LIBERATION THEOLOGY AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF NEO-COLONIZATION

DR. JUAN A. CARMONA 

In the previous essay, we dealt with how Spanish colonization and imperialism had an impact on Latin America.  We can see how the conquest planted the seeds of rebellion and resentment, and, at the same time, the emergence of a theology that would address those economic. political, and social ills.

Today, we can continue to look at and evaluate what has properly been called "Neo-colonialism," under the aegis of the U.S.A.  While many people in the Caribbean and Latin America see the arrival of U.S.A. troops and the economic system of the U.S.A. as "liberation" from the cruelties of the Spanish empire, our coverage today will demonstrate that it is just the opposite, i.e. passing the goods (lands and resources) from one set of thieves to another set of thieves, and, how in both cases, that imperialism has done its utmost to protect the stolen goods.

Latin America and the Caribbean today, have become proving grounds for various experiments in neo-colonialism-transnational corporations, Japanese vehicles, tracking stations, satellite dishes, foreign television, military exercises, millions of tourists, and off-shore schemes.  It is in the light of these considerations that the realities of the Caribbean/Latin American conditions have to be understood.  They explain why the current structures of poverty continue to be overlaid with a veneer of progress instead of being dismantled altogether; why the prospects for the sharing of power among the broad masses of landless people are neither nearer nor clearer; why in some cases of political independence has essentially ushered in new forms of structured economic dependence; and why the ideals of racial, cultural, and regional integration are ignored more often than they are pursued.  The process of underdevelopment, which began in 1492, has never been substantially challenged. The only major shifts in the region have been from one form of  dependency to another (Kortright Davis, Emancipation Still Comin. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990, pp. 3-4)

In the century after the wars for independence in Latin America, two powers-one prominent and one emerging-would vie for political and economic influence in Latin America. Great Britain, the preeminent power in the world at the beginning of the nineteenth century, would be the most potent external political and economic influence on Latin America into the 1930's. The United States, as it emerged as an industrial and economic powerhouse throughout the nineteenth century, would challenge the British for influence in the region.  In the first century after independence in the 1780's, the power and influence of the United States radiated westward and southward from the Old Thirteen Colonies.  It was on the North American continent and in the Caribbean basin that the United States would truly challenge and then supplant the British throughout the nineteenth century. U.S. influence was minimal south of Central America and the Caribbean.  British power in South America began to wane with the First World War, and would be completely replaced by the end of the Second World War (Marshall C. Eakin, The History of Latin America:Collission of Cultures. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2007, pp. 230-240).

The Spanish-American War in 1898 marks a watershed, not only in the role of the United States in Latin America, but also the U.S. role in the world.  In many ways, 1898 marks the emergence of the United States on the world stage, and the beginning of more than a rise to global supremacy that continues into the twenty-first century.  Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States marched across the North American continent, conquering, colonizing, and creating one of the largest domestic markets the world had ever seen.  By 1898, the Second Industrial Revolution was in full swing in the Unites States, built on iron and steel, the internal combustion engine, petroleum, power and a revolution in chemistry that would produce (among other things) fertilizers and explosives that would transform agriculture and warfare.  The Civil War in the 1860's had brutally halted expansion and integration of the continent.  In the decades after the war, railroads crisscrossed the nation, binding the regions together, and steamships carried U.S. troops and exports across the oceans (Ibid. p. 246). 

In the 1930's, several patterns were clear.  The British preeminence in nineteenth-century Latin America (especially South America) was rapidly disappearing and U.S. power in the region was growing dramatically.  U.S. investment in the region moved past that of Great Britain, the United States had decades of direct economic and military involvement across the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico, and U.S. policy-makers were hard at work on forging a Pax Americana in which the United States would "lead" the rest of the hemisphere.  The Second World War would accelerate all of the processes, opening an era of unprecedented U.S. power and influence in Latin America after 1945. As the peoples of the region forged their identities as Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, Brazilians-as Latin Americans-they did so in a complex and deeply conflicted relationship with the Colossus of the North (Ibid., ops. 251-252).  

Against this backdrop of history, we must stop to ask, "What is the relationship between theology and these historical developments in Latin America?"  As has pointed out several times before, theology does not emerge from or operate in a vacuum.  Theology is developed within the framework of human relations and historical occurrences. History shapes and at the same time is shaped by theology.  A knowledge of history helps us o understand the contents and nature of theology.  A knowledge of theology, on the other hand, enables us to give a meaning to history.

Liberation Theology, which addresses how the emergence and development of economic, political, and social structures under the influence of U.S. imperialism, seeks to identify, unmask, and denounce the environmental ills that these structures have generated.  Liberation Theology seeks to bring about a restricting of Latin American society, so that there will be a more fair, just, and equitable system for all of its inhabitants.  

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 

 COLONIAL HISTORY OF LATIN AMERICA 

DR. JUAN A. CARMONA 

In order to understand why Liberation Theology developed in Latin America, we must first come to grips with its colonial and neo-colonial history.  As has been pointed out before, Liberation Theology did not emerge in a vacuum.  There were circumstances and reasons as to why we see its emergence and development in  this corner of the world.  In essence, we will note that Liberation Theology is both an anti-colonial theology which denounces the status quo of economics, military, and political imperialism, as well as a post-colonial theology which seeks to address the concerns and issues prevalent in those societies which either are sovereign or in the process of becoming sovereign.

Following the lead of Columbus, the Spanish swept across the Caribbean within a generation, conquering and destroying the native people in their paths.  The Spanish moved through the conquest of a 'stepping stone process.'  They would conquer an island, establish a base of operations, and then move outward from there in a step-by-step pattern. Hispaniola, for example, became the staging ground for invading Cuba, and then Cuba for the conquest of Mexico.  From island to island, the Spanish replicated the original process on Hispaniola, while adding new features to respond to the different lands and peoples they encountered.  In a pattern that would be reproduced across Latin America for the next century, the conquerors divided the spoils-plunder, land, and natives among themselves.  The conquest operated on something of a seniority system.  The senior members of the expeditions got the best spoils, and those who got the smaller shares, along with those who arrived in the latter waves of conquistadors, were pushed outward to find their own riches and to conquer their own lands.  Unlike the Portuguese, who consciously set out to build their factories, or trading posts, the Spanish come to conquer, pillage, and then settle as colonists.  After the initial conquest, they recognized that all future wealth would have to come from the land, and the key to producing on the land was the exploitation of non-European labor (Marshall C. Eakin, The History of Latin America: Collision of Cultures. New York: Palgrave Mac Millan, 2007, p.62)

When put into a historical perspective, Liberation Theology is a theology which emerges within the framework of land-grabbing colonization, slave labor, and genocide.  It develops against the backdrop of conquest and eventual marginalization.  Liberation Theology is what Luis Rivera-Pagan calls "Theology from the margins," i.e. a theology which is generated among conquered and marginalized people.

Columbus's arrival brought a new economic system that also changed the socio-cultural organization of the indigenous people.  The native women were no longer equal to the men; they were raped and taken as objects of possession by the colonizers as a means to subjugate the population.  The Church allowed only men as the leaders of religion, and only white Spanish men at that. Not even the colonizer's own mixed blood offspring were acceptable as servants of God.  Five hundred years later, women are still submissive to men (Lydia Hernandez in "Even Today What Began Five Hundred Years Ago." New Face of the Church in Latin America, Guillermo Cook, ed. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994, p. 19).

As the military conquest drew to a close in the sixteenth century, the Spanish and Portuguese turned to making their new possessions productive long-term enterprises. Cultivation and exploitation of the land became the primarily objective of the developing colonial regimes.  Land without labor, however, was useless to the colonizers.  The population of Spain and Portugal were not very large, perhaps 10 to 11 million, combined in the sixteenth century.  The monarchies of both had little interest in a large out-migration of their subjects; rather, they needed them to provide an adequate and compliant labor force in Iberia, Mexico, and Peru, on the other hand, had populations that were each possibly double that of Spain and Portugal combined.  Quite literally, the Americas were built from the sweat and blood of African and indigenous people.  And much of the economic expansion in Europe after 1500 was fueled by the wealth of the America produced by their sweat and blood.  Out of this coercive labor system emerged the most burdensome legacy of the colonial period -the large landed estate (Eakin, op. cit, p. 96).

As we continue to examine these negative historical realities in Latin America, we can then begin to understand why our theology is referred to as a "theology of liberation."  It is a theology which seeks to advocate for liberation from the oppressive structures which have come into being as result of imperialistic conquest, genocide, slavery, and colonization.  

In future essays, we will focus on the impact of U.S.A. neo-colonialism in Latin America.  The impact of the imposition of the U.S.A. structures and subsequent policies will be examined as we seek to evaluate the need for a theology of liberation this region.

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