ASK POPE BENEDICT: WHEN DOES GENOCIDE PURIFY?
By Adam Jones
CounterPunch, CA
May 18 2007
Pope Benedict XVI’s recent trip to Brazil seems to have done little to
shore up the Catholic Church’s declining power in its Latin American
heartland. It went a long way, however, towards confirming Benedict’s
reputation as a reactionary bigot.
Benedict, of course, is the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Throughout the 1980s, he was Pope John Paul II’s enforcer in the
campaign to expunge the dangerously progressive ideals of Catholic
"liberation theology" from Latin American soil. What could not be
accomplished by state terrorists, who killed thousands of members
of Christian "base communities" in the 1970s and ’80s, Ratzinger
and John Paul sought to engineer by installing conservative bishops
who would stem the progressive tide. Fortunately, they seem to have
failed. An account by Larry Rohter in the New York Times (May 7)
notes that the movement which Ratzinger "once called ‘a fundamental
threat to the faith of the church’ … persists as an active, even
defiant force in Latin America," with some 80,000 base communities
operating in Brazil alone. It is fuelled, as it always has been, by the
"social and economic ills" that pervade the region, and that have only
"worsened" under the neoliberal prescriptions of the past two decades.
This time around, Ratzinger/Benedict’s bile was directed not at
liberation theology, but squarely at the historical memory of the
serial genocides — probably the most destructive in human history —
inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. On the last
day of his visit, in the city of Aparecida, the Pope "touch[ed] on
a sensitive historical episode," in the blandly understated language
of an Associated Press dispatch (May 13). In other words, he ripped
the bandages off a still-suppurating wound. According to the official
text of Benedict’s comments on the Vatican website, the Pope declared
that "the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean" were "silently
longing" to receive Christ as their savior. He was "the unknown God
whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it …"
Colonization by Spain and Portugal was not a conquest, but rather an
"adoption" of the Indians through baptism, making their cultures
"fruitful" and "purifying" them. Accordingly, "the proclamation of
Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation
of the pre-Columbian cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign
culture."
So there we have it. The invasion and conquest of the Americas,
which caused the deaths of upwards of 90 percent of the indigenous
population, was something the Indians had been pining for all along.
They weren’t just "asking for it," as sexist cranks depict women as
complicit in their own rapes. They were actually "longing" for it,
since salvation and "purification" came with it.
Actually, genocide came with it, as Raphael Lemkin knew. Lemkin is the
Polish-Jewish jurist who, having fled the Nazi invasion of Poland for
refuge in the U.S., coined the word "genocide" in 1943. He defined
genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the
destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups,
with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of
such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social
institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion,
and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of
the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives
of the individuals belonging to such groups." His framing became the
foundation of the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, and of
the academic field of comparative genocide studies. Lemkin himself
was keenly aware of the devastation of the indigenous people of the
Americas, and considered it basic to his understanding of genocide,
though most of his writings on the theme remain unpublished. (See
the text of John Docker’s excellent February 2004 talk at the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, "Raphael Lemkin’s History of Genocide
and Colonialism".)
Benedict’s astounding comments attracted barely a flicker of media
attention in the West — almost all of it on the wire services, and
some of it problematic in itself. A May 13 Reuters dispatch noted
blithely that, contrary to Benedict’s claims, "many Indian groups
believe the conquest brought them enslavement and genocide." This is
rather like writing that "many Jewish groups believe that the Nazi
Holocaust brought Jews enslavement and genocide." The reality exists
independently of the belief. As blogger Stentor Danielson points out:
"In the real world, it’s a basic historical fact that the Indians were
enslaved. It’s a basic historical fact that entire tribes were wiped
out. The reason [that] ‘many Indian groups believe’ these historical
facts is because people like Reuters’ craven reporters won’t admit
when there’s a fact behind the claims."
Indian organizations and spokespeople expressed outrage at Benedict’s
statements, calling them "arrogant and disrespectful." Sandro Tuxa,
leader of a coalition of Indian tribes in Brazil’s impoverished
northeast, declared: "We repudiate the Pope’s comments. To say
the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is
offensive, and frankly, frightening" (Reuters, May 14).
Frightening indeed. Genocide scholar Greg Stanton describes denial
as the final stage of genocide: "The perpetrators of genocide dig up
the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and
intimidate the witnesses" (see Stanton’s "Eight Stages of Genocide"
on the Genocide Watch website). Genocidal perpetrators, and those
who inherit their mantle, also seek to "purify" historical memory —
as Turkish authorities unceasingly, but so far unsuccessfully, have
sought to do in the case of the Armenian genocide.
Stanton also reminds us that denial is "among the surest indicators
[that] further genocidal massacres" may lie ahead. That’s a thought
worth pondering, as the reinvigorated indigenous movement in Latin
America confronts a renewed neo-colonial assault on its culture,
health, and means of subsistence.
Adam Jones, Ph.D., is the author of Genocide: A Comprehensive
Introduction (Routledge, 2006) and editor of Genocide, War Crimes
and the West: History and Complicity (Zed Books, 2004). Email:
[email protected]
http://www.counter punch.org/jones05182007.html