Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Contemporary Latin America Michael Dodson Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1. (May, 197

Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Contemporary Latin America
Michael Dodson
Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1. (May, 1979), pp. 203-222.
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J. Lal. Amer. Stud. I I , I, 203-222 Printed in Great Britain
O O ~ Z - ~ I ~ X / ~ ~ / J L A$0S2-.0I0I IQO 1979 Cambridge University Press
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism
in Contemporary Latin America
by M I C H A E L DODSON
For the past decade and a half, Latin American Catholicism has been a
focal point of extraordinary religious change and political activism. Although
the first visible signs of religious renewal in the traditionally conservative
Latin American church did not appear until the early 1g60s,l a mere decade
later, in 1972, Christians for Socialism had held an international meeting of
radical Christians in Santiago, Chile. Today, Latin American bishops and
Christian base communities throughout the continent are deeply involved in
the struggle to preserve human rights against the encroachments of authoritarian
regimes. One of the most controversial aspects of the changing
Latin American church has been the emergence of organized movements of
Christian radicals who sought to use religion as a base from which to transform
society through political action. Sizeable priest movements of the left
appeared in such countries as Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, where
they had a notable impact on national politics. Acting from the premise that
Christian faith must be linked to social action to be meaningful, radicalized
Christians joined a dialogue with Marxism, denounced social injustices,
provided leadership to politically marginal groups and struggled to change
the very nature of the Latin American Catholic Church. The rationale and
justification of such action was provided in the collection of writings known
as the theology of liberati~n.~
1 Examples of early attempts to assess the changing Catholic Church in Latin America are:
John J. Considine (ed.), Social Revolution in the New Latin America (Notre Dame,
Indiana: 1965); Considine (ed.), The Religious Dimension in the A7ew Latin America (Notre
Dame, Indiana, 1966); William V. D'Antonia and Fredrick B. Pike (eds.), Religion,
Revol~ition and Reform: Neru Forces for Change in Lafin America (New York, 1964); and
Fran~ois Houtart and Emile Pin, The Church and the Latin American Revolution, trans.
Gilbert Barth (New York, 1965).
2 Major authors and works in the theology of liberation are: Hugo Assman, Teologia desde
la praxis de la liberacidn (Salamanca, 19731, Aldo J. Buntig and C. A. Bertone, Hechos,
doctrinas iociales y liberacio'n (Buenos Aires, 1973); Enrique Dussel, Camznos de liberacidn
latinoamericana Vols. I and II (Buenos Aires, 1975); Gustavo Gutiirrez, -4 Theology o/
Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.,1973); Enrique J. Laje, S.J., lglesia y liberacidn (Buenos
Aires, 1975); Juan Luis Segundo, Liberacio'n de la teologia (Buenos Aires, 1975).
204 Michael Dodson
There is now a sizeable literature on religious change in Latin Ameri~a,~
but outside the continent not much critical attention has been given to
liberation theology and the radical Christian politics it justifies. Existing
studies have been interested primarily in the theology of liberation rather
than in its social analysis or the political action flowing from it.* The
present article looks at liberation theology as a political phenomenon, and
attempts to show why it arose in Latin America at this particular juncture,
how it justifies a ' prophetic ' political involvement by the Church in terms
of the Christian gospel, and what it seeks to accomplish through politics.
Within this framework, the specific foci of analysis will be : (I) the centrality
of dependence and underdevelopment to the theology of liberation; (2) the
use of a class struggle perspective to explain social conflict and justify
political action; (3) the actual exercise of a political role by radical Christians
to achieve religious as well as secular goals. The experience of the Argentine
Movement of Priests for the Third World, the largest priest movement in
Latin America, will be used to provide concrete examples of the points
discussed.
Since liberation theology and Christian radicalism are a major response
of Latin American Catholicism to the perception of a development crisis
which pervaded the region in the early 1g6os, a brief review of both socioeconomic
and religious conditions preceding the rise of liberation theology
will be helpful. During World War I1 and shortly thereafter, the countries
of Latin America enjoyed favorable terms of trade with the Western industrial
nations. During the war and the ~eriodo f post-war recovery, the high
demand for minerals and agricultural goods led to a high volume of trade
on terms favorable to Latin America. Favorable trade conditions made it
possible for some Latin American countries to initiate industrialization and
for others to accelerate its tempo. However, these favorable conditions began
to deteriorate after 1950, SO that a process of independent, self-sustaining
economic development did not take hold in Latin America. Neither pro-
3 Recent major works on religion and social change in Latin America are: Thomas Bruneau,
The Political Transjormation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge University Press,
1974); Emanuel de Kadt, Catholic Radicals in Brazil (Oxford University Press, 1970);
Gerhard Drekonja, ' Religion and Social Change in Latin America ', Latin American
Research Review, Vol. 6 (Spring, 1971); Daniel Levine and Alex Wilde, ' The Catholic
Church, " Politics ", and Violence: The Colombian Case ', The Review of Politics, Vol.
39 (Apr. 1977); Brian Smith, ' Religion and Social Change : Classical Theories and New
Formulations in the Context of Recent Developments in Latin America ', Lalin American
Research Review, Vol. 10 (Summer, 1975); Ivan Vallier, Catholicism, Social Control and
Modernization in Latin America (Englewood Cliffs, 1970).
4 A very thoughtful and probing exception is: T. Howland Sank5 and Brian Smith,
' Liberation Ecclesiology: Praxis, Theory, Praxis ', Theological Studies, No. 38 (Mar.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 205
fessional economists nor Catholic intellectuals recognized this failure. At
the time, therefore, the Church shared the generally optimistic expectations
of the wider society that economic development lay just around the ~ o r n e r . ~
Reflecting the orthodox economic thought of the day, the church tended to
see social problems - such as the working conditions of the urban laborer,
land tenure patterns, the economic plight of the peasant, high illiteracy rates
and poor housing - as discrete problems, each unique and unrelated to the
others as well as unrelated to the economic and political relationships
between the Latin American nations and the First W ~ r l dF. ~ro m such a
perspective the church could pursue its traditional strategy of charity towards
the poor while awaiting the alleviating effects of the development process.
