Arriving to the end of the season of Advent, and with our eyes already set on the manger of the nativity in Bethlehem, the irruption of a social explosion in our country doesn't allow us to look at a horizon of peace. Our horizon is in many senses very similar to that at Bethlehem where the empire imposed on the people laws and projects that did not make for people's happiness.

In this context, from the perspective of the incarnation, we should, as churches, run the risk of being witnesses to the dignity of all people answering the call of being servants to the truth and to justice. Emmanuel, God with us, should be the basis on which to build a more just and sensitive world, a world in solidarity with the excluded, looking towards them, as its is from them that hope comes.

All Christians are called to be witnesses to peace, a peace which is born from the will to build a more inclusive society, a society where everybody can find a place with dignity. Witnesses to a peace that is nurtured in justice and in truth.

The Christian church is a universal body that includes a concept of equality before God and brotherhood between people that is unique to it. The concept of communion offers the possibility and the duty of building close networks of solidarity that embrace the whole earth. On this basis we appeal today, concretely, to your support from each one of your places.

All that is happening these days in Argentina, and what has been brought to the attention of the international community through the media, again highlights the injustice in our country, together with the record of corruption, irresponsibility and insensitivity of its ruling class. However, at the same time it is an opportunity to remind the countries of the northern hemisphere that we also have a history of 500 years of painful and unjust international relations.

In this history, full of sin, a huge transfer of natural resources, products of all kinds and labour from the global south to the global north, resulted in a huge accumulation of wealth in the north, bringing, to the present, enormous profits to that part of the world. This means that any proposal for a change of situation in the south implies some deep changes in the lifestyle of the north.

This transfer of wealth started with the conquest of the Americas and continued throughout the centuries of colonial power. It is still going on today, through the transfer of the huge profits of transnational enterprises and mainly in the form of interest on a debt which is a heavy burden for our people. Here the ruling sector of our country irresponsibly played the game in the last decades and at the present. The effects on this debt of the current policy, as in Argentina, have been disastrous. The debt, as well as springing from an unjust economic relation, is illegal. It generates corruption and impunity in order to continue to be possible.

We call upon churches, agencies and Christian institutions in the north to consider the following crucial issues which we have already raised in the past:

We request you to use all means and possibilities to build up commercial and economic international relationships based on justice and equality.
We ask you to use the same means and possibilities to help us to alleviate the burden of the international debt, which is producing misery and killing millions of people.
We request you to consider concrete signs of self-restriction favouring the needy in the south, and to implement concrete signs of solidarity with those who are suffering more deeply. God created the north and the south (Ps 89.12) and once and for all, the dominion of one over the other must stop!

We wish to express our gratitude to all those individuals and institutions in the north involved in the creation of just international relations and solidarity networks. We encourage you to continue working towards a transformation of the ladder on which those "above" enjoy life and those others "below" suffer, into a bridge over which we may embrace and all can talk.

We greet you in Christ, head of the universal church to which we belong, here in the south and there in the north.

Note

1. The letter was signed by the following churches: the Anglican Diocese of Argentina, the Argentine Evangelical Methodist Church, the Association of the Churches of God, the Church of the Disciples of Christ, the Congregational Evangelical Church, the Evangelical Church of the River Plate, the Evangelical Waldensian Church of the River Plate, the Reformed Churches in Argentina, and the United Evangelical Lutheran Church. It was also signed by the Argentine Committee for Refugees, the Argentine Federation of Evangelical Churches (FAIE), the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights, Isedet Seminary, and the River Plate region of the Latin American Council of Churches (Clai).