Abstract
Through a detailed account of one of the many tragic events that occurred during Argentina’s Dirty War, Gustavo Morello analyzes the heterogeneous relationships that the Catholic Church maintained with the military and the state. His research breaks away from monolithic views of institutional politics, in general, and the long-held vision of Argentina’s union of church, state, and the military, in particular. The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War fits within a new phase of collective memory and historical studies about abusive regimes and civil wars in Latin America—a phase that provides a much more complex understanding of their nuances and contradictions, leaving dualism behind (Villalón 2015).
Morello successfully presents the church with its own internal conflicts and different political positions as well as the ways its members expressed dissent within and beyond the religious institution. His research also confirms the increased politicization lived in those years in Argentina and the region and the heights that ideological conflict reached. In a polarized context, no gesture went unnoticed; and every action could have a definitive, life-and-death effect.
One could argue that the book has two types of sociological labor: a thorough historical narrative at the micro level and a political/institutional analysis at the macro level. These two are tied together through Morello’s main premise: by understanding what occurred exactly to the five seminarians of the La Salette congregation, a more accurate analysis of how the institution of the church worked during the military regime can be developed. The fate of the five seminarians, central to the book, illustrates that the church had three distinct political positions toward the rule of the military and its abusive practices. While much has been learned about the extreme ways the military forces violated human rights (through the infamous kidnapping, torturing and disappearances of any person considered to be subversive), Morello’s research documents another aspect of the story. His study deconstructs the church as an institution by showing its political and ideological cleavages, the heterogeneity of its members, and the significance of their doings at various levels of authority. Morello weaves thick archival data, field notes, and interview quotes with sociopolitical and institutional analysis skillfully.
Readers are presented with a step-by-step account of what happened to this group of seminarians as they were kidnapped, tortured, and, later, released as a result of the ceaseless activism of some of their religious sisters and brothers. Also, the author provides information about these seminarians’ beliefs and the structure of their particular congregations in the local, national, and international realms. The richness of the case is contextualized historically—so those who are not familiar with Argentina’s past can at least have a sense of where and why these seminarians’ lives were put at risk—and religiously, mostly regarding the role that Liberation Theology played in the region during the Cold War. Finally, readers are left with an analysis of the church as a heterogeneous institution and of how the three factions (conceptualized by Morello as Antisecular Catholicism, Institutional Catholicism, and Committed Catholicism) interacted with institutional members of the church in Argentina and abroad, believers, citizens, social movements, political parties, the military, and the state.
The main strength of Morello’s book is the meticulous documentation he provides. His research brings light to a series of events that had been buried and misunderstood. On a second plane is his argument about a divided, heterogeneous church. The three-pronged typology he offers is solid, but it could have been demonstrated better if he had contextualized his analysis more broadly or complemented his data with other cases or studies. In other words, the jump between the detailed account of the fate of the five seminarians and the macro-analysis of the church as a whole was not always performed successfully. Another aspect that could have been worked through better is the historical contextualization of the Argentinean case. Readers without any prior knowledge can be left with too limited a view. Along with the lack of references and ties to other literature on the topic (for example, to the vast bibliography on collective memory and human rights movements in Latin America), the book falls short in directing readers to historical literature that would allow them to reach a better understanding of the case in point.
One last observation about the book’s shortcomings is the one I believe to be the most problematic: Morello’s efforts in redeeming the fate of the seminarians and subsequently the church itself (as an institution that should not be demonized as a supporter of the military but understood as a heterogeneous body where anti-military/pro-human rights activists not only existed but suffered violence) hinder his analysis. For example, throughout the book, the author criticizes the church for not taking quick action to liberate the seminarians who had been wrongly imprisoned. Of course, this criticism is logical and commendable. However, his focus on the fate of the seminarians prevents him from questioning the broader picture—the one that has puzzled Argentineans in general and human rights activists in particular for quite a long time—that is, the church’s passive or ambiguous attitude about violence being perpetrated (illegally and indiscriminately) against all people by military, paramilitary, and other armed groups.
Morello’s analysis of the three factions of the church still helps readers understand why the church did not react in a unified way against the widespread systematic abuse of human rights that was occurring in Argentina. However, his emphasis on the seminarians and the attitude of the church toward their own institutional representatives ends up reproducing a hierarchy that puts religious people over non-religious people, believers over non-believers. This was probably an unintended consequence of what we can call “case over-focus,” which reminds researchers of an old lesson: too much focus on the tree prevents us from seeing the forest. Books like Morello’s, with all of its strengths and limitations, are invaluable contributions furthering our understanding of how injustices have been perpetrated and how people’s individual and collective agency to navigate and challenge institutional structures and relations of power continues to be the key to provoke social change.