Mozaik 13/2004 Latin America and Europe by WSCF-Europe

Old World, New World? For me doing theology is writing a love letter to God, to the Church to which I belong, and to my people: and this is my project. (Gustavo Gutierrez)

The topic of the thirteenth Mozaik is Latin America and Europe: Worlds Apart or on the Same Track? This theme was dealt with in the WSCF conference in Agape, Prali (Italy) in June 2004: Window on the World: Economic, Cultural and Political Relations between Latin America and Europe. Do Europe — the continent of the ex-colonial powers — and Latin America — the formerly colonised continent — have anything in common apart from historical links and current economic ones? Though formal colonialism has long since come to an end, even today some of the relations between these two continents are still hierarchical ones. The economic relations between Western Europe and Latin America have been often marked by inequality, be it in the form of EU protectionism or in creditor–debtor relations. In our first section, On the Same Track?, we look at some similarities in the transformation processes many countries, both in Latin America and in Central and Eastern Europe, have gone through during the past two decades. Many South American countries have turned from military regimes towards democracy and have changed their economic models towards market-oriented ones. The whole continent has increasingly implemented neoliberal economic policies. With the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the Central and Eastern European countries introduced democracy and abolished their state-led economic regimes by implementing market-oriented reforms. In our second section on Windows Between Two Worlds, we will look at different countries’ experiences and compare processes between the regions. In the humanities, liberation theology has also transformed the ecumenical theological landscape during the past decades. While developed in Latin America, contextual and liberation theologies have been taken up world-wide by the ecumenical movement. In our third section on Theology and Liberation, we will explore the challenges of contextual theologies today and how liberation theologies have influenced ecumenical theological thinking in other parts of the world. We are grateful to our friends from the Americas who have contributed articles, especially to Martin Almada, a winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize; Pablo Romo Cedano, former director of the Dominicans for Justice and Peace; and Manuel Quintero, former general secretary of WSCF. As always, we encourage our readers to write in with responses to the essays contained in this issue of Mozaik. Please send all comments, feedback, questions and further ideas on our ecumenical journal to our email address (wscfmozaik@yahoo.co.uk). We are also looking for volunteer editors, illustrators and section editors, who could participate in making Mozaik more colourful, challenging and interesting. With this issue, Rebecca Blocksome joins the Mozaik editorial board as an editor and copy editor, both in connection with her new role as publications intern in the WSCF European Regional Office in Budapest, Hungary. She also serves as an editor for Student World, the Federation’s ecumenical review. A native of the United States, she studied art and journalism in Kansas before moving to Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 2002 to volunteer with the Church of the Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS). As an American Baptist with Mennonite roots, she is ecumenically minded for reasons practical as well as theoretical. Finally, we are proud to introduce our illustrators: Maaike Vergouwe (dazu@worldmail.nl) and Daan Zuijderwijk (zwijk@tiscali.nl), two Dutch photographers based in The Hague, The Netherlands. They both studied photography at the St Joost Academy of Fine Arts in Breda, and now they work together as ‘Zeevonk’ (Sea-Spark). In this issue of Mozaik, you will see photos from Estonia, Latvia, the Rhine in Germany, Serbia and Montenegro, Suriname, and Transylvania in Romania. They try to portray each person in her or his own role in the world, be it in Latin America or in Europe.

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Silke L E C H N E R

Latin America and Europe Worlds Apart Yet on the Same Track: Which Latin America? Which Europe? Which Latin America comes to your mind when reflecting on Europe–Latin America relations? Which Europe comes to your mind when thinking about Latin America–Europe relations? When talking about Latin America and Europe, we should take a differentiated view and keep in mind that we are not talking about homogeneous entities.

WHICH LATIN AMERICA? When spending some time in various countries of Latin America some years ago, I was often asked the following question: “And how do you like Latin America?” I never knew what to answer. I did not want to be impolite, but I saw little sense in answering this question, as there is not one Latin America. So I usually asked back which Latin America they were referring to. I guess one is generally prone to seeing a different continent as a homogeneous entity, but in the case of Latin America this seems to be especially true. Yet this continent is just as heterogeneous as every other one. Let me provide some anecdotal evidence. A friend of mine from Uruguay told me that he was asked to dance during a conference somewhere in Europe. The music was salsa. When his dancing partner realised he was not actually able to dance salsa, she angrily dumped him, saying “But did your mother not teach you?” She was obviously unaware that salsa is not a national dance in every country in Latin America. While at an international conference in Colombia some years ago, we had a participant from Suriname. Very often he was asked: “How is life in Africa?” Many people were unaware that Suriname is part of South America; generally there is little knowledge about the French- and Dutch- speak-

ing small countries of Suriname, Guyana and French Guyana. When thinking of Latin America, we often think of indigenous people; yet significant numbers of indigenous people exist mainly in the three Andean countries, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. Obviously great economic differences exist, for example between the rather developed Chile on the one hand and Bolivia on the other, which has macroeconomic indicators more common for African countries. There are certainly many other aspects worth pointing out but this short sketch is meant to raise some thoughts about this. When talking about Europe–Latin America relations, we have to question our image of Latin America and keep in mind that we are not dealing with a homogeneous entity. Starting from here — which are the issues worth discussing when thinking about these two continents?

COLONISERS AND NEO-COLONISERS What certainly comes to our mind very quickly is the history of colonialism, Latin America as the colonised region and Europe as the coloniser. And certainly without this history we could not understand the economic, political and social landscape of today’s Latin America. Basically every single country of Latin America was colonised by a European country, so it does make sense to think of this region as a whole in this respect.

Békés Gellért Ecumenical Insitute (Pannonhalma, Hungary) Established in 2001 by Archabbot V ÁRSZEGI Asztrik OSB, this Benedictine Institute is a place to pray and work for the visible unity of the Church by means of publications, conferences, lectures and workshops. Our young theologians are involved in the ecumenical and interreligious dialogue internationally and in Hungary. If you wish to know more about us, contact NAGYPÁL Szabolcs, BAKOS Gergely OSB and OROVA Csaba: bgoi@chello.hu

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On the same Track? These days the concept of “Neo-colonialism” is often used, referring to continuing unequal power relations between the global North (the highly developed, industrialised countries) and the global South (the so-called developing countries). Certain aspects of current trade relations between Europe and Latin America may be considered as neo-colonial; while no physical oppression takes place, Latin American countries are kept in their place still today to provide resources for industrialised countries by the way the global economy works. Similarly, the high levels of external debt most countries in Latin America have, puts them in the position of permanent debtors towards the rich creditor nations. The lack of mechanisms for dealing with debt in the global financial system — be it cancellation, an international bankruptcy procedure or whatever — keeps these countries in a vicious circle, unable to leave the debtor position, unable to develop their economies. Thus to some extent, a certain part of the current economic relations between Europe and Latin America may be interpreted as neo-colonial. Yet one should be careful with this analysis as well. Generalising the concept may hide the role of Latin American governments in the political and economic situations of their countries, which were not always conducive to furthering development, to put it mildly.

WHICH EUROPE? Coming from a Western European country, I have to admit that when I think of Europe–Latin America relations, I mainly think of these issues mentioned: the history of colonialism, current European policies towards Latin America, and debtor–creditor relations. Yet, which Europe am I talking about when referring to these issues? When considering the history of Europe as a coloniser, one cannot speak of Europe as such. It was only certain European countries, mainly Spain, Portugal and Great Britain (and to some extent France and the Netherlands as well) who were the colonising powers 500 years ago. Similarly, when analysing who are the creditor nations of Europe, they are mainly Germany, Great Britain, France and more generally the whole of Western Europe, Scandinavia and Southern Europe. This is a very limited view of Europe, however, and one has to specify which Europe one is talking about. Until only 15 years ago, basically half of Europe was under Soviet rule; countries were deprived of their independence and people lived under oppressive regimes. How can Central and Eastern Europe be brought into the picture when relating it to Latin America?

LATIN AMERICA AND POSTCOMMUNIST EUROPE — ON THE SAME TRACK?

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Many Latin American countries were governed by various military regimes mainly during the seventies, and have undergone transitions to democracy usually at some point during the eighties. On the economic level, Latin America applied an importsubstituting industrialisation approach for most of the 1950s–1980s. Though a capitalist pattern, these systems provided for an active role of the state and high levels of protectionism. In the eighties almost all Latin American countries undertook a U-turn in their development strategy and have increasingly implemented neoliberal economic policies. The dual transition thus consists of the change towards democracy and the opening of their economies, with both processes starting mainly in the eighties. Changes in Central and Eastern Europe have been even more radical. After the fall of the Soviet regime, countries of the region introduced democracy almost overnight. At the same time, they started a complete overhaul of their economic systems: Soviet-style economic systems were replaced by market-oriented economies. Certainly the starting positions of these two regions are different from each other, not least because in the case of Central and Eastern Europe, an “outer empire” existed between 1948 and 1989, so speaking of domestic politics or independence makes little sense regarding these countries. External influence was strong in many Latin American countries, of which the involvement of the U.S. government in various dictatorships is probably the main example. However, these international influences were not totally determinative and domestic political life was generally possible in the case of Latin American countries.

A POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE While differences thus clearly exist, many parallels can be drawn. Or can they? In political science and political economy literature, a debate is raging on the question of comparability: while some argue that comparisons are impossible as the differences are too large to make meaningful case studies, others hold the opinion that drawing parallels does make sense and one can draw useful lessons from these comparisons (see GRESKOVITS, 1998). While this debate is going on, defenders of the latter view put forward intra-regional studies — an area that is growing, yet still not quite flourishing as scholars usually stick to studying the region or country that they know best (and few people have knowledge and interest in two continents). Analysts who do, however, dare to enter this field, discuss the similar reform processes in the two regions: in both Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, the market-oriented reforms undertaken consisted mainly of macroeconomic stabilisation, dismantling of old controls, and the strengthening or creation of new institutions and legal frameworks.

Comparing Latin America to post-communist Europe (I refer to Central and Eastern European countries here) seems a rather exciting endeavour, even though it is often overlooked both in popular discourse and academic research. As a matter of fact, both of these regions have gone through dual transformation processes in the last two decades, and while certainly huge differences exist, one can also see clear similarities which make a comparison worthwhile.

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It can be argued that a comparison between these two regions makes sense as it is only here that dual transformation processes (both on the economic and on the political level) were roughly simultaneous. While this is true for other countries in the world as well, it is only in the case of Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe that a whole region underwent these processes (NELSON, 1991). This is what makes the transformation processes that have happened in these two regions worth analysing in a comparative perspective.

WSCF — FOSTERING RELATIONS In the above we have considered different perspectives on the two continents and on the relations between them. Yet, what is the role of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) in all this? Why does Mozaik, the journal of the WSCF Europe Region, dedicate an issue to Europe–Latin America relations? WSCF has throughout her history taken a critical perspective on all forms of colonialism and oppression and has fostered reflection and action on this. Around the 500th anniversary of the colonisation of Latin America in 1492, WSCF organised two bi-regional encounters: “500 Years… And What Now?” in Quito, Ecuador, in 1991; and “Europe ’92 and Latin America — Looking 500 Years Ahead” in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1993. European and Latin American students came together to exchange and discuss this history between the two regions which had begun 500 years earlier. A participant reported on the conference in 1991: “The perspective was the colonisational past, and the different oppressive structures prevalent through the five hundred years. But also the hopes and perspectives for future democratic, independent development within the region, and the relations of the region to other parts of the world … The conference and the follow-up work gave rise to an enhanced global consciousness” (Mozaik 1992/2. 23.). Yet the perspective of these events was not only oriented towards one side of Europe. In an article on the aforementioned WSCF conference in Portugal in

On the same Track? 1993 a participant wrote about the perspectives and contributions given by the participants from Central and Eastern Europe who shared about their own experiences of repression (Mozaik 1993/1. 17.). A decade after this event, WSCF organised another biregional encounter of these two regions: “Window on the World: Economic, Cultural and Political Relations between Europe and Latin America” held in Agape, Italy, in 2004. From the beginning this conference aimed at giving a differentiated perspective on the two regions. It turned out that one of the highlights of the meeting was a panel during which students from Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus and Hungary shared about the recent political and economic transformation processes (or lack thereof, as in the case of Belarus and Cuba) of their countries. A window comparing Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe was opened. Many European participants did not know about, for example, the dictatorship of Paraguay in the eighties (which was another input). On the other hand, many of the Latin American participants heard for the first time about the situation in Belarus, a current dictatorship in the middle of Europe.

HOW WSCF BUILDS BRIDGES WSCF has thus played an active role in fostering relations between students of these two continents. For me personally, WSCF has built bridges both within Europe and to Latin America. Some years ago I went to live in Ecuador for a whole year, working in the WSCF office of the Latin America region, a year that basically changed my life or at least brought it on a certain track. On one hand, I became extremely excited about the work of WSCF and decided to get more involved after my return to Europe; on the other, Latin America as a research interest opened up to me. But WSCF also facilitated a new perspective on my own region: through my involvement in WSCF Europe in the past years, I grew more and more interested in the transformation processes of Central and Eastern Europe. I went to meetings in various countries and made friends from this part of Europe, from whom I learned a lot. I owe my personal Europe–Latin America relation to WSCF. Which is your Latin America? Which is your Europe? Suggested Reading GRESKOVITS Béla, The Political Economy of Protest and Patience — East European and Latin American Transformations Compared. Budapest, 1998. LINZ Juan J. – STEPAN Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and PostCommunist Europe. Baltimore – London, 1996. Mozaik 1992–2004. NELSON Joan M., Intricate Links: Democratization and Market Reforms in Latin America and Eastern Europe. New Brunswick – Oxford, 1994. PRZEWORSKI Adam, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Cambridge, 1991. Silke LECHNER has been the chairperson of WSCF Europe since 2001. She is a Lutheran from Germany who currently lives in London. After graduating in political science and English literature and linguistics at the University of Hanover, Germany, she spent a year in Ecuador working for the WSCF Latin American office. She is currently a Ph.D. student of Latin American politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. For comments, please write to S.Lechner@lse.ac.uk.

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Simone L A N Z A

Wind of Ecumenical Renewal: Six Small Windows between Latin America and Europe Europe was broken up at the end of World War II; it was not easy to start again for people who experienced their loved ones killed by the enemies. In those days, Tullio VINAY, a young Italian Waldensian minister, together with other young Protestants, had the idea to build a place of peace and love, where Christians could reconcile themselves in the name of Christ. One of the main aims of the ecumenical movement nowadays is to avoid wars; this is a concrete hope we must globalize.

THE IDEA OF AGAPE Lacking money, electricity and even roads, people built Agape with enthusiasm and faith in Christ, with stones and wood from the site. It was not easy: in the Waldensian Church there was a controversy about Agape’s construction on the pretext that, in the first two years, no pastoral vocation came out from it. The founders had clear ideas regarding the role of Agape in the renewal of the Christian Church as a whole, not just the Waldensian one. Not only was Agape training people to preach the love of Jesus Christ in the world instead of just in the churches: Agape was an idea. In Agape people who were partisans in the resistance and people who were soldiers of the fascist army could truly reconcile themselves: Agape is a place where different people can communicate their diversities among themselves. Agape has always been critical towards the Church’s model of relationships, as one of its founders -Enea BALNEAS stated: “Once again, Agape says no! No to these pseudo-communities; no to these churches full of satisfied bourgeois people; no to this plain preaching! Once again, no!” People reckoned then that the Church was stuck in a mud pool, and even now, more than fifty years later, the Church is still more in a mud pool as fewer and fewer young people attend worship. Only love, which introduces a new dimension into human relationships, can save us: “Accepting Agape means accepting a diagnosis — our Church is in a mud pool — and a clear duty: to understand that neither evangelism nor Church media nor money of other churches are able to take her out of it. Only love can make it, only love, which secretly works in individuals”. Agape is an ecumenical centre in the Cozie Alps at 1600 metres of altitude, and it is an ideal of working towards peace and reconciliation and towards the radical renewal of the Church as a whole. Since its founding, hundreds of young people have come to offer their work, and today Agape can host about one hundred people who reflect on various themes: from theology to politics to gender, to give some examples.

THE POOR IN SPIRIT In the XIIth century, a young merchant of Lyon called WALDO chose to give his riches to the poor and to convert to a more authentic Christian life. So as not to involve unwilling relatives with his personal choice, he left half his riches to his family members. His story is similar to Saint Francis’ and from a similar period as well, with an important difference: together with his associates, he would read and preach the Bible in common language. The Roman Church found this claim to preach, as lay people without authorisation, offensive; and she excommunicated WALDO for heresy. His followers, both women and men, thought that preaching

towards true conversion, towards a real life shift, was crucial. Their main idea was that, in order to preach, it was not important to be a successor of the apostles of the Roman Church, but to daily convert to the Gospel through poverty, itinerant ministry and purity of conduct. So, the poor man of Lyon was forced to act clandestinely as he preached all over Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia. Faithful to the poor, the Waldensians (together with the Hussites) are the only medieval movements to survive the persecutions and slaughters by the Roman Church in the name of Christ.

THE ROOTS OF PROTEST At the beginning of the XVIth century, the Archbishopric of Mainz was on sale and Albert von HOHENZOLLERN, who already owned two, offered 14.000 ducats to Rome for it — but he did not have such a sum of money. So he asked for a loan from the most powerful bankers of those times, the FUGGER family, who had made their fortune also out of the cannon construction business in the previous century. They gave him the money at a very high interest: Albert must return to them 30.000 ducats. This system is very similar to the one that nowadays creates the national debts of Latin American, African and Asian countries. The analogy continues: the FUGGERs “proposed” that Albert should sell indulgences so that his subjects could gain their relatives’ souls, the pope could have the money to build St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and the FUGGERs would have their money back. Nowadays, the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) “propose” economic restructuring policies to poor countries so that they will be able to return their unfair debt. Everything would have happened just as the FUGGERs had forecast if it were not for a young scholar called Martin LUTHER, who reacted on 31 October 1517 with his 95 theses that got Protestantism underway. So we can see that LUTHER’s religious struggle was, in fact, also a “protest” against this financial system, even if many Protestants do not grant this today and LUTHER himself turned to rich princes against the poor peasants. Most Protestant churches in Latin America are directly funded by US fundamentalists, and it is certain that the CIA used these churches to divide grassroots Christian groups and liberation theologians.

THE CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS It is widely held that on 12 October 1492 Christopher COLUMBUS discovered America. Today we know that America already existed and that COLUMBUS’ discovery was actually a conquest. Gold obsessed him; it is one of the most frequent words in his journal. And gold obsessed even more those criminals better known as conquistadores, who committed the greatest genocide in human history in order to take the gold. According to some historians, in order to get rid of the Spaniards, the Indios were telling them that there was a place with more gold than they could imagine. But the conquerors went everywhere and left rivers of blood behind them. A sensitive bishop, Bartolomè DE LAS CASAS, wrote about a “womb strike” performed by indigenous women, who did not wish to give life in such a deadly and violent context. In Nicaragua part of the population was slaughtered, and part was deported to Peru to be slave miners. Indigenous slavery, though, was soon abol-

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ished, as the Spanish monarchs needed “free” subjects who could pay taxes. So they started to import slaves from Africa: about sixty million people disappeared from Africa and the same amount from America. In the following hundred and fifty years, wars, diseases and enslavement drastically reduced the population. Then integration destroyed indigenous culture. Thousands of cultures, languages and traditions that lived in the Latin American continent disappeared or are bound to disappear. The fault of the natives was that they lived in rich lands, just as they do now, when still some 500 million indigenous people struggle in order to remain on their lands. Thus the genocide continues.

while the civilians’ situation has also worsened, and they lack water, electricity and health care. Regarding this escalation, Patrick BOYLAN, a US scholar, states: “Many elements make us think that these are not the so-called ‘Islamic fanatics,’ but instead ‘death squads,’ trained (according to The Guardian) by CIA.” This situation reminds us of the Latin American situation in the seventies and eighties, when curious pacifists, independent journalists and free NGOs were under attack, as they could be dangerous witnesses of the regimes’ behaviour. In this way, just like in Latin America, the Eldorado, the neoliberal economic dreamland, becomes a terrifying place where death squads can freely act.

