Reviews
Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena by John Burdick, University of Califor- nia Press, 1993, 280 pp., $45 (cloth). In overwhelmingly...
...In overwhelmingly Catholic Latin America, a region beset by deep social and economic inequality, the progressive Catholic Church would seem ideally situated to prosper...
...This timely collection, ably translated by Frank Bardacke and Leslie L6pez, is essential reading for anyone interested in the ongoing Zapatista uprising, the shape of peasant insurgency in the post-Cold War era, Mexico's widespread political-economic crisis, or politically engaged Latin American literature...
...Those who for years and years have satiated themselves at full tables, while death sat beside us so regularly that we finally stopped being afraid of it...
...Those who filled our pockets and our souls with promises and empty declarations...
...With explanatory commentary by John Ross and Frank Bardacke, the book offers a firstrate snapshot of the struggle which is the fruit of that plunder...
...In addition to revealing Marcos' poetic talents, these letters and communiques provide an excellent introduction to the nature of plunder and misery in Chiapas...
...Unlike much previous scholarship about the Church which has tended to ignore competing religions, Burdick sees the religious arena as a fluid one in which religious migration is the norm, not the exception...
...In this incisive, immensely readable book, anthropologist John Burdick explores the reasons for the Catholic Church's decline by analyzing the choices of religious affiliation made by the residents of Sdo Jorge in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro...
...He compares how Catholicism, umbanda and pentecostalism fare in addressing the experiential predicaments of some of the most marginal sectors of the working class, unmarried youths, married women facing domestic conflict, and African Brazilians in Sdo Jorge...
...In the space of a few weeks in January, 1994, the ski-masked guerrilla leader who calls himself Marcos, through a skillful mix of political audacity, literary irony and hightech media manipulation, transformed himself and the indigenous communities of the state of Chiapas into Mexican national icons...
...Shadows of Tender Fury: The Letters and Communiques of Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Monthly Review Press, 1995, 272 pp., $30.00 (cloth), $15.00 (paper...
...For those who read Spanish, Marcos is well worth reading in the original...
...This transformation probably began with one of his earliest and best-known communiques, in which he replies to a government offer to pardon his peasant troops...
...Paradoxically however, the liberation theology-inspired Christian base communities (CEBs) have not enjoyed a popular groundswell...
...Even in Brazil, the Latin American country with the most CEBs, Catholicism is losing ground against the African-Brazilian religion umbanda and the evangelical churches...
...In each case, progressive Catholicism comes up short...
...Given that the CEBs are losing the battle for souls in Brazil's urban periphery, the question of whether the Catholic Church is the only religious vehicle for social change becomes more urgent...
...Who must ask for pardon," he asks, "and who can grant it...
...Virtually the same collection is available in Mexico as EZLN: Documentos y comunicados (Ediciones Era, 1994), with a powerful introduction by Antonio Garcia de Le6n...
...Burdick points out that many CEB members have not made the leap into political activism despite the Church's teachings, while pentecostalism-often caricatured as the religion of the status quo-does offer possibilities for active political engagement...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 6
