SUMMARY: Prologue. – 1. The celebration of 500 years. – 2. The current indigenous reality: a) numbers; b) their religious world; c) their situation of dispossession. – 3. Afro-Americans: a) kidnapping and slavery; b) their religious culture; c) their citizen rights; d) the current situation. – 4. Indigenous and Afro-American pastoral: a) linked to the reality of the people; b) respecting them as subjects of their own destiny.
Foreword
The importance of the topic of “indigenous pastoral care” in Latin America is not only great, but also deeply felt, especially from sectors that have their sights set on defending the human, cultural and religious rights of the various ethnic groups, as well as those others who have pastoral care towards the poor and oppressed as the axis of their evangelical work, since oppression and a different culture seem to go hand in hand.
Latin America and the Caribbean, today projected towards the “Mission ad gentes”, also recognizes that the cry of its VI Missionary Congress: “America, with Christ, get out of your land”, also calls it, within its own continent for a recognition, advocacy, and evangelizing dialogue with indigenous peoples and Afro-American cultures
We have already said that it is a ministry that is part of the option for the poor. Indigenous peoples today constitute the peoples that as a whole are mostly attacked, plundered, marginalized, defenseless and still despised. That is why respect for their cultures and traditions and religious dialogue is joined by a staunch defense of their rights and their lands, the demand for the formulation of a legislative system that really protects them, as well as the effective recognition of their dignity.
The indigenous peoples are no longer silent, their protest against the situation of marginalization and plunder that they suffer, can be heard in many ways: “How can we not listen to the voice of the Indians in this compromising and vibrant hour? We are alive! they tell us. Seventy million people with hundreds of different peoples and cultures question society and the Church today. They are alive and with a resolute vocation for the future, as we have seen here in the indigenous uprising, which has shown all Ecuadorians and also Latin America their undoubted capacity for reflection, organization and convening” (Conf. Epis. Ecuatoriana). .
It is not the perspective of our work to delve into the situations of the first evangelization 500 years ago. (We know of the abusive excesses, of the accompaniment to the conquest, but also of the gratifying testimonies). We simply want to show the clearest channels and the most significant orientations around the indigenous pastoral that today arises in the Church of AL
However, in the midst of the current aggression suffered by the indigenous peoples and the response that the Church is giving to this problem (although perhaps not as a whole), we cannot fail to recall the great testimonies of the first time:
How not to remember Juan de Zumárraga, Vasco de Quiroga and Fray Junípero de Serra in Mexico; Pedro de Córdoba and Antonio de Montesinos in Santo Domingo; to Pedro Claver in Colombia; Bartolomé de las Casas, Antonio de Valdivielso, Francisco Solano in Central America and Toribio de Mogrovejo in Peru; José de Anchieta in Brazil, Roque González de Santa Cruz in Paraguay? All of them carried the clear line of defense of the Indian against the attacks of the conquerors. Like many others, they did not serve the sword or gold but God the Father of all and Father of the Indians.
Certainly today we have other guides, other pioneers, other prophets. Outstanding bishops, priests, men and women religious and lay pastoral agents who have, as a central objective of their evangelical work, and within a broader perspective of the option for the poor: the defense and appreciation of the Indian, their culture, their lands, their traditions.
And they do so in the face of a new strong and ruthless aggressor: neoliberalism; system for which everything is fundamentally measured by its economic value and whose sole purpose is to obtain raw materials to intensify production and establish new markets, even if it is at the cost of the disappearance of entire ethnic groups and cultures and with the plundering of their lands .
1. The celebration of 500 years
It is convenient that before we briefly recall the celebration of the 500 years of the evangelization of AL It is a fact that had many readings, carried out from various angles or perspectives, it has insisted both on the negative parts (certainly present and absolutely detestable), as well as on the positive aspects of the meeting of different cultures.
Basically there were three positions taken in relation to the “celebration of this event”:
There are those who celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery and incorporation of lands discovered by European navigators, exclusively highlighting the “expansion of Western civilization, the expansion of faith, in an environment of seeing the fact only from these aspects: triumph, conquest, expansion, and the result thereof: new peoples incorporated into European rule, colonial expansion, and a faith that spread.
