THE LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT OF LIBERATION THEOLOGY

One of the most important things that  must be taken into account with any given stream of theological thought is its historic context.  Close attention must be paid to the geographical soil in which a particular theology emerged, and also, how the history of the region played a role in the development of that particular theological system.  Liberation Theology is no different.  It emerged and developed within the geographical and historical confines of a certain region and a certain people.  And while there are different "Liberation Theologies," which are unique to certain regions and certain social classes, we will pay particular attention to the Latin American context.

A Euro-centric approach to the history of Latin America has dominated the majority of the literature relative to this region.  It is as if Latin America were dormant, waiting for the Europeans to come and "discover" it in order to be even mentioned in the history books.  It would be very easy to assume that prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that there was  nothing of significant historical significance taking place in that part of the world.  Since the history of the Americas has been written for the most part from the ethnocentric standpoint of Europe, it is necessary to debunk and demythologize the notions that accompany this mindset.

The collision of the peoples-Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans-gave birth to Latin America.  For thousands of years prior to the European arrivals, the Native Americans had lived in isolation from the inhabitants of what became known as the "Old World."  The peoples of Africa, Asia, and Europe had fought, traded, and otherwise intermingled since the rise of the human species throughout these regions (Marshall C. Eakin, The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p.1). It is claimed that in spite of this, however, that they had lost any sustained contact with the populations of the Americas for millennia (Ibid.).  Eakins is of the position that on October 12, 1492, Columbus "reunited" the inhabitants of the Old World and the New World and initiated an ongoing exchange of humans, plants, animals, and microbes that created (and continually recreates) Latin America.  The collision of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, like three powerful streams converging to produce a roaring river, mixed the three peoples into a dazzling variety of combinations, producing something new and unique in world history.  As the decades and centuries passed, the turbulent river gradually split into many different streams, but all had their origins in the great waterway formed by the initial clash of these three groups (Ibid.).

On one of Columbus's voyages, he came upon evidence of the contact between Guinea an d the New World.  From a settlement that along the South American coast, on which his companions landed on August 7, 1498, the natives brought handkerchiefs of cotton very symmetrically woven and worked in colors like those brought from Guinea, from the rivers of Sierra Leone, and of no difference (John Boyd Thatcher, Christopher Columbus: His Life, His Work, His Remains.  New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903, Vol. 1, p 392).  Not only were they alike in style and color, but also in function.  These handkerchiefs, he said, resembled almayzars-Guinea  headdresses and loin cloths.  "Each one is a cloth so woven in colors that it appeared an almayzar with one tied on the head, and the other covering the rest (Ibid., p. 393)." 

These were among the earliest documented traces of the pre-Columbian African presence.  Within the first and second decades of the so-called "discovery," African settlements and artifacts were to be sighted by the Spanish.  When they were not reported as mere asides, they were ignored or suppressed.  But history is not easily buried.  In the oral traditions of the Native Americans, and the Guinea Africans, in the footnotes of the Spanish and Portuguese documents, part of the story lies.  Another part lies embalmed under the American and African earth.  As this earth is now being lifted by archaeological picks and trowels, a new skeleton emerges of the  history of these adjacent worlds (Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus. New York: Random House, 1976, p. 16).  

Inspired by his encounter with the southern sea, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and his companions decided to push further south along the isthmus.  They came upon an indigenous settlement where to their astonishment, they found a number of war captives who were plainly and unmistakably African. These were tall black men of military bearing who were waging war with the natives from settlement in the neighborhood.  Balboa asked the natives whence they got them, but they could not tell, nor did they know more than this, that men of color were living nearby, and that they were constantly waging war with them.  These were the first blacks that had been seen in the Indies (Lopez de Gomara. Historia de Mexico. Anvers, 1554).

Peter Martyr, one of the earliest historians of America reports on this remarkable encounter between the Spanish conquerors and the blacks.  "The Spaniards" wrote Martyr, "found Negroes in this province. They only live one day's march from Quarequa and they are fierce.  It is thought that Negro pirates from Ethiopia established themselves after the wreck of their ships in these mountains.  The natives of Quarequa carry an incessant war with these Negroes.  Massacre or slavery are the alternate fortunes of these peoples (F.A. Mac Nuts, ed. and trans. De Orbo Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d'Anghera. . New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons (1912)." 

