Latin American Christians in the Liberation Struggle: Chile, Dominican Republic, Argentina
Edwards, Rick
Since the Latin American Catholic Bishops met in Medellin, Colombia in August and September 1968 to call for basic changes in the region, the Catholic Church has been increasingly...
...They said that "nobody can be revolutionary and anti-Peronist at the same time...
...My first contact with the workers and peasants was through technical courses and posts...
...in order to be a bridge between God and man he must immerse himself in the people as they march toward God via the revolutionary process to construct a more human, and thus a more divine society...
...PL: What elements - subtle or otherwise - awoke your consciousness regarding Latin American history and that of the Third World...
...The detachments of fighting Peronists must decisively be integrated...
...This leap can only be made by a young minority...
...But the most interesting phenomenon among the left Catholics has been the appearance of a direct action movement known as the Camilo Torres Revolutionary Committees (CORECATO, Comites Revolucionarios Camilo Torres), also called the Camilista Movement...
...The government's fear of the Peronist Armed Forces (FAP), among the most effective of the country's revolutionary urban guerrilla organizations, is not hard to understand -- the two major guerrilla fronts, one Peronist and one Marxist, comprise between 3,300 and 7,500 militants...
...There we argued for an opening toward the principles of Camilo Torres and their later development in the tendencies fostered in Colombia by the Golconda group.** We also picked up lines of interpretation applied in Chile by MAPU (Unified Popular Action Movement) in its dissent from Frei's Christian Democracy...
...5. These circumstances make it indispensable to change the political power structure so that the majorities can make the decisions...
...A LETTER FROM THE F.A.P...
...The importance of Camilo in setting a new standard of Christian commitment cannot be underestimated...
...Many but not all the Tercermundistas are allies of Peronism...
...We evaluated European Christian Democracy from the time of its first appearance as well as its adjustment to Latin America...
...imperialism invested hundreds of millions of dollars in government-financed loans and technical assistance grants as well as private investment -- had begun to show wide cracks by 1968, when it was apparent that the regime of Eduardo Frei Montalva was unable to satisfy the aspirations of the Chilean masses...
...1. Camilista Underground in Santo Domingo As the following report by Carlos Maria Gutierrez makes clear, the Dominican Camilista Movement stresses student work, organization of peasants and industrial workers and the search for unity on the left...
...GUTIERREZ: Does the Movement function both legally and illegally...
...that the people's struggle for liberation demands a rapid and effective Revolution that abolishes the structures that now drown it...
...It was in this setting that he made his now well-known remarks, "I tell you without hesitation: we see revolutionary Christians as strategic allies of the revolution...
...Since Gutierrez interviewed the Camilista leader ten months ago, these projects have continued as the Movement has gained more and more adherents...
...the two receive 800 and 350 dollars a month respectively...
...What exists is a combination of power groups: military officers that sustain the government as they sustained the Trujillo apparatus before...
...The movement rejects the notion of confessional politics, arguing rather for Christian participation in secular political and labor organizations so as to avoid undermining working class unity...
...Finally, we believe in the necessity of destroying the bourgeois State and establishing anew a workers' State...
...FIRST LATIN AMERICAN ENCOUNTER OF CHRISTIANS FOR SOCIALISM April 23 - 30 Santiago de Chile r iThe objective of this Encounter is to bring together for the first time Christian groups of priests, pastors, and lay people, both Catholics and Protestants, who try to follow the call of Christ "to proclaim liberation to the captives, sight to the blind and to free the oppressed" (Luke 4:18), by committing themselves to the Latin American people's revolutionary process of liberation from economic dependency on capitalist imperialism and the underdevelopment it engenders...
...7 (November 1970), p. 8.] The following report will appear in slightly revised form in a book by Gutierrez called The Dominican Republic: Rebellion and Repression, to be published in the fall of 1972 by Monthly Review Press...
...Several splits in the ranks of Christian Democracy followed the Medellin deliberations of the Latin American hierarchy...
...We see the growing confrontation with the hierarchy, which they oblige to unmask itself before the people...
...Until 1965, no one here had ever talked about armed uprisings in the urban zone...
...When I speak of socialism, let me make myself clear, I am not referring to a schematic socialism, but to a socialism which by its very dynamic points out all the possibilities of uniting the social organism through an independent formula...
...For an excellent treatment of this subject, see Yves Vaillancourt, "Crisis in ILADES," LADOC, December 1971...
...between models of change which are socialist and those which favor capitalist modernization...
...Nor can he transmit life, as the people already live long before he comes to teach them...
...You know that to be Peronist means to be of the people...
...a thirst for liberty, justice and equality that is not theory, but rather the nostalgic image of concrete facts...
...In its place, the Christian religiosity of the people will be fermented to form a new kind of Church-as-people for all those priests and Christians who, during the hard march, risked themselves for a new society, a new man, and thus for a new Church...
...To participate at present in Chile is to participate in the historic project which the people are engaged in...
...LEADER: There have been contacts with the PRD which is advocating a national political front also, and these are continuing...
...One of its most solid bases of action seems to be the BRUC (Bloque Revolucionario Unitario Cristiano, or United Christian Revolutionary Bloc...
...If there is any novelty in the Christian left in Latin America it is this: beyond the Marxist-Christian dialogue, beyond cooperation, there are now Marxist Christians (or Christian Marxists) who are steadily gathering forces throughout the continent...
...To confront the imperialist policy of the United States, the dominant class and the repressive groups, you cannot think about a peaceful route...
...The priest of the Third World, of our own country, is torn and in conflict over these two realities to which he owes his being: the Church and the people...
...In 1969 I went to live in a working-class district - the San Miguel district south of Santiago - because I understood that it was not enough to talk of solidarity with the workers but that I had to live as a priest and share the problems, the injustices, the exploitation they had to live under...
...A joint action must be planned with the militant Peronist groups whose strategy contemplates a progressive development of the revolutionary process...
...POLITICAL AND LABOR GROUPS MENTIONED IN ARTICLE MPD, the Dominican People's Movement: Marxist-Leninist in orientation, has been the principal focus of official repression and suffered attacks also from Joaquin Balaguer...
...And we can say that we are the ones who have worked most effectively to develop the politics of unity - with the PDC in the University and with the PDC and the PRD in the labor unions...
...personal life...
...Initially, these priestly contributions were discreetly programmed under the theme of "Christian collaboration...
...an incipient oligarchy, that although at times does not agree with Balaguer supports him anyway to keep its privileges...
...It was judged necessary and urgent to undertake an analysis of the different political experiences of Latin American peoples on the way to liberation, to evaluate the role Christians have played and must play in this process in the future, to reflect on it theologically and to advance possible forms of coordination and support for a more effective action in each country and throughout the continent...
...But there has been some progress in this respect...
...2. Those now in power constitute an economic minority which makes all the fundamental decisions of national policy...
...The Latin American Bishops had hoped that their call published in Medellin would be enough, all too hastily retreating from their public declarations when their implications became apparent...
...The priest who struggles attracts his people who, in admiration of his attitude so contrary to that of the institution, come to respect him profoundly...
...It has the very concrete name of Peronism...
...Chile is governed by the Unidad Popular, a coalition of leftist parties elected in 1970, which include the Communist and Socialist parties as well as two Christian parties, the United Popular Action Movement (MAPU) and the more confessional organization called the Christian Left (IC...
...4, No...
...4. The decisions required for the socioeconomic development of the country beneficial to the majorities and to national independence necessarily affect the interests of the economic minority...
...The PRSC has been accused by its own members of being financially subordinate to Venezuelan Christian Democracy...
...Its import does not rest only in the priests' open declaration in favor of socialism, a position already taken publicly by other Latin American priests and even by some individual members of the hierarchy...
...And the priest almost always sees an egoistic faith in the "faithful", in those who go to Church...
...Rick Edwards * John Gerassi (ed...
...The concrete form of this involvement may vary, but one thing is certain: isolated or exclusively ecclesiastical confrontations, though positive, lose a large part of their effectiveness for change because they are not linked to a coherent plan made within the Peronist revolutionary forces...
...While in his sincere conscience, the gospel message brings him to confront the system, to draw nearer to the people, to transform the Church, this institution imposes a limit on him, opposes change...
...they fought in the labor movement and the Peronist Youth...
...LEADER: There is a national steering committee which exercises the coordination of the different sectors and which of course is also clandestine...
...249-291...
...They are not separated from the hierarchical Church which supports them in some of their initiatives which in certain circumstances could be much more efficacious...
...it was primarily ideological...
...GUTIERREZ: Toward a front with the PRD only, or also with other groups...
...But, without doubt, certain events are more influential than others...
...It may ultimately be a process initiated by a general strike leading through a series of stages to the seizure of power...
...Also, his position on work in the popular base and in student groups...
...Similar splits occurred elsewhere, and they have continued to occur in Chile up to the present time...
...We don't intend to create a new and separate movement but we want to labor together with the working class world to make an efficacious contribution to the objectives that have been traced out in favor of the workers...
...Enrique Lopez Oliva, "Control y espionaje militar sobre la Iglesia Catolica," Bohemia, Ano 63, No...
...PL: Was the awakening of your consciousness purely intellectual or was it a product of the crises or conflicts that took place in your...
...military intervention in the Dominican Republic, see Fred Goff and Michael Locker, "The Violence of Domination: U.S...
...One group, based in the city of Mendoza, declared last July that their alliance with Peronism represented a decision "not . . . for a political party, but an option between social forces...
...Power and the Dominican Republic," published in I.L...
...12-13...
...6. At present the majorities reject the political parties and reject the present system but do not have a political apparatus suitable to seize power...
...They stated clearly that it is necessary to "destroy prejudices, the mistrust that exists between Christians and Marxists...
...See NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...I suffered more than one personal crisis because of my growing social commitments...
...With this force the Church-as-people of God orients its march toward liberation with greater strength and more precision on all levels of the construction of the New Man of which Christ so often spoke and to whom he so often testified...
...There is no such thing as apoliticism because this also is a political position and sometimes it is a hypocritical way to support the status quo...
...All this leads to stagnation and prevents the country from developing...
...The Autonomous University of Santo Domingo...
...And he saw still more clearly that love which does not find effective expression is no more than a lie...
...He added, "It is the only way we can keep alive...
...But we believe that for us what Marx said about "the class in itself" and "the class for itself" continues to, be valid...
...The priest's participation in a political party should in no way include the holding of important posts or mask personal advantages...
...It had appeared here as a response to Marxism-Leninism, although it did not formally support the United States...
...In its strategy v-is-a-vis CASC, the Catholic labor federation, Camilismo suffered a setback in February of this year when its allies forming the Unity and Change slate failed to unseat the conservative union leadership (the latter employed highly questionable tactics to assure its hold on the organization...
...With a revolutionary position that rejects equally the electoral action of the PRSC and the positions sustained by CASC on labor matters, CORECATO has opted for a clandestine task of popular mobilization and indoctrination...
...Garcia Elorrio was killed musteriously in a hit and run accident and his widow was arrested last December...
...Most hard-hit in this respect has been the MPD, an openly Marxist-Leninist group...
...Disputes between a Marxist majority of faculty and students and the dominant anti-Marxist minority tore the institute apart, the Marxists withdrawing in 1970 and becoming active in support of Unidad Popular...
...GUTIERREZ: Concretely, how do you differ from the programmatic positions of the PRSC...
...the Communist and Socialist parties were legal...
...So in order to analyze the internal composition of its leadership, we necessarily have to think in terms of the variable, "U.S...
...Thus I came to know the exploitation of the Indian in the Bolivian 18 project, that is, one capable of replacing dependent capitalism by socialism...
...is not an invincible military power...
...Although our people have faith and the Christian heritage forms part of their national being, our people have almost completely lost their faith in the Church, its work, its sacramental signs, its ministers and hierarchies...
...To Camilo it had become apparent that the central meaning of his Catholic commitment would only be found in the love of his neighbor...
...The priest in the struggle is like a powerful magnet that attracts all undiscovered Christian militancy, as well as the young priests who are torn between castration and rebellion...
...Mao's words concerning Gonzalo Arroyo (center...
...Harshly repressed by the regime, Dominican Camilismo is principally active in the urban areas (though it has also extended its Committees into certain peasant communities) and the majority of its leadership is made up of university youths...
...The latter, although they may 'have the best of revolutionary intentions, fail to achieve their objectives in the long run because they are incapable of mobilizing all Christians on a mass scale...
...The Church is under seige, perhaps belatedly, by the new winds of change blowing over Latin America-a continent where, thanks to the Cuban Revolution, the word "liberation" is no longer a mystical aspiration "for some day in the future...
...Therefore, assimilating the experience of 1965, we do not talk especially about tactics for the time being but simply about violent means...
...306-307...
...Since the Latin American Catholic Bishops met in Medellin, Colombia in August and September 1968 to call for basic changes in the region, the Catholic Church has been increasingly polarized between those who heard their words from the point of view of the suffering majorities and those who heard them from the point of view of the vested interests...
...The secondary school group functions illegally in the high schools...
...But that theoretical outline must be compared with our reality in order to arrive at an adequate and well-founded solution...
...34-43...
...His witness is the most forceful denunciation of the anti-Christian character of the regime, and dispels the latter's argument that subversion is atheist and Marxist...
...You cannot speak of the regime's composition according to a class stratification, nor even talk of a bourgeois class, because we don't have it here...
...In order for it to be legitimate it should be a real commitment to the people, one which requires a political dimension to be efficacious...
...But we prefer to let Arroyo speak for himself through his answers to some questions put to him by PRENSA LATINA...
...II, No...
...There have been several very good experiences...
...it has no meaning when at our side the true Church-as-people of God demands that we fight with all our might to save it from misery and hunger...
