'NEW COURSE FOR THE NEW LEFT' SATURDAY REVIEW, 30 MAY 1970

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01314R000300550002-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 70
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 26, 2004
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: January 1, 1970
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

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 4 a.
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Something Old and Something New 5
"New Course for the New Left"
Saturday Review, 30 May 1970 7
"Foreign Policy in Latin America"
Survival, April 1970 11
"Fidel and the New State-Class"
Encounter, April 1970 19
"The Rules of the Game"
The New Yorker, 25 April 1970 23
"The Peruvian Military: A Summary
Political Analysis"
The Rand Corporation, May 1970 43
"The Soviet Union in the Third World:
Purpose in Search of Power"
Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Sciences,
November 1969 65
Vol. 1 No. 1
Summer, 1970
No editorial approval is implied in the selection of these
reprints, which are meant to stimulate thought, not channel it.
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i ~?i ??i?'A?Ri ?i'?i.~..~? ~. Spied :~'p.'~'S.gOpi.~.P49.O i i?1. 1 S6S??: ~? ~? :? i ticJi.40 :??540.?S?;. ~?.~ ?i??i? i??i S SSS? O i?O???~.'?.~?1Z? =i
W iscourage..individual contributions of
any kind; these provide marvelous service as well as
relaxation. But habitual turning aside from hard
intellectual problems into easy and popular action
is a major threat - perhaps the major threat....
-Provost Robert L. SprouZZ at a University of
Rochester con ference on "What's Right and What's
Wrong with Today's Universities," 1 November 1968
s
.y
organize his thoughts while facing a blank sheet of
paper knows how sweet the relaxation is to quit and
to accept the self-indulgence of any kind of action.
It is much harder to write, to study, to take data
or design experiments, to think beyond the Vietnam
X war...or to do almost anything than it is to stir...
activity on the issue of the moment. I do not mean
h at all + d
-- - -'- - ---- ----t............ -- - vvuw Vr. VV (.Lti VVV/L? ? ? ? '?
3,. I mean the phrase quite literally. The life of the
mind is a hard life indeed. Anyone who has tried to
Threat of Relaxation
This private circulation publication is a new venture. It is based on the
premise that field colleagues, although constantly under pressure to act quickly
to carry out their specific duties and already overburdened with papers, may oc-
casionally need to take time out to consider the broader problems of this age of
multiple social and moral crises.
No one can read more than a small fraction of the publications which strive
to interpret what is going on in Latin America, but by using.a panel to screen a
fairly large number of popular and learned journals, and by reproducing signifi-
cant articles -- mostly pertinent directly to Latin America but sometimes reach-
ing out to include analyses of U.S. and even international developments -- we
hope to capture the attention of busy colleagues and to stimulate this kind of
serious thought.
The descriptive comments in the following paragraph will indicate the range
of topics covered in this first issue. Our tentative schedule is to make this a
quarterly publication, reproducing five or six articles each time. No comments
are necessary, although you are urged to report a real lack of reader interest.
We realize that your time is limited, and that this sort of material may be irre-
levant. Conversely we shall be grateful to any reader who cares to suggest
changes in content, format or concept.
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In this issue we include coverage of the "New Left," the
"New Church," the "new middle class military", the "New State-
Class" in Cuba, the "old" Soviets in the Third World and a
"borrowed" Chilean's view of foreign policy in Latin America.
We feel these six items should provide an appropriate mix for
openers. Briefly they are:
1. In New Course for the New Left (Saturday Review, 30 May 1970), Irving
Howe, a not unsympathetic observer of the New Leftism in the U.S., describes
how the movement's earlier phase of "participatory democracy" has degenerated
into a "quasi-Leninist fascination with violence." Howe suggests that, if
the New Left movement is to avoid becoming a sterile and isolated political
sect, it must return to its earlier view of politics -- to a re-application
of youthful energy and idealism to the preservation and improvement of our
democratic institutions, marred as they may be.
2. In Foreign Policy in Latin America (reprinted in Survival, April 1970),
Claudio Veliz, Director of the Institute of International Studies in Santiago,
Chile, discusses the historical roots and recent trends which have led to the
resurgence of nationalist feelings in Latin American countries. In this con-
text he points up current Latin American efforts to avoid the negative impact
of conflicting U.S. economic policies through technological innovation, eco-
nomic integration, and new ties with nations outside the hemisphere.
3. In Fidel and the New State-Class (Encounter, April 1970), John Mander de-
scribes Castro's use of Marxism-Leninism to legitimize his new brand of
caudillismo. The applicability of the Marxist-Leninist justification to
other revolutionary situations in Latin America is questionable, however.
Mander suggests that in practice anti-oligarchic forces in the hemisphere
are likely to turn to the army or the "state-class," i.e., an entrenched
bureaucracy which uses new technological means and exploits nationalist
feelings, to gain power and produce social change.
4. In her "profile" of Ivan Illich, The Rules of the Game (The New Yorker,
25 April 1970), Francine du Plessix Gray makes little effort to be objective.
She obviously admires the controversial ex-Jesuit who, although an orthodox
theologian and disciple of the late Cardinal Spellman, has made both bitter
enemies and devoted followers by his caustic criticism of what he describes
as the smugness and bureaucratic ways of the Roman Catholic Church in the
U.S. and Latin America.
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5. In his memorandum The Peruvian Military: A Summary Political Analysis
(RM-6048-RC, may 1969) for the Rand Corporation, Luigi R. Einaudi examines
the political role of the Peruvian military and explains why the military
leaders took power in 1968. He also provides a succinct analysis of the so-
cial origins of the officer corps; its educational and institutional back-
ground, and its relationships with other sectors of Peruvian society.
6. In The Soviet Union in the Third World: Purpose in Search of Power
(The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Novem-
ber 1969), Fritz Ermarth of the Rand Corporation describes how Khrushchev's
vision of Soviet-inspired revolution in the Third World has been dampened by
nationalist aspirations of Asian, African, and Latin American countries and
by the continuing influence of Western powers in areas where their interests
are at stake. Ermarth argues that Khrushchev's successors have adopted more
pragmatic tactics, concentrated on specific areas of the Third World. He
notes, however, that it's still too early to say whether this new approach
will make the Soviet Union "as conscious of the limitations of its power in
the Third World as the U.S. has become, at no insignificant cost."
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SATURDAY REVIEW/May 30, 1970
New Course for the New Left
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following essay,
the introduction to my book "Beyond
the New Left" to be published later
this spring by the McCall Publishing
Company, was written before the re-
cent events in Cambodia and at Kent
State. I find' it encouraging that in the
tremendous student upsurge of pro-
test there has been thus far mainly a
stress on the need for democratic and
nonviolent ;political change. The hope
for this country is to find a politics
combining radical measures with liber-
al values, and if the students stick by
something like that combination they
can do enormous good.
W That is the New Left? The
phrase has become part of
our journalistic currency, but
the phenomena to which it points are
barely a decade old and remain strik-
ingly diverse in character, scattered in
organization., and sometimes incoher-
ent in statement. In any traditional
sense, the New Left does not comprise
a structured political movement. When-
ever it has tried to form a national
organization, as at the disastrous Con-
ference for it New Politics held in Chi-
cago during the summer of 1967, it has
quickly fractured into several hostile
groups. Students for a Democratic So-
ciety, the major New Left group, has
recently split into three or four em-
battled factions, with the two main
ones using physical violence on one
another, as if intent upon re-enacting
the worst of Stalinism. As Mark Rudd,
leader of the SDS Weatherman faction,
was quoted in The New York Times of
September 26, 1969: "We sometimes
heat them up [the other faction] and
IRVING Hows, author of The Decline of the
New, is on the faculty of CUNY. Beyond
the New Left, copyright 0 1970 by Dissemt
Publishing Corporation.
they beat us up. What we usually do is
beat them up when we find thet "
The New Left has become an impor-
tant force, but only in certain limited
segments of American society. It has
made no impact on such major institu-
tions as the trade unions, or on such
major social groups as the working
class-by traditional Marxist expecta-
tions, the lever of revolution. It ',as not
been able to establish itself - sig-
nificant presence in either national or
regional politics (e.g., the pitiably small
vote received by Eldridge Cleaver and
Dick Gregory in the 1968 Presidential
election; the failure of New Leftists to
win even a primary in a stronghold like
Berkeley). But the New Left has had
a notable effect on campus life; it has
exerted an oblique but measurable in-
fluence on the more extreme black
militants; and it has contributed to the
growth of a distinctive "youth culture."
Some questions about New Left in-
fluence are hard to answer. The claim
is often made that it has played a ma-
jor role in mobilizing public sentiment,
even if through confrontationist shock
tactics, against the Vietnam War. My
own judgment is that large sections of
both the American population and our
political leadership turned to opposing
the war mainly out of a realization that
it could not be won short of an intoler-
able escalation. Nevertheless, it seems
likely that on this score, despite some
exaggeration, the New Left deserves
credit. It did play a valuable role in
stirring dissent against the war; it did
serve as a pressure on the conscience
of liberals. Yet, the paradox that must
be noted here is that such credit is of a
kind that the New Left cannot, in ide-
ological consistency, be verx enthusi.
astic about. For a central ?w Left
dogma has insisted that "the system
can't be changed," and that to achieve
even limited ends it is necessary to
complete a wholesale socia, transfor-
mation, what is these days very loosely
called "a revolution."
Insofar as the New Left claims credit
for mobilizing popular sentiment in be-
half of changing U.S. policy in Vietnam
-and I think`}t has some right to make
that claim-it undercuts its own "rev-
olutionari" theories and tacitly ac-
knowledges that, despite its intentions
and rhetoric, it has played the role of a
reformist pressure group mobilizing
sentiment for change within this so-
cietN I see nothing dishonorable in
playing such a role; I wish only to point
to the problems it presents the New
Left. And let me also stress that it is
not I nor people of my persuasion who
insist that achieving short-range goals
within the present society is incompati-
ble with working toward long-range
social change.
J f, however, we do try to estimate the
immediate consequences of New
Left activities, we must also look at the
other side of the balance. We must ask
ourselves: How much sentiment has it
helped to mobilize for the far Right? To
what extent has it contributed to the
victories of Nixon in the country as a
whole, Reagan in California, and Sten-
vig in Minneapolis? Now, there is no
completely accurate or "scientific" way
of measuring the consequences of any
political conduct, not even conduct as
abrasive as that of the New Left; but
every available source of evidence-
from opinion polls to electoral results
to the use of common sense-indicates
that among large segments of the mid-
dle and working classes there has set
in a strong, and sometimes violent, re-
action against New Left methods. My
impression is that the more candid
New Left spokesmen would not deny
this, for, believing as they do in "polari-
zation" (that is, ;n provoking large
numbers of people toward the ex-
tremes of the political spectrum, there-
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by dislodging and disabling the liberal two distinct phases. The first was a
center), some of them would actually phase of populist fraternity, stressing
see the growth of the far Right. as a an idealistic desire to make real the
tribute to their own effectiveness And egalitarian claims of the American
so it is, although hardly in the way they tradition, a non- and even anti-idea
suppose. For what the New Left, in its logical approach to politics, and a
thoughtless fascination with apoca- strategy of going into local commu-
lypse, fails to consider is the probable nities in order to organize oppressed
line-up of forces in this country if there minorities. Perhaps the major stimu-
is to be a polarization during the next lant to this early New Left was the
roes in
Ne
i
A
f
few years-to say nothing of the r roba-
ble victor in such a showdown.
