12/21/05
Rome plays a shrewd game of Hegelian politics, maintaining a significant presence in both leftist and rightist political camps. The common denominator is that the political agendas of both left and right are diverting men and nations from true Biblical Reformation. At the current time, Rome’s leftist branch is enjoying some remarkable success in South America. Bolivia is the latest example.
The news from Bolivia runs as follows:
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Leftist claims victory in
Bolivia |
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A
leftist candidate from one of Bolivia's Indian peoples who wants to legalise
coca-growing has claimed victory in the presidential election. "We
have won," Evo Morales told thousands of cheering supporters as some
exit polls suggested he had passed the 50% barrier for outright victory… Bolivia,
South America's poorest state, has had five presidents in four years… Mr
Morales, a former coca leaf-grower and union leader, described himself on
election day as "the candidate of those despised in Bolivian history,
the candidate of the most disdained, discriminated against". .. Mr
Morales, an admirer of Fidel Castro, said on Sunday that he wanted ties with
the US but "not a relationship of submission". |
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|
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(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4539454.stm )
Morales’ party replaces the rule of generally corrupt rightist political parties. And who lies behind Morales, mentoring him in the art of leftist politics? The article excerpted below reveals the answer:
Coca farmer turned saviour of the left
promises wind of change in Bolivia
Barring mishap, Evo Morales could soon become Latin America's first wholly
indigenous leader
Dan
Glaister in La Paz
Thursday December 8, 2005
The
Guardian
High up on the
Bolivian altiplano near Lake Titicaca, an Aymara priest holds a green plastic
lighter to a carved wooden cup containing strips of paper. Despite the fierce
gusts of the early morning wind, the paper catches and smoke billows forth. The
priest, dressed in traditional, brightly coloured robes, holds the smoking
vessel before the presidential candidate.
"We have lost
perhaps 500 years," says the priest. "Mother moon, mother earth, we
ask you in this place to support us." The candidate, smoke blowing in his
face, looks deferential…
Barring mishaps, Evo
Morales, a former coca farmer and union chief turned leader of the Movement to
Socialism (MAS), seems certain to win the biggest share of the vote. It is a
prospect that has the US scrambling to label him a narco-terrorist and pawn of
Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. For many on the left, Mr
Morales is the poster boy of anti-globalisation, an iconic figure who will
chart an independent course for Bolivia, setting an example to others…
The Aymara ceremony
is repeated two hours later at the sacred archaeological site of Tiahuanaco.
The priest gives a short speech in Aymara, which despite being an ancient
indigenous language contains some words familiar to the foreign observer -
"election", "Evo Morales", "Hugo Chávez", and
"Che Guevara". The ceremony ends with trinkets being set on fire as
an offering to the Earth. The trinkets are topped by two llama foetuses on
skewers. The priest offers the congregation and the eager media coca leaves to
chew.
Coca is at the
centre of Bolivia's election campaign. Mr Morales, 46, comes from a mining
family, but when the mining sector collapsed at the end of the 1970s his
family, like many others, moved from the high plains in the east near La Paz
and turned to agriculture in the lower, central lands. Coca was the most
lucrative crop, a plant revered for its curative properties and role in
indigenous rituals; but then the US cracked down on drugs, coca growers became
criminals and the sector collapsed. Today a limited amount of coca is grown in
Bolivia.
"I want to make
an alliance with the US, with others, a real alliance against drug trafficking,
but not against the cocaleros [coca growers]," Mr Morales says, sitting in
his campaign headquarters at La Paz. "Zero cocaine, but not zero
coca." A handsome man, with a mop of black hair, he is usually clad in
black jeans, T-shirt and fleece and has a reputation as something of a swinging
bachelor…
The next section of
his campaign speech is on corrupt politicians. "I didn't want to be a
politician because politicians are thieves," he tells the crowd in Viacha.
"But then I realised that politics is the science of serving the
people."…
Mauricio Bacardit is
a Jesuit priest who has been Mr Morales' mentor for 20 years, watching over him
as he rose to become leader of the coca growers' union. When I ask him whether
he gives Mr Morales spiritual advice he almost chokes on his whisky. "No,
not spiritual advice. Power. Evo is a leader, leadership runs through him. He
has responded to what the masses wanted."
