Strategic Pastoral Action:
Writings on Justice, Resistance, Peace
................................................
Below are three written works which offer reflection on
prophetic responses to oppressive practices in the western hemisphere. They are:
 *1. How Mexican base communities are encountering the oppressive practices of the neoliberal new world order.
*2. Reflections on radical evangelism from Casa Ave Maria's radical coordinator in Nicaragua.
*3. The divisive effects of the U.S. dollar on Cuba's transitional economy.
.................................................
Central Mexican Base Communities vs. the
Necro-economics
of Neoliberalism
This article will appear soon in
the journal Religious
Socialism, a publication of the Commission on Religion and
Socialism of the Democratic Socialists of America. It was
delivered as a paper earlier this year by Wes Rehberg ( (c)1996
all rights reserved) during the 1996 Socialist Scholars
Conference in New York City.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These
winds that blow full of the long history of struggle of our
people today are winds of new movements of hope harvested largely
in pursuit of the triumph of life over this project of death,
Neoliberalism. They are these winds that return you [the upstate
New Yorkers] to us to reunite us. Because we believe in life, we
continue going forward ... More, we ourselves feel strength in
order to continue struggling so that this project of death
imposed by the International Monetary Fund on the most poor
countries of the world, shall not continue to grow more the
unemployment of the worker's hands, the hunger and misery that
not cannot only be addressed economically without considering as
well values such as justice, truth, liberty, democracy, love,
etc. -- Letter from Mexican base communities;
original Spanish in endnotes.(1)
The term "neoliberalism" has become a catchword for
ecclesial base communities and other ecclesial community
cooperatives in Latin America. Knowledge of its meaning is an
indicator of consciousness, a revolutionary consciousness that
knows this term as a characterization of the dominating global
political, economic and social order that stresses free markets
and free trade, but which also leaves millions of people surplus
to its presumed benefits.
For Christian base communities in central Mexico, in the
state of Hidalgo, which like others operate under themes of
liberation theology and the pedagogy of the oppressed,
neoliberalism is a "project of death." Its economics is a necro-
economics, a pervasive order that results in death by hunger, by
political assassination, by economic treachery, by governmental
complicity, by extreme social marginalization.
As the letter above from these Mexican base communities
suggests, those left outside the neoliberal system as its
"other," are not "other" to the connected life of what its
liberationist theological perspective considers fundamental, a
connection which includes cooperativist conceptions of justice,
peace, love and truth which arise from the circumstances of
oppression.
Instead of looking to a global economy dominated by
the trilateral north, and enforced by overt and covert military
action supplied by the global arms trade, the communities look to
themselves, to local practices for their power and strength, and
to alliances of solidarity with similar cooperative formations
throughout the world, as well as with activists who reflect on
conditions of oppression and offer strategic responses.
What this essay will seek to do is briefly describe how such
communities, under conceptions and themes of liberation theology,
interpret the reality of their oppression and respond to that
interpretation of reality.
What it will address briefly as well
are definitions of neoliberalism, a brief history of ecclesial
base communities, the style of organization of base communities
in central Mexico, themes important within the praxis of
liberation theology, and a notion of solidarity which includes a
request for a revolutionary activist response from people who
live within governments identified with oppressive forces.
A VERSION OF WHAT "NEOLIBERALISM" MEANS
Neoliberalism is characterized generally as a dominating
agenda of free markets, privatization and structural adjustments
that often cut government health and education programs but offer
military support for complying governments. A further
characterization has come in Mexico from the jungles of Chiapas,
communicated to the newspaper La Jornada by the literary
Zapatista rebel known as Subcommander Marcos.
This
characterization was offered in the midst of a Mexican Army
onslaught in March 1995 to seize the command of the Zapatista
National Liberation Army, mostly Mayan insurgents who rose up
against the outfall of neoliberal oppression in this southern
Mexican state. Marcos and others were weaving a path among the
Mexican military and entering the Lacandon jungle, by the
account in this communique.
Marcos relates how he had stopped to
reflect on another entry into the jungle 11 years previous, his
first, to join this insurgency at its beginnings. He is startled
by a shout from under nearby leaf, and recognizes an old friend,
a beetle, named Durito (little hard one), whom he had met during
that first entry. After some conversation, the beetle begins a
discourse on neoliberalism. I quote Marcos in this elided
version:(2)
[Durito] went under a little leaf. After awhile
he
came out
pushing his little desk. After that he went for a chair, sat
down, took out some papers and began to look through them.
"Mmmh, mmh," he said with every few pages that he read. Soon
after he exclaimed "Here it is!" "Here's what?" I asked,
intrigued. "Don't interrupt me! ... Your problem is the same
many have. You refer to the economic and social doctrine
known as `neoliberalism.'" ... Just what I needed now, I
thought, classes in political economy ... [Durito continues]
... "It is a metatheoretical problem! Yes, you start from
the idea that neoliberalism is a doctrine ... You think that
neoliberalism is a capitalist doctrine to confront the
economic crises that capitalism itself attributes to
`populism.' Right?" ... Durito didn't let me answer ... "Of
course, right! Well, it turns out neoliberalism is not a
theory to confront or explain the crisis. It is the crisis
itself made theory and economic doctrine! That is,
neoliberalism hasn't the least coherence; it has no plans
nor historic perspective ..."(3)
Crisis management on a megaeconomic scale, given the shape
of doctrine, when in fact, as the beetle further spells out, it
is more rather "i-m-p-r-o-v-i-s-a-t-i-o-n," an improvisation
given the status of rationality and doctrine by both advocates
and critics of neoliberalism.
Those who live in a network of
ecclesial base communities in northwestern Nicaragua known as the
Bloque, for example, have born witness that they know well the
cost of this "improvisation" under a government now fully in
complicity with IMF structural adjustment demands. Infant
mortality has risen, and the availability of health care and
education has radically diminished. Nicaragua is now the second
poorest nation in the hemisphere.
A PARTIAL HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF BASE COMMUNITIES
Base communities such as those in the Bloque, in the
seminal base-community network in the parish of St. Paul the
Apostle in Managua during the 1970s, and in Mexico came into
being as a direct
result of a movement that was engendered in Panama and Brazil and
underscored by the episcopal conferences in Medellin,
Colombia.
Vatican II had stressed that there was a theological continuity
between "temporal progress" and the transcendent realm of
ultimacy, and following this, Pope Paul VI in 1967 issued the
encyclical Populorum Progressio in which he advocated "integral
development" for people who were living in conditions of
oppression and poverty.
Such development included "not only
overcoming poverty but growing in knowledge and culture,
cooperation with others, and a will to peace, all the way to
acknowledgment of God and being joined to God in faith and love
..."
The year following the issuance of this encyclical, 130
bishops from CELAM -- the Latin American bishops conference --
met in August in Medellin, to devise ways to implement the
social reforms advocated during the Vatican II Council. The
bishops pledged themselves to defending human rights, raising
human consciousness, sharing the condition of the poor, and
decrying institutionalized violence.
An oft-mentioned phrase in
the Medillin documents was "comunidad de base": the base
community, signifying small groups of Christians under lay
guidance. With antecedents in Belgian, Brazil, and through the
efforts of Chicago priests on the outskirts of Panama City, the
base community had begun to become a presence in Latin America by
the time of the Medellin conference, especially as an effort to
reach communities beyond the reach of dwindling numbers of
Catholic religious.
A key methodological concept in the deliberations of such
communities is embodied in the term "praxis", elaborated from
Paulo Freire's pedagogy of the oppressed and combining action
with reflection on that action, which in turn is again practiced
and reflected upon, the key components of a hermeneutic of
suspicion.
Praxis is the activity of a concientizacion that is
self-critically analytical and is transformed into action against
the oppressive practices it exposes.
BASE COMMUNITIES IN CENTRAL MEXICO
Praxis and concientizacion are part of the daily life of a
group of eight base communities near Tulancingo, Mexico, in the
state of Hidalgo, and of the subgroups of 33 comunidades
pequen~as, or small reflection and action groups within these
communities. The first of these communities had been formed more
than a decade ago, had flirted briefly with U.S. and Latin
American development programs, then turned from these to the
radical liberation theological perspective that now guides their
practices.
These communities operate under a council of women, youth
and men coordinated through Desarrollo Rural de Hidalgo, known as
DERHGO, and the Sergio Mendez Arceo Committee for Human Rights,
part of a network of Mexican non-governmental human rights
groups. The communities are also part of SENEC, the Secretariat
of New Experiences in Community Education, which also serves five
other projects like DERHGO in other Mexican states.
