Marxism And Christianity In Revolutionary Central America

Liberation theology has become an essential component of almost every major debate over Latin America today. It has changed the face of political life in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Haiti; contributed to the rise of “people power” in the Philippines; even played a role in the growing discontent of debt-plagued Brazil. Now, using the plainspoken approach that made his Inside Central America the indispensable book on current affairs in the region, Phillip Berryman traces the origins, spread, and impact of liberation theology. He shows how its proponents have radically reinterpreted basic Biblical themes (such as the Creation and the Exodus) from the perspective of the poor and isenfranchised. By not asking “What must I believe?” but rather “What is to be done?” they make a direct connection between religious beliefs and political life.

This is a provocative and important contribution to understanding the role of Catholicism in the struggle for justice in Central America. Phillip Berryman writes with the sensitivity and passion of a Christian who has lived the biblical option for the poor. Penny Lernoux

Blase Bonpane has lived and worked with the realities of liberation theology for more than a quarter of a century. In Guerrillas of Peace, Bonpane takes the reader from the high country of Huehuetenango in Guatemala to intensive grass roots organizing in the United States. He shows that we cannot renew the face of the earth and coexist with the torturing, murdering governments of Guatemala and El Salvador, and their accomplices in Washington. We cannot say the Lord's Prayer and fail to do the will of God on earth. A new person is being formed. This person, this revolutionary person insists that human values be applied to government. This leads to a ruthless and revolutionary conclusion...children should not be free to die of malnutrition, no one should be allowed to die of polio or malaria, women should not be free to be prostitutes, no one should be free to be illiterate. The loss of these freedoms is essential for a people to make their own history. This is the Theology of Liberation, the kind of theology that made the early Church an immediate threat to the Roman Empire. --from the IntroductionBlase Bonpane, former Maryknoll priest and superior, was assigned to an expelled from Central America. UCLA professor, contributor to the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, commentator on KPFK, and author of many publications, he is currently Director of the Office of the Americas, a broad-based educational foundation dedicated to peace and justice in this hemisphere.

"The controversy within the Catholic Church over the concept of liberation theology raises the questions: is there room in Christian philosophy for a socialist society? And is there a place in a socialist society? Nicaragua's recent experience, says Margaret Randall, shows the answer to these questions to be "yes". The dominant role Christianity played in the Nicaraguan revolution both before and after the 1979 overthrow of the Somoza regime shows that the concrete goals shared by the two ideologies, Christianity and Marxism, outweigh their theoretical contradictions. The main part of Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution consists of long narratives by members of two Christian base communities with key roles in the Nicaraguan revolution. Solentiname is the retreat founded in the mid-sixties by Father Ernesto Cardenal -- now Nicaragua's minister of culture -- on a remote island in Lake Nicaragua. El Riguero is an urban community, founded in 1972 by father Uriel Molina in a Managua barrio. Christians in the Nicaraguan Revolution features the voices of "ordinary" believers as well as those of well-known religious and political leaders" -- Back cover.

This is the first new anthology of writings by Latin American Marxists to appear in over twenty years. Its purpose is to fill this vacuum and to provide a working tool for both students and activists. While including theoretical, sociological, historical, and economic writings, the majority of the documents center on political struggles throughout the continent. The anthology's method is historical, considering the evolution of Marxist thought in the context of social and political struggles during the different historical periods in Latin America, as well as in connection with developments in the international workers' movement. Of particular interest are hard-to-find documents from the early years of the Communist International; a number of important and previously untranslated texts by Jose Carlos Mariategui, widely considered the most important Marxist thinker of the Americas; documents from the 1932 revolt in El Salvador, led by Farabundo Marti; and selections from the most dynamic elements of the Latin American left, including the Central American revolutionary movements, the Brazilian Workers Party, and liberation theologists.