From Sucre to Santo Domingo (1972-1992)

The Event of Sucre (1972)

CELAM organizes approximately every two years a General Assembly, while during the last Vatican Council, this body met yearly. This year’s meeting took place in Sucre, Bolivia, for the XIV Assembly. At the 1971 Synod of Rome, the Latin American bishops led a growing presence of Christian leaders from the Third World. The Argentine Monsignor Eduardo Pironio, the then General Secretary of CELAM, spoke of the process of Latin American liberation.

The African bishops expressed the need to “Africanize” the Church, while Asian bishops equally showed the importance of ecclesial renewal in their region. It seemed the Church was growing in its awareness of a more plural stance of Christianity in the world. Certain groups within the Vatican, especially those under the leadership of Monsignor Sebastiano Baggio in the Dicastery of Bishops, saw this decentralization as a threat.

These conservative groups began a process of reorganizing themselves within the Vatican, since they had been displaced from the beginning of the process of aggiornamiento at the Second Vatican Council. In 1971, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace moved from a progressive orientation towards a conservative one. Rome slowly was returning to the conservative spirit previous to the Council. Thus, CELAM would find itself returning to more traditional streams of thought.

From the various Apostolic nunciature across Latin America, groups prepared for Assembly at Sucre. We could call this meeting at the Sucre, a sort of "coup d'état" in the vision of CELAM. The first move was to take over CELAMs leadership, advancing Mons. Alfonso López Trujillo who had been named Auxiliary Bishop of Bogotá to become Executive Secretary of CELAM. López Trujillo had been empowered by the conservative, Father Roger Vekemans, who had left Chile after the triumph of Salvador Allende and Unidad Popular. López Trujillo, on November 23, 1972, would become the President of CELAM and hold that position for many years, until 1992. An influential cardinal in Rome, López Trujillo was a well-liked member of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which little by little was growing in hold over CELAM, as we shall see. In Sucre, thus, the Latin American Church was beginning to change course on an international institutional level, from a vision of renewal to one that was more conservative and institutional. At this time, the Instituto Itinerante de Pastoral de América Latina (IPLA) led by Ecuadorian Monsignor Leonidas Proaño was shut down. The IPLA had profoundly impacted the continent in its efforts to promote the renewal of the Church since the Second Vatican Council. While the remaining institutes were moved to Medellín, under the watchful eye of López Trujillo, the classes for theological renewal for bishops were suspended, courses which had been a great success in Medellín and Antigua, Guatemala, under the leadership of Edgar Beltrán and the Pastoral Department, whose president was Monsignor Leonidas Proaño.

The courses for bishops in Antigua had been organized by Monsignor Oscar Romero, secretary of the Bishops of Central America (SEDAC). Subsequently, however, liberation theologians were expelled from the different bodies in CELAM (the institutes, departments, commissions, etc.), thus beginning the "witch hunt" that would not stop for two decades.

The Regimes of National Security (From 1964)

The changes within CELAM were made possible by a continental context that had equally changed politically. It was the beginning of a dark period of Latin American history, known as the era of the “Regimes of National Security.” Latin American Military leadership had been trained in Military Schools in the United States, especially those schools dedicated to “intelligence,” geopolitics, and the ideological formation of armies. Such is the case of Roberto Marcelo Levingston from Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, who spoke of the necessity to guarantee national security in fighting against the enemies of sovereignty: Communists, leftists, popular movements, etc. Such enemies were not foreign aggressors, but rather they were found among the people, inside their national borders. As Monsignor Cândido Padim of Brazil was the first to show the similarities between this military ideology and the doctrines supported by the Nazi party, Brazil was the first country to suffer its consequences. The military coup of 1964 was mobilized equally against people's movements and against the Church.

In 1968, the Institutional Act Number Five initiated repression and torture in Brazil. ³ On February 27 1969, the Catholic priest Antonio Pereira Neto was martyred. Pereira Neto had been the secretary to Monsignor Hélder Câmara and adviser to the Juventud Estudiantil Católica (JEC). ⁴ The JEC body would play an essential role in the renewal of the Church, the same which can be said of the Juventude Universitária Católica (JUC). ⁵ The period of military repression would begin with the military coups of Hugo Banzer over President Juan José Torres in Bolivia (1972), the dissolution of Congress in Uruguay in 1973, and the haunting military repression in Chile. Beginning with the murder of President Salvador Allende on September 11 of 1973, the military repression heralded the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The operation was carefully planned by the American Department of State, under the leadership of Henry Kissinger. The following years would give witness to a right-wing revival in the Peruvian government and the military coup d'état in Argentina led by Jorge Videla in March of 1976. These events would unleash a period of terror, torture, and repression across the continent.

While Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Venezuela, and Columbia would see a democratic face in politics, all other governments in Latin America would fall into the hands of military dictatorships ensuring “National Security.” Such regimes would be put into power and supported by the United States, coordinated by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency. The viability of "peripheral capitalism," by way of weak quasi-democratic governments seeking to develop their economies in 1960, was now made impossible due to these military dictatorships. With people’s movements inhibited by these “strong” governments, transnational corporations were able to install themselves and ensure unmeasured accumulation in the hands of the national bourgeoisie.

The military through their power “from above”, cleared the path for the establishment and expansion of a new economic project: the transnationalization of North America, European, and Japanese capital in Latin America. In this stage, massive loans gave the impression of economic advancements (such as the “Brazilian miracle”). However, these loans, which came due with heavy interest, would produce an economic phenomenon that would end in the crisis of military governments in the 1980s. Weakened by immense foreign debt and systematic economic impoverishment, these dictatorships subsequently gave way to a new democratic phase in 1984. These economic factors will later open the doors for formal democracies that attempted to find economical solutions for a long-suffering people.