On the contrary, the opposite position existed, that of those who denounced the invasion and the violent conquest that brought about a strong ethnocide, (it is calculated that, for one reason or another, up to ten times more Indians disappeared than those who remained). The partisans of this way of seeing, revived a nightmare in this commemoration. They did not even accept this date, because “America was not discovered”, it already existed more than 45,000 years ago. The date was just an event for the rulers who oppressed and continue to oppress to this day.
There was, still, another third group that rejected both ways of considering the event. They distanced themselves from the celebration and the denunciation, and assumed the date solely as an opportunity for the autochthonous cultures to make a new self-discovery, rescue their own suffocated identity and raise the demands of a profound dialogue with European culture and with the Christian religion. . They called themselves, (and still call themselves) the “Abya-Yala” (name that the Kuna Indians of Panama gave to what we now call Latin America and that means “fertile land, mature land”.
Also within the Church itself, some aspects were emphasized more than others. For the structural Church as a whole, the celebration of this event had the perspective of rethinking faith, and framing it in a new process of evangelization. The Pope delayed the CELAM meeting and convened it in Santo Domingo precisely to enhance the time and place. The Latin American and Caribbean Church thus celebrated the commemoration of 500 years of Evangelization, and it did so above all in a future framework, that is, to promote new channels for a “New Evangelization”.
About the past, few words and few data. The document of the Assembly is located in the theme of the inaugural speech of the Pope, and of the messages to the indigenous and Afro-Americans:
In them, John Paul II recognizes that before this event, “the seeds of the Word were already present and illuminated the hearts of the ancestors.” He also recognizes that there were abuses and injustices against the Indians: “the enormous suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of this continent during the time of conquest and colonization”, which gives him reason to remember the names of several ecclesiastics who firmly defended the rights of the Indians.
Regarding the Afro-American peoples, he is more firm in his denunciation: he recalls the very serious injustice committed against the African populations who were violently uprooted from their lands, their cultures and their traditions and brought as slaves to America and he even has a heartfelt memory from when he visited Senegal in Africa and fundamentally the island of Gorée, where the black trade was very strong.
It is also clear that the celebration of 500 years of the First Evangelization was a new reason for revision. At least it served for a new awakening towards the bleeding reality still present. Within this perspective, there were numerous Episcopates from Latin America and the Caribbean, who, with phrases full of firmness, recognized mistakes, asked for forgiveness and committed themselves to help overcome the conditions of injustice in which the Indian peoples currently live.
It is beautiful, in this sense, the dialogue that a part of the Church of Panama, (the Bishops, and missionaries of the Diocese of Colón and Vicariate of Darién) maintains with the “Indian Brother” says verbatim: “We remember, Indian brother, how, being the absolute administrator of this entire Continent (Abya Yala), whose owner is God the Father (Ankoré, Pava-Nana), the conqueror and colonizer arrived and, without right or dialogue, gradually stripped you of all your lands. The wars caused by them, the diseases they brought and other factors were decimating your populations throughout Abya Yala. Cultures that were gestating for 40,000 years were devastated by the dominator. Only blood, crying and desolation were the traces you left, the further you went into the jungle to survive. And those who stayed were subjected and imposed a way of thinking and acting that is not your own.
We as a Church, also arrived and fulfilled God’s plan, when we loved you, defended and denounced the passion and death to which you were subjected; but we moved away from the will of the Lord, when we did not hear your cries, we did not hear your cries of terror and hunger and we believed that your suffering was necessary to implant a Christianity understood from the mentality of the dominator. We did not realize that Christ Jesus, whom we intended to present to you, was in you suffering an ordeal of exploitation and extermination, dying with you when your life and culture disappeared.
And now that? Five centuries have passed. You remain poor and marginalized, without participation in the decisions and goods that rightly belong to you, this being an injustice. You are still considered a second-rate being. We as a Church, aware of your value and your reality, defend your right to be the subject of your history, to maintain and develop your culture, to have your own land. We fight so that your autonomous social organization, which has its legitimate traditional caciques, is respected. We will continue to accompany you in your struggles, incarnating more and more in your reality and seeking to build an autochthonous Catholic Church for those who freely want to join this Evangelizing Project”.
It is clear that the LA Church was already and continues to be present and close to the needs of the indigenous peoples. Within it, the voices of the Indians and Afro-Americans are heard with feelings of solidarity and their distressing situation is experienced with pain.
2. The…