Other questions concerning its in-
fluence are equally hard to answer. To
what extent, for instance, was the re-
cent appearance of that promising
political tendency we call the; New
Politics-the Leftist-liberal coalition
associated with the campaigns of Sen-
ator Eugene McCarthy and thg late
Senator Robert Kennedy-7a conse-
quence of pressures from the` New
Left? There can't be an assured reply,
but I for one would be prepared to
say that yes, some of the credit should
go to the New Left. Saying that, how-
ever, _ I would also want to note that
most New Left segments, and especial-
ly SDS, sneered at and refused to sup-
port Senator McCarthy's candidacy
when he rallied public sentiment
against the war. One New Left spokes-
man, Tom Hayden, was even reported
to have declared that "a vote for
George Wallace would further his ob-
jective more than a vote for R.F.K."
(Village Voice, May 30, 1968).
So far, the New Left has made few
serious contributions to political
thought or cultural experience.; What-
ever interest the New left shows in
political theory is usually directed
toward the work of older writers
whose work it appropriates and some-
times twists for its own ends. But the
New Left has had a considerable im-
pact on intellectual styles and fash-
ions, reviving radical sentiments in
elderly men of letters who found it
expedient to restrain themselves dur-
ing the conservative Fifties, providing
a rhetoric of excitement for young
writers often well attuned to the de-
mands of the market, and helping to
make "radicalism" a hot journalistic
property in magazines as various as
Esquire and The New York Review of
Books.
J n its few years of existence the New
Left has already gone through
g
can
mer
the
upsurge o
the early 1960s, when they began to
struggle for their dignity as men and
their rights as citizens. And perhaps
the most dramatic action of the early
New Left was the journey hundreds
of young people took in the summer
of 1963 to live and work in Mississippi,
helping Negroes organize themselves
for local community and political
ends. The main slogan of that moment
-appealing but vague-was "partic-
ipatory democracy." From the view-
point of those of us committed to the
politics of democratic socialism, this
first phase of the New Left was, de-
spite occasional tactical blunders, a
profoundly welcome and promising re-
invigoration of American political life.
The second phase of the New Left
signifies a sharp turn: away from
fraternal sentiment and back to ill-
absorbed dogma, away from the
shapelessness of participatory democ-
racy and back to the rigidity of van-
guard elites, away from the loving
spirit of nonviolence and back to a
quasi=Leninist fascination with vio-
lence. In this second phase, the New
Left grows in numbers yet makes cer-
tain, through its sterile authoritarian-
ism, that it will not be more than a
blown-up reincarnation of the radical
sects of the past.
romantic anarchism and Leninist
toughness. In this second phase of the
New Left, it sometimes seemed as if
the SDS were transforming itself into
a society for the resurrection of the
god that failed. Notions, dogmas,
ideologies, and slogans that an earlier
generation of radicals had discarded
after painful reflection and experience
now came back in crude form. The
theory of "social fascism," Stalin's
contribution to the victory of Hitler-
ism, was transformed into a theory of
"liberal fascism" by SDS leaders. The
idea of a self-appointed "vanguard"
that will prod the sluggish masses
into rebellion-one of the more
dubious contributions of Leninist or-
thodoxy-was uncritically embraced
by middle-class students whose view
of the actual conditions, sentiments,
and needs of "the masses" was utterly
lacking in reality. The notion that
"bourgeois democracy" is no more
than a mask for the domination of
capital and therefore not to be valued
by radicals found strong echoes in the
Sixties. And perhaps most distressing
of all, the liberal values of tolerance
and respect for the rights of op-
ponents were sneeringly dismissed in
accordance with the and formulas of
Herbert Marcuse. To be sure, not all
New Leftists succumbed to this au-
thoritarian debauch. Some, like Greg
Calvert, former SDS national secre-
tary, complained sadly about the
"Stalinization of the New Left," and
looked back wistfully to its earlier
years; but in the main, the drift was
toward the sectarian wastelands.
It would now seem that we are on
the verge of still another phase in the
development of the New Left. Some
elements within it-the Weathermen
What are the causes of this sharp and the Crazies, for example-seem
change? The breakup of the Negro- to be abandoning what they have re-
labor-liberal coalition that had garded as orthodox Leninism and to
sparked the civil rights movement and be turning to a mixture of violent
ensured the victory of John F. Ken- adventurism, staged desperation, and
nedy; the despair, much of it war- even hooliganism all marked by serii-
ranted and authentic, over U.S. in- ous,symptoms of social pathology.
volvement in Vietnam; the rise of Any contrast between the United
separatist and nationalist sentiment States today and Russia in the late
among black youth; an intense disillu- nineteenth century must of course be
sionment not only with liberal politics made with a maximum of. caution, yet
of the moment but with the whole it is hard to avoid the impression that
idea of liberalism; and the growing the desperado-totalitarian Left comes
appeal of the "Third World Revolu- to us as a re-enactment of the politics
tion" conceived (or misperceived) by of, the fanatical Russian terrorist
the New Left as an odd blend of Serge Nechayev, The Weathermen,
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having given up hope for the pro-
letariat, now see the main revolution-
ary force in our society as the high
school students; their experience may
yet lead them to the kindergar-
tens.
How fair some elements-not, it
should be said in fairness, the major-
ity--of the New Left have sunk into
the pathology of violence can be seen
from the following report about a re-
cent Weathermen gathering that ap-
peared in the January 10, 1970, issue of
The Guardian, a New Left weekly. The
report summarizes the keynote speech
of Bernardine Dohrn, former inter-
organization secretary of SDS:
Dohrn characterized violent, militant
response in the streets as "armed
struggle" against imperialism. . . .
"We're about being a fighting force
alongside the blacks, but a lot of us
are still honkies, and we're still scared
of fighting. We have to get into armed
struggle."
Part of armed struggle, as Dohrn
and others laid it down, is terrorism.
Political assassination-openly joked
about by some Weathermen-and lit-
erally any kind of violence that is con-
sidered anti-social were put forward
as legitimate forms of armed strug-
gle....
A twenty-foot-long poster adorned a
wall of the ballroom. It was covered
with drawings of bullets, each with a
name. Along with the understandable
targets like Chicago's Mayor Daley,
the Weathermen deemed as legitimate
enemies to be offed, among others,
The Guardian (which has criticized
Weathermen) and Sharon Tate, one
of several victims in the recent mass
murder in California. She was eight
months pregnant.
"Honkies are going to be afraid of
us," Dohrn insisted. She went on to
tell the war council about Charlie Man-
son, accused leader of the gang which
allegedly murdered the movie star and
several others on their Beverly Hills
estate. Manson has been portrayed in
the media as a Satanic, magnetic per-
sonality who held near-hypnotic sway
over several women whom he lent out
to friends as favors and brought along
for the murder scene. The press also
mentioned Manson's supposed fear of
blacks-he reportedly moved into
rural California to escape the violence
of a race war.
Weatherman, the "Bureau" says,
digs Manson....
"Dig it, first they killed those pigs,
then they ate dinner in the same room
with them, then they even shoved a
fork into a victim's stomach! Wildl"
said Bernardine Dohrn.
It will be said that these sentiments
are in no way characteristic of the
thousands of young people who have
been protesting against the Vietnam
War. I entirely agree. It will be said
that the Weatherman group isn't rep.
resentative of the New Left. In one
sense, that also is true. No other
New Left tendency has abandoned it.
self so completely to corrupting fan-
tasies of blood. But it needs to be said
that Miss Dohrn's ravings have a con-
nection-distorted, extreme, yet with
the representativeness of caricature-
to things one can hear these days
among some portions of the New Left.
The cult of violence, the identification
of a tiny group of affluent youth with
the "destiny of the revolution," the
adulation of charismatic authoritarian
leaders, the crude hatred for liberal
values-all these can be found in vari-
ous New Left tendencies, even if with.
out the vivid pathology of the Weather.
men.
The most interesting theoretical
question concerning the rapid changes
within the New Left has to do with the
relation between its earlier and later
phases. Those of us who write for such
journals as Dissent, whatever our
shortcomings, can at least claim some
credit for having foreseen the possibili-
ty that a politics of populist vagueness
would lead to a politics of authoritarian
rigidity. For this decline I would sug.
gest two causes:
1) The crisis and virtual collapse of
U.S. liberalism. During the 1960s, with
the possible exception of John F. Ken.
nedy's brief tenure as President and
Eugene McCarthy's effort to win the
Democratic nomination, American lib-
eralism was in a bad way. Without pre
tending to a full explanation; let me a;
least indicate a few summary reason!
for this decline: The exhaustion of tra
ditional New Deal politics, alliances
and outlooks; the appearance of moral
political issues that bread-and-butte)
liberalism was not equipped to dea
with; the involvement of certain libera
leaders (e.g., Humphrey) in a war tha
large numbers of young people rightly
saw as indefensible.
A rough but useful axiom can be sug
gested about recent American politics:
The New Left has flourished as a result
of, or in direct proportion to, the fail-
ures and failings of liberalism. When
the candidacies of Eugene McCarthy
and Robert Kennedy seemed to offer a
significant alternative, a way of realiz?
ing the hopes of the idealistic young
through electoral politics, thousands of
young radicals and liberals flocked to
their campaigns. Both on and off the
campus, the New Left then began to
wither into a marginal group, limited
for the time to nasty and impotent
sniping. But when there seemed no
viable alternative, and both candidates
in the 1968 Presidential election spoke
as supporters of the Vietnam War,
moods of despair swept across the cam-
pus, and the New Left could transform
these moods into a disillusionment
with liberal politics in particular and
the idea of liberalism in general.
2) An internal connection between
the thought of the early New Left and
the thought of the later New Left. What
both shared was an impatience, some-
times a distrust, and more recently a
downright contempt for the methods
and norms of democracy-the "cum-
bersomeness" or "sham" of representa-
tive elections, the "irrelevance" of
undemonstrative majorities, the "ma-
nipulation" of the masses by politicians
and the media, the "dullness" of ordi-
nary middle-class people, etc. Under
the guidance of such authoritarian
thinkers as Marcuse, the New Left in
both its phases, although more so in
the later one, revealed a profoundly
elitist bias. It might speak about "the
people," and sometimes even "the
workers," but it found its base of sup-
port mainly among the alienated mid-
dle-class young.
When the phrase "participatory de-
mocracy" first began to be heard, it
gained its impact as a response to a
genuine problem that had been trou-
bling both socialist and nonsocialist
thinkers for some time: What could be
done to stop the gradual erosion of
democratic institutions, in which the
formal appearance of participation by
the people continued but the real sub..
stance declined?
At first, the New Left's emphasis
on participatory democracy signified
mainly a desire to reinvigorate democ.
racy, to give it greater meaning and
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immediacy-although the New Left
rarely had any concrete proposals for
achieving this end. Too often partici-
patory democracy meant in practice a
blithe dismissal of parliamentary rules
in the discussions of the New Left.
groups, a practice that may have
encouraged collective expressiveness
(and interminable meetings) but also
proved to be peculiarly open to manip-
ulation by tight little factions and
charismatic figures emphasizing their
own modesty. At best, such procedures
helped enliven-were relevant to-the
politics of small groups; but they could
contribute almost nothing to solving
the problem of'democratic politics in
large societies, where the sheer number
of citizens and the complexity of com-
peting interests require a system of
representative institutions.
The stress on participatory democ-
racy proved to be especially damaging
in the curious way it prepared the
ground for authoritarian politics.
There was not too great a distance be-
tween the distrust shown for the limi-
tations of representative institutions
by the early New Left and the con-
tempt shown for the very idea of rep-
resentative institutions by the later
New Left. To dismiss "formal democ-
racy" in behalf of participatory de-
mocracy was in effect to jettison the
values of both-as if, in reality, demo-
cratic rights didn't always require 'a
commitment to "forms," that is, rules
both fixed and open to change through
agreed-upon procedures. By the late
Sixties, one rarely heard much about
participatory democracy from the
New Left. Now the fashionable phrase
was "revolution," unspecified as to so-
cial character, political possibility, or
ultimate goal, and too often reduced
to a ritual of expressiveness that re-
quired neither thought nor moral
justification.
Those of us who want to preserve
and extend democracy, while simul-
taneously working toward fundamen-
tal social change, must acknowledge
that the coming decade is likely to be
a time of trouble, even peril. There are
linked dangers from the irrationalities
and violence of both polar extremes,
which together could destroy our
hopes for an American movement at
once democratic, militant, and radical.
The New Left plays a double role here.
It contributes valuable energy to the
needed task of protest and insurgency,
but it also contributes a political-moral
confusion, sometimes verging on ni-
hilism, which threatens liberal values
and helps provoke a popular backlash.
Nor are our objections merely tacti-
cal. The kind of "revolution" envisaged
by all the SDS factions has nothing to
do with the large-scale social trans-
formation this country needs. Who
with a reasonable impulse to self-pres-
ervation and democratic survival
would care to test out the dispensation
of a Tom Hayden or a Mark Rudd?
Worthy fellows, perhaps, but better
powerless.
The perspective I would advance for
the immediate future combines 'aroad
coalition of popular forces to w,;rk for
immediate social improvement:: along
a liberal course, and a regathering of
those people, now a tiny minority in
this country, who believe in the values
of democratic socialism. This signifies:
? the premise that we are not and will
not soon be in a "revolutionary situa-
tion";
? the subpremise that, if "revolution-
ary activity" in the next few years
comes to more than loud talk, it will
have an elitist, desperado, and adven-
turist character;
? the belief that it is in our interest
to preserve and improve the present
agencies of democratic politics, marred
as they may be, requiring changes as
they do, and even liable to sudden col-
lapse as they are.
I think that the more sensitive and
undogmatic elements in and near the
New Left will soon have to face 1. he
futility of trying to "go it alone."
Their movement has grown and prob-
ably will continue to grow; yet, bar-
ring some major self-transformation,
it will also continue to have the char-
acter of a sect isolated in fundamental
outlook, language, and psychology
from the American people. Neverthe-
less, it contains precious resources of
energy and idealism, and this energy
and idealism ought to be thrust into
the mainstream of American politics.
One can only hope for a slow re-
gathering of forces among the liberal-
labor-Left in the United States. A
movement that fails to understand the
needs and aspirations of the American
workers and their unions, or that dis-
misses them contemptuously in the
name of some abstract revolutionary
purity is doomed to failure. A move-
ment that fails to understand the
urgency of moral protest animating
the young and that stays rigidly with-
in the limits of traditional New Deal
and post-New Deal liberalism is also
doomed to failure.
Can we then bring together the
strategy of coalition with the passions
of insurgency? Can we recognize that
in the American system wide and
loose electoral blocs are essential,
even if inherently unsatisfactory to
ideological purists, while at the same
time the idea of stirring the bottom
layers of society to speak out for
themselves is also urgent? Such a view
is inherently complex, and this is a
moment when many people are seized
by a mania for simplicity; but I think it
is a political perspective that, no mat-
ter how difficult to realize, is required
by the present state of things. Oddly
enough, if you were to go back to the
founding document of SDS, the now-
famous Port Huron statement, you
would find a view of politics fairly
close to what has been said here. One
can only hope that many young people
will yet return to it.
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The Institute for Strategic Studies
Foreign Policy in Latin America
CLAUDIO VELIZ
The Dyason Memorial Lectures were set up twenty years ago, to invite distinguished
overseas specialists to speak in Australia. The recent series of talks were given by
Dr Claudio Veliz, Director of the Institute of International Studies, Santiago, Chile,
and were reprinted in Australian Outlook. The second talk by Dr Veliz, of which the
full title was `Foreign Policy and the Rise of Nationalism in Latin America', is
reproduced below.
Australian Outlook (Melbourne). December 1969. Reproduced by permission.
The disconcerting and unfortunate conflict
between the Central American republics of
Honduras and El Salvador ought not to obscure
the fact that Latin America has a long and
sophisticated tradition of diplomacy and intra-
Latin American politics which has evolved
through four centuries to the present situation, in
which a complex nationalism finds functional
expression in the desire, shared by all political
parties and groups of opinion, to construct an
independent foreign policy.
If relative change is a principal characteristic
of human action in scientific and technological
matters, then relative continuity is a main feature
of political activity. Things change indeed, but
less than we think, and all too often the changes
that do take place are not those we had planned
for and confidently expected. Consequently, if
we are to seek an understanding of the current
political situation of Latin America, it is useful to
examine, however briefly, the traditions, the atti-
tudes and the manner of political activity which
have led to the present state of affairs.
It would be a mistake to date the awareness of
national identity in Latin America only from the
first decades of the nineteenth century, when the
Spanish colonies successfully carried out their
revolution for independence. In fact, if one
accepts the view that the modern phenomenon of
nationalism and the formation of the nation-state
should be traced back to the sixteenth century,
then one can legitimately use, as a working hypo-
thesis, the proposition that the major nations of
Latin America are among the oldest in the western
world. For, indeed, during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the geographical isolation
of the colonies; the nature of their direct links
with the Iberian peninsula and their lack of com-
munications between each other; even the result-
ing parochialism of their cultural development
over a long period, facilitated the gradual develop-
ment of a sense of separateness and a
related feeling of internal coherence and cultural
identity.
This national awareness became politically
significant during the revolutions of the decade
after 18io, when most of the colonies severed
their relations with Spain. At that time, national
feeling was principally associated with the rejec-
tion of the Spanish connection which was con-
sidered a reactionary, obscurantist and dead
tradition to be shaken off if the new republics
were going to move along the road of progress
and liberty. On the other hand, the cultural com-
plex of Western. Europe - especially Britain and
France - exercised a tremendous attraction and
was uncritically accepted as a viable and most
desirable alternative. The choice was under-
standable; liberal or radical Europe appeared in
the vanguard of everything and to follow her was
to be on the road to progress; at the other
extreme, Spain, sunk in poverty and political
repression, still torn apart by wars of religion or
dynastic succession, offered a distressing spec-
tacle to her old colonies.
The dilemma was expressed in forthright terms
by many Latin American intellectuals. Perhaps
the best known presentation of the case was that
by Sarmiento, the Argentine thinker and politi-
cian, who in a book entitled Civilization and
Barbarism, tried to prove - among other things -
that everything European was civilized while
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things Latin American were equated with
barbarism.
In cultural terms, the assumption of political
power by the new national governments was not
paralleled by a significant inward-looking search
for domestic roots; nationalist feeling was identi-
fied with the conscious and enthusiastic imitation
of the political and cultural habits of the principal
nations of Western Europe.
Moreover, the, ruling circles - to which the
intelligentsia and the cultured groups un-
doubtedly belonged - had economic and political
interests which coincided with the prevalent
liberal, free-trading trends in vogue in the more
enlightened European capitals. These ruling
groups were mostly exporters of mineral and
agricultural products, or were directly or in-
directly associated with foreign firms which im-
ported manufactures from Europe and the
United States. Hence, even without reference to
ideological determinants, these people objectively
tended to accept 4 liberal, free-trading solution to
the problems which confronted them at the time.
Therefore, the cultural attitude which informed
the development; of nationalist feeling at this
relatively early stage did not seek a break with
Western Europe'; rather, it looked upon the
imitation of the European cultural complex as a
desirable goal.
But perhaps the most important characteristic
of this long, systematic and occasionally success-
ful process of imitation was that it was con-
sciously focused on learning how cultured Euro-
peans consumed, and not how they produced.
The object was to become civilized, European-
like; this object did not include a manner of pro-
duction for the very simple reason that it was not
needed. Those Latin Americans who aped the
consumption habits of Europeans had ample
financial means to indulge in this activity; Latin
America has always been rich in resources and
during the second half of the nineteenth century,
the world demand for her primary products was
growing at a very rapid rate.
The Latin American and the Japanese pro-
cesses of conscious imitation ran their respective
courses almost simultaneously, but the results
were different: the Latin Americans became
experts at consuming like Europeans while they
continued to produce like eighteenth-century
apprentice Spaniards; the Japanese learned fairly
rapidly how to produce like Europeans without,
at the same time, massively accepting Western
Europe's habits of consumption.
In the nineteenth century, the countries of
Latin America had little political, military or
strategic importance in world affairs. Partly
because of this, and partly because of the very
great distances which separated them from the
centres of decision, although they earnestly tried
to imitate the style and manner of European
diplomacy, their international politics were
emphatically intra-Latin American. Culturally,
their nationalism fed on European example, but
when it came to action, it was directed against
one another. Thus there developed in Latin
America a complex, sophisticated diplomacy; a
microcosm of world affairs, with international
wars, secret pacts, betrayals, arbitration, defence
treaties, and - of course - a delicate system of
balance of power.