The critical praxis of governance in the communities,
within
the structure of DERGHO, and within SENEC itself, is
collaborative. This means there is a sharing of tasks and
authority, an empowering of women and youth in governance roles,
and the effort to insure continuance and regeneration of the
communities themselves through various types of educational and
leadership experiences.
This has been a difficult task, as is
testified by community coordinators and members. Reasons for
these difficulties include:
* The difficulty in obtaining local educational resources
which includes teachers and schools for many of the
communities. Even when teachers are obtained voluntarily
from outside the country, the Mexican government may require
them to leave, as is occurring currently with two volunteers
from Spain.
* The difficulty in obtaining technological resources
which
would help communities to increase their production of goods
for survival and for sale either through DERHGO's campesino
store in Tulancingo or to other outlets. These resources,
too, are sought from outside sources from solidarity groups.
* The difficulty in obtaining health resources, which
include alternative health practices as well as the need to
forego such things as construction of sanitary facilities
because other necessities take priority in the midst of
scarce resources.
* The question of the possibility of a spread of violent
attacks against the communities by "counterinsurgency" and
"private" forces which for political, economic and social
reasons don't want to see such communities develop. Such
attacks are common in Mexico where landowners or local
"caciques" are in conflict with indigenous community aims.
So far DERHGO has experienced no violent attacks, partly
because many communities and their "ejidos" are on non-
arable land, though leaders have been threatened.
* Difficulties within the prevailing Roman Catholic
Church
heirarchy in accepting such formations within the context of
Christian praxis even though social teachings in Latin
America stress their importance. The difficulties are
especially apparent when base communities proclaim
themselves overtly as sites of resistance against political
and economic oppression, sites defined within the context of
"class struggle."
* The temptations of "consumerism" and "egoism" that come
with the availability of the type of consumer goods that
characterize the so-called First World which stress a
trenchant individualism and self-aggrandizement. At the same
time there is a recognition that a style of "market
socialism" is critical for the communities to intersect with
the larger economy, even though it is difficult to compete
in this realm.
* The tensions between community and individual needs and
requirements, and between communities' needs and
requirements. Often times these are defined in liberationist
contexts as questions of autonomy, a conflict between
individual autonomy and community autonomy. My preference is
to investigate these tensions by not using the notion of
autonomy, but substituting for this term the terms "agency"
and "positionality," as these have been described in
feminist jurisprudence.(4) In any event, these tensions are
sought to be met through collaborative negotiations.
Still, these difficulties are considered vastly different
from those of times past when problems included the perpetuation
of family violence and abuse of women, alcoholism, the long
absence of men forced to work off ejido lands in fincas, which
included the temptations offered at these sites. Conversely, the
current difficulties are seen to offer opportunities for building
solidarity with others in similar straits or with those who might
be able to help amplify resources.
THE CALL TO SOLIDARITY IN A RADICAL THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
A conception of "solidarity" includes within liberation
theological contexts a response to the question of divinity,
interpreted often in Latin America as a manifestation of a divine
person as one of, or directly among the oppressed in its
preferential option. This teaching is embodied in the scriptural
narratives of Jesus of Nazareth, who, in the narratives, situates
himself as called to free the captives, the oppressed, the widow,
orphan, those in prison, the hungry, the poor.
These narratives have particular meaning for people of
the
base communities. People among oppressed groups who have been
taught to lead groups in concientizacion -- often called either
delegates of the word, or catechists, or as in DERHGO and SENEC
communities, "asocios" -- engender dialogue using narratives and
story telling to help open political and economic contexts within
which those engaged in "la lucha" can envision themselves.
For
people used to working within conceptions of divinity already,
this has been a powerful element of concientizacion. Communities
are engendered within this "mystical" and practical
understanding.
From a philosophical perspective, I interpret this
process
from what I have elsewhere called "transintuitive,"
"transsubjective," and "transreflexive" realities, which
themselves are part an emergence which itself is part of life
renewing itself and refreshing itself.
Within this emergence is
an autochthonous reality which itself seeks to assure equitable
distribution of life resources so that flourishing is spread
among humans, for example, as broadly as possible -- a
flourishing open to all. This might be interpreted as "spirit,"
or that which in theological terms has been called the divine
within the human, apparent in individuals and communities both,
and as fully at risk as they are.
Solidarity is viewed from this perspective as "standing
with," that is, as the narratives of the Nazarene note, of being
"among." "Being among" includes "standing with" in the most
abject moments of treachery.
As one theologian has noted, if one
embraces the Christian narrative in faith and claims to be a
Christian, then one also embraces the notion of the resurrection,
for by definition, to be a Christian is to believe in the
resurrection. To be such a one, with the resurrection as an
article of faith, one need not fear "standing with" in solidarity
nor its consequences.
Solidarity, thus, involves revolutionary risk, which
itself
is a test of solidarity. For communities, to stand in solidarity
is to take the risk of empowerment, of flourishing, which is to
take the risk of being a site of resistance against oppression,
and to name that oppression, to name the demon.
Base communities
have named the demon of this era the political, economic and
social force that continues to keep them oppressed, to leave them
dying from hunger and hunger-related diseases at a global rate of
almost 2,000 persons an hour. This is categorically the opposite
of flourishing, and demands response.
On the walls of the DERHGO coordinating center in
Tulancingo
are plaques and posters which name this demon, which call it
neoliberalism, which explain its devastating affects, and which
urge resistance.
There are also expressions within this group of
solidarity with the Zapatistas, the EZLN, and now the FZLN, as
well as with other campesino resistance formations against this
particularly defined oppression. As well, there is in DERHGO's
quarters, a very large portrait of Emiliano Zapata, signifying
revolutionary solidarity. The accompanying human rights center
also receives and distributes "action alerts" which call on
others to act in solidarity.
Such calls for solidarity go forth as well to those in
the
United States, resident nation of the imperial force of
"neoliberalism." The calls urge persons of this nation, including
its academics and "eruditos," to join in the practical activity
of the very real revolutionary struggle that makes the term
"praxis" an actuality, a living interaction of theory and
practice, with a strategic vector of action.
Solidarity in this
context is the action of risking theoretical practices and
understandings with practical action and revolutionary strategy,
in resistance to global practices that are terribly abasing and
devasting to the local practices of base communities seeking to
flourish.
-----------------
ENDNOTES
1. Estos vientos que soplan llenos de una larga
historia
de lucha de nuestro pueblo hoy son vientos nuevos
movimientos de esperanza largamente cosechada tras el
triunfo de la vida sobre este proyecto de muerte,
Neoliberalismo. Son estos vientos los que nos vuelven a
unir. Porque creemos en la vida, seguimos adelante ...
Mas, nos sentiremos fuertas para seguir luchando
porque este proyecto de muerte impuesto por el Fondo
Monetario Internacional a los paises mas pobre del
mundo, no siga creando mas desocupacion de mano de
obra, hambre y miseria no solo economica sino en
valores fundamental como: la justicia, la verdad, la
libertad, la democracia, el amor, etc...
These excerpts are from a letter written in October 1995 by
Mexicans who live and work in base communities -- Christian
communes and cooperatives -- in central Mexico. It was written
to a group in upstate New York which works to help resource the
communities in their struggle to survive a battle against
institutionalized poverty. The excerpts read, in Spanish:
The base communities, through their
reflection on their situation and their actions to overcome
impoverishment, have concluded that they are victimized by a
global economic order which they have labeled "neoliberalism."
2. The Zapatista National Libertion Army, Mayan insurgents in
the state of Chiapas, Mexico, rose up Jan. 1, 1994 by taking
briefly various municipalities in this state and quickly
withdrawing, a symbolic act against neoliberal expansion in
Mexico, particularly through the North American Free Trade
Agreement. The NAFTA accords between the United States, Canada
and Mexico took affect on that date. The uprising halted the
expected flow of international investments into Mexico, and
especially into oil-rich Chiapas, where land disputes are
pervasive and brutal.
3. Marcos, Subcomandante, "Durito II (Neoliberalism Seen from the
Lacandon Jungle)," "Epistle: Second Communique of the EZLN of the
11th of March 1995," trans. Cindy Warner, NCDM-USA. From Owner-
Chiapas-L@profmexis.dgsca.unam.mx: 21 March 1995, via NCDM-
Ally@igc.apc.org. PeaceNet (CarNet).
4. The terms "agency" and "positionality" are taken from the
hedonist arguments of feminist jurisprudence characterized by the
work of Katharine T. Bartlett, Judith Gbrich and Robin West.
