Confronting colonialism: Maryknoll catholic missionaries in Peru and Guatemala, 1943-1968

Working Paper of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Volumn , Issue 338, 2007, Pages

  Behrens, Susan Fitzpatrick ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CATHOLICISM; CHURCH ROLE; COLONIALISM; CULTURAL INFLUENCE; ETHNOPOLITICS; INDIGENOUS POPULATION;

CENTRAL AMERICA; GUATEMALA [CENTRAL AMERICA]; PERU; SOUTH AMERICA;

EID: 34548057248     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (110)

1. Charles Wagley, "The Maya of Northwestern Guatemala" in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Robert Wauchope, gen. ed., Part I: Ethnology, Evogn Z. Vogt, vol. ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), 46-68, 55
2. Dan Chapin Hazen, "The Awakening of Puno: Government Policy and the Indian Problem in Southern Peru, 1900-1955" (PhD diss., Yale University, 1974), 14.
3. Bruce Johnson Calder, Crecimiento y cambio de la Iglesia Católica Guatemalteca: 1944-1966 (Guatemala: Editorial José Pineda lbarra, 1970), 19
4. Account of a trip to the West Coast and the Northwestern Highlands, June 9-26, 1943. 80. Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, Maryknoll Mission Archive (MMA)
5. Leigh A. Fuller, SJ, "Catholic Missionary Work and National Development in Guatemala, 1943-68: The Maryknoll Experience," (master's thesis, New York University, 1971), 63
6. Hazen, "The Awakening of Puno," 5.
7. Greg Grandin, "To End With All These Evils: Ethnic Transformation and Community Mobilization in Guatemala's Western Highlands, 1954-1980," Latin American Perspectives vol. 24, no. 2 (March 1997): 7-34
8. Arturo Arias, "Changing Indian Identity: Guatemala's Violent Transition to Modernity," in Carol A. Smith, ed., Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540-1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 230-257
9. Richard Wilson, Mayan Resurgence in Guatemala: Q'Eqchi' Experiences (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995).
10. The actions of this contingent of missionaries did not represent the views of Maryknoll missionaries in Guatemala, many of whom strongly condemned these clergy for putting the mission at risk. Nonetheless, the Guatemalan Church and state came to identify all Maryknoll clergy as potential revolutionaries and subjected them to scrutiny and even threatened to expel them from the country. Philip Berryman, Christians in Guatemala's Struggle (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1984).
11. Calder, Crecimiento y Cambio, p. 59
12. Jeffrey Klaiber, SJ, La Iglesia en el Perú: Su Historia Social Desde la Independencia, Tercera Edición (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1996), 65-66.
13. This increase in foreign clergy in Guatemala corresponded with a general increase in the number of foreign clergy throughout Latin America (though some countries received greater concentrations than others). The number of priests and nuns from the United States increased as follows: 1956 South America 728, Central America 329; 1960 South America 981, Central America 433; 14 1968 South America 2455, Central America 936; 15 1978 South America 977, Central America 433. "U.S. Catholic Overseas Mission Personnel," (Washington DC: Mission Secretariat), U.S. Catholic Mission Association (USCMA) archive, MMA.
14. See also: Edward L. Cleary, OP, Crisis and Change: The Church in Latin America Today (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985). The increase in foreign clergy throughout Latin America would suggest that this process was occurring not just in Guatemala, but throughout the region.
15. Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545-1650 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984)
16. Jeffrey A. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 1573-1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985).
17. The Spanish Crown granted the first conquistadores the right to extract labor and produce from indigenous communities assigned to them in exchange for introducing these subject people to Catholicism. This grant, which ostensibly excluded direct control or ownership over indigenous people's land, was known as an encomienda and the Spanish grantees were known as encomenderos.
18. Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)
19. Woodrow Borah, New Spain's Century of Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951)
20. Eric Van Young, Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
21. Cole, The Potosí Mita, 60.
22. MacLeod, Spanish Central America, 119.
23. Ibid., 107.
24. Linda A. Newson, "Indian Population Patterns in Colonial Spanish America," Latin American Research Review vol. 20, no. 3 (1985): 41-74.
25. Cole, The Potosí Mita.
26. Sabine MacCormack argues that the extirpation of idolatries marked a significant shift in Spanish proselytization marked by an intolerance equivalent to that exhibited by the Inquisition towards heretics and nonbelievers. Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes: rision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 387-392.
27. See also Susan Ramirez, ed., Indian-Religious Relations in Colonial Spanish America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, 1989).
