Maya and Catholic Cultures in Crisis

30. A Look Backward and Forward

30 A Look Backward and Forward This volume, and the preceding one, have examined the interactions of the Maya and Catholic worldviews that began in the sixteenth century and have continued to the beginning of the twenty-first. The previous volume showed that at the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Maya interpreted their military defeat as having been due to the stronger power of the Spanish gods. Consequently, they incorporated the Spanish Catholic gods, especially the saints, into the Maya covenant and defined these gods according to the covenant’s concepts and logic. The previous volume and Part II of this volume showed that this slightly modified Maya worldview continued to define Maya life into the twentieth century. At that time, it was called into question, due to the Maya subsistence crisis primarily resulting from loss of their lands. This loss impacted all parts of their culture. By the mid-twentieth century, following the liberal suppression, the Catholic Church reentered the Maya communities in an attempt to 452 · Part IX. Conclusion establish orthodox Catholic communities as defined by the sixteenth-century Council of Trent. Amid much misunderstanding, orthodox Tridentine Catholicism gradually distinguished itself from the Maya worldview and, in some areas, attacked it in an effort to suppress it. But as Maya catechists forcefully pointed out, Tridentine Catholicism was inadequate to relieve their sufferings due to the subsistence crisis. This lack of concern for contemporary social problems was a systemic Catholic problem, as Tridentine theology placed primary emphasis on correct belief and ritual as preparation for a life to come, to the neglect of social justice in contemporary communal life. Vatican Council II and the Catholic Action movement, with its concern for contemporary human communities, attempted to reform what had become an archaic church. The implementation of these reforms initiated the second phase of Catholicism’s interaction with Maya communities in the current era. It was based on a biblical theology that stressed the moral message of the Gospels, especially the prophetic theme of social justice. As a result, numerous Catholic programs of health, education, and cooperatives were established in Maya communities. They increased life expectancy and began to give the Maya the institutional tools to defend themselves and take their place in contemporary society. This evolved into the third phase of interaction, the liberation movement that brought into critical focus the systemic nature of the social injustices against Maya communities and how they were the source of many of the problems encountered by Catholic Action at the local level. As the liberation movement developed, it divided over the strategy to confront systemic injustice. One sector allied itself with radical Marxists and chose violence as the only feasible solution to the problems of sustained injustice, itself protected by violence. They joined in armed uprisings against the national governments of Guatemala and Mexico. Others renounced violence as the answer and attempted systemic reform by nonviolent methods. The investigation has shown that the traditional Catholic position about the morality of taking up arms was not carefully considered. In the fourth phase, the post-insurgency period, systemic injustices continue with non-implementation of the peace accords, poverty, land seizures, and the murder of human rights advocates. The subsistence crisis has been somewhat alleviated by some increase in government efforts, programs funded by non-governmental organizations, and monies sent back from large-scale migration to the United States. In the fourth phase, another aspect of Catholic liberation became important—liberation from Western theological categories that Catholicism had imposed in the past A Look Backward and Forward · 453 to express universal values. This liberation became the agenda of the indigenous theology movement. It sought an inculturated Christianity that expressed the message of Christ using the theological forms of Maya culture, the wisdom of the ancestors that was readily found to be the same as the moral message of Jesus. Both worldviews see time as cyclical—a process of birth, death, and regeneration, in Maya terms; one of election, sin, and redemption , in Judeo-Christian terms; and cultural vibrancy, degeneration, and revitalization, in anthropological terms. The death-sin-degeneration segment of the cycle took place when both Maya and Catholic cultures dimmed their moral sense and became ritualistic. Ritual assumed supreme importance by closing in on itself and severing itself from the primary function of religious systems: helping people to live meaningful lives in the human community. Regeneration-redemption-revitalization came about when...