The first stage in this development was brief
and violent. As soon as Spain was ousted from
the region, it became apparent that the frontiers
between the new republics had to be defined, and
this was only accomplished after fighting a
number of small wars. The major viceregal or
imperial centres - Mexico, Colombia, Peru,
Brazil and Argentina - retained their territory
and their claims were not challenged; but between
them there were a number of captaincy-generals
and presidencies - smaller administrative units
within the Spanish Empire - whose territory was
claimed by more than one of their powerful
neighbours. These early struggles were resolved
through the formation of a number of inde-
pendent buffer states - Ecuador, Venezuela,
Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia - which more or
less corresponded to the colonial frontiers of the
disputed territories.
During the rest of the century and up to the
First World War, intra-Latin American politics
were mostly dominated by the stresses and shifts
of two interlocking systems of balance of power;
one ranged along the Atlantic coast and included
Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina; the
other alongside the coast of the Pacific, with
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile. This
second system of equilibrium eventually achieved
a delicate internal balance which may have had a
positive influence in maintaining stability in the
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region during the half century which followed the
War of the Pacific in the early i88os.
It is also worth noting that the Pacific coast
system included almost exactly the territory of the
Inca Empire and later of the Viceroyalty of Peru,
and this is again the area covered by the countries
which signed the Andean Pact in 1969.
During this period, which can be roughly con-
sidered to have started in the mid-nineteenth
century and ended ,with the depression of 1929,
relations with the United States were not always
easy. Anti-Americanism, which became such a
violent and well-publicized phenomenon during
the worst years of the cold war, has its roots in
the British-American rivalries of the nineteenth
century when the idea that a vast cultural dis-
tance separated the presumably civilized, sophisti-
cated, well-mannered, bilingual, European-like
Latin Americans, from the loud, wealthy, vulgar
and upstart Americans, was time and again used
by British, French and German businessmen and
diplomats to gain a foothold in the region. Yet in
spite of the Mexican-American War and the
numerous instances of outright military interven-
tion by the United States Marines in the Carib-
bean, relations between the major Latin American
republics and the United States were not the most
important feature of the region's diplomatic
history; rather, as I have suggested, it was intra-
Latin American relations that consumed most of
the energies of the foreign ministries of the new
republics.
This relatively sheltered state of affairs came to
an abrupt end, not with the First World War
which was considered a very distant conflict
whose outcome did not really affect Latin
America one way or the other, but with the Great
Depression of 1929. The economic and social
consequences of this event were simply stagger-
ing, and reinforced much of what had been
preached for some years by the supporters of
nationalistic, reformist and revolutionary creeds.
A situation of mass unemployment and a general
paralysis of economic activity caused not by local
maladministration but by financial disruptions
which had taken place far away, and for reasons
which escaped the control of the Latin American
governments, could not but lead to the strengthen-
ing of the nationalist positions. These feelings of
impotence and frustration were quite general and
it became apparent that, whatever their party
allegiance or political inclination, practically all
governments in Latin America were moving
towards a reconsideration of their relations -
political and economic - with the rest of the
world. It could perhaps be said that Latin
America's awareness of her inter-dependence
with the industrialized nations of the world first
became politically significant during this decade
after 1930, and it was in those crucial years that
governments started for the first time to formulate
more or less coherent extra-Latin American
foreign policies.
This process had hardly begun when the
Second World War put an end to it. Undoubted-
ly, diplomatic activity continued, but these first
stirrings of a new and complex nationalism were
overwhelmed by the immediate political demands
of a conflict which divided the world into two vast
enemy camps with Latin America securely within
the sphere of influence of the Western allies.
War and depression also brought about great
changes in the economic life of these nations. The
outbreak of war, especially, led in fact to the
establishment of a system of absolute protection
for the production of industrial goods in Latin
America. There followed a tremendous growth of
import-substitution industries, based on public
capital, channelled through the central state and
necessarily using imported, advanced, capital-
intensive techniques. Within two decades, Latin
America built a number of vast industrial com-
plexes and in doing so, acquired some consider-
able knowledge of how to produce the manu-
factured goods demanded by the large urban
markets.
The imitation of consumer tastes which charac-
terized the cultural nationalism of the nineteenth
century was in this way completed with a rapid
process of adaptation of United States tech-
nology and modes of production.
The end of the war did not bring about any
great changes in the foreign political situation as
seen from Latin America because soon after
hostilities were over came the Truman Doctrine
and the cold war, which presented her with a new
dilemma, the reflection of yet another situation
which was completely beyond her control. How-
ever, it appeared to many that the dilemma pro-
posed by President Truman was less convincing
than the one posed by the Second World War. It
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is possible that a principal reason for this sceptic-
ism was that 'Latin American politicians knew
perfectly well that the local Communist move-
ments were very far from being revolutionary'
and most unlikely to act in the way that President
i ruman and his successors described. At any rate,
although the cold war dilemma was quietly
rejected as unrealistic, practically every country
used the preoccupation of the United States with
the problem of Communist subversion as a lever
to secure greater financial. aid and military
assistance.
The tension; of the cold war resulted in the
acceptance by nations on both sides of the Iron
Curtain of a number of supra-nationalarrange-
ments to counteract the real or imagined threats
from their respective adversaries. These arrange-
ments became so numerous and well-known that
some observers were inclined to think that they
were symptomatic of a great trend towards the
disappearance of oldfashioned nationalism and
the coming of the age of internationalism.
From Latin America, the situation was seen
differently. It appeared that the fears, the threats
and the military and political demands which
resulted from the cold war confrontation, had
convinced a number of countries of the wisdom
of postponing their own national interests
momentarily, For the sake of entering into defen-
sive agreements to protect them from a common
danger. In this way were formed NATO, the
Warsaw Pact, the Baghdad Pact, ANZUS,
SEATO, CENTO, the Organization of American
States, and so on.
The high tide of the cold war covered all but
the highest peaks of national interest and the
conflict gradually resolved itself into a massive
confrontation between two great nationalisms;
those of the Soviet Union and the United States.
For the allies of each contender, the term 'inter-
nationalism' acquired a new significance as a
euphemism which described the rapid and loyal
support these smaller nations gave to the foreign
policy decisions of the great powers.
When, for a multiplicity of reasons, the high
tide of the cold war' started. to recede, the peaks
of the national interests of lesser nations, which
r In fact, in the past forty years, there are only two docu-
mented iustanu:s of active participation by Communists
in revolutionary attempts to take over a Latin American
government; these happened in Brazil in 1935 and in San
Salvador in 193:(.
had been submerged, but not eliminated, started
to reappear on the surface. Slowly at first, but
gradually gaining momentum, polycenitrism pro-
liferated on both sides of the old Iron Curtain
and therecame a moment, perhaps three or four
years ago, when the Soviet Union probably felt
more significantly challenged - politically - by
China than by the United States, while the United
States was much more bothered by France than
by the Soviet Union.
This restoration of fluidity took place in the
shadow of two very great powers, armed to the
teeth, locked in a close embrace and unable to
manoeuvre with anything approaching agility.
More important, perhaps, the principles and
ideologies which the Soviet Union and the United
States claimed were the ultimate cause for which
the cold war was fought, have been challenged
all too often even by their respective allies and
were quietly shelved while their place was taken
by what can only be described as a flexible and
pragmatic approach to international politics.
Furthermore, it appears that during the im-
mediate past a dissociation has been taking place
between factors which traditionally have gone
together in international affairs. At 'least since
Machiavelli pointed it out quite clearly and
brutally, military and economic power have been
considered essential prerequisites for the efficient
exercise of political power. This is not so clear
today; Rumania has neither economic nor mili-
tary power remotely comparable to that of the
Soviet Union, and yet she acts in politics in a way
which can most certainly be described. as signifi-
cant. France, when President de Gaulle caused
such difficulties to NATO, was certainly not in a
position to match the United States' economic or
military power. In military or economic terms,
Peru is a very minor country, and yet this small
nation has successfully challenged the United
States and is now exercising a considerable
political influence in Latin America, much greater
than her economic and military might would
warrant.
The fact is that, whatever its causes, there is at
present a situation which allows certain countries
in certain circumstances to have greater political
mobility, and perhaps power, than their limited
military and economic strength would suggest.
At this juncture in the development of inter-
national affairs, Latin Americans fact: a difficult
and exciting problem. If we are to have an
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independent foreign policy, based on a civilized
and efficient appreciation of what constitutes
our national interest, we must first discover what
we are, what is it that we want to be, and how we
want to go about it. These questions do not really
need immediate and definitive answers; it is
enough of an accomplishment for us to ask them.
Until now, Latin Americans have been at worst
mediocre imitators; at best, able to supply intelli-
gent answers to questions posed elsewhere. To
begin asking our own questions represents a very
great and positive change.
For three hundred years Latin Americans
tried to become like Spaniards; then for one
hundred and fifty years we used our wealth and
energy to try to turn ourselves into sophisticated
Europeans; for the past twenty years we have
accepted - for good or had reasons - circum-
stances and situations which have made us
increasingly dependent on the United States.
Today it is fairly obvious that the dynamic
possibilities of dependence have been exhausted
and Latin Americans are at last faced with them-
selves; forced at short notice to establish a
coherent and functional relation between national
aspirations and foreign politics.
It is important, if we are to understand cor-
rectly what this political and intellectual mood
really means, not to fall into the trap of thinking
it is just one more instalment of the facile anti-
Americanism of the cold war years. This is
simply not so. The nationalist resurgence cuts
across political boundaries in a very real way.
Only a few weeks ago, when the government of
Chile was revising its policies with respect to the
United States copper companies operating in the
country, all the political parties, from the extreme
Right to the extreme Left, were in favour of
nationalization. In the confrontation between the
Peruvian government and the International
Petroleum Company, again, all the political
parties and organized groups of opinion sup-
ported President Velasco Alvarado although they
openly disagreed with him on other issues. Such
examples can be multiplied and indicate that the
old cold war divisions no longer apply to the
relations between Latin America and the United
States.
This resurgence of nationalist feeling has not, of
course, taken place in a vacuum. A number of
political decisions mark the transition from the
quiet acceptance of a dependent role - which was
more or less common a decade ago -to the
generalized and almost respectable defiance of
today. One most significant event in this process
of transition has undoubtedly been the Alliance
for Progress, that scheme of co-operation first
launched by President Kennedy at the beginning
of this decade and whose unhappy life has stir-
prised even its most bitter critics with its in-
glorious brevity and. quiet demise.
When the Alliance was first launched, it was
openly proclaimed to be the answer of the United
States to the Communist menace in the region; it
differed from all other schemes in that it con-
ditioned the granting of financial assistance to the
fulfilment of certain types of reform (agrarian,
fiscal and administrative), and the maintenance of
representative, democratic forms of government.
