The Bolivian Catholic church takes sides on the constitutional referendum

It is interesting to see how in Latin America, the right have traditionally accused the catholic church of ‘meddling in politics’, whenever the church has taken the ‘option for the poor’ that was popularised by those who became part of liberation theology in the late 1960s.

Of course, maintaining silence in the face of the most structurally unequal and socially unjust societies, or even in the face of some of the worst human rights abuses anywhere is seen by detractors as maintaining the status quo and tantamount with collaboration in crimes against society. So I have always felt slightly sickened by the sight of the church sanctioning and blessing the actions of murdering dictators in Argentina, or Pinochet in Chile. Not that the church’s hierarchy acted any more consequently with its own supposed beliefs during forty years of franquismo in Spain.

So we come to Bolivia and the role, political yes, that the Catholic church is playing now that the stakes are high and the new constitution is set to be approved by referendum on 25th January. We already discussed on 4th December the political side that cardinal Julio Terrazas has chosen to support in this debate between a majority advocating democratic but profound change, and those wanting to perpetuate a status quo that confers small oligarchic groups total impunity under the law and enormous, fraudulently-acquired economic power. These small groups are prepared to defend those privileges with all the violence that we saw in August-September and with all the media support that their wealth can buy.

This is why it was interesting to see how yesterday, the opposition converged in Sucre to have ‘a day of prayer’ to supposedly defend their faith. The political significance of this is evident. The opposition are trying to make political capital out of the spat that took place between the government and cardinal Terrazas in December when the latter argued that narco-terrorism was taking hold of the country. This is part of a concerted effort to paint the government as ‘anti-catholic’ and is part of a campaign of lies that puts in doubt the future role of the church in education and in society in general.

In leading this day of prayer only with members of the opposition, the church was either politically naïve (which I don’t believe for one moment) or deliberately provocative. In a country where the vast majority of Bolivians claims to be catholic, openly taking sides with a minority opposition is a way of dragging believers into defending the status quo, including the privileged political and economic position of the catholic church, which by the way, is a great land owner in a country with some of the most unequal land distributions in the world.

Not meddling in politics? The church always knows how to when it comes to defend its own interests.

See Spanish version of this article in Kaos en la red:
http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia/iglesia-catolica-boliviana-posiciona-ante-proximo-referendum-nueva-con-2