC Honduras office from 2019-2020.