Apart from other considerations, the Alliance
represented a conscious attempt by the United
States to change her political allies in Latin
America. There was at the time, inside the
Democratic Party and especiall}' among the
President's closest associates, a feeling of great
unease with the type of political support the
United States was receiving in Latin America. It
was felt that it was unfair, inefficient and danger-
ous that the support which the great democratic
power obtained in Latin America should have
been almost exclusively forthcoming from the
extreme Right-wing groups which loudly and
frequently made public their loyalty to the United
States in her anti-Bolshevik crusade. The new
Kennedy Administration felt that this identifica-
tion of the United States with every petty
southern tyranny and the most reactionary
political movements was extremely undesirable,
as well as paradoxical, for the United States
stood precisely for principles of political conduct
that were anathema to these southern hemisphere
political movements. Moreover, the victory of
Fidel Castro in Cuba was seen by many - mis-
takenly as it turned out - to be a portent of things
to come, and there was a genuine desire to find
for the United States a course of political and
economic action more in tune with changing
circumstances.
The Alliance, through its emphatic advocacy of
reform and democratic control, tried to shift the
site of local political support for the United
States from the extreme Right-wing to the centre-
Left. It was felt that with its strong advocacy of
structural reform, the non-Communist Left
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would have no option but to support it. On the
other hand, it was also felt that the loss of the
support of the extreme Right-wing was not such a
catastrophe and would be more than amply com-
pensated in quality and numbers by the new
loyalties which the Alliance was expected to
inspire among the centre-Left.
This analysis was only partly borne out by sub-
sequent events; the Right-wing felt betrayed and
was absolutely indignant with the United States,
but the centre-Left' greeted the initiative with
coolness and in fact was never really prepared to
support it. As a result, the United States was
more deprived of political support than before.
In an indirect manner, the political failure of
the Alliance For Progress opened the way to the
type of nationalist challenge that has now become
characteristic of the foreign policy of the coun-
tries of Latin America. For, after years of loudly
proclaiming her cold war aims, the United
States had bi:lieved her own arguments and was
imprisoned in a rigid mould of policy which
could only conceive of a Communist Left-wing
challenge from Latin America. In a way, she
resembled the fortress of Singapore on the eve of
the Second World War, all guns facing the sea
but practically defenceless against a land attack.
The United States had all her formidable political
and military artillery aimed against the Latin
American Le ft-wing, but she was quite vulnerable
to a nationalist challenge from the Right or the
centre-Right. And this is precisely what has
happened:the resurgence of national feeling; the
desire by the intelligentsia, large sectors of the
urban middlL. groups, the armed forces and some
Church groups, to put an end to the limitations of
dependence; the frustration of the Right-wing
and the relative decline of the influence of the
United States in world affairs in the face of a
growing pol:,centrism and a general restoration of
fluidity to international politics, all have contri-
buted to bringing about a complex crisis in the
relations between Latin America and the United
States.
This crisis has been facilitated by Washington's
delay in announcing a coherent policy to replace
the defunct Alliance for Progress. There is indeed
a pause on the part of the new Nixon Administra-
tion which reflects an equilibrium between con-
flicting pressure groups within the United States.
This is not likely to be resolved at short notice
and in the meanwhile Latin America will prob-
ably have sufficient time to put together a fairly
impressive and politically viable nationalist
foreign policy.
In the past, the policies of the United States
towards Latin America were mostly influenced
by the traditional primary producers' pressure
group - those United States corporations inter-
ested in the production of Latin American raw
materials and primary products which were sub-
sequently exported elsewhere - and in the export
to Latin America of United States manufactures.
These groups were mostly identified with the
Republican Party and had close links with the
local Right-wing groups in Latin America. Their
relative economic influence has been declining
over the last two decades whilst the importance
of another group, the financial and industrial
interests, has been growing. These new corpora-
tions are not interested in the production of raw
materials for export, but in the production of
manufactured goods inside Latin America.
Theirs is a progressive and modernizing outlook
and they are prepared to support all the reforms,
however radical, which they feel are compatible
with rapid economic development. They are
mostly associated with the Democratic Party and
at the time strongly supported the Alliance for
Progress. The trouble is that although their
influence has been growing, they are now out of
power, while the traditional pressure group of the
primary producers whose influence has been
declining, finds itself back in power with President
Nixon. In a way, Governor Rockefeller sym-
bolizes this paradoxical situation in his own
person because through his family he is associat-
ed with Standard Oil (and hence with the Inter-
national Petroleum Company) which is typical of
the traditional primary producers' pressure
group, but personally he is mostly interested in
the new industrial and financial ventures, through
the Chase Manhattan Bank, IBEC, and other
enterprises.
At present, the delicate equilibrium between
these conflicting pressure groups does not appear
to be moving towards a resolution, but from the
point of view of the new Latin American
nationalists, one is as bad as the other, because
the type of economic development which the
modernizing pressure group would support
would drive the region even deeper into a position
of utter dependence.
This concern with the problem of dependence
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underlies the whole issue of relations with the
United States and although at ti ales it may appear
crude, it hides the essence of a cultural attitude
which may well become the most dynamic force
behind the resurgence of nationalism.
After centuries of more or less successful
imitation of foreign models, Latin Americans are
convinced that they must start creating their own
environment, intellectual, political and artistic.
The history of the passing of man through this
planet is in many ways the history of the physical
and institutional shapes he has designed to serve
him as instrunments. Man is the only animal who
used tools systematically, but these are not
absolutely practical; they have different shapes
which identify the user. A Greek vase is different
from a Coca-Cola bottle and yet both were
designed to hold liquids. If two thousand years
hence archaeologists were to dig up present-day
Latin America, they would find little or nothing
to differentiate that part of the world or to iden-
tify it with a certain people.
What Latin Americans find most undesirable
in the development of industries using United
States capital, technology and designs, is that
this is gradually building a cultural environment
which is utterly deprived of functional contact
with the social conglomerate which inhabits it.
As industrial products are every day more abun-
dant and production is growing very rapidly, the
urban groups in Latin America have almost a
feeling of suffocation under an avalanche of
foreign shapes which obliterates the personality
of the region.
As can be imagined, this is not a small problem
and it most certainly does not have a single or
easy solution.
However, three initiatives are now gaining
considerable support which -in my opinion-
accurately reflect the spirit in which solutions to
these problems are being sought.
The first is a conscious and deliberate attempt
to create in Latin America a scientific and techno-
logical pool with sufficient capacity to generate
and innovate in those fields. This is a difficult if not
impossible enterprise for a single country, but it
is now being planned at least on the basis of the
Andean group of nations. Secondly, the move-
ment for Latin American integration which until
recently was seen mainly as a commercial initia-
tive, has now attained a new political significance
not so much as a free trade area, but rather as a
powerful coalition which would improve the
negotiating capacity of the member countries and
also afford a broad base for the development of
industrial ventures built around autonomous,
multinational state or mixed corporations.
Finally, there is a widespread feeling that an
effective and opportune way of helping to solve
the problem of dependence is by breaking away
from the vertical axis, United States-Latin
America. This is to be accomplished not by fall-
ing into the negative trap of anti-Americanism,
but rather by diversifying the foreign relations of
the southern republics; by making a determined
effort to open up functional channels of com-
munication and trade, activating exchanges
between the countries on either side of the
Pacific. The opening to the Pacific is thus an
indirect consequence of the crisis in the relations
between Latin America and the United States
and has now become a major object of policy for
the Andean group of nations, the most imagi-
native and dynamic coalition of the region.
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Fidel & the New State-Class
By John Mander
^ IDEL CASTRO, according to Mr. Herbert
Matthews,' is the first Latin American to
have achieved world fame during his own life-
time. Of course Mr. ' Matthews, as readers of
ENCOUNTER (see his long article, "Dissent over
Cuba," ENCOU\7ER, July 1964) will know, has
an interest to declare in this matter, and readily
declares it. A dispassionate observer might in-
(Iced get the impression that Mr. Matthews had
invented Fidel Castro; and he would not be
far wrong. Castro himself has been heard to
refer irritably to "this old man who thinks he's
my father" (quoted by Mr. Matthews in the
present biography). The irritation comes natur-
ally from a man who, if he has not yet claimed
immaculate conception, is known to have re-
sented his actual father as strongly as he
resented the tutelage of an Eisenhower, or a
Khrushchev. Still, it would be as much a mis-
take to attempt to psychologise Fidel away, as
to take his wordy rhetoric for gospel, which is
more or less what Mr. Matthews contends Mr.
Theodore Draper has been doing. In that long
battle Mr. Matthews comes up with several
cogent points. Kremlinology, as practised in
contemporary think-tanks, is wasted on Fidel
Castro. When Mr. Matthews first interviewed
him in the Sierra Maestra, he was most cer-
tainly not a Communist. That he was a poten-
tial caudillo, of great force and very Latin
American type, Mr. Matthews spotted correctly
and duly informed his N.Y. Times audience.
It had been thought that Fidel was dead-killed
when his boat from Mexico made its disastrous
landfall. Mr. Matthews revived the man and
I Castro: A Political Biography. By HERBERT L.
MnrrrnEws. Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 5os.
'Socialism in Cuba. By LEO HUBERMAN and PAUL
M. SWEEZY. Monthly Review Press, 54$., $5.95g.
' The Liberators. By IRENE NICHOLSON. Faber &
Faber, 55L
, History of Latin American Civilisation. Edited
by LWIS IIA`:KE. Methuen, 65s.
his legend, and by so doing gave him a place
in American folk-lore and Batista a nasty
shock. For once, the historian had made his-
tory. One can hardly blame Mr. Matthews for
sticking so doggedly to his invention.
"Invention" sounds impolite, and perhaps
"discovery" would be more gracious. But one
cannot help feeling that Mr. Matthews' Fidel
is as much "invented" as, say, Mr. Draper's
or Messrs. I-Iuberman & Swcezy's in their
frankly apologetic account-though they admit
the more glaring mistakes-of the social and
political structure of the new Cuba.' Mr.
Matthews quotes a school report that credits the
young Fidel with "remarkable histrionic
abilities." Fidel is indeed, though not quite in
the sense Mr. Bolt intended, a man for all
seasons. If it suits Fidel, as it did late in 196x,
not only to claim that he was a Marxist-Lenin.
ist, but that he had always been one-an easily
controvertible fact-this is more readily under-
stood within the context of the history of Latin
American caudillismo (as can be gleaned from
Irene Nicholson's posthumous The Liberators,'
or from Lewis Hanke's immensely scholarly col-
lection, History of Latin American Civilisation')
than of the history of the world communist
movement. Thus,, it may well be that in the
Draper-Matthews controversy both camps have
right on their side. "Objectively" (to speak in
Marxist terms) Fidel has certainly brought Cuba
into the Socialist camp, and is pro-Soviet enough
to have condoned the Czechoslovak intervention.
But at the same time it is entirely credible that
Raul Castro (in a laughing comment to Mr.
