Abstract
Observers agree that the Catholic Church has played a pivotal role in the recent political development of El Salvador.1 More specifically, what is now known as the ‘Popular Church’ is widely viewed as a force, if not the force, behind the political mobilisation of the poor to support the insurgents’ agenda. Thanks to radical priests and theology students, hitherto apathetic and conservative peasants and urban poor learned to identify the ‘structural sin’ of capitalism and started to yearn for a politico-religious version of the ‘promised land’.2 Alain Besançon once made the distinction that Moses and Saint John ‘knew that they believed’, while Marx and Lenin ‘believed that they knew’.3 By blurring this distinction — radical Christians know that they believe and believe that they know — the ‘Christianisation’ of the revolution conceivably produced an explosive mixture.
Underlying any theological argument and, at the very roots of any polemic on God, one almost invariably finds men’s interests and, very clearly, interests of power. (Cabarrús, 1983)
Very soon the Central American University ‘José Simeón Cañas’ attempted to participate in the process of liberation of the Salvadoran people; that is, liberation from its situation of structural oppression. Hence its mission to attempt to be the critical and creative conscience of the Salvadoran reality. (Salvadoran Jesuits, ‘Los Jesuitas ante el pueblo salvadoreño’)
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Notes and References
To mention but a few publications on the subject: Edwin Eloy Aguilar, José Miguel Sandoval, Timothy J. Steigenga and Kenneth M. Coleman, ‘Protestantism in El Salvador: Conventional Wisdom versus Survey Evidence’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 28, no. 2 (1993), pp. 119–40;
Americas Watch, El Salvador’s Decade of Terror, Human Rights since the Assassination of Archbishop Romero (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989)
Philip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (New York: Maryknoll, Orbis Books, 1984);
Carlos Rafael Cabarrús, Génesis de una revolución: análisis del surgimiento y desarrollo de la organización campesina en El Salvador (México: Ed. de la Casa Chata, 1983);
Jorge Caceres Prendes, ‘Radicalización política y pastoral popular en El Salvador, 1969–79’, ECA, nos 407–8 (Sept.–Oct. 1982), pp. 93–153;
Rodolfo Cardenal, El poder eclesidstico en El Salvador (San Salvador: UCA editores, 1980)
and Historia de una esperanza, vida de Rutilio Grande (San Salvador: UCA editores, 1987);
Salvador Carranza, ‘Una experiencia de evangelizatión rural parroquial, Aguilares, septiembre de 1972-agosto de 1974’, ECA, nos 348–9 (Oct–Nov. 1977), pp. 838–54;
Jorge Carredes Prendes, ‘Radicalizaci–n política y pastoral popular en El Salvador, 1969–1979’, Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, vol. 11, no. 33 (December 1982), pp. 93–153;
CEB (Comunidades Eclesiales de Base), ‘Pronunciamiento de las Comunidades Cristianas de Base ante la situación de la Iglesia en el momento actual’, ECA, nos 396–7 (Oct.–Nov. 1981), pp. 1075–6;
Ana Cristina Cepeda et al., ‘“Orientatión” y “Justicia y Paz”, reformismo y radicalismo en la Iglesia salvadoreñia’ (2 parts), ECA, no. 230 (Oct. 1973), pp. 705–728
and ECA, nos 303–4 (Jan.–Feb. 1974), pp. 51–80;
‘Los Jesuitas ante el pueblo salvadoreño,’ ECA, no. 344 (June 1977), pp. 434–50;
Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982);
Tommie Sue Montgomery, ‘The Church in the Salvadoran Revolution’, Latin American Perspectives, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1983), pp. 62–87;
Ivan D. Paredes, ‘La situación de la iglésia católica en El Salvador y su influjo social’, ECA, nos 369–0 (July–August 1979), pp. 601–14.
On the relation between the church and radical politics in Latin America, see Jean Meyer, Historia de los cristianos en América Latina, siglos XIX y XX (Mexico: Vuelta, 1991)
See for instance Jenny Pearce, Promised Land: Peasant Rebellion in Chalatenango, El Salvador (London: Latin American Bureau, 1986)
Gino Germani, Politica y sociedad en una época de transición, de la sociedad tradicional a la sociedad de masas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidos, 1966).
See Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint, On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 15
See Aguilar et al., ‘Protestantism in El Salvador’, op. cit.; Mark Danner, ‘The Massacre at El Mozote’, The New Yorker, 6 December 1993;
Instituto Universitario de Opinión Pública, ‘La religión de los Salvadoreños’, ECA no. 563 (Sept, 1995), pp. 849–62
Quoted in Charles J., Beirne, ‘Jesuit Education for Justice: The Colegio in El Salvador, 1968–1984’, Harvard Educational Review, vol. 55 (Feb. 1985), p. 10
CONIP, ‘Comunicado de la Coordinadora Nacional de la Iglesia Popular, Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero a nuestros hermanos cristianos y al pueblo en general’, ECA, no. 383 (Sept. 1980), pp. 906–8.
Kincaid, ‘Peasants into Rebels: Community and Class in Rural El Salvador, Comparative Study of Society and History, 29 (1987), p. 489
PDC/Tendencia Popular, ‘Mensaje de la Tendencia Popular Demócrata Cristiana a la conventión nacional del partido y al pueblo salvadoreño’, ECA, nos 377–8 (March–April 1980), pp. 374–6.
Jean Daudelin and W. E. Hewitt, ‘Churches and Politics in Latin America: Catholicism at the Crossroads’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2 (1995), p. 229
Ernesto Cardenal, in an interview for the French newspaper Le Monde (15 March 1979), claimed that ‘an atheist revolutionary knows God, but a bishop who supports a dictatorship does not’.
Matt D. Childs, ‘An Historical Critique of the Emergence and Evolution of Ernesto Che Guevara’s Foco Theory, Journal of Latin American Studies, 27 (1995) p. 612 (added emphasis)
Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Civil War (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 37–57
See also Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)
Raj Desai and Harry Eckstein, ‘Insurgency, the Transformation of Peasant Revolution’, World Politics, vol. 4 (July 1990), p. 449
See Luis de Sebastián, ‘La proyección social debe cambiar la injusticia estructural: De Sebastian’, El Universitario (San Salvador, UES), vol. 6 (15 May 1979), p. 11.
Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), Universidad y sociedad, tectums para el civiso de admisión a la UCA (San Salvador UCA editores, 1989), p. 208.
S. M. Lipset, ‘University Students and Politics in Underdeveloped Countries,’ Comparative Education Review, 19, 1 (February 1966), p. 145
For instance Transits Rivas and Hilda Elizabeth Miranda Lumna, Crisis de la educación superior universitaria y las posibilidades de solución para la Universidad de El Salvador (San Salvador: Editorial Universitaria, 1990).
Jon Sobrino, ‘Inspiratión cristiana de la Universidad’, ECA, no 468 (October 1987), p. 698.
On the notions of ‘prophecy’ and ‘utopía’, see Ignacio Ellacuria, ‘Utopía, profetismo desde América Latina: un ensayo concreto de soteriología histórica’, Revista Latinoamericana de Teología vol. 17 (May–Aug. 1989), pp. 141–84.
For the objectives of private institutions in the same region, see Jorge Mario Garcia Laguardia, Legislación universitaria de America Latina (Mexico: UNAM, 1973), p. 210
For a classic definition of the university’s mission, see José Ortega y Gasset, Mission of the University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 62.
Ignacio Ellacuria, ‘Universidad y política, Estudius Controamericanos (ECA), 383 (September 1980), p. 21
Román Mayorga Quiroz, ‘La UCA hacia el futuro’, ECA, nos 324–5 (Oct–Nov. 1975), p. 601.
Mayorga Quiroz, La Universidad para el cambio social (San Salvador: UCA Editores, 1978) op. cit., p. 176.
Proyecto UCA/PREDE-OEA, La investigatión y la docencia en la educación universitaria de El Salvador (San Salvador, June 1990), p. 51.
Jon Sobrino, ‘Compañeros de Jesús-El asesinato-martirio de los jesuitas salvadoreñas’, ECA, nos 493–4 (Nov.–Dec. 1989), p. 1064.
Jon Sobrino, ‘Inspiratión cristiana de la Universidad’, ECA, no 468 (Oct. 1987), p 701.
Cf. Carlos Ernesto Mendoza in Análisis, vols 9–10 (Sept.–Oct. 1988), pp. 47–59
Mariano Castro Morón, Función politica del Ejercito salvadoreño en el presente siglo (San Salvador: UCA editores, 1987), p. 278.
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© 1999 Yvon Grenier
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Grenier, Y. (1999). The Catholic Church, Social Change and Insurrection. In: The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14833-2_6
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