ECONOMIC TORTURES, FROM THE AMERICAS TO IRAQ

GLOBALISING HOPE

Just as in typical Latin American dictatorships, the ex-secret service director, George BUSH Sr. became the president of the United States. The mid-seventies, the time he was leading the CIA, was also the time of the Condor Plan, which was a military strategy to impose neoliberal economics and to physically eliminate socialist governments in Latin America. Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay: in a recent documentary presented at the Cannes Film Festival, some Latin American generals are proud to have anticipated today’s US anti-terrorist techniques. There is in fact an interesting link between Latin American history and today’s Iraq. The economic strategies are the same, and Iraqis seem condemned to misery because they live on rich lands. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, Iraq is today’s Eldorado. “A Capitalistic Dream,” headlined one issue of The Economist: in fact, foreign enterprises need neither authorisation nor local partners nor investment in the local community. The neoliberal system imposed by the occupying countries is against the Hague and Geneva Conventions, since they cannot unilaterally modify the economic status of the country. There is also a political link. The US ambassador in Iraq is John NEGROPONTE, who acted in Latin America in the eighties. NEGROPONTE started to work in the US embassy in Vietnam during the war, but his most important task was the direction, in 1981, of the so-called Iran-Contra Affair in Honduras, supporting Contras in Nicaragua and the war against the resistance in El Salvador. According to Noam CHOMSKY, the United States was afraid that “Nicaragua may have become a second Cuba. In Honduras, proconsul NEGROPONTE’S task was to superintend the bases where an army of mercenary terrorists, the Contras, was trained, armed and sent against the Sandinistas.” In 1984 Nicaragua, as a state of law, brought the United States to the International Justice Court in The Hague, where the U.S. was ordered to stop the “illegal use of force” (international terrorism) against Nicaragua and to pay a high fine. Amnesty International censured NEGROPONTE and the U.S. Senate prosecuted him, while Bush Sr. appointed him to be responsible for National Security and BUSH Jr. appointed him to be ambassador in Iraq, certainly the right place for him. According to Pino CACUCCI, one of John NEGROPONTE’s specialities was to push the enemies to believe that their best companions were spies, so that they would be executed for this. Such a thing happened to the greatest Salvadorian poet, Roque DALTON, because of “a CIA agent, working for the Shit Department, so-called because its task was to dirt the target’s reputation. Roque DALTON has been killed because his stupid companions believed some false evidence, which stated that he was suspected to be a CIA informer. In this way (as Paco TAIBO II stated) ‘the Salvadorian guerrilla divided and lost his cleverest militant’”. Since NEGROPONTE arrived in Iraq, guerrillas have become tougher and independent reporters and NGOs workers have begun to disappear,

Nevertheless, much hope comes nowadays from Latin America — similar to the hope that brought hundreds of young people to build Agape, similar to the hope that the poor in spirit held while wandering and preaching through Europe, similar to hope of those who claimed to reform the Christian Church. The World Social Forum (WSF) is held in Porto Alegre and its slogan has a theological content, mostly ignored in Europe: “Another world is possible.” The proposal that arose here came from the indigenous people in Chiapas and in Ecuador: we should not gain power in order to make a revolution in the world; we should instead challenge the concept of power in itself. Today it is not important to make globalisation better, but to build a world “donde quepan muchos mundos” (where many worlds live together). A philosophical, theological and political thinking centred on the poor and oppressed, on women and indigenous people, arises from Latin America. Many ecumenical Christian communities make this thinking concrete in poor areas. Day by day Roman Catholics, Protestants and Atheists work together, knowing that fundamentalism is a great danger for the ecumenical movement. Many of the Latin American indigenous movements are telling us that Jesus Christ was with them even before the conquistadores arrived there, and that He was surely not on the invaders’ side. Christianity was born as a heterogeneous movement, with a lot of diversities in it: it was not a Church as an institution; it was a movement, with a communitarian vocation. Its characteristics were strong local links, a spirit of friendship, liberating solidarity, communal property, lay leadership and an equal place for women. These are also the characteristics of the liberation theologies coming from Latin America. Liberation theologies and actions overcame the Marxist period and are more mature now, by being more inclusive. There is a God of Love and Liberation, Who gives us hope. Thus one of the slogans of the 2004 World Social Forum is “Globalising Hope.” Suggested Reading BOYLAN Patrick, The New Saddam. http://www.boylan.it. CACUCCI Pino, Il sequestro di Simona e Simona: forse la memoria aiuta più della scarna cronaca. http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/641087.php. DE LAS CASAS Bartolomé, Brévisima relación de la destrución de las Indias (1552). In Obras indígena. Madrid, 1985. GALEANO Eduardo, Las venas abiertas de América Latina. México, 1971. GIRARDI Giulio, Resistenza e alternativa, al neoliberismo e ai terrorismi. Milano, 2002. PAPINI Carlo, Vado di Lione e i poveri nello spirito, il primo secolo del movimento valdese (1170–1270). Torino, 2001. POLANCO Héctor Diaz, Etnia y naciòn en America Latina. México, 1993. SORIA Julio Pinto, Historia general de Centroamérica. Madrid, 1993. TOURN Giorgio, I valdesi. La singolare vicenda di un popolo-chiesa (1170–1976). Torino, 1993. VINAY Tullio, L’amore è più grande. Torino, 1995. Simone LANZA was born in Milano, Italy in 1971. He is the vice-director of the Agape Ecumenical Centre. He defines himself a Christian Pantheist; he studied anthropology, philosophy, international cooperation and development in Torino, Lyon, Berlin, Urbino and Pavia. He is engaged in world and local social forums. He travelled and worked with different NGOs in Latin America: in Chiapas, in Nicaragua and in El Salvador. He was involved in organising the WSCF Europe conference in Agape in 2004. His email address is vicedirezione@agapecentroecumenico.org. This essay was translated by Peter CIACCIO.

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Sören A S M U S

The Conquest of Latin America: Europe and the External Other It has taken a long time to realise how the respective peoples perceived the encounter between people from Europe and people from Latin America. Enrique DUSSEL describes the process of encounter between the European conquistadores and the indigenous people of the Americas from a European point of view in six forms: Invention, Discovery, Conquest, Colonisation, Spiritual Conquest, and Extermination. For the indigenous people of Central and South America, this process is seen in five forms: Parusia of Gods, Invasion, Resistance, End of Time, and the Age of the Sixth Sun.

the imagination of the Renaissance European people. COLÓN opened the way officially and politically to ‘Asia.’ The characteristic European approach to the Other is a result of this. COLÓN, and accordingly the people of Western Europe, did not recognise those people they met as independent and unknown to them. The indigenous American people were seen as objects of European evangelisation and dependent upon Europeans to gain a history and an identity — in this case, that of a Hindu from India — who could not and were not expected to make contributions of any kind.

CENTRE AND PERIPHERY

After the “Invention” of America, the “Discovery” was begun by VESPUCCI. Returning from his voyages to Brazil, he slowly realised that he in fact did not reach a fourth Asian continent, but rather a ‘New World.’ These areas are seen as a new part of the world — the old world being Europe. The known world is defined as the centre, from which the rest is defined. To ‘discover’ implies that the Europeans accept that they are confronted with something previously unknown.

DUSSEL gives an impressive account of the historical process from the first arrival of Cristóbal COLÓN (COLUMBUS) on the American continent to the near-complete destruction of the indigenous culture there. The uncovering of this part of history is made more difficult by the fact that Spain and Portugal, the leading European countries at this time, were themselves later pushed to the periphery of European history. This was mainly because their economy did not manage to progress from the mercantile to the capitalist stage early enough. It is exactly the Eurocentrism of the whole of European philosophy and the humanities that is responsible for the ignorance in regard to other continents and the distorted perception of the Other in history up to the present time. This Eurocentrism is all the more surprising since up to the conquest of the ‘New World,’ Europe had an undeniably peripheral position in the world’s history, and it is from the Enlightenment that Western Europe projects back its role into history and thereby describes everything from a position of European dominance. In the 1490’s, Western Europe expanded towards the Atlantic West after being continuously blocked by the Islamic empires in the East. It was only at the peripheries that Europe could expand: Christian Orthodox Moscow to the East, reaching the Pacific in the XVIIth century; and the Hispanic Christendom of Portugal and Spain to the West, across the Atlantic. The people of the Western European margins managed to adjust to this hegemonic power in their process of expansion, the starting point of which is the conquest of America.

I. The European View on the Discovery 1. INVENTION COLÓN did not find something new in his view, but just what he knew he would find: the Western approach to India. In analysing COLÓN’s diaries, one finds again and again his interpretation that the area of his Invention is either India or China, as was to be expected by his view. It took the voyages of Amerigo VESPUCCI to realise that the continent found by the Europeans was not a part of Asia, but an independent, ‘new’ continent, or rather two. To the day he died, COLÓN was of the opinion that he had reached Asia. The supposedly Asian character of the continent persisted in

2. DISCOVERY

3. CONQUEST Whereas these two forms of encounter were primarily theoretical and aesthetic, indicating a change in reflection on the experience, it soon became a physical encounter that was both a political and military one. Hernán CORTÉS exemplifies this next form of encounter, which was the Conquest. After the lands were geographically acknowledged, the Europeans went on to control them physically — that is, to control the bodies and persons. After previously encountering only villages and simple agrarian cultures, the encounter with the Maya and Aztec were with a developed city-culture. The conquest is the most violent form of encounter and results in the complete destruction of the indigenous culture. The soldiers who followed CORTÉS were free from the conventional constraints of their culture, whereas the Aztecs were tied to a traditional determined way of life that does not allow for such easy integration of the unknown as did the Spanish. The first encounter was a violent and destructive one: CORTÉS came to conquer and to rule, there was no other option for him. The military encounter was that of a more developed killing-technology on the side of the Europeans. The violent-military I encounters the inferior Other. The conquest is the factual and cruel denial of the Other.

4. COLONISATION The conquest was followed by Colonisation, the fourth form. After the military subordination, there followed the cultural, pedagogical, erotic, economic and political practice of controlling the other. Out of this the syncretistic cultural mixture, Latin America developed. This was the economically exploited and depended backside of the European modernity. This culture developed in the double standard of morality regarding the European, and amorality and humiliation regarding the indigenous peoples. Its most obvious expression was found in the sexual exploitation of women by the conquistadores. Out of the killing of the ‘India’ (indigenous woman) and the rape of the ‘India’ comes the ‘Mestize.’ The machismo gave a

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double standard: the sexual domination of the ‘India’ and the (only outward) respect of the European woman. The secular religion of the capitalist economy began and the embodiment of the indigenous subject was subjugated to the totality of the newly developing economic system. It was the beginning of the long-lasting and destructive colonisation of today’s Latin America. What follows as the last two forms of encounter is the establishment of ideological dominance after political and economic dominance was already achieved. Although the aim of evangelisation has always been one of the motives of all the efforts towards the conquest of the Americas, seen in the given perspective, the repressive character of Christian theology in Latin America becomes apparent now.

5. SPIRITUAL CONQUEST The fifth form can de described as Spiritual Conquest. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI acknowledged control over the discovered Islands by Ferdinand of Aragon. Henceforth the conquest was based on a divine command; the conquistadores believed that their success over the indigenous people was a sign from God to affirm this command. Based on the Eurocentric belief that the Christian God is the ultimate Lord of the world, the Western European peoples derived from that the power and authority for the human representative of this God (be it the Pope or the King) to rule and divide the world according to God’s will. In the same way, it was this God that gave the right religion, and therefore all other forms of religion had to be seen as inferior, primitive, idolatrous or satanic — in any case they were seen as something not worthy of survival, but rather due for complete destruction. The indigenous peoples had to be forced into the kingdom of heaven like they were forced into the kingdom of the world; in both cases the Holy Church provided the ideology for dominance and violence over and against the Other. After geographically discovering and geopolitically conquering the Americas, it was finally necessary to control the imagination of its peoples in order to include the Indios completely into the newly established system. Towards this end, priests such as SAHAGUN and DURAN collected knowledge from the indigenous culture. Thus, their knowledge was perceived as something to be known in order to be overcome and done away with.

6. EXTERMINATION This leads finally to the sixth form of the encounter of two worlds, which basically was the Extermination of the indigenous culture. A new syncretistic culture came into being, but it was far away from being a fair and complementary mixture of the two previous ones.

It was rather the repulsive, destructive and genocidal shock for the indigenous world that led to the dominance of the Western European Christian elements in the culture of the Mestize. The survival and integration of some of the American elements into this new culture was due to popular creativity and came in spite of the Western culture. All in all, there was little change in the way the European I approached the Other, as it was always the already-held point of view that remained the pattern of thinking. There was no space for the idea that the difference experienced could provide something new or valuable in itself, but only some means to the predetermined end of exploitation.

II. The Indigenous Experience of the Invasion 1. PARUSIA OF GODS In the beginning, the only way for MONTEZUMA and his people to understand the appearance of the people from beyond the sea within their framework of thinking was to define it as a Parusia of Gods. On one hand, the sea was for them something that could not be travelled, so there had to be something special about these creatures. On the other hand, one main feature of the religion of those indigenous peoples was that time was perceived in circles, so that everything that happens has happened before and will happen again in the future. The only way to integrate the Europeans into this scheme was to relate them to a mythical story of a king or god who left towards the East and promised to return. The ambiguity of this story was that there was a slight possibility of them being humans, but this was the option with the least probability according to the framework available to MONTEZUMA. So in the beginning he approached CORTÉS and his soldiers like gods and offered them the throne in order to prevent evil from his people.

2. INVASION If the conquistadores were really gods, then they could try to end the ‘Age of the Fifth Sun,’ the age of the Aztecs. After that age there would be Invasion, destruction and humiliation, the end of the world as they knew it, and this had to be prevented under all circumstances. So MONTEZUMA tried to ‘appease’ the invaders whom he saw as gods. As with the sacrifice of human hearts to their gods, all the Aztecs did was directed towards the preservation of the ‘fifth sun’ and whatever MONTEZUMA could do for this, he would. But by now CORTÉS was in a strategic and military position to conquer them.

3. RESISTANCE As they realised — after MONTEZUMA was murdered — that the Spaniards were no gods, the indigenous peoples started fighting them. All over Central and South America the resistance continued during the XVIth century for quite some time until the invaders established their military hegemony.

4. END OF TIME So the Age of the Fifth Sun, of the Aztec Empire, ended shortly and what came was the End of Time. This point in time was generally perceived within the different worldviews as the end of the world.

5. THE AGE OF THE SIXTH SUN The Age of the Sixth Sun — which is, according to Enrique DUSSEL, the rising age of capitalism — began with its human sacrifice for the higher exploitation of resources and human lives.

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UNFINISHED DIALOGUE One has to realise the advanced state of philosophical, religious and cultural development that was already achieved in these countries to understand the extent of ignorance and the extension of the tragedy of not entering into true and open dialogue. DUSSEL makes a considerable effort to explain the state of thought the indigenous cultures had in the Americas, and he rightly describes the change in perspective for Western scholarship from a Eurocentric to a non-Eurocentric view on world history as a Copernican Revolution. It is thanks to him and others that today we can depart from our limited view on the development of culture and understand better different developments independently of our own history. Whatever the works of SAHAGUN and DURAN kept as historical memories, it was structured through the view of Western European Christians and is only a recollection of a culture already mortally wounded. At the beginning, the last philosophers of the indigenous people tried to communicate their knowledge and wisdom to the invading priests of the different orders, but those did not understand at all and tried to ‘convince’ the Indios finally by sending soldiers again to kill whoever might object to their logic. It was the beginning and at the same time the end of an unfinished dialogue in which the gods and thereby the

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knowledge and culture of the Native Americans in Central and South America were destroyed. However dominance did not manage to wipe out the differences, as the uprising of the Zapatista Movement and the Messages of Subcomandante Insurgente MARCOS have shown to the world. There is a resistance memory left, from which new cultural developments have risen again.

Suggested Reading BOFF Leonardo – ELIZONDO Virgil (eds.), 1492–1992: The Voice of the Victims. Concilium 1990/5. DUSSEL Enrique, The Real Motives for the Conquest. In BOFF Leonardo – ELIZONDO Virgil (eds.), 1492–1992: The Voice of the Victims. Concilium 1990/5. 30–46. DUSSEL Enrique, Von der Erfindung Amerikas zur Entdeckung des Anderen – Ein Projekt der Transmoderne. Düsseldorf, 1993. ESQUIVEL Julia, Conquered and Violated Women. In BOFF Leonardo – ELIZONDO Virgil (eds.), 1492–1992: The Voice of the Victims. Concilium 1990/5. 68–77. Shades of Tender Fury – The Letters and Communiqués of Subcomandante MARCOS and the Zapatista Army of Liberation; Translated by Frank Bardacke et al., New York 1995. Sören ASMUS is a United Protestant from Germany. He graduated at the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) in Dublin and is minister in the EvangelicalLutheran Church of the Rhineland, working at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal (Barmen School of Theology) for the department of Ecumenism, Mission and the Science of Religion. He was on the WSCF European Regional Committee and a member of the Programmatic Working Group. His email address is: soae@gmx.de.

Jon B E R G E Å

Europe, Central America and Development Aid Cooperation Central America’s contacts with Europe began 500 years ago, when the Spanish conquistadors came over the Atlantic to plunder and conquer. For 500 years the relationship between the two regions has gone through many changes, but always remained unequal. The most visible sign of this inequality today is the European “development cooperation” with Central America.

DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION: AN INTERPRETATION The positive interpretation of the term “development cooperation” is to see it as an ambition to move away from the 500 years of inequality. A more pessimistic interpreter would say that the term makes invisible the basic power inequality in the whole development cooperation industry, which still means that one powerful donor gives something, in this case aid, to a much less powerful receiver. Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, seven small countries, are since long major receivers of European aid or “development cooperation”. Though the region is often called the backyard of the United States, the combined European money transfers to the region by far surpass the money donated by the region’s wealthy neighbour in the North. This article tries to understand development cooperation between the two regions in relation to the political development in Central America, the geopolitical priorities and development of European commercial and foreign policy, and recent development aid trends, theory and practices.

Relations between Central America and Europe must obviously not be reduced to development aid transfers from benevolent European donors to thankful Central American beneficiaries. To understand the cooperation between the two regions, we must see it as one component in a wider historical and political context.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND For 300 years Central America was a Spanish colony administered from Madrid and the colonial capital in Guatemala. The Spanish managed to exterminate most of the indigenous people living in the region, with Guatemala as the main exception, and constructed a colonial economy based on agriculture export. The land was confiscated from the indigenous people and large landholdings were created to produce for the world market, exploiting the remaining indigenous populations as cheap plantation labour. Political power has been shifted over the years from Spain to the region’s national elites in the independence struggles of XIXth century and economic domination has been passed on to Great Britain first and later to the United States. The colonial structure of the economy, however, still remains. The region is the most unequal in the world; small elites and foreign multinational corporations are making money exporting agriculture and clothes, produced in maquiladora factories or “sweat shops”.

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THE ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES The eventual Spanish or other European comeback in Central America will, however, for a long time be overshadowed by the United States, carefully monitoring and protecting her interests in their backyard. In all relations of domination there is also resistance and the relation between the United States and her backyard is no exception to this rule. Resistance, often dressed in nationalist independence struggles, has in Central American history almost always confronted the United States and the national elites that benefit from her protection and support. The Nicaraguan example can illustrate this point. In the mid XIXth century William WALKER, a North American adventurer, occupied Nicaragua two times with the aim of integrating the country into the United States and re-establishing slavery. After a short liberal nationalist period at the turn of the century, U.S. Marines occupied the country again. In the thirties, the first Latin American guerrilla warrior, Cesar Augusto SANDINO, however, caused the Marines so much damage that they had to leave the country. SANDINO was later betrayed and murdered during the peace talks. The author of the crime was SOMOZA, the chief of the National Guard the Marines had created to substitute for themselves and look after U.S. interests when they had to leave. SOMOZA soon assumed power and his family’s dictatorship came to be one of the longest lasting in the history of Latin America, and losing its U.S. support only when the revolution was inevitable. The Sandinista Revolution finally overthrew Somoza in 1979. Bad luck for the Nicaraguans: they gained democracy and independence from the United States almost exactly at the same time as the recently deceased U.S. president Ronald REAGAN assumed power. REAGAN made the struggle against the Sandinista democracy and social experiment one of his most serious personal political commitments. The United States armed, funded and logistically supported an invasion force called the Contras operating from Honduras and Costa Rica. The then not-so-famous senator John F. KERRY found out and made public that the Reagan administration and the CIA was funding the Contras’ war against the Nicaraguan government by importing drugs from Colombia and selling them in the United States. What was considered worse, they also sold arms to the U.S. enemy No. 1 in the Middle East, Iran (at war with Iraq and

On the same Track? the U.S.-supported Saddam HUSSEIN) and financed the Contras with the money they got from the Iranians. The Nicaraguans did not gain peace before the Sandinistas lost the elections in 1990. The history is not very different in many other Central American states. In Guatemala a democratically elected president was overthrown in a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954 which then put an end to the still-unrealised land reforms and propelled a conflict between U.S.-supported military regimes and left-wing insurgent groups until 1996, when the peace accords were signed.

IDEOLOGICAL POLARISATION In such a context, the Europeans have been quite able to play a role in Central America as a progressive alternative to U.S. foreign policy. In the ideologically polarised Central American conflicts of the eighties, U.S.-supported regimes stood against left-wing insurgents (FMLN in El Salvador, URNG in Guatemala, FSLN in Nicaragua). European stands against military dictators and U.S. imperialist policy were necessarily a support for groups with a very radical agenda, often more radical than the one practiced by the European Social or Christian Democrat governments that provided the aid. The ideological nature of the Central American conflicts in the eighties and the popular revolutionary-dedicated spirit of its people no doubt fascinated and inspired many Europeans tired of the neoliberal winds that blew on their own continent. Various solidarity movements were growing all over the old continent. Brigades were sent to support the popular struggles; Europeans were picking coffee, building schools and kindergartens. Some were even taking up arms together with revolutionary Central Americans. People with similar experiences today often have a big say in their respective countries’ development aid industries. When Great Britain’s development aid agency withdrew its activities from Central America last year, only a representative in Nicaragua remained. An explanation for why Nicaragua was made an exception is that the British minister of development picked coffee in Nicaragua in the eighties.

THE EU AND THE PEACE PROCESS European governments and the European Union (EU) have played an active role in the Central American peace processes as well as in the reconstruction work after hurricane Mitch, which devastated extensive parts of the region in 1998. European agencies took the lead to use this tragic event as an opportunity to transform Central America. The institutionalised dialogue in San José between Central America and the EU is the longest sustained foreign policy dialogue the EU has maintained and it goes back all the way to 1981. Especially when the important breakthrough was made in the Central American peace processes, the European Union, the San José Dialogue and major European development agencies played an active and important role. The peace talks were initiated through the Esquipulas Process, which got its name from the Guatemalan town close to the border of Honduras where Central

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On the same Track? American presidential meetings were held. The United States was here partly sidestepped and the Nicaraguan Sandinista government was recognised by the other Central American presidents.

RECEIVERS OF DEVELOPMENT AID A lot of aid money is today increasingly channelled away from Latin America to the war on terrorism in Asia and to Africa, where GDP rates are lower. In spite of this, the American backyard is likely to remain a major receiver of European aid at least in the near future. The European Commission is presently staffing a new decentralised regional office in Managua with more than one hundred employees. Honduras and Nicaragua are still considered sufficiently poor as to qualify for cooperation in most European development aid strategies. Based on historical experiences there is some hope that a Europe with a more active common foreign policy could play an important role as a global counterweight to the United States. Historical experiences in Central America can to some extent be seen as examples that reinforce and justify such European ambitions and self-image. It must, however, be questioned whether the EU today acts as a counterweight to the United States in Central America. The peace processes in the region gave way to political democracies and much of the ideological tension has been reduced. The elections have, with few exceptions, been won by political parties representing the traditional national elites. Though progress has been made on political rights, the redistribution of wealth has been non-existent and the gap between the poor and the rich continues to increase in the already most unequal region of the world.

STRUCTURAL ROOT CAUSES Some of the major structural causes for the violent conflicts have hence not been sufficiently addressed and the weak government institutions and policies can not sufficiently respond to increasing social protests and public discontent of today. The neoliberal policies of Central American governments have, despite their failures, generally been praised by the major international multilateral institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The European Union as well as the United States and all other major donors condition their aid on the successful implementation of IMF structural adjustment policies. With the implementation of electoral democracy, European policy has moved from a focus on human rights to trade as the answer to the region’s problems. Further cooperation with the region is also conditioned by the success in the Doha development round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where the United States and the EU have met much resistance from developing countries lately. Central America finished her negotiations on a free trade treaty with the United States, which will probably start working in the beginning of 2005. The EU has promised her own free trade agreement with Central America, but this will probably not start before 2006. If there is rivalry between the EU and the United States in Central America today, it is much less about ideology and much more about trade.

CIVIL SOCIETY Development cooperation is, however, not only about official state development agencies, money transfers and politics of national security. It is also about social movements and NGOs trying to promote solidarity between the regions and building bridges between people.

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About 5 per cent of the European development cooperation is administered by different NGOs, churches and solidarity organisations, working closely with the Central American civil society. These organisations have an important role in monitoring their governments’ policies and development cooperation together with their counterparts, and in general they do provide harsh criticism of the role of international financial institutions such as the IMF and WB in the region. The NGO development cooperation has, however, also gone through important changes in the last twenty years. The demand from their financiers in Europe for efficiency and professionalism has increased. If typical solidarity or development aid workers in NGOs in the eighties lived out in the bush and picked coffee or built stoves or schools with their own hands, they now sit in offices and administer projects or write reports. A challenge for civil society cooperation is how to keep the mystique and the solidarity, the ideological indignation that personal encounter with social injustice should provoke, with an increased efficiency and transparency.

MUTUAL SOLIDARITY AND COOPERATION A further challenge to the NGO solidarity movement is given by globalisation, which gives the word “cooperation” a new meaning and importance. If globalisation increases the awareness that we all sit in the same boat and are affected by the same global processes, the need for a globalised civil society increases. Mutual dependence gives way for real mutual solidarity. Some NGO development organisations in Central America have understood this and struggle to link civil society organisations in the two regions to a common struggle, for example through participation and support to the social forum processes. Many development cooperation NGOs, both older and more recent ones, are, however, little interested in leaving their charity-based methodology and vision of benevolent Europeans providing aid to Central Americans in need. Fundraising campaigns in Europe often reproduce this image of Central American victims, a strategy which has proven effective for fundraising, but at the same time risks hiding the structural causes of Central American poverty and exclusion and reproduces a colonial and racist European understanding of her own position in the world. Such “development cooperation” definitely does not deserve the name. The future will show which one of these present trends within development cooperation will be dominating — if real development cooperation is possible, or whether structural power inequalities between the two regions will remain for another 500 years.

Suggested Reading GALEANO Eduardo, Las venas abiertas de América Latina. México, 1971. La sociedad civil de América Central y México ante la vulnerabilidad del desarrollo y las relaciones con la Unión Europea. http://www.alop.or.cr/trabajo/publicaciones/La%20Vulnerabilidad%20del%20Desarrollo.pdf. La sociedad civil del Mercosur y Chile ante la asociación con la Unión Europea. http://www.alop.or.cr/trabajo/nuestro_proyectos/union_europa/publicaciones/chile-UE.pdf. Retos y perspectivas de la democracia en la Región Andina. http://www.alop.or.cr/trabajo/publicaciones/Democraciaandina.pdf. The Reality of Aid. An Independent Review of Poverty Reduction and Development Assistance. http://www.realityofaid.org/roa2002/2002report.htm. Jon BERGEÅ is from Sweden, but is living in Nicaragua, working for Forum Syd, a Swedish development cooperation network. He is a Baptist and has been active in the Swedish Baptist youth organizations international committee and in the ecumenical movement in Sweden for several years. He participated in a WSCF conference on globalisation in Höör, Sweden in 2001 and has a degree in international development at the University of Göteborg. His email address is: jon.bergea@forumsyd.se.

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Mária M E D V E C Z K Á

Two Faces of Socialism? Czechoslovakia and Cuba The expression “socialism” appears throughout history and to the present day in various contexts, in different countries and continents. Unfortunately this terminology could be misleading, making it seem that all forms of socialism are one and the same. Are there, in fact, significant differences between the Latin American and European versions of socialism, or are the two comparable?

DEFINING SOCIALISM The term “socialism” can refer to several related things and it has been used differently in different times and places by very diverse groups. There is an accordance between them in the roots, however, which we can find in the struggle of the working class of the nineteenth and twentieth century for a society in which equality would be guaranteed and where the economic system would serve the whole society and not only a small part of it. Socialism designates a social and economic doctrine, as well as a political movement inspired by this doctrine and the system that arises by the application of this doctrine in society. In some cases, it also designates a state and for some groups (Marxists) it means one of the stages of the evolution of society. In many countries in contemporary Europe, political parties named “socialist” occupy an important position, forming the government or constituting an important opposition party. Centrism is a common concept: they advocate state ownership or control of the fundamental means of production and distribution of wealth. The transformation of the existing capitalist society is to be achieved by peaceful, democratic and parliamentary means, respecting personal ownership and human rights and liberties. For many inhabitants of Europe, however, socialism relates to communism. This is because in Central and Eastern Europe the political system was changed from democracy to “people’s democracy” or socialism (usually it also was reflected in the name of the state) after Word War II, under the rule of the Soviet Union. This change was forced, did not respect the principles of democracy and was made by the Communist Party of the country.

I. Life in Communist Countries in Europe Although each of the Communist countries had its own specifics, there are some common features that were shared by all of them. These are: a centrally planned economy, a Marxist-Leninist ideology, single-party rule and restrictions on individual freedom. To get a better understanding into the life in these countries we will take as an example Czechoslovakia, where in 1948 the Communist Party gained power by a coup d’état and introduced a totalitarian regime with the assistance of the USSR that lasted until the end of the 1980s.

1. NATIONALISATION According to communist doctrine, socialism is the transition-period in the evolution of a society that succeeds capitalism and precedes communism. Therefore all should serve

the installation of a classless society of abundance and freedom, in which all people enjoy equal social and economic status. But forty years of experience have shown that the goal was rather to keep the power and to obtain economic benefits for a small group of people who were leading the ruling Communist Party. One of the tools to achieve equality was the nationalisation of private property. Factories, lands, stores, but also buildings and flats were expropriated without compensation. By nationalisation the whole economy was put into the fist of the state, which established a centrally planned economy. The plan (made always for a five-year period) was prepared mostly by officers who often created it following coefficients and not real needs and possibilities. It was an inflexible system that led on one hand to a shortage of goods and on the other to their excess.

2. CENTRALLY PLANNED EMPLOYMENT The state guaranteed social security to the whole population (except those whom the regime set outside the society): each inhabitant was guaranteed free education and medical assistance, as well as (nominal) employment. This also had a negative impact on the personal profile as well as on the morale of the people. For example, as education and employment were planned by the state, it meant that the schools allowed for each specialisation a certain number of students for which the state could guarantee employment. Thus the possibility of free choice for an area of studies (and sometimes also of the grade of education) and later of the employer was limited. The artificial maintenance of employment of the whole population caused moral decadence, because the work that could be done by one person was sometimes carried out by many, because everyone had to have a job even though there was not enough work for so many people. For most employees, the salary was fixed and by making more effort it could be increased only slightly, which often also influenced the employee’s morale negatively. The communist economy guaranteed for the majority of the population everything that is necessary for life, but giving no possibility to acquire more. If we consider that Czechoslovakia was one of the most economically developed countries in Europe before 1948, we have to acknowledge that communism meant for the majority of the population an aggravation of the living standard. Naturally this did not touch the leaders of the Communist Party, who had special access to everything and whose living standard was incomparable with that of the ordinary people.

3. IDEOLOGY AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS From a political point of view, political institutions were formally maintained (parliament and government), but in the Constitution the leading position of the Communist Party was fixed, which gave it a complete and unchallenged power. In Czechoslovakia, for example, for an apparent maintenance of the pluralistic system there were three parties, but the elections were predetermined in such a way that these parties gained each time a previously fixed number of deputies, the names of whom had to be approved by the Communist Party.

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Windows between Two Worlds Another hallmark of the communist states was the mandatory involvement of the mass of the population in political life. Many had to join the Communist Party in the hope of a normal life or a possibility of progress in one’s career. Children and youth enrolled in the only existing youth organisation, also controlled by the Party. Following these controls and castigations, participation in state elections was almost full and total. The Marxist-Leninist ideology limited the human personality to the pure material part. Religion was considered an enemy of humankind, which led to its persecution. Although outwardly freedom of religion was declared, all religious activities except the official ones (liturgy) were prohibited, monasteries were closed, and many bishops, priests and monks were imprisoned. Many practising Christians were also jailed. Later on the regime confined itself to considering them unreliable, so they could not work in the field of education and could not hold directorial positions. The ideology of the state was present in every field of common and professional life. It began with the schools of all grades: apart from the obligatory political classes, textbooks in most subjects contained highly ideological content. It continued through the mass media: all newspapers, televisions and broadcasts were controlled by the Communist Party. Also in art, there was severe censorship, and those who did not accept Party regulations were excluded from the official art. And it ended with the public space: inside and outside of buildings there were wall-gazettes and billboards with texts like “Lenin lives forever!” or “With the Soviet Union forever and never otherwise!”

4. PERSECUTION The persecution and control did not concern only the Church. In some sense, everyone was watched. The Security Service (_TB) officially had in every office, factory or company its own agent who was delegated to control and inform about the employees. Also individuals were forced to inform the _TB about the people in their neighbourhood, about their activities and thoughts. This constant control and persecution of “enemies of the regime” led to distrust and fear, as the methods of interrogation and jail were often marked by torture and sometimes even death. Those who openly disagreed with the regime were persecuted in different ways. The most simple and in the last period the most frequent was to make unpleasant the life of the individual and of her or his family. It took the form of following, frequent examination of the flat by the police, bugging the telephone, or by making impossible the studies of the children in higher education. Another means was to discharge or to let intellectuals be employed only in manual work (university professors working as stokers). In graver cases arrest, torture and even execution followed, and mainly in the fifties abductions were not rare either. Restrictions on individual freedom were present also in the area of travelling to foreign countries. At the beginning, this was completely forbidden; later on trips to other socialist countries were permitted. To non-socialist countries only a fixed number of people from each region could travel each year. The number and the people were decided by the Security Service.

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1. THE CUBAN REVOLUTION Even though it was a closely attached satellite state of the USSR from 1968 until the end of the eighties, the original direction of the Cuban revolution (1952–68) was very different. Originally, it tried to introduce its own model of social arrangements and to avoid dependency on the great world powers, first of all the United States. Therefore it gained a big response and excitement in the countries of Latin America as well as among the youth of Europe. After 1959, when Fidel CASTRO and the Cuban revolution came to power through partisan warfare, it made some very important steps to enforce its intentions. In the framework of agricultural reform, the fields of the landlords were nationalised and the properties of American, British and other foreign companies were expropriated. This, together with the strong anti-American propaganda of the revolution, caused the imposition of a blockade on commerce with Cuba by the United States. As a consequence, Cuba began a close economic cooperation with the Soviet Union, which later on expanded also to the field of politics and military. After the nationalisation of the property of international corporations, the possessions of Cuban businesspeople were expropriated, and in 1961 CASTRO openly declared the building of socialism. In accordance with this orientation, new social and economic reforms began which strengthened the role of the state. There was also a campaign for literacy, whose aim, however, was not only teaching the population how to write and read but also to spread propaganda of Marxism and militant anti-Americanism. CASTRO considered the Cuban revolution so successful that he tried to “export” it and to install it also in other Latin American countries. He delivered weapons and provided training and economic help to guerrillas in Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua and El Salvador. The international and economic policy of the regime led to a total collapse of the economy, which obliged CASTRO in 1968 to resign his independent policy and his own idea of the revolution. Therefore, in this period he accepted the political and economic model dictated by the USSR and integrated Cuba into the group of Communist countries. Cuban family businesses and the property of small farmers were nationalised. The leading position of the Communist Party in the state was ensured by the Constitution. The economy was planned for five-year periods. The grade of interference of the state into the life of the citizens increased to such an extent that some of the laws reached bizarre forms (e.g. a law against laziness). The level of poverty and a regime that has persecuted every manifestation of criticism have caused a massive illegal emigration of Cubans.

2. REFORMS IN CUBA In the eighties, Fidel CASTRO denied the reforms of Mikhail GORBACHEV, but the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet economy affected the very weak economy of Cuba dramatically.

II. Socialism in Latin America Although the highest number of states with communist regimes was in Europe, this phenomenon did not bypass Latin America either. Here its main base, still today resisting inner and outer pressures, is Cuba, led by Fidel CASTRO.

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If CASTRO wanted to save his regime from a total economic bankruptcy, he had to accept some reforms which were not in accordance with the principles of Communism. Therefore he allowed, for example, the running of private restaurants, carrying out different types of services, and owning foreign currency (earlier it was castigated by many years of prison). Recently he started to support the expansion of tourism. As a result of all these reforms, the economic situation has improved slightly, but its price was letting go in a certain way of the principle of equality. The difference between the group who has access to the profits from the tourism sector and the one who does not have is deepening.

3. OTHER COUNTRIES IN LATIN AMERICA Apart from Cuba, there appeared various forms of socialism in Latin America (e.g. in Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru, etc.) Some of them even declared themselves as “the third way, between capitalism and socialism.” Unlike in Europe, most of these had their roots in the grave economic and difficult political situations of their respective countries, and in the low living standard of large parts of the population. For their formation, it was also important that the economy (and often the politics as well) of these countries were depending on American capital to a high degree. So the socialists promised that nationalisation would bring not only social justice, but also independence from the United States.

The incapability to resolve economic problems in the short term, the strong anti-American policy, and the fear of Marxism that they inspired, mostly led to quick ends for these governments.

SOCIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE Comparing socialism in different regions, we find that it cannot be classified only according to its belonging to one continent or another. There are some characteristics that are typical for a specific continent, for Europe or Latin America, but there are also others that are intercontinental because they are bound to a certain definition of the term “socialism”. Similarities thus exist, yet there seems to be a major difference between Latin American-type socialism and the European cases. This key difference between the Cuban case (as well as other socialist experiments in Latin America) is that there revolutionary movements mostly overthrew dictatorships and then implemented an alternative model. It was a matter of domestic politics. In the cases of most Central and Eastern European countries, however, communism was imposed from outside. Mária MEDVECZKÁ was born in 1976 in Bratislava, Slovakia. She is Roman Catholic, an assistant of Spanish language at Comenius University in Bratislava. She studied Spanish philology in Bratislava and at the University of Granada in Spain. Her email address is mamed@centrum.sk.

