Political pluralization and the declining scope of religious authority in Argentina’s 1960s: the case of Cristianismo y Revolución

ABSTRACT

The transformation of global Catholicism during the Second Vatican Council affected the Argentinean Church. Argentinean Catholics became involved in different sides of the political discussion. While some supported a dictatorial regime, others thought the end of the dictatorship and a fair society could only be achieved through a revolution. In that context, we explore Mark Chavez’s idea of secularization as the decline of religious authority. The magazine Cristianismo y Revolución (CyR) is a case which allows us to see this process displayed. Different Catholic actors, independently of the Church’s structure, claimed Catholic beliefs to support opposing political positions. However, religion remains an important element of the public sphere in contemporary Argentina.

KEYWORDS:

• secularization
• guerrillas
• Marxism
• Catholicism
• authority
• Latin America

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Many Protestant believers shared the trends of Liberation Theology. CyR published documents, reflections, and statements from different Christian groups (Campos 2016) and some Protestants joined guerrilla groups, including the Montoneros (see below for further details), following their religious commitment. Many members of reformed churches ‘were disappeared’ in the 1970s and Protestant Churches were instrumental in organizing the first groups that spoke out against the violations of human rights in the country. (Morello 2015)

2. There were many other religious magazines that were mostly sold in the city of Buenos Aires; if they had a national readership, they were only aimed at priests (Lacombe 2014).

3. Many of Argentina’s revolutionary groups—the Vanguardia Comunista (Communist Vanguard), the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas (Peronist Armed Forces or FAP), the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Revolutionary Armed Forces or FAR), the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army or ERP), the Descamisados (‘Shirtless’)—had revolutionary Catholics among their ranks.

4. Then a colonel, Perón was Undersecretary of Work during the military regime between 1943 and 1945. From that position, he created a political movement that incorporated industrial workers into the political system by granting them labor rights and political representation. His government (1945–1955) developed a welfare state and workers shared almost 50% of the country’s GDP. However, Perón and his followers disregarded the liberal institutions, blaming them for ignoring workers’ rights and dismissing the political rights of the lower classes. The press and the political opposition were harassed under his regime.

5. Since the Peronists had won the election in 1954 with more than the 60% of the votes, we assume that a significant part of the population was deprived of its political rights.

6. Asia, Africa, and Latin America contributed to the debate of the Vatican Council with themes such as justice and development, although they were not directly treated during the Council. However, in March 1967, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Populorum Progressio, which addressed these issues.

7. The Message of 18 Bishops from the Third World, which dates from 15 August 1967, stated that Socialism is better than Capitalism because “true Socialism is Christianity fully lived”; it is the system that best adapts to the present time the moral requirements of the Gospel (paragraph 14) and its commitment to human dignity (17). Religion is not opium for the people but strength for the weak (19). (Botán, Ramondetti, and Ricciardelli 1968)

8. In the Medellín conference (Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopy 1968), the Latin American bishops referred to the social situation as “institutionalized violence” (Paz, paragraph 16). “It is no surprise, therefore, that Latin America should be ‘tempted by violence’. Nobody should abuse the patience of a people that has undergone a situation that would hardly be endured by those more aware of human rights” (Paz, 16). Structural changes that Latin America needs will not occur without a deep reform in the political system (Justicia, paragraph 16).

9. García Elorrio’s father Aurelio was the director of the magazine Catholic Youth (1924–1925) and editor of the education section for the Catholic newspaper El Pueblo (1933–1935). In 1934, he organized the International Eucharistic Congress in Buenos Aires. From 1936 he worked at the National Ministry of Education where he advocated mandatory Catholic education in state schools. This initiative became law in 1946, while Aurelio García Elorrio staffed Peron’s first government.

10. It is difficult to obtain data about press circulation in Argentina for these years, mainly for the kind of magazines that were facing political persecution. However, to have a point against which to compare these figures, we should keep in mind that El Combatiente and Estrella Roja, both left-wing magazines linked to revolutionary armies, delivered around 10,000 copies per issue in the 1970s (Lewis 2002; Morello 2013a; Plis-Sterenberg 2005).

11. Camilo Torres was a Catholic priest who, after teaching Sociology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, joined the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army) in December 1965. He was killed in an ambush in February 1966. He became an iconic figure for Latin American revolutionary Catholics (Brienza 2008).

12. All the quotes from CyR have been translated from the Spanish by the first author.

13. Paragraph 31 states: “Everyone knows, however, that revolutionary uprisings—except where there is manifest, longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country—engender new injustices, introduce new inequities and bring new disasters”(emphasis added).

14. Since the proscription of the Peronist party, some activists were fighting to recover political rights for Perón and his followers. The groups that were known during the 1950s and early 1960s as ‘Resistance’ later became ‘special organizations’ in the Peronist jargon. García Elorrio connected with these ‘special organizations’. (Campos 2016, 123–124)

15. While the insurrectional approach tried to get most of the population to join the revolution, the Guevarist strategy (named after Ché Guevara) advocated the creation of a small guerrilla army as a foco or a focal point to start a revolution.

16. In many writings of the magazine, as in other political magazines of the time, there was a millenarian component: the end of the world was close, the triumph of the revolution was imminent, good Catholics should be ready to give up their lives for it, since they would be rewarded in a revolutionary heaven. They were invited to follow Camilo Torres’s example, giving up their lives for their oppressed sisters and brothers (Campos 2016, 74–81; Lacombe 2012, 33–34; Morello 2003, 277-281).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gustavo Morello S.J.

Gustavo Morello, SJ, is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA. He works on the relations between Catholics and politics in Argentina and Latin America’s recent history as well as the religious transformation of Latin America. He is the author of The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War (2015).

Fortunato Mallimaci

Fortunato Mallimaci is a Sociology Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas—Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Laborales (CONICET–CEIL) in the Sociedad, cultura y religión program. His research focuses on the history of Catholicism as well as on class and religion. His most recent book (co-authored with Luis Donatello and Julio Pinto) is Nacionalismos, religiones y globalización (2017).