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Latin American Catholicism's Opening to the Left

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Paul E. Sigmund
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Extract

Radio Havana? Quotations from Chairman Mao? A black liberation group pamphlet? Wrong. These are excerpts from Roman Catholic publications in Latin America. Still regarded by many as one of the bulwarks of the status quo, the Latin-American Church has undergone a startling transformation in the last five years which has moved its official thinking and portions of its elite leadership significantly to the left.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 61 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1973

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References

1 CLASC(Caracas), Anõ VI, no. 36, 10 and 12 ; Ruiz, Jose Maria Gonzales in Spes (Montevideo), 07, 1970, as translated in LADOG (Washington, D.C.)Google Scholar, April, 1971, Document 66b; Group, Golconda, Final Document, translated in Sigmund, Paul E. (ed.), The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (2nd revised edition; New York, 1972), p. 469Google Scholar.

2 “Acusan de Subversion a Mendez Arceo,” Excelsior (Mexico City), 10 25, 1971, p. 20AGoogle Scholar. Bishop Sergio Mendez Arceo's progressivism elicits schizophrenic responses from Mexico's “revoluntionary” politicians. After the rally the governor of the state where Cuernavaca is located criticized the bishop for supporting local strikers because this would discourage new investment which the governor was trying to attract, while one of the few surviving signers of the 1917 Mexican constitution commented in a leading newspaper that Mendez Arceo's position had been adopted in order to advance “the interests of clerical reaction.”

3 Episcopado Mexicano, , La Justicia en Mexico, published in CIDOC Documenta (Cuernavaca), I/1, 71/344, pp. 3, 9, 12–13Google Scholar.

4 In the early days of the German Christian-Democratic Party, for example, Konrad Adenauer spoke of capitalism as an “eclipsed economic system” and the CDU Ahlen program adopted in 1947 declared, “The capitalist system is inadequate for the vital political and social needs of the German people”— cf. Heidenheimer, Arnold, Adenauer and the CDU (The Hague, 1960), pp. 124–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a similar initial attitude by the Italian and French parties see Einaudi, Mario and Goguel, Francois, Christian Democracy in Italy and France (Notre Dame, 1952)Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, excerpts from Jaime Castillo, Propiedad y Sociedad Comunitaria, translated in Sigmund, Paul E., op. cit., pp. 461–465Google Scholar, and in Sigmund, , Natural Law in Political Thought (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 198–200Google Scholar.

6 Cf. Solari, Aldo, El Tercerismo en Uruguay (Montevideo, 1965)Google Scholar. For another influential form of tercerismo, see Mende, Raul, El Justicialismo, Doctrina y Realidad Peronista (Buenos Aires, 1950)Google Scholar.

7 Arellano, Mariano Rossell y, “Pastoral Letter” in Pike, Fredrick B. (ed.), The Conflict Between Church and State in Latin America (New York, 1964), p. 181Google Scholar; Gallo, Jorge Ivan Hübner, “Catholic Social Justice, Authoritarianism, and Class Stratification,” in Pike, , op. cit., p. 200Google Scholar.

8 Popular, Açaõ, “Documento Base,” translated in Sigmund, Paul E. (ed.), Models of Political Change in Latin America (New York, 1970), p. 128Google Scholar.

9 Other Brazilian Catholics were not as enthusiastic about Goulart's move to the left. In Sao Paulo in March 1964, 500,000 people participated in a “March of the Family with God for Liberty” which was the prelude to a military-civilian coup that overthrew Goulart and installed the military regime still in power. See Skidmore, Thomas, Politics in Brazil (New York, 1967), ch. 8Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Guzman, Germán, Camilo Torres, translated by Ring, John D. (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Gerassi, John (ed.), Revolutionary Priest (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

11 For a description of this process see Grayson, George W. Jr, “Chile's Christian Democratic Party: Power, Factions, and Ideology,” Review of Politics, XXXI (04, 1969), 147–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Paul, Pope VI, On the Development of Peoples (New York, 1967), p. 46, sec. 26Google Scholar.