The ethos of an individualist, competitive society - a capitalist society - was
not questioned, nor was the belief that economic development would produce
individual well-being, social mobility and political maturity. Not until
the I ~ ~ O San, d particularly after the failure of the Alliance for Progress, did
a change of orientation begin to take place within the church, as well as in
the larger society. When it did come, that change was expressed as a reaction
against the developmentalist model of social and economic change.
Even as the Alliance for Progress was being fashioned to stimulate Latin
American development through a capitalist framework, some Latin American
thinkers were beginning to recognize the high degree of dependence
which their economies displayed with respect to the industrial nations. They
perceived a widening rather than a narrowing gap between their economies
and those of the rich nations. As they witnessed their own countries return
to a cycle of exporting raw goods and importing more expensive, finished
goods, these Latin American intellectuals began to question the efficacy of
the purely economic and technical development scenario touted by the
developed countries. Such questioning produced a general sense of crisis
throughout Latin America, particularly as the failure of the Alliance for
Progress became more and more evident.
The development crisis in Latin America coincided with a religious crisis.
A major result of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council
(1962-5) was the perception that Latin America needed massive attention as
a mission field. The largest Catholic continent in the world, Latin America
displayed pastorally weak churches which had little appeal among the
common people. Priestly vocations had fallen to acutely low levels. Protestant
competition and secular political groups with populist or revolutionary
5 ' Christians, Churches and Dcvelopmcnt ', lSAL Abstracts, Year I, No. 6 (Jan. 1969), 1-8;
Catholicism in Latin America ', lSAL Abstracts, Year IV, No. 40, 4-9.
6 Jesds Garcia Gonzhlez, ' Dcl dcsarrollo a la liberaci6n ', Contacto, 8, No. 2 (June 1971).
30-31.
206 Michael Dodson
appeals were making severe inroads among the Catholic faithful. The
church's response to this crisis was a commitment to enlarge the number
of clergy and to upgrade the quality of pastoral action. Foreign priests were
urged to go to Latin America and large numbers of clergy, domestic and
foreign alike, were encouraged to take up ministries among the poor.
Although the latter took various forms, for simplicity I will refer to it as
the worker-priest experiment. It is within the broad worker-priest sphere of
action that the church became intimately caught up in the struggle to
resclve the development crisis.
The theology of liberation grew most fundamentally out of the church's
direct involvement with the working poor, both urban and rural. This
involvement began quietly and modestly in the early 1960s with thc promotion
of the worker-priest concept in such countries as Argentina, Chile
and Uruguay. Aware that the church seemed to be losin-g contact with the
masses, particularly in the cities, bishops in many dioceses supported a plan
for parish priests to take employment in factories and workshops in order
to get closer to working people, understand their needs more intimately, and
develop a ministry appropriate to them. The case of Argentina is illustrative
of what evolved out of this project. For most worker-priests, direct involvement
was a profoundly unsettling experience in consciousness-raising. They
realized that the church was alienated from the poor and began to see both
religion and the social order through a Marxist lens. They began to see the
church as an agent of pacification and co-optation since it made little effort
to chang-e social conditions or draw attention to the structural causes underlying
poverty. For clergy who wished to act on the basis of this new awareness,
it became necessary to rethink the priestly vocation, the mission of the
church, even the very meaning of faith itseK7
Clergy radicalized by direct involvement with the poor required tools for
explaining the social relationships they encountered, and for justifying some
form of political action to ameliorate those conditions. Hence, liberation
theology evolved as an amalgam of Marxist social analysis and a reinterpretation
of the prophetic tradition in Christianity. Radical Christians
needed a theology which called for the liberation of people from the concrete
social conditions of Latin American dependency. Through a Marxist
lens, they now saw sharp class inequalities, the concentration of power
among elites, chronic political instability and a lack of social mobility as
integral aspects of Latin America's uniquely dependent condition. Let us
now look briefly at the theology which proposed to justify Latin American
Vivid personal accounts of this experience can bc found in Jose Maria Diez-Alegria, Yo
creo en la esperanza! (Bilbao, 1972); Carlos Mugica, Peronisnm y cl-istianismo (Buenos
Aires, 1973); Jose M. Llorcns, S.J., Opci6n fuera de la ley (Mendoza, 1972).
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 207
liberation; then we will examine critically the social analysis and political
action strategies which a typical radical priest movement pursued in order
to bring that liberation about.
As we have seen, from the perspective of a worker-priest in the early
1960s the Latin American social order appeared laden with structural
obstacles to change. Poverty was the inevitable by-product of the socioeconomic
system, not the result of individual failure. As constituted, the
system benefited domestic and foreign elites whose interests were not only
inconsistent with but directly opposed to those of the Latin American
masses. Such a perspective vividly recalled the prophetic vision of an earlier
biblical tradition. Indeed, the prophetic tradition in Judeo-Christian history
had been fashioned precisely to meet a condition of captivity, exploitation
and oppression. The question was, how to adapt a pastoral ministry to the
demands for prohetic action in the context of present-day Latin American
oppression, i.e. dependency.
