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The ambush of a president -- and liberation theology
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THE PRIEST OF PARAGUAY: FERNANDO LUGO AND THE MAKING OF A NATION
By Hugh O’Shaughnessy
Published by Zed Books, $29.95
The former bishop, father of a child and promiscuous beyond that, in effect set the trap on himself. His enemies, however, sprung it on him. Suddenly the obscure Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, head of a country most people cannot quickly place on a South American map, was notorious.
Lugo, ordained in 1977, studied at the Gregorianum in Rome and was appointed a bishop in 1994. He resigned from his diocese in 2005 to seek the presidency -- for which the Vatican admonished him. It was not until his 2008 victory that he received a gift from Pope Benedict XVI who also absolved him from his religious vows. Early this year he admitted fathering a son, Guillermo, in 2007.
“Few political ambushes,” writes Hugh O’Shaughnessy in The Priest of Paraguay, “have been better prepared.” Certainly, the resigned bishop, a former Divine Word priest, had left himself wide open, even in a region where priestly concubinage is more tolerated than condemned. Yet, as O’Shaughnessy explains, there’s a far darker side to this ambush.
In winning the presidential election, the former bishop had broken the corrupt right-wing Colorado Party’s 60-year grip on the nation of 1.2 million people. For 35 of those 60 years (1954-89), Paraguay had been controlled as the personal fiefdom of General Alfredo Stroessner, a man Washington was pleased to have as an ideological ally, though they may have privately deplored his fondness for a succession of 14-year-old girls.
Paraguay had an unchallenged reputation for corruption and for poverty.
O’Shaughnessy recalls it was under Stroessner that “Eisenhower sent Col. Robert Thierry of the U.S. Army to Paraguay from May 1956 to March 1958 to teach torture techniques to the Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos, the National Department of Technical Affairs.” Three thousand Paraguayans were tortured by la Técnica, and thousands more by its satellites in police stations around the country. Lugo’s anti-Colorado Party father and three of his uncles were among them. Waterboarding seriously damaged Lugo senior’s health and led to his early death.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo speaks during Patriotic Alliance for Change meeting April 20 in San Lorenzo to celebrate the one-year anniversary of his victory in the presidential elections. (CNS/Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)Lugo’s own 2009 emboscaderos were the South American right wing and its U.S.-pleasing, capitalism-promoting partnerships. The ambush was not merely politics as usual; it was about liberation theology and land reform -- in a nation where the richest 1 percent of landowners hold 80 percent of the land, and this in a nation where agriculture brings in 90 percent of foreign earnings.
Paraguay’s Lugo, Presidents Luiz Lula da Silva of Brazil, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador are as wary of big money from the North and politico-military Washington as they are of powerful local landowners. They also have a historic understanding of much of their hierarchies’ fondness for national military and wealthy right-wing blocs.
Each of these five presidents knows he is in Washington’s sights and those of its hired spin doctors, and sociopolitical gunslingers and agents provocateurs. Yet in O’Shaughnessy’s words, these five leaders’ presence on the South American scene “signifies the happy re-emergence of the sort of reforms that had been championed for decades by liberation theologians and which their opponents -- from Pope John Paul II to President Ronald Reagan, the former intellectually, the latter by force of arms -- had done much to suppress.”
Ergo, the ambush of the 58-year-old Lugo was also about the liberal and left leadership emergence in South American nations. Lugo is the political flowering of liberation theology that Washington, its right-wing South American allies, and a church in Rome that enjoys playing the diplomatic game have reason to fear.
Lugo and the other presidents also have much to fear: Ask those who lived through Chile’s Pinochet or Argentina’s “Dirty War”; through the United States’ invasions of Panama and the Dominican Republic and Grenada; through Reagan in El Salvador or the failed U.S. invasion of Cuba. These U.S. attitudes and spins are not one-time castoffs in history’s dumpster; this is the continually churning garbage of the Monroe Doctrine and the strategically based -- in Washington and therefore more easily manipulated -- Organization of American States.
The United States, offscreen in action, onscreen in condemnation, is not going to allow these leftists and liberals their way -- if it can prevent it. The same forces that pushed NAFTA through are at work here, the politico-commercial complex that has superseded without replacing the military-industrial complex. These two are the terrible twins of U.S. might and intent.
They are up against an emergence that represents also the rights of South America’s “least of these,” the generally landless indigenous. In Paraguay, they are the Guaraní. “The movement for indigenous rights,” O’Shaughnessy states, “was not to be suppressed by bayonets and torture chambers. … It manifested itself in domestic politics from the Chiapas region in Mexico in 1994 to Ecuador, Peru, Boliva and Chile.”
The spark point is that “indigenous rights” translates into agrarian reform: the last thing the 1 percent of landowners holding 80 percent of the land wish to hear. It is extremely significant that part of Lugo’s 2008 presidential acceptance speech was in Guaraní, the language of the majority of Paraguayans; as significant as the attendance of “the octogenarian Ernesto Cardenal, the priest-poet of liberation theology … and Leonardo Boff, the liberation theologian from Brazil.”
British journalist O’Shaughnessy has covered Latin America for almost half a century for the major British papers. The book is somewhat repetitive, highly detailed and therefore a little slow-going at times. (I have a passing personal quibble, that he twice mentions “U.S. journalist Penny Lernoux” without saying who she wrote for -- the National Catholic Reporter.)
Don’t be deterred, this is a very important book about the new face of South America. Lugo politically legitimates liberation theology, he was democratically elected, overwhelmingly by the indigenous. That alone is sufficient to rally Lugo’s enemies in Paraguay, in Washington and in the Catholic church.
Arthur Jones is NCR’s books editor.
Section:
I. Book Reviews 
Excellent review of this
Excellent review of this important book, but the list goes sadly on:
"Lugo and the other presidents also have much to fear: Ask those who lived through Chile’s Pinochet or Argentina’s “Dirty War”; through the United States’ invasions of Panama and the Dominican Republic and Grenada; through Reagan in El Salvador or the failed U.S. invasion of Cuba."
Do not forget that in 1954 the US also overthrew a democratically elected president in Guatemala for suggesting poor indigenous Mayans use their ancient traditional lands which had been left unused by the United Fruit Company; this dynamic also early displays what is further described here as Liberation Theology, and the use of multinational agriculture of military interventions. In Guatemala this led to genocidal massacre of entire indigenous populations and language groups (and Maryknoll Father Bill Woods among several others) including under Reagan and Pat Robertson favorite the psychotic Rios Montt.
See also the overthrow and murder of the democratically elected President Allende in Chile in the darkest days of Nixon, leading to the horrendous brutal military dictatorship of the torturous Pinochet. Remember the Stadium, and the exile. Do not forget the Pat Robertson blessed Reagan/Bush contra war against impoverished farmers in Nicaragua, in which so much of the US press cheerleaded and propagandized except the great NCR.
The overthrow of these democratically elected presidents (and now in Honduras Zelaya) leads the world to breathe a little easier that we have Obama in the White House not so eagerly engaged in imperial military adventures world wide. Perhaps this explains a Nobel Peace Prize incomprehensible to many anglo Americans.
Always enjoy your coments.
Always enjoy your coments. Re: John Paul II's negative attitude toward liberation theology,his baggage included his experience in Poland; he saw communism everywhere. With regard to liberation theology, JPII truly made a bad choice. His treatment of Archbishop Romero while he was alive was, to put it mildly, uncharitable.
Dear Fran, I always regret
Dear Fran,
I always regret writing so uncharitably, so judgmentally, with so little patience and understanding and so swiftly, so mean-spirited and so obstinately, arrogantly opposed to the spirit and the letter of our beloved yoke the Rule For Monks written fifteen hundred years ago by Our Holy Father Saint Benedict, in particular the chapter On Humility, and on silence, and I always pray the discrete Dennis Coday will simply cancel my so violent ventings as not for publication, without his Imprimatur, having found that in fact that something does Obstat, not Nihil Obstat (including this meta-analysis of writing).
And then too often the horror of publication a few days later, revealing to all the world wide web my severely limited literary capabilities and the mean state of my soul.
But sometimes this glorious, stunning, tearful joy of responses such as yours to my crude and crass comments falls like a drop of rain unto this dry and droughty desert.
Thank you and I am so relieved to find this resonated with you.
DEO GRATIAS
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)
Frere Charles, I also always
Frere Charles, I also always enjoy your comments - and the self-depreciating way you put them! Hugh O’Shaughnessy's book on Lugo is important. Not least for us SVDs. On occasion the visionary has to become practical, the mystic politically-pragmatic. I'm hoping that after two terms - just seven years to go - President Lugo will want to return to the Divine Word Missionaries. And I would hope we would welcome back our brother with open arms.
"If you live according to my
"If you live according to my word you will be my disciples, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free"(Jn 8: 31-32).
1+ 1 = 2 even if the Pope says it is equal to 3!!! The Pope does not create truth nor does the power of a super power. Truth is as simple as Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere of Tanzania and as powerful as Mahatma Gadhi of India. One thing is necessary for all who want to fight using the power of truth never be afraid, have hope and never fear death.One day you will change for CHANGE and become another BARACK OBAMA if not Jesus Christ who refused to die on the grave and rose!
The world has changed and it will never be the same again. If God has changed the Soviet Union to Russia and America to African America; I have no doubt that he will renew anywhere in this world. Good for Boeff and liberation Theology because God is a true liberator!