Lucas V E I R A S A N D

Putting Recent Argentine Economic History into Context “Send this loaded galleon to Seville, dispatch that steamer to Southampton, pay the debt!”

When walking Buenos Aires’ downtown streets on a busy Friday morning, it is not hard to hear businesspeople talking about Latin America (L.A.) and Western Europe (W.E.) being worlds apart, with different histories, cultures and — of course — living standards. But I believe W.E. and L.A., though not always on the same track, are economically integrated, as they became five hundred years ago.

AN EVERLASTING SOURCE OF RESOURCES As it is known, in the XVIth century huge changes were touching human life in many spheres, e.g. sciences, arts, politics, economics, theology. The European arrival on the American continent was not just a colourful tale about two big groups of cultures meeting. In the economic sphere, it became the miracle of finding an “everlasting source of resources” for the starving W.E. economy. The circumlocution of Africa was being achieved almost at the same time. The Middle Age and its feudal mode were amidst decay: new land property relations (France and England), a renewed fluid commerce based on harbours (Italy), an increasing role of banks (mainly German and Flemish) and a new social stratification had been taking place since the XIVth century, just to mention some phenomena.

Modern expansion machinery had now been developed, while the new land was to provide its fuel through colonialist relations. The development economy of W.E. required precious metals and now a new continent was able to provide such wealth. Exceeding three times the total reserves in Europe, 185.000 kilograms of gold and 16.000.000 of silver arrived just to Seville harbour between 1503 and 1660 (not including the immeasurable traffic). Spain, whose sword left more than 60,000,000 native people dead in a couple of centuries, was sunk into debt due to luxury and a yet unproductive economy. Hence, the fresh wealth quickly spread by the rest of W.E., the creditor.

INDEPENDENCE AND INFLUENCE After L.A. countries gained political independence during the XIXth century, their new dominant classes pursued a cultural model based on some of the North. The United States of America became a model for many countries in the region. In the case of Argentina, a few European countries embodied that model. Strong historical ties to Spain are visible. Britain used to monopolise commerce: raw materials were exported to Southampton or Liverpool to be manufactured and resold. Taking a glance at XIXth century Buenos Aires architecture, different aesthetic styles may be observed, each related to a certain paradigm. Focusing now on recent history, popular alternatives to traditionally North-oriented governments went about winning a larger space in civil society in L.A. by the early seventies. A

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The incapability to resolve economic problems in the short term, the strong anti-American policy, and the fear of Marxism that they inspired, mostly led to quick ends for these governments.

Lucas V E I R A S A N D

Putting Recent Argentine Economic History into Context “Send this loaded galleon to Seville, dispatch that steamer to Southampton, pay the debt!”

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systematic plan for the region, however, involving most L.A. military forces, was designed to eliminate those popular alternatives, political opposition and any voice of dissent by brutal repression. Though the plan was not made in the region but in the United States, it was more bloodily implemented in the Southern Cone countries. It took place at similar times in these nations and used to have the Western countries’ approval. Argentina experienced dictatorships from 1966 to 1973 and from 1976 until 1983; Brazil from 1964 to 1985; Chile from 1973 to 1990; Paraguay had a “one-party democracy” from 1954 to 1989; and Uruguay suffered a lack of formal democracy from 1973 to 1985. That is called Plan Condor. Former Chilean dictator PINOCHET is facing charges about this precise matter nowadays.

Thus the debt did not benefit at all those who are paying it today through unemployment, poverty and high taxes on consumption. The dictatorship also hurt the low-capacity industry. Hence, the country’s economy was only ready to export meat and seeds and to attract speculative capital. Everything else was to be imported and the state would intervene in the least possible way in the economy. Neoliberalism, the new Western model, had bared its early L.A. face. The state was becoming more absent in the economy while more present in disappearances and torture. Whereas the middle and upper classes were experiencing “plata dulce” (sweet money), buying imported luxury objects around the world for the first time, poverty grew from 2 to 10 millions people and debt raised from 3 to 45 billion dollars during 1976-1983.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY

THE LOST DECADE

During that time, a new theological perspective born in the L.A. region was becoming more influential. Liberation theology put an eye on that unpronounceable issue: poverty, or maybe the poor and the oppression over them. God’s creation is threatened in several ways. Politics and economic relations were no longer outside issues for theology. Huge questions developed on the table of Christianity. In most L.A. countries, several churches experienced crucial discrepancies between those tied to the traditional hierarchy and those engaged in a renewed vision. In Argentina, the ones fully committed to this perspective suffered systematic persecution, threats, torture, disappearance and murder, while most of the ones related to traditional oligarchy either kept silent or proactively promoted state terrorism.

The downfall of the dictatorship due to several banks’ bankruptcy and the posterior Malvinas war deception in the early eighties brought back democracy. Though the new government put those responsible for state terror on trial, they were released sometime after. Democratic officials and parties were unable to address the debt issue and its interest taxes were always paid. Devaluation in order to increase exports so that foreign currency was obtained to pay debt caused more inflation and poverty growth. Thus a new crisis emerged in 1989. Most of the wealth produced within the country was flowing in another new way, and a chance for development was being wasted again. Even though slightly better industry conditions were achieved, GDP stayed the same from 1980 to 1992. That is why the eighties are usually presented as the “lost decade”.

CULTURE OF FEAR The high correlation index between paramilitary or state terrorism violence peaks and gross economic exclusion became notorious. In Argentina, those peaks are most observable in 1975, 1976 and 1978. At the same time, inequality and debt increased astronomically. Terror was exerted by the state not only upon a group, but also upon the whole civil society through silence and the “culture of fear”: conscious self-censorship took place. In the meantime, W.E. was experiencing the cold war and the crisis of the welfare state model, of which the L.A. version was populism. The neoliberal state model, mentored by Friedrich HAYEK from Austria, was welcomed by the establishment. The dearth of cash dollars due to the oil crisis induced the necessity for international banks to lend great amounts of money. Those could become debtors who were ready to accept high interest rates while being unable to declare bankruptcy. Third world states under dictatorships, mainly in L.A., were targeted. These governments were thirsty for cash money and overcoming more than fifty years of external financial restrictions.

THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS New policies about the debt were getting consensus in the North at the end of the eighties. The Baker Plan was designed to recycle funds, via World Bank credits. These new credits would be available upon achievement of structural reforms in L.A. countries’ economies; hence the debt became a lever to impose certain policies, designed by “The Washington Consensus”. A newly-elected government followed up these suggestions and explicitly implemented neo-liberal policies throughout the nineties. President MENEM’s ministers tried to eliminate

SWEET MONEY In Argentina, that money was destined for financial speculation (exchange-rate control), corporation fraud (their back-to-back self loans were paid by the national state) and weapons.

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inflation by “ley de convertibilidad” (convertibility law) equalizing the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar. At the same time, the first reform of the state was initiated: large trade liberalisation and economic opening were carried out as most public companies were privatised, many of them under a corrupted process. European holdings bought many of those key enterprises investing over-valued debt bonds. This happened with the consent of Argentine officials and following IMF “suggestions” for a smaller and more efficient state and better debt negotiation. So the debt did not decrease while very little real money was collected during privatisation. Minister DROMI had an unbelievably clear slip (lapse) in a conference during the time of that process: “Nothing that must stay under state control shall be kept under state control.” The new private management companies were able to collect huge benefits, profiting from the artificially high peso exchange rate and transferring billions of dollars to their headquarters in North America and Western Europe.

Windows between Two Worlds payment. In case of either of these two options, the mechanism is over and a major tool to impose policies is lost. On the contrary, an in-between location keeps an “eternal” recycling and a sustained flow.

LOSERS AND WINNERS L.A. has worked as a fuel provider to the European expansion machinery and the growing global market. Europe has embodied the promise of development for L.A. and a credit and technology supplier. L.A. became a provider of resources and wealth; W.E. stands as the one that also accumulates, the producer of added value and a technology exporter. Both of them belong to the same world, a global market that needs at least two faces in order to accumulate. Mutual interdependency is established, modernising its links. The debt is one of the latest mechanisms. As the Uruguayan writer Eduardo GALEANO points out, the division of international labour consists in some being specialised in winning, while the others specialise in losing.

THE BRADY PLAN In the North, a new strategy was designed for debtor countries. The Brady Plan was implemented in 1992 to avoid any chance of financial system bankruptcy by inviting banks to issue debt bonds, which were to be sold to new anonymous creditors. A second reform of the state continued this task from the mid-nineties by “adjusting” (reducing) investments in health, education and social matters also at the level of the provinces. A major reform of labour laws was executed, defeating historical rights won by the working classes. Currency stability overcame high devaluation and an increase in imports substituted for export growth. The trade balance was negative and exports limited to raw materials and seeds, with less added value due to a lack of manufacturing. Unemployment rose up to 18 per cent. The political opposition took power in 1999, but no meaningful change took place. By 2000, the debt was around 150 billion dollars while almost 200 billion had been already paid since 1976. The 2001 crisis related to both political and economic matters: corruption and the lack of representation on the one hand, the failure of economic plans on the other.

THE END OF CONVERTIBILITY That was the end of “convertibilidad” and the beginning of a new inflationary process. The IMF still does not fully acknowledge its role in the failure, blaming all the wrongs on the debtor. The current government is renegotiating the actual value of debt bonds. International bondholders made various demands against the Argentine state, especially in Italy and the United States of America, to obtain complete payment of capital and interest rates. Though the Argentine government may be quite successful in reducing 75% of the amount of this debt in default, a huge portion of the debt is not on bondholders’ hands but in multilateral bodies. That part of the debt, which has never been under default, grows every day. It stands as a mechanism of economic dependency (most national decisions require IMF and World Bank endorsement) and its cycle of getting new credits to pay old debts is intact. But those organs are just formal managers. The domestic wealth goes to economies of the North, the main contributors to those bodies. The role of the debt as a key issue from thirty years ago to the present is critical to understanding the current reality, and also to transforming it. As an instrument, the debt works in a “U” way: a proper middle-tension is required to avoid both extremes, i.e. the total incapacity of paying to creditors and the full definitive

GLOBALISATION: REBUILDING THE PUZZLE What is today called globalisation is, indeed, a process of embodying a unique whole-earth market, which started long time ago and was probably only decelerated during a part of the XXth century due to the world’s partition into two blocks. The process now reaccelerated with an increasing tendency to more wealth concentration. After the fall of the Soviet orbit, Central and Eastern European countries are required to develop a free-market economy in order to get “re-inserted into the world.” Former colonial relationships have become current imperial ones. Keeping colonies as occupied territories became expensive, unproductive and even old-fashioned. Nowadays, Northern hegemony is rather exerted culturally and economically. It is enough to impose certain economic and cultural models and rules sharper and more efficiently. It is not about the good and the bad guys, but about understanding a little more of the complexity of the global market and current late capitalism stage. The point is that a historical wealth flow from South to North and from East to West is easily observed. The mechanisms changed: indiscriminate sacking of metals in XVIth century; raw materials export to Europe during industrialisation; today the debt and commercial unilateral terms (EU–MERCOSUR liaisons, Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)). A cultural and political tie where economy rules. Inequality becomes not an undesired effect, but a necessity. We should rebuild the puzzle, as Jean-Paul SARTRE said, joining all the scattered little pieces to be able to observe the whole picture again, becoming actively committed and more conscious, hence exerting collective pressure about the debt and deconstructing mechanisms of inequality.

Suggested Reading GALEANO Eduardo, Las venas abiertas de América Latina. México, 1970. HAYEK Friedrich, Denationalisation of Money. London 1976. HOBSBAWN Eric, Industry and Empire. London 1968. KRIEDTE Peter, Spätfeudalismus und Handelskapital. Göttingen 1980. MEILLASOUX Claude, Femmes, greniers, capitaux. Paris 1975. SCHVARZER Jorge, La larga crisis de la deuda en América Latina. UNIRISD, 2000. United Nations, Human Development Report 2003. New York, 2004. Lucas VEIRA SAND lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds a university degree in psychology and he studied anthropology and sociology as well. During 2000 he served as an intern at the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. His email address is vslucas@yahoo.com.

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Martin ALMADA

The Condor Plan and Dictatorship in Paraguay Starting with World War II, a radical change occurred in Latin America due to a powerful increase in the number of political parties and revolutionary organisations for national liberation, with the arrival to power of progressive governments that proclaimed a break with the capitalist model: Cuba and Chile.

THE REGIONAL CONTEXT The counter-offensive of North America was immediately felt, a country that emerged as a political and military hegemonic power that considered Latin America as its backyard. Thus, by the initiative of the United States, in 1942 the Organization of American States (OAS) created the InterAmerican Defense Board to protect Latin America from communist influence. Later in 1960, the United States created the School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone. It was in this school that young Latin American officials were trained to neutralise the mighty progressive force. They were especially trained in torture techniques for pulling confessions out of political prisoners. The Roman Catholic priest Roy BURGOISE gave it the name “School of Assassins” in 1990. In 1961, it was also by U.S. initiative that another military device was created in order to keep back the current of change that was advancing under the name of the Conference of American Armies. The first meeting took place in the Panama Canal Zone in November 1961. Police, military, bilateral and multilateral treaties were signed. It was thus that the Plan Condor came into being: a criminal military agreement created by the Chilean General Augusto PINOCHET in order to fight back first those who opposed his politics of state terrorism, and later democrats, without distinction. The military governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay were part of Plan Condor. According to Patricia MCSHERRY of Long Island University, who studied Plan Condor, various documents recently declassified by the U.S. State Department prove that United States intelligence military officials thought of Condor as a legitimate antiterrorist organisation. MCSHERRY adds that “we know that the base in Panama, which also sheltered the School of Americas of the American Army, was the centre of hemispheric counterinsurgent plans and Plans during the seventies. The evidence highlights the seriousness of the involvement and

complicity of the United States in the repression undertaken in Latin America as part of the Cold War, and in the murders of the Operative Condor.” The powerful North American military intervention in Latin America resulted in: a recession of the workers’ movement; a period of state violence, that is, state terrorism; destruction of democratic participatory spaces; physical destruction irrespective of revolutionary movements’ militants and leaders; and the establishment of the neoliberal model, i.e. the dictatorship of the market. The market developed under the influence of globalised neoliberalism (multinational interests) to the detriment of the State. That is why we now have a state for the poor and a market for the rich. According to this approach, all economic and social issues can be solved through the market.

THE NATIONAL CONTEXT From 1932 to 1935 Paraguay was pushed by multinational companies interested in oil to finalise the war against Bolivia. More than 30.000 Paraguayans and the same number of innocent Bolivians died in this war. During World War II it was obvious that the Autonomous Federations in Paraguay sympathised with Germany and its allies. Later, in 1947, the bloodiest civil war in her history took place, and blows to the palace followed the complicity of the governments in the neighbouring countries: Argentina and Brazil. The figure of Roberto L. PETIT, a young lawyer, appeared on the political scene in the fifties. He foresaw the need to conclude the agrarian reform, and was later given the charge of

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the police department, where he immediately set free all political prisoners, including the communist ones. At that time the democratic government of Federico CHAVES was presiding. PETIT’s behaviour so disturbed the Embassies of Brazil and the United States that they decided to accelerate the fall of President CHAVES. General Alfredo STROESSNER was in charge of the military blow that took place on 4 May 1954 with the clear support of the Brazilian government. Its first victim was Dr. Roberto L. PETIT. We must mention that STROESSNER was invited in May 1953 by the Pentagon to visit military installations in North America and that he also visited the Panama Canal Zone. U.S. military aid and training helped to consolidate the repressive infrastructure of STROESSNER’s government. On the other hand, the advice of the United States facilitated coordination between the intelligence services of Paraguayan armies and their counterparts in the region. Within the frame of the “cold war”, STROESSNER stood out as the most faithful ally of the United States in Latin America. STROESSNER could “reign” for thirty-five years due to his politics of “granite unity” between “the Government, the Autonomous Federations and the official party.” Corruption, contraband and drug traffic were also the tripod of his government. An alleged danger of internal disturbance promoted by the communists was the argument wielded by STROESSNER to enjoy the unconditional military support of the United States. Thus he managed to send more than 2000 Paraguayan officials to train for the anti-subversive fight at the School of Americas in the Panama Canal Zone. As a proof of his loyalty, STROESSNER sent a Paraguayan occupation troop to the Dominican Republic in 1965, when the United States invaded that country. Another hallmark of STROESSNER’s government was permanent torture, without exception even for children, women or old people. It was also during this 35 years of military and police dictatorship that it was the daily bread of people to be confronted with fear, exile, premeditated murders, lies, tortures, impunity, nepotism, sinecure, corruption, detentions and disappearance of victims. It should be mentioned that the Roman Catholic church in Paraguay maintained a position of commitment to her people and also fought against dictatorship.

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EDUCATING FOR FREEDOM — MY DETENTION AND TORTURE In the sixties I was the headmaster of the Juan Bautista Alberdi Institute in San Lorenzo, fifteen kilometres away from Asunción. Inspired by the theology of liberation, we carried out democracy in the lecture hall and we established the criteria that the school must be an antechamber of democracy. It was also at that time that I was elected president of the Association of Teachers, and it was under those circumstances that we promoted the Consumption, Economy, Credit and finally Housing Cooperative. We built a neighbourhood for teachers and we launched the idea: “A personal house for every Paraguayan teacher.” In the seventies I was offered a scholarship by the Argentinean government to carry out my doctoral degree in pedagogy at the National University in La Plata. I was the first Paraguayan to receive a doctorate in education. On 26 November 1974, finding myself in the company of my wife at the Alberdi Institute, I was imprisoned and taken directly to the chief of the Secret Police of the dictatorship. There the military assistants of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay, who wanted to know about my links with university subversives in Argentina and Chile, submitted me to an interrogation. The Paraguayan soldiers wanted to know about my links with the subversive plot against the president of the republic and my militant position in an alleged armed revolutionary movement. My crime was defined as follows: Martin ALMADA, intellectual terrorist. I was then taken to the torture room. I was frightened while looking at my torturers. It seemed to me that their eyes launched fire, that they stopped being human in favour of being animals. The work was perfectly shared: Francisco RAMIREZ, alias “Tata” (meaning “fire”), threw me in a bathtub full of fetid water, excrement and urine. Nicolas Lucilo BENITEZ implacably wielded the whip. Camilo Federico ALMADA SAPRIZA gave me kicks and held the position of secretary of the act. Juan Ramon Bogado CABALLERO, discharged the karate blows. Lorenzo Fortunado LASPINA beat my back with a braided wire. Obdulio ARGUELLO hit my head with a police club. Agustín BELOTTO held me in a basin and stepped on my chest to keep me at the bottom of the bathtub. I faced this situation for 30 long days. While I was in the torture room my wife, teacher Celestina PEREZ, was kept prisoner in the Juan B. Alberdi Institute. During 10 days she was systematically subjected to psychological torture, as they called her to make her listen to my screaming and outcries during the torture sessions. The ninth day she received my bloody clothes with a shoemaker’s needle, the proof that they had also pulled out my nails. The tenth day at midnight she received a call by which she was told that “your husband died, come and take his corpse.” She had a heart attack due to this news and died of pain.

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Windows between Two Worlds After three years in prison I went on a hunger strike for 30 days. I gained my freedom thanks to the strong endeavours of the Inter-Church and Amnesty International Committee. I travelled to Panama and thanks to the support of this government, I was designated a consultant for UNESCO for Latin America with the headquarters in Paris from 1978 to 1992. During all this time in Paris, my “hobby” was to follow the steps of my ex-torturers through the police magazine in Paraguay, and especially to follow the tracks of Plan Condor.

