Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY
/
Latin America imprisoned in liberation theology
Latin America imprisoned in liberation theology
Jul 18, 2025 8:24 PM

Old-style leftist politics is making a eback in Latin America. In Brazil, an avowed socialist and anti-capitalist has taken power in a landslide vote. Luiz Lula da Silva’s first day as president ended with a dinner with Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Also joining him was Venezuela president Hugo Chavez, who is pursuing a leftist agenda and promising a full crackdown on “terrorists” and “traitors” who oppose him. In Ecuador, new president Lucio Gutierrez, a retired army colonel, holds similar political sympathies, promising to empower the poor through state means. These political leaders’ platforms are also fueled by a ponent: a reversion to liberation theology, which twists the Gospel call to assist the poor in their plight into a redistributionist political agenda that threatens violence and uses anti-American sentiment to secure political power. With economies in turmoil in the midst of a stubbornly recessionary environment, resentment against “globalism,” American influence, and property owners and producers is high. The perception that “neo-liberal” economics has been tried and failed can only lead to more political momentum shifting toward socialist experimentation and folk-hero autocrats on the model of Chavez and Lula, who thrive on denouncing the wealthy as the cause of economic instability and widening poverty.

All of this recalls the heady days of the 1980s, when liberation theology was at its height in Latin American politics. Lead by theologian-intellectuals, the liberation theology religious movement allied itself with Soviet-backed political interests to call for revolution against the capitalist classes, and the expropriation of the expropriators in the name of Jesus. Pope John Paul II eventually led a campaign against the theological deviation and boldly stood up to would-be dictators in the region who used religion as a way of justifying their personal power. This time, redistribution, not revolution, is the watchword. Resentment is directed against globalization, not mercial classes as such. The theology backing the new Latin leftism is more populist and nationalist munist. It focuses on popular control of industry and welfare measures rather than wholesale looting. And, most importantly, because the new political trends do not play into an overarching global-political drama, hardly anyone is paying close attention.

In some sense, however, this increases the danger of these trends, if not for global political reasons, at least for the plight of all people in Latin America. The simple truth is that redistribution, centralization of power, expropriation of wealth, and the like will not raise the standards of living. Only market economics, more secure property rights, freer trade, and sounder currencies, can do that. Measures like disempowering owners of factories and farms, erecting protectionism in the name bating globalism, and handing out more subsidies to people who vote in a leftist direction do not create wealth, but rather increase dependency and poverty. No economy has ever grown through statism. The best prescription is not intervention but the fostering of free trade and openness. But the first step is to understand the pending dangers that the new Latin leftism poses to democracy and freedom in Central and South America. To quote Russell Kirk, “A good-natured ignorance is a luxury none of us can afford.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY
Labor unions, yesterday and today
Along-cherished predisposition on the part of the Roman Catholic Church is that labor unions act as a protection against the exploitation of workers. From Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum forward, the Church has been an outspoken proponent of organized labor, worker safety and human dignity. Thus, es as little surprise that the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops weighed-in when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in February regarding the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and...
The politics of apocalypse
Disarmageddon” is what The Economist earlier this year called placent, reckless leaders” who “have forgotten how valuable it is to restrain nuclear weapons.” The politics of nuclear weapons – deterrence doctrines, mutually assured destruction and so on – have been the obsessive stuff of international politics since the Manhattan Project. There is, as Alissa Wilkinson and I argue in our 2015 book How to Survive the Apocalypse, something unique about the nuclear age, in which it es terrifyingly clear...
Nature, technology, and Pompeii
The primary mission of the Acton Institute since its inception has been identifying and revealing both traditional and innovative tonics to ward off Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In fact, the manner in which we wield our power over one another, our environment and God’s other creatures defines our humanity, or, in other words, who we are as individuals and social creatures. bined tradition teaches us that humanity was not created by...
Arvo Pärt and the universal soul of music
Sacred music is not only a devotional posed and performed to honor our Creator but also a bulwark against human sinfulness and frailties. Composer Arvo Pärt has been creating music of faith that inspires while at the same time subverts several of the most oppressive systems of government of the past century. poser’s lifelong development as a poser also led him to a deeper faith. He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1972. Theologian Peter Bouteneff observed that Pärt is...
Editor's Note: Summer 2018
In early July, an Indian court issued a ruling that accorded the status of “legal person or entity” to animals in the state, saying “they have a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person.” With this measure, designed to prevent cruelty to animals, justices of the Uttarakhand High Court in northern India declared that “the entire animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic ones, are declared as legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding...
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
For the first time, we can now mechanically simulate the cognitive process. –Sister Mary Kenneth Keller Sister Mary Kenneth Keller established herself as a strong influence in the world puter science at a time when women in the field were unheard of. At the same time, her work paved the way for what we now understand as the information economy – a key driver of wealth creation. She was the first woman in the United States to earn a...
Power, people and things in 'Westworld'
Since I was a child I’ve always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us e the people we dreamed of being.” So begins Anthony Hopkin’s character, Robert Ford, in his speech marking the finale of the first season of HBO’s mind-bending, techno-philosophical series “Westworld.” Ford is the brilliant co-creator of Westworld, a theme park set several decades in the future in which...
Acton Briefs: Summer 2018
A collection of short essays by Acton writers, click a link to jump to that article: AU and building the free society by Jenna Suchyta Westminster Abbey praises God for the NHS by Noah Gould President Trump nominates Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Joe Carter AU and building the free society Jenna Suchyta, Acton Institute Intern Over 1,000 people flocked to Grand Rapids June 18-21 to listen to more than 80 inspiring faculty members lecture on a wide variety of...
The return of nature worship
We live in decadent times. Universal human rights have not been fully attained, yet radical environmentalists insist that flora, fauna and even geological features and structures should be deemed legal persons, a meme known as “nature rights.” The drive to grant rights to the entirety of the natural world has already achieved stunning victories. In 2008, Ecuador granted human-type rights to “nature” in its constitution back, while Bolivia recently passed a law to the same effect. More than 30...
Editor's Note: Fall 2018
When I accepted the new position as managing editor of Religion & Liberty, only one thing had been set in stone: Caroline Roberts’ article on Walker Percy would be the cover story. Everything else remained to be determined. Her essay is one of the first e from Acton’s new longform journalism platform, bines extensive reporting with beautiful photography to give readers an immersive understanding of the subject. This project continues to grow and improve. Curt Biren analyzes economic and...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved