THE NEEDS OF CENTRAL AMERICA
There is a land not far away. It lies on our own continent. It is a land of tropical beauty, where cocoanut palms wave their tall green branches in the breeze, and where flowers bloom the year around. The banana, pineapple, orange, and many other tropical trees and plants yield their fruit in rich abundance. The chatter of innumerable parrots and the sweet songs of many birds are heard from the great tall trees of the forests. Scantily-clad brown-faced boys and girls run about. Seeing it, one is made to say, “What a beautiful country!”
But, ah! As one advances inland, leaving the pretty harbor of Corinto, on the Pacific coast, the signs of the enemy’s work are on man and beast.
There is desolation everywhere. The poor people are too weak to withstand the strong rival with whom they have had to battle so long. Homes are broken up. Mothers with their little children are crying for help. Their cries are heard on every side. Powers of darkness sweep over the whole country.
The poor are driven like animals to the plantations to work for a few cents a day, not enough to sustain life. They are paid in advance for the season’s work. The wage is so small the family soon spend it all. Then they are arrested and made to work for what they have already received. Even mothers are put into the coffee and banana fields to work in the hot sun. On the poor tired women go with their babies strapped to their backs all day long, with nothing to eat but a tortilla (a corn cake baked without seasoning of any kind).
In the evening the poor tired people make their way to their little huts, which are made of a few sticks driven into the ground and covered with straw or palm leaves. There they grind corn for tortillas, the children carrying water in little buckets made of gourds that grow on trees, or in a jar made of clay. Their homes are as dirty as pig-pens, for the animals live in the house with the family.
As you travel through the country you find the very poor, who live in the mountains, far away from the cities, often whole families, without clothes. If they wear anything at all, it will be a piece of cloth woven from grass pinned around their bodies with a thorn, for they never saw a pin or button. Many boys and girls fourteen or fifteen years old have never worn clothes.
Both in the cities and in the country women are beasts of burden, for the women or the donkeys furnish the transportation, the men do not work much. The women work in the markets and little stores, and carry great loads of sugar, fruit, water, etc., on their heads in the hot sun. The streets are full of children that never were in school. They grow up to be lazy, fight with each other, and steal. When you have one around who is not saved you have to keep everything under lock and key.
More than two-thirds of the population are of illegitimate birth. Men and women live together and raise families, yet are never married. One of the difficult things the missionary has to do is see that they marry and live clean lives.
The priests charge so much money to perform the ceremony that the poor cannot pay it, so they live on year after year in this way; but they have to pay so much to the priests every year to get them to forgive their sin of adultery, in that way the Church of Rome gets more from them than they would to marry them. The priests prey upon the superstitions of the people to extract money from them at all points. The natives’ religion is a mere form of outward exercises.
For over 400 years the whole of Mexico, Central and South America, as well as the West Indies, have been under the heavy yoke of Romanism. The Spaniards came into the country and, driving the natives at the point of the sword, baptized them into the Roman Church, and took away their language and liberty. They compelled them to carry timber and stone from inland and build temples for the Roman Church.
I am just a brown-faced Indian girl, but I want to learn to read God’s Word. Will you send missionaries to teach us? There are thousands just as I am.
In Leon, which is the largest city of the Republic of Nicaragua, and where we have our work, there are between seventy and eighty thousand people and forty-two temples. And when one sees those old temples almost ready to tumble down, and covered with moss and grass centuries old, one feels that Rome is certainly coming to the end of herself in these countries. The people are rising up now and calling for schools, and for freedom of the press, and are crying, “Away with the Church! It has never done anything for us.” Many thousands are becoming free-thinkers.
Nicaragua is the only Republic of Central America that has Church and State united. A great fight is now on for their separation. There are over one million people in this Republic alone without the Gospel. Let us pray God to speed the day when these reforms shall be wrought and the Gospel be given the people.
Nicaragua saw her first missionary sixteen years ago. It has been the last of the Republics to receive the Gospel. The persecutions were so severe that the missionaries had to leave in a few weeks. But, thank God! some of the people accepted the glad news and have stood true through flood and flame. But there are very few missionaries there as yet, and thousands are without the knowledge of a Savior who died for them.
All these countries are being flooded with New Thought, Russellism, Christian Science, Theosophy, and Spiritualism. Many are coming into these things now, for the people are fast turning from Romanism. They are like little hungry birds with wide-open mouths ready to accept any poisonous thing presented. Are we, the true followers of Jesus Christ, going to sleep on and fail to wake up to this great opportunity? Let us go forth with the old-time Gospel of Pentecostal power, that will drive the enemy from the land, and give these dear people the truth.
At one place where we were having meetings the people asked us why missionaries had not come to them before. They said, “We saw the first one sixteen years ago, but he was so persecuted he had to leave us in a few weeks, and only a few heard the Gospel, and we have been in darkness for so long. Oh, if some one had only told us before the way of life!”
Many children were brought to us to be placed in school, so that they might learn to read and write, and study the Bible. But as yet we have been unable to open a school. My heart has been torn as I have seen the little children growing up in such ignorance, and especially the young girls. This country, like all other countries without the Gospel, regards the women and girls as no more than animals, and they are the prey to every horrible crime that anyone wishes to inflict upon them. The little girls are often sold into lives of shame by their parents for a few dollars. We knew one mother who sold her four young daughters. One of them found that she was to be sold so she ran away and hid in the mountains, but they hunted until they found her, then they bound her and carried her away, dripping with blood where she had been beaten with clubs and stoned with stones. The man that took her was, I am sorry to say, an American. “It is only the precious Blood of Jesus that can change the human heart, that is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jer. 17:9.
Many foreigners have come here for money, and do not care much how they get it. Some have gold mines, others have plantations, many of them are Americans. They are making every sacrifice for the gold that perisheth. Shall not we, then, who have the treasure of Heaven, break the Bread of Life to these dear hungry souls ere they perish?
There came to us early one morning a bright-faced Indian girl about thirteen years old. Her parents were dead, her sisters were living lives of shame and they had driven the poor little one out from them. She had been sleeping in the markets and parks and was crying in the street. Some one told her to come to us for we were missionaries and we would help her. She said she would be our servant and do anything, that she might have a place where she could be sheltered from the wicked men. She is only one of the many thousands that are here in this dark land crying for some one to help them. Unless we take them in they will be destroyed by sin. Many are found dead, having been killed to hide the crime of some wicked person. It is in behalf of these suffering ones that this little message is sent on its way in the Name of Jesus.
We are having blessed meetings. Many are coming out to hear the good news. Some have already received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. A native brother that has been saved has gone out to another place to preach, and the power of God is falling. Several have received the Holy Spirit, and others have been blessed in soul and healed in body.
Soon after coming into the country God gave me a vision of the blessed Latter Rain falling all over Central America. So I ask you, dear child of the Lord, to pray that the people in the homeland will be stirred up to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Many missionaries have gone to China, India, Africa, and the Islands of the Sea, but few have come to this country. Let us awake and pray that the Lord will send forth laborers, and that the means will be provided for their support, and that this very needy land shall hear the blessed Gospel story. There are a few faithful soldiers of the cross laboring here, but the battle is hard and long.
Some have fallen, and their comrades have laid them away on the green hillside to await their reward at the coming of the One who said: “He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathered fruit unto life eternal.”—John 4:36.
But there is a great door open, and the enemy is flooding in with all sorts of implements of war. There is urgent need of more soldiers and supplies. Just as Uncle Sam was able to send men and means for the great conflict in Europe, and so defeat the enemy, so our Captain, who never lost a battle, is able to send His soldiers, to defeat the enemy and drive him from the ranks and to send great showers of blessing upon the dry and thirsty land.