...The document as presented here represents about one half of the original...
...For example, the hope aroused by plans which are announced as revolutionary and which later frustrate the people, or the progressive consciousness at the forefront of a working class which is becoming more and more aware of Latin American liberation, of the fact that only it can be the agent which can get rid of imperialism, dependence and underdevelopment...
...We are organizing a mass answer which can be of use no matter what opportunity presents itself...
...No one is saying things are as they should be, not even the far right -- which feels that things have gone entirely too far...
...GUTIERREZ: What agency orients the analysis and tactics of the Movement...
...When the priest joins the people he finds a Peronist phenomenon which surprises him...
...III, No...
...After public and obviously fraternal debate, the phrase was changed into "Christian participation.' Father Gonzalo Arroyo, tall, slender, "with the face of a typical priest" as one journalist has written, won fame years ago for his intensive work in agencies created by the Christian Democrats...
...The plight of the Church is not that it exists in a world of violence, injustice, struggle and change, but that its profoundly Manichaean doctrine as well as its institutional structure (rooted in the power and "values" of the system with which it peacefully coexists) and its ministerial expression (a mixture of individualism and social expression of power) place the Church outside the pain and struggle of the people in their march towards justice...
...This process has led to strong resistance on the part of those who have privileges and for this reason it is absolutely necessary to mobilize the people...
...In the conversation which follows, the leader - a university youth - defines the most outstanding aspects of the Movement and outlines an analysis of the Dominican political situation...
...3. This minority will never be able to make a decision adversely affecting its own interests or the foreign interests to which it is bound...
...They do this precisely because they are Christians and priests: "The deep reason behind this commitment is our faith in Jesus Christ, which depends, renews itself and takes flesh according to the historical circumstances...
...These should be one reality, but the priest sees them diverging and opposing one another more and more each day...
...15 LEADER: Because of our country's geographical position, its territory and population, the proximity of Haiti and our general location in the area, we cannot talk of an independent solution...
...PL: And Camilo Torres...
...Theologians and priests, both for and against us, have taken part in debates, and the bishops signed a declaration which, according to an opposition weekly, is a mild reprimand of the eighty priests whose good faith nobody denies except the ultra-right sectors...
...Nevertheless, though this motive also powerfully influences the priest, the principal cause is not to be found so much in the fear of losing a certain form of life as in the fear of breaking with the Church--a tie upon which his whole priestly being depends...
...GUTIERREZ: What were the motives which led you to break with the Social Christian party...
...The Church is "on the other side...
...These materials on Christians in the Latin American liberation struggle represent part of a NACLA pamphlet to be published later in the spring...
...between confessionalism in politics (i.e., providing "Christian political alternatives") and militancy in secular radical parties and movements...
...Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres (New York: Vintage, 1971), p. 368...
...Quoted in Collins, op...
...We have the formidable responsibility of being revolutionaries, as a prior condition to being Men, People, Christians, Church...
...That reality cannot be understood in the light of a classical interpretation of the Marxist position...
...cit., p. 1. Both the right and leftwing press mentioned him by name when public opinion became aware of the work and activities of eighty Catholic priests who met in the Vicaria Sur of the Santiago Church in April, 1971, under the basic slogan of "Christian Participation in Socialist Construction...
...The Organizing Committee was able to meet in December with priests belonging to the Third World Movement, ONIS, Golconda, ISAL, etc., who were en route through Santiago...
...Their authenticity led their Christian witness to see the need for armed struggle-they joined the FAP...
...The military intervention in 1965, the fraudulent elections of 1966 and 1970, as well as the control which the United States exercises here, do not permit talk of a legal route...
...I spent a few days on the island during the Batista regime and I could see the contrast of the beauty of Havana and its luxurious life at that time against the exploitation of the workers and peasants...
...Thus they move him to adhere more fully and effectively to the war that, with the Christian aspect his presence gives, they feel is more their own...
...Camilo's option for violence has clearly affected the attitudes of Latin American Christians, but so also has his attempt to build a United Front, as we shall see in the Dominican piece which follows...
...As a priest his obligation is to represent with his life that human-Christian devotion to the man who suffers...
...GUTIERREZ: What immediate possibilities are there for the insurrectional or violent route...
...The former found in the Medellin documents, as in certain documents of the Second Vatican Council and the social encyclicals of Popes Paul VI and John XXIII, the legitimation of their struggles for justice and their condemnations of exploitation and structures of domination...
...The Christian cannot content himself with any old way of "loving his neighbor" but must demand the most total and effective way, though this may cost him his life...
...ILADES, a research and training institute, was founded in 1966 by Cardinal Silva of Santiago, the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM) and the Jesuit Center for Research and Social Action (CIAS), with the blessings of Chile's Christian Democrat president Eduardo Frei...
...The initials stand for Committee for Independent Political and Electoral Organization...
...The Christian Democracy's Chilean showcase -- an experiment in which U.S...
...We accept as valid the Marxist interpretation of social classes...
...a Manichaean Christianity for their personal use, when it is not a mere social manifestation...
...Success in this alliance would mean a movement with combined effectiveness among urban and rural workers, as well as high school and university students...
...Arroyo: Undoubtedly, the Cuban Revolution has had considerable influence in radicalizing the youth and in increasing the political awakening of the working class...
...The informant admitted that Balaguer's government provides maintenance for a large majority of the party's activists in their work, on the condition that the party support his administration...
...Then there was a rupture between Camilismo and the JRSC and the present movement was formed...
...See page 16...
...The fear of risking one's life and leaving one's "status" is the fundamental motive which causes many self-styled revolutionaries-in spite of their ambitious declarations-to content themselves, in practice, with such non-violent methods as newspapers, denunciations, demonstrations, fights for certain concessions, which are positive but today are ineffective by themselves, and which do not lead to confrontation with forces that sustain the regime...
...MOTIVES FOR A UNITED FRONT In his Platform of the United Front of the Colombian People, Camilo Torres listed seven "motives" for the formation of a United Front...
...26 (November-December 1970), pp...
...At present, the PRSC has almost fallen into disrepair...
...a Gospel which is the life of the individual and of the people, a ritualistic and Manichaean hierarchy that is involved in the anti-Christian system-all these things fill a priest's path with doubts, inner conflicts and search for truth...
...Camilo Torres GUTIERREZ: Do you maintain contact with CASC...
...Without a doubt Christians have new apostolic prospects open before them, because today they are accepted as Christians in a revolutionary process where together with non-believers they can work for the construction of a more just and more humane society...
...This attitude turns the priest into a bureaucrat, who puts "individual passports" in order, without the slightest influence upon the rotten and anti-Christian values of these lives...
...THE REVOLUTIONARY PRIESTHOOD a) The Revolutionary Dimension of the Priesthood: From this reality of two Churches, the role of the priest acquires new dimensions and wide horizons...
...Each of these parties represents a schism from the older Christian Democratic Party, MAPU having been formed in 1969 and IC in 1971...
...We believe that the historical process, the development of the social forces with the accompanying effects of imperialism, proceed to give the society an internal dynamic...
...Of its ten executive committee members designated in 1970, only three are still active...
...Today, from jail, we would like our thoughts and our vision of the way to reach you: this concerns the role of the priest and of the Church in the revolutionary process we are experiencing.21 I. THE CHURCH IN THE THIRD WORLD d) Religious Reality: For the priest who is in living contact with the people, the reality of misery, moral degeneration and war creates an impact of conscience upon his faith, upon his decision as a man and as a Christian...
...The Church-as-people of God needs the explicit faith and the sign with which to express its content, which is rich in life, truth and justice...
...From this point of view Christians for Socialism criticized IC as anti-Marxist and a "throwback to Christian Democracy...
...I've never been in socialist Cuba...
...Since they were published we've been constantly approached by the press, radio and television, as well as by the trade unions, youth groups, and others, to explain our position...
...Not fellow-travelers -- nothing of that sort...
...Here the concept under which the military services have been organized places a priority on national security and control of the population and the revolutionary forces in the name of constituted authority...
...between violent and nonviolent means of struggle...
...ILADES was designed to train young Christian leaders from all over Latin America for social action along anti-Communist, Christian Democratic lines...
...That is why these priests declared: "This system, characterized by private ownership of the means of production and by growing inequality in the distribution of income, converts the worker into a mere pawn of the productive system and promotes the irrational use of economic resources and the incorrect transfer of surpluses to foreign countries...
...Or it may initially be an armed foco which then provokes a popular uprising, as occurred when Trujillo fell...
...LEADER: When we speak of the United Front we include here all the popular organizations which have been moving toward a rupture with the established order, that is, with the dependent relation vis-a-vis imperialism...
...For the explicit force of the revelation to be a leaven in the masses, the priests must take on this historic role and Christians must live it with dedicated lives...
...CASC has a completely conservative line with programs of the Latin American Confederation (CLASC), which do not reflect a revolutionary strategy...
...a dehumanizing system...
...A professor in the Catholic University and resident of a working-class district, Arroyo could be one test of the contradictions in Chilean politics today...
...By this commitment, by his presence-which will always have a religious (not clerical) value-he will gradually take on the Christian values that the people are living, and fill his religious life with real content...
...GUTIERREZ: Does the precedent of Colonel Francisco Caamano in 1965 permit us to think that a Peruvian-type phenomenon might also occur here...
...They worked as laborers in factories...
...5, No...
...there are barely 150,000 workers and more than 500,000 unemployed...
...PL: What can you tell us about the meeting of the eighty worker-priests, their objectives and prospects...
...That charge, which appeared in the Dominican press without provoking any denial, held that the Venezuelan COPEI party has been paying the PRSC two thousand dollars a month since 1970...
...You know this well, yet one may be deceived by sporadic ritualistic demonstrations void of significance...
...After organizing the university and high school students, we proceeded to work in the labor unions and in the popular neighborhoods...
...As a method, full of humanism, it can progressively surmount the obstacles the people will encounter in order that they may gain their total liberation...
...He opened a new road of political alternatives for all priests, that is, he publicly joined a revolutionary movement...
...The lack of class consciousness of a part of the working class is promoted by the ruling classes, especially through the mass media and through certain right-wing action which sows fear, 17 caution, and ultimately, resistance and passivity among the people...
...Some of these diverging tendencies suggest polarization between left and right, and in some cases they represent tensions among left Christians themselves...
...2) For the Church Itself: The best, most effective, most radical (and perhaps the only) way to change the Church, to restore its vitality, its Gospel strength, is to change totally the corrupt and anti-Christian system in which the Church is rooted and which has transformed it into an anti-sign...
...LEADER: His principles of the United Front...
...b) Importance of the Presence of the Priest In the Revolutionary War: 1) For the Priest: to enter into this process is required by his conscience...
...the policy of the agencies of repression is to make it impossible for the urban revolutionary groups to reach the rural areas...
...PL: What do you think of Cuba...
...That is why those who are luke-warm can never be Christians...
...Sometimes I came up against ideological - not personal - divergencies with my fellow priests...
...it is good for nothing but to be thrown away...
...Nor can he orient his efforts "inwards," trying to influence this arthritic structure, for in doing so he abandons the people of God in their struggle...
...This led us to take up arms, to confront the regime and to liberate the individual and the people as a whole...
...Chile, on the other hand, possessed a thirty-year tradition of institutionality within a formal democracy...
...The accusation added another significant fact: In 1970, President Balaguer authorized the PRSC, with no funds in the bank and Moreno Martinez as its presidential candidate, to draw checks on the Reserve Banks totalling thirty thousand dollars to finance the campaign...
...LEADER: When we rejected the peaceful route we did not bind ourselves to a single tactic...
...they took the left as much by surprise as they did the right...
...Latin American Radicalism (New York, 1969) pp...
...Because of this we are confident that you will not back off when faced with this demand that your conscience makes of you as men, as Christians and as priests...
...They understand that "socialism is not only a new type of economic system, it also generates new values which allow for the appearance of a more fraternal society where the worker assumes with dignity the role that is his...
...The Camilista United Front idea is one of our fundamental points...
...It is useless to force a religious structure to evolve when it is integrated into a political-economic structure that is its negation...
...For the ordinary mentality of Christians, especially in certain countries where the process of secularization has advanced suffciently, militancy in a political party is rejected by broad sectors of the Church and therefore could be counter-productive especially when the persons involved hold executive priestly posts...
...The formation of revolutionary and combatant cadres must be stimulated...
...Both of these are to be found in the Chilean and Dominican documents which follow (Numbers 1 and 2...
...Arroyo: The sacrifices of the Vietnamese people have enabled me to understand that the U.S...
...But, in spite of the positive action you are carrying out-we cannot be less than sincere, and with the trust which your lives submerged among the people inspires in us-we resolve to tell you what you yourselves have lived: that this limited involvement is not sufficient...
...That is how the revolution was understood by our companions from the Church, Gerardo Ferrari and Arturo Ferre...
...Only { in this way does it become possible to go beyond a simple tactical utilization of Christian elements in the revolutionary struggle...
...You know your priesthood has only one possibility of being authentic: the struggle with the people...
...The repression has killed, injured, jailed or forced to flee some of the best leadership in the Dominican left...
...Only in this way will it be possible to understand the frequent castration of the original liberating dynamic of Chritianity, analyzing historically the mechanisms of attraction and introjection of the social systems...
...GUTIERREZ: In what respect does the thought of Camilo Torres influence you most...
...the question should be what19 way is best for him to do so...
...Political Christians in Chile operate in a context quite different from that of their confreres in the Dominican Republic or...
...at the same time, by the testimony of his life (more than of his words) he will answer the questions about life, suffering, history and death that have explicit expression only in Christ's resurrection, which sheds light on what he who gives his life for justice existentially intuits...
...You know this struggle is violent, despite the people's wish...
...Arroyo: When I was a professor at ILADES I travelled to different Latin American countries to speak to students and workers who were applying for scholarships to that Institute...
...Professor Bosch holds that the conditions still are not ripe, owing to the multiplicity and the fragmentation of the Dominican left...
...GUTIERREZ: In Latin America there are now two examples of socialist processes: the Chilean - a socialism sought through the institutional routes - and the Cuban, achieved by the violent, revolutionary route...
...GUTIERREZ: Have you taken positions favoring unity, for the purpose of political action with other groups...
...LEADER: We have talked with the PRD, but we also made similar proposals to the PCD, the PSP, and the MPD in order to establish a political front with socialist objectives...
...Arroyo's thinking was made known to PRENSA LATINA in long conversations, as well as his articles and actions...
...But the Unity and Change group still control some of the unions which make up the federation...
...We also accept Mao's argument on fundamental and secondary contradictions...
...SOURCES: Gerassi, John, Ed., Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings and Messages of Camilo Torres (New York: Vintage, 1971), pp...
...GUTIERREZ: In thinking of the Camilista Movement, does the process of insurrectional struggle for the seizure of power depend on the situation in the Caribbean, on whether other countries have been liberated, or is it a question of exclusively national phenomena...
...One cannot afford to be ineffective when the very destiny of man is at stake, when desperation is the daily bread in millions of homes...
...Argentina...
...And nonetheless they occurred...
...The publication, produced by NACLA's Church Research Project, will include articles on the role of missionaries in the U.S...
...GUTIERREZ: How does CORECATO define the composition of the present regime with respect to the sectors it represents and to foreign influences...
...This also had an impact on the high school students organized by the JRSC...
...The reason is that the Church is also an institution inserted in society and cannot help but have an effect on politics...
...LEADER: Our university student group functions legally in the University, like all the rest...
...following includes peasants, workers, middle class...
...Then it strived to be a sort of third position, defining itself against something, but not really representing a creative attitude so much as an average of solutions...
...The priest lives inserted in this enormous machinery of power, and hearing the call of the people who are debating along their difficult way, can no longer accept the role of mere bureaucratic dispenser of an empty word and lifeless signs...
...To do this we must overcome the Church's condemnation of communism as "intrinsically evil" and the aphorism that "religion is the opiate of the people...
...The people are not wrong in feeling this hope...
...The Church, which apparently had nothing much to say about the political process now being carried out in Chile, has also begun an internal analysis to revise obsolete positions...
...The Camilo Torres Revolutionary Committees were created at this point as agencies for work among the people...
...highlands and the dictatorships in Nicaragua and Haiti...
...When this failed, due to fragmentation and mistrust on the left and the repression exercised by the government, he joined the National Liberation Army in the mountains...
...We are sure that the Church-as-institution will fall with the system in which it is sustained and from which it gets its strength...
...We follow with growing interest the struggle that the Priests for the Third World are carrying out within the Church in favor of a commitment to justice...
...He justifies this attitude by trying to deny what is evident to all those who, like himself, are marching with the people: the indispensable necessity of armed revolutionary struggle...
...All Latin American countries have to plan a way out that is coordinated within a global strategy...
...Later a diligent and devout student at Louvain University* in Belgium, this unusual priest was the target of many rightwing press attacks and received much attention from the U.S...
...It is therefore important, in the light of the encounter with the people, to revise the concepts and practices of what the Church, evangelization, the sacraments, grace and the word are, and consequently, of what the priesthood is...
...PL: Can you give us a summary of the reaction this attitude has caused among Christians...
...COPEI, is the Venezuelan version of Christian Democracy...
...In our country neither a bourgeoisie nor a proletariat exist as such...
...Are you also applying an analysis of14 the Marxist type...
...The Montonero "17 of October" Detachment of the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas (in jail...
...Through Peronism they found the answer to the same question that you are asking: how to find the concrete path by which to realize the priestly ideal of serving as God's catalyst among a people who struggle to be human and more divine...
...Since the Dominican Camilista Movement uses Camilo's United Front principles as one of its key reference points, NACLA reproduces here the seven motives: 1. The decisions that are indispensable for Colombian politics to be oriented for the benefit of the majorities, not the minorities, must be made by those who hold power...
...Translated by Richard E. Edwards...
...8 (December 1968...
...PL: What do you think of Viet Nam...
...Our version is based on a translation by the Documentation Center of the World Student Christian Federation, 35 Quai Wilson, Geneva, Switzerland and the Spanish original which appeared in Cristianismo y Revolucion, (Buenos Aires) Ano IV, No...
...This movement has taken anti-U.S...
...It is out of this questioning that "Christians for Socialism" was f ed in Chile, which is reflected in the words of12 Gonzalo Arroyo in the second of the documents which follow...
...of assuming a commitment to the people to the very end-to their suffering, to their liberation-shoulder to shoulder with the militant who has long been risking his life to save his people...
...Here not one leftist group is able to function legally...
...Polarization takes the form then of options between Marxist and Developmentalist analyses of the social and economic crisis of the region...
...24 (June 11, 1971), pp...
...Colombia's revolutionary priest, Camilo Torres, attempted to build a mass revolutionary movement in that country during 1965 under the banner of the People's United Front...
...The figures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are clearly linked in the true independence movement that Latin America has begun in the last decade...
...Fall who must fall and whatever the cost...
...We have to construct socialism with revolutionary Christians...
...It was a mechanical transplant of what had been done in Europe...
...Gerardo Ferrari died in combat...
...power structure and documents and articles on religious groups in the struggle for liberation.In the Dominican Republic, the Revolutionary Social Christian Party (PRSC) is in the middle of a profound crisis which may lead to its disappearance...
...The radicalization process which Arroyo represents is winning over an increasing number of Chilean Catholics, laymen as well as clergy, who are ministers of a centuries-old institution that cannot escape the inexorable tremors of history...
...and anti-communist positions in Latin American labor struggles, operating as the labor front of the Christian Democratic parties...
...We know you will give all your love, every effective service, and that we will soon meet on the road of the people's war, which your lives will bear witness to your faith in God and in man...
...We are not thinking about a rigid, unimaginative socialism...
...LEADER: We are developing work in that sector, but we cannot say that it is effective, given the level of repression being applied in the countryside...
...Peronism, at the time of Juan D. Peron's overthrow in 1955, was extremely antagonistic toward the Catholic hierarchy, but this antagonism has not interfered with relations with priests and active Catholics in working class neighborhoods...
...Arroyo: Camilo Torres is the prototype of a priest who thought that only in the revolutionary struggle of the people "can you practice love of your neighbor...
...Arroyo: After long years of study abroad I returned to Chile in 1964...
...1 (March 1970), for background on Golconda...
...The priests also declared: "the installation of a popular government and its activities in favor of the construction of socialism bring great hope to the people...
...This reaction is not only due to anti-clericalism - understandable because of the clerical position against the Peronist people in 1955, because of the easy life the priests lead, because of the Church-system alliance - but also because the Church, its representatives, its word and its signs, are something empty and useless, which does not respond to concrete human problems, which has nothing to do with the people's struggle nor their war waged against the monster with whom, as they see it, the Church identifies...
...This is sad...
...Sixty-seven percent of the country's enterprises are concentrated in the hands of the state...
...PDC, the Dominican Communist Party...
...VENCEREMOS...
...they lived in slums...
...For background and a description of the 1965 U.S...
...ogether with lay professors and the entire graduating class of ILADES (Latin American Institute of Doctrine and Social Studies), I had to resign from my post in 1969.**In spite of this crisis I have never had doubts about my membership in the Society ofJesus or in the Church, although I was aware that my adhesion to a Church which many times worked together with the oppressors demanded a fidelity to the Gospel and sufficient strength to consistently denounce its conduct when it institutionalized itself in capitalist society...
...Another form of political action, not in a party sense but in the task of de-ideologicalization - which is important when the people are alienated by bourgeoisie ideologies - is today practiced by progressive sectors of the Latin American Church and by some movements such as Priests for the Third World in Argentina and ONIS [National Organization for Social Information] in Peru...
...The cause of the committed priest's indecision is very complex...
...Since then, without abandoning my intellectual work, but now stimulated by my proletarian experience, I have continued to make contacts with and commit myself to the working class and trade union struggle, here, in the proletarian zone of Greater Santiago...
...in practice, the mass of the hierarchy, the clergy and the curias cannot accept it...
...This, in short, is the declaration of the priests, who do belong to the Church...
...Arturo Ferre is with us, a prisoner of the dictatorship...
...The breakdown occurs when it becomes a question of methods for achieving change, who are to be allies in the fight for change, and the type of changes which are needed...
...CASC, the Autonomous Confederation of Christian Trade Unions, Santo Domingo's branch of CLASC, the Latin American Confederation of Christian Trade Unions...
...We saw that Christian Democracy did not have a position consistent with Latin American reality...
...The life of one, the freedom of the other are the hard sacraments by which grace is flowing into and giving life to this New Church that is a-borning...
...GUTIERREZ: Does the Movement operate among the peasantry...
...LEADER: Experience shows us that not one group in the Dominican left, from the most radical all the way over to the one most in accord with the system of power, is arguing for the institutional route...
...Previously, BRUC was controlled by the PRSC through its youth wing...
...LEADER: The rupture was not just a structural break...
...Which of the two do you believe is viable for the Dominican Republic...
...Camilismo, perhaps because of its Christian identity, has not suffered so severely from the extremely violent repression exercised by the youthful right-wing terrorists of La Banda, only recently restrained after increasing domestic and foreign criticism...
...Though he is involved with the people, the reality of his engagement with the Church keeps the remnants of a black-and-white, Manichaean, sectarian-and-clerical idea of the Church from being erased (for this has pierced very deeply, even as deep as the subconscious, after so many years of being faithful to the ecclesiastical institution...
...And this ineffectiveness also becomes a problem of conscience...
...we want to analyze it in greater depth because we feel this is fundamental in order to succeed in our struggle and to save the Church, giving it a new form that will pull it from the chaos in which it now is...
...In an effort to resolve the dilemma, the priest clings to the "method" of "non-violence" to achieve the structural change demanded by his conscience and yet to be able to continue "within the ecclesiastical institution...
...We who feel profoundly that we are the Church, the people of God, also felt the tearing of indecision in a search for the way...
...Imperialism...
...There is no military group which could assume management of the economy, politics and the whole social process...
...TO THE PRIESTS FOR THE THIRD WORLD The brutal reality of the Third World, with its stream of injustices, hunger and pain, turned into conscience in a people that rebels, has spilled over into the Church, has by far surpassed the Church...
...They have actively propagated their faith and are widely publicizing their decision to participate in the socialist construction of a country now in the first stage of much needed revolutionary transformations...
...15-20...
...PSP, the Popular Socialist Party: predecessor of the Dominican Communist Party, but still exists in its own right...
...LEADER: The Dominican Republic does not escape the Latin American phenomenon of dependence...
...Fidel Castro spent an hour and a half, during his recent Chilean visit, in conversation with the 140 priests and nuns who formed the nucleus of Christians for Socialism as of December 1971...
...Christians for Socialism differs from the IC in identifying itself clearly with the aspirations of the working class and with Marxism as a method for the analysis and transformation of social reality...
...penetration of the Third World, the churches and the U.S...
...Thus he came to argue that "the revolution is not only permissible but obligatory for those Christians who see it as the only effective and far-reaching way to make the love of all people a reality...
...that to fight against the regime in the Peronist Movement is the only possibility of effectively reaching the sought-after goal of a total change of structures...
...IV, No...
...We also reviewed the Chilean Christian Democratic experience and that of similar movements all over Latin America...
...He knew Peronism only through books, newspapers, union leaders, etc., but he was unaware of the throbbing reality that makes the WHOLE people, en masse, not only Peronist in the sense of belonging to a party, but in the sense of what being a Peronist requires of them: a conception of life and of man...
...Incorrect forms of Church participation in politics are rightwing clericalisms, the prime example of which is the colonial Church, and the confessional conservative parties, as well as leftwing clericalism which tries to use the Church for partisan purposes...
...The Camilo Torres Revolutionary Committees, however, are clandestine from the base to the leadership...
...Two other important factors are to be observed in the growth of the Christian left...
...This road is not so new as would seem at first glance, since there have been many cases in the history of the Church in Europe, especially before the First Vatican Council[1871], and also in Chile and other Latin American countries, where priests in the past had a great influence at decisive historic moments...
...Its old structures, mental as well as ritual and pastoral, have proved themselves useless, incapable of transmitting an intelligible message and a life that is in communion with the life and rebellious suffering of the people...
...We say "regrettably," because as Christians and Peronists, we are not violent...
...The Jesuit priest, Gonzalo Arroyo, raised everybody's expections...
...This kind of denunciation and confrontation indubitably make a great contribution to the liberation of the people...
...The commitment of the priest to the people on their way to liberation should not limit itself to denunciation, to words, to demonstrations, to involvement in the slums or at work, but must also be present in the vanguard of the people that faces the violence of egoism with the violence of love...
...FOOTNOTES FOR ARTICLE ON CHILE * This is where many Latin American clerics have been trained since World War II, including the revolutionary priest, Camilo Torres (Colombia) and the notorious anticommunist strategist of Eduardo Frei's 1964 presidential campaign in Chile, Roger Vekemans, S.J...
...LEADER: Yes, but not at the top leadership level, since we are an excluded group...
...At the same time I began to give courses in the universities which made me witness the radicalization of groups of Christian students more closely...
...In 1969 the first serious break in the ranks occurred with the withdrawal of an important sector of the party which then formed the United Popular Action Movement (MAPU), allying with the parties of the Marxist left in the Unidad Popular electoral coalition which brought Salvador Allende to power in 1970...
