No Turning Back

SR. DARLENE NICGORSKI lived in Phoenix and was a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis when this interview appeared. She went to Guatemala in 1980 to help establish a preschool but was forced to flee six months later after her pastor was killed. —The Editors

We lack the Bible's inclusive sense, its total concept of who is our neighbor. Our neighbor isn't only those people who speak like us, act like us, and have the same values and economic status as we do. The Bible doesn't say that only when white, middle-class, United States citizens are involved in the process should people become involved. That's a shame, but that's reality, so we have to deal with that. But when they do become involved, they need to understand the full range of involvement and sacrifice. And that what we are doing is nothing compared to the trials of faith borne by the refugees.

Sojourners: What do you think the sanctuary trial is about?

Darlene Nicgorski: I don't see this case really dealing with the issues of sanctuary, because of the limitations of the court. I think this is not only an attempt to silence the truth about Central America and to stop the movement, I really think that the government will particularly try to take on what they consider mainline churches—the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church, and other Protestant churches. The Quakers have always been into this sort of stuff, so they're not the same kind of threat. But if the government can, they want to make an example and use this trial not only for its impact on sanctuary but also because the churches are beginning to gain momentum on other issues in which the churches feel themselves in conflict with the government, such as South Africa, the Pledge of Resistance, Witness for Peace, and the peace movement.

The churches' voice on sanctuary and Central America has probably been the clearest voice of any. I think the government has very clearly used this issue as an attempt to intimidate, divide, and separate the churches further for taking a stand that might be opposed to this administration. Doing that with mainline churches is the most effective way to divide administration opponents.

I don't think people realize what's been going on or that this is what this case is about. What the government is trying to do--and this has continued to happen--is discredit us, which is certainly what's happened in history. We know from Martin Luther King Jr. and the anti-Vietnam War movement that one of the things the government is going to try to do is discredit the opposition. And they'll try as much as they can to take away my religious identity and show that this isn't real religion. The government says that Jesus Cruz, the prosecution's main witness, can decide for this country what is religious activity and what is not.

My journey began in Central America. I was in Guatemala, helping to set up a preschool, for only six months when our pastor was shot and killed. After being forced to flee and living in southern Mexico, I came back here and realized I couldn't read the scriptures in the same way anymore. What I had lived made the scriptures live in a new way.

Before, the scriptures were much more a kind of comfort, a consolation. Now whenever I pick them up, there is a challenge--the way of the cross.

Having lived and walked with the people in Central America, having read the scriptures with them, having experienced the fear, the suspicion, needing to flee, and the daily dependence on faith and prayer gave me a sense that when I was back here I could not forget, and I felt compelled to do something. I couldn't go back to being the kind of person I was before; there was somehow a call to give voice to those experiences.

Persecution had followed us into Mexico. The Guatemalan army repeatedly crossed into southern Mexico, looking for subversives or guerrillas in the camps. We took tape recordings of the refugees' stories and then carried the tapes to the United States, not expecting that the same persecution would come here. Right here we found spies and the kind of infiltration of church meetings that was the fear of everybody in Central America. There were searches of houses in Guatemala, so we buried and burned books--anything with the word "liberation" would make you suspect.

I had the same experience at my home in Phoenix. My neighbors told me that more than seven agents of the government, some of them armed, had come to my home and searched my apartment for more than four hours. They made a 20-minute videotape of themselves searching my apartment. You can see a female Salvadoran who was in my apartment. Agents about twice her size were about to break in the door when she opened it. They pointed a gun at her and got her to say on camera that she was there without papers and that she'd been commissioned to be there. Then they went through everything in my apartment. This was the first time that I began to see that what they were going to do in this case was try to negate our religious identity.

One thing they found was an article I had written on being a refugee. I used the phrase "poor and oppressed." They had circled it and written in the column "Marxist ideology." Well, I didn't know that "poor and oppressed" came from Marx; I knew "poor and oppressed" from the Bible. But that's how this investigation came to be viewed through their lens of criminal activity.

One of my concerns is that, while I think it's important to help our government follow good laws--whether international laws or the 1980 Refugee Act--God and patriotism have become one. It is very difficult to get people to respond to a moral imperative, in contrast to one that's legal.

I used to wonder, should we try to raise moral issues in the hope that people can then see that laws can be very wrong? It might mean people going to jail, such as is happening in the peace movement. That was certainly demonstrated in the civil rights days. Rosa Parks did a very small thing, but it was against the law, and her little action is what helped people to see that the laws were bad. What I decided for myself, and what I see happening in the sanctuary movement, is that people need to be led to taking a responsible position from their own moral convictions, as if to say, "I'm going to help this person, and I'm going to do this without anybody stopping me."

Do you think the trial is helping people to get to that decision, or is it muddling the issue?

I don't know. The reason I chose to stay part of this group of 11 is that, because of the greater media attention on a larger group, we are helping to get out more information that I consider important--the truth about what's going on in Central America. What I try to raise whenever I'm speaking in public is the situation of the refugees. It's sad, but the trial has captured the interest of the American public, because now 11 North Americans, mostly church people, face possible prison sentences and not because of the suffering of Central Americans. So if we can use the trial to help raise people's consciousness, I think it has been fruitful.

You and several other defendants have referred to feeling a sense of powerlessness. Can you describe that feeling and also describe the impact this trial has had on your faith?

My faith has gone through a process of clarifying, a kind of cleansing. It's like starting down a road and one choice leads you to the next. I never knew that saying yes to work in Guatemala would lead to experiencing my pastor being killed, or fleeing, or being persecuted, or being in a refugee camp. I think it's faithfulness to prayer and community, coupled with making the choice to walk with the poor and oppressed, that helps these issues come together.

Sometimes you'd like to turn back, but you can't. Then the road gets narrower, and the journey gets sort of lonely. But it also gets clearer in terms of the gospel message.

I don't know where my life will lead me after the trial. But I know that the faith I've experienced in the trial has made me clearer about the sense of powerlessness that a poor person must feel. We defendants are all quite well-educated. Some of us have tried to keep very involved in the process. And yet, it's as if all of a sudden the process gets taken over, and we're left with no alternatives and dare not speak in the courtroom. How much worse it must be for the people without resources.

You've spoken about how your work and this trial have affected your faith. What do you think is its effect on the church as a whole?

I see Central American refugees as the new missionaries, missionaries to the North American church. It is time for us to be the listeners. The refugees have so much to teach us, and if we could learn to listen to them, that is the real hope for the North American church.

The sanctuary movement can bring revival to the church. The important thing is for us to listen and see that we have something to learn from Central Americans. By their speaking, we can have an opportunity for the conversion of North Americans.

This interview is one in a series of interviews with sanctuary trial defendants conducted in Tucson by Vicki Kemper two weeks before the verdict.