DISCOVERY OF THE TERROR ARCHIVE On 3 February 1989 a military coup d’etat took place in Paraguay that overthrew Dictator Alfredo STROESSNER, after 35 years of iron governance. In June 1992 the new national constitution was approved. This one consecrated the legal entity of habeas data, a Latin phrase meaning “bring me the records.” On 11 September 1992, in Asunción, I made a habeas data demand to Judge Dr. José Agustin FERNANDEZ. It was done in order to find out the reasons for my detention and torture from 1974 to 1977. There was extensive media coverage of all my efforts in front of the legal power. I received a phone call telling me that my records were outside Asunción, of which I informed Judge FERNANDEZ. He ordered the register from the “Productions” Office of the

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National Police on 22 December 1992. It was thus that we found tons of documents which allowed us to know, among other things, how Plan Condor functioned. This plan was promoted by the Chilean General Augusto PINOCHET in 1975 in order to eliminate any opposition to the military regimes in the Southern Cone of Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay). Operation Condor allowed the action of foreign forces inside the countries of the Southern Cone, who imprisoned and eventually caused to disappear individuals from the other nations — i.e., the globalisation of state terrorism. Suits were filed against PINOCHET (Chile), VIDELA (Argentina), FIGUEREIDO (Brazil), BANZER (Bolivia), STROESSNER (Paraguay) and ALVAREZ (Uruguay) in Spain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay. I appeared in the courts of these countries to present documents on Plan Condor, the criminal pact.

Martin ALMADA was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2002 in the Swedish Parliament for his work in defending human rights in Latin America. His email address is almada@rieder.net.py.

Ekaterina K O L E S N I K O V A

A Dictatorship in the Midst of Europe: The Case of Belarus The recent development of the Republic of Belarus is distinguished by the striking difference between two periods in its post-communist history. At the beginning of the nineties, Belarus was one of the most promising young Eastern European democracies with stable political and economic ties to other countries. Nowadays Belarus is a politically and economically isolated country governed by the personalised dictatorship of its president, Alexander LUKASHENKO.

Besides, the strategy of extreme nationalism promoted by this Front was hardly acceptable in a country where the majority of the population had close relationships with Russia and where a great part of the Belarusian people either worked in Russia or had relatives there. Additionally, despite the fact that in the early nineties Belarus was suffering from high rates of inflation and unemployment, neither of the two political groups proposed a consistent programme of economic reforms in the country.

A NEW REPUBLIC

AN UNEXPECTED PERSON

Belarus became an independent republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Having one of the most developed economic systems and the newest stock of production assets among all the Soviet republics, Belarus had the potential to become a highly developed European economy. In 1994 the first democratic constitution of the Republic of Belarus was adopted, and soon the first democratic elections of the president were held according to this Constitution. In the early nineties there were two main political powers in the Republic. On one hand, there was the ruling elite that had been formed mostly by the communist nomenclature with the prime minister at its head; on the other hand, the nationalistic opposition, the Belarus Popular Front, formed the second political power. This nationalistic opposition was the one calling for the Republic’s independent development and for breaking up the political and cultural ties with Russia. They also concentrated their efforts on forming a Belarusian cultural policy. Contrary to other post-Communist republics, the Belarusian Parliament, which was formed during the Soviet era, was not re-elected until 1995, so the opposition Belarus Popular Front could not have access to power.

While these two political powers prepared their participation in the presidential elections, a member of the parliament, Alexander LUKASHENKO, entered the bid for the presidency rather unexpectedly. He put the main focus of his presidential election campaign on the fight against corruption in the ruling circles (surrounding the prime minister) and also on anti-nationalistic policies (aimed at criticising the opposition, the Belarus Popular Front). As it often happens in systems with a low level of political institutionalisation, almost any talented person “from the street” can enter politics and gain political power. Moreover, since the political parties in Belarus were young and had no experience participating in democratic elections, they had difficulties in becoming channels for recruiting a new political elite. Alexander LUKASHENKO won the presidential elections in July 1994. LUKASHENKO’s political opponents did not take seriously his election campaign, nor his extraordinary personality. Coming from a village and offering very simple and clear ideas, he was accepted as the only fighter for plain people in the republic. Using populist slogans that reflected the hopes of the Belarusian majority, LUKASHENKO won the support of

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Martin ALMADA was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2002 in the Swedish Parliament for his work in defending human rights in Latin America. His email address is almada@rieder.net.py.

Ekaterina K O L E S N I K O V A

A NEW REPUBLIC

AN UNEXPECTED PERSON

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the largest groups in the electorate — the pensioners, the army and the “working class.”

STEPS TOWARDS AN AUTHORITARIAN REGIME Less than half a year after the presidential elections, Alexander LUKASHENKO’S authoritarian nature became clear. Although the 1994 constitution set up a separation of powers, he immediately set about trying to limit the role of parliament and the Constitutional Court in favour of the executive branch. During the 1995 parliamentary elections, he publicly discouraged voters from participating because a turnout of less than fifty per cent would have given him grounds to disband the parliament and rule entirely by presidential decree. Further, he openly challenged some rulings of the Constitutional Court, declaring their decrees unconstitutional, and he ordered the ministries and other governmental institutions to ignore them. As the presidential reforms continued, the system of local authorities was changed and representatives to the local councils were thenceforth directly appointed by officials from the president. A basic procedure of democratic systems was thus abolished and another step towards establishing an authoritarian regime was made. But even these efforts did not ensure LUKASHENKO the power he craved, and so ultimately more bold action was needed. Hence, he called two national referendums on a variety of issues, with the aim of bypassing parliament’s opposition to his agenda.

THE REFERENDUMS The referendum in 1995 included a resolution to adopt Russian as the second official language and to replace the national symbols (state emblem and national flag) with new ones, which resembled the old Soviet insignias. The November 1996 referendum went beyond symbolic issues to directly impact the governance of the country. Under the pretence of constitutional referendum, Belarus had a hidden coup d’etat, as a result of which the entire political power was concentrated in hands of one person in the country. In it, a strong majority of votes cast were in favour of the president’s proposal for a radically amended constitution. This proposal was accepted, even though the referendum as such was clearly anti-constitutional. The European Union (EU) and the United States (U.S.A.) severely criticised the conditions under which the referendum was held and have refused to recognise its legitimacy. Notably, the major exception to this criticism is Russia, whose parliament and government have affirmed its results. Following this show of public approval, LUKASHENKO promptly dissolved the parliament and implemented a new one. This new parliament in turn adopted LUKASHENKO’S new non-democratic constitution, according to which the system of governance was changed completely. Under this new constitution the President became more significant than even the government; power was now fully concentrated in the President’s hands. One of the most striking things is that the presidential term, after the adoption of the new constitution, was prolonged for an additional three and a half years, until 2001 — this in direct contradiction to an earlier ruling by the (old) parliament.

CONSOLIDATION OF POWER The new constitution called for the creation of a two-chambered parliament, and after its adoption in 1996 deputies for the first convocation of parliament were appointed by presidential decree. In general, the parliament has become largely inactive and is frequently bypassed by presidential decrees — as the constitution allows only for short parliamentary sessions, it becomes necessary for the president to issue decrees on

Windows between Two Worlds issues upon which parliament is unable to decide during the allotted time. The decrees of the president have greater power than laws. In circumstances of “specific urgency and necessity,” the new constitution gives him the authority to make decrees even without a decision by parliament to delegate such powers to him. The new constitution also alters the nature of the Constitutional Court, changing it from an independent body to one under the president’s control. Half of the twelve justices on the court are directly appointed by the president, and the other half are appointed by the Senate. Immediately following this decision, five judges on the court resigned in protest; a sixth, who refused to resign, was prematurely dismissed by LUKASHENKO. The new Constitutional Court’s first act in office was to rule that his presidential decree enforcing the results of the referendum was entirely constitutional.

SUPPRESSION AND DISSENT Between 1996 and 1999 numerous protest actions arose across the country and political opposition parties were formed at this time. All of those movements were severely suppressed by the authorities; most activists and leaders were either detained or unexpectedly disappeared. It was confirmed later that they became victims of political murders. The number of political migrants leaving Belarus increased and many people from the opposition against the LUKASHENKO regime now live abroad. The pressure on the mass media forced a number of independent newspapers to close down, the most famous of which is Svoboda (“Liberty”). Newspaper licences are cancelled, journalists are sentenced to forced labour being accused of slandering the president, and foreign journalists are expelled from the country. Freedom of the media is thus non-existent. Also TV and radio stations are completely in the palm of the state. For the few still-independent newspapers, it is very difficult to survive in the atmosphere of repression. In 2001 Alexander LUKASHENKO won the second presidential elections, in which he received 75 per cent of the votes according to official sources, and his term of commission was extended until 2006. Several aspects can help to explain this outcome: the highly atomistic society; the weak and separated opposition without a strong, unique leader; and the lack of independent sources of information. In addition, it is suspected that the real election results were falsified; foreign observers of the elections registered massive manipulations.

CHANGING ECONOMY In early nineties and shortly after LUKASHENKO’s election, Belarus could be characterised as one of the economically weakest and poorest countries from the former Soviet Union. During this period the country had one of the highest annual rates of inflation (up to 600 percent in the mid-nineties) and unemployment (up to 13 percent, taking into account hidden unemployment) and a very low rate of economic growth (during some years, the indicator was negative). The average monthly salary in Belarus barely reached 100 EUR until the end of the nineties. After the second presidential elections, however, the situation in the republic has changed considerably, so that currently among her neighbours Belarus is even considered a prosperous, rapidly developing country. This opinion, unfortunately, is mostly based on the information from the official propagandist Belarusian massmedia and is a result of misunderstanding the real economic system in the republic. The reason for the quick improvement of the aggregate economic indicators in Belarus — e.g. the deceleration of unemployment and inflation, the rise in salaries and pensions, and the increase in production and a building boom —

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Windows between Two Worlds is a further consolidation of political power in the republic. Coupled with the changed structure of production, the overwhelming share of state-owned enterprises and return to the Soviet-style methods of management and system of administrative punishment, LUKASHENKO’s immeasurable presidential authority facilitates good economic results in the republic. Still, all the economic decisions and programmes in the republic must be approved directly by the president. As a result of increased government interventions in the economy, the level of administrative corruption has increased in Belarus. Additionally, while more and more foreign investment flows into its neighbour countries such as Ukraine and Russia, foreign investment is virtually non-existent in Belarus. Belarus has lost almost all her trade ties with other European countries and the only remaining partners are the countries from the former Soviet Union, Poland and Germany. Despite all the recent economic changes, Belarus still can be described as an economically and politically isolated country.

A THIRD TERM? Currently, the possibility of a third presidential term is hardly discussed in Belarus. In September 2004 the president announced a new referendum to be held on October 17, where citizens were asked to remove the existing restriction in the constitution for more than two terms of presidential commission and, particularly, to allow Alexander LUKASHENKO to participate in the third presidential elections

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in Belarus in 2006. The current Constitution does not allow the same person to be elected as president more than twice. The aggressive agitating campaign in favour of LUKASHENKO, infringement of the election legislation, compulsion of citizens to participate in a terminated referendum (before the date of the referendum itself) and mass falsifications resulted in ninety percent turnout for the referendum and eighty-five percent approval of the amendment to the constitution, according to the Central Election Committee. These numbers are doubtful and uncharacteristic for the atomistic and disjointed Belarusian populace, for whom the rate of attendance does not usually exceed fifty to sixty percent. Moreover, the referendum was held with numerous flagrant violations from the side of the state administration and local election committees. It is clear that Alexander LUKASHENKO is going to evade the Constitution once again and to find for himself an opportunity to stay in power as long as possible “for the benefit of all Belarus people,” according to his own words. In general, this campaign showed that the opposition did not have the necessary potential to organise mass protests and meetings in order to express an alternative political opinion and to help change the authoritarian regime in the republic. Ekaterina KOLESNIKOVA is Russian Orthodox and belongs to the Brotherhood of Three Vilnya Martyrs in Minsk, Belarus. She worked as a music teacher for children in the Kruptsy Sunday School in Minsk and participated in theological and gospel readings there. Her major is economics and she studied in the Czech Republic and Italy in Master’s programmes. She thanks the help of Natalia BAZYLEWICH in preparing this article.

Manuel Q U I N T E R O

The Ecumenical Movement in Latin America and Its Relation to Europe In the last decades of the XXth century and this early XXIst century, the ecumenical movement in Latin America was ample, with many forms which developed in answer to real issues and challenges, present both in its most immediate surroundings and in the whole oikoumene.

FIRST STAGE: WSCF During the first stage, in the forties and fifties, the most significant expressions of ecumenism were the direct effect of the pioneering work of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) in countries such as Argentina and Mexico; as well as the consequence of the YMCA presence in some of the most important cities on the continent; and of valuable efforts undertaken by Evangelical youth at the national and continental level: in 1941 the Latin American Fellowship of Evangelical Students (ULAJE) was founded. Iglesia y Sociedad en América Latina (ISAL, Church and Society in Latin America) gathered young Christian intellectuals — among them the Catholic theologians Gustavo GUTIÉRREZ, Segundo GALILEA, Juan Luis SEGUNDO, Lucio GERA, and the Protestant theologians Emilio CASTRO, Julio DE SANTA ANA, Rubem ALVES, José Míguez BONINO — for a critical reflection on the relationship between faith and poverty, the gospel and social justice. Together with these progressive para-ecclesiastic ecumenical bodies, a series of dialogue and cooperation efforts took place involving Evangelical churches, which culminated in the constitution of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) in 1982. CLAI basically summoned and included the so-called historical churches: Methodist, Lutheran, Reformed,

Presbyterian, Anglican, Waldensian and Congregational, with a small but valuable representation of Pentecostalism. On the other hand, other churches related to the American missionary movement were also involved in missionary cooperation and theological dialogue under the auspices of the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL), which eventually developed the theology of integral mission. At the end of the 1960s, specifically in 1969, the first meeting of CLADE (Latin American Conference of Evangelicals) took place in Bogotá. The FTL was organized as an evangelical response not only to the ISAL movement, but also as a response to the dominant North American evangelical conservatism that was reluctant to respond or to get involved in social questions. Those expressions of a search for dialogue and cooperation between the Evangelical churches were marked by different ideologies. The most radical ecumenical movement, represented since the middle sixties by student (WSCF) and youth para-ecclesiastic organisations (the Latin American Ecumenical Youth Union, ULAJE), organisations of Christian education (Latin American Evangelical Committee of Christian Education, CELADEC), and of intellectuals (Church and Society in Latin America, ISAL), opened to Roman Catholic participation and pleaded for profound changes in social, political and economic structures.

COMPROMISE IN THE POLITICAL ARENA Militants of these organisations became involved in political processes led by leftist parties and organisations in their countries, and some of them paid with their lives for this compromise “until the last consequences.”

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An emblematic figure from this point of view was the Argentinean professor Mauricio LOPEZ, a leader of WSCF and later of the World Council of Churches (WCC), who was imprisoned, tortured and disappeared under the military regime in Argentina. On the other hand, the churches that motivated the initiative of the Latin American Council of Churches were characterised early on by the adoption of a defence line of human rights, at a time when many countries in Latin America were under dictatorial and military regimes and the National Security Doctrine prevailed. Thus, the CLAI had among its first programmes the “ministry of consolation and solidarity,” under the guidance of Puerto Rican pastor Juan Marcos RIVERA. This pastor developed significant work regarding the denunciation of violations of human rights and of support to human-rights abuse victims, in close collaboration with the Human Rights Office of the World Council of Churches. Since the end of the eighties, as the recovery of democracy in South America moved forward, the Council concentrated its efforts towards the peace dialogues and negotiations in Central America, in countries that suffered the consequences of long and bloody civil wars. The final years of the XXth century and the early years of this century were the scene of a new emphasis: the prophetic criticism of the neoliberal model and its negative consequences on a continent where poverty and inequality are increasing. We must mention in this respect that Jose Luis MACHINEA, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) of the United Nations (UN), made a statement on 28 September 2004 on the fact that the region had 223 million poor people, figures that reflect a relapse in the fight against poverty and inequality to unacceptable levels.

A JOINT ETHOS Both the aforementioned para-ecclesiastic organisations (WSCF, ULAJE, CELADEC, ISAL) and the CLAI developed their mission, starting from a joint ethos made up of a progressive theology influenced by some European theological movements, and an anti-capitalistic ideology that also found its roots in the philosophical thought developed in Europe. Equally in their public statements and decrees in the past decades and in their pastoral theology, the para-ecclesiastic organizations pleaded for liberation, a key concept that involved the pulling down of oppressive and unjust structures and the building of a more human society — a process that questions the whole prevailing system. Over this period, CLAI strongly emphasized the struggle for justice. The other big sector of Evangelical churches promoted the so-called integral mission, a concept that states that God’s salvation affects the whole person, both spiritually and physically, and in her or his concrete historical reality. An inte-

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gral mission lives out and proclaims both personal and social justice. These churches always argued that historical churches, in their eagerness to add a prophetic voice to injustice, overlooked the spiritual dimension of salvation and evangelical emphasis. The dialogue and the search for unity between Christian churches happened within the so-called “Cold War,” a context of ideological polarisation that perfunctorily placed the social and political protagonists in one of the two groups, “socialism” or “capitalism”: the ideological option of non-alignment rarely appeared in the Latin American environment. Many times, the most radical ecumenical position was qualified as “communist” and the militants of this prophetic ecumenism were persecuted within the Church and outside it.

EUROPE, ALWAYS THERE Students and intellectuals in Latin America and Europe — especially those in Western Europe — have always felt a mutual attraction, which was frequently rendered in real honeymoons, although there were also the sporadic and recurrent “bitter moons.” This mutual attraction is due to concrete historical and cultural reasons. With the “discovery” of America, Europeans could for the first time recognise the peculiarity of their civilization and the fact that it was part of a true oikoumene, although two hundred years after this historical event, HEGEL still considered the European human being to be the “universal human.” The women and men on this side of the Atlantic are the fruit of the ethnic and cultural blend between Native Americans and Europeans, Africans and later Asians. That is why Jose VASCONCELOS (1882-1959), a renowned Mexican philosopher, suggested calling Latin American and Caribbean people “the cosmic human beings.” For almost five hundred years, Latin America’s fate was linked to the unsteadiness of European politics, and basically to three great powers: Spain, France and England. Although during the world division in the XVIIth century it was Spain that took the lion’s share of the so-called “New World,” during the following centuries, the wars between these powers for the command of the new rich areas of the planet had immediate and profound effects on the colonies in this part of the world. This is particularly obvious in the Caribbean, the scene of a sharp confrontation between the three powers, dissimulated by the picturesque and romantic façade of official piracy or revealed in all its harshness in cruel naval and inland battles.

BONHÖFFER AND BARTH — IMPORTANT INFLUENCES The most radical Latin American ecumenical movement that we called para-ecclesiastic needs to be understood in that historical relation. WSCF, the unquestionable pioneer in the continental ecumenical movement, brought the theological debate on the Old Continent to our region. The Christian student’s thought in the sixties was fed on the positive evaluation of secularisation by Dietrich BONHÖFFER and the dazzling possibility to live in the world as mature women and men free from religious control, etsi Deus non daretur. Moreover, BONHÖFFER was a martyr of Nazism, a person of political compromise “until the last consequences,” and that made him a paradigm of faith and action for a generation that was looking for its place in the continent’s convulsed history. On the other hand, the influence of Karl BARTH on the Latin American ecumenical movement can be seen in the importance given to the Bible, to Jesus Christ as central part of the Revelation, and to the daily and existential contact with social reality. This influence is also apparent in the criticism of religion

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Theology and Liberation (or of the institutional Church as the expression of this religion), which is one of the main themes of that radical ecumenical aspect; and we must not forget that for BARTH religion “contradicts and neutralises Revelation.” At the background of all this stays BARTH’s own political attitude, which, as BONHÖFFER’s, is to be found in true and brave opposition to Nazism.