The “Dark Night” of Politics and Martyrs

The Church, during its populist stage (from the 1930s), had slowly begun to make itself more present in the heart of the people before the failure of developmentalism (approximately 1955-1965). Against the developmentalist philosophy were the critiques of the youth movements, priests, and conscientious Christians.

For the first time in its history (if we exclude the events in the wars of independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century), the Church suffered persecution under the governmental rule. Under the guise of national security, military governments confronted the prophetic church as its enemy, inaugurating a period in the history of the Church in Latin America comparable to the glory of the early church under persecution by the Roman Empire. Thus, the Church in Latin America living in the same “Spirit.” Thousands of lay Catholics and Protestants, hundreds of priests, religious orders, and dozens of bishops were persecuted, tortured, and martyred – believers murdered because of their commitment to the poor. It is a significant martyrology that we must keep alive the memory. José Marins has written multiple books remembering many of these saints. ⁶

Let us be reminded of a few of them.

Brazil was the first country where the dictatorship was linked to transnational interests and Pentagon support. There began a “dirty war,” where we can highlight the torture and jails of São Paulo, where for four and a half years beginning in 1968, the Dominicans Tito de Alencar and Frei Betto were held and tortured. Betto wrote Letters from Prison, which is a precious volume documenting his suffering and indescribable passion; a text that reminds us of letters written by Christians martyred in the first century.

Father Rodolfo Lunkenheim was martyred on July 15, 1976. A few months later, Father João Bosco Penido was murdered on October 11, 1976. Bosco Penido, alongside Monsignor Pedro Casaldáliga, was to testify for two women the army had tortured. Father Ezequiel Ramin gave his life to those without land on July 24, 1985, and in a similar fight for the landless, Father Josimo Morais Tavares was killed on May 10, 1987. It would be too long to cite all those in the Ecclesial Base Communities (EBC) and Christians committed to the plight of the poor who were martyred in these years. It is not an exaggeration to state that in Latin America, more have died as martyrs in total numbers than Christians killed during the first three centuries of the church under the Roman Empire. Consider the parish of Aguilares in El Salvador led by Rutilio Grande (himself martyred on March 12, 1977), where paramilitary and military groups killed more than 260 committed Christians.

Father Alfonso Navarro was martyred in the bloodied nation of El Salvador on May 11, 1977. On March 24, 1980, Monsignor Oscar Romero was martyred, a death symbolizing the Latin American Christian twentieth century. In May that year, over 600 campesinos would be murdered next to the Sumpul River. In the region of Olancho, Honduras, Father Ivan Betancourt and Casimiro Zephyr were martyred on June 25, 1975. In Guatemala, so many have been martyred since 1954 that it is impossible to count. Among the dead was Father Augusto Ramírez, who died on November 7, 1983, and the martyrs of El Petén at the hands of an incredibly bloody and unjust military. In Panama, 1971 is an essential year in the Church's history, marking the disappearance of Héctor Gallego on the isthmus. In South America, Father Carlos Mugica, one of the many saints from this period, was murdered on May 11, 1974, at the door of his little parish in a marginal barrio of Buenos Aires at the hands of the AAA. ⁷ On August 4, 1976, the Bishop of La Rioja, Monsignor Enrique Angelelli, was also martyred. He was killed by military assassins who bashed his head onto the pavement. Angelleli was returning from confirming the murder of two other priests who were committed to fighting for the justice of the poor in Argentina.

The martyrdom of Monsignor Carlos Ponce de León, the Bishop of San Nicolás de los Arroyos, has been confirmed as being murdered on July 11, 1977. The episcopate and Nuncio Monsignor Pio Laghi knew of the deeds and did little to nothing about it. In an infamous pastoral announcement, certain Bishops of Argentina spoke of particular conditions in which there there could be a legitimate repression at the hands of the government.

However, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel have been the clear Christian witnesses against the bishops' opinion. Meanwhile, in Chile, the Church became the Vicariate of Solidarity, becoming the principal institution in defense of human rights, especially during the time of Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez. In Bolivia, we cannot forget the martyrdom of Father Mauricio Lefevre on October 23, 1971, and Father Espinal on April 12, 1980. In Columbia, the Indigenous priest of the Páez people, Álvaro Ulcué Chocué, was martyred while defending his fellow Indigenous brothers from colonizers on November 10, 1984.

This story of the Church's glory in martyrdom casts a long shadow on Latin America, ending with the martyrdom of the theologian and philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría and his five Jesuist brothers, a cook, and her daughter. They were murdered on November 16, 1989, merely seven days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While in the global north, Eastern Europe was being liberated, Panama was being invaded in the South and leaders of people's movement were being murdered.

The Church of the Poor and “Ecclesial Base Communities” (EBC)

Amidst this horror, persecution, and martyrdom, a new experience would emerge from among the people without any previous planning or any a priori pastoral project: a new experience that Pope John XIII prophetically called the “Church of the Poor.” Since the military persecuted Catholic Action and other official Brazilian church groups, Christians were forced to meet in a simple and semi-hidden fashion in homes. ⁸ Moviemiento De Educacion de Base (MEB) arose in the northeast of Brazil, where Paulo Freire would practice his pedagogy of the oppressed by highlighting that attention needed to be given to people and the poor. ⁹ Gathering to discuss simple Biblical texts, preferably from the Gospel, small communities proliferated and grew across Brazil. It was a way of hiding oneself and a way to resist against the repressive military state. As the Methodist theologian José Míguez Bonino stated, the EBC were a way to practice being the people. Those who were repressed, isolated, and tortured by the state could meet around the Word of God, putting into practice the method developed by Young Christian Workers (YCW): "See-Judge-Act." This method consisted in seeing daily life, judging it in light of the Biblical text, and acting accordingly. This review of daily life fed the praxis of people experiencing poverty.

