Truth and Mercy, Justice and Peace

For a number of years in the 1980s I worked under the auspices of Mennonite Central Committee throughout Central America as a resource person conducting workshops on conflict resolution and mediation. As an outgrowth of those efforts, I had the opportunity to serve as an adviser to a religiously-based conciliation team that mediated negotiations between the Sandinista government and the indigenous movement of the Nicaraguan East Coast, known as Yatama.

As part of its overall role the conciliation team accompanied returning exiled Yatama leaders back to their home area and villages to explain the agreement that had been reached with the Sandinistas. Given the context of war and the deep-rooted animosities that persisted, these were intense meetings. At the opening of each village meeting, the Nicaraguan conciliators would read Psalm 85, in which the Psalmist refers to the return of people to their land and the opportunity for peace…