It's a shame that the newspaper El Canillita only publishes their paper in Spanish. Those of us who speak only English miss out on some of the great articles and op-ed pieces that you won't get in the News-Times.

Here's a piece from Wilson Hernandez, founder of the Ecuadorian Center. He wrote a piece on the Amish community and the hardship they endured this past week.

(Translated from El Canillita, 10/13/06)

The first time I heared of the Amish community from someone who had visited Lancaster, PA, what particularly impressed me was the apparently simple manner in which the visitor said they lived. It seemed to me curious that in a country so ultramodern, a group of people would live with simplicity, humility and in permanent peace with their neighbors.

Since then I have had the thought that some day I should visit the Amish. At first, because the bucolic setting would transport me, at least mentally, to my own past. Besides, I am compelled by my own curiosity to want to see for myself whether what I heard was true.

The Amish are a protestant religious community, descending from Swiss immigrants, whose members spoke a German dialect within the community and English in their dealings with the outside world. They restrict the use of modern technology like cars and electricity. They live simply, work on farms, use horses as transportation, wear simple clothes, educate their children in their own way. When their children reach 14 years old, their education ends and they begin working full time on the family farms. The Amish are a strongly united group that defends pacifism and keeps closed off from the outer world. When their children reach 17 years of age, they’re permitted to leave the community in order to put to the test their way of life. If they want to stay, they’re allowed to stay outside. But if they return to the community, they return forever.

As I learned some of the details of their lifestyle and religious and social concepts, views that many see as strange and anchored in the past, I particularly noticed the moral strength and solid character that the Amish must cultivate in order to be able to resist the immense external pressure from a frivolous, conflict-ridden, and modernistic society (civlilized, we call it).

But the most surprising thing about the Amish, was yet to be revealed to me, When a neighbor, angry with God and beset by feelings of guilt that weren’t very clear, dementedly took the lives of five innocent girls and wounded others, everyone thought that that the Amish families that family members in such a brutal act would be enraged with the killer and his relatives and, here the leaders of the Lancaster Amish community they surprised us by showing stoicism, nobility, and perhaps a rare wisdom. When we all felt a burning anger, they showed us the Christian face of serenity, the sublime gesture of forgiveness and the majestic decision to seek reconciliation and peace.

The Amish have given us a lesson that it behooves us never to forget. “It is a sin to refuse to forgive.” These words, spoken by Mr. Enos Miller, grandfather of two of the murdered children, capture the purity of heart of the people and the immense wisdom with which they know how to face the horrors of modern life.

Neither wrath, nor revenge nor the blind search for reasons and the guilty heal wounds caused by hatred and insanity. Only forgiveness, reconciliation and understanding of their disorders can lead to peace.

The xenophobes should read this the next time they call this man ignorant.