Father Michael Gillgannon, for 30 years a missionary in Bolivia and an old and good friend of USM, spoke before a GSI forum last year and left us with some surprisingly unconventional views about social and economic conditions in Latin America. He follows these provocative remarks in his annual Christmas report from Latin America, reprinted below.

2008 The U.S. and Latin America
A Report from Michael Gillgannon

In the wider world …what a year. Crises abound but they create fruitful reactions and initiatives as survival is at stake. And everybody is in it together. We all hang together in mutual cooperation or we all hang separately in isolated selfishness as the crisis goes round the world. Is it not ironic that after all our outsourcing of jobs and production (in the race to the bottom) that we produce a world wide depression as one of the few things left with our once proud label “Made In America”.

And the further irony of various administrations of the last 28 years stripping government of raison d’etre and responsibility for the common good suddenly conducting the country to become the biggest socialist republic in history. We redistribute the people’s money to private banks and corporations (who caused their own downfall by avaricious and incompetent management) in the trillions. Why are Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Fidel Castro smiling…no, laughing out loud? Because American outsized and unregulated capitalism (did we not have some Catholic teaching documents on these dangers some years back which some Catholic teachers have forgotten in their blind predilection for one-issue political ethics?) seems to be self- destructing before the eyes of the world.

Meanwhile, the “socialist republics” of Latin America, so easily labelled and regularly ignored by the American press and the U.S. State Department, continue their experiments with mixed economies. They are not opposed to private property or outside investment for mutual development. But they are casting ever wider social safety nets for the poor, old people (the majority with no social security from previous governments), the excluded indigenous groups now covered by new Constitutional safeguards, and the unemployed. They are making many mistakes from inexperience and lack of trained people but they are open to revisions and self-evaluation.

These governments, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay (with the ex-bishop of the poor as president), Argentina and Brazil have one motif in common. Descolonializacion. They have declared economic and political Colonialism moribund but not quite dead. They intend to kill it.

They have all been legitimately elected with international observers of their elections. Evo Morales of Bolivia recently won a recall vote with 67% of voter approval. They see themselves with a mandate.

And so they are impatient and are trying to change things fast. Some say too fast causing much social conflict as they tackle centuries of racism, classism and powerful business, financial and political interests which have no intention of losing their privileges. But the majority who elected them say they are not making some monumental changes fast enough. These poor and indigenous majorities, having now had a taste of winning political power, are pushing hard for more and refuse to be the servile peons of the past.

Needless to say, the social conflicts come daily. But racism and classism are the roots of the struggles and the excluded indigenous have suffered terrible incidents of prejudice. Throughout this year groups of indigenous have been attacked with clubs (would you believe in Cochabamba baseball bats were handed out to the mob?), whips, knives, guns and dogs in Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Tarija, and Sucre (of which we have a CD with the Rector of the State University leading the mob)) with many injured and some deaths.

Recently, in the Pando area of the Amazon, campesinoes trying to assemble for peaceful protests were attacked on the road by employees and mercenaries of the local Governor in what an international team of South American investigators labelled a massacre. 20 compesinoes were killed and scores wounded running away.

The Governor (his extended family owns most of the Pando that is not forest or jungle) and some cohorts are now in jail awaiting trial on charges he and his people planned and carried out the attack(there is a CD if you want a copy). Hundreds of others in the mob fled across the river bridge to Brazil when the police came. They say they are political refugees. Brazil does not quite know what to do. And Bolivia is asking for them back to face charges. Because the case is so politically charged seven judges in La Paz have excused themselves or been refused by defence lawyers for prejudice or political connections.

In the midst of the political confusion caused by the national government facing the open rebellion and lawlessness of five Department governments opposed to them and the new Constitution, the Church leadership has been sadly silent on all these tragic events. The government has accused Cardinal Terrazas of siding with the wealthy of Santa Cruz who seem to many to be using the Church. Some government spokespersons have made statements about the Church and its leaders, and threatening to tax church properties, that have not helped the public discourse. But the timidity of the Bishops in not publicly condemning the racial violence has left many in the Church perplexed. Sadly, both the Bolivian Church and society are badly divided along racial and class lines. The only good thing about the situation, for those of us who have seen it coming for years, is that it was inevitable. Bolivia, like all of Latin America, has to face up to its 500 year history of Colonial racism and classism. But, as in the U.S., the road to dignity and equality will not be easy, even with the first Indian and the first Afro-American as our respective presidents.

One of the decolonizing effects of the government was to accuse the American Ambassador, David Goldberg, of supporting the dissident Department Governors and interfering in the internal affairs of Bolivia. He was declared Persona non Grata and sent back to Washington. Then the Bolivian Ambassador was sent home from Washington. In sympathy, the Venezuelan government did the same thing with Washington responding in kind.

The Obama Administration will be a long time ending the colonial economic and political postures of the United States telling Latin American governments how to run their countries for the benefit of American commercial and financial interests. We are sure such postures will not be high on the new Administration’s list of priorities for change. But those colonial legacies will come back to haunt the State Department, the Commerce Department and the Defence Department, among others, soon if they fail to see how fast Latin America is looking for new trade and aid partners all over the world to end its hemispheric dependency on the North.

I continue my mission work here with many new, and some old, projects though I notice the years bring one face to face with age, diminishment and mortality. Do pray for our poor people this Christmas as only Jesus and his Spirit can reconcile us in these global times of rapid change.

Rev. Michael J. Gillgannon