He tells me a joke
about the 2002 presidential elections, when Mr Morales lost by two points.
"Evo is walking along the street and sees some children playing football.
When they see him they start chanting, 'Evo! Evo!' He says why are you cheering
me? They say, because daddy says that if you win the election we'll all move to
Miami."…
Yet, casting around
for an opinion in Bolivia I met no one who thought the next government would
last more than six months. If Mr Morales wins, the right and the US will force
him out, or the same social movements that brought down the past two
governments will again take to the streets; if the right wins, there will be an
uprising from the left.
"Bolivia is a tragedy that we've been living since 1985," says Mr Bacardit. "Whoever wins, we're going to have problems." (from http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1661925,00.html?gusrc=rss )
Yes, not surprisingly, it is a Jesuit priest of the Jesuit Order of the
Roman Catholic Church: Mauricio Bacardit.
An article in Spanish at http://www.eldeber.com.bo/anteriores/20050130/santacruz_5.html
focuses on the Jesuit priest. Here are
excerpts from the article:
“Mauricio Bacardit / Sacerdote jesuita «El principal reto ahora es resolver el tema de la pobreza”
Fue nombrado por la Iglesia para
dialogar con las partes en conflicto sobre las autonomías departamentales. Dice
que no se quedaron cruzados de brazos. Afirma que hay que crear instituciones
inclusivas…
Mauricio Bacardit es boliviano.
Nació el 8 de septiembre de 1936. Trabaja desde los años 70 en la promoción y
desarrollo rural y suburbano de la Iglesia católica. Desarrolló esta actividad
en Chuquisaca, Potosí, Tarija, La Paz y ahora lo hace en Santa Cruz, desde hace
cuatro años. Es director ejecutivo de la Pastoral Social Cáritas y colabora
también con la cárcel de Palmasola.”
It explains how he is urging
Bolivia to focus on the issue of poverty.
Bacardit was born in 1936, and is executve director of Pastoral Social
Charities. The leftist politics
so common among Jesuits like Bacardit keeps people concentrated on symptoms of
problems, like poverty, instead of the underlying cause, which is the wrath of
God upon false religion. So long as people
continue to embrace false religion, they will continue to be plagued by the ill
consequences of false religion. But
Romanism keeps people in bondage to false religion and idolatry.
A book
by Andrew Orta, entitled Catechizing
Culture : Missionaries, Aymara, and the New Evangelization, documents the
current Roman Catholic approach of inculturation among the Aymara of
Bolivia. According to the author, one consequence of
"inculturation" is that Catholic priests now encourage the Aymara to
revive rituals that earlier generations of Catholic priests had tried to
eradicate. Practices once denounced as idolatrous are being re-interpreted as essentially
‘Christian.’ Here is how one person has
summarized the book:
“What happens when the
Catholic church in Bolivia reverses itself after 450 years and, in a policy
move called 'theology of inculturation,' not only hands over missionary duties
to Aymara catechists, but trains them to foster and revive, rather than to
stamp out, sacrifical rites and 'native' shamanic practices? In this ambitious
and innovative dual ethnography of missionizing priests and catechists and
missionized Aymara communities, Orta sets a new standard for the study of both
transnational process and the production of local worlds, tying the two
together through a subtle analysis of embodied subjectivity and personhood. In Catechizing
Culture, cutting-edge theory meets lively ethnographic narrative, and the
reader is witness to the latest twists in the making of millennial Andean
societies." —Thomas A. Abercrombie, associate professor, anthropology, New
York University (from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023113/0231130686.HTM
)
Actually, the method
of “inculturation” is just a new chapter in a very old playbook, for Roman
Catholicism has long been essentially the fusing of many pagan elements with
Christianity. In this way it, along
with so much modern pseudo-Protestantism, has served as an impediment to true
Biblical Reformation. But we should pray that
God would pour out the blessing of a true Protestant Reformation in Bolivia, as
well as all other nations of the world.