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Why Latin America's Deep Catholic Roots Matter

by Alejandro Bermudez 

Plutarco Elías Calles, the ferocious, anti-Catholic Mexican president whose anti-Church legal measures sparked the grassroots revolution known as the Cristero War (1926–1929), always complained about how damaging the presence of “traitors” in the government ranks was to a state attempting to wage war against Catholic revolutionaries.

In fact, Calles was convinced that it was not so much the extraordinary number of Catholic people up in arms, but the scores of “crypto-Catholics” that essentially led to the government’s defeat.

He blamed the Cristero victory on the numerous atheist bureaucrats who would suddenly develop a conscience when not just a priest, but their priest – the one that probably baptized their whole family or gave them First Holy Communion – was going to be arrested.  As a consequence, the details of any military or police operation would often be leaked in advance.

Many members of firing squads would deliberately miss when told to shoot priests or lay Cristeros. The list of Cristero martyrs include some soldiers who, moved by the heroic virtues of their captives, would turn around, stand in front of their comrades alongside those being shot, and be killed on the spot.

I have a hard time explaining to my American friends why a region like Latin America, being so profoundly Catholic, is at the same time so profoundly dysfunctional when it comes to social justice, the rule of law, equal rights and human dignity.

I have heard a bunch of theories, mostly economic ones, trying to explain why Latin America has never been able to bring true Christian ethics into the public square.

I am not an expert in economics, but as a thinking human being, I am not too sold on the idea that there are such things as “replicable systems.”

I believe that more than “models,” such as the “American model” as opposed to, say the European or the Japanese models, there are cultures and peoples; and thus, there are different ways to achieve the universal desire for a just economy and a working democracy.

In this regard, my friends who are convinced that all of Latin America’s problems would be solved if we would adopt every single American institution are usually the same ones who are also completely convinced of American “exceptionalism.”

But whatever the explanation for this Latin American failure, it is certainly not the case that the Catholic faith in the region is not “for real.” Nor is it too “tainted” with superstition or other pre-Christian local religions, as many in the academic world tend to believe.

A few weeks ago, I had a hard time explaining to a French journalist from Le Figaro that one of the main Catholic feasts in Peru’s Southern Andes, The Lord of Qoyllur Rit’i, (Quechua for “snow star”) was not a “pseudo-Christian feast with a heavy pagan tone,” as she was planning to write. The journalist is a Catholic, but the idea that Catholicism can be inculturated was surprisingly foreign to her.

According to a tradition that goes back to the sixteenth century, a little Quechua shepherd named Pablucha (“little Paul”) met a boy with lighter skin named Manuel while he was tending his sheep. Manuel also claimed to be a shepherd, but he was crying because his flock had abandoned him and had gotten lost. Pablucha befriended Manuel, who explained that his flock had given him wounds in his feet and hands.

When the townspeople found out about Pablucha’s friend and how he had blessed Pablucha’s herd, they secretly followed him to their usual meeting place. But when Manuel saw them, he disappeared forever in a shining flash (thus, “snow star”). Pablucha died when he saw his friend disappear, so the townspeople buried him under a rock. They painted a crucified Jesus on the rock, which became the heart of today’s shrine.

During the yearly feast, which requires climbing a steep, narrow trail for five miles to reach the shrine at 15,000 feet above sea level, the men wear black ski masks with red crosses in the forehead. They deliberately speak in a thin, almost whining voice so as to become “child-like,” to become “pabluchas.”

Then, in the middle of the night, they climb the Colquepunku glacier and bring down large chunks of ice on their backs, which the people carefully melt and take away, believing that is miraculous water.

The dresses and dances can look genuinely foreign to non-Peruvians or even to Peruvians from the coast.

But the story and the feast are profoundly grounded in the Gospel. Consider the elements of the feast: the wounded shepherd’s name, Manuel – a name given to baby Jesus in many Peruvian regions and a derivative of Emmanuel; the need to become like children; water from a holy shrine, reminiscent of Lourdes; and the penance and repentance in the harsh pilgrimage to the top of the mountain.

Faith and culture are inseparable. Moreover, for most Latin Americans, buildings with towers can only be churches, and when you speak about “the church,” you are referring to the Catholic Church. Time and again, in every Latin American country, the Catholic Church leads all polls measuring trust and credibility, even in the midst of the sex scandals. Polls in Peru and Argentina last week confirmed this again.

People who cannot receive Holy Communion, such as remarried divorcees, hardly hold a grudge against the Church. And those whose lifestyles are in contradiction with Church teachings may not stop doing what they are doing, but they rarely claim that the Church should be more “compassionate” and change its doctrine.

Don’t get me wrong. A Latin American Catholic is in no way better than his North American brother or sister in the faith. Within the Church, as St. Augustine put it, the line that separates the City of the World from the City of God is a fine line that runs inside each human heart, not between cultures or borders.

But there is no doubt that Latin America enjoys the beauty of being born under the light of Catholicism.

Such beauty, expressed in art, culture, tradition, cooking  and the affable nature of most Latin Americans, it is not, as Max Weber would have suggested, an obstacle for sound and articulate development.

On the contrary, Catholicism, in the words of Prof. Anthony Esolen, “with all the sins that can be laid to the charge of her members, (has) been simply the greatest agent of social transformation the world has ever known.”

With the Hugo Chavez-style leaders of the region failing, and countries inspired by their Catholic traditions begining to seriously start finding their way towards sound democracy and prosperity in justice, I don’t think Latin America will be an exception.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)