28. Thomas A. Ambercrombie ("La perpetuidad traducida: del "debate" al Taki Onqoy y una rebelión comunera peruana" in Jean Jacques Decoster, ed., Incas e Indios Cristianos: elites indígenas e identidades cristianas en los Andes coloniales, Lima: CBC, IFAE, Asociación Kuraka, 2002, 79-120) argues that the extirpation of idolatries provided ambitious Spaniards with a means of enhancing their position in society. It came on the heels of efforts by indigenous people and clergy - spearheaded by Bartolomé de Las Casas's support for the New Laws - to undermine encomenderos' power by eliminating their right to grant their encomiendas to their heirs.. The extirpation thus provided encomenderos with a new means of controlling indigenous people even as the Crown and clergy sought to undermine their power. At the same time, it enhanced the power of Spanish missionaries by charging them with responsibility for taking control of errant Andean communities.
29. Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, and Ann M. Wightman, Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570-1720 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1990), 34, both reveal that Spanish control over Andean communities was limited at best. Andean community members responded to the Potosí mita by fleeing their communities. In some cases, they labored at Potosí forming a free-wage labor force; in others they settled as "forasteros" [foreigners] in distinct Andean communities and urban centers; in others they settled on haciendas, gaining protection as yanacona laborers. Bakewell describes Yanaconas as a "a minority made up of people who did not belong to any ayllu- the kin group that was a basic building block of the social structure; neither did they form any ayllus of their own. To this extent, they might be said to be 'free-floating' in a society whose other members had a rigidly defined place." This status enabled Yanaconas to evade Spanish labor demands by fleeing and/or laboring for Spanish hacendados in exchange for protection from Spanish officials.
30. MacLeod, Spanish Central America, 327. Cofradías were institutions devoted to the worship of a patron saint. Participants in the coftadía shared responsibility for performing rituals and providing support to worship the saint. Cofradías were transferred to the New World where indigenous and Aftican people transformed them to conform with their religious practices and ideals and social and political organization. Indigenoas cofradía,leaders, known collectively as the "civil-religious hierarchy," protected funds garnered by the cofradía to support the saint's cult in a " caja de comunidad" (or community chest).
31. Nancy M. Farriss in Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984) provides a detailed analysis of how Mayan people adapted and transformed Spanish Catholic institutions and ideas to fulfill their needs and to restructure their communities. She also recounts the highly dependent relationship between clergy who relied upon Mayan communities for their resources and Mayan "converts."
32. Adriaan C. Van Oss, Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala 1524-1821 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
33. Luis Millones, comp., El retorno de las huacas: estudios y documentos sobre el Taki Onqoy, siglo XVI (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990).
34. Jan Szeniinski, "Why Kill the Spaniard? New Perspectives on Andean Insurrectionary Ideology in the 18th Century," in Resistance, Rebellion and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, Steve Stem, ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
35. Leon G. Campbell, "Church and State in Colonial Peru: The Bishop of Cuzco and the Túpac Amaru Rebellion of 1780," in Journal of Church and State 22 (1980): 251-70.
36. Boleslao Lewin, La rebelión de Túpac Amaru y los orígenes de la independencia de Hispanoamérica, tercer edición ampliada (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Editora Latino Americana, 1967)
37. Scarlett O'Phelan Godoy, La gran rebelión en los Andes: de Túpac Amaru a Túpac Catari (Lima: Petroperu, 1995).
38. J. Lloyd Mecham, Church and State in Latin America: A History of Politico-Ecclesiastical Relations, revised ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934, 1966), 160.
39. Pilar García Jordán, Iglesia y Poder en el Perú Contemporáneo, 1821-1919 (Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos "Bartolomé de Las Casas," 1993), 27.
40. Exposición del Capítulo metropolitano de Lima a la convención nacional, sobre la exclusión de los falso cultos y sobre los derechos de libertad y de propiedad de la Iglesia (Lima: Impreso por Francisco Solis, 1855), p.5, Colección de Vargas Ugarte, Archivo de los Jesuitas, Santo Toribio, Perú Iglesia 39b, doc. 44.
41. Nils Jacobsen, Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano, 1780-1930. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
42. Julio Cotler, Clases, estado y nación en el Perú. (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1978).
43. José María Arguedas, Todas las Sangres (Lima: Editorial Horizonte, 1985).
44. Marcela Calisto, "Peasant Resistance in the Aymara Districts of the Highlands of Peru, 1900-1930: An Attempt at Self-govemance" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at San Diego, 1993)
45. Clarinda Matto de Turner (Birds Without a Nest: A Novel, J.G.H., trans., 1904, emended by Naomi Lindstrom (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996)) offers a fictional account of the triumvirate of power established by clergy, hacendados, and caciques.
46. Cotler, Clases, estado y nación en el Perú, identifies hacendados as the principal link between indigenous rural communities and the Peruvian state, which would represent an enormous problem after agrarian reform in 1968.
47. Mecham, Church and State, 315-316.
48. Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 92-93, 269, and fn. 77-78.
49. E. Bradford Bums, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 96-98.
50. Richard Newbold Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944-1966 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 278.
51. Virginia Garrard-Bumett, Living in the New Jerusalem: Protestantism in Guatemala (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 57-58.
52. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 104.
53. H.M.B. Ingersoll, "The War of the Mountains: A Study of Reactionary Peasant Insurgency in Guatemala, 1837-1873," (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1972).
54. Mary P. Holleran, Church and State in Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949) 127, 140-141.
55. Garrard-Burnett, Living in the New Jerusalem, 58. Coftadías were actually replaced by guachibales, which were equivalent institutions that operated without Church sanction.
56. Estatuto provisional for the governance of Peru issued by General San Martin, quoted in Mecham, Church and State, 161.
57. Ibid., p. 25.
58. Manuel Burga and Alberto Flores Galindo, Apogeo y Crisis de la República Aristocrática, cuarta ed. (Lima: Rikchay Peru, 1987), 111.
59. Historiográfica de Puno, Iltmo. y Rdmo. Sr. Dr. D. Juan Ambrosio Huerta, Dignísimo Obispo de la de la Diócesis, 163 AJ, Anexos de la Memoria del Prefecto del Departamento de Puno, Puno 9 Junio 1900, BN (E834 30ff).
60. William D. McCarthy, MM, "Notes for a History of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in Peru" (unpublished manuscript, 1998).
61. Kay B. Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978)
62. Douglass E. Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead: The Modernization of a Mayan Community in the Highlands of Guatemala with a forward by Charles Wagley (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979)
63. Ricardo Falla, Quiché Rehelde: Estudio de un movimiento de conversión religiosa, rebelde a las creencias tradicionales, en San Antonio flotenango, Quiché (1948-1970) (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala, 1980);
64. John Watanabe, Mayan Saints and Sinners in a Changing World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992)
65. Richard Wilson, Maya Resurgence.
66. Informal Conversation with Juan Domingo Céceres Olazo in the Archivo Regional de Puno, December 24, 2002.
67. James Anthony Walsh, Trip to South and Central America April 5 to August 11, July 27, 1942, cited in William D. McCarthy, MM, "Notes for a History."
68. Edward Cleary (Crisis and Change, 14-15) described Peru's next papal nuncio, Rómulo Carboni, as the "nuncio as entrepreneur" for his extraordinary ability to attract foreign clergy and resources to Peru.
69. General Council Minutes, January 18, 1943, cited in William D. McCarthy, MM, "Notes for a History."
70. Arthur Kiernan, MM, Letter to James E. Walsh, MM, April 16, 1943, Puno, MMA.
71. In 1968, after twenty-five years of operating the pre-seminary, it had produced fewer than a dozen clergy. Robert Kearns, MM, Maryknoll Fathers in Peru, 1965-1977, vol. 4., (n.p., n.d.), 168, MMA.
72. John Schiff, MM, "Catechetical Follow-up in the parish," at Puno Rural Catechetical Conference, October 22-23, 1963, in Kearns, Maryknoll in Peru, vol. 3, 204-220, 217.
73. "Sometimes a community is cold and indifferent. . . . It should be explained that unless they do have a catechist there will be no annual feast-day. This is a hard decision to make and should be arrived at only after much prayer and a long period of patient waiting for the people to decide for themselves. Father Robert Kearns, "Recruiting aad qualifications of the catechists," in Kearns, Maryknoll in Peru, vol. 3. 191-197 and 193.
74. Ibid.
75. "Catholic Relief Services in Peru," (1954) p. 1, Catholic Relief Services Archive, Baltimore, MD.
76. "Proyectos de Desarrollo Comunitario Promovidos por Cáritas del Perú," Folleto "Cáritas," Archivo de El Comercio, Lima, Peru
77. Phillip Erbland, MM, interview by William D. McCarthy, MM, tape recording, Lima, February 11, 1996, courtesy of the Maryknoll Society History Project.
78. Kearns, Maryknoll in Peru, vol. 2, 20.
79. Arthur J. Dwyer, Puno Diary, June, 1956, Maryknoll Priests Peru Diaries, MMA. I suspect that the politician referred to was Pedro Beltrán, an important opposition leader who was said to have instigated the Ciudad de Dios invasion to publicize President Odría's failure to meet the housing needs of Peru's new urban residents. Beltrán played a crucial role in introducing mutual savings and loan associations, of the type Maryknoll advocated, in the 1950s. David Collier, Squatters and Oligarchs: Authoritarian Rule and Policy Change in Peru (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 69-70.
80. Kearns, Maryknoll in Peru, vol. 2, 95.
81. Ibid., 96.
82. Ibid., 97.
83. Father Dan McLellan was subsequently named "Director of the Institute of Human Relations and Production" at San Marcos University as well.
84. Memoria Para La Asamblea Episcopal Peruana Sobre el Desarrollo de Cooperativas de Crédito Parroquiales en al Año 1959, Archivo del Obispo de Juli (AOJ).
85. Oficina Central, Cooperativas de Crédito Parroquiales, Memoria Para La Asamblea Episcopal Peruana, 1959, AOJ
86. and Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Crédito del Perú, Estadísticas 1966, AOJ.
87. Clarence J. Witte, MM, March 24, 1943, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
88. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 19.
89. Forward by Charles Wagley in Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead, p. x.
90. Clarence Witte, MM, "Thoughts and Jottings for Soloma," October 1943, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
91. Alfred E. Smith, MM, San Miguel Acatán Diary, August 1946, MMA.
92. Ibid.
93. Community and Social Survey Guatemala (July 1, 1953), Maryknoll Seminary Library (MMSL).
94. Brother Felix Fournier, Letter to Mabel, Will, and Family, July 1, 1953, MMA.
95. John M. Watanabe, "Enduring Yet Ineffable Community in the Western Periphery of Guatemala," in Guatemalan Indians and the State: 1540 to 1988, Carol A. Smith, ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 197.
96. Charles Wagley, "The Maya," 62. Protestant missionaries settled in Panajachel in 1920, but it took them nearly two decades to gain a convert. (Ricardo Falla, SJ, "Evolución Política-Religiosa del Indígena Rural en Guatemala (1945-1965)" en Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos Año 1, numero 1 (Enero-Abril 1972) 27-41, 32). Although Douglas E. Brintriall identifies conversion to Catholicism and conversion to Protestantism as nearly identical processes, he notes that conversion to Protestantism started later and might have been in response to people's distress at the level of conflict between costumbristas and Catholic converts. (Brintriall, Revolt Against the Dead.) This same kind of step conversion facilitated by Protestants' tolerance for costumbre, is evident in Michael E. Mendelson, Los escándalos de Maximón (Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social Guatemalteca, Publicación no. 19, 1965).
97. Arturo Arias, "Changing Indian Identity."
98. Hugo Gerbermann, MM, Ixtahuacán Diary, March 1952, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
99. See also: "Colotenango ... Almost every week we see a few new faces among those who come in to learn the doctrine. In spite of the fact that the witch doctors and even the alcalde are trying to keep the people away from the doctrine classes, the number is steadily increasing." Hugo Gerbermann, MM, Ixtahuacán Diary, January 1952, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
100. Edward J. McGuinness, MM, Guatemala Diary, October 1-15, 1951, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
101. Brintnall, Revolt Against the Dead, 15.
102. Adams, Crucifixion by Power, 139.
103. For a description of a similar experience with foreign clergy, see: Luis Z. de León V.; presentación y notas, Jesús Borrego, Carchá : una misión en Guatemala : entre los Kekchíes de Alta Verapaz, (Guatemala: Centro de Estudios de las Misiones Salesianas, 1985).
104. Rev. Edward J. McGuinness, MM, Guatemala Diary (Jacaltenango), October 195 1, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
105. Edward J. McGuinness, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, Cuilco Diary, December 1953, Maryknoll Priests Guatemala Diaries, MMA.
106. Ricardo Falla, Quiché Rebelde.
107. Gordon Lewis Bowen, "Interests and Ideals: American Foreign Aid to Latin America, 1960-1965" (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1978). Bowen observes that United States aid to Guatemala in these years consistently bypassed the government of Guatemala even though the intention was to strengthen and centralize the government.
108. Brother Felix Fournier, Letter to Laura, Frank, Christine, March 28, 1955, MMA.
109. Fuller, "Catholic Missionary Work and National Development in Guatemala," 116.
110. Brother Felix Fournier, Letter to Dad, Kay, Gaby and Laura, September 6, 1963, MMA.