Evo vs. the Catholic Church

Readers:

For weeks Bolivia has been embroiled in a war of words between the Morales government and the Catholic Church, over the issue of what role Catholic teachings should play in schools here – both public and private. I asked one of our Democracy Center volunteers, Caitlin Esch, who has been following the story, to give us a sense of what is going on. Her article is below.

Jim Shultz

Evo vs. the Catholic Church

It started off with a bang, a call by the Bolivian government to change the way religion is taught in Bolivian schools.

Splattered across the headlines of Bolivian newspapers over the past few weeks have been the controversial comments of President Evo Morales and his Minister of Education, Felix Patzi, comments that have combined “Catholic Church” and “hierarchy” with “indoctrination” and “liars.” These comments have inflamed archbishops and cardinals and sparked demonstrations of protest in La Paz, Santa Cruz, Sucre and Cochabamba.

Patzi reportedly criticized the church hierarchy and its role in schools, accusing it of “serving the oligarchy for the past 514 years since Spain colonized the country.” While Evo famously accused some members of the church of “acting like in times of the Inquisition.”

But President Morales has changed his tune in recent days. Gone is the talk of removing Catholic teachings from Bolivian schools (public, private and religious). Morales and Cardinal Julio Terrazas are friends again. The fiercely religious can exhale.

After meeting with the Cardinal last Sunday night, a statement was released on Monday, ambiguously stating that religious diversity would be respected and that Catholicism would remain in schools. Although the meaning of this statement is vague, clearly the president is backpedaling, a move in stark contrast to the language used by both Morales and Patzi, in recent weeks.

What sparked this controversial that the Evo administration seems to be quietly walking away from?

Does Catholicism equal Colonialism?

In a country where as many as 70% of the people consider themselves Catholic, it’s no wonder that Catholicism has been taught as the dominant religion in schools for much of the country’s history. However, as Patzi points out, it is a colonial religion brought to Bolivia on the imperial wings of Spanish conquistadors. A religion that quickly swallowed the indigenous religions that preceded it, and continues to do so today.

Bolivia has a long and tangled history with Catholicism, as well as the harbingers of Catholicism: missionaries. Sociologist Jose Luis Gareca elaborates, citing examples of early Spanish missionaries, such as Dominico Tomas Ortiz. Ortiz, an avid note-taker, wrote, “El indio es la peor lacra humana (The indian is the worst of human scars.)” Later sections of Ortiz’s notes accuse “Indians” of being “animals, brutes, dirty cowards.” This was Ortiz’s justification for the colonization and subsequent religious conversion of indigenous peoples.

According to June Nash in the book, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us, as late as 1977 in the Santa Cruz region the Summer Institute of Linguistics Missionaries, “rounded up the Indians living on the tract and assigned them to local farms where they worked without pay, living in abysmal conditions…where they cut cane on white settlements for 15 hours a day, except on Sunday when they worked for 13 hours.” Perhaps this is what Patzi refers to when he said that banning Catholicism as the sole religion taught in schools is a step towards the decolonization of Bolivia’s education system that has “marginalized indigenous people and religions for hundreds of years.”

What the Government Proposed

Despite earlier, stronger claims to the contrary, the Morales government isn’t looking to ban Catholicism from schools entirely, rather, it was (whether it still is remains to be seen) looking to teach Catholicism alongside other religions. According to ABI, the official government website, “Patzi indicated that a new curriculum will be made, not only for the Catholics, but with respect for the diversity of religions, taking into account the history and cosmology of the 36 original Bolivian peoples and the diversity of the spiritual world.” Patzi said last Thursday, “I believe the Church must understand that we are living in times of change, times of transformation and they must admit that things should be balanced. This doesn’t means that we are against the Church. They have the right to champion their faith in their own churches.”

Among conservative critics of the new Bolivian government, however, the move smacked of government designs to interfere in one of the areas many families hold most sacred, religious life. Comments could be heard such as, “See, Evo wants to do just what Castro did in Cuba, use the government to kick out the church.”

Evo the Catholic

If this language among Bolivians that sounds so deeply critical of religion shocks or offends, and you do not believe, as Patzi said, that Catholicism is the “imperial religion” that has “indoctrinated” and “monopolized” religious teachings since 1825, don’t fret: Evo is a Catholic. Yes, it’s true. In an attempt to quell the angry Catholic masses he admitted that his own beliefs are that of Catholic/indigenous fusion -- and that he prays everyday.

Yet, despite this harmony Evo professes to have achieved between conflicting religions, it remains to be seen whether the Bolivian body politic will attain a similar peace on the issue of religion and the new government.

Caitlin Esch