The obvious answer was to move out of confessional roles and into the
public arena, where a two-fold action strategy evolved. On the one hand,
a prophetic ministry came to mean interpreting the gospel within a framework
which posited social conflict and exploitation rather than social
harmony and consensus. Radical clergy referred to this as interpreting the
' signs of the times.' The priest must analyse the society in which he works,
determine where the chain of exploitation begins, and denounce publicly
the social and political relationships which are found to lie at the root of
exploitation. In theological terms this amounted to ' desacrilizing ' certain
aspects of the social order. Whereas conservative clergy had long been
identified with the status quo, and liberal clergy sought change through
accommodation within the existing social system, these radical clergy
developed a theology which demanded fundamental changes in the system
itself. A major purpose of this article is to examine and assess the social
criticism offered by liberation theologians, both in terms o~f general categories
or concepts of analysis, and in their concrete application to the experience
of Argentina.
The second aspect of the prophetic role was community leadership. Radical
clergy organized their followers for political action, guided by a vision of
the Christian promise of redemption which directly linked the temporal
sphere with the spiritual. Social change in the present was seen as integral
to the long-range spiritual redemption of mankind. Concretely, in Latin
America, this implied the demand for the full participation of ordinary
people in the shaping of their own lives. Profound dependence and passivity
must be replaced by full participation and self-determination in the econ208
Michael Dodson
omic and political spheres. To achieve such a goal, radical priests became
spokesmen for a political program which advocated participatory democracy
and humanist s~cialism.~
This entire experience of rethinking Latin American social reality can
be expressed in the categories of Christian social thought. The developmentalist
model fits easily with a dualist theology which posited two
societies (Christian and non-Christian) and two histories (profane and
spiritual). It excused the church from any role in altering the process of
underdevelopment. For those who wished to have some impact on the
process, a new model had to be created; the liberation model is a step in
that direction. In rejecting the developmentalist model, it accepts the evidence
of a single, interrelated social reality composed of social relations of
domination and exploitation. In biblical terms, it accepts the idea of a single
salvation history, the objective of which must be liberation when lived out
in class societies characterized by domination and exploitation.' Let us turn
now to a critical discussion of the social analysis upon which that projected
liberation is based.
Dependency Analysis in Liberation Theology
For virtually all writers of the theology of liberation genre, dependency is
the single most important characteristic of the Latin American sociopolitical
order. By far the most common usage one encounters is descriptive,
the term portraying what is assumed to be the nature of Latin America's
economic and political condition rather than a more analytical usage as a
theory of the region's historical development which requires empirical
verification. Put differently, liberation theology has adopted a dependency
framework of analysis largely on the basis of the intuitive feeling that it
' fits ' the conditions through which Latin Americans have lived. Liberationists
have thus employed a subtle but imprecise and still largely untested tool
of analysis as though it were a finished and verified product. As representative
as any is the formulation of Hugo Assman :
The theory of 'dependency ' grows out of the crisis of developmentalist theory.
It is not a complement to the latter but rather a total rejection of it. Underdevelopment
is not a preparatory stage preceding capitalist development; it is a
direct consequence of such development. It is dependent capitalism which is a
special form of conditioned development. Inasmuch as dependency is the shaping
8 The political theory of liberation theology is treated at much greater length in M. Dodson,
' Religious Innovation and the Politics of Argentina: A Study of the Movement of Priests
for the Third World ', Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Indiana University, 1974. See
especially Chap. 3.
"onz6lez, ' Del dcsarrollo a la liberacibn ', p. 38.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 209
reality of our entire history, it necessarily arises as the appropriate scientifically
explanatory category of analysis.1°
Assman is both right and wrong in important respects. The perception that
the Latin American ' developmental ' experience is profoundly different
from that of the First World is correct, the evidence to support it overwhelming.''
His contention that the Latin American experience is tied to that of
the First World is also accurate. From this perspective the assertion that the
theology of liberation must use the experience of dependency as an essential
point of departure seems not only acceptable but beyond argument. In this
respect Assman and his fellow theologians are fundamentally right. They
are wrong, however, in thinking that dependency is a clear-cut instrument
which itself does not require sharp, critical analysis. In this sense, Assman's
formulation as quoted above begs important questions about the specific
nature and consequences of dependency.
Inasmuch as theories of dependency (for there are many) are refined
versions of Lenin's theory of imperialism, they fit easily into the Marxian
framework of analysis adopted by liberation theology. Presented very
schematically, the common thread of these theories is as follows. The
nations of Latin America have had to confront economic and social development
(the passage to modernity?) from a position within an already established
global economic system. This position was historically determined by
the expansion of monopoly capitalism into the Third World in search of
new outlets for capital investments and accumulation and new sources of
raw materials. This process, which Lenin called imperialism, gathered
momentum towards the end of the nineteenth century and became fully
developed in the early decades of the twentieth - before the nations of Latin
America had begun a process of autonomous economic development. Given
the comparative strength of the already established capitalist economies, a
pattern of economic relationships was begun which ' guaranteed capital
flows from the over-capitalized economies to backward countries and
10 Hugo Assman, ' El aporte cristiano a1 proceso de liberacibn de Amtrica Latina ', Contacto,
8, No. z (June 1971)~ 14.
11 See, for example, Fernando Ilenrique Cardoso, and Enzo Faletto, Dependencia y desarrollo
en Amhica Latina (Mexico, 1969); Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment
in Latin America (New York, 1967); Helio Jaguaribe, et al., La dependencia
politico-econdmica de AmCrica Latina (Mexico, 1970); Pierre Jalee, The Pillage of the
Third World (New York, 1968); V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalistn
(Moscow, 1968); Osvaldo Sunkel and Pedro Paz, El subdesarrollo latinoamericano 31 la
teoria del desarrollo (Mexico, 1970); Theotonio Dos Santos, ' E! nuevo carlcter de la
dependencia ', Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios Socio-Econdmicos, No. 10 (Santiago,
1968); Frank Bonilla and Robert Girling (eds.), Strt4ctures of Dependency (Stanford Univ.,
Institute of Political Studies, mimeo., 1973).
L.A.S.-I4
ZIO Michael Dodson
assured provision of raw materials in return.' l2 AS a consequence, the
Latin American economies were incorporated into an international economic
system on a dependent and unequal basis, the control over which lay elsewhere.
The Latin American economies were dependent in the sense that
capital in all forms was controlled by First World economies, and unequal
in the sense that the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods
brought far greater financial return to the First World than to Latin
America. The exploitative character of this relationship ' could be measured
by the increasing indebtedness of [the Latin American] economies to the
central economies ',13 and by the general failure throughout Latin America
of a self-sustaining and competitive (as opposed to cooperative and subordinate)
industrialization to take place. On the contrary, the role of the
peripheral economies is to nourish the further development of the capitalist
countries at the expense of their own development. They are ' hooked ' on a
process of development which, from an economic standpoint, entails falling
ever further behind the already developed countries. This is the process
Andre Gunder Frank has called ' the development of underdevelopment '.I4
Far-reaching social and political consequences accompany this economic
cycle. Most importantly, there occurs in the dependent countries the growth
of a domestic bourgeoisie, an indigenous capitalist class which facilitates
and benefits from the Drocess of im~erialism.A s allies of the international I I
bourgeoisie, they are not affected adversely by the process of underdevelopment.
On the contrary, they partake of the profit which that process entails.
This class consists of ' the principal wielders of economic resources -
agrarian, commercial, industrial or financial ',15 which presumably means
bankers, industrialists, large landowners, the so-called ' export-import elite '
and, in some cases, the upper echelons of the armed forces. By virtue of
their role in a global process of exploitation, these groups cannot but be
defined as ' oppressors '. A residual category encompassing virtually everyone
else in society constitutes the oppressed. Liberation thus becomes a
struggle to break out of the cycle of political dependence, perpetual economic
debility and social injustice which characterizes Latin America. Liberation
is the escape from dependency. In this light, the theology of liberation can
be understood in its full implications. The attempt to make biblical reflection
and pastoral action socially and politically liberating implies the engagement
of the church in class struggle. Nothing less than the destruction of the
12 Cardoso, in Bonilla and Girling, Strs~ctz~reosf Dependency, p. 8.
13 Ibid., p. 9.
14 Andre Gunder Frank, ' The Development of Underdevelopment ', in James D. Cockroft
et al., Dependence and Underdevelopment (Garden City, New York, 1972), pp. 3-18.
15 See Michael Dodson, ' Religious Innovation and the Politics of Argentma '.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 211
' national bourgeoisie ' and the severing of dependently structured economic
ties with the First World would seem to be in order!
In criticizing the dependency perspective as it has been incorporated into
liberation theology, this article examines five general issues, The first point
has been suggested already - many, if not most, theologians of liberation
have overreacted to the awareness of dependency. The unquestioned assumption
of a single and uniform dependency framework to explain the political
economy of the twenty Latin American nations illustrates this weakness.
Since liberation theology is anchored in social analysis, it is accountable to
the standards of social science. In this regard it is inadequate to imagine
that a conceptualization or, at best, a suggestive model of international
economic and political relationships is the same thing as an expIanatory
theory of the dynamics of those relationships. Dependency is not an empirical
theory with explanatory (in the sense of predictive) power at all. For
that matter, as has been suggested, there is no single theory of dependency
anyway. What exists is a variety of approaches to the study of First World/
Third World relationships, each of which seeks to organize analysis around
the common themes of capitalist expansion, unequal exchange relationships
and class conflict. As will be suggested more fully below, within this variety
of approaches divergent themes are developed and, therefore, the uncritical
acceptance of a dependency theory is premature on the part of theologians
of liberation.
A related aspect of this simplification of dependency ' theory ' is the
tendency to treat Latin America as an undifferentiated whole; but, of
course, the region is characterized by great diversity of socio-economic and
political conditions. Argentina's social or economic situation can hardly be
compared with that of Bolivia. The latter country seems to correspond much
more closely to Lenin's conception of a colonial, or dependent, country than
Argentina, given its heavy reliance on raw material export, its almost total
lack of industrialization (not to mention the domestic potential for it) and
its highly inegalitarian society. Yet the Movement of Priests for the Third
World has consistently analysed the Argentine situation as if the two countries
shared identical problems and those problems had precisely the same
causes. lfi
A second criticism concerns the emphasis in liberation theology on
economic variables over and above other factors. Consistent with its adopted
Marxian theoretical framework, the theology of liberation stresses economic
1 6 Renato Poblete, S.J., ' La teoria de la dependencia: anilisis critic0 ', Liberaci6n: diblogos
en CELAM, Documento CELAM No. 16, Secretariado General del CELAM (Bogotb, 1974))
p. 211.
212 Mzchael Dodson
and particularly trade factors as the root cause of all other social phenomena,
including political power relationships. The economic cycle of imperialismdependency
discussed above is itself taken to account not only for the
economic weaknesses and imbalances of the Latin American countries but
also for the existence of varying class structures and disparate patterns of
the exercise of political power. Latin America's diversity along both
dimensions is concealed in the process as reflected in the tendency to use
such vague and simple dichotomies as oppressor-oppressed, powerful-weak,
rich-poor, elite-people. The reality of Latin American societies is nothing so
simple - or, at least, if it is, this must be demonstrated empirically, not
simply deduced from a theoretical framework which itself lacks empirical
grounding. Social and political outcomes in Latin America are shaped by
the reciprocal influence of an entire range of social, economic, political and
cultural variables, as are all societies. The economic factor is one important
factor not the causal factor from which all other phenomena merely derive.
To illustrate this point, we may note that there have existed countries
dependent in the sense understood here which have also enjoyed high levels
of economic development. In varying degrees, Canada, AustraIia, and New
Zealand have all been dependent countries, yet have managed to develop
economically in a traditional capitalist sense from within that framework.17
This point anticipates two of the remaining three.
Firstly, underdevelopment does not always follow in the wake of the
imperialism-dependency cycle even in Latin America. Cardoso has shown
that at least in Brazil and Mexico foreign investment no longer is, as he
puts it, ' a simple zero sum game of exploitation as was the pattern in
classical imperialism '.la The pattern of local development is uneven to be
sure, but then it is in the First World also. What occurs is an 'internal
structural fragmentation ' in which the more advanced sectors of the local
economies evolve into a necessary and dynamic element in the international
capitalist system. The existence of these sectors is, of course, implicit in the
theology of liberation analysis as discussed above but its significance for that
analysis is ignored. The conceptualization put forward by Frank of a progressive
underdevelopment of the Latin American economy ignores the fact
that dependency, monopoly capitalism and vigorous (though narrow)
development are fully compatible. The theology of liberation is correct,
however, that the price aid by the ' developing' country is high in terms
sf the proportion of its people who actually benefit from such a pattern of
development.
A fourth point which we may appropriately discuss now concerns the
1' C<~rdoso,' Imperialism and Dependency in Latin America ', p. 11. 18 Ibid.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 213
class division which the theology of liberation posits as accompanying
dependent development. Once again the problem lies in the simplicity of
conceptualization, which in this case is reduced to superficiality. As in the
case of the point discussed above, it can be shown that in several countries
of Latin America, perhaps most notably in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and
Uruguay, the so-called oppressor class encompasses a very wide range of
groups, indeed. Not only is the financial and land-owning aristocracy
incorporated but, in fact, large segments of the working class can be shown
to benefit from dependent development. At least some intellectuals, State
employees and members of the armed forces, not to mention the petit
bourgeoisie (small businessmen), and even the well-organized and often wellpaid
blue collar working class clearly benefit. Though these groups may
give verbal support to nationalist, anti-imperialist causes (as with the Peronist
unions in Argentina), they are hardly allies of the truly dispossessed and
marginal classes of these countries. Even in Marx's sense of class membership,
these groups cannot be said to share a common interest with landless
rural laborers, peasants, Indians, or first-generation shanty-town dwellers.
In short, the Marxian division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat,
even when expressed as oppressor-oppressed, is too simple and nalve when
applied to the complex societies of Latin America. We will return to this
point in the final section of the essay.
The final point concerning dependency is perhaps the most far-reaching
in terms of the utility of the simple dependency model employed by the
theology of liberation. The imperialist thesis rests on the assumption that
First World capitalism must necessarily expand into and exploit Third
World economies. While such may have been the case early in this century,
the changing nature of international capitalism may be making such
' dependency ' by First World economies on Third World raw materials
and markets, particularly the latter, obsolete. Again, Cardoso has shown that,
during the 1960s and 1g7os, Latin America's participation in the expansion
af international trade and investment has been declining. From a centerperiphery
perspective, for example, ' one finds that the trade rate of growth
was 7.9 per cent per year in the central economies and 4.8 per cent in the
peripheral ones '. Exports from the Third World to the First World have
steadily declined from the post-war high in 1948, and Latin America's share
fell from 12 per cent of total world trade in 1948 to 6 per cent in 1968.
Accompanying this trend is a decline in United States investment in Latin
America. Between 1950 and 1968 its participation fell from 39 per cent to
20 per cent.'Vow these data do not necessarily signal an end to depen214
Michael Dodson
dency. My argument is rather that the analysis of liberation theology, by
tying its liberation program to the relatively simple notion that Latin
America's social, economic and political ills can all be laid at the doorstep
of underdevelopment (and, therefore, ultimately at the doorstep of an
aggressive, exploitative external capitalist penetration), will miss the multidimensional
causes of those ills and misdirect some, perhaps much, of its
revolutionary fervor in unproductive or even counterproductive directions.
Put more simply, the current object of liberation attack may be largely a
straw man. h his has important implications, indeed, for those who take
dependency as given, and shape their normative revolutionary goals to fit
the social analysis it entails. The concrete experience of the Third World
Priest Movement in Argentina illustrates the point vividly.
The Analysis of Class Struggle in Liberation Theology
Attempts to incorporate a class struggle perspective into liberation theology
are as central to it as the analysis of Latin American dependency and are,
indeed, related to it. The division of society into social classes with antagonistic
interests is thought to be a result of dependent development. In
liberation theology, class struggle is also closely linked to values which
liberationists claim are indigenous to Latin America. In all parts of Latin
America, the theologians of liberation call for the adaptation of both the
Marxian framework of class analysis and the socialist goals associated with
it to the indigenous values of each Latin American nation. Indeed, the
incorporation of indigenous values is viewed as indispensable. From this
perspective the liberation scenario can be restated as follows : the awareness
of dependency sharply awakens the church to the class character of society,
which necessitates taking sides in a situation of class struggle and assuming
the historical ' project ' of oppressed peoples. This means a siding with the
proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Political action must then be pursued
which is geared to the assumption of power by the proletariat and the
destruction of the capitalist system of production and the introduction of
socialism. The entire process must be consistent with the unique character
of the nation in question.
Members of the Movement of Priests for the Third World are emphatic
that liberationists cannot simply borrow mechanically from the Marxian
framework but must adapt it to their own particular conditions of dominance
and s~bordination.~A' leading Movement theologian, Father Lucio Gera,
argues that when any group begins to dominate other social groups, it
ceases to be ' community ', it ceases to be ' of the people ', and becomes
20 Luis Roggi, ' La realidad del Tercer Mundo ', Enlace, I, No. 7 (14Ocr. 1969), I.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 215
instead an elite, or an oligarchy. The term ' class ' may be utilized to depict
these two groups - ' elite ' and ' people ' (pueblo) - but one can never say
a priori who will fit into them in the context of a given social reality. It is
necessary at each point in history to ' determine concretely who is " people "
and who is " elite " or dominating '. For the Third World Movement, the
dominated class in Argentina today is the sector incorporating the urban
working class (the proletariat), the inhabitants of villas miserias (a lumpen
proletariat?), and the campesino, including landless rural labor and tenant
or share-cropping farmers. The dominating class is composed of the rest of
society, but primarily the owners and directors of the capitalist enterprises
which are thought to control Argentine political life.21
At first glance, the Third World Priests' use of class analysis seems quite
similar to that of Marx. Both see the capitalist organization of the means
of production as creating a division of society into two opposed classes. It
creates a class of capitalists which controls private property and appropriates
the wealth produced by labor, and a proletarian class which is chained to
and impoverished by that capitalist class. However, whereas for Marx all
prior classes in history had been ' particular ' classes with partial, narrow
interests, the proletarian class was a ' universal ' class in the Hegelian sense,
meaning that its ascendance would bring about the disappearance of class
divisions. This view of the nature of the proletarian class was an integral
element in Marx's overall theory of dialectical historical development leading
to a classless society."
Third World Priests clearly do not see the Argentine proletariat as the
repository of a Hegelian universal. In terms of their theory of historical
development, no existing proletariat at any given point in time can embody
the universal. To categorize the proletariat in this way would be to make
absolute a given (and temporary) configuration of social forces, which would
contradict the prophetic goal of relativizing all concrete historical presents
in the light of the liberation view of the Christian eschatology (God's plan
for human redemption). In other words, the Third World Priests reject
both the determinism in the Marxist vision of an ultimate victory of the
proletariat and the con.tention that the proletariat actually is a universal
class. These points highlight the essentially democratic propensity of their
2 1 Lucio Gera, ' La Misi6n de la iglesia y del presbitero a la luz de la teologia de la liberaci6n ',
PASOS (14 Aug. 1972), 8.
2 2 For more detailed treatment of this point, see particularly Shlomo Avineri, The Social
and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 61 ff.; Herbert Marcuse,
Reason and Revolrrtion: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (New Yorlr, 1941), pp. 312 ff.;
and John Plamenatz, Mun and Society: A Critical Examination of Some Important Social
and Political Theories from Machiavelli to Marx, Vol. 2 (London, 1963), p. 314 ff.
216 Michael Dodson
thought which can envision a constant struggle toward greater equality -
political, social, economic and cultural - but cannot envision a classless
Utopia; they also render the priests' version of liberation incongruous with
an analytic framework of class struggle. This particular blend of Marxism
and democratic theory puts the priests in the position of advocating an
egalitarianism which their own social analysis tells them will never be
realized since class struggle is in their view endless.
Another important aspect of the Third World Movement's class analysis
involves the degree of common interest among the groups which compose
the Argentine proletariat. As broadly defined as it is by Third World
Priests, the term ' proletariat ' seems to incorporate groups whose interests not
only do not coincide, but are, in fact, opposed. In this regard, the argument
of Rodolfo Stavenhagen is particularly interesting. Stavenhagen shares with
the Argentine priests the notion of an ' internal colonialism ' applied to the
Latin American nations. He notices, however, what the Third World
Priests failed to see - that the objective interests of the urban working class
and those of the rural proletariat may very likely be opposed within such
a context. To take but one obvious example, agrarian reform presumably
would be in the interest of the rural worker. However, it might very well
not be in the interest of the urban worker. Stavenhagen explains:
An agrarian reform usually implies an initial diminution of food deliveries to
the cities, the effects of which are first felt by the working class. It also means
the channeling of public investments into the rural sectors, with a consequent
disfavoring of the urban sector which . .. is about the only sector that really
benefits from economic development in a situation of internal colonialism. On the
other hand, the struggle of the urban working class . . .for higher wages, more
and better public social services, price controls, etc., finds no seconding in the
peasant sector because benefits obtained by the working class in this way are
usually obtained at the cost of agriculture - i.e., the peasants. In short, the urban
working class of our countries is .. .a beneficiary of internal ~olonialisrn.~~
Stavenhagen's analysis suggests that the class analysis of the Third World
priests is an inevitable contradiction of interests - not between capitalists and
proletariat but among elements of the proletariat. His analysis also suggests
that the priests could come into conflict with one another by becoming
deeply committed to one or another of these potentially antagonistic groups.
This issue also raises serious questions about the compatibility of the Movement's
values and those of the indigenous political movement with which
it sought an alliance. At this juncture, then, let us turn to an examination
of the concrete efforts the Third World priests have made to realize the
2 3 Rodolfo Stavenhagen, ' Seven Fallacies about Latin America ', James Petras and Maurice
Zeitlin (eds.), in Latin Amerzca: Reform or Revolution? (New York, 196S), p. 29.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 217
implications of their analysis of Argentine society by linking their liberation
praxis to Peronism.
Liberation Theology, the Third World Priests and Peronism in Argentina
Almost from its inception, the Third World Priest Movement in
Argentina searched for ways to accommodate Peronism to its liberation
goals and to integrate itself into the political activities of Peronist groups.
In general its members have viewed Peronism as an authentic Argentine
revolutionary movement. This view is rooted in the members' daily contact
with lower class working people and the residents of villas miserias where,
they claim, Peronism is the ' main political force among the people
Although their view is understandable, it is based on a highly uncritical
and somewhat distorted interpretation of what Peronism was both before
and after 1955. For example, Carlos Mugica, perhaps the best known Third
World supporter of Per6n and author of Peronismo y cristianismo, argues
that Per6n's political program of justicialismo has been an important vehicle
for the achievement of socialism and democracy in Argentina.25 Given how
far Argentina is from the achievement of either of these goals, not to
mention the obviously uncertain commitment of justicialism to either of
them, Mugica's assessment was premature. Such prominent Movement
leaders as Ruben Dri and Rolando Concatti have made similar arguments.
Dri has contended that the masses actually held power under Per6n, because
his rule prior to 1955 was a truly popular democratic rule. And Concatti
has attempted to synthesize Marxist and democratic interpretations of
Per6n7s rule by arguing that Per& gave concrete expression to the historical
class struggle while simultaneously making ' the democratic movement ' a
reality. In his words :
The masses, who were presented by Irigoyen with what could have been a
popular democracy, were recently living it authentically with Per6n. .. . He congealed
groups whose democratic vocation had hitherto been frustrated. This
implies not just ' clean elections ', but the triumphant experience of respecting
majority
It is understandable that present-day admirers could see Per6n's organization
of the working class as a ' triumphant experience '. For people
hitherto entirely outside the political process, it surely was. On the other
hand, such interpretations overlook the authoritarian and demagogic
features of Per6n7s rule which suggested anything but a triumphant respect
24 Agostin0 Bono, ' Life " Bitter " for Priests in Argentina ', National Catholic Reporter
(Sept. 1972), P. 15.
25 Carlos Mugica, Peronismo y cr2;.tianismo(Buenos Aires, 1g73), pp. 29-44,
26 Rolando Concatti, ' Nuestra opci6n por el Peronismo ', Cristianismo ji Revolctciln, IV
(Sept. 1g71), 29-30.
218 Michael Dodson
for majority will. In addition, by insisting on an interpretation of Peronism
which stresses that it is a movement and attempts to identify it with such
popular indigenous political experiences as those of Facundo Quiroga and
Hip6lito Irigoyen, the Third World Priests overlook the concrete organizational
developments that have led to the ' institutionalization ' of Peronism
through justicialism and the Confederacidn General de Trabajadores
(General Confederation of Workers). Through these developments the
descamisados (shirtless ones) of the 1940s largely became a favored elite of
industrial workers whose socio-economic position was far better than,
perhaps even maintained at the expense of, the large mass of truly marginal
people with whom the priests were mainly concerned. In short, the priests
underestimated the extent to which the populism of the earlier Peronist
period has been undercut by the gains in political sophistication and socioeconomic
advantage which two decades have wrought. They have created
a Peronism after their own vision of Argentina's needs, and in the process
have lost sight of the changed nature of that ' movement '. Per6n's return
to Argentina and election to the presidency in early 1973 made painfully
clear what this mistaken judgement would cost the priest movement.
The Third World Priests became heavily embroiled in the factional strife
that wracked the Peronist movement after the General's return from exile.
Some priests wanted to avoid becoming too involved with the divisive
internal conflict among the various Peronist groups but were willing to
accord verbal support to Peronism in general because it represented the only
ray of political hope for Buenos Aires' one million villeros. Others, including
the most dynamic members of the early leadership, like Miguel
Ramondetti, the first national secretary of the Movement, and Rolando
Concatti, Jose Maria Serra, and Santiago MacGuirre of the national secretariat,
began to diverge from those loyal to Per6n. Deeply influenced by
their experiences with the rural poor and the most marginal urban workers,
these priests were less optimistic about Peronism's commitment to
Argentina's marginales. For them, Peronism had become a 'bourgeois
phenomenon ' whose real strength lay in the organized working class which
they saw as a labor elite. They had come to doubt the authenticity of
Peronism's commitment in the communidades de base, or ' grass roots '. The
attitude of these leaders, which was shared by a small number of rank and
file, became the major preoccupation of the Movement by early 1973. The
Movement's journal, Enlace, began to devote much of its attention to this
growing conflict, and in August 1973 a meeting was held to discuss the
Movement's future. Those priests loyal to Per6n urged that the Movement
face up to its dilemma and either make a total commitment to Peronism or
rethink its goals.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 219
By the time of its December 1973 meeting, the Third World Priest Movement
had reached an impasse over its direction as a nationwide movement.
It had become two movements, one of which was itself split. The Peronist
camp was divided between a militant leftist group whose position
approached that of the Montoneros and the Juuentud Peronista, and a much
larger group whose loyalty was to Per6n and whose pronouncements conformed
to the official position of the G~vernment.'T~h e other faction was
a basically Marxist group which shares with all Third World Priests a
desire to achieve socialism in Argentina, but which rejects the idea that this
can be accomplished through Peronism and without class struggle. Such
early leaders as Ramondetti, Concatti, Andris Lanson, Eliseo Morales and
Rahl Marturet have taken this position. In early 1974, they joined a new
movement which accepts both religious and lay membership, calls itself
Cristianos por el Socialismo: Argentina (Christians for Socialism in
Argentina) and constitutes, in effect, a competitor of the Third World
Priests on Argentina's political left.
In the face of these divisions, the six-man secretariat based in Santa Ft and
composed largely of priests with a Peronist orientation renounced the secretariat
at the December meeting, arguing that the Movement no longer
possessed sufficient coherence to warrant a nationwide organizational
apparatus. A third meeting held in February 1w4 confirmed this position,
and it was decided that the Movement of Priests for the Third World would
return to the decentralized character it had possessed in its worker-priest
stage eight years before. The publication of Enlace, the Movement's ' link ',
was discontinued.
The Third World Priests of Buenos Aires survived this rupture largely
intact as a group. Most had been Peronists from the beginning and hence
the split did not so severely affect them. Continuing in close contact with
them was a group of priests based in Rosario, Santa FC and to a lesser extent
in Cdrdoba, who also were loyal to Peronism. This is the core of what
remains of the Movement of Priests for the Third World. For a short while
it appeared that this group would continue the tradition of political activism
which had distinguished the Third World Movement, but the shocking
assassination, on 11 May 1974, of Father Carlos Mugica, probably the bestknown
Peronist among the Third World Priests, virtually halted the group's
activities as a political m~vernent.'T~h is tragic event symbolized the extent
2' The Montoneros and the Juventud Peronista, or Peronist Youth, were two of the more
militant, leftist elements in the broad Peronist movement. The former was an armed group
engaged in guerrilla actions, while the latter was extremely active in organizing such lower
class groups as the shanty-town dwellers. Both of these groups were pushed rapidly toward
the periphery of Peronism during the brief period of Peron's presidency and the General
220 Michael Dodson
to which the priests had become embroiled in bitter political controversies
and entangled in the embrace of a powerful political force whose behavior
was far beyond their control. In the wake of Father Mugica's death, the
greatly subdued priests have talked of redirecting their liberation efforts in
less overtly political directions. They have not abandoned the notion of a
prophetic ministry, nor the idea that they must somehow be instruments of
social and political as well as religious liberation. But their efforts are
increasingly directed toward decentralized community action projects which
carry the Third World spirit into the villas but no longer tie it explicitly to
Peronist politics.
Thus, at least in the case of Argentina, the attempt to fuse theology of
liberation principles and the indigenous political values of Peronism through
concrete political action has had harsh consequences for the liberationists.
The priest-Peronist alliance resulted in the near shattering of the priest
movement. In Peronism the priest radicals were dealing with a populist
political movement which possessed a much broader range of principles than
they did. Peronism was both more and less radical. It incorporated groups
ranging all the way from extreme left to extreme right, each finding in
Per6n what it wanted to see. As I have suggested, this is indeed what the
priests allowed themselves to do. It took only a brief period of direct
involvement in politics for the ideological differences to produce cleavages,
then finally the splitting apart of the Movement. The breakdown of the
Movement's organizational integrity was only aggravated by the fact that,
in the final analysis, Peronism was interested in the marginal sectors of
Argentine society at a merely rhetorical level. In short, the realities of
Peronist politics in no way fit the simplified class analysis of the liberation
perspective adopted by the Third World Priests.
Conclusions
The immersion of Latin American Catholic priests in the daily struggles
of the poorest social stratum led directly, and perhaps inevitably, to the
development of a theology with a strongly political character. Even before
treatises on liberation theology began to appear, clergy in various countries
had already begun to run foul of the authorities in their attempts to help
the dispos~essedT.~h~e ir own experiences left little doubt of the profoundly
moved increasingly to the right of the political spectrum. See, for example, Alberto Ciria,
' Peronism Yesterday and Today ', Latin American Perspectives, I, No. 3 (Fall, 1974), 21-41.
28 In late 1975, the Third World Priest Movement appeared to be making a comeback under
the new name, Christians for Liberation. See, ' Vuelven 10s tercermundistas ', La Opinidn,
Afio v, No. 1383 (30 Dec. 1975), 12. The military coup of March 1976, however, seemed
to stall this resurgence of religious radicalism.
Liberation Theology and Christian Radicalism in Latin America 221
conflictual and weakly integrated nature of Latin American society. From
this awareness it was but a short step to Marxist sociology and thereafter to
a theology which conceived political liberation as a central goal and task.
Perhaps a measure of the fundamental accuracy of liberation theology is to
be found both in the swiftness with which it penetrated church thinking
throughout the continent from 1968 on, and in the vehemence with which
it as been contested in Latin America by politically reactionary groups.
Military regimes pursuing a ' National Security State ' ideology in such
countries as Argentina and Chile have approached liberationist clergy as
State enemies who must be obliterated completely from the body politic.
Despite the fundamental or general accuracy of its analysis, however,
liberation theology's attempts to explain political phenomena go awry in at
least two important areas, the analysis of economic dependency and class
struggle. The thrust of this article has been to demonstrate the need for a
more pragmatic, experimental approach to these themes on the part of
liberation theology. Political movements, such as the Third World Priests,
may afford the luxury of being wrong when exercising the denunciatory role
outlined above, but effective exercise of the leadership role requires a pragmatic
and unromanticized assessment of political realities. In this vein it
can be argued that Latin American liberation theology requires self-criticism
and further development in three areas, at least in so far as it strives to
function as critical social theory.
Firstly, the kind of ' pan Latin Americanism ' that has characterized the
theology of liberation in all its aspects, including social analysis, must be
avoided. At least in terms of social analysis, it is inappropriate and misleading
to treat the continent as a uniform whole. Emphasis could more
fruitfully be focused on the unique and distinguishing character of each
nation's social and political experience. But this, too, must be done critically.
Secondly, it will not do to assume, as the Third World Priests did, that the
acceptance of a dependency perspective and identification with the ' poor '
or ' oppressed ' automatically makes the liberation movement compatible
with an allegedly authentic indigenous political movement like Peronism.
Secular political movements in Latin America, even self-styled ' liberation '
movements, ought to be approached in the same critical spirit which liberation
theology displays in its analysis of the social order as a whole. Thirdly,
as was suggested above, the theology of liberation must handle Marxist
categories of social analysis with greater critical detachment. Marxism's
fruitful stress on the conflictual nature of society, the political importance
of a highly unequal distribution of economic resources, and the existence of
222 Michael Dodson
politically significant ties with the First World needs to be balanced with a
greater sensitivity to the complexity of Latin America's social structures and
political movements. Such sensitivity could make what is already a profound
and dynamic current of social and political thought even more significant
for the understanding of contemporary Latin American societies.