An encounter with New World Negroes was also reported off Colombia.  Fray Gregoria Garcia, a priest of the Dominican order who spent nine years in Peru in the early sixteenth century, pinpoints an island off Cartagena, Columbia as the place where the Spanish first encountered blacks in the New World. Once again, the blacks were found as captives among the natives.  In a book silenced by the Spanish Inquisition, Garcia wrote, "Here we found slaves of the lord-Negroes-who were the first our people saw in the Indies (Alexander von Wuthenau. The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South America. New York: Crown Publishers, 1969, p. 167)."  

Darien and Columbia were easily accessible to African-ship wrecked mariners.  These places lie within the terminal area of currents that move with great power and swiftness from Africa to America.  These currents may be linked to marine conveyor belts.  Once you enter them, you are transported (even against your will, even with no navigational skill), from one bank of the ocean to another.  It is important to point out how many small, isolated black communities have been found on the American seaboard at the terminal points of these currents.  Alphonse de Quatrefagas, professor of anthropology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, noted in his study, The Human Species (published in 1905) that "black populations have been found in America in very small numbers and as isolated tribes in the midst of different nations. Such are the Charuas of Brazil, the black Caribees  of Saint Vincent in the Gulf of Mexico, the Jamassi of Florida, etc.  Such again is the tribe of which Balboa saw some representatives in his passage of the Isthmus of Darien in 1513).  Yet it would seem, from expressions made use of by Gomara, that these were true Negroes.  This type is well-known to the Spanish (Alphonse de Quatrefages, The Human Species. New York: Appleton, 1905, p. 200)."

De Quatrefages shows how the location of these African New World communities coincides with the terminal points of Africa-to America currents or sea roads.  "We only find these black men in America in those places washed by Kouro-Siwo, a Pacific current known as the 'black stream,' and the Equatorial current of the Atlantic or its divisions.  A glance at the maps of Captain Kerhallet will at once show the rarity and distribution of these tribes.  It is evident that the more or less pure black elements have been brought from Africa through some accident at sea; they have there mixed with the local races, and have formed those small isolated groups which are distinguished by their color from the surrounding tribes (Ibid., pas. 201-202)."

These Spanish sightings of Africans in the New World and the later discovery by anthropologists of distinctive black settlements along the American seaboard (outside of the mainstream of the post-Columbian slave complex) constitute only one strand of the evidence of pre-Columbian contact between Africa and America.  An overwhelming body of new evidence is now emerging from several disciplines, evidence that could not be verified and interpreted before, in the light of the infancy of archaeology and the great racial and intellectual prejudice.  The most remarkable examples of this evidence are the realistic portraitures of Negro-Africans in clay, gold, and stone unearthed in pre-Columbia strata in Central and South America (Van Sertima, p. 26).

It has only been in recent decades, however, that this evidence has begun to filter down the general public.  When in 1862, the head of a black man was found in the Canton of Tuxtla, near the place where the most ancient of pre-Columbian statuettes were discovered, the historian Orozco y Berra declared in his History of the Conquest of Mexico that there was bound to be an important and intimate relationship between Mexicans and Africans in the pre-Columbian past (M. Orozco y Berra. Historia Antigua y de la Conquista de Mexico. G.A. Esteva: 1880, Vol 1, p. 109).

In his time, however, the Negroid heads could not be conclusively dated.  We know now, without a shadow of a doubt, through the most modern methods of dating, that some of the Negro stone heads found among the Olmecs and in other parts of Mexico and Central America, are from as early as 800 B.C. to 700 B.C.  Clearly American history has to be reconstructed to account for this irrefutable piece of archaeological data.  Explanations, not excuses, have got to be found.  The time has come to disperse the cloud of silence and skepticism that has settled over this subject for over a century (Van Sertima, p. 26).

The purpose of this essay has been to present a non-European approach to Latin American history.  The primary reason for this is to dispel the notion of Caucasian cultural superiority.  Further research and study will reveal that the Africans and their descendants in pre-Columbian America were not brute savages as has been depicted in American history books, nor were they intellectually underdeveloped.  The reader/researcher  will discover that they were a people who were very skilled and that together with the indigenous people of the Americas, they built up a great civilization.  

For Liberation Theology to be understood in the Latin American context, one must take into account the history of the groups who lived and worked in this context.  One must also understand the impact of European colonization on this region of the world in order to know and understand why a movement such as Liberation Theology developed in the first place.  Only as one studies these facts, can a non-colonial theology be understood and properly evaluated.  

This essay is submitted in the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary