ABSTRACT
Most of North Americans in the Cathedral that day had previously heard these stories, these testimonies, but without having been to Central America. We can safely say that testimony was effective, because of the rapid growth in the Sanctuary movement and other Central American solidarity movements during the early 1980s. The Sanctuary movement in the south-west United States (US) actually grew out of the experience of listening to the stories of refugees just having crossed the border. By performing their life histories, the refugees presented themselves as fully human; and as they described their pain and their experience they encouraged identification, sympathy, and empathy, leading, they hoped, to action on the part of the listeners. Testimony created solidarity between the refugees and those representatives of a people whose government was held responsible for creating refugees in the first place, and in turn, that solidarity led to further political action by US citizens.
