Christianity in Latin America, From the Wars of Independence to Liberation Theology

1. Christianity in Latin America, From the Wars of Independence to Liberation Theology OLLI, Fall, 2018 The History of Christianity from the Reformation to Today

2. Wars of Independence • 1810-1825 • Unlike the American Revolution, the Church (religion) was not a significant cause of the revolt from Spanish authority. • But, the Church was drawn into the vortex of the Revolution, and many clerics became intimately involved in the events leading to the Wars of Independence.

3. Father Miguel Hidalgo and the Grito de Dolores Mural depicting the Grito de Dolores, by Juan O'Gorman.

4. Cry of Dolores battle cry of the Mexican War of Independence from Spain, first uttered by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, parish priest of Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato state), on Sept. 16, 1810. Hidalgo was involved in a plot against the Spanish colonial government, and, when the plot was betrayed, he decided to act immediately. After arming the people, he addressed them from the pulpit, encouraging them to revolt. The exact text of this most famous of all Mexican speeches is not known, and a wide variety of “reconstructed” versions have been published, but he may have said, in essence, “Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe [symbol of the Indians' faith], death to bad government, death to the gachupines [the Spaniards]!” Hidalgo amassed a large popular mob-army, but after much reckless pillage and bloodshed the movement was suppressed and Hidalgo himself was captured and executed on July 31, 1811. Hidalgo's “cry” became the cry of independence. In commemoration, each year on the night of September 15—the eve of Mexican Independence Day—the president of the republic shouts a version of “el Grito” from the balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City: “Viva México! Viva la Independencia! Vivan los héroes!” The ceremony is broadcast throughout the country and is repeated in smaller scale in many towns and villages.

5. Liberal-Conservative Divisions • Following the Wars, Latin Americans seriously divided over how to treat the Church in the newly independent nations. • Issues of royal patronage and the relationship to the Papacy • Ownership of immense amounts of land and property. • Who was to control education in the new countries?

6. Attacks on the Church by Liberals • Liberal doctrines were more secular and radical than Conservatives, seeking to open the doors to change and improvements across society. • Church seen as an intransigent and unchanging reminder of the old order that had been overthrown by the Wars of Independence. • So, when liberals came into power

7. Attacks on the Church by Liberals, 2 • they sought to strip the Church of its power, as the arbiter of morality, the educator of its children, the banker to the wealthy, the philanthropist to the sick, the poor, the needy. • What followed throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century was a long wrenching battle between Liberals and Conservatives over the Church, Liberals seeing it as impediment to progress, Conservatives as the bastion of morality and order as ordained by God.

8. Struggle Between Liberals and Conservatives for Conscience and Wealth in the Nation • Property of Church attacked. Monasteries and nunneries closed, education secularized, public education replaced Church (Catholic schools). • Most notable manifestation of this long battle took place in Mexico where a new Constitution in 1857 marked the triumph of Liberalism.

9. Mexican Constitution of 1857 • Benito Juarez, a full blooded Zapotec Indian, led the movement in Mexico which attached the Church, its rights and privileges. The Conservative reaction led to a bitter civil war preceding 1857. • The Ley Juarez, incorporated into the Constitution, essentially stripped the military and the Church of their traditional rights, while the Ley Lerdo

10. Mexican Constitution of 1857, 2 • forced the Church to sell off its many properties. • The War of the Reform continued into 1858 and left Mexico open to foreign intervention—Emperor Maximillian, 1865, and move towards order and progress under Porfirio Diaz.

11. Christian Accommodations to other Religions • African and native American (Amerindian) religions also permeated portions of Latin America, creating synthesized or syncretic forms of Christianity in Latin America. • Condomblé in Brazil, Santería in Cuba, Voodoo in Haiti all examples of African religious traditions wedded into the Christian matrix imposed by Spanish.

12. Catholic Church’s Adaption of the Age of Darwin and Science • At first, extremely reactionary. Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, 1864, reasserted tradition, rejected “modernity.” Condemned freedom of thought, toleration and secular education. • In second half of nineteenth century the Papacy began to accommodate. New priests were trained in seminaries devoted to a strict morality. Renewed evangelization.

13. Rerum Novarum, 1891 • “Of New Things” addressed the changing world, marked by modernization, urbanization and industrialization. Pope Leo XIII took the revolutionary position that the Church must protect the rights of workers and fight the injustices of the liberal system. Catholics had duty to promote social justice; denied the validity of socialism, which competed with Church for allegiance of the masses; also attacked unbridled capitalism. Rerum Novarum a modern response by ancient institution to the challenges of its worth and validity.

14. Twentieth Century • The Catholic Church continued to be associated with those who controlled the state, although the great exception was the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1917. • Very radical, socialistic, determined to eliminate Church from public, and many parts of, private life. • Cristero Rebellion, 1920s.

15. Twentieth Century, 2 • In other countries, the long association of Church with ruling elites led to a powerful reaction at mid-century, Liberation Theology.