A Tale From Old Argentina

Extract

Recently attention was focussed on the Church in Latin America by the Puebla conference of bishops, but we must not forget that last year, 1978, was not only the year of the World Cup but also that of Jim Jones and the mass suicides. Those events in Guyana were as photogenic as any papal visit or assembly of bishops and perhaps even more difficult for a secular world to comprehend. Such mass religious hysteria is unusual in any continent but the fundamentalist religious beliefs that seem to have accompanied it have been increasing recently and the activities of groups like the Mormons have become a feature of life in the shanty towns. For some, these happenings are an anglo-saxon excrescence on the fair face of South America. True enough, flight from the world usually takes a different form in Latin countries. The situation does not lead men to indulge in fantasies about a new Jerusalem or Jonesville here on earth. The most they can hope for is to take time off and spend it in the company of fellow sufferers who may teach them how to transmute their present cares and troubles into something of mystical value. There is a down-to-earth realism in the suffering Christ and the Mater Dolorosa in a world where incarceration, flaying, and swords of sorrow are no idle metaphors. But we must not forget that these religious forms have their secular counterpart. In the dark days of the late nineteen twenties after the fall of Hipolito Yrigoyen the unevangelised masses of Buenos Aires found a liturgical release from their cares in the tango.