The Church dedicated itself to becoming the
Church of the poor and oppressed. In 1978 the
Latin American bishops met again in Puebla,
Mexico, and the majority progressives pressed on
with the new liberation action. ‘Between Medellín
and Puebla, ten years have gone by’, the bishops
declared.
If we focus our gaze on our Latin American
region, what do we see? No deep scrutiny is
necessary. The truth is that there is an ever
increasing distance between the many who
have little and the few who have much... we
discover that this poverty is not a passing
phase, instead it is the product of economic,
social and political situations and structures.What was needed, the progressive Church leaders
urged, was ‘personal conversion and profound
structural changes that will meet the legitimate
aspirations of the people for authentic social
justice’.
In Latin America the leading members of the
Church hierarchy knew that if the Church failed
to take the side of the poor the masses in their
desperation would turn for their salvation away
from the Church to a godless Marxism. The
Church soon discovered the inevitable political
implications of its new role. It spoke out against
the ‘disappearance’ of people in Argentina and
Chile and against the death squads of El Salvador
during the 1970s; it defended the rights of labour
unions and spoke up for the Indians excluded
from the mainstream of development in Bolivia
and Peru.
The most far-reaching change in the attitude of
sections of the Catholic Church took the form of a
campaign to reach out to the ordinary people, to
give practical help, to communicate and to organ-
ise by creating thousands of grass-roots commu-
nity groups. These Christian communities in Latin
America sought to ‘liberate’ the people through
exercise of the faith and through stress on the value
and dignity of human life. They were based on self-
help through discussion and common action con-
cerned with the practical issues of life and politics.
Priests, nuns and Catholic laity provided leadership
and teaching. But, unlike a left-wing party under
rigid hierarchical control, the groups that sprang
up relied on their own initiative. In Brazil, where
the communities were developed to their greatest
extent, tens of thousands of such groups had been
formed in the countryside and in the shanty towns
by the early 1990s, and as many as half a million
of the disadvantaged poor had been brought
together. A community might consist of twenty or
thirty people meeting in a simple building. They
would celebrate mass with a priest, and then dis-
cuss their immediate problems and concerns. They
would decide on action: to demonstrate, to peti-
tion, to demand basic services for their commu-
nity, such as electricity and housing or perhaps a
health centre. They acquired a sense of self-worth
and confidence in acting together against corrupt
local authorities. Devoted priests, nuns and laity
served them. They taught respect for Christian val-
ues, as well as basic democracy and non-violent
methods of action to improve their lives. In Brazil,
the hierarchy spoke strongly in support of this
community movement and accepted the strained
relations thereby created with the state.
Repressive governments understood the risk
nationally and internationally of taking any drastic
steps against such a strongly united Church.
Nevertheless, there were many martyrs when the
military, no longer confining themselves to accu-
sations of communist infiltration, resorted to
harassment and murder. One such incident which
attracted worldwide attention in 1980 was the
murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an out-684 LATIN AMERICA AFTER 1945: PROBLEMS UNRESOLVED
Homeless children huddle together for warmth,
Bolivia. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos