“The spirit of the Lord has been given to me,
For he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
To proclaim liberty to the captive
And to the blind new sight,
To set the downtrodden free,
To proclaim the Lord’s year of favor.”
-Jesus in Luke 4:18-19
Padre Guadalupe’s autobiography To Be A Revolutionary is dedicated to the poor people of the world and the biblical quote above opens his tale of transformation from normal North American youth concerned with finding the answers to the bigger questions in life to Jacobin priest in Honduras to Christian Revolutionary. Padre Guadalupe’s autobiography ends in questions as well, though not from his hand but that of his parents. They tell their story of trying to find out his last days.
They know that he joined a group of armed irregular troops protecting the border from attacks and theft by right-wing guerillas supported by America. They knew that Padre Guadalupe was captured and killed in a raid, but the exact events leading to his murder and where his body now lies is unknown. As for those that had previously been arrested that could speak to what happened? All have since been killed. Padre Guadalupe has become one of the many Latin American desaparecidos. As I think this book clearly shows, it’s due to his absolute commitment to helping make Honduras, and to a lesser extent all of Central and South America, a Christian Socialist Community.
The singular focus which Padre Guadalupe shows in his devotion to bettering the life of Honduran campesinos is incredible. After his expulsion from Honduras, over 30,000 people whose lives he has touched in a positive way sign a petition so that he will be allowed to return to the country which he has been naturalized in. But he did not start out with such single-mindedness.
When describing his youth, he frequently recounts his love for sports, his enjoyment of working outside, his gratitude for the blessings and privileges in his life as well as a puckish disdain for authority. Working as an engineer in the European front of World War II and the joy it gives him makes his turn towards the church seem somewhat unusual. However, because of the underlying humanism that he’s brought to his work and romantic relations, and that his brother did so as well, makes the decision to seem natural nevertheless.
Not having great familiarity with the Catholic religion and the training of its clergy, I found the anecdotes and histories that Guadalupe shared to be generally amusing. Especially given that it was occurring at a time when many changes were in the air that would later be codified in the Vatican II council and the 1968 Medellin Bishops conference. The conflicts he narrates about him with his superiors over rules and regulations takes on different tenor knowing that much of what he goes through will soon no longer be requirements. As interesting as these area, however, it was once Padre Guadalupe (he did not yet adopt this name) first begins his time in Latin America that his personality really gets the chance to develop himself in a manner contrary to that of the fake Christians, the violent and duplicitous land-owners, the various forms of vendepatrias and sell-out politicians. Conceiving himself as a clarion voice of truth and justice, he does not dogmatically reject collaboration with the “goddless communists” but sees them as important allies since they fight for the same thing – The creation of the Kingdom of God on Earth.
Because of his advocacy of the poor, even during his period of anti-communism Father Guadalupe faces slander campaigns in the press. It’s this’ along with meeting and interacting on the political level more and more with Marxists; and beginning to read the works of Marx that he starts to understand the traditional antipathy that the church had for such political activists as emerging from the churches defense of private property – the maintenance of which helped keep their coffers filled and clothes gilded with gold.
Whereas previously his work focuses on radio schools to help with literacy, creating workers collectives to better their labor and political conditions; fighting against land seizure; etc. individually – he comes to see this as an interconnected political struggle that must be lead by Socialists and leavened by Christians.
The chapter entitled The Birth of a Christian Revolutionary and other section towards the end Father Guadalupe begins to describe how all true Christians need also be Marxists. Since armed revolution seems counterintuitive to the mission of Christ’s Love, he first explains that Christ’s life cannot be properly understood without a historical, materialist (i.e. Marxist) understanding of the times, that it’s similarly imperative to understand the present in such a manner and then relates this to the Catholic Church’s Just War doctrine:
- “Revolutionary insurrection can be legitimate in the case of evident and prolonged tyranny that gravely violates the fundamental rights of the human person and dangerously hurts the common good of the country, whether it proceeds from a single person or from evidently unjust structures.”
- When all the other non-violent methods have been tried without success
- When the war will no produce worse injustices than the existing ones.
- Where there is a probability of succeeding.
In his own words, Father Guadalupe states “being a Christian demands being a revolutionary and a socialist, and to be a revolutionary and a socialist one has to use the Marxist-Leninist science of analysis and transformation of the world, then a Christian needs to understand Marxism.”
While there is little biblical exegesis here on these issues, Father Guadalupe provides the titles of the liberation theology books that have had the biggest impact on his transformation into a Christian Revolutionary – some of which I have linked to below.
More compelling than such hermeneutics the extensive autobiographical descriptions of the type of Christ-driven life Father Guadalupe lived, one defined by total commitment to organizing the poor so that their conditions are better rather than providing guidance to those that are already comfortable, i.e. the bourgeoisie members of the faith, this isn’t really needed. The priests in the book that argue against him, and on behalf of foreign financial interests or domestic juntas set up to protect illegally seized land, come off looking bad. After all, Christ certainly would not have defended those with pockets already bulged from wealth stealing heads of cattle from those that don’t even own a home.
Limited Bibliography
Juan Luis Segundo
Grace and the Human Condition
Our Idea of God
The Sacraments Today
The Evolution of Culpability
Bishop Proano of Ecuador
Evangelization, Conscientization, and Politicalization