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How Latin American Liberation Theology Sees the United States and the USSR
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14641 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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5 / 1988 |
6,589 Words |
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John K. Roth
John K. Roth is Russell K. Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at
Claremont McKenna College, where he has taught since 1966. A
specialist in both American and Holocaust Studies, he has been
a visiting professor at the Universities of Innsbruck
(Austria), Doshisha (Japan), and Haifa (Israel). The most
recent of his fifteen books are Approaches to Auschwitz: The
Holocaust and Its legacy (with Richard L. Rubenstein), The
Questions of Philosophy (with Frederick Sontag), and American
Ground: vistas, Visions and Revisions (with Robert H.
Fossum). |
Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism and a call for the peoples' unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America.
--Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Provoked by hunger, poverty, exploitation, and premature death, Latin American liberation theology, in the words of Brazilian priests Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, is a "chant of the Third World transformed into a reflection of messianic hope for a society of freedom, a society that will become a communion of brothers and sisters." This religious-political movement--rooted in the Bible, the social theory of Karl Marx, and above all in the plight of the impoverished people--intends to change the world radically. Its aims put Latin American liberation theology on a collision course with the United States. American policy-making must reckon with that fact.
To get the analysis under way, consider that Latin American liberation theology did not exist when Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) studied early nineteenth-century democracy in the United States. Even then, however, that French observer's keen insights targeted factors throughout the Americas that would eventually conspire to produce this theological-political development, which may yet rival Islamic fundamentalism as the most politically volatile religious upsurge of the twentieth century's second half.
Egalitarianism, individualism, an influential role for religion, a propensity to let majority rule form public opinion--these were among the qualities Tocqueville found most pronounced among U.S. citizens. He regarded
... (1995 of 41919 Characters)
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