Wow! Wow!
I too am thankful for this
I too am thankful for this review and the comments. I came to this page from the NCR July 2009 article on the continued training of Honduran military officers at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. I reached that article while preparing a comment to Allan McDonald's article on Barack Obama's Peace Prize and the death of Wendy Elizabeth Avila in Honduras. The article can be found that the Machetera website. It is followed by a 12 minute FaultLine video about the current situation in Honduras and about the death of Wendy. I encourage people to watch it and then go out and begin to revive the Latin American solidarity movement in the U.S. which was so strong in the 1980s. As I predicted prior to his election, the U.S. ruling class would task Obama with dealing with the newly resurgent popular movements of Latin America and that would mean more of the repression, intervention, death and destruction that it has always meant for our Latin American brothers and sisters.
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/allan-mcdonald-on-obamas-prize...
I am glad that finally the
I am glad that finally the New theology of liberation is alive. Ii is not the old liberation theology, but a new one base on a democratic system. It is a new structures of government in South America. It is not the extreme radical left ,which no one wants anymore, but a balance left with a new approach to the 21st century. I thing all the old systems are changing even the US.(But not the Catholic Church, which is death RIP). Viva Padre Lugo!
The following is an excerpt
The following is an excerpt from “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church – Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus” by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, first published in Australia in 2007 and later published in 2008 by the Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville MN:
The Prison of the Past
I believe that the Catholic Church is in a prison. It was not evil people who put it in this prison. No, it constructed the prison for itself, locked itself in and threw away the key. That prison is the prison of not being able to be wrong.
One of the rights I treasure most greatly in my life is the right to be wrong. I absolutely demand this right. I demand the right to be wrong one hundred times a day, in big things and small things. I demand the right to say, ‘Sorry, I was mistaken. Sorry, I did not understand. Sorry, I acted without sufficient thought. Sorry, I was insensitive.’ I could surrender many other rights and still live a satisfying life, but I could not survive a single day without the right to be wrong.
Far too often the Catholic Church has believed that it had such a level of divine guidance that it did not need the right to be wrong. As a result, both theologically and psychologically, it can be bound to decisions of the past. It can be unable to move forwards, even when clear evidence emerges that earlier decisions were conditioned by their own time and that the arguments for them are not as strong as they were once thought to be. It has not been able to face the idea that on important issues and for centuries at a time it might have been wrong.
I have been re-reading some statements of earlier centuries that, for either theological or psychological reasons, the Catholic Church does not believe it can change. Among them I find some that interpret the bible in too liberal or too legal a manner. I find interpretations of the bible that I believe should be revised in the light of more recent knowledge of biblical meaning. I find statements that take a text of the bible out of its context in a manner that is not legitimate. I find statements that canonise a particular system of philosophy in a way that is not possible. I find statements that are not sufficiently aware that human words are inadequate carriers of divine truth. I find in places a psychological inability to admit ignorance or error.
In addition, there is the whole mixed history of the Catholic Church over two thousand years. I have long had a difficulty with the idea that I must give ‘submission of mind and will’ to the WORDS of a pope, even non-fallible ones, but DEEDS throughout history that were far from the mind of Jesus Christ seem to be brushed aside. Surely we cannot separate words and deeds in this manner. Surely deeds speak more powerfully than words. Is it not the entire history of the church that we must look at and ask ourselves whether we are once again locking ourselves in a prison of the past if we say this past must determine our future?
This need to be right at all times and in all matters, or at least to seem to be right, has been a major cause of the poor response to abuse within the church …. I strongly believe that the future health of the church depends upon its being set free from the prison of the past. Only then can the church as a whole have the freedom to grow.
Art Jones can crow about the
Art Jones can crow about the vast right-wing conspiracy all he wants. The fact remains that Lugo is a cad, is & remains completely responsible for his mis- behavior, and has no one to blame for his predicament but himself.
HEY BOOK CLUB! Am I the ONLY
HEY BOOK CLUB! Am I the ONLY one who bought the new Dan Berrigan book??
Why not try reviewing a book
Why not try reviewing a book that somebody outside your niche audience will actually read?
We read things we don't want
We read things we don't want to hear even if we know them to be true. OK, Lugo is a cad, so many of the clergy seem intent on going to hell, but Latin America is getting strong and we better see it. Us self-roghteous cannot ignore who benefited from our teaching torture, our killing when we think it is right. Indigenous people are coming into the light.
We know the martyrs, and there are so many we will never know, but we honor them when we shout "presente". Keep these articles coming. This is like a tender hand drying our tears, a strong arm lifting us up and steadying us until we have the strength to march some more. You help us be faithful to a dream.
We need to hear about this
We need to hear about this part of the world. The media do not inform us about South America and the gains it is making. Thank you.
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