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suffered a serious setback and became defensive; quite a few progressive intellectuals abandoned their “old-fashioned” ideals about social justice and joined the group of winners, accepting as unquestionable and “normal” the capitalist social order, as well as the sanctification and idolatry of the market.

THE CHALLENGE OF GRACE THE THEOLOGY OF LIBERATION Who can doubt that the political theology of Johann Baptist METZ influenced the Latin American theology of liberation, especially in its emphasis on the fact that theory and practice feed and need each other, and in the statement that there is no theoretical truth without proper practice? Or in his statements that there is no orthodoxy but that resulting from orthopraxis? Or even more, that there is no liberation of the human being without the political structures enslaving it being changed? Similar questions were put by liberation theology in stating that theology is a critical reflection upon practice in the light of faith; in other words, that the compromise, the efficient love, comes first, and only afterwards does the discourse come. Praxis and reflection address and correct each other, making a hermeneutical circle. And, at the centre of practice and reflection, there is the preferential option for the poor, to whom the Good News of the free and unconditional love of God is given. In its turn, the theology of hope of Jürgen MOLTMANN — which arrived on our shores in the first years of the seventies — confronted us with the challenge of an eschatological future that must begin its realisation here and now, while at the same time giving us back the notion that the essence of Christianity is the faith in God’s Reign and the denial of any present kingdoms. In Latin America the radical ecumenical movement very soon learned the value of hope, especially when the tragic night of protracted military dictatorships delayed the coming of the democratic dawn.

IN SPITE OF THE CHANGES The fall of the Berlin Wall15 years ago, which symbolically marks the collapse of real socialism in Central and Eastern Europe and the end of the “bipolar” world, made possible the weakening of the most rigid and dogmatic ideological attitudes, and the concern for social justice acquired legitimacy and stopped being identified with the ideological labels of the great communist conspiracy. From one day to the next, communism stopped being “that ghost which travels the world” and capitalism emerged as the great winner of the Cold War, surrounded by such euphoria that some ideologists allowed themselves to talk about “the end of history.” Thus Latin America was no longer the battlefield between the two great systems in their search for supremacy. The extinction of the internal and external communist enemy weakened the raison d’etre of military governments and put the National Security Doctrine into second place. The return of democratically elected governments and the new international geopolitical reality helped to bring social and economic development issues back onto the public agenda, and the criticism of misery, marginalization and exclusion were no longer deemed “subversive” by the powers in charge. In the aftermath of these historical changes, Latin American critical thinking

We can say nowadays that a system which emphasizes the values of competence and the pursuit of profit in the economic field, and which promotes so-called “unique thought” in the ideological arena, is the expression of a radical crisis of civilisation. For this system values people for what they have and not for what they are, while neglecting the preservation and care of the environment in its unrelenting pursuit of profits. A lot of people hoped that the collapse of real socialism would make way for a new Enlightenment era, where it would be possible to solve conflicting interests in a civilized manner, without resorting to war, and where humanity as a whole would move towards a higher stage of integral development. In practice, we have had the military and economic hegemony of a single country, the deterioration of multilateral institutions and the resurgence of fundamentalisms, phenomena that made the world into a more violent and less secure place. The ecumenical movement as a whole is now challenged to proclaim and share the gift of God’s grace to a society that idolises the market while sacrificing to it millions of victims. As METZ already said, one has to fight to forge an “oikoumene of compassion” that will allow us the practice of solidarity with human suffering within and outside the boundaries of Christianity. Suggested Reading BONINO Jose Miguez, Towards a Christian Political Ethic. Philadelphia, 1983. CAPEELA Juan Ramon: Los ciudadanos siervos. Madrid, 1993. CHOMSKY Noam, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance. New York, 2003. DUSSEL Enrique, History and the Theology of Liberation: A Latin American Perspective (tr. DRURY John). New York, 1976. METZ Johann Baptist, La compasión. Un programa universal del cristianismo en la época del pluralismo cultural y religioso. Revista Latinoamericana de Teología. Abril 2002. 25–32. SILVA GOTAY Samuel, El pensamiento cristiano revolucionario en América Latina y el Caribe. Río Piedras, 1983. Manuel QUINTERO is an electrical engineer and journalist from Cuba. He is the incoming director of Frontier Internship in Mission (FIM), beginning January 2005. Previously he served as the director of communications for the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) in Quito, Ecuador; and as secretary general of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) in Genève, Switzerland. His email address is manuel@clai.org.ec.

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N A G Y P Á L Szabolcs

European Integration and the Unity of the Church “The one who does not gather with me, scatters.” (Matthew 12,30)

When pondering the visions and ideas for Church co-operation and European integration, we shall speak first about the ecumenical movement for the unity of the Church, then about the European integration for the unity of our continent, and finally about the role of Central Europe in both: a specific part of the world, of which most countries joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. Our approach shall be that of a historian of ideas, thus restricting ourselves to the dimension of ideas in this essay.

THE ECUMENICAL PROJECT Ghislain LAFONT OSB, the Benedictine theologian and historian of ideas, describes four thought forms — One, Existence, Time and Evil — which move and direct the development of ideas. One of these movements is the idea of One, and, deriving from this, that of Unity. In the history of the Christian Church, divisions followed each other in 500-year periods: in the Vth (451), XIth (1054) and XVIth (1517) centuries the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church was fragmented into branches, confessions and denominations. Recently there is more and more acceptance that this (intermediary) state is clearly against the will of God, it scandalises the world, and, furthermore, it hinders, if not blocks, the sharing of the good and liberating news with all those who thirst and hunger for it. Five hundred years have passed since the last great Church division, and it seems history has surprised us once again: in 1895 the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) was established, the first thematically and structurally interdenominational organisation on our globe. The first spinning of the wheel of the Student Christian Movement (SCM), together with other similar achievements, fermented an unexpected development which soon rewrote and redesigned the spiritual map of Christianity. It placed in the focus of Christian discernment such ideas as community, communion, koinonia, reconciliation, conciliarity, solidarity, collegiality, common witness, consensus,

dialogue, fellowship, association, sisterhood, federation, covenant, alliance, union and — unity. Let me introduce a parallel from the technical world. In many of our computers, we find the Defragmenter among the System Tools in the Accessories menu. It is advisable to defragment our system from time to time, or, if we have never done it, as soon as possible. It puts together what belongs together and ensures the smoother running of the system, while simultaneously releasing energies for other purposes. The fragmentation map at the end of the process looks like a rainbow, rather than a barcode on commercial goods. This movement within the Church, which so clearly uses, defines and applies the idea and vocabulary of the One, and aims to defragment Christianity, is called the ecumenical movement. It is, of course, not diversity that this movement confronts, but division. Diversity builds up, division destroys.

LAYERS OF IDENTITY Nowadays we are witnessing the building of a supranational (not international!) identity in the European integration process, which is parallel with what is happening in the Christian confessional families, as in the case of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), or the panOrthodox gatherings. The Roman Catholic church is a peculiar exception in this

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Theology and Liberation respect, since she is blessed with the fact that organisational unity (transcending national, cultural and regional differences) and supranational identity have been central concerns throughout her whole history. One explanation for this may come from the historical and psychological experience that episcopally structured churches are less likely to split. Furthermore, because of the idea of a central See, the Roman Catholic thought tradition has been organising its church structure in a supranational way. There is no Roman Catholic church of Hungary, for example, only the Roman Catholic church in Hungary. This is one reason why the current structure of the World Council of Churches (WCC), established in 1948, does not promote the membership of the Roman Catholic church, who is a world council of churches in herself, keeping in visible dialogue her national branches, various rites and manifold movements. Of course, the Roman Catholic church’s method of preserving her unity and integrity is just one model among the few. This tradition, furthermore, has not always been capable of avoiding the temptation of the idea of exclusive uniqueness in its paradigms, which is an extreme realisation of the idea of One. Claim of superiority or exclusivity, hereditary hatred and (at best) mistrust, are, however, not characteristic solely of Christianity, but they also mark the history of Europe, our continent. The building of modern nation-states and national churches largely coincided in history, influencing, inspiring and guiding each other. It was the cataclysm and tragedy of the last great war (1939–1945), fought between nations and using the ideology of nationalism, which made further integrity in Europe become a necessity. From that time on, Christians have tried to commit themselves to resisting any attempt to misuse religion and the Church for ethnic or nationalist purposes. Identities are important, and they are good in themselves. But, obviously, a person has more than one identity; or, better said, one’s identity consists of many different layers.

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should be used to strengthen the idea of a reconciled Europe in co-existence. Similarly and simultaneously, we should use the European integration process to strengthen the unity of the Church as well. As in times of division, also in times of integration do non-theological factors play a role; among them are political, ideological and theoretical ones. How politicians cope with the challenges of integration can provide models of unity for the Church as well, and it can create political and social situations where churches have to act cooperatively and in accordance. Mutual learning and attention is indispensable in this respect, concerning methodologies, problem-solving techniques, the art of mediation, mentalities of forgiveness, and attitude and behaviour in dialogue. As a general rule, we can discern and formulate that each and every dignified means which can be helpful and useful for the unification of the dismembered Body of Christ, is definitely worth a try, and we also have the moral duty and responsibility to apply and integrate them to our cause, to implement our prophetic vision.

THE ROLE OF CENTRAL EUROPE So this is the ecumenical project for the unity of the Church, which Central Europeans joined very early, at the beginning of the XXth century; and the integration process for the unity of Europe, which Central Europeans have been following from a distance for a long time, and now they contribute to it from the inside. It is important to stress that Central Europeans do not join someone else’s project, as if the European Union were a Western European endeavour; but they should contribute to the common project for the integration of Europe with their insights and take their share in building up a more united continent. The idea of Europe, it is helpful to emphasize, in many countries means also a quality, a community of values, not just geography or economy. It is something more general and nobler which transcends our localities, while at the

Certainly the restructuring, rescheduling and redimensioning of identities through the integration of Europe is a beautiful idea, which can be a meaningful case to be supported by Christian thinkers as well. The idea of integration has also been decisively inspired by Christianity. The canonization by the Roman Catholic church of Robert SCHUMAN, one of the founding fathers of the European integration process, signals the strong link between Christianity and the European unity. Charta Œcumenica (2001), the common commitment of the various churches in Europe, speaks about our common responsibilities, among them the participation in the building of Europe (point 7): “The churches support an integration of the European continent. Without common values, unity cannot endure. We are convinced that the spiritual heritage of Christianity constitutes an empowering source of inspiration and enrichment for Europe.” It is also symbolic that both the Treaty of Rome (1957), establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), and the recently adopted European Constitution (2004), were both signed in the Eternal City. The lack of reference to Christianity in the constitution, on the other hand, is historical nonsense and dishonesty towards ourselves. Naturally, the ecumenical process is marked by ecusceptics and ecuphorics, just as in Europe we find eusceptics and euphorics alike. The economic and political interest of states to join the integration process

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same time ensuring the equal dignity of nations and regions. The relocation of some of the European institutions to Central European venues would be a powerful sign and symbol for the equal dignity of these values and concerns. As we see it, Central Europeans particularly can contribute to the idea of the unity of Europe in four main ways: first of all, with their own concerns, points of view, with their own insights, aspirations, visions and wisdom, including of course their knowledge, traditions, heritages and culture. Secondly, Central Europeans could contribute to the unity of Europe with their own unity within Central Europe. There is an ongoing dialogue among the countries between Germany and the former Soviet Union, in the heart of Europe, to rediscover their belonging together, and to develop their sense of common identity. Thirdly and very importantly, these new member states should constantly remind the other states, who actually started the process, that Europe does not end with Central Europe, and we are only half-way through as far as the number of member states and the geographical territory of Europe is concerned. Europe, as well as Christianity as a whole, should breathe fully with two lungs (again, or for the first time), with the spirit of the East and of the West, as Pope John Paul II constantly reminds us. Finally, as for the North–South divide within Europe, Central Europe is also in a strategic geopolitical and spiritual position. Here not only Orthodoxy meets Western Christianity, but also Protestantism meets Roman Catholicism. This is also the furthest North and West that the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire ever reached within the continent. This is what we were to emphasize here about the ecumenical movement (and, inside it, the Roman Catholic church), and the European integration (and, inside it, Central Europe); and how these two processes realise the idea of One and Unity.

EUROPE AND OTHER CONTINENTS Finally, let us end with another parallel between the ecumenical movement and the European integration process, as something which leads us further toward a unity of a greater scope and dimension. The two leading branches of theological dialogue nowadays are ecumenical dialogue for the visible unity of the Church; and interreligious (interfaith) dialogue for building peace, community and appreciation among people of various faiths, and for nourishing spiritual enrichment among them.

Theology and Liberation In this double attention we have a more defined, pointed and feasible aim on the one (ecumenical) hand; and a looser, more dispersed, more scattered and dreamt-about goal on the other (interreligious) hand. Similarly, already in 1950, in his first speech on the topic, Robert SCHUMAN, who was the minister of foreign affairs of France at that time, mentioned the responsibility of Europe towards other continents, especially Africa: “This production will be offered to the world as a whole without distinction or exception, with the aim of contributing to raising living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements. With increased resources Europe will be able to pursue the achievement of one of her essential tasks, namely, the development of the African continent.” The same responsibility, of course, goes for Latin America as well, with a growing urgency. This is how we build our common European house in the global village. Indeed, we always have to keep in mind that the integration of Europe and the visible unity of the Church are segments and instruments in working for the unity of the whole of humankind. Suggested Reading BOERMA Coenraad, The Poor Side of Europe. The Church and the (New) Poor of Western Europe. Genève, 1989. Conference of European Churches (CEC) – Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), Charta Œcumenica. Guidelines for the Growing Cooperation Among the Churches in Europe. Strasbourg, 2001. http://www.cec-kek.org/English/ChartafinE.htm. GURNEY Robin E. (ed.), Europe on the Move. Documentation from a Special Meeting of European Church Leaders. Genève, 1990. KOLONITS Veronika – NAGYPÁL Szabolcs, Survey on the Ecumenical Condition in Europe. Budapest, 2004. KOSHY Ninan, Churches in the World of Nations. International Politics and the Mission and Ministry of the Church. Genève, 1994. LAFONT Ghislain OSB, Histoire théologique de l’Église catholique. Itinéraire et formes de la théologie. Paris, 1994. NAGYPÁL Szabolcs, Ecumenical Dialogue as a Methodology for Central Europe. In NAGYPÁL Szabolcs – Peter _AJDA (eds.), A Pentatonic Landscape: Central Europe, Ecology, Ecumenism. Budapest, 2002. NAGYPÁL Szabolcs, “Your Faith has Made you Well: Go in Peace, and be Healed of your Trouble”: The Ecumenical Condition and Dialogue in Europe. In DEGIGLIO-BELLEMARE Mario – GARCÍA Gabriela Miranda (eds.), Talitha Cum! The Grace of Solidarity in a Globalized World. Genève, 2004. POBEE John S. (ed.), Construction of a Common European Home. A Report of a European Consultation. Genève, 1992. SCHUMAN Robert, Declaration of 9 May, 1950. http://www.robertschuman.org/robert-schuman/declaration2.htm. NAGYPÁL Szabolcs (1974) is a graduate in theology, law and literature. He is Roman Catholic, an ecumenical theologian in the Békés Gellért Ecumenical Institute (BGÖI) in Pannonhalma, Hungary. He is former chairperson of KÖD (Magyar SCM), former chairperson of the WSCF Central European Subregion (CESR) and former member of WSCF European Regional Committee (ERC) and global Executive Committee (ExCo). He co-edited the books: A Pentatonic Landscape: Central Europe, Ecology, Ecumenism (Budapest, 2002) and The River Book: Identity, Culture, Responsibility (Bial\ystok, 2003). He is the editor-in-chief of Mozaik and Student World.

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Ignacio T R U J I L L O M .

The Relationship between Economy and Theology in the Spirituality of Latin American Resistance To speak of Latin American spirituality starting from the relationship of the economy and theology is without a doubt one of the fundamental topics in the quest to understand social resistance as a hopeful element when the human being, oppressed and without many alternatives, is confronted with the reality of a hegemonic system where only the names of first-world countries have a place.

can know God because God wears overalls, a helmet, and gloves. This is our God: a God who liberates our nation. In our broken Latin America, the experience of knowing God is not static. God does not become a dogma; God transforms every day so that together we can look for freedom by means of liberation. To know God, to serve God, is to be an activist for the nation, for the people who have less; it is to build the Reign on Earth.

UNDERSTANDING LATIN AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY

BETWEEN IDOLS AND HERESIES

In this world reality, one registers badly the name of the “old continent”, Europe, and her aspirations of world conquest in a suicidal career for economic, political and commercial control of all those spaces, where the human being has a possibility to live and to find life; a career that will have the outcome of death and destruction for all alike. It is on the European continent that Christian thought takes on a social responsibility of commitment with the Reign, by means of organising social movements which tried in their moment to liberate the human being from systemic oppression. It is not our intention to make a journey through all the movements and expressions of resistance in Europe; for that, we will consider economic history and its theological implications. For the social movements of resistance in Latin America, it is important to know the history of liberation of Europe; and for this, it is necessary to recover their historical memory because in this way we will be able to motivate a joint fight, whose purpose is to transcend historically and to make a salvation history out of our history. Although most of our prominent Latin American theologians have been instructed in European universities, it is undeniable that the love and pain for their countries has been the fundamental element of the search for alternative freedom. It is in this love and pain for the neighbour that Latin American spirituality becomes — as Leonardo BOFF put it — “on the way to transformation,” entering into a dramatic and dangerous context, while at the same time hoping to encounter the humiliated and offended humanity which inhabits the South of the Planet” (BOFF, 2001, 13). It is not a coincidence that amid this spirituality on the way to transformation, there is a strong connotation of “resistance”, creating a Latin American spirituality of resistance. Resistance presents itself in the face of the mechanisms by which our countries are oppressed. Economy and theology are fundamental parts of the mechanism of oppression and at the same time of liberation, because it starts from these two realities that Latin American women and men find the greatest concerns, exploitations and hopes. Although theology has the purpose of propitiating a freedom encounter with God, it is equally the discipline that takes charge of the study of the revelation of God from experience and human transcendence and in creation. It is from theology that new spaces of liberation are built. It is the encounter with a God who walks next to our people, who soils Godself with mud while walking, who walks among the stones and suffers our afflictions. It is the vision of a God who incarnates Godself in our nation — not as an observer, but as an activist. Our nation

Everything that goes against total life, against the encounter with our neighbour and with the resurrected Jesus Christ, falls in the domain of idolatry and heresy. The market becomes (by means of the economy and theology of the market) a fight of gods and demons in which interest, wealth and subjection intervene. “Theology is reflection, in diversified levels of elaboration, about the gods (and demons) in whom human beings, in one way or another, believe, and with whom they presume to have different degrees of contact with history” (ASSMANN, 1997. 14). The argument, then, becomes implicated not only with theoretical economic postulates, but rather, it carries us to the field of economic processes. From this we make our hypothesis that ASSMANN establishes: “In economic theories, and in economic processes, one verifies a strange metamorphosis of the gods and a hardened fight among them. This suspicion, with all that it implies, should disturb the scientific mettles of any economist” (ASSMANN, 1997. 15). The metamorphosis that ASSMANN considers deals with the fight of gods and demons in the realm of society, not only on the subjective or metaphysical plane. The topic brings us to identify a “spirituality” of non-life, and the necessity of choosing the option for life. The economy has the capacity to remove life by means of its mechanisms. “Capitalism leans on a necrophilic spirituality and on an anti-life, which recognizes only the abstract person. The economy in general scarcely fulfils the analysis of the institutional mechanisms of the system” (ASSMANN, 1997. 17). Unfortunately, economic theory has been based on the exclusion of the poor and on the well-being of those who have power in our countries and at the global level. In this way, the economy as a critical tool is supported by a liberation theology that can rediscover the value of human life as a fundamental value in the experience of the peoples’ faith, and in their spirituality and resistance. “The constructive notion of theology reappears inside a binomial economy-theology, where it tries to relocate human life in the centre of economic logic, of which ‘effective economic rationality’ is the cloak and façade” (ASSMANN, 1997). Many people described the symptoms of the “illness of the capitalist economic system”: the poverty of the masses, the wealth of small groups, the exploitation of women and children. Some were betrayed, while others tried to explain the situation by appealing to divine laws: there will “always be poor among you” (Matthew 26,11). In this way, the study of the economy as an element of the social totality should be a fundamental task, with the purpose of offering alternatives that consider everyone because we are all inside the economic processes, in order to overcome an exclusionary system. The economy should analyse and offer alternatives consid-

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ering the whole society as well as its particulars. The economy is related on a day-to-day basis with theology. The economy has profound implications for the diverse perceptions of life and its practices. In relation to interpretations, “We suspect that the economy works many times with theological budgets” (ASSMANN, 1997. 1). This is a proper perception, since in history we can identify that theoretical economic formulations have not only ethical implications, but also theological ones. In the name of faith, economic theory can have a theological quality in its market rhetoric. Julio de SANTA ANA relates the theory of the market with theological perception when he affirms that “economic practice is a religion.”

