There was a very turbulent period in the 80s in Central America. It was a time when Reagan was doing his best to combat outbreaks of communism in the region, mostly by trashing the rule of law in the US and by arming the countries and people we are now fighting in the Middle East. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend until I am forced to blow his brains out.) Jimmy Carter, before Reagan, was no great hero in any of this either.
Anyway, for some of us older ladies and laddies, the phrase "liberation theology" may still be kicking around in our age-addled brains. The Holy See in Rome was none too pleased with liberation theology, as I recall, because it upset the delicate balance between being a strong leader of the Roman Catholic Church and pushing your nose up various world leaders' butts. Liberation theology is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (my favorite dictionary, by the way--yes, some of us have favorite dictionaries) as: "A school of theology, especially prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, that finds in the Gospel a call to free people from political, social, and material oppression."
Archbishop Oscar Romero practiced liberation theology. You should read his sermons to see where this tough, gentle, decent man was coming from. As I said, he was not popular with the home boys in Rome. To quote one article about the archbishop, "There was a storm of accusations and attacks from certain prelates against the archbishop. Among other things he was accused in May 1979, in a document signed by several bishops and sent to Rome, of inciting 'the class struggle and revolution' by his pastoral activities." His little church was considered a threat to the El Salvadoran government and he was assassinated in 1980.
...This was also a period when the expression "desaparecido" became widely known. The expression refers to people who "disappear", never to be seen or heard from again. In other words, they were murdered, and usually after being tortured. It was the time when death squads roamed Central America, torturing and killing enemies of whichever dictator they happened to serve.
Which brings us full circle and back to current events. There was a US Ambassador to Honduras who has often been accused of having helped set up the Honduran Death Squads and supporting the Nicaraguan death squads. He is currently George Bush's US Ambassador to Iraq. His name is John Negroponte.
Anyway, for some of us older ladies and laddies, the phrase "liberation theology" may still be kicking around in our age-addled brains. The Holy See in Rome was none too pleased with liberation theology, as I recall, because it upset the delicate balance between being a strong leader of the Roman Catholic Church and pushing your nose up various world leaders' butts. Liberation theology is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary (my favorite dictionary, by the way--yes, some of us have favorite dictionaries) as: "A school of theology, especially prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, that finds in the Gospel a call to free people from political, social, and material oppression."
Archbishop Oscar Romero practiced liberation theology. You should read his sermons to see where this tough, gentle, decent man was coming from. As I said, he was not popular with the home boys in Rome. To quote one article about the archbishop, "There was a storm of accusations and attacks from certain prelates against the archbishop. Among other things he was accused in May 1979, in a document signed by several bishops and sent to Rome, of inciting 'the class struggle and revolution' by his pastoral activities." His little church was considered a threat to the El Salvadoran government and he was assassinated in 1980.
...This was also a period when the expression "desaparecido" became widely known. The expression refers to people who "disappear", never to be seen or heard from again. In other words, they were murdered, and usually after being tortured. It was the time when death squads roamed Central America, torturing and killing enemies of whichever dictator they happened to serve.
Which brings us full circle and back to current events. There was a US Ambassador to Honduras who has often been accused of having helped set up the Honduran Death Squads and supporting the Nicaraguan death squads. He is currently George Bush's US Ambassador to Iraq. His name is John Negroponte.
For those of you who might be interested, but don't really want to read (Mr. Bush), one of my all-time favorite actors starred in the leading roll in a movie about Oscar Romero, called, oddly enough, Romero - the late Raul Julia.
ROMERO: comments and interview with Raul Julia
Shortly before his murder, Archbishop Romero pleaded with then-president Jimmy Carter to stop U.S. funding of El Salvador's murderous regime and urged Salvadoran soldiers to stop the repression and lay down their arms. The tragedy is that Romero's message still echoes, unheeded today, as kidnapping, torture, and murder are still instruments of repression in many U.S. backed regimes around the world.
I feel the people of North America are very ignorant about U.S. policies in Latin America in general. But there's always been a tradition of supporting people, in the name of democracy, who are not very democratic. This tradition has got to be examined - what's happening is that we're becoming more and more responsible for crimes that are no different from the crimes the Nazis committed during World War II. -- Raul Julia
No comments:
Post a Comment