of others. They called this deeper effect the “domestication of
aspirations”—which basically means that people lose hope. They
know that if they try to change things, they’re going to get
slaughtered, so they just don’t try.
The Vatican has had a very harmful impact on all this. It’s tried to
undermine the progressive thrust of the Latin American church—its
“preferential option for the poor” and its attempt to serve as a
“voice for the voiceless”—by installing very right-wing bishops.
(The New York Times had an article on this the other day, but there
was a slight omission in it: the role of the US—which is crucial, of
course—wasn’t mentioned.)
In El Salvador in 1995, the Pope installed as archbishop a Spaniard
from the right-wing Opus Dei, who essentially told the poor: Don’t
worry about social conditions. If you keep away from sin,
everything will be fine in the next life. This was after the
assassination of Archbishop Romero, along with dozens of priests,
bishops, nuns and tens of thousands of others, in the brutal war the
US ran in the 1980s—a major aim of which was to destroy the
Salvadoran Church’s concern for the poor. The new archbishop
accepted the rank of Brigadier General from the military, which—he
explained—did not “commit errors” as an institution and was now
“purified.”
Similar things have happened elsewhere. In Indonesia, the
Communist Party (PKI) had millions of followers. Even conservative
experts on Indonesia recognize that the PKI’s strength was based on
the fact that it really did represent the interests of poor people. In
1965, General Suharto and his followers in the army presided over
the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of landless peasants (and
others) and wiped out the PKI.
They went on to compile a world-class record of terror, torture,
aggression, massacre and corruption. The Clinton administration has
described Suharto as “our kind of guy.” Amazingly, quite an
impressive popular struggle is still going on in Indonesia, but of
course we don’t hear much about it.
You once wrote to a mutual friend that when educated classes line
up for a parade, people of conscience have three options—they can
march in the parade, join the cheering throngs on the sidelines, or
speak out against the parade (and, of course, expect to pay the price
for doing that).