Thus, in this manner, a new way of being the Church was born (not another Church nor a parallel Church), that would renew it in total. This way of being the Church would challenge the institutional Church, even the institutions of the Vatican, demanding a renewal based on the Gospels. In light of this new praxis, thousands of Ecclesial Base Communities were born. There would be over one hundred thousand of these communities in Brazil alone. In 1973, the Bishops of Northeastern Brazil brought to light a pastoral letter titled, I have heard the cry of my people. A clear, conscious, and foundational text to establish the Church of the Poor. The letter stated that it was the Church's responsibility to choose the oppressed, displaced, and marginalized peoples. The “option for the poor” became a watershed moment that would divide and judge the different visions of the Church. Let us be reminded of a few national and international meetings of these Ecclesial Base Communities, which, as true councils, must not be forgotten from the pages of history. In July 1975, the first of these meetings occurred in Vitoria, Brazil, in the dioceses of Monsignor Luis Fernández, where eighty representatives met under the theme, “The Church is Born of the People by the Work of the Holy Spirit.”

The second meeting would occur in the same place in July of 1976 and then in João Pessoa (Paraiba) in 1978. The fourth meeting was in Itaici in April of 1981, with over 300 participants from eighteen states and seventy-one dioceses. The sixth meeting took place in July of 1986 in Goiânia with 1,500 participants, 50 bishops, 204 dioceses, and representatives from all Latin American countries (except Paraguay, Honduras, and Belize), under the conference theme: “The People of God in Search of the Promised Land.” In 1989, 19 countries, 225 dioceses, and 30 indigenous representatives participated under the theme, “The EBCs are the Church, Not Merely an Ecclesial Movement.” The ecclesial base communities movement had increased in participation in Mexico. In 1986, 6,000 participated in a meeting in Oaxaca. In 1989, 15 Mexican Bishops were present at the XIII Conference and III Latin American Meeting. At the I Conference of Andean Ecclesial Base communities, which took place in Bolivia in October of 1986, 11 countries represented 250 participants under the theme, “In an Unjust World, the Church is Born of the Spirit That Builds the Kingdom of God.” These Communities are an expression of the tradition in the church that revolves around the direct reading of the Scriptures from the place of the people. They have in their practices the same tradition as that of Jesus, who read directly from the Hebrew Bible. These Communities, as the heart of the “Church of the Poor,” are the church anchored in the history of Latin America. The Church of the Poor is at its core the renewal and most vital aspect of the Catholic Church, including that of the magisterium. When Monsignor Leonidas Proaño died on August 31, 1988, the indigenous people of Ecuador named him their saint. It was in Proaño’s name, that the indigenous led the levantamiento nacional in Ecuador in 1990. ¹⁰ In this way, the Church of the Poorhas its martyrs, Mons. Romero, and also its saints, Mons. Proaño. It is a church that is close and entwined with the story of creativity and prophecy. Many people's movements have been encouraged by the EBCs across the region: the indigenous peoples, Afro-Latinos, marginalized, workers, and landless campesino movements.

“Liberation Theology” (1968-1992)

Liberation Theology is a Christian theology born outside of Europe (the Mediterranean world). It is a theology that expresses the experience and the praxis of the Church of the Poor. It is a church that finds its justification in the most ancient dimensions of the Christian tradition and the Liberation of Latin American peoples.

Thus, it is opportune to repeat the words of Pope John Paul II, who, on April 9, 1986, said, “Liberation Theology is not only timely, but useful and necessary. It must build a new stage, which connects with its antecedents, reflections that were initiated by the Apostolic tradition, and continued by the Fathers and Doctors [of the church].” The history of this theological movement, which comes from a generation of prophets patterned after Isaiah, is one of the most passion-filled theological traditions in Latin America in the twentieth century. Liberation Theology is an essential Christian movement and a critical school of thought articulated alongside people of Latin America.

The history of this school of thought, for the sake of this description, could be divided into four stages:

The first was from 1959 to 1968, namely the stage of preparation. From the announcement of the Second Vatican Council to the Cuban Revolution and to CELAM meeting in Medellín, began a slow process of critique over the theology of the Catholic Action. It became a theological vision expressed in the past by Jacques Maritain and presently by Pope John Paul II in the presentation of the two kingdoms: the spiritual and the temporal. It was during this period in which Juan Luis Segundo proposed a new theological method in his small book Situación de la Iglesia en el Río de la Plata (1962) and José Comblin wrote the Fracaso de la Acción Católica (1961). In 1964, different groups of theologians invited by CELAM met together alongside Segundo and Comblin, Lucio Gera, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Segundo Galilea, and many others.

The second stage of the constitution of Liberation Theology took place from around 1968 to 1972. In 1967, in the Protestant tradition of Richard Shaull and Rubem Alves, there was a shift from a Theology of Revolution to the issue of Liberation. Alves would defend his doctoral thesis at Princeton Theological Seminary, “Towards a Theology of Liberation.” ¹¹ In the Catholic sphere, the theme of Liberation begins to arise as a continuation of the Theology of Development, for example, that of Emile Pin in Rome, François Houtart in Louvain, and Vicente Vetrano in Buenos Aires. In 1970, Hugo Assmann clearly distinguished the difference between Liberation Theology, the Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz, and the Theology of Hope of Jürgen Moltmann, among many others.

Several meetings between 1969 and 1970 delimited the theme of this growing theological movement, eventually penning it as Liberation Theology. The Peruvian priest Gustavo Gustavo Gutiérrez published 1969 an article under this name, which eventually led to the constitution of Liberation Theology and a book under the same name published in Lima in 1971. In its first steps, this new vision began as a formulation around the praxis of the oppressed and the poor. It subsequently functioned as a theoretical act (theological) of fundamentally and undeniably proposing this preferential option for the poor. It became a theology influenced by the methodological horizon proposed by Latin American Marxism, especially that of dependency theory, particularly its ethical foundation which remains still valid.

The third stage arose in the meetings in Sucre of 1972, which would kick off a series of debates born out of the meetings at CELAM during a time of trial and growth. This new theological vision was being persecuted from Bogotá, even though it was gaining ground across Latin America (evident in the I Meeting of Theologians in Mexico in 1975), Europe (the meeting at the Escorial in 1972), the United States (the meeting Theology in the Americas in Detroit of 1972), and in the Third World (from the first meeting of the Third World Theologians in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1976). In 1973, the Comisión para el Estudio de la Historia de la Iglesia en América Latina y el Caribe (CEHILA) would begin the task of putting together the memory of the Chruch, the plight of people’s movements, and Latin American theology. ¹²

Thus in 1979, new iterations and themes in Liberation Theology began to emerge: feminism and the Liberation of women in Liberation Theology, such as that explored by Elsa Támez in the meetings in Mexico; the incorporation of Indigenous thought led by the Seminary of Chiapas in that year; and the topic of discriminatory racism of Afro-Latin Americans in the meetings of Jamaica.

Meanwhile, Leonardo Boff, Jon Sobrino, and, years later, Juan Luis Segundo would begin to develop the aspects of Liberation Christology and Ecclesiology. Carlos Mesters, Jorge Pixley, Severino Croatto, Milton Schwantes, and many others would make clear a new Biblical exegesis rooted in the tradition of the people and readings of Liberation in the Book of Exodus.

The last stage of this theological development would begin with “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Liberation Theology, also known as Liberatis nuntius, published in 1984. For the first time in the history of Latin America, a theological vision was condemned. This letter came from the Vatican, through the old tribunal of the Inquisition (now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), denouncing this theological movement. Two years later, a more peaceable document would be published: “Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation” (Libertatis conscientia). Efforts to stop this growing theological movement has not ceased. Even though the Polish theologian Józef Tischner thought that the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would be the end of Liberation Theology, it continues to grow and expand. Since it was not born out of Marxist inspiration (though it can use Marxist concepts with Christian freedom), it was born out of the preferential option for the poor of Latin America, which unfortunately faces an ever growing and more destitute situation than in 1968.

The Third Conference of the Bishops in Puebla (1979)

In 1973, inspired by the meetings in Medellín, CELAM thought it would be meeting for another conference to at least interpret this growing theological vision in another manner. In 1976, the formal organization for the Third Conference began, despite its original plan to begin in 1978, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the meetings in Medellín. The idea was to oppose Ecclesial Base Communities and Liberation Theology in order to condemn this Church of the Poor, which was prophetic and committed to the most needy. We must recognize that this objective was foiled by the decided action of many bishops, theologians, and Base Community Christians who would work together in Puebla.

A Document of Consultation was sent around in 1977, where a developmentalist vision was at work. The theoretical framework of this text was that the rural and traditional societies of Latin America needed to become urban and industrial. There was no mention of the North-South domination nor of the economic aspects concerning capitalist work. Though a lengthy document, comprised of 1,159 paragraphs, such issues were not spoken about or treated with clarity. The reaction to this document was impressive, kicking off one of the most significant theological movements in the history of Latin America, furthering the conversation of Liberation Theology. This document deployed bishops, priests, religious orders, base community movements, and hundreds of theological articles in Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Theological magazines such as Concilium, with the signatures of Yves Congar and Karl Rahner supported this Liberation theology that had arisen from the meetings of Medellín years earlier. This new current in the Church received support from Christians in Africa and Asia, as evident in the like-minded nature of a document put together by Third World Theologians in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Pope John Paul II was elected concurrently as the meetings organized for Puebla. The Pope arrived in Latin America on January 25, 1979, his first intercontinental trip to these meetings, and the conference began two days after his inaugural address. A few hours after the speech by the Pope, a group of Liberation Theologians, at the invitation of the bishops, released a balanced document entitled The Speech of John Paul II, a Brief Commentary by a Group of Theologians. These theologians had been explicitly excluded by the organizers of the Conference. This document immediately made clear that a sweeping condemnation of Liberation Theology would not be possible due to the spirit of openness and ecclesial mindedness that these forty-two theologians of Liberation expressed. With a willingnenss to work and collaborate with this Conference in a constructive manner, these theologians drafted this document with a disposition that fostered a spirit of understanding. In turn, the Brazilian Bishops produced a small text, “Contributions for Reflection,” which presented clear options regarding these questions and was subsequently used in the conference. Due to their large number, the Brazilian Bishops had a decisive effect on the Conference—the plan of debate proposed by Mons. López Trujillo was rejected and the proposed plan by Brazilian Bishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida was accepted. The work of the conference was divided into twenty-three commissions. The commission that received the most attention and to which most of the Cardinals and Vatican envoys signed up for was “Commission 10: Ecclesial Base Communities.” These groups from the Vatican were most concerned with these Ecclesial Base Communities because of their aspiration to reform the institutional church from its base, the people. Concerning Medellín, many new advances were made.

The subject of these ecclesial processes was declared to be the people of Godand the people of Latin America, subjects that were named often. The documents indicate that there is a clear vision of the history of the Church in Latin America, at least by some of its main protagonists: “The intrepid fighters of justice and the witnesses of peace, like Antonio de Montesinos, Bartolomé de las Casas, Juan de Zumárraga, Vasco de Quiroga, Juan del Valle, Julián Garcés, José de Anchieta, Manuel da Nóbrega, and many others who defended the Indians against the encomenderos and conquistadores, even unto death, like Bishop Antonio Valdivieso.” Liberation Theology remained the central issue of the conference. The Bishops included in the proceedings a definitive text that read, “Theologians offer an important service to the Church: that of systematizing doctrine and the directions of the magisterium as a synthesis of the wider context, putting these orientations in language adapted to the times; they move towards new investigations of the facts and the revealed word of God, in order to refer them to new sociocultural situations.” However, nothing indicated in the final document that there was a condemnation of Liberation Theology. There was neither a condemnation of the Church of the Poor, ecclesial base communities, or popular pastoral movements working with the peoples of Latin America. In Puebla, the door was left open to continue to work alongside the people, with a ”preferential option for the poor,” that by now had been doubly consecrated at Medellín and now in Puebla. Here, thirty-two bishops wrote a prophetic letter in support of Mons. Oscar Romero expressed their interest in his work in San Salvador and to protect him from being the object of state persecution. We now know that this act of episcopal solidarity was pointless since Mons. Romero would be killed as he celebrated Mass on March 24 of the following year. Romero offered his body as the sacrificial lamb for the poor of El Salvador. The Conference in Puebla ended on February 13, 1979.

The Situation in Cuba and Chile

According to Raúl Gómez Treto, between 1959 and 1969, the Church was preparing to for the Conference of Intellectuals when Fidel Castro addressed both Christian revolutionaries and Marxist bureaucrats. In two Comunicados, the Cuban episcopate demonstrated their profound change. On April 20, 1969, the episcopate criticized the blockade of Cuba, while on September 8, they called for efforts to be made for the promotion of human relationships between Christians and atheists. These events demonstrated a larger alignment between the elements of the Church and Latin American Marxism. When Fidel was in Santiago in 1971, he had a revealing dialogue with the Chilean socialist priests called the “Group of the 80” on the similarities between Christians' and Marxists' views on the fight for justice. The years between 1979 and 1986 marked by a period of "dialogue" between the Church and the revolution. The work of Frei Betto, Fidel y la religión, in 1986 would begin a period of openness that foreshadowed a profound change in Cuba. ¹³ In 1986, in the National Ecclesial Meeting of Cuba, all parishes and all the Dioceses were called to participate, leading to massive participation at the national assembly. ¹⁴ This was an assembly in which all delegates of all the dioceses, whether lay, priest, or bishops, had the same voting power, one vote per delegate, over the process of reconciliation between the Church and the revolution. However, in 1989, the relationships in this endeavor began to thin. Monsignor Francisco Oves had surprisingly left the island years ago, and there was no way to build a bridge back to the previous situation of solidarity. In September of 1991, the old Soviet Union stopped lending economic aid to Cuba; in October, the Party Conference made it seem that profound political change on the Island would be increasingly difficult. The Cuban Church was waiting expectantly.

From 1970 to 1973, a historical moment occurred in Chile when Salvador Allende, having been democratically elected, began a revolution that increasingly became colored by socialism. Some Christians, who were part of the Democratic Christian Party, ¹⁵ separated and founded the Popular Unitary Action Movement, ¹⁶ which would later join Allende’s party, Popular Unity. ¹⁷ It was in 1971, that 80 priests wrote and published a document named, “The Participation of Christians in the Construction of Socialism in Chile.” The bishops responded in a condemnatory tone on May 27 with the pastoral letter, “Christians, Politics, and Socialism.” However, the fraying between Christianity and socialism especially began with the crisis of the Latin American Institute of Social Studies. ¹⁸ When Franz Hinkelammert and Gonzalo Arroyo supported a socialist option, they separated from Roger Vekemans and Pierro Bigó, both of whom were more in line with the tradition of democratic Christian politics. In 1972, the first Meeting of Christians for Socialism occurred in Santiago, with delegations from every Latin American nation. A short-lived movement following the fall of Popular Unity took place on September 11, 1973, with the violent and bloody military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. A situation in which there was a democratic and revolutionary movement was drowned in blood. The dialogue between Christians and Marxists would continue to develop in the following years, only to mature in the Sandinista Revolution.

The Sandinista Revolution (1979-1990)

Under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the Church had been unable to show signs of the renewal going on in light of the Second Vatican Council and Medellín. However, the first Pastoral Meeting occurred between January 20 and February 1 of 1969with signs of impending change.

Ernesto Cardenal had founded a contemplative community on the islands of Solentiname, having written En Cuba and his provocative work, La Santidad en la Revolución. ¹⁹ During a class for bishops, the Archbishop of Managua, Monsignor Miguel Ovando y Bravo, declared in 1972, “Socialism is making great steps forward in Latin America and socialization must take place, though not in a unilateral manner.”

