Group Comes Through Socorro County On Walk For Peace

By John Larson
Farmers and ranchers along Highway 1 south of Luis Lopez are not used to seeing Buddhist monks in yellow robes, beating ceremonial drums and walking down the road. But that’s what greeted them Tuesday morning as a group of seven people on a pilgrimage for world peace were on their way to camp overnight in the public park in San Antonio.
The walkers will end their trek Thursday, July 16, at White Sands Missile Range’s Stallion Gate on Highway 380 for a 24-hour silent vigil on the anniversary of the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb.
The spiritual pilgrims, including Albuquerque Catholic Workers and monks from Temple Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound, began their walk at Los Alamos National Laboratory on July 5. Their trek has taken them through Santo Domingo and Isleta pueblos, Albuquerque and Socorro.
They average about 17 miles a day. Along their route, the group stops to educate those interested in the effects nuclear weapons have on humans, using photographs and data from the bombing of Nagasaki.
“The mission of the Inter-Faith Peace Walk is to pray for the elimination of nuclear weapons and for those who were downwind of the mushroom cloud in New Mexico,” said Gilberto Perez, a Buddhist monk based in Washington State. “We’re praying for world peace. This particular cause is for the disarmament of nuclear weapons. We need to love each other and have to love the earth. If we don’t, we die.”
He said this the 20th year for the vigil at Trinity Site and the first year for the pilgrimage from Los Alamos.
After the Trinity Site vigil, the pilgrimage will pick up again in California and end at the trident nuclear submarine base in Bangor, Wash.
Walkers coming through Socorro County included Buddhist monks Perez and Senji Kanaeda from Temple Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, Bainbridge Island, Wash.; Erica Freeman, also of Bainbridge Island; Dennis Duvall and Iris Wolfe from Prescott, Ariz.; and Hiro Takahashi, Tokyo, Japan.

Group Comes Through Socorro County On Walk For Peace