----------------
Author: Wes Rehberg has a doctorate in philosophy from SUNY-
Binghamton and is a longtime activist and co-founder of SPAN/--
Shoestrings & Grace, a Latin American community resource and
human rights project.
-----------------------------
The offering below is from Grant Gallup ( (c) 1996), coordinator of the hospitality house Casa Ave Maria, in Managua, Nicaragua.
Evangelization from the Perspective of Liberation Theology.
This note on EVANGELISM is excerpted from one I wrote for another
discussion group, locally called a "charla" (our local [Nicaraguan] word for
chat).
Segundo Galilea (what a wonderful name--
Second Galilee!) is a Chilean pastor and writer whom I had the great
blessing of studying with at St. Bernard's Institute in Rochester NY
one summer in the 80's. One of his little books, which I commend to
the reading of those interested in this discussion of "evangelism",
is his "The Beatitudes: To Evangelize as Jesus Did."
For Galilea,
the evangel is the activity of Jesus himself, carried on in the
church today: its ingredients therefore are those of Jesus' own
evangelism: so we must preach the God who saves, who liberates, and
our evangelization must bring about incarnate rescue (not merely
promise extraterrestrial or post-funeral rescue), here in our
history, cultures, aspirations, our whole reality; it must transform
individuals and groups, families, and societies into justice-doing
people and justice-doing communities; it must be directed to those
most in need, most marginalized, most de-humanized.
Gustavo
Gutierrez, whom I studied with at Maryknoll, reminded us that the
gospel is directed not so much to the nonbeliever as to the nonhuman --
that is, to those whom the human community has dismissed as "the
offscouring of the earth." And our evangelism must be modeled on the
discipleship of Jesus, as the Great Evangelizer.
Galilea takes up
the Beatitudes as the synthesis of the gospel itself: promise and
invitation and demand. They reveal who God is, who Jesus is, and are
not just moralisms about who we SHOULD BE, but promises of what we
shall be, and demands of what we must be.
Evangelism in the
Beatitudes is a LIFE WITNESS, the gospel of Jesus is preached to us
BY THE POOR. In place of Jesus now, as in a sacrament, we have the
poor (whom Jeremy Taylor called "those excellent images of Christ")
inviting us into the kingdom, who go there before the rich; we have
prostitutes and other sexual outcasts inviting us into the reign of
God, because they get there before us, we have Jesus ushering poor
widows and dying thieves into the kingdom long before we can get
there--and it is their invitation that bids us follow.
"The
Beatitudes are a promise whose fulfillment begins right now."--
(Galilea). So that to say "the kingdom is theirs" (as the
Beatitudes say) is to say concretely that the gospel, the Christian
message, the church, belong to them.
God (says St. Paul) does not
leave Godself without a witness anywhere, and the "offscouring of the
earth" do not receive the gospel from the hired help of bourgeoisie
denominations as news at all, much less as good news in the Dockers-
clad Playtex Living Bible thumping versions preached by them.
At the
beginning of his "missionary work", Jesus preaches at Nazareth,
establishing his credentials -- and the audience for his message: "The
spirit of the Lord has been given to me. . . to bring good news TO
THE POOR, to proclaim LIBERATION TO PRISONERS and NEW VISION TO THE
BLINDED, to SET THE DOWNTRODDEN free."
Well, I don't mean to review
and restate all of Jesus' definition of evangelism, nor all of
Galilea's work, nor all of Gutierrez's ideas on evangelism here, but
they are emblematic of a new way of seeing the task of
evangelization, which is light years from seeing the gospel as
preaching to middle class and upper class gringos some rarified
theological opinions about Jesus in the metaphysical discourse of the
middle ages or the Reformation, clad in Me First World cultural
baggage and bathos, or (worse, in my opinion) in the show tunes and
self-improvement psychology of the megachurches and their gospel of
narcissim.
And when it came time for the disciples of Juan Bautista
to take him a report on whether Jesus his cousin was living up to his
ideas of what evangelism is (the ideas he preached at Nazareth), what
does Jesus tell them to report to Juan Bautista?
"Go back and tell
Juan WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN AND HEARD -- people actually walking around
with new vision, the most hideous illnesses healed, people who
couldn't hear what we have to say are hearing it, people who were
dead meat in this society are alive as you or me, and the poor are
having the good news of liberation preached to them."
Jesus' gospel
is not so much a gospel whose content is the correct opinions about
himself, but whose content is the message that the listener -- poor,
outcast, dead -- is now empowered with new life and in charge of that
life as subject of history and not an object of someone else's
opinions.