In that year, a group of young Christians, among them future guerilla commanders Mónica Baltodano, Luis Carrión, and many others, who belonged to the parish of Santa María de los Ángeles led by the Franciscan Uriel Molina, would join the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). ²⁰ A little while later, a terrible earthquake destroyed the capital. The battle against Somoza intensified, but ultimately, the FSLN would enter triumphantly to Managua on July 19, 1979. This marked an essential moment in the history of the Church in Latin America because it was the first revolution in which Christians had participated from the beginning in the process of this radical change. On November 17, 1979, the Nicaraguan episcopate delivered a pastoral letter, “Christian Commitment for A New Nicaragua,” a letter in which Papal Nuncio, Monsignor Pietro Sambi, stated that he does not condemn socialism but shows how it can be accomplished.

Shortly after, an extensive literacy campaign, led by the Jesuit Fernando Cardenal, the brother of Ernesto, under the influence of the methodology of Paulo Freire and through the work of a Columbian Salesian, was launched to reduce illiteracy in Nicaragua. Don Giovanni Bosco, the famous Salesian educator, would have been happy to contemplate the work of all his pedagogical work to the poor children of Turin in the nineteenth century, being renewed and employed for the education of Nicaraguan children in the twentieth. On October 20, 1980, the FSLN released a document entitled “On Religion.” It was the first time the socialist revolutionary government defined religion, specifically the Christian faith, as a positive factor in the revolutionary process. Undoubtedly, CELAM began to pressure the Bishops of Nicaragua, especially Archbishop Ovando y Bravo, who gradually fell in line with the counterrevolutionary position.

Rome intensified pressure to resign on Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal in the Ministry of Culture and Education, and Miguel D’Escoto as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, priests who filled positions in the Sandinista government. Meanwhile, the United States, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, had made Nicaragua the object of their obsessive foreign policy through a blockade, while deploying Marines to Honduras and paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the “Contras” to fight the revolutionary government. These efforts impeded the FSLN from being able to develop the country since it now had to enter into this new war with the Contras. In this dramatic context, Pope John Paull II asked the people of Nicaragua to obey their bishops in the Plaza de la Revolución in Managua. With over 1 million believers present on March 4, 1983, the Pope implored the people to follow the bishops that now opposed the revolution. For John Paul II, the Sandinista revolution was like that of Stalinism in Eastern Europe, a grave error of contextual interpretation. The Sandinistas were now fighting against the tanks and soldiers of the hegemonic power over Latin America, the United States, a situation radically different from that of Poland, which was fighting against the Soviet Union. These statements caused certain bewilderment in Christians in Nicaragua and across Latin America, uttered by a Pope increasingly colored by his politically conservative stances; a political vision that would only become more accentuated throughout his tenure as Pope, evidenced by his political naming of bishops in line with a philosophy of restoration and not that of renewal as initiated by the Second Vatican Council. In 1985, Sandinistas won the elections democratically with 67% of the votes. Regardless of this democratic process, the American support of the Contras became increasingly unbearable.

On July 4, 1986, Monsignor Pablo Vega supported American efforts to transfer 200 million dollars to fight against the FSLN. The Nicaraguan government saw this as treason, and he was expelled. Many more contradictions occurred in the following years with the relationship between the Church and Sandinista governments. On December 20, 1989, Uriel Molina, the founder of the Antonio Valdivieso Center, was removed from his parish in Managua's marginal and poor neighborhood. His removal represented a new moment of suffering for a poor Franciscan committed to the people of his nation. By February 25, 1990, the whole world learned of the failure of the Sandinistas in the electoral process. The pressures of war and the economic difficulties that defeated the FSLN, resulted in Violeta Chamorro taking power as president.

Undoubtedly, Sandinismo demonstrated, in the first place, its true democratic sense and urge. Secondly, the Sandinistas did not suffer the collapse of real socialism, which would have been especially difficult if they had been in power during the fall of the Soviet Union. Thirdly, Sandinism organized itself as an opposition party by becoming a party to recover the government in the 1996 democratic elections.

In this regard, Christians in Nicaragua have lived through a critical episode in the pages of the history of World Christianity. I remember being in Calcutta, India, when someone at the Conference mentioned, “We are interested in the Sandinista revolution because it is the first socialist revolution that is not Stalinist.” It very well could be the first socialist revolution that loses democratic elections and could equally recover them through democratic elections if it can retain its Sandinista Army.

We should continue by telling of all that has happened and what continues to happen in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. However, this story would be too long to recount, and here, we end our account of the events of Central America.

John Paul II and Latin America

John Paul II first appeared in Latin American history during the General Conference of Puebla in 1979. This Polish Pope quickly gained popularity worldwide, being the first Pope who was not Italian in centuries, coming from a working-class background, and emerging from a socialist nation giving off positive signs of life. However, over time, a clearer image of who he was slowly became evident. For many, the speech at the Plaza de la Revolución in Managua in 1983 and the humiliation of Ernesto Cardenal began to shift public perception of his papal leadership. John Paul II surrounded himself with figures such as Mons. López Trujillo and Monsignor Josef Ratzinger, to name a few, men who had a special relationship with the Church in Latin America. A trending philosophy of restoration in his papacy indicated signs of a return to a pre-council vision of the Church.

This process was evident in: the systematic naming of conservative bishops, especially in Brazil and Peru; the Pope's distrust of Liberation Theology (though in a famous text, he names it as "useful and necessary"); and his weariness of the Ecclesial Base Communities. That is to say, the EBCs were only blessed for their work if they fell under the strict parochial structure; otherwise, they were condemned for seeking any autonomy, which they should have sought as Christian people's movements. The Pope showed an ambiguous position towards the Church of the Poor. While thousands went to see the illuminated face of Christ on Earth, there were those, like one old woman, who, while sitting on the floor of the Plaza de la Revolución, wept and exclaimed, “I do not understand what the Pope was trying to tell us; he spoke of the obligation to obey our bishops. . .and did not cite one verse from the Gospels or spoke to us about Jesus! He did not want to pray for our children murdered by the Contras!”

