Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America

5 With or Without the People The Catholic Church and Land-Related Conflicts in Brazil and Chile

185 5 With or Without the People The Catholic Church and Land-Related Conflicts in Brazil and Chile patricia m. rodriguez Land is more than land . . . it is soil and symbol. It is, without doubt, the piece of terrain necessary for the subsistence of the family, but it is also the Promised Land, whose conquest only occurs in unity, in organization, in the confrontation against the owners who support themselves through public institutions. —Dom Tomás Balduino, founder and president of the Brazilian ­ Pastoral Land Commission Land redistribution has been one of the most well-known and controversial popular causes embraced by the progressive wing within the Catholic Church in several Latin American countries since the 1950s.1 Although struggles over land concentration and rural poverty were muffled by co-optive or repressive state policies during authoritarian periods in many countries of the region, the Catholic Church continued to provide crucial—and sometimes the only—material, legal, and spiritual support to poor rural populations throughout the years. Upon the return to democratic rule in the 1980s and 1990s, the relationship between peasants and the church began to be transformed as poor and indigenous peasants organized more autonomously and less restrictedly. Democracy has opened 186 | Patricia M. Rodriguez­ opportunities for peasant and indigenous groups to seek alliances and receive support from sources other than the church, including political parties , unions, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Demo­ cratic rule has also curbed the possibility of repressive responses from the state, thus enabling more radical activism by peasant groups eager to implement new agrarian policies. These new political possibilities have not sidelined the church from its central role in agrarian issues, but they have transformed the playing field. As rural grassroots movements intensify their economic, social, and political demands, the stakes for continued church support have increased. To endorse popular land-related demands means to take a position that places the church in the middle of an intense crossfire between powerful elite groups and vociferous popular movements. Rural social movements represent a very dynamic sector of civil society—poor and indigenous­ peasants—and the church seeks to maintain links of faith to these groups in particular. Therefore, the church increasingly finds itself forced to confront the distinct internal and external challenges that arise as a result of its continued presence in the agrarian policy debate. But how exactly does the Catholic Church position itself in this public realm? What determines whether the church will support the claims of popular movements, and, if it does side with these movements, what kind of support it can offer? In line with this volume’s theme of the embeddedness of the church within its popular bases, this chapter examines the links between the Catholic Church and groups in civil society that act in defense of social justice and equality in Brazil and Chile. While conducting field research on the issue of the political and mobilization strategies of land-related movements in both countries, the differences in the involvement of church actors in each case struck me as worthy of a more in-depth look and interpretation . The distinct church approaches to land-based movements in these two countries are illustrative of the possibilities and limitations of the connections between religion, civil society, and democratic politics; they also speak to the manner with which—and reasons for which—the hierarchy can mobilize for the people, as well as learn from them. Since 1975 an arm of the Brazilian Catholic Church, the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, or CPT) has been at the forefront of efforts With or Without the People | 187 to ­ implement agrarian reform and curb rural violence. Church activism intensified through the close ties built between progressive priests and the thousands of peasants that form the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST). Although these ties receded as the MST sought autonomy, the CPT has continued to play a critical role in raising government, church, and public awareness of the land issue. In a similar fashion, Mapuche indigenous organizations in Chile have sought out progressive bishops as allies in the dialogue with the state, beginning in the 1970s, regarding the devolution of ancestral land and constitutional recognition. In this case, however, both the church and Ma­ puche organizations have taken a much more cautious approach to their process of approximation. In fact, only in 2003 did...