A LATIN AMERICAN VISION ON EUROPEAN SPIRITUALITY In European history we can find characters (e.g. Isabel the Catholic, Martin LUTHER, Uldrych ZWINGLI, John CALVIN, Karl BARTH, Karl RAHNER, Dietrich BONHÖFFER, Jürgen MOLTMAN and Simone WEIL) who contributed with their actions and reflections to the resistance and creation of faith alternatives. The first volume of Karl MARX’s Das Kapital was published in 1867; the second and third volumes were published after his death, in 1883 and 1894. This work was based on Adam SMITH and David RICARDO, who formulated the labour theory of value, which affirms that products are exchanged as a function of the quantity of work incorporated into their production. MARX analysed all the effects that this theory implied, to which he added his theory of capital gains. He considered private property to be undesirable from a social point of view and considered it unfair for people to obtain rent for the mere fact of being property owners. He concluded with three statements: the return rate (the benefits) would tend to diminish over time; the working class would become poorer and poorer; and the economic cycles would be harsher and harsher. The last two statements would be the consequence of the first. The arguments put forth to defend the theory of diminishing return rates were not convincing, and because of that, neither of the other two statements were sustained. MARX tried to transform a scientific theory into a political programme of social transformation. Although in the Europe of the XIXth century, theology kept the Bible as the norm of faith and dogma as well as hermeneutics, it remained fundamental to the theological core that we should consider the relationship “I think” as the paradigm of conscience and the “I speak” as paradigm of communication. For Enrique DUSSEL, “MARX only knew the description privatising Christianity that had arrived to him through HEGEL. For MARX, in the political-economic reality of Europe, just as HEGEL and his generation interpreted it, Christianity was the only possible religion.” (DUSSEL, 1993, 251). Although MARX did not sympathise with religion, he identified with the theological task, since in the dichotomy of demon–capital he gave preference to the enormous opportunity to create theological thoughts with the purpose of freeing the working classes and the oppressed by means of a “theology of the daily life”. Starting from it, he criticised religion and expressed it metaphorically in Das Kapital. Of course, we are not presenting MARX as a theologian, because his theology was fragmentary and negative; it is fundamental, however, to recognise that he is anti-fetishist and for this he goes against the gods of the capitalism and from its perspective, of the Antichrist. It is in our theology of life, in our day-to-dayness, in our active commitment to the truth and the integrity of our actions, to denounce what is not, nor can ever be God.

Theology and Liberation

THE SPIRITUALITY OF RESISTANCE AS AN ALTERNATIVE I do not find a better way to go about concluding this article than José TAMAYO-ACOSTA’s words when he affirms: “The liberation theology of Latin America is entered as a speech not structured mimetically starting from the European, but processed from the Latin American reality, with some own signs of identity, with an actual methodology, and it would like to respond, from the faith interpreted through liberation, to the political, socio-economic, cultural and religious challenges of Latin America.” (ELLACURÍA, 1990, 51.). Our invitation is to create new theological horizons that are based in a theology of life, of liberation of the human being from the systems of oppression. In the North and South of the planet, we can create a transformation-in-progress of the theologies and economies of the destruction and dehumanisation of our society. Our yearning unites our efforts with those who do not navigate by the flag of religion, and we can find sisters and brothers in those who fight for holistic life. HEGEL said that there is no revolution without reformation, referring to the French Revolution but in a same way to the Protestant reformation. In HEGEL’s concept, reformation represented a revolt in heaven, which was manifested on Earth in the France of the XVIIIth century. HEGEL might be paraphrased in the inverse sense of the above sentence: There is no reformation without revolution, without our conception of the neighbour undergoing a metamorphosis; without our actions being directed by the common good rather than goods; without rich people being able to see poor people, not just poverty. I request the attitude of shaming us for not internalising this reality, for not constantly wondering: where will the poor sleep? I also request the necessary indignation in the face of the realities that I am called to look upon, I ask also to put my heart there — my passion — so that my wobbly and uncertain feet go towards them, to unite my hands to so many hands, my dreams to so many dreams. For that reason “opting” becomes the obstinate “option for the poorest, too.” Then I do not get tired of requesting consistency and fidelity with this project of the Reign of God. Latin America and Caribbean, in her history of slavery and oppression, is also a daughter of Africa, the unknown mother. So many histories of fights, so many other desirable possible worlds. It is not enough to know that it is there; it is necessary to undertake the road.

Suggested Reading ALVEZ Rubem, Cristianismo ¿opio o liberación? Salamanca, 1973. ARJONA Rubén, De la sumisión a la revolución. La influencia de Calvino en la Revolución Francesa. México, 2000. ASSMANN Hugo, Teología desde la praxis de la liberación. Salamanca, 1976. BOFF Leonardo, Espiritualidad. Santander, 2002. GUTIÉRREZ Gustavo, Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas. Salamanca, 1999. HINKELAMMERT Franz, Las armas ideológicas de la muerte. San José, 1977. HUNTINGTON Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, 1996. SANTA ANA Julio de, La práctica económica como religión: crítica teológica a la economía política. San José, 1991. SOBRINO Jon, El principio misericordia. El Salvador, 1992. TAMAYO-ACOSTA Juan-José, Para entender la teología de la liberación. Estella, 2000. Ignacio TRUJILLO M. is a graduate and M.A. in economics for the Escuela Superior de Economía in Mexico City, and graduate in theology and master’s student in theological sciences in the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in San José, Costa Rica. He is a member of the “For Equality” Student Christian Movement in Mexico. At the moment he is a professor and researcher in the field of economics and the theology in diverse university institutions and social organizations in Mexico City. His email address is itmnzlv@hotmail.com.

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Cristian B U C H I U

Colonialism and Disparities: The Birth of Liberation Theology Having preserved the class structure of the Spanish and Portuguese metropolis, South American societies never developed representative assemblies like their counterparts in the North, but maintained the hierarchical structures of power of the conquista even after the revolutions of the XIXth century. Indigenous people were forced into slavery even after conversion, and they endured hideous atrocities. The attempts of Roman Catholic leaders to salvage the Native Americans are usually known and the cases of Antonio DE MONTESTINOS and Bartolomé DE LAS CASAS are quoted to show the early Church efforts to consider the Amerindians as human beings. Economic growth combined with sharp class distinction and the patronatus system (the consequences of the latter meant that the State acted as a brake on the ability of the Church to change society) have always been among the important causes of a hugely unequal distribution of wealth in South America. On the other hand, societies may live well even with such discrepancies if the financially less well-off classes receive a fair amount of the wealth in order to cover, for example, basic cost of living and education expenses. This was not however the case in most of the South American countries at the beginning of the XXth century.

DOCTRINAL BIRTH The poverty of the lowest social classes was so striking that it permanently provoked strong reactions. Social movements and armed guerrillas agitating for revolutions flourished during the XXth century, greatly inspired by the practical achievements of communism in the Soviet Union (also by its financial support), and by the Marxist ideology highly esteemed in South America. The South American romantic momentum of social revolution is described by such successful leaders as the Cuban president Fidel CASTRO or idealised in popular heroes like Che GUEVARA or fr. Camillo TORRES, killed while fighting for changing their countries’ systems. Liberation theology was coined in such a context of poverty, social struggle and inequality, where quixotic outlaws exercised an enchanting romantic appeal. It may be that early liberation theologians felt they were fighting a romantic battle, but of course, other, less poetic, factors were also responsible for the development of the movement. Scholars like Arthur F. F. MCGOVERN take into account the significant changes in the Roman Catholic Church of Latin America began long before Vatican II, as concerns grew about the deficit of priests, the numerous conversions to Protestantism and the influence of Marxism. The shortage of priests led to a higher degree of involvement by laity in the Church life: “The training of lay coordinators, Cursillo retreats, Roman Catholic action groups modelled after the Young Christian Workers in Europe, the Better World movement brought over from Italy, and a plan for radio teaching of religion, all formed part of revitalized efforts to reach more of the faithful and to

involve them more actively. These efforts laid the groundwork for the ‘base communities’ that would become prominent in the years following.” The intellectual context for the development of liberation theology was basically described by the European theologians’ interests, synthesized by the BOFF brothers — “The integral humanism of Jacques MARITAIN and the social personalism of MOUNIER, the progressive evolutionism of Teilhard DE CHARDIN, Henri DE LUBAC’s reflections on the social dimensions of dogma, Yves CONGAR’s theology of the laity and the work of M.-D. CHENU and the Second Vatican Council.”

SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL The Second Vatican Council from 1962–1965 offered new ground for a more practical involvement in the world theology and directly supported the basic ideas of the latter liberation theology, especially the possibility of “transforming the world.” The encyclical Gaudium et Spes focused on the church dealing with the modern world, including social inequities. The discourse of the Roman Catholic Church was concentrated on social and political activism. The emphasis on social activism is the most important factor in the birth of South American liberation theology, together with the emphasis on laity involvement in the Church. The activism was founded on a series of developments of the Roman Catholic magisterium and a new reinterpretation of the biblical charity. In Mater et Magistra (1961), John XXIII expanded the traditional concern of the Church for the worker to include treatment of poor nations and uses for the first time the term development. John XXIII deals with the term in Pacem in Terris (1963) and inserts also a significant treatment of socio-economic rights (the right to food, employment, education and medical care). In Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio (1967), development is enriched with the term integral and the main focus is on trade relations between rich and poor nations, which are suspected of creating dependency and inequality. Extremely explicit, this political analysis by the papal office is a paramount detail that explains the background of liberation theology and the reasons why it did not develop in any fortuitous niche of Roman Catholic doctrine, but more par-

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ticularly in a context of intense discussion and research on the meaning of development, and generally in the context of defining a suitable social doctrine, relevant for contemporary capitalist societies. Paul E. SIGMUND was thus right to notice that “by the time of 1968 the issue of the moral validity of the economic and political system in Latin America was squarely before the Church. Marxist criticisms of capitalism and the ‘dependence’ of which the pope spoke were being analyzed by social scientists in Latin America. The question of the legitimacy of revolutionary violence, the abuses of capitalism, and the appropriate response to poverty and oppression had to be faced ...” The Vatican endorsed and condemned at the same time the revolution in Populorum Progressio: “We know, however, that a revolutionary uprising — save where is manifest longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country — produces new injustices, and brings on new disasters. A real evil should not be fought against at the cost of greater misery.”

HISTORICAL OUTLINE The precise and particular context of the birth of liberation theology was, according to SIGMUND, “1968 — the year of the Medellín Bishops conference — which was also the year of the Prague Spring, student quasi-revolutions in Paris and Mexico City, the siege of the Chicago Democratic Convention, the emergence of the New Left and Black Power movements, and takeovers of Columbia and other universities in the United States, Europe and Latin America.” Important factors catalysing the emergence of liberation theology were the main Christian social organizations appearing at the beginning of the sixties as precursors of the later socially-involved liberation movements we mentioned previously, mainly youth groups that promoted advancements of living conditions for the people: the Student Christian Movement, Young Christian Workers, Young Christian Agriculturalists or the Movement for Basic Education. All these groups of Christian affiliation were particular expressions of a need of the marginalized people and they came to fill up the theologically empty space of a church that was described emphatically by Gustavo GUTIERREZ: “The Latin American Church has lived and to a large extent continues to live as a ghetto church. Individual Christians, small communities and the Church as a whole are becoming more politically aware and are beginning to read politically the signs of the times in Latin America.” In fact, the birth of the South American liberation theology and the existence of these movements are highly interdependent. One cannot understand the development of one without the other. The organization of the first base community in Brazil occurred about 1963. The formation of the

Theology and Liberation aforementioned movements, broadly called Catholic Action, was inspired by Canon Joséph CARDIJN in Belgium. This boom of lay organizations would probably not have happened without national reorganizations of churches. One example for this is the formation in 1952, in Brazil, of the National Conference of Bishops. In the context of these movements, in which young theologians were coming of age, the main themes of later liberation theology were discussed for the first time. The terminology used in the Vatican magisterium’s documents was adopted, discussed, researched and given a practical shape by a generation already grown up in the enthusiasm of personal, practical involvement. This enthusiasm itself in turn fed on the obnoxious economic and social conditions of the time. It is to be noticed that the majority of the names involved with liberation theology were only reaching maturity in the 50’s and 60’s. This particular generation, which was experiencing the stagnation of their countries, was convinced that something new had to be started. This explains the initial lively interest in social involvement. Liberation theology was the problem of this particular generation of theologians, yet nowadays, especially with the fall of communism, it may be affirmed that it is fading along with its founders.

STAGES OF LIBERATION THEOLOGY The BOFFs talk about four stages in the history of liberation theology. The foundational stage is dominated by the Roman Catholics Gustavo GUTIERREZ and Juan Luis SEGUNDO, and by the Protestants Emilio CASTRO and José Miguez BONINO. Conferences and seminars, series of articles, reviews and journals describe broadly this stage. The main event of this stage was a somewhat pre-liberation theology meeting, the Medellín Conference of South American bishops in 1968. In preparation for this conference, GUTIERREZ “described theology as critical reflection on praxis” during one of the many preparatory meetings. These meetings, claim the BOFFs, “acted as laboratories for a theology worked out on the basis of pastoral concerns and committed Christian action.” One of these was a Swiss congress organized in Cartigny in 1969 under the title Toward a Theology of Liberation. The first Roman Catholic congresses on liberation theology were organized in Bogotá, Columbia, in 1970 and 1971. The building stage, described as “responding to the most urgent needs in the life of the Church: spirituality, Christology, and ecclesiology,” is actually a period of intense publishing on the topic, the bibliography growing rapidly in all South American countries and trying to cover the widest possible range of subjects. The settling-in stage involved the establishment of direct practical involvement: “More theologians became pastors, too; it became usual to see theologians taking part in involved epistemological discussions in learned congresses, then leaving go back to their bases among the people to become involved in matters of catechesis, trade union politics, and community organization.” The formalisation stage surrounds the attempt to find more “formal expression” to present in a significant way the “whole basis of revelation and tradition so as to bring out the social and liberating dimensions”. But one of the major achievements was the commencement in 1985 of the publication of a series of 55 volumes under the title Theology and Liberation.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY TODAY Liberation theology has lost the fervour of its beginnings and its early revolutionary zeal. It is also hard to assess what it has gained but the main emphasis moved from the

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Theology and Liberation traditional analysis of class struggle to a new sort of solidarity with the poor and oppressed. Liberation theology has reached a certain maturity. MCGOVERN affirms that liberation theology “has matured sufficiently to include greater internal self-criticism.” One of the most interesting changes is the shift in the usage of Marxism. Liberation theologians used elements of Marxist analysis, as it offered the best method of criticizing the capitalist system that was producing the dependency of South America — hence its poverty and economic problems. In liberation theology “praxis” means the actual living of Christian faith; “class struggle” implies the social realities of Latin America, not a programme of a revolutionary elimination of the ruling class; and when talking about the “poor”, theologians of liberation are thinking of landless peasants and those obstructed from real political and economical participation. But there is a repeated identification of capitalism as the source of Latin America’s problems. One positive factor is that liberation theology can still exert a radical “prophetic” role in reminding complacent elites of the religious obligation of social solidarity and in combating oppression and promoting the empowerment of the poor. SIGMUND notices that “it took the official Roman Catholic Church a century and a half to recognize that democracy and freedom were central elements in the Christian message. It has taken only two decades for it to relate that message to human liberation.” In order to better envision the future ideological perspec-

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tives and choices of liberation theology, in the conclusion of his book SIGMUND asks several poignant questions worth reproducing here: “Does theological reflection on the experience of the poor and oppressed always lead to the conclusion that capitalism must be replaced by a socialist system? What is the relation of the private property and liberation? How can human rights be best promoted in the modern state? What is the liberation theology’s attitude toward the redemocratization of Latin America? What is the ‘prophetic’ role of the theologian? If the cure for the weaknesses and failures of democracy is more democracy, should not the liberation theologians devote their primary energies to developing the spirituality of socially concerned democracy, whether capitalist or socialist in its economic form, rather than denouncing dependency, imperialism and capitalist exploitation?” Suggested Reading BONINO José Miguez, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation. Philadelphia, 1975. BOFF Leonardo and Clodovis, Introducing Liberation Theology. NY, 1987. GUTIERREZ Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation. NY, 1973. MCGOVERN Arthur F. F., Liberation Theology and Its Critics. NY, 1989. SEGUNDO Juan Luis, Liberación de la teología. Buenos Aires, 1975. SIGMUND Paul E., Liberation Theology at the Crossroads. NY, 1990. Cristian BUCHIU is an assistant professor at Hyperion Univ. - Bucharest, in history and religion. He holds a Master of Theology at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York & a Master in Political Sciences at the Univ. of Bucharest. He also has a B.A. in Orthodox Theology in Bucharest. His email address is cbuchiu@rdslink.ro.

Pablo R O M O C E D A N O

Liberation Theologies and Current Challenges We frequently have the idea that liberation theology is an ideology that rules thought within a generalised sector of the Christian Church in Latin America, and that is false. Liberation theology defines itself as one faith reflection starting from the liberation experience of the believers (Christian militants). That is, doing theology is a second act, the first being the Christian life that works for building God’s Reign. It fights for freedom, justice and truth.

NOSTALGIC? A LITTLE HISTORY It might seem that today it is not relevant to speak of a liberation theology, especially after the official sentences in the eighties, the changes in the world’s ideological signs, the rise of new actors, the manifest expansion of neoliberalism and the new global trends. It might eventually seem that this is not a fashionable subject — as if freedom is something fashionable. Apparently, speaking about liberation theologies today is like speaking of the glorious sixties, a nostalgic experience for some who have become conservative and wistful. Is this true? What happened with the liberation theologies? Where is the theological reflection today? Is this theological model still valid in a world transformed by the expansion of capitalism? Are the poor still a theological subject? Liberation theology was born as a concrete expression in the sixties and was systematised in its first moments both by Latin American and European theologians. Gustavo GUTIERREZ OP was the first to coin this expression as a theological model in the early seventies. Liberation theology initialised its first stages by recovering the experience of the Christians in Latin America involved in the various battles of social, political and economic change.