13 Paul, Pope VI, op. cit., p. 47, sec. 30–31Google Scholar.

14 On the controversy in Chile, see Mutchler, David E., The Church as a Political Factor in Latin America (New York, 1971)Google Scholar.

15 Colonnese, Louis (ed.), Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Bogota, 1970), II, 31 and 78Google Scholar. See also Laurentin, René, L'Amerique Latine a I'Heure de I'Enfantement (Paris, 1968), pp. 148ff.Google Scholar Ironically while Catholic theorists were justifying the use of violence in Latin America, the official Moscow line increasingly favored the via pacifica in Latin America. Just before the Medellin meeting, Pravda published a denunciation by the general secretary of the Chilean Communist Party of “petty bourgeois adventurism and terrorism”—a veiled reference to Castroite guerrilla activity. See Corvalan, Luis, “The Alliance of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Forces in Latin America,” translated in Sigmund, (ed.), Models, p. 110Google Scholar.

16 Dom Helder, Camara, “Is Violence the Only Option?”; “Declaration of the Central Committee of the Brazilian Episcopate, February 18, 1969,” translated in Sigmund, (ed.), Models, pp. 146–152Google Scholar.

17 John, Pope XXIII, Pacem in Terris (Huntington, 1963), pp. 50–51Google Scholar.

18 “The Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes),” sec. 21, in Walter Abbott, S. J. (ed.), The Documents of Vatican II, (New York, 1966), p. 219Google Scholar.

19 In a New York Times interview (October 4, 1970). Allende was quoted as saying, “I have read the documents of the bishops at Medellin and the language they used is the same as that which we have used since we were born into political life thirty years ago.” During his visit to Chile in November, 1970, Castro called on the cardinal in Santiago and repeatedly endorsed cooperation between Christians and Marxists. However he attacked worker-run enterprises (proposed by the opposition Christian Democrats as part of their program of communitarian socialism) as a maneuver designed to convert the workers into “petty bourgeois” capitalists.

20 Guevara, Che, “Socialism and Man in Cuba” and “Two, Three, Many Vietnams,” translated in Sigmund, (ed.), Ideologies, pp. 372 and 378Google Scholar.

21 “Los Cristianos en la Construction del Socialismo,” Pastoral Popular (Santiago, Chile), XXI, no. 123 (05–06, 1971), 51. In April 1972 a meeting of “Christians for Socialism” in Santiago concluded that “Socialism appears to be the only acceptable alternative for bringing an end to the exploitation of the class society.” (Quoted in Chile, no. 329, May 10, 1972, p. 2.)Google Scholar

22 Villegas, P. Beltrán, “Yo Respeto Su Opinion, Pero …,” Pastoral Popular (Santiago), XXI, no. 123 (05–06, 1971), 56Google Scholar.

23 Conferencia Chile, Episcopal de, Evangelio, Potitica, y Socialismos (Santiago, 1971), pp. 35–36Google Scholar. See also Paul, Pope VI's Apostolic Letter on the Eightieth Anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, 05 14, 1971Google Scholar, translated as A Call to Action (Washington, 1971), sec. 30–34Google Scholar.

24 See photograph of the baptism in Visión, Sept. 25, 1971, p. 18.

25 The simplistic American solution to Latin-American poverty, population control, is rejected by both the Marxists and the Catholic radicals. (Paradoxically Catholic-influenced reform governments in Chile and Colombia are the only ones in Latin America to have initiated birth control programs.) Lyndon Johnson's statement on the anniversary of the United Nations in 1967, “Five dollars in birth control assistance is worth $100 in economic aid” is widely cited by infuriated Latin-American leftists to prove that population control is an American plot (in its more extreme versions, “genocide”) to assuage the revolutionary pressures from Latin America.

26 Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory (New York, 1953), pp. 30 and 261Google Scholar.