...To the priest who seeks to integrate himself in the revolutionary process, Peronism is important not only because it involves the immense majority of the country, but also because its doctrine responds fully to what a Christian can aspire to as a goal for justice and for society...
...As a man who sees men suffer, he cannot, without dehumanizing himself, let so much pain pass by him and not use all possible means to return to man his human face...
...Arroyo: Undoubtedly, our taking up of these positions caused a much greater impact than we expected...
...He soon fell in a skirmish with government troops advised by U.S...
...Fortunately, I had understanding superiors who supported me in my way of life, in my understanding of what a priest should be today: somebody committed to the desires, hopes and sufferings of the proletariat...
...Gonzalo Arroyo letter January 11, 1972 The ideological character -- in the pejorative sense of the term -- of the manifestations of "sociological Christianity" can be unmasked only through the analysis of the functions it exercises within the modes of production and socio-economic formations...
...The Chilean priests have also taken a position regarding the relationship between Marxism and Christianity...
...In fact, however, work has been intensified and has enjoyed some progress through Camilismo's rapprochement with other forces of left Catholic inspiration which are strong in rural areas...
...16 2. Rrroyo on Chle's Christians for Socalism Gonzalo Arroyo, whose interview by Julio Huasi of Prensa Latina is printed below, is a leading spokesman for "Christians for Socialism," a Chilean movement of Marxist Christians which will celebrate its first birthday on April 16...
...Everywhere in Latin America today, including the Catholic Church, one hears a litany of the need for change...
...And it is also this Peronist reality that expressed the people's march, all its militant sacrifice, all its generous blood that pushes history forward...
...Anything can happen in today's Chile, even a meeting of nearly one hundred practicing priests--considered the best qualified of the 2,000 now in Chile...
...Given the continued resistance of reformist PRD leader Juan Bosch to unity on the left, the Camilista efforts in this direction face great difficulties...
...Nevertheless, one part of the press has attacked us systematically, especially that part related to institutions of Christian inspiration...
...7, 21...
...Working Document for the q Conference, p. 5. !M_1____W ______~~M______- -____ AJ_20 3. rgentinas Third World Priests Called to Frms Both the senders and the receivers of the following letter are prime targets for the Argentine military dictatorship's repressive apparatus...
...His apostolic zeal as messenger carrying the good news is suddenly brutally shaken and he is forced to make radical decisions when confronted with the religious panorama that surrounds him...
...The rupture occured in February 1969 during the Third Congress of University Students...
...Friends, Priests for the Third World: Each day you drink the blood of Christ...
...This suffering falls upon our shoulders with the weight of the gospel's message and obliges us to do our utmost to change this structure as soon as possible...
...For fifteen years, non-violent methods of denunciations, strikes, demonstrations and elections have been systematically crushed by the violence of armed repression that defends and sustains the system...
...In 1965 the PRSC possessed enough vitality to sign the insurrectionary Rio Piedras Pact with Juan Bosch and to participate directly in the April Constitutionalist rebellion that year.* Today, infected by the decomposition of the Dominican political milieu, it presents the appearance of an artificial party sustained either as an ornamental opposition to Balaguerism or simply to maintain an affiliate of the world Christian Democratic movement in the country...
...When the pro-United States press attempted to get the Church hierarchy to take corrective measures separating these priests from the vast Christian community in Chile, the effort boomeranged...
...2 (April 1971), pp...
...And in the process, these elements void the Church of significance as light and catalyst...
...d) The Priest-Revolution and Peronism: All the people's yearning for liberation, all their hopes for a better society, all the strength of their march is not something vague and nameless...
...5, No...
...And the "hard-line" wing headed by Antonio Rosario has united with the Revolutionary Social Christian Youth (JRSC, Juventud Revolucionaria Social Cristiana), the youth branch of the party, in demanding the expulsion of Moreno Martinez and the purification of the group...
...In the two years prior to its being closed down, its circulation had grown from 4,000 to 20,000 and it claimed 100,000 readers...
...We shouldn't ask if it is right or wrong for a priest to take part in politics...
...LEADER: The Dominican Republic does not have a tradition of military culture or of a socio-political formation of the officers...
...They wouldn't let us...
...that to be a Peronist militant means to be atthe vanguard of the people...
...19-31...
...With certain preocupation we observe that this has still not been attained...
...So these "revolutionaries" talk of lack of objective or subjective conditions, of formation of cadres, of conscientization, of organization, etc...
...Horowitz, J. DeCastro and J. Gerassi (eds...
...Undoubtedly the criteria used to reject or accept this type of political action which stems from a faith in the liberation promised by Christ should fit the political situation of the country in question...
...In this way, it was reported, Balaguer obtained PRSC participation in the elections, but the Social Christian leader emphatically denied that the PRSC had received the sum of one hundred thousand dollars for this purpose, as had been speculated...
...Camilo Torres: Obras Escogidas (Montevideo: Editorial Provincias Unidas, 1968), p. 173.GUTIERREZ: Aside from working with other groups in specific sectors, have you posed the question of national political unity...
...Funds came from the German Catholic bishops through the Misereor and Adveniat Foundations...
...In other words, the incarnation and witness which brought us to a commitment to the suffering man are no longer sufficient...
...Arroyo: What I just said shows that it was not an awakening of consciousness on the purely intellectual plane...
...In addition, it provides a monthly subsidy to PRSC head Alfonso Moreno Martinez and to the party's secretary, Luis Estrella...
...In fact this group has increasingly identified itself not as Christians who are ready to cooperate with Marxists, but as Christian Marxists...
...One of the questions which has arisen from this growing disenchantment with Christian Democracy is whether it is wise and correct for Christians to form confessional parties of the left, center or right...
...The Priests for the Third World -- some 400 in number, though membership fluctuates somewhat -were also targeted for repression in a document dated April 13, 1971, prepared by the Argentine information services and made public by the Cuban magazine Bohemia.* Repression took the form of detention of a number of priests active in the organization (at one point last year some 47 priests were jailed after a march in support of political prisoners) and -- significantly -- the October shutdown of the closely allied magazine Cristianismo y Revolucion...
...We think that all this has been very useful: an awakening of consciousness for many Christians, sometimes a painful one, which could even create division inside the Church, but one which carries the strength of the Gospel: "If salt becomes tasteless...
...and with the regime, that classes them among its enemies...
...PRD, The Dominican Revolutionary Party: led by Juan Bosch, it is the only mass party in the country...
...it is not only the corporal but also the human that is systematically destroyed...
...But what concerns us most of all is that now in Chile "there are large groups of workers who are in favor of changes but who have not joined on a mass-scale the present process in favor of socialism...
...In 1970 alone, the dictatorship imported $200 million in equipment to fight them...
...counterinsurgency experts...
...Or if not, he negates the evangelical licitness of violence, or shields himself in a priestly22 NUEZ IN CUBA S1t (HAVANA) universality which has long since lost its meaning...
...Your priestly hearts are marked with the blood that Christ sheds for his people...
...And this Revolution is possible only by way of violence, by a positive, creative, constructive, giving and loving violence...
...And here forceful arguments and factors come into play which put a priest up against the wall, because at his level of commitment he not only absolutely opposes the ecclesiastical institution, but he opposes his own priestly conscience as well...
...Therefore, the priests feel themselves committed to "this process now being carried out and want to contribute to its success...
...This effort has embittered more than one life...
...A NEW CHURCH ARISES c) Revolutionary Commitment: To the degree that the priest, like the militant, engages himself in the struggle, he experiences what he already knew: as long as the system continues, the isolated kind of struggle is ineffective, useless...
...Neither is it his work to be a bridge between the Church-as-institution and the poeple, because owing to the Church-as-institution's mistakes this is as useless as it is impossible...
...Belgian...
...If we lose this support, we will disappear...
...What is important is common action in the historic project which the country is now engaged in...
...GUTIERREZ: Camilo Torres arrived at his conception of the United Front by means of Marxist class analysis - unity of the strata or classes which are in contradiction with imperialism or with the capitalist system...
...Nevertheless, here and now, non-violence regrettably cannot be the method for achieving the necessary change...
...The Dominican military man is unlikely to have a university education...
...A people that suffers and that is alienated from the Church...
...I knew the Church whose hierarchy sided with the powerful who kept silence over the injustices committed against the people and the tortures applied to revolutionaries, among whom were also many Christians...
...The role of the priest in the Third World is that of being God's witness in the forward march of the people...
...LEADER: A group of youth withdrew from the PRSC because we found, on analyzing the Social Christian positions, that Christian Democracy does not respond to Latin American reality...
...What is important is that - as we see things - conditions exist...
...The group then allied itself with the related university/student sector whose vanguard was BRUC, and provided this organization with a new vision...
...Founded by Juan Garcia Elorrio, a former seminarian and follower of Camilo Torres, the magazine was the only legal voice of the militant left in Argentina...
...Leadership is in the nationalist bourgeoisie...
...And you know the struggle is Peronist...
...Vol...
...LEADER: Yes, we have...
...4 (July-August 1971), pp...
...c) For the Success of the Struggle: The fact that priests are being incorporated into the people's war is of great importance to the latter.23 The priest who struggles is a living example of what Christianity and the Church should be...
...13 In the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo I interviewed a member of the national leadership of Camilismo, whose name cannot be published because of the clandestine nature of his work...
...So we came to the conclusion that ideology is not something given in advance, but rather a constant search for theoretical arguments in contact with a reality, with a praxis...
...Facing the reality of a people that suffers, stifled by an inhuman and anti-Christian system, the priest finds himself in an institution alienated from the people's reality, when not actually opposed to the people, and comfortably situated in the system which oppresses the people...
...Thus, these priests have been able to feel in dramatic form the exploitation of the working class, the malnutrition of vast sectors of the population, the shortage of housing, unemployment, lack of culture, all of which is the result of the capitalist system, the result of the domination of foreign imperialism which has been maintained until now by this country's ruling classes...
...Then a broad movement was developed, framed in the position of Camilo Torres...
...Moscow recognizes both parties...
...The whole phenomenon of power in this country is complex in its internal aspects, but everything is always referred directly to the United States...
...Without Christians any revolution in Latin America will be partial.** * Joe Collins, "The Evolution of Christian Marxists in Chile" (MS), pp...
...it is totally distinct from the class analysis of a European society...
...In our country 1 the values (generosity, solidarity, risking oneself for justice, humanitarianism) that mean the historical continuity of Christianity and that form the content of the new implicit Church, have a concrete name: Peronism...
...Collaboration between both, say the priests, "will be facilitated in the measure that Marxism becomes more and more an instrument of analysis and transformation of society and in the measure that Christians purge their faith of everything that prevents them from assuming a real and efficacious commitment...
...The officers probably could not exercise the government with a sense of social development, or would not understand the factors at work in that sense...
...press agencies...
...The press communique issued by the priests has had great political effect both in Chile and internationally...
...In face of the force of this reality, the real or fictitious difficulties found for avoiding political involvement in the Peronist Movement are valueless...
...He can no longer transmit a word and a ministry that are rejected...
...But more importantly, Camilo lent the fire of committed love to the Christian forces for change around the continent...
...It has neither a methodology nor a strategy viable for the solution of the problems...
...The transition between a bourgeois Church and a revolutionary Church is a "leap" which breaks with too many historical, theological, psychological, economical and political ties...
...All of you know this Peronist reality well...
...As a Christian this requirement is the axis about which the entire Christian life and message turn...
...He will discover the signs that express the explicitly Christian meaning of that popular reality...
...On the other hand, the priest's presence in the revolutionary process is also the presence of the explicit continuity of the Church and of the construction of the "new Church" that will respond to the "new" reality of the society that the people want to create...
...It has pacifist politics, and is trade-unionism striving for purely economic demands...
...We cannot visualize how we could gain power by the institutional route...
...PL: How did you come to have this class vision of Chilean and Latin American reality...
...10 (February 1970...
...The priests are aware of the problems between Christians and Marxists based on past history which today is dead in Chile...
...Now in his forties, he was ordained in the "Society of Jesus" after graduation as an agronomist from the Catholic University of Chile...
...But the way of violence also has a wide range of alternatives...
...Arroyo: Study circles on "Christian participation in socialist construction" took place from April 14th to the 16th [1971] in Santiago with the attendance of eighty priests, most of whom function in working-class districts, or among the peasantry andlow-income social groups...
...We believe that in political matters, the Dominican and Latin American revolutions require unity among the revolutionary and progressive sectors which advocate the seizuere of power...
...7. The political apparatus to be organized should seek the greatest possible support of the masses, should have a technical planning component, and should be organized around principles of action rather than around a leader to avoid the danger of cliques, demagoguery and personality cult...
...In their search for God through man, they left the peaceful life of the seminary...
...At the same time, he accuses the Church of being what it should not be, and corrodes the institution...
...It is difficult to get to the peasants...
...For more on Dominican repression see the NACLA Newsletter, Vol...
...One is the importance of the example set by Camilo Torres, and the other is the widespread disenchantment among politically radical Christians with the Christian Democratic or Social Christian option...
...The priest forcefully unmasks the false cover-up of "Christian civilization...
...One detail suggests the spirit of the eighty Catholic priests who met to found this movement-the substitution of a single word which in essence illustrates a change in conduct and aims...
...The type of political action consisting of directly joining a political movement - as is the case of Camilo Torres and the Frente Unido [United Front] - cannot be considered to be the usual for a priest...
...But the mass backing it receives there allows it to make itself heard - in fact, it operates openly...
...I refer especially to the failure of the "revolution in liberty" [of Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic Party] - not its partial reforms which must be recognized as positive - but as a revolutionary the "paper tiger" are being proved right by the heroic struggle of this self-sacrificing people in favor of all other underdeveloped countries...
Vol. 6 • March 1972 • No. 3