Liberation theology is the consequence, or better said, the fruit in Latin America of the Second Vatican Council for the Roman Catholics and of a theological update for Protestants who lived and suffered in the sixties. If the reflective ecclesiastic experience of this council affected the whole Roman Catholic Church, the manifestations would be very different in the various concrete realities of the world as a whole. In Europe, there have been reflections for many years upon the dissociation between “Christian life” and “life in the world”; hence there appeared theologies called in their times “theologies of the world’s realities” by Yves CONGAR OP. These theologies, the majority elaborated in France, were fundamentally optimistic, modern, liberal, and bound together with experiences of concrete Christian life in this world. We must remember both the experiences of worker priests and nuns and of priests and nuns in the universities. Alongside these theologies, there appeared other, more pessimistic ones like “the theology of the death of God.” There were in this period more rationalist theologies and the hermeneutical and historical criticism manifested itself. Those were the times, we must remember, of the great debates and sentences for Biblical interpretation with the tools of the semantics of that period, of linguistics and of the contributions of biblical theology (fundamentally Protestant). Such contributions, together with the Christian practice of many women and men in the social field, awakened an irrepressible desire to read the Bible “one more time”; to do proper and contextual readings. The concern of many Christians was the result of an intense search for alternatives, ways for the authentic life of faith. The great European wars ended and a lot of opportunities opened for the future.

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The Soviet Union took a completely different path from that of the United States, and Europe was divided. Many Christians in Europe honestly and freely tried to take the best road for all. These thoughts arrived second-hand in Latin America, while the basic emergency there was to survive and follow the road that could give life. The Second Vatican Council allowed many things that were previously censured. One could read the Bible with criticism suggested by science, and the liturgy pleaded for more participation and openness, becoming more accessible to the people. The centralized power was reformed and redefined according to “God’s People.” And one of the most important things was that with the constitution of Gaudium et Spes, doors opened for the participation of Christians in the realities of the world.

Then the following question was: how to be efficient here and now? Many Christian women and men took the revolutionary path and went to the mountains of Latin American countries; others decided on working in unions; others in politics, others in the media, others in the middle of base communities, others on the peripheries of the great cities. They fermented and grew in their spaces. These were the times for the great debates on means and purposes, on the validity of this or that alternative. There were also times of great repressions, the coup d’etat in the name of the “values of Christianity.” The disappeared ones were present in Christian communities that searched for the Resurrected. Theologians began their task of gathering the faith experiences of the first to give reason for their hope.

THE LONG MARCH

MARTYRS OF FAITH

Many Christian women and men, many pastors with their people, many people sometimes without their pastors, initiated a march — a quest. Their march was one of faith. They started by reading the Bible again, to understand what Jesus was saying today and now. And they discovered the power of God’s presence with His people. They discovered, as many Christian women and men in history, that God’s presence is always liberating. That God is a God for the living and that God joins God’s people in the liberation, as God did with Moses and the prophets. This “discovery” was not made by some great theologians behind their desk; it was made by the people in the middle of their reality, fundamentally characterised by pain, poverty, marginalisation, and the lack of access to goods that make fullness of life possible, as Saint John says. If the great theologians also “discovered” it, they did it with the people, for the people and within the people. The Gospel of St. Lucas, the “Good Samaritan” was read again and questions were made about the current meaning of the word compassion. Let us remember that these were the times of the Alliance for Progress, those developmental programmes of the Cold War. “Who is my fellow?” Christian women and men of those times asked themselves; and they answered fearlessly, the one who suffers “death before one’s time,” like Bartolomé DE LAS CASAS more than 450 years before. This transition is only made through the Christian practice of love from the mystical life: identifying Jesus with the Other woman or man who suffers and is persecuted. This was the transition of Saint Catherine of Siena when she saw Jesus in the prostitute or in the criminal sentenced to death.

During that period it was recognised that a theological work is one done by a militant of faith. Theology is not sociology of religion or a new science of secularised humanities; it is all about an act of faith. A second act, as I said at the beginning, was already defended in the late seventies by Latin American theologians, while the first act was represented by Christian life: the priority of practice over theory. Thoughts multiplied and diversified, faithful to their origins and scientific methods. Thus plurality developed; theology was defined not as unique and monolithic, but as something which materialises in concrete reality: it is historical and contextual. If we are faithful to their methodology, theologians never pretended that their reflection of faith was one and only one, and even less that it was constant and unchanging. Liberation theologies approached the subject from the point of view from which they analyzed the surrounding reality. First of all, Latin American theologies took as subjects the poor, “the ones for whom God acts in favour.” Afterwards there was great criticism from the point of view of the woman in search for including the excluded, i.e. the woman and the poor woman. Further came the Negro, the Indian (Native American) and the Chicano (MexicanAmerican).

HOW IS IT SEEN TODAY? The present interest in liberation theologies is an interest in all theology that speaks of God and gives a reason for hope. The question for the present interest is linked to the question for the need the Christian has plainly to explain to her- or himself and to others her or his faith and hope and the love she or he practices. Today as always, a theology talking about God, the real God, is a theology that liberates, a liberation theology that reclaims human beings, revealing as a reflection their own lives damaged by evil and inviting them to freedom. It invites them as persons and as a group: as people; and today more than ever, as people of peoples. Hence it is not the subject of one continent, of one certain period. Talking of God today means talking of the hope for freedom. The characteristics of these new liberation theologies are like the old ones: the discovery of the Bible’s novelty that invites to end slavery and seduces to realise efficient actions, in the historic context of the moment, by denouncing lies and presenting the ways to a full life.

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Theology and Liberation Thus, today liberation theologies are not exclusively of one geographic area, I insist; they are merely elaborated from the perspective of the forgotten of the Earth, are inclusive in gender (feminist); are macro-ecumenical; dignify; they are multiethnic and multicultural and fundamentally full of courage facing injustice and full of tenderness facing the creation of the human being.

THE CHALLENGES OF INSURGENT st THEOLOGIES IN THE XXI CENTURY The first challenge of insurgent theologies will be that of permanently identifying the true God from the other gods appearing on the market, or from the market itself — that is, taking into account the complex reality generated by globalisation, the enormous inequality and inequity. This means recovering what contextual theologies bring to us, understanding theology as a “second act,” the first one being “action,” “orthopractice.” The theologies of this emerging century will have to grant a privilege to charity — love — as the source of all faith reflection. Free, compassionate, charitable, unconditional love. Concrete and real love, also called charity. Not any kind of charity, but one which is qualified by efficiency in its doings, in its transforming the structures of lovelessness and sin, and not only to alleviate an occasional or exclusively personal necessity. This practice of “efficient love” will be the whole of subsequent reflections. This means selectivity, to be small, to be marginal, and frequently this practice implies not being “socially correct”. This involves a pre-understanding of partiality. The second is closely tied to the first: that is, assuming a clear and public option for those excluded from this global market designed by current financial institutions and the entire chorus surrounding them. That is, for the great impoverished majorities, for the immigrants who abandon everything while trying to survive, the Indians enduring poverty, the marginalised and excluded homosexuals, the individuals with different abilities driven away and the poor children and youth. I think that the challenges of theologies reside in understanding how to give life and how to accompany life from the point of view of the poor and the excluded, from the point of view of those who do not have their future in their own hands. This is not about the fact that theology designs a new economic alternative and valid pattern. This is not the problem of theology. But its concern is animating this possibility. This is not about creating a new ideology, but about jointly reflecting in a community of faith, with whom they do not believe but fight for freedom; and about making protagonists of the irrelevant ones and empowering them. When Fray BETTO mocks the market and places it as the current god in its tremendous immanence, he is repeating the joke made by psalmists and prophets against the Golden Ram and the gods of the neighbouring empires in the Old Testament. He is merely distinguishing between idolatry and adoration of the God of Life. Humour is a powerful weapon. Dignity is an indestructible weapon.

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This theological work repeats time and again along the history of Christianity: denouncing idolatry is now the charge of the Christian and therefore of the theologian. Exposing the god who requires human sacrifices — blood, pain, passion, death — in order to be able to live and rule. Bartolomé DE LAS CASAS, before the invasion of Our America, did the same thing; it is what Martin LUTHER did in front of the traffic of Grace; it is what ROMERO did in relation to the unjust war developed in El Salvador. Arundhati ROY, from the Hindu tradition, with the finest intuition says that in order to end with the Empire one must surround it, one must mock it and expose it. That is, one must keep a distance and laughter is the answer: we must tell stories, says she, “depriving it of oxygen. Making it ashamed, mocking at it. With pure art, music, literature, stupidity, joy, brightness, our pure persistence – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from those they want us to create.”

LEARNING TO LIVE TOGETHER Learning to live pluralistically is learning to live together: as Felicisimo MARTINEZ said, no theology owns the entire face of Jesus Christ. The whole of the Christian mystery is yet to be discovered. For Christians to live together, we have to own a deep spiritual serenity more necessary today than ever. Spirituality grounded in affective and effective congruity. This kind of living together will be seen more frequently in other religions and not only within Christianity. The ecumenical movement within Christianity initiated in the past century will continue as something natural and obvious. Today’s challenge for all us resides in joining the orthopraxis with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Taoists. It also means weaving possible channels with the most ample doctrinal reflection (Paul KNITTER). Thus theologies will carry out the humble function of articulating the human desire of meeting the God of life and fulfilling God’s will. Pablo ROMO CEDANO participated, with Bishop Don Samuel RUIZ, in the mediation team in the war between the Zapatistas movement and the federal government of Mexico (1994–1998). He was the director of the diocesan human rights centre in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas (1993–1997); and later director of the Dominicans for Justice and Peace organization, based in Genève, Switzerland (1999–2002). Now he is part of the SERAPAZ, a peace organization in México. His email address is pabloromo@hotmail.com.

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Theology and Liberation

Malena B J Ö R K G R E N

Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology: Similarities and Differences In this article I will examine the relationship between liberation theology and feminist theology. What is the impact of liberation theology on feminist theology? Which similarities and differences can be found between these theologies? The aim is not to make an extensive analysis over their relationship, but to sketch an introduction or a short overview.

Feminist theology can be seen both as a part of academic women’s studies (when feminist analysis focuses on religious studies) and as a part of the liberation theology paradigm (if we have a wider definition of liberation theology). Some feminist theologians explicitly define themselves as feminist liberation theologians: Rosemary Radford RUETHER and Elisabeth SCHÜSSLER FIORENZA especially, among others.

NOT ONE THEOLOGY, BUT THEOLOGIES

CONTEXT, PRAXIS AND EXPERIENCE

It is possible to define liberation theology either in a narrow or in a broader way. Seen in a narrow way, liberation theology can be described as a theological approach that arose in the sixties in Latin America. In a broader meaning of the concept, it stands for a wide range of different liberation theologies (for example black theology and Asian liberation theology). Using this latter understanding of the concept, also feminist theology can be seen as one of the forms of liberation theology. The different liberation theologies were born more or less at the same time, but not all of them were “derived” from Latin American liberation theology. Having all this in mind, it is today more appropriate to speak of liberation theologies, in plural. Feminist theology can neither be seen as one homogenous discipline nor one unified movement of thought. The views differ, for example concerning the relationship to Christian tradition. A watershed can sometimes be seen in the question of whether the inferiority of women (and other oppressed groups) is understood as an essential part of Christian tradition, or if the tradition in an unconditional way can support equality among all human beings. On the other hand, feminist theology has more and more become a worldwide, global ecumenical movement. The challenges lie in the different perspectives that spring from the range of cultural and social contexts and religious backgrounds.

One can find many methodological commonalities between the different liberation theologies. For liberation theologians, the inseparability of theory and praxis is of a great importance. Feminist theology that is close to the women’s movement exemplifies this connection. In Europe, however, there is not necessarily a connection between academic feminist theology and feminist activists in and outside the Church. This inseparability of theory and praxis appears as liberation theology and feminist theology have as their intellectual foundation the strong reference to praxis, even though they call it differently. Liberation theology speaks more about praxis, while feminist theology talks about experience. Some call both approaches contextual. The aim for feminist theology, however, is not just to reflect on praxis, but to seek actively to be a form of praxis, thus shaping genuine Christian activity. This emphasis on context involves the view that there is no objective theology. Every theology is shaped by its context (also European theology, even if sometimes it has claimed to be objective and universal) and not without linkages to social or cultural use of power. Taking context as the starting point has for liberation and feminist theology meant looking at theology from the “margins”, from the situations of poor human beings, from different women’s situations.

MULTIPLICITY OF OPPRESSION For liberation theology, the poor people’s situation is not due only to one type of oppression. Instead, there is an interrelatedness of different structures of oppression (political, social, economic, racial and sexual). Latin American liberation theology has mainly been created from men’s perspectives (almost all of its well-known theologians are men). Feminist liberation theology has criticised it for not including a gender perspective, for not seeing that it is often the poor women who are the most oppressed ones. Often it has just remained a question of merely formal

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inclusion or of “adding women”, instead of enlarging the understanding of the subjects of the poor. Another tendency among male liberation theologians has been a failure to see sexism (and heterosexism) as fundamental political and theological issues. This situation is now changing, not so much because of revision on the side of liberation theologians, but more because of the amount of feminist theologians writing within the field of liberation theology. A similar problem subsists inside feminist theology: feminism cannot just fight sexism. Instead, it must be a struggle against racism, classism, colonialism and militarism as structures of women’s exploitation and oppression. It cannot just be preoccupied with gender-dualism. Feminist voices are arguing that patriarchy must be understood as a historical political system of dominations that intertwine — only when taking this perspective can it be changed. Most of the Latin American feminist liberation theologians and the black and Hispanic women theologians take this view as their starting point. Feminist liberation theology highlights the fact that it is possible to be both oppressed and oppressor simultaneously. This has been the starting point for their critique of male liberation theologians as well as for their self-critical attitude to their own generalizations of women’s experience. Also, here is the question of the interlocking of oppression.

EXPERIENCE AS NORM? When theology (as in the case of liberation theologies) is understood as a critical reflection of praxis, women’s historical, concrete and bodily experiences, especially those of oppression and suffering, become the centre of theology. Even if experience or praxis constitutes the norm of theology, it is not the same as reducing theology to experience or praxis. Experience is understood as a tool for critique and reconstruction of reality. Within feminism, critique has nevertheless been directed

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against placing women’s experiences as a norm that could give more complete and less distorted knowledge than men’s experiences. Why would women or the poor have a “truer” understanding of reality and of theology? These feminists want to remind that experiences do not say anything about what women are but only about how they are treated. In fact, experience is not anything unique to feminist theology, as all theological reflection has its foundation in experience: what have been called objective sources of theology — Scripture and tradition — are themselves collected human experience. What is new about feminist theology’s use of experience is its use of women’s experiences, which have been almost entirely neglected in theological reflection in the past. It is also important to note that as much as there is no one liberation or feminist theology, there is not one experience in singular, but many experiences.

COMPARISON IN SIX SUBSTANTIAL QUESTIONS Bible: The role of the Bible is quite different when one compares liberation theology with feminist theology. It is often less complicated for Latin American liberation theologians to lean on the Bible than for feminist theologians to do so. The “theology of poverty” of Latin American liberation theology has a strong Biblical basis, while it is much more difficult to create a theology in favour of women’s liberation based on Biblical texts. Language: Feminist theologians have pointed out that the language in Latin American liberation theology remains in a way sexist and exclusive (for example when it comes to the image of God). Ethics: The ethics in Latin American liberation theology have mostly dealt with political and economic ethics and, for example, lacked the proper treatment of sexual ethics and morality.

S E I T I V I T C A

WSCF Europe Activities in 2005 7–10 January 2005 Respecting Human Dignity and Integrity Consultation in View of Conference

19–22 February 2005 Equality of Chances CESR Winter Seminar

Vilnius, Lithuania

Trencˇin, Slovakia

19–21 January 2005 WSCF Staff Meeting

14–20 April 2005 Respecting Human Dignity and Integrity WSCF Europe Conference

Genève, Switzerland

23–25 January 2005 Ecumenical Pre-World Social Forum Youth Meeting Porto Alegre, Brazil

8–9 February 2005 Higher Education in Europe Consultation in View of the ERA London, United Kingdom

9–16 February 2005 European Regional Committee Meeting London, United Kingdom

February 2005 Images of God Nordic Winter Meeting

Vilnius, Lithuania

April 2004 TEAMS (Through Ecumenical Action More Sharing) Consortium Workshop Stuttgart, Germany

12–18 July 2005 Christians in Civil Society CESR Summer Seminar Czech Republic

June to September 2005 Lingua Franca Summer Courses

Various Locations in Central and Eastern Europe

August 2005 Nordic Summer Meeting

Venue and program to be defined

July 2005 Agape Theological Camp

Agape Ecumenical Centre, Prali, Italy

August 2005 Agape Political Camp

Agape Ecumenical Centre, Prali, Italy

July 2005 International Ecumenical Student Meeting ESG (German SCM) with WSCF Europe Germany

21–28 September 2005 Higher Education in Europe: Universities as Service Stations or Laboratories of Universal Questions? European Regional Assembly (ERA) Feketic´, Serbia and Montenegro

Hagtun, Norway

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Compared to Latin American liberation theologians, many feminist theologians talk about oppression on a more individual level, as an intimate personal kind, in the area of sexuality, for instance. The individual and her or his experiences, including emotions and personal relationships, are more accentuated in feminist theology. Latin American liberation theology tends to value “collectivism”, a collective subjectivity. Christian Tradition: Like other liberation theologies, feminist theology has both its critical, deconstructive aspect in relation to tradition, and a constructive aspect that aims at creating a more inclusive, non-sexist theological discourse and practise. The relation of feminist theologians to religious institutions and traditions is much more complex than that of most liberation theologians. The reason for this is that women as a group have been excluded from the most valued positions, especially from ordination. Liberation and Evil: Both Latin American liberation theology and feminist theology understand liberation as something that can happen here and now, not anything that awaits humanity only in a life after death. This understanding is probably connected to how these theologies relate to evil in the world. Evil is understood as something socially constructed, which means that evil also can be deconstructed in this life. Grassroots Groups: Liberation theology has emphasized

the base community as a worshipping group. This has also had an impact on feminist theology and enabled the growth of woman-churches and groups of justice-seeking friends.

CHALLENGES The challenges for the future are to engage in serious dialogue between different liberation theologies and First World and Third World feminist theologies. This has been done only to a small extent. Another challenge concerns the problems with the concept of experience mentioned above. In order to avoid the risk of becoming dogmatical or uncritical, both liberation theology and feminist theology need to develop a theoretical reflection concerning their claims of truth. Suggested Reading ISHERWOOD Lisa, Liberation. In ISHERWOOD Lisa – MCEWAN Dorothea (eds.), An A to Z of Feminist Theology. Sheffield, 1996. VUOLA Elina, Limits of Liberation. Praxis as Method in Latin American Liberation Theology and Feminist Theology. Helsinki, 1997. VUOLA Elina, Köyhien Jumala. Johdatus vapautuksen teologiaan. Helsinki, 1991. WELCH Sharon, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity. A Feminist Theology of Liberation. New York, 1985. Malena BJÖRKGREN is Evangelical-Lutheran, a theologian from Finland. She is a member of the board of the Nordic Co-operation Council (NSR) of Student Christian Movements (WSCF Nordic Subregion). Currently she is writing her Ph.D. on violence against women. Her email address is malbjork@abo.fi.

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