One Indian who found Jesus and loves his Bible
Just as some returned from the European battle-front to call for help from their countrymen, so we send out the cry to our brothers and sisters in Christ to let them know the great needs here, that they may join in a petition to the Throne of Grace for help.
The fight is on, the battle sound is ringing out,
The cry to arms is heard afar and near,
The Lord of hosts is marching on to victory,
The triumph of the right will soon appear.
The fight is on O, Christian soldier,
And face to face in stern array,
With armor gleaming and colors streaming,
The right and wrong engage today.
THE INDIANS OF NICARAGUA
(Extract from Article by Brother Schoenich)
From the time that Gil Gonzaloz de Avile reached the peaceful shores of the Chontales—Nicaragua—penetrating to the borders of the great lakes, the Indian has been made to suffer from the hands of the so-called enlightened races. When the above gentleman set his feet on Nicaraguan soil, the land contained some 3,000,000 peaceful and industrious Indians. In less than ten years 2,500,000 of them had perished in battle, were worked to death in the mines, or had starved in the mountain fastnesses.
In 1529 the Indians revolted, and after six terrible battles, the Spaniards succeeded in defeating them; the Indian chiefs were thrown to bloodhounds, who tore them to pieces. The masses were subjected to heavy tributes and severe tasks, and were driven like cattle by their cruel conquerors. Whoever resisted was ruthlessly tortured, towns that rebelled were destroyed and the people put to the sword. The Indians were reduced to the most abject slavery, their property was taken, and they were branded like cattle with hot irons. This cruel practice prevailed for years, and the miserable remnant of Indians who were still permitted to live, moistened their native soil with their bloody sweat, or dragged out a painful existence in the mines or gold placers. Coffee, rubber, sugar and cocoa were not then sought as today.
In 1810, when the first movement toward freedom began to be realized, an impartial observer unhesitatingly estimated the entire aboriginal population of the country at about 90,000 souls. The real Indian is fast going out of existence. The Ladinos, a class of mixed Spanish and Indian, soon may be all that is left of the Indian.
A fear of the white man has been planted in the Indian by these things. This makes it hard for the missionary. When one visits their villages, the children and women run and hide, and sometimes the men too. Only when one is well acquainted will they show friendliness. To reach them, a missionary must live among them, show them love and kindness and prove by word and deed that they are their friends, and desire to bring them to the true light of our Savior Jesus Christ.
These poor Indians are much oppressed. A planter will make a contract with a man for himself and oftentimes his woman or wife (they are seldom married) and all his children, to pick coffee, etc., giving him money on the contract for his living. When the planter is ready this man and his family must appear and work, gathering the crop, receiving twelve to twenty cents per day. If he does not appear, soldiers are sent after him, and he is brought at the point of the bayonet with his hands tied behind him and made to work until his debt is paid. The contract may be made as far as twelve months ahead, and likely the man has used up all that his contract calls for. He then seeks work elsewhere, or even contracts himself to another planter.
I know a man who has been trying for four or five years to get free from his “patron,” as the planter is called. Because he is a good worker the planter will not release him unless he pays four or five times more than he owes. The man is interested in the Gospel. We are praying God to liberate him and make him a true servant for our Lord Jesus Christ.
May God help the Church of Christ to awake to see the awful condition of these people, who are also compelled to pay their church dues by law and by force. I know a woman who was back in her church dues. They took all that she had, which was a few chickens.
Friend, will you not take these dear people on your heart in prayer and intercession? God can and does save poor Indians. We have seen His work in the lives of some. Brother, Sister, awake! Our Lord is at hand, and what is done must be done quickly. “Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.”
There is also a remnant of Indians in remote parts of the Republic known as the Suma and Mosquito tribes. These Indians have not come under the influence of the Church of Rome. They do not speak the Spanish language. There is more English than Spanish spoken among them. For more than half a century the Moravian missionaries have worked among them. They have several missions and churches scattered along the Atlantic coast, and up some of the large rivers. The Moravian Mission has translated the New Testament into the Mosquito language.