The Matthean Great Commission (doubtless an ecclesial
voice, in any case, but one which the Church has always taken
seriously by letting it stand as if it came to us from Jesus of
Nazareth himself) makes the whole world the field for the seed to be
sown, the audience for the gospel to be preached to, and lived
amongst, but in that mixed world of rich and poor, of oppressed and
oppressor, the gospel comes to the rich, to the opressor, as
questions and woes: "Alas for you who are rich! You are getting your
goodies now!" "Who then can be saved?"
In Luke 19:1-10 when
Zacchaeus announced the redistribution of his wealth, Jesus said
LIBERATION/SALVATION had arrived at his house. "Look, sir, I am going
to give half my property to the poor, and if I have cheated, I will
pay back four times the amount!" Jesus said, "Today salvation has
come here."
North Americans spend more money on their lotteries than
they do on charitable giving -- I read this recently somewhere on
Internet. Is it true? It is hard to hear any gospel preached by
such a community -- its actions speak louder than its words. A
community which is six per cent of the world's people gobbling up one
half the world's goods is not a credible community to speak in the
name of the poor man of Nazareth.
For northamericans, any gospel
preached there must include the challenge to renunciation of wealth,
privilege, and their status as oppressors. It is a greatly fattened
society, increased with goods, prosperous and needing nothing -- "You
do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and
naked."
The challenge to the church at Laodecea is the challenge to
the church of North America. As the southern hemisphere needs to be
liberated from its impoverishment, its slavery to multinational
corporations and their puppet governments here, so the northern
hemisphere needs to be liberated from its wealth and waste and
narcissism, its imperialistic urge to rule the world's resources,
even to manage the world's religion with its gospel of lies, so that
it can continue to fatten off the poor of the earth.
I was writing early this morning on my $1500 computer when there was a
cry at the gate -- a poor man, dirty shirt and pants, in "chinelas",
rubber shower clogs that are the shoes of the poor -- shouting that his
father had come home drunk this morning and whacked his mother three
or four times with a machete -- could we take her to the hospital?
We
drove to his house, six blocks away, and found someone had already
taken her to the Lenin Fonseca hospital, so we drove there and found
that she was in emergency room.
The attendant asked him for 35
cordobas (about $4.50) for an electroencephalogram. (Since the U.S.-
run World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are now the
effective budget-makers of this republic, there is no free hospital
care as there was under the Sandinistas.)
The poor man had no money,
and I had left in such a hurry I hadn't brought my wallet. On the way
back home, I asked him in anger why he didn't sell the machete and pay for the X-ray with that!
But the driver, a poor man
himself, preached the gospel to me: "I'll pay for it, out of my
salary, if you lend it to him," he said. Evangelism by the poor.
Grant Gallup+
Casa AVe Maria
Managua, Nicaragua.
-----------------------------------------
The following article, which appeared in the Winter
1995 issue of
Religious
Socialism, was authored by Wes Rehberg, (c) 1995 all rights
reserved.
Cuba and the Divisive Dollar
The U.S. war of economic attrition has succeeded; it's
only a matter of
time.
There is a morose undercurrent in Cuba today that speaks of a
loss of faith in the
nation's socialist struggle, a profound growth of cynicism among
its people, and
perhaps the demise of the Cuban revolution itself.
Cuban government efforts to navigate the survival of its
socialist government through
the recently tightened U.S. blockade and the collapse of the
Soviet Union have radically
altered Cuba's social structure and created somber moods among
intellectuals
struggling for reasons to keep faith alive.
Cuba's efforts have also spawned the development of a theological
perspective that
has kinship with liberation theology but marks itself as
distinct, and which also
struggles to keep alive faith in Cuba's egalitarian revolutionary
dream.
With the morose undercurrent, a new sign has emerged on Cuba's
horizon, stronger
than the blockade has been as a signifier of U.S. oppression, and
perhaps stronger
than those powerful spiritual signifiers that can be seen among
justice-seekers of
religious persuasion. This is the dollar sign; Mammon. Cuba has
developed an addiction
to U.S. currency.
The significance of this addiction is clear from two recent
visits to Cuba, my latest
journey this June. The oppressive 34-year-old U.S. economic
blockade against Cuba
has unquestionably become joined by Cuba's search for American
dollars as primary
symbols in the Cuban intellectual and theological consciousness.
This is, however,
a contradictory juncture. On one hand, it indexes the
longstanding struggle to
surmount U.S. opposition to the Cuban socialist revolution. On
the other, it
signifies the divisive perils of recent Cuban efforts to
accommodate capitalism's
neoliberal marketplace by seeking investments from international
corporations
through joint projects.
 What persists in the midst
and tension of this contradiction is
the grave question
of faith for many Cubans, and also for them, the equally grave
question about the
revolution's survival.
Some Cubans expressed to me painfully that their trust in the
Cuban revolution is
seriously eroded even though they want or seek no alternative,
leaving them deeply
depressed. They want their dream of the revolution to survive but
they are realistic
and scientific in their outlook; they see the revolution
fading.
Others have moved to a search for faith in a divine who
exemplifies the hope for justice and its possibilities that had
been represented in their minds by the Cuban revolution, for a
socialist form of egalitarian distribution of wealth and
resources, even if a such a hope may seem slim. This faith is
spoken of as a 'theology of accompaniment' the radical church
standing with the people and alongside the government in the
pursuit of equality and justice.
Still others seek faith through a renewed exegesis of Marxists
texts which allow accommodation to forms of market socialism as
ways to channel the onslaught of the dollar as well as to ease
the effects of the collapse of the Soviet orbit and the U.S.
blockade.
Yet others have turned to faith in the dollar itself; they have
been converted to capital. Hands down. Money is on their
minds.
But there's no question that in the midst of this contradiction
the dollar has become
the paramount critical Cuban symbol. It overshadows the symbolic
value made by the
government of the U.S. blockade, a blockade that ironically has
been instrumental in the Cuban conversion to the dollar's
possibilities. This is a conversion that now borders on
obsession, overwhelming the remaining iconic power of Fidel
Castro's image, and the proliferation of busts of Jos Mart! as
apostles of revolutionary hope.
The obsessive search by Cubans for U.S. dollars was most obvious
in Havana where I
felt myself inescapably linked to this currency, a dollar sign
myself, no more.
Prostitutes persistently solicited my dollar openly on the
streets, children begged for
it by name, vendors hawked for it, musicians smilingly played for
it, religious shrines
invited its donation.
 Fidel Castro even
autographed U.S. currency
for those who sought
such autographs during an October 1993 visit I made to Cuba with
the first Freedom
to Travel Challenge sponsored by Global Exchange of San Francisco
in defiance of U.S.
travel restrictions and the embargo itself.
But this obsessive search for U.S. currency has dangerously
separated Cubans from
Cubans in their own nation, where now two economies and two
marketplaces prevail
by government decree, one for the dollar, another for the peso.
This separation has
yielded an undercurrent of resentment and renewed class
divisions.
Cuban pesos can buy nothing in the growing economy developed
particularly by those
who hold interests in a burgeoning tourist industry where only
the dollar counts
and where no rationing of goods exists. Dollars, on the other
hand, can't be spent
in shops Cubans ordinarily use because of legal prohibitions,
shops where goods are
restricted by rationing. The dollar thus separates Cubans from
Cubans and Cubans from
United States citizens just as the blockade has. Some may try to
finesse this currency
distinction with 'scientific' explanation, but there's no
question that there are two classes here; the dollar people and
the peso people.
Furthermore, it's clear that the combination of the tightened
U.S. blockade, which
faces tougher revisions again this year in the Congress, and the
hunt for dollars
represents a profoundly significant epistemological shift for
Cuban thinkers as well,
one which guides all other discourses. The hope thinkers express
is that accommodations to this global currency will also keep
significant aspects of the Cuban revolution intact, at least in
theory, one pole of the Marxist notion of praxis, which engages
practice as well.
This epistemological shift was most apparent at the VII
Conference of North American
and Cuban Philosophers and Social Scientists at Havana University
which I was part
of, where efforts to demonstrate faith in Cuba's revolution
continued but where discussion about market revisions in
socialism were also pronounced and given exigetical justification
from Marxist texts. But whether theory will square with practice
is admittedly problematic, and so hope trails off as practice
indicates possibilities of neoliberal triumph.
Thus there is present the persistent undercurrent of despair in
the face of this
epistemological shift as well. Some intellectuals privately
concede that they feel
that the revolution has been lost in the twin encounter with the
blockade and the dollar. This a very sad concession for them,
leaving only a void. The U.S. war of economic attrition has
succeeded; it's only a matter of time.
