Radical Christians and Red Bishops in Mexico and Latin America
Also in this edition: Fidel Castro’s Centennial. The 43, Governor Falls. The Right Takes Power in Colombia. Afro-Mexican Communities.
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Pope Leo will travel to Latin America in November on a tour that will include Peru—where he lived and worked for years—as well as Argentina and Uruguay. He is surely aware of the legacy of the “red bishops,” priests, nuns, and theologians who played a vital role in the history of progressive struggles throughout the Americas.
From Peru and Brazil to Central America, as well as in Mexico and the United States, liberation theology evolved over more than 60 years. It remains as relevant today as it was at the beginning, Michael Löwy and Samuel González Contreras affirm in an extensive essay in La Jornada Semanal. They argue that in the current “global civilizational crisis,” accompanied by an “ethical hemorrhage,” that includes events such as the genocide in Palestine, there is “a valuable opportunity to confront this crisis through the elective affinity that links liberation Christianity with radical anti-capitalism.”
The ideas of liberation theology originated in Latin America with theologians such as Peruvian Gustavo Gutiérrez and his Brazilian counterparts, and were promoted in Mexico by religious figures such as “red bishop” Sergio Méndez Arceo and Bishop Samuel Ruiz, as well as through grassroots Christian communities throughout the country. Pope Francis, the previous pope, championed Gutiérrez’s work in one of his final writings just last year, after his predecessors at the Vatican had rejected liberation theology: “His theology has shaped the life of the Church and remains relevant today, with a freshness that opens up new avenues for following Jesus,” he wrote, as Bernardo Barranco recalls in La Jornada. Gutiérrez discussed the evolution of liberation theology in an interview published in La Jornada Semanal in 2008, marking 40 years of the movement he himself helped name.
“A conspirator through and through in support of noble causes,” is how filmmaker Francesco Taboada Tabone describes Méndez Arceo in the documentary The Red Bishop (2024), which offers glimpses into the life of the bishop of Cuernavaca. The documentary recounts the bishop’s relationships with Mexican presidents, Fidel Castro, Lucio Cabañas, Latin American exiles, guerrillas, political dissidents, and others, reports Blanche Petrich. He was the only Catholic prelate to openly condemn the October 2 massacre. He went to Lecumberri prison to visit political prisoners. He maintained contacts with guerrilla organizations and supported striking workers.
Elena Poniatowska recounted Méndez Arceo’s acts of solidarity with the students in 1968, including his visits to Lecumberri, where she interviewed him. “I am conscious, I am responsible for the common good, and I cannot excuse myself in the face of the countless abuses in the administration of justice—abuses that become even more evident when they involve people who are economically, socially, or politically weak and marginalized,” he replied when asked why he visited the prisoners. Years later, Poniatowska asked him after he announced that he was excommunicating every torturer: “Aren’t you afraid of the Vatican, Don Sergio?” He replied: “Look, Elena, I am afraid of my conscience… I am merely doing my duty as a shepherd, as a servant of human life and dignity, by decreeing excommunication for torturers...” Don Sergio had already declared himself a supporter of “democratic socialism, with a human face.”
Bishop Samuel Ruiz, for his part, was central to struggles for dignity, not only in Chiapas but nationally and internationally, as another practitioner of liberation theology. As bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz wrote a pastoral letter in January 2004 stating: “The question God will ask us at the end of our lives will be: Which side were we on? Whom did we defend? Whom did we choose? Questions that no one, not even the powerful, will be able to evade at the end of their lives,” Blanche Petrich reported in 2011, shortly after the cleric’s death, in an account of his political life. “He was a man who, at the time of the Zapatista uprising and the federal government’s offensive against Indigenous peoples, knew how to fill the shoes of a trusted interlocutor for all the opposing voices during the turbulent 1990s,” she wrote.
“In addition to being ethically moved by the reality of collective poverty, it regarded the poor as agents of their own liberation, valuing their capacity for resistance, their awareness of their rights, their ability to organize, and their power to transform their circumstances,” Miguel Concha summarized when commemorating liberation theology in 2012.
The Quote:
“Capitalism is not Christian.”
—Don Sergio Méndez Arceo
In Case You Missed It
◻️ Commander Fidel’s Centennial. The influence of Fidel Castro extends beyond Cuba’s borders, and even his adversaries continue to identify him as a living reference point for the global left, President Miguel Díaz-Canel explained this week when opening a major event commemorating the centennial of his birth. One after another, the 1,500 attendees from 63 countries spoke about the example of Cuba and Fidel, and the urgent need for solidarity with the Cuban people in the face of the savage U.S. blockade. At the same time, in Mexico, 16 artists created works for the Luz para Cuba print portfolio.
◻️ The narco siege in Guerrero. Communities in the Tierra Caliente and La Montaña regions have been attacked in recent weeks with explosives dropped by drones and gunfire, reports our correspondent Sergio Ocampo Arista. “The coordinated attacks against the civilian population seek to dismantle Indigenous organizing that has historically resisted both threats from organized crime and extractive megaprojects,” explains Mario Patrón. There are even reports that drug traffickers in the upper reaches of the Sierra de San Miguel Totolapan “have 500 young men working as slaves. And what is the federal government doing? Nothing,” one resident says. Following the reports and mounting public pressure, federal forces arrived in Coyuca de Catalán (Tierra Caliente) in early July, but residents believe that a genuine peace cannot be achieved until the criminal groups are dismantled.
◻️ The largest reduction in poverty in 36 years. Mexico’s government reports that the percentage of the total population living in poverty has reached its lowest level in 36 years, but the work is not finished: Nearly 50 percent of children under the age of five in Mexico live in poverty, even though early childhood is a crucial stage of development.
◻️ The 43: governor falls. Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR) accused former Guerrero governor Ángel Aguirre of concealing and destroying evidence concerning the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa teaching students. At the same time, the former politician, who has already been arrested, accused someone else: “my nephew, el pendejo, knew what was going on” on the night of Iguala. The families of the disappeared are waiting to see whether the former governor will provide truthful information about the fate of the students.
◻️ The right takes power in Colombia. Upon taking office, new President Abelardo de la Espriella declared that there would be zero tolerance for crime, but also for “social protest outside the law.” He canceled peace talks with armed groups and stated that “our guide today is to sign on to the Shield of the Americas to strengthen our security,” concluding: “Stand firm for the homeland. Long live Christ the King.” La Jornada editorialized that Colombia is experiencing “a return to darkness,” arguing that “half of the electorate allowed itself to be swept up by the mirage of gaudy nationalism, a hard-line approach to security, and the promise of restoring ultramontane values that have no place in a democratic and pluralistic society.” ▶️ VIDEO
◻️ Afro-Mexican communities. Elena Poniatowska writes about the first research into Afro-Mexican communities, which lived apart from the wider world while keeping 300 years of traditions alive. “They were invisible,” Senator Susana Harp Iturribarria tells her. Harp promoted a constitutional measure recognizing them as a distinct culture: “There are three peoples with different ways of dancing and eating, with their own cookbooks and different beliefs… For example, those in the south, along the Costa Chica of Oaxaca and Guerrero, perform ‘versos en topada’ [poetic singing]. It is a kind of game between a man and a woman who declare their love for each other in verse. In Oaxaca, a young man recently recited a verso en topada to me because he wanted to take me away with him. And I answered him with another verso en topada: ‘I’m from the Costa Chica, / from the blue-tiled coast, / I’m tastier than bread / shared at a celebration / You say you’re going to bite me, / but only if I let you.’”
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Edited by David Brooks and Jim Cason in the United States, Tania Molina Ramírez in Mexico City, of La Jornada, and Elizabeth Coll in Tokyo, under the direction of Carmen Lira Saade and Guillermina Álvarez. More information.