While it seemed like the Pope had a progressive posture with critiques of liberalism and capitalism, he was in fact implacable in his condemnation of socialism and Marxism. The Pope has an ecclesiocentric vision, which applauds the events of 1492 with an air of triumphalism. This Church vision seemingly did not consider the genocide of indigenous peoples of Latin America and the enslavement of Africans 500 years after the initial evangelization.

This current “New Evangelization” of the Americas did not seem to recognize the events of the first evangelizations, and it is hard to find the purpose of the second without historical consciousness. John Paul II will be remembered in Latin America as the Pope who “rebuilt” the institution of the episcopate around highly conservative bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who were far from being pastors of the people. It was a papacy with various contradictions, such as the condemnation of fundamentalist Protestantism gaining ground among poor Catholic sectors, and on the other hand, the upending of the possibility of conscientization of poor Catholic masses through the condemnation of Ecclesial Base Communities and Liberation Theology.

It is possible that due to these ecclesiocentric and Eurocentric political visions, the twenty-first century will find Latin America with a high percentage of Pentecostal Protestants, many belonging to fundamentalist sects as announced by the theologian José Comblin, based on his socio-religious studies.

The Democratic Opening (From 1984)

This opening towards democracy in Latin America must be traced back to 1976, with the Trilateral Commission and the presidency of Jimmy Carter. These events signaled a shift from the decadent military dictatorships by supporting democratic, populist, and social-democratic governments, as occasioned by the economic crisis incited by foreign debt incurred by military governments.

In 1978, authoritarian leader Joaquín Balaguer lost his re-election bid to Antonio Guzmán as president of the Dominican Republic. In Bolivia, military general Juan Pereda Asbún was overthrown by a more nationalist government that called for elections. At this time, the government of Somoza in Nicaragua was thought to be replaced by a liberal democratic government.

The same strategies were being made to overthrow Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Similar plans were also being examined in Haiti to depose François Duvalier. Such events would culminate in the democratic elections of Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín in 1983 in Argentina and the elections of Tancredo de Almeida Neves in Brazil in 1985.

Inaugurating a period of formal democracies on the American continent, these events signaled the project of the minimal state (as the American philosopher Robert Nozick would call it) and that of free market economics (as espoused by Milton Friedman). All national services organized previously under the benefactor state, such as that of Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, would now be privatized: banks, oil, electricity, telephone, and other strategic services. In Mexico, the Free Trade Agreement in partnership with the United States would be the prototype to this new situation. In 1983, people's movements in Chile would begin the process that would culminate in the election of the Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin on July 30, 1987. The Chilean episcopate had anticipated this situation with a Pastoral letter titled: “Gospel, Ethics, and Politics,” which opened the doors to a necessary democracy.

However, through 1992, power remained in the hands of Augusto Pinochet and democracy still had to bow to the old rulers of the country. In 1983, a movement consisting of millions of people in plazas across Brazil emerged to demand "Diretas Já!” ²¹ This new people’s movement seemed only possible with the Church’s support. Unfortunately, the early death of Almeida Neves and the governments that would follow showed the Brazilian people and the Ecclesial Base Communities that overcoming the immense external debt, conservative neoliberal politics of privatization, and free market policies only led to greater impoverishment.

On the other hand, in 1991, the older progressive faction of the Episcopal Conference of Brazil managed to remain in leadership of the Church in contrast to the arrival of all types of conservative bishops named by the Vatican to all dioceses. ²² In the November 25 of, 1984 elections, the Colorado Party assumed the presidency of the Uruguay government under the leadership of Julio Maria Sanguinetti. While in Paraguay, on March 17, 1987, the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, who had governed since 1951, was deposed. A relative of the dictator, Andrés Rodríguez, opened the doors towards a greater state of democracy but continued certain elements of Stroessnerism without Stroessner. The Paraguayan episcopate had published a pastoral letter on April 20, 1986, on the importance of a “national dialogue,” which prepared the path for a change.

I would like to highlight that alongside the growth of formal democracy, there were still circumstances that demonstrated ongoing occupation by the Western powers. The Gulf War demonstrated the great efforts by various countries to liberate Kuwait in 1991. However, we must recognize that the Republic of Panama represented another occupied country. Like Kuwait, Panama was juridically and materially occupied by the United States. Since December 20, 1989, the United States occupied the Central American nation while the world applauded Eastern Europe's Liberation from Soviet control. More than five thousand Panamanians died and were mourned by the Church. The Panamanian Christian magazine Diálogo Social recounted the events and deaths of this conflict, in which the National Guard was dissolved and replaced by a military body utterly loyal to the United States. These are occurrences of injustice that Latin America must bear. Meanwhile, democracy finally triumphed in Peru with the populist Alan García on April 14, 1985, a victory that coincided with a cholera epidemic. This disease has expanded and spread across the region like never seen before in the twenty-first century. As economic exploitation produced misery, misery produced cholera. The preferential option for the poor spoken about in Medellín and Puebla is more critical than ever.

Haiti: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Fourth Conference of Santo Domingo (1992)

The Duvalier regime ushered in lamentable exploitation and extreme poverty in Haiti, the first Latin American country to gain independence in 1804 when it freed itself of French colonial powers. On July 26, 1985, the Church in Haiti woke up to the protest of the government’s expulsion of three Jesuit priests. Subsequently, the Confederation of Clergy of Haiti went on a campaign of unprecedented prophetic action, which would lead to the departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier on February 7, 1986.

From December 2^nd to the 6^th of that year, a vital symposium was held under the banner, “Transition to Democracy in Haiti.” The Haitian episcopate released a pastoral letter on June 27 called “Foundational Letter on the Path Towards a Democratic Society,” one of the most important documents by Catholic leaders on democracy. On August 25, 1987, the right-wing group Tonton Macoute attempted to assassinate the Salesian Father, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. While the assassination attempt failed, they tried to once again on September 11, 1988. They broke into the church where Aristide was celebrating mass, murdered 12 congregants, and injured over 80 others, yet could not kill Father Aristide.

Shortly after, the Salesians forced Aristide out from their ranks for his commitment to the poor, after which Aristide asked to be reinstated in Rome. Eventually, as leader of the National Front for Change and Democracy and head of the Lavalas Political Organization, Father Aristide (or as the people call him “Titide”) would be elected as president with 67% of the votes on December 16, 1990 ²³ (More recently, the masses set fire to the Nunciature and the Archbishops' home, who had fled Haiti).

The president of the Conference of Haitian Bishops, Monsignor Leonard P. Laroche, said to President Aristide during his tenure, “When Moses received from God the mission to guide the people of Israel to the Promise Land, he asked, ‘Who am I?’ to which Yahweh answered, “I will be with you.” Today, your excellency, an important mission has been entrusted to you. Surely, it will not be easy, just as it was not for Moses. There is a long pilgrimage through the desert ahead. That the Most High, the Omnipotent God, put in your heart, dear Father Aristide, the same feelings that the encouraged his servant Moses.”

Aristide would not allow the leaving president to put the presidential sash on him at his inauguration. Instead, he had a humble farmer with a scarf on his head, as Haitian laborers wear, put the sash on him and invest him with presidential authority in the name of the people. When he went to sit in the presidential chair, he did away with the one which Duvalier sat on, and a group of orphans from his community brought a simple wooden chair made by their hands for him to sit on. Aristide immediately donated his presidential salary to the orphans throughout his tenure as president.

As president, priest, and Liberation theologian, Aristide was not accepted by the old power brokers of Haiti. Thus, the coup d’etat of September 30, 1991 came with no surprise. The theologian-president was now facing the hour of his martyrdom, like other liberation theologians, like Ignacio Ellacuría in El Salvador, who have been martyred. Nevertheless, despite such acts of extreme violence, an impoverished continent was filled with hope! The Fourth General Conference of the Latin American Bishops will take place in Santo Domingo in October of 1992 as a memorial of the five hundred years of the arrival of Christians to this continent. This momentous occasion opens us to new expectations and profound ambiguities. In the Dominican Republic, Joaquín Balaguer was again elected in 1986 after talks that he won the elections fraudulently over the Dominican Liberation Party of Juan Bosch. ²⁴ As the cost of sugar decreased, Santo Domingo decided to open its borders and install transnational commercial free zones on the Island. The growing misery is so great that electricity can often only be used for four hours a day. In 1990, the economy per capita development was at negative five percent. Archbishop Nicolás López Rodríguez, president of CELAM on this occasion, wants the fourth Conference to be celebrated in the country with pomp.

Though the Santo Domingo was changed with new streets and refurbished old monuments, the people were still moaning in poverty. The preparatory documents for this conference were criticized for their for their lack of historical, theological, and pastoral content. The new CELAM elected in 1991 attempts to repair all the damage done in previous years, yet it seems too late. In addition, the Vatican has announced that it will name the next president, vice president, and executive secretary for the Fourth General Conference. In the three previous Conferences, these positions were ex officio related to positions held by CELAM. Now, the Pontifical Commission for Latin America is intervening in CELAM and stripping it of its authority. The same happened in the 1991 meeting of the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious (CLAR), whose leadership was imposed by Rome and thus overruled by the Confederation's bylaws.

Conclusions

The Latin American populist states from 1930-1954 attempted to build a national project. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church situated itself with the creation of Catholic Action to reconquer its presence in the life of the public sphere. If the developmentalist States of 1954-1964, collectively, this new benefactor state, tried to control processes of dependence in the beginning expansion of transnational corporations in this democratic stage, the Church promoted a Christian democratic project heavily influenced by the renewal flowing out of the Second Vatican Council.

Military states seeking national security from 1964-1984 opened the doors for the entrenchment of transnational corporations ended up indebting themselves disproportionately. During this time, the Church in many countries, such as in the case of the Bishops of Brazil, held a heroic position of resistance alongside the poor of their nations. In other nations, such Argentina, bishops participated in in the repression of their own people in this dark page of their history.

Now is the time of the Ecclesial Base Communities, Liberation Theology, Martyrs, and Saints. Since 1984, there has been a new opening of democracy in the region towards the minimal state. The Latin American episcopate, now with increasingly conservative leadership due to Vatican appointments, finds itself divided and confused, even though it has a historical responsibility that must be heard as it moves towards the future.

While the crisis of real socialism leaves the left without any projects, the military hegemony of the United States on the continent leaves us without revolutionary possibilities in the short term. Meanwhile, the unrestrained free market creates a new situation of loneliness for people's movements. In the face of this growing poverty of the mass of peoples of the region, what remains is that the “preferential option for the poor” of Medellín and Puebla now shows us the prophetic path forward, especially for those Christians who discovered in Vatican II the narrow path of following Jesus through the cross towards resurrection. Such a path resembles that of the martyrs and saints and that of Mons. Oscar Arnulfo Romero or of Mons. Leonidas Proaño, whose tomb is a place of such veneration by the poor that their frequent visitations leaves an ever-growing hole where the body lays.