537 - Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder, and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America

Cry of the People: United States Involvement
in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder,
and the Persecution of the Catholic Church
in Latin America
By Penny Lernoux
New York, Doubleday, 1980. 535 pp. $14.95.

The thesis, stated in the sub-title, is amply stated through hardhitting evidence with thorough documentation. The new Catholic Church of Vatican II, the social encyclicals of the 1960s, and of Medellin and Puebla, has set off a collision between its emancipating forces and the brutal campaign of repression led by Latin American elites in alliance with U.S. military and economic power.

The author is a journalist who has written about the transformation of much of the Catholic Church in Latin America, both as a church reformed and as a church militant, since the mid-'60s. Her reliable articles filed from every capital city of Latin America-often from infamous places where authorities rule by violence and Christian hope turns stubborn-identify her as a truly competent interpreter of the church persecuted and martyred for the defense of the poor.

It may take courage for most American Christians to expose themselves to the documented complicity of their government and of U. S. corporations in the suffering of Latin American Christians. The author does not hold to a view of deliberate evil, but points to the inevitable cruelty of national security as the prevailing ideology of U. S. foreign policy-an ideology consistently pursued in most Latin American countries by the ruling class and the armed forces.

When Latin American church leaders tell her "the Americans are killing us," she knows what that means. According to her research, "between 1950 and 1975, the United States trained 17,651 Latin American military personnel, including eight of the region's dictators, and in addition supplied $2.5 billion worth of armaments. Such collaboration is the lifeblood of the doctrine of national security" (p. 56). Elsewhere, she recalls that "there have been sixty-nine cases of U. S. military intervention in Latin America since 1850" (p. 173).

Few of her well-researched facts are as disturbing as the role of the CIA. It has used and infiltrated U. S. missionary organizations, "and funded and directed local religious groups in Latin America for all manner of covert activities, from bombing church buildings to overthrowing constitutionally elected governments" (p. 288).

This work is by no means the first to portray the devastating consequences of the abuse of U. S. power in Latin America. What is unique here is the establishment of the causal relationship between the American ideology of national security and the torture, murder, and persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Somehow, in the

538 - Cry of the People: United States Involvement in the Rise of Fascism, Torture and Murder, and the Persecution of the Catholic Church in Latin America

name of national security, we do not mourn the killing of "leftists," "Marxists," "socialists," or "communists." But it is quite another thing when someone helps us identify the very same undesirables as fellow-Christians. It ought not to be, perhaps, but when the crime changes from homicide to fratricide, our sensitivities may take a quantum leap in the direction of protecting life. For this outcome alone, this book deserves our gratitude.

We are also introduced to the luminous lives of many of today's Latin American prophets, and to the deeds and deaths of a number of recent Latin American martyrs. Together with the lesser-known and unknown fellow-martyrs, they revive for us that highest of all Christian beatitudes: Greater love has no one than to give life for one's friend.

The fastidious reader might object to an instance here and there of "breezy journalism." Others might be put off by the patent partisanship. But when someone chronicles the appalling human toll of the cruelty of one's government and economic system, it is time for passionate utterance and unquestionable fact.

Jorge Lara-Braud
Council on Theology and Culture
Presbyterian Church in the U.S.
Atlanta, Georgia