TEOLOGÍA INDIA
Samuel
Ruiz explains Indian Theology as follows:
I
believe that it has not been sufficiently recognized that there is a salvific
presence of God in all religions, and, of course, in the pre-Columbian ones.
… A Kuna Indian said, "God is so big that He has permitted every group to see
Him…. God is so unfathomable, so infinite, and incomprehensible that no person,
no human group can have a total perception of God. Therefore, God permits his
presence and our perception of Him to be divided among the peoples, so that
they may enter into a dialogue with each other, so that they may share their
perception of God with each other."
The
sources where we perceive the presence of God are within the indigenous culture.
It is not based, as for us, in a philosophy, but in mythology. A myth is a way
of reflecting "abstractly" about things. Through their myths, the Indians carry
out their reflection or their wisdom transmitted through their ancestors. These
myths are the guardians of the tradition, and they allow the community to reflect
about their tradition.
Thus,
Indian Christian Theology presupposes the recognition of a revelation of God
in all cultures - what Vatican II called Seeds of the Word… fortunately, Christopher
Columbus did not bring God in his three caravels, since God was already present
among the Indian communities.
It
is impossible to insist too much on the importance of this recognition. It permits
a dialogue that has not been possible in the 500 years since the first evangelization
of the Americas. In that evangelization, a culture was imposed over the indigenous
culture in order to express the gospel. There was no reciprocal dialogue, since
that would have run into a theological presupposition that denied the existence
of cultural differences. In the framework of the theology of the time of the
Conquest, it was not possible to recognize anything positive in a religion that
was not Christian. Non-Christian religions were considered shadows of error
and shades of death… We are only now beginning to correct this grave error after
Vatican II… But
revolutionary as this is for the Church, what is really important about this
movement is not its theology, but its practical consequences. By validating
indigenous religious beliefs and practices, rather than condemning or denigrating
them, the Indian Theology movement has provided an ideological basis for an
indigenous renaissance. It is this renaissance that is the focus of the project.
This
renaissance is not a movement from above, led by bishops and theologians, but
a movement from below, in which thousands of Native Americans are seeking respect
for their traditions, and the right to control their own lives. Indians are
claiming the right not just to the equal participation in Mexican national life
so long denied them, but to autonomy - the right to live their lives in their
own way, by their own rules, rather than those imposed by the nation.
Jan de Vos, a Belgian Jesuit
who has worked with Mexican Indians, and especially with the Lacandones in Chiapas,
writes:
"... the Catholic Church
discovered little by little, along with the Indians, the catechists, and the
deacons, that God does not reveal himself solely in the Sacred Scriptures, nor
only in what we call the Tradition of the Church, but in also in the history
of every people (pueblo)… that what are called Seeds of the Word are scattered
through the history of all peoples. The Indians… did not need to be told twice
that God had probably spoken in their history… and this led in Chiapas and in
other areas to what is called ‘Indian Theology’….
"The Indians… say that
the Word of God which the evangelicals and the neo-Catholics preach to them
is only a path, but not the only path. They say they began to organize themselves
politically, and that neither the Catholic Church, much less the evangelicals,
knew how to help them … [Instead,] the leftists began to help them organize….
These Maoists began to
proselytize politically by helping the Indians to organize themselves, in close
cooperation with Indian catechists, since they had the confidence of the communities…
A conflict with the diocese rapidly developed, as the Church realized that the
Maoists were using it.
… as a result of this
political organizing activity, the Indians learned to take charge and to discuss
their own problems in assemblies, in a way very similar to their traditional
consensus-seeking process. Obviously, the Catholic Church accepted that in the
primitive church this process also existed, and said: 'As Christians you Indians
have the option of returning to the root of Christianity, to those Christian
communities of which the Franciscan and Dominican friars of the 16th century
dreamed when they thought that perhaps it would be possible to establish them
among the Indians…
In 1983 this organization
was shaken by the arrival of a small guerilla group which formed part of the
so-called Forces of National Liberation. The group that was half Indian and
half mestizo, and it was here that Subcomandante Marcos appeared for the first
time… This small group established itself in the jungle, because it was there…
that the Indians had most successfully organized themselves as the result of
the patient and slow work of the Catholic Church and the more rapid work of
the Maoists in the 1970s … So this cell said, 'here, more than other regions
of Mexico there is the possibility of implanting something much more revolutionary.'
Because its objective was to produce a radical change on the national level,
a change towards socialism.
… The Zapatistas made
an offer to the Indians. They asked the Indians, 'Do you have arms?' 'Yes, a
few… which we use to defend ourselves from the death squads.' The offer of the
Zapatistas was to transform this small defensive force into an offensive movement
aimed at insurgency, at a change in the national society. The Indians replied:
'OK, we have walked on the path of the Word of God. We have also walked on the
path of organization, but they haven't helped because the authorities won't
listen to us. So let's see if it is possible to take this third path, the path
of arms… Why not try this path to see if it can resolve our problems?'
…The path of the Word
of God was the first that the Indians tried, and till today it is still a path.
The path of organization continues, what I call the path of 'negotiated resistance',
but with great difficulty because of the decision of some to join the Zapatistas
and others not to join.
The third path gathered
strength among the Indians until a conflict developed between the Catholic Church
and the armed struggle. … the Church said, especially in the person of Bishop
Samuel Ruiz, 'the path of arms leads to death, don't follow this path'… Many
Indians left the ranks of the Zapatistas, until in 1993 Marcos was forced to
act.
There is a fourth path…
that of their own experience. The Indians say, 'OK, the Word of God came to
us from the evangelicals and the Catholics. The organization was also partly
taught to us by leftwing outsiders. The path of arms was also offered to us
by a small group of insurgents. But there is a path that has always been our
own. It is the path of our own history, our own experience, and it is perhaps
the school where we can learn most. We can call it the path of our roots'
Jan de Vos, Tocando
Fondo, pp 19-22
It is this fourth path that
the Totonacs of Huehuetla are struggling to follow. The film, Democracia
Indigena, documents some of that struggle.
I
have been fortunate to observe this development in a single community over more
than thirty years. Huehuetla is a 90% Totonac community in the Sierra Norte
de Puebla. Since 1970, I have finished three films in Huehuetla. The first,
"The Tree of Life", released in an English version in 1975, focuses on
the Danza de los Voladores. The second, "The Tree of Knowledge",
released in 1980, compares two ways of knowledge, that of the Danza de los
Huehues and that of the public schools. The third, "Democracia Indigena",
released in 1999, focuses on the municipal elections of 1998 as an example of
the Teologia India movement in action.
Until
the 1970's, Huehuetla had changed little since the Porfiriato, when mestizos
first took control of the municipio. By the end of the decade, however,
the advent of public education, roads, television, and government agencies such
as Inmecafe and INI, made the Totonacs more conscious, and more resentful, of
their subordinate status. These changes coincided with the organizing effort
of the Partido Socialista del Trabajo, which provided an initial ideological
framework for many Totonacs.
When
young, activist priests arrived in 1980, they found a core of bi-lingual teachers,
catechists, and other Totonac ladinos (i.e., hispanicized Totonacs) looking
for ways to change their condition. What the priests and nuns did, essentially,
was to offer the Totonacs in general, and the ladinos especially, the
church as a space to express their aspirations, and an ideological continuity
- in the form of Teologia India - around which to organize themselves.
In
1989, the ladinos and other Totonacs set up the Organizacion Independiente
Totonaca (OIT), a civil association (asociacion civil). The OIT chose
a list of candidates, made an electoral alliance with the PRD, campaigned actively,
and won by a landslide. In spite of false starts, the alliance effected a dramatic
transformation in the lives of the Totonac population, by redirecting state
and federal funds to projects aimed at benefitting the marginalized rural areas
where the Totonacs live, instead of to the cabecera, or town center,
where the mestizos live.
The
OIT/PRD alliance governed for nine years, until losing to the PRI in 1998. Over
the nine years, there was an increasing split between the OIT and the PRD. This
led, in the 1998 election, to the disaffection of many OIT supporters from the
PRD list of candidates. Combined with the successful efforts of the PRI to recruit
Totonac support to add to their mestizo constituency, this split led
to the victory of the PRI.
Since
the elections, the OIT has broken its electoral alliance with the PRD, and is
concentrating on building its own alternative structure, with the aim of organizing
the Totonac majority to seek autonomy. The basic problem is that the OIT, in
line with the concepts of the Teologia India movement, rejects the national
political process in favor of indigenous autonomy - Democracia Indigena
- while the PRD accepts the national political system and seeks to work within
it.
Interview with Sylvia Marcos, in Ixtus, 1999