Still, not all dissenting thinkers feel this way. One
intellectual in particular, Juan Antonio Blanco, openly expressed
his concern about Cuba's societal divisions, the currents of
despair and the seductions of the dollar. Blanco, a former
government
minister who operates the Felix Varela Center in Havana, an NGO
named after the 19th century Catholic priest who advocated the
struggle for Cuban independence, criticized
current Cuban economic and political policies during a meeting
with North Americans
who attended the Havana University conference.
For Blanco, the greatest peril Cuba faces today is not a threat
of military invasion
by the U.S., not the collapse of the Cuban economy itself, but a
U.S. decision to lift the blockade. Cuba's government has become
vertically intransigent, he said, and has swept many of its own
problems under the rubric of the blockade. It is unprepared for
the impact of the economic onslaught from the U.S. which is bound
to occur if the blockade is lifted, he said. It is no accident
that key U.S. government officials who support an end to the
blockade echo Blanco's sentiment and consider this the best
strategy for toppling Fidel Castro's socialist government. But
for Blanco, there's always Cuba's special nature, unique to it,
which he describes as its 'right-brain' approach to its own
revolution.
True, he says, the left-brain will rationally suggest to
observers and to some of Cuba's own thinkers that the Cuban
revolution is on its way out. But Cuba has faced
'insurmountable' perils in the past and survived. Strangely, he
says, perhaps
because Cubans now are speaking creatively among themselves and
that some hard-line taboos have been lifted, there may be yet
another chance for the revolution's survival, that Cubans will
themselves devise unique ways to combine what only appear to be
enormously contradictory possibilities to rationalists, with the
socialist goals of justice prevailing.
Radical religious people also continue to have faith in the
promise of the revolution,
particularly within the Episcopal Church orbit in Cuba, where
instead of liberation
theology as the defineably critical field of engagement, a
'theology of accompaniment' has been engendered and where
clear-thinking and hard-headed faith is seen to persist.
Supported by religious radical movements such as the Pastors for
Peace Friendshipments to Cuba, and by other forms such as the
Episcopal Peace Fellowship and the ecumenically-supported Martin
Luther King Center in Havana, exponents of the theology of
accompaniment continue to press for an end to the U.S. embargo,
to seek means to help struggling people through Cuba's 'special
period'; of severe economic crisis, and to develop ways for the
church to co-exist in revolutionary praxis with counterparts in
Cuba's government.
As explained by two exponents, Episcopal Bishop Jorge A. Perera
Hurtado and the Very
Rev. Juan Ramon de la Paz of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in
Havana, the theology of
accompaniment draws from themes similar to liberation theology
with Christ especially situated with the poor and with those who
struggle against oppression. But unlike in many nations in the
hemisphere, Cuba's government is not defined as an agent of
oppression. On the other hand, unlike the Nicaraguan history of a
conjunction between liberation theology and the Sandinista
government with liberation priests serving as government
ministers, church and state are separated by law and in practice,
thus the church accompanies the state in its goals for justice
for the oppressed and poor.
The heart of the people is in this struggle, said Rev. Ramon de
la Paz, and it is here also that faith resides, and where the
church works.
Intriguingly, my own representation of myself as a liberation
theologian among Cuban
intellectuals despairing of hope in their revolution drew
questions about the sense
of a religious faith of this order, about the meanings of
liberation theology in the U.S., and about links among peoples of
faith throughout the hemisphere against the onslaught of
neoliberal's Mammon and its oppressive practices.
Nevertheless, it's still a big question whether faith in the
right-brain creativity of the Cuban mind and heart, or in the
divine that stands with the poor, will be forces strong enough to
combat what many Cubans morosely fear, the loss of their
revolution to the seductions the dollar clearly represents.
Radical visitors from the U.S. also represent dollar signs, even
in the midst of expressions of solidarity with the goals Cubans
have voiced in shared dialogues and celebrations. The blockade
has divided Cubans and people from the U.S., and the dollar
divides us further. Faith is tested thoroughly when the dollars
radicals bring seem to offer the only hope.
For more perspectives on Cuba and Cuba solidarity, visit the Cuba Solidarity Web Site
e-mail us
(c) 1996, 1997 Strategic Pastoral Action
|