Matthews) should have said, "Yes, we tried to
read Marx's Capital when we were in prison.
But we threw it away after three chapters...."
The Latin American caudillo has traditionally
won power through his personal qualitics-
bravery, panache, millenarian rhetoric. Idco-
logical consistency has never rated very high.
But this is not to say that the caudillo
-Bolivar, Peron or Castro-does not operate
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according to certain rules inherent in the
make-up of Latin American society. The simi-
larity of the pau:crn su$gcsts, on the contrary,
a high degree of consistency. Historically,
eaudillismo.was :i rough and ready solution to
the problem of le,yitimac) in the broken societies
"the Liberators" left behind them. It is clear
from Professor Hanke's! volume and from Pro-
fessor I-i(umphrcys',' that very little in the
colonial cxpcricr.cc of Latin America (unlike
that of the Thirteen States) had prepared
her inhabitants for self-government. Before
Miranda, Bolivar, and San Martin (as famous,
surely, in their lifetimes as Mr. Matthews'
Fidel?) royal authority had been absolute. After
them, no firm basis of authority remained. The
oligarchs ruled, but who should rule the
oligarchs? The upshot could only be territorial
fragmentation, and reversion to the rule of the
strongest. If a more intellectual justification
was looked for, tradition dictated that the
ruling caudillo should turn to Europe or North
America for some suitable ideology to under-
pin his authority. The ideology in question
need not be esFecially relevant to the circum-
stances of the country he ruled: but it must
be new, and-it must have at its back the pres-
tige of some recently triumphant cause. Thus
Bolivar and Sa.s Martin (as Miss Nicholson
shows) were ch.ldren of the Benthamitcs and
the French Revolution. Later in the century, Por-
firio Diaz of Mexico, and many others, pro-
claimed Comic's positivisme as their state philo-
sophy. Peron of Argentina-and Vargas of
Brazil-dabbled in Fascism. Seen in this per-
spective, Castro and Guevara were merely fol.
lowing the tradi::ional path in proclaiming their
revolution "Marxist-Leninist"-without troub-
ling to read the Marxist classics and, indeed,
keeping the genuine communists (as the two
Escalante affairs show) !as far as possible from
the levers of power. This is one point, among
many others, made by Mr. Richard Bourne in
his excellent recent Pelican study of Latin
American leader:; of the present day'-Guevara,
Frei, Strocssncr, Lace da, Kubitschek, Evita
Peron. All exhibit this :type of caudillo leader-
ship; all tend to make up their (very varied)
ideologies as they go algng.
TrrE CONTRAST LETWEEN the slapdash amateur-
ism of the 26 July group (which Mr. Matthews
makes no attempt to conceal) and the dreary,
but disciplined professionalism of the official
communists could hardly be greater. But if the
S Tradition and Revolt in Latin America and
other essays. By R. A. Hum-intEYs. Weielcnfeld &
Nicolson, 63s.
'Political Lead mr of Latin America. By Richard
Bourne. Penguin, 7$.
professional communists came in handy (they
were good organisers-they had organised for
llatista), their ideology satisfied certain needs
which existed not only in the Cuba of the
ig6os, but equally in the Latin America of the
Liberators, and indeed of the Conquistadores.
The Conquistadores had the universal Catholic
religion to sustain them in their incredible en-
deavours in the New World, and it is hardly
conceivable that a band of mere marauders
could have achieved the same results,
Similarly, the Liberators had the universal
ideology of "the Rights of Man" to sustain
them in their struggle against the decrepit,
bigoted rule of the later Bourbons. Armed with
this ideology, they did not feel their. selves pro-
vincials, and were not so treated by their Euro-
pean or North American contemporaries. In-
deed, they could feel that in making their re-
volutions they had put themselves in the fore-
front of humanity. Certainly, it is not difficult
to see a certain ambiguity in their eager adop-
tion of this new ideology. For, while they felt
that they were "making it new," it is apparent
to us that they were employing a borrowed ideo-
logy, often fatally ill-suited to the real problems
of their continent.
It is unkind perhaps, but surely accurate, to
see in this a typically colonial reaction. The
attitude to the metropolis is ambivalent:' on the
one hand, it and all its works are rejected as
outmoded; on the other, its newest, most avant-
garde thinkers are called in to redress the
balance. It is apparent that Marxism-Lenism
satisfies these ancient needs very well. It is
universalist: it is anti-American; and it can
still be presented as "the.new thing." Without
it, Castro would be just another Latin Ameri-
can caudillo lording it over a relatively insigni-*
ficant island. With it, he becomes part of a
universal process-indeed its avant-garde. Yet,
from another aspect, it must appear that all he
has done is to exchange one variety of colonial
dependence for another.
Tins ARGUES, TrHEN, for a Latin American in-
terpretation of the phenomenon Fidel Castro.
Whether Fidel Castro, so interpreted, is more
or less of a danger to the United States I am not
sure. Logically, it would appear that an indigen-
ous Castrismo was far more of a threat to the
'The same ambiguity runs through much of
Latin American art and literature. For those inter-
ested in the cultural working-out of this inherited
ambiguity a study of German Arcinieggas' Latin
America: a cultural history (Barrie & Rockliff, 84s.).
or, in the visual arts, Leopoldo Castedco s excellent,
up-to-date and splendidly illustrated A History o/
Latin American Art and Architecture (Pall Mail,
50s.) is strongly recommended.
20
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"American system it than an ,alien rctgimc im-
posed by force on an unwilling society. But this
is perhaps to ignore the heterogeneity of Latin
American society itself (as Castro and Gucvara
did), and to argue that a formula that worked
in one area of the continent is applicable to an-
other. with wholly different conditions (i.e.,
Bolivia). This, too, is an ancient problem. Is
Latin America one-as the titles of Professor
Hanke's and Professor Humphreys' volumes
assume-or is the heterogeneity so great as to
render all generalisations meaningless? It will
be seen that both communists and anti-com-
munists arc potential victims of this dilemma.
Theoretically, Marxism should take "objec-
tive conditions" into account, and proceed
therefrom. But it is evident that in today's pre-
valent anti-Americanism it is subjective condi-
tions that really count. Anti-Americanism is a
reaction that bears little relation to the objec-
tive facts of American investment, interference,
etc. In fact, it is clear that one reason why
Cuba was among the top league of Latin Ameri-
can states economically before Castro was pre-
cisely that American investment was so high.
But this has to be balanced against the fact
that Havana (like Mexico City and Lima, "City
of the Kings") was, at the time of the Declara-
tion of Independence, a richer, more powerful,
more elegant city than any in North America.
The historical humiliation involved in the de-
scent from this status to a centre of gambling
and prostitution for the yanqui tourist is painful
to imagine, and may well count for more than
all U.S. imperialist activities in this century.
If Cuba is competing in any kind of avant-
garde race, it is in the subjective depth and
violence of its anti-Americanism.
But there is a profounder view of the "Latin
Americanism" of Fidel Castro's revolution; and
an excellent analysis of it is to' be found in
Luis Mercier Vega's Roads to Power in Latin
America? Mercier Vega is clearly on the side
of those who see Latin America as a frustrated
civilisation. The states of Latin America have
a common problem. The old oligarchies are not
well-adapted to coping with the complexities
of modern society. Yet the social progression
we are familiar with in Europe-feudalism-
bourgcoisie-proletariat-makes little sense in
Latin America. There is no bourgeoisie, be-
cause the middle class remains largely depen.
dent on the old oligarchic structure, and desires
only to live by its traditional values. Equally,
;there is no proletariat because the "feudal" re-
0 Roads to Power in Latin America. By Luis
MERCi6R VEGA. Pall Mall Press,, 45s.
lations that existed in the countryside have
been reproduced in the context of industrial
life, and trade unions are almost everywhere de-
lundcnt agents of the state or the oligarchy.
(Equally, one might add, there is no true
peasantry in the European sense, so that even
"feudalism" is an inappropriate term.)
Yet the old, oligarchic state is plainly ob-
solescent. What, then, is the alternative? In a
brilliant analysis of the various guerrilla move-
mcnts of the past decade," M. Mercier Vega
makes it very plain that guerrilla tactics are not
among the "roads to power" he has in mind.
True, in Cuba they can be said (with reserva.
tions) to have succeeded. But elsewhere, he
suggests, there are only two real alterna-
tives: the Army, and what he calls the "State-
class." We are already familiar with 'the Army.
It is in power in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and
Bolivia today, and provides one possible alterna.
tive (and not necessarily a "right-wing" one, as
the Peruvian example shows). But Army r6gimes
are generally short-lived, because armies do not
possess the kind of expertise, any more than do
oligarchies, which modern administration re-
quires.
The second alternative, then, is the "State.
class." This is not a middle class in the con-
ventional Anglo-Saxon or Marxist sense (if any.
thing, it is closer to that "New Class" of which
Dj ilas wrote). This "State-class" is essentially
an extension of that centralised bureaucracy
which Latin America has known since Colonial
days, laced with a portion of modern-type
technocracy. It is to be seen in Mexico in the
PRI party, where it functions efficiently and
with a degree of "democratic centralism," by
electing a caudillo for a non-renewable term of
six years, and uses the rhetoric of a Revolution
in which it only fitfully believes. This type of
regime is more long-lasting than the military
type, because it ossesses greater expertise and
elasticity, controlp of the pork barrel, and an
ability to exploit the nationalist sentiments of
the electorate, while pacifying the concern of
the foreign investor. It needs, still, a caudillo-
type figure who can act as arbiter between con-
flicting interests. it is both very modern, and
very traditional. It is to M. Mcrcicr Vega that
we owe the bold suggestion that what we are
seeing in Cuba is essentially the establishment
of a "State-class" and a "class-State," of a type
that will become increasingly common in Latin
America. M. Mercier Vega has taken Fidel
firmly out of the hands of Mr. Matthews and
Mr. Draper, and those of Messrs. Hubcrman &
Sweczy, and convincingly de-demonised him.
10 Guerrillas in Latin America. By Luis MERCIEA
VP,oA. Pall Mall, 45$.
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 Approved For Release 2005/01/11 : CIA-RDP88-01314E Q 0 ?A rl i 125, 1970
THE RULES OF THE GAME
ROSS the Tiber from the sump-
tuous palaces of the Vatican, in
an old square off the Piazza
N'avona, there stands a fragmented
statue of unknown origin that has come
to be known as Pasquino, in honor of a
fifteenth-century tailor who lived near-
by. Tradition has it that the original
Pasquino was a man of mordant wit
who delighted in cutting men's reputa-
tions apart. For centuries, Romans
have been using the statue, the pedestal
on which it stands, and the wall be-
hind it to affix satirical quatrains,
epigrams, and lampoons in prose and
verse. These pasquinade,.;, as the satires
are called? have been directed against
the venality of popes and cardinals,
against indulgences and simonies,
against the vainglory of princes, against
any person or institution considered un-
just. Pope Julius If, for example, was
described by the following verse: "A
fraudulent merchant, he has sold so
much Heaven that none remains for
him." Throughout the centuries, Pas-
quino has been a symbol of resistance
to all pomp and solemnity-and espe-
cially to clericalism. It was in a cafe
facing the statue of Pasquino, one sunny
June morning in 1968, that Monsignor
Ivan Illich, a naturalized United States
citizen of Spanish, German, and Yugo-
slav ancestry who had become one of
the most admired, feared, and contro-
versial priests in the American hemi-
sphere, chose to cat his breakfast be-
fore keeping an appointment to which
he had been summoned at the Vatican.
Illich, a tall, lanky man in his early
forties with handsome, hawklike fea-
tures, who was dressed for the occasion
in a secular gray suit, a secular white
shirt, and a secular black tie, rose from
a third cup of cappuccino shortly before
9 A.M. He walked with a swift and
feline stride across the Ponte Sant' An-
gelo and toward the building, just to
the left of St. Peter's Basilica, that
houses the Congregation for the Doc-
trine of the Faith. This agency, also
known as the Holy Office, is an off-
shoot of the. Sacred Congregation of
the Universal Inquisition, which had its
origins in the early thirteenth century.
It was to answer certain questions about
his faith that Illich had been summoned
to the Vatican. The questions had been
divided by the Holy Office into four
categories: "Dangerous Doctrinal Opin-
ions," "Erroneous Ideas Against the
Church," "Bizarre Conceptions About
the Clergy," and "Subversive Inter-
pretations Concerning the Liturgy
and Ecclesiastical Discipline." In past
centuries, men had often been dragged
to similar interrogations in chains. In
1968, proceedings of such nature were
rather more,civilized, even in the case
of a man who had become "una cosa
de curiositd, 'de maraviglia, de scan-
dalo"-"an object of curiosity, bewil-
derment, and scandal"-to the Roman
Catholic Church. Illich, for seven years
the director of a center of higher learn-
ing in Mexico whose progressive char-
acter had come to alarm the Vatican,
had arrived in Rome by plane, and
he presented himself punctually at the
Holy Office, smiling and very obviously
a free man.
After ringing the doorbell and being
admitted into a small vestibule, Illich
was led through a set of doable doors-
one of them padded with leather for
soundproofing-into a large reception
room, which he recalls as rather stuffy.
He was left there alone to wait. The
windows were shuttered and partly
covered with triple sets of curtains.
']'lie chairs were of a high-baroque
style, gilded and upholstered with red
plush. In front of'a large sofa stood
an imposing table of pink marble. On
it was a ballpoint pen chained to a
green plastic holder, which was glued
to the table. Illich walked to a win-
dow and opened it wide. Leaning on
the windowsill, he looked out at the
construction site of a new church build-
ing, designed to serve as a meeting
hall for future Vatican councils. Men
in yellow helmets were directing the
placement by large cranes of some pre-
cast cement modules twelve feet high.
Behind the building site, and partly
hidden by the cranes, stood the splen-
did little medieval Church of Campo-
Santo Teutonico. Illich -sat down at the
pink marble table and, with the chained
green pen, wrote a brief letter in Por-
tuguese-one of eleven languages in
which he is fluent-to a close friend, a
Brazilian archbishop. He described, in
that brief note, the furniture in the re-
ception room of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith and expressed
grave doubt whether any part of a
church should be built with precast
cement blocks.
Punctually at nine, Fran jo Cardinal
leper, of Yugoslavia, the head of the
Congregation and one of the highest
ranking prelates in the Roman Catholic
Church, entered the room and greet-
ed Illich. The Cardinal, having re-
ceived a ceremonial kiss on his ring,
vigorously shook his visitor's hand. Aft-
er exchanging a few phrases in Ital-
ian, the two men talked for twenty
minutes in Serbo-Croatian about the
weather in Dalmatia. Cardinal ;eper,
as Illich later described him, seemed
"very kind, very correct, most humane,
rather apologetic . . . acting like a man
obligated to proceed in a transaction
which embarrassed him profoundly."
After this pleasant interlude in the
Cardinal's native tongue, the two men
went back to Italian to discuss the busi-
ness at hand. Cardinal 5eper then
called into the room an unsmiling man
dressed in a worn black cassock, and
explained that this official of the Holy"
Office, whom he introduced as Mon-
signor de Magistris, would show Illieh
where he was to go next. On the way
out of the reception room, Monsignor
de Magistris picked up a heavy silver
inkwell with a pen in it-Illich is
struck to this day by the preponder..
ance of pens in his recollection of that
visit-and the two men walked down
some back stairs to a very ancient and
creaky elevator, which took them sev-
eral stories deeper into the subterranean
regions of the Vatican. They emerged
into a musty corridor lined from floor
to ceiling with shelves of ancient
leather-bound volumes. After passing
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through three more narrow rooms
lined with bookcases-which were cov-
ercd with what Illich describes as "real
chicken wire"-they arrived in a cham-
her dominated by a heavy oak table on
which stood two candlesticks,] a Bible,
a black wooden crucifix with a white
figure of Christ, and a large dossier
of press clippings, one of which Illich
recognized as a page from the French
weekly Paris-Match. 3chindthe table
at a small, rubicund man who ap-
pcared to be in his fifties. Monsignor de
Magistris deposited the silver rinkpot on
the table. Illich walked up to the man
seated at the table, and the following
conversation took place (in Italian):
"I am Illich."
"I know."
"Monsignor, who :;re you
"Your judge."
"I thought I would kjtow your
name."
"That is unimportant. I am called
Casoria."
All three men then made the sign
of the cross, and Illich was asked to put
his hand oil his chest and
swear to tell the truth. He
obliged. He was then
asked to keep secret c rery-
thing that took place in
the ensuing exchanges and
was warned that a special
excommunication would
he issued against anyone
who revealed the proceed-
ings of the Congregation.
Illich, in very rapid Italian,
replied that he refused to
take any oath of secrecy,
on the grounds tha-, such
an oath would he "against
the natural law of self-
defense and the divine law
of honesty in the Church"
and that it would Contra-
dict the Vatican CCulwil's
reforms of the C,on"rega-
tion's methods, violating
in particular the papal;
edict "Integrae Servan-
dae," of 1965, which stat
cd that the charges and the
rules of procedure of the
Congregation should he a
matter of public record.
This refusal apparently
took the two officials by
surprise, and a heated dis-
cussion followed. "We
have other means at our
disposal ! " Monsignor Ca-
soria exclaimed, waving
some papers in the air. "If
you don't want to swear
to secrecy, this is over!"
Thereupon, Illich began to intone,
"In the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the ..."
"What are you doing?"
"I am putting an end to this session."
Illich recalls some very excited
shouting. "This is without precedent!"
the interrogators cried. Illich persisted,
and it was finally agreed that he would
not have to answer any accusations
until he had received a written copy of
all the charges against him. Monsignor
do Magistris went upstairs to confer
with Cardinal Aeper, and while lie was
gone the two men remaining in the
chamber had a strained but polite con-
versation. Illich asked the judge what
his official post was at the Vatican.
Monsignor Casoria disclosed that in
addition to being a judge of the Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, he was Under-Secretary of the
Sacred Congregation for the Discipline
of the Sacraments, Counsellor of the
Sacred Congregation for the Clergy,
Deputy to the Monasteries of Rome,
and a specialist in the physical details
of unconsummated marriages. When
Monsignor de Magistris returned, he
announced that, with Cardinal Seper's
consent, a written copy of the Congre-
gation's questions would he brought to
Monsignor Illich that afternoon.
Illich was staying at the Capranica,
Rome's oldest and most distinguished
ecclesiastical residence, where he had
Once lived while studying for the priest-
hood. And he was waiting there when,
at three-thirty, a messenger arrived
with a Xerox copy of the Congrega-
tion's questionnaire. Illich sat down to
read it, and almost at once he start-
ed laughing. He laughed a good deal
that afternoon as he sat in the Ro-
man sunshine perusing the extraordi-
nary document that had been drawn
up against him, for he found that
most of the questions were not only
theologically unsound and based on
th, vaguest of anonymous innuendoes;
they were also very funny: "What
do you think of Heaven and Hell,
and also of Limbo?" "Do you deny
the distinction between shepherds and
sheep among the people
of God on earth?"
"What are your thoughts
on the peaceful coexist-
ence of East and West?"
"What did you have to
do with the kidnapping of
the Archbishop of Guate-
mala?" "What is the na-
ture of your relations
with Octavio Paz and
Carlos Fuentes? " "Is it
true that you would. like
to see women go to con-
fession without .1 grate in
the confessional box?"
"Is it true that, begin-
ning in 1960, there, has
been in you a dangerous
general development of
new ideas and disinte-
grating tendencies of a
humanitarian and liber-
tarian nature?" "What
would you answer to
those who say that you
are petulant, adventur-
ous, imprudent, fanatical,
and hypnotizing, a rebel
against all authority, dis-
posed to accept and rec-
ognize only that of the
Bishop of Cuernavaca,
Mexico? "
That evening, sitting
in a trattoria near the
Teatro di Marcello over
an excellent Roman din-
ner and three carafes of
Frascati, Illich composed
a letter (in Italian) to Cardinal Sepcr,
w}tich begat5:
Mos?r REVEREND EMINENCE:
Following upon the interview that
Your Eminence granted me yesterday
morning with so much pastoral feeling,
I find myself obliged to report to Your
Eminence all that took place during and
after the nterrogation conducted by
Msgr. do Magistris and 11sgr. Casoria,
and to give Your Eminence ntv own
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view of the situation as it now stands.
Let me start by saying that, faced
with authoritative procedures which, at
least in my opinion, are very questionable
in both substance and style, I am left-
as it Christian and as a priest-with a
single, clear-cut choice.
I can, on the one hand, simply Withhold
any defense of myself, without claiming
my reasonable rights or advancing my
lawful defense. On the other hand, I can
(not for Illy sake but for the sake of
defending the divine constitution of the
Church and the honorable status of its
ecclesiastical institutions) set myself sys-
tematically in opposition to everything
that I recognize as a distortion of the
Gospel, contrary to the divine principles
that govern the Church, contrary to what
has been decided by the councils, and con-
trary even to the most recent and re-
peated statements of the highest ecclesi-
astical authorities.
Eminence, I must acknowledge to you
that I have decisively chosen the first
way, and that I have resolved to take
as my watchword "If a man asks you
to lend him your coat, then give him your
shirt as well."
In this letter, Illich added that many
of the questions put to him were so
phrased as to elicit defamatory informa-
tion about other priests, about laymen,
and even about bishops-information
that he suggested the judges should
"ferret out by other and more correct
channels." And he stressed the fact
that his refusal to answer the Congre-
gation's questionnaire was in no way a
personal defense but had the purpose of
"contributing to the greater splendor of
the Church." The letter ended in a
tone of contrite subservience to Rome
that has always been Illich's style, and
that annoys many of his progressive
friends. "Trusting in Your Eminence's
continued understanding," he wrote,
"I declare myself Your Eminence's
most humble son."
The next morning, before boarding
a plane for Mexico, Illich returned to
the Vatican to deliver his letter per-
sonally to Cardinal 5epcr, and the
Cardinal received him with emphatic
cordiality. "1 had the impression that
lii~ fr,'lings were sonu?wherc? between
p, i pl, sity,. inc rednlily that Buell a pro-
.,dui. Was putisihlr, exasperation, and
Immor,nts annoyance," Illich said later.
"As we parted, he gave me an ab-
braecao, most affectionately. And then
a truly extraordinary thing happened.
We were speaking in Croatian, and
as the Cardinal led me to the door
his last words to me were 'Hadjite,
hadjite, nemojte se vratiti!'-which
means `Get going, get going, and never
come hack!' In other words, `Beat
it!' It wasn't until I was going down
the stairs from his office that it struck
me that he was quoting from the In-
quisitor's last words to the prisoner
in Dostoevski's story of the Grand In-
quisitor."
W HEN Illich arrived in the United
States in 1952, shortly after he
had been ordained in Rome, lie was
assigned to the Incarnation Church in
New York's Washington Heights, a
prosperous, conservative Irish neigh-
borhood that was receiving a startling
influx of Puerto Ricans. He was wel-
comed to the parish by its pastor, Mon-
signor John Casey, a hearty Irish-
man who had once served as secretary
to Francis Cardinal Spellman. "Ivan
Illich?" Monsignor Casey asked in-
credulously as he greeted his new
curate. "What kind of a name is that
to go around with? It sounds Commu-
nist. We'll call you Johnny." One of
Johnny Illich's first assignments was to
add Spanish to the number of ]an-
guages he spoke by attending the Ber-
litz School, where Monsignor Casey
had been studying Spanish three times
a week for three years, with indiffer-
ent results, in order to attend to his
growing flock of Puerto Rican parish-
ioners. Illich's performance at Berlitz
staggered Monsignor Casey; he cov-
ered seven lessons in one session. `Vith-
in three weeks, Illich had quit Berlitz.
Within three months, lie was speaking
Spanish fluently, having learned it most-
ly by standing around the street corners
of Washington Heights asking ques-
tions of his Puerto Rican parishioners.
Where did they come from? What
were their native customs? What could
the Church do to make them feel inure
at hon-c? I11irh discovered that althoiigh
not all Puerto Ric;nts had ('lase ties it,
the Church, more than otie-third of the
nominally Roman Catholic population
in the New York archdiocese was Puer-
to Rican, and he soon became aware
that the problem of integrating Puerto
Ricans into American-style religion
was one of Cardinal Spellman's biggest
headaches. Before long, Illich was
revolutionizing the New York' arch-
diocese's approach to the Puerto Rican
problem. His methods were unortho-
dox. During his yearly vacations, he
walked, rode horseback, and hitchhiked
all over Puerto Rico with a knapsack
on his hack. "The first Mass I said
at about six in the morning, after I
had slept on the altar steps of the chap-
el," he wrote of a typical day on one
of those excursions. "Then I travelled
on, by horseback, to the next chapel. I
heard confessions, baptized, married,
and off I went to the third chapel, on
horseback still, where I arrived after
noon."
A genial, dynamic, obsessed man,
Illich puzzled his colleagues. His back-
ground was strikingly different from
that of most of the young curates in
the New York archdiocese. His father,
who Caine from a titled Dalmatian
family, had been a wealthy engineer
and landowner in prewar Germmany;
his mother's family were Sephardic
Jews who had come to Germany from
Spain. Born in Vienna in 1926, Illich
was expelled from the Austrian school
he attended in the thirties because of his
mother's Jewish background. During
the war, he continued his education in
Italy, and at first he seemed destined to
be a scientist. He did research in crys-
tallography at the University of Flor-
ence, and developed a method of dis-
cerning blood types by their crystallo-
graphic formation. By the time he was
twenty-four, he had earned a doctorate
in history from the University of Salz-
burg (he wrote his dissertation on
Toynbee's philosophy of history) and
other degrees in philosophy and the-
ology at the Gregorian University in
Rome. Since his teens, Illich has been a
close friend of Jacques Maritain, and
he describes Maritain as a central in-
fluence on his life. The Vatican had
wished Illich to enter the Collegio
di Nohili Ecclesiastici, where gifted
linguists and intellectuals are prepared
for high-ranking careers in the Church's
diplomatic corps. It was therefore a
source of bewilderment to all who
knew him when this high-strung, suave,
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dazzlingly brilliant aristocrat turned
away from the distinguished posts for
which the Holy See had intended him
and sought assignment to an obscure
position in New York City's most con-
ventional Irish territory. "What in
heck did you come here for?" one of
his colleagues at Incarnation, Father
Joseph Connolly, once asked him. `I
came because my friends in Rome
ribbed me about not being able to make
it in an American parish," Illich an-
swered. A need to test himself, to Ac-
cept the toughest challenges, has al-
ways been a trait of Illich's character,
which some of his friends say borders
on the masochistic.
According to Father Connolly, liv-
ing in the same parish with Illich was
"like riding a Piper Cub wit)' an atom
bomb under the seat." Illich climbed
stairs three at a time; he never walked
through the rectory but swept through
it like a tornado. His ability to recruit
people was nothing short of extraor-
dinary. He started employment agen-
cies for Puerto Rican migrants and
persuaded Madison Avenue magnates
to publicize them. When he set up
Sunday camps for Puerto Rican clil-
dren, dozens of Irish bus drivers gave
up their Sundays to take the kids
to the country. He encouraged young
social workers to live in cuartitos-
small apartments in the Puerto Rican
slums-so that they could better ob-
serve the needs of the people. "The
Puerto Ricans idolized him," Fatter
Connolly has said. "He was sir.
Puerto Rico, their Babe Ruth." 'a-
ther Connolly has also described him
as "the most prayerful and ascetic priest
I've ever known." Illich was in the
church by 6 A.M., before anyone else,
saying his breviary and his rosary. He
forgot to eat when there was work
to do. He was known for his zeal in
visiting the sick, the aged, and men in
jail, and also for his rigorous, some-
times pedantic orthodoxy. He was al-
ways looking up ancient sources to re-
solve a doctrinal dispute. He insisted on
frequent confession and frequent Com-
munion. Some of Illich's colleagues
criticized him for an overabundance of
zeal-they f':tt, for instance, that he
encouraged too many women to enter
convents. "Lay off that stuff," Father
Connolly would say. "You're pushing
them in." Yet although I]lich was idol-
ized by parishioners, he was never en-
tirely at ease with the other priests lie
met and worked with in New York.
He once turned to Father Connolly, a
man from Hell's Kitchen who had
worked as a slaughterhouse butcher,
and said wistfully, "I wish I had been
a slaughterhouse butcher, so I could
be closer to the other priests." Father
Connolly smiled, and told Illich, "You
were not cast for the role of shepherd
but for empire."
Early in his career, Illich began to
'criticize the American Church for its
smugness, its bureaucracy, and its chau-
vinism-especially for its way of im-
posing its own values on minority
groups such as the Puerto Ricans. He
voiced his criticism in essays published
in theological journals under the pen
name of Peter Canon. "A critical atti-
tude is precisely one of the areas in
which Christian love for the Church
can develop," he wrote in one of
the first of these essays. "Criticism is
the fruit of hard work and prayer."
Irritated by the "ecclesiastical con-
quistadores" whom he saw working as
missionaries in Puerto Rico-he was
shocked by their ignorance of native
idiom and their lack of interest in
native tradition-lie soon began to
agitate for a radical transformation of
American missionary methods. The
missionary must he indifferent not only
to possessions and material comfort, he
wrote, but to all the values and customs
of his own home. The American priest
working with people of a foreign cul-
ture should cultivate a spirit of
"total cultural indifference."
To Illich, any expression of
cultural superiority seemed as
powerful a manifcstaton of
original sin as the confusion of
tongues at Babe]. The process
of obtaining grace, he wrote
on one occasion, might involve
a total stripping away of cul-
tural values, "a beatitude of
cultural poverty." The mis-
sionary, therefore, had to he
"willing to witness with his
life, to a foreign people, the
relativity of human convictions
in front of the unique and ab-
solute meaning of the Revela-
tion."
Illich frequently pointed out
that many Puerto Ricans
failed to attend Mass in the
United States because it start-
ed on time. And if he had had
his way, he would have totally
transferred the church of the
camficsinos, with its unpunc-
tuality, its semi-pagan rituals,
its great corn munity feast days,
to the streets of New York.
He wanted to cut through all
formalities in order to meet
the needs of the communi-
cants. His crusade to give
church weddings to the nu-
merotas Puerto Rican couples
who had had only a civil or
consensual marriage was a nightmare
for Incarnation Parish. "The rectory
bell would ring at any time of day or
night," Father Connolly has recalled,
"and there would he a bridal party,
bride and groom all dressed up, holding
flowers, accompanied by all their chil-
dren and friends, asking for Father Il-
lich to marry them on the spot. And he
was ready to marry them, without any
papers or certificates. We had to hold
him hack. How did we know the groom
wasn't already married to someone
else? We had to curb him-he was like
a wild horse. I'd say to him, `Form
them first-don't just get them to
church.' Hi; idea was simply to bring
all the Puerto Ricans into church and
make them feel they were wanted. He
had the aristocrat's bread-and-circuses
approach to the poor. I'd sap to him,
`John, you're getting at them through
their stomachs.' "
In 1956, in what turned out to he a
highly successful bread-and-circuses ap-
proach, Illich decided to stage a na-
tional feast day for the Puerto Ricans of
New York. The Italians had their Co-
lumbus Day and the Irish had their
St. Pat's. Why shouldn't the Puerto
Ricans have their San Juan's Day, on
June 24th? San Juan Masses had in-
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deed been offered in St. Patrick's Ca-
thedral since 1953, drawing a few
thousand persons, but Illich wanted his
celebration held in a grandiose outdoor
space that would be reminiscent of a
native plaza. He asked permission to
hold the fiesta in the great quadrangle
of Fordham University, and Cardinal-
Spellman was invited to be a guest of
honor. "The boss says all right," the
message came back from the chancery,
"but he says he doesn't like to play to
empty houses." Illich saw to it that the
house was full. He took ads
in Spanish-]language news-
papers and travelled through
the city for weeks on a
sound truck announcing the
fiesta. "You\ might get five
thousand people," a police
official said the clay before the event to
