|
secularists, due to the influence of the Catholic Church, the simultaneous influence of indigenous religion, and the on-going interaction of these religious influences with the political left. For instance, Paraguay just elected a strong leftist as president, overturning 61 years of often brutal rightwing rule. The man they elected is known as "the bishop of the poor." He was a Catholic bishop of Paraguay's poorest region for almost two decades. He identifies with the poorest of the poor--the indigenous. He resigned his bishopric in order to bring together the fragmented leftist parties of Paraguay, into a coalition that could defeat the corrupt, entrenched Colorado Party. One of his first acts as president was to appoint an indigenous woman as head of the office of indigenous affairs--a first. He is committed to social justice. His neighbor, Evo Morales--the first indigenous president of Bolivia--when Lugo was elected--sent him this message: "Welcome to the Axis of Evil."
They laugh about our Bushwhacks down there, but they are also bound and determined to assert the sovereignty of Latin American countries, and to end the centuries of U.S. corpo/fascist plunder and brutality.
Fernando Lugo, in turn, is close friends with the new, young president of Ecuador, the US-educated economist Rafael Correa. Correa just presided over a rewrite of Ecuador's Constitution. One of its provisions grants official legal status to Mother Nature (called "Pachamama" in the indigenous language), and the right of Mother Nature and her critters and ecosystems to exist and to function properly--a first in the world. Nature is always viewed in our legal systems through the lens of human use--human needs, human impacts. This enshrinement of Pachamama's rights, apart from human needs, uses and impacts, is revolutionary. It is an indigenous belief--and one that could save our planet, if it catches on.
The Catholic Church has long been at war with Mother Nature. Catholic missionaries in ancient times used to go in a burn down or chop down Sacred Groves, oblivious to the connection between preserving forests and preserving the fertility of the topsoil in downstream agricultural lands (and other forest functions--a haven for birds, bees and other natural benefits)--a real ecological connection that was enshrined in the Pagan reverence for the forest. They further trashed and toppled statues of the Goddess wherever they found them, burned the Gnostic Gospels (in which a Mother God and a Father God are both revered), and ran dreadful inquisitions and pogroms against any remnants of Goddess worship.
To name but a few ways that the wrong-directed, patriarch-infested Church that solidified in the 5th Century AD, and dominated western civilization for a thousand years, HATES Nature and all her works.
Well, something is happening in South America, in particular, to bring these opposing traditions--Catholicism and indigenous beliefs--together. The Liberation Theologians take Jesus' teaching about kindness and generosity seriously. They feel that the clergy have an obligation to support the political struggles of the poor. This has cost many a priest and nun and bishop their lives in Latin America. The Vatican has tried to stamp this theology out--but it is making a big comeback. At the same time, the indigenous majority is coming into its own, as a political force, at long last. Thus you have South American leaders acting like real Christians--acutely feeling the need for economic fairness to the poor--in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and to some extent in Chile, with this leftist movement reaching into Central America as well. And you have amazing news items like Pachamama's rights being officially recognized in Ecuador, and tens of thousands of indigenous coming down out of the Andes mountains in Bolivia, for a special ceremony investing Evo Morales as their sacred leader, prior to his official inauguration as president of Bolivia. And--also amazing to us--we find Evo Morales on the campaign trail in Bolivia, with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck--a highly valued medicine, sacred to the indigenous. Morales was/still is the head of the coca leaf farmers union. (--a whole different thing than cocaine).
The coca leaf farmers--who are also the best producers of organic food--are the most oppressed and brutalized class in South America. They are slandered as cocaine dealers, and--with the U.S. (Clinton/Bush) 'war on drugs'--their small farmlands are sprayed with toxic pesticides, poisoning their crops, their children, and their animals, and driving them off the land, so the big drug lords, and Monsanto et al, can take them over. The U.S. government has no understanding of the sacredness of the coca leaf, and its function as a survival tool in the high-altitude, icy reaches of the Andes. And it has no understanding of the notion of being at peace with Mother Nature--something that it appears that the Liberation Theology Catholics are learning from the indigenous.
In any case, I find it fascinating that the head of the Jesuits is taking a position much to the left of the Vatican on Liberation Theology. Bear in mind that Fr. Dan Berrigan is also a Jesuit (--a priest who was on the lam from the FBI, after pouring blood on Draft records, during the Vietnam War). The Jesuits have a tradition of fostering original thinkers and rebels. This may not mean much to us here, now, but it certainly will be meaningful in Latin America.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
