Maya and Catholic Cultures in Crisis

24. Social Justice by Maya Empowerment

24 Social Justice by Maya Empowerment In addition to administering the sacraments, the type of pastoral worker discussed in this chapter was involved in various community efforts that empowered the Maya to confront their crisis, especially through literacy, health, or cooperative programs. They agreed with the ultimate goal of the insurgents: social justice. They understood the population’s frustrations with governmental corruption, the greed of the economic elite, and the degenerate political process that protected it with violence. But they rejected armed rebellion as the means to attain social justice. Father Luis Gurriarán We have previously met Padre Luis (introductory photograph) in chapters 12 and 17, which described his work with the K’iche’ cooperatives, 348 · Part VII. The Impact of the Maya Crisis on the Worldviews of Pastoral Workers consciousness-raising programs, and the Ixcán colonization project in Santa María Tzejá. He was born in 1933 to a middle-class family in Galicia, Spain, the home of the Santiago conquistador cult (Santos 2007). Inspired by a family member who was a Catholic missionary, he entered the seminary at age fifteen. Upon finishing his Tridentine theological studies, he was ordained a priest in 1958 as a member of the Sacred Heart congregation . He was typical of many of the Spanish clergy at that time—conservative , anticommunist, pro-Franco. Padre Luis, along with other Spanish Sacred Heart priests and Dominican nuns, was assigned to evangelize the K’iche’ Maya. All of them suffered severe cultural shock from their initial encounters with Maya culture in the late 1950s. They were overwhelmed by the poverty and cultural differences they encountered. It made them reevaluate their Catholic commitment. Some withdrew from the religious life. Others returned to Spain and the Catholic conservatism of that era (Diócesis del Quiché 1994: 49–50). Others remained and worked at establishing Tridentine Catholicism among the Maya, including the two described in the previous chapter. Padre Luis had a different reaction—a conversion experience that initiated his evolution away from his Tridentine formation. “I came to follow in the footsteps of the traditional Spanish missionaries. I had that conquest mentality—to introduce the Christian faith. . . . Social matters had not been discovered yet. . . . I, at least had not discovered them. . . . I did know that the people were poor. What I didn’t know were the causes of the poverty and exploitation, or that the poverty was in great part due to the years of colonialism. From the vantage point of today, I can see there was a certain culpability, not only from the Spanish kingdom, but a certain moral responsibility on the part of the church. . . . The church allied itself with those in power who subjugated or enslaved the peoples of the Americas. That realization was a surprise or an awakening to me” (Manz 2004: 52; see also Santos 2007: 70). The experience would completely reorient Padre Luis’s life. “I had no other alternative than to figure out how I was going to rearrange my ideas. That meant to bring about a radical change in my mind-set and therefore to find the way to aid people in changing their conditions. . . . I came to evangelize the Indians of Guatemala, but in the process of getting to know them, they evangelized me” (Manz 2004: 52). He recalled his Tridentine formation and its shortcomings. The portrait of Jesus that I was taught in the seminary had nothing to do with the historical Jesus that I kept finding in the people of Social Justice by Maya Empowerment · 349 [Maya] communities. The Bible that I had studied in my theology courses also had no relevance for their understanding of religion. The revolution that was taking place in my mind would lead sooner or later to a partial break with the past. I realized that at times, my companions, people of the church, would say that I was becoming very radical . . . or that I had become an enemy of the traditional church. I answered them that not only was I not an enemy, but continue to be an active member of the Church. But I have changed my concept of the Church, my concept of God, of the Bible. . . . I could no longer speak of religion as an instrument of submission, of complacency , and to accept things as they are because that is the will of God. (Santos 2007: 78) He came to understand that his most important...