THE FORMER SWITZERLAND
Berryman, Phillip
but performs its job in a different way. While it still has to keep its nose clean with the bishops, and go carefully on controversial issues, its editorial board has independence and includes at...
...The results were mixed: the Frente got only 23 percent of the total vote but it came in second place in Montevideo...
...Listen...
...Though Congress was suspended, the President, Juan Bordaberw, has been able to retain some leverage...
...Their imaginative actions included entering movie theaters and passing out literature and commandeering a milk truck and giving away free milk with propaganda in poor barrios...
...Because of their high educational level Uruguayans are able to compete for Jobs in other countries...
...The only time the hierarchy has stood up to the government occurred recently when there seemed to be a move to appoint directors for private schools...
...By opening its ranks the organization had become more vulnerable and within less than a year the army was able to get at the leadership by means of systematic terror and torture (with the help of Brazilian and American advisors, it would seem...
...Large numbers of people are emigrating...
...Their impressive techniques were due to the presence of professional people and technicians in the movement...
...The hierarchy is said to be divided---most bishops reflect the conservatism of the interior and Archbishop Partelli of Montevideo, although he is personally sympathetic to progressive elements, cannot stand up alone...
...In this laicist atmosphere there was formed a minority of Catholics with a mature faith, especially through various Catholic Action movements...
...The education level was high and Uruguay in spite of the smallness of its population was an intellectual and literary center...
...One could also point to the distinguished magazine V[spera and the Centro Pedro Fabro (where Juan-Luis Segundo, S.J...
...One observer was of the opinion that the church had no way of channeling the energies of these people after they had become aware of the situation...
...State of Siege...
...The first year was spent discussing the situation of the country, the second was devoted to theological aspects of church and society and the third to church structures...
...in its decline automobiles are so expensive that mechanics work miracles to keep them running...
...The very old and the very young, among the clergy, seem to like it better than the middle-aged...
...I would say it does a very effective job, in a quiet way, and with great integrity: but its title, while giving it a captive audience, hampers it from expanding its frontiers much, despite the fact that it contains a good deal that is of general Christian interest...
...The distribution of wealth was relatively even and the middle-class predominated...
...She was limp, her wings folded back, when he carried her off in the wind...
...Somewhere, a tiger lily flings its petals to the wind...
...It is the all-too-familiar stow of Latin America today...
...After the elections large sectors of the Left despaired of the electoral process...
...Although the populace still remembers its days of prosperity and grumbles about the military, there are few prospects for change...
...One would fike to dose with some signs of hope but all indications point to further deterioration...
...ISAL has left and is indeed disbanded or very discreet in most countries...
...Political parties are suspended, meetings are prohibited, informers are ubiquitous, there is systematic wiretapping and mail-opening, and .the press is totally controlled (Marcha was definitively closed some months ago...
...Hence Uruguay's economic situation worsened...
...Actually the numbers declined, especially during the third year...
...elaborated his series of theology for the laity recently published by Orbis books...
...What arouses vague childhood recollections in the casual observer must provoke ecstasy in the car freak...
...ISAL ( iglesia y Sociedad en America Latina), an ecumenical group of the theologians and social scientists, had its base there and published Cristianismo y Sociedad...
...Until this point they had concentrated on consciousness-raising exploits, such as the well-known kidnapping and "execution" of Dan Mitrione, the AID public security expert who had given police training, including torture techniques (cf...
...Under the emerald cover, soldered with gold, we could see the slow movement of deep water...
...The "internal war" aroused a sense of political vocation in the military, and the coup came in February 1973...
...They have inspired depths of affection and of hatred which no other order could equal...
...It would seem that the military thought that the world food situation and rising meat prices would enable them to ride a new boom to prosperity and popularity...
...And Uruguay seems destined to become an economic satellite of Brazil...
...To see the tradition of Thomism as inescapably 'left' may seem to many people sheer effrontery: yet from the days of Eric Gill in the thirties to the present moment, such a position has been maintained by the Dominican journal, and I think with a IN SOUTH AMERICA THE FORMEB SWITZEB ND Montevideo should be a delight for old car aficionados...
...Commonweal: 535...
...The people of the interior and even many workers bad voted for the traditional parties but the Frente had received a surprising support from the middle-class and the bureaucracy...
...Vispera survives but says nothing about Uruguay...
...The "internal war" was continued against other elements of the left...
...Its immigrants were little disposed to accept the kind of clericalism they had known in Spain and Italy and hence from the beginning there has prevailed a laicist atmosphere in society and the church 21 November 1975:552 had no political influence...
...But for a time the Uruguayan way of life was maintained in parliamentary democracy and summer vacations at the beach...
...It is said that 400,000 or more live in Argentina and others are going to Brazil, Venezuela, the U.S., or Australia...
...Uruguayans used to think of their country as the "Switzerland of South America...
...There was a scrupulous respect for freedom of expression and governments practiced an orderly democratic succession...
...Weeks later, as we picked shark's teeth and coral from the sandstone cliffs above the lake, we found the chrysalis hanging stiffly from a bit of milkweed...
...In effect it means the depression of wages and salaries of both workers and the middle class...
...Half the people are said to have passports...
...The boom came to a sudden halt at the end of the Korean war when demand for beef and wool declined...
...For the elections of 1971 the Left experienced a season of hope...
...The prevailing ideology seems to call for a return to a "free market" and "real prices" after years of a welfare state...
...The standards of discussion are remarkably high (it is interesting to note that Professor Karl Popper recently commended a Clergy Review article on his own philosophy-a rare event) and the book-reviewing is serious...
...Pax Romana, the international student movement, had its offices in Montevideo...
...During the '60s the left began to become more prominent, especially in the voice of the review Marcha...
...One self-exile in Peru shook his head sadly, "It's a perfect example of how a fine way of life can be ruined overnight," he said in Oxford-accented English...
...There is no effective Justice and Peace Commission nor is there any national priests' organization...
...Pax Romana moved to Lima because of police harassment...
...The explanation of this curious concentration of old vehicles reflects the history of this small South American republic (2,850,000 inhabitants): during its boom decades Uruguay was able to import a large number of cars...
...With its low birth rate and continual emigration, Uruguay actually has a declining population...
...People recognized the crisis when some Uruguayan banks failed in the late '50s...
...It tries to be ecumenical and to present the clergy in modern dress, but I doubt if many people outside clerical ranks read it, except in mission areas abroad where it has a remarkable currency...
...It was settled by EuroCommonweal: 351 pean immigrants during the last half of the 19th century (as were neighboring sections of Argentine and Brazil) and rose to prosperity on exports of beef and wool...
...It is said that the Minister of Culture lost his job over this confrontation...
...The generals and colonels still feel the euphoria of power...
...This one came to the lake, dropped gently to the surface and was turned to a copper feather by the August sun...
...New Black]riars under its current editor, Herbert McCabe, is a characteristically Dominican product...
...A group of intellectuals and university students, taking the name of the Peruvian Indian rebel Tupac Amaru, formed a highly disciplined clandestine organization called the Tupamaros...
...During this same period Uruguay was a focal point for radicalized Christians in all of Latin America...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ED HOEPPNBR IgOR TIlI~ MONAMCil'S TIIANSPAUItgN~' LII,'ig$ Before we tore the last wall down, we sat and stared out the empty window at the shingles and bones we had thrown from the roof and the grains in the heavy oak door that sparked in the sunlight...
...With its broad pampas and homogeneous population Uruguay was perhaps the only Latin American country that would resist the "land of contrasts" treatment in travel brochures...
...The traditional Blanco and Colorado parties were challenged by the Frente Amplio, a coalition of Communists, Christian Democrats, and others which seemed even more coherent and promising than the electorally successful Unidad Popular in Chile...
...While it still has to keep its nose clean with the bishops, and go carefully on controversial issues, its editorial board has independence and includes at least one layman...
...From the early decades of this century the government built up a unique welfare state system...
...Actually it wasn't quite overnight...
...Many youths were ready for something more radical and the Tupamaros decided to relax their clandestine discipline and expand with a view toward a "people's war...
...It is a country of the old--sadly like its automobiles...
...Observers estimate that since that time the number of political prisoners has remained at around 3000...
...New Black]riars, the journal of the English Dominicans [Blackfriars, Oxford, England, $12.50], is quite a different proposition from either of the preceding ones...
...All that is drastically changed now...
...During the whole process of "internal war" the Catholic Church has said virtually nothing...
...One curious datum is that only about 60 percent of Uruguayans are baptized while the average in the rest of Latin America is always over 90 percent (with the interesting exception of pre-Castro Cuba...
...Touching, finally, they shuddered...
...PHILLIP BEILq.YMAN ( Phillip Berryman, a previous contributor, worked ]or some years in Latin America...
...The rain comes to meet the waves and receive its wings...
...The monarchs came to test on the open hardwood floor like leaves fallen together from the same tree...
...The English Dominicans of the last half-century have been a race of brilliant eccentrics, both in personality and interests...
...Obviously the political element is mostly absent, but an undercurrent of ecclesiastical politics is often detectable as the journal tries to change and broaden clerical attitudes while not offending anyone...
...We are the journal of the left and we are critical both of the church and of the left because this is where our theology takes us, the theology of the Dominican tradition," says the leaflet inviting new subscribers...
...During the '60s these Catholics were shaken by the crisis of Uruguayan society and hence when the archdiocese of Montevideo began discussion groups the response was spectacular: about 1000 groups with a total participation of perhaps 10,000 people...
...Many were jailed just because they had been seen with Tupamaro members, e.g., doctors who treated the wounded without denouncing them, and priests who had seen them...
...Uruguayans discovered that they were Latin Americans after all and that their prosperity had been built upon their marginal usefulness to Europe and the U.S...
...For one thing there was no tradition of active intervention in national life due to the laicist influence...
...At this point the army decided to take over from the police and proclaimed a state of internal war on the Tupamaros...
...Many fly south...
...Like the nation, the Uruguayan church has historically been atypical...
...However, Uruguay's traditional European markets closed themselves to protect their own beef and so as not to waste reserves needed for oil purchases...
...The male waited, fluttering slowly, like water, above her...
...At the moment of writing, Bordaberry is promising an economic plan but there seems to be no real basis for any coherent economic development...
...A regular layman's viewpoint is included among articles...
...You see them parked in town or sputtering along the wide avenue that follows the beaches: Fords and Chevies from the '40s, the '30s, even Model T's and A's, as well as more obscure European cars of the same vintage, right-hand steering wheels, and so forth...
...Many participants went into the Ftente Amplio and many of the youth entered the Tupamaros...
...Wayward, unconventional, unpredictable, unamenable to external discipline, they have traced a very different path, in journalistic terms, from either the Jesuits or the secular clergy...
...Some opine that the military are not worried by the emigration and indeed see it as an escape valve for potential troublemakers...
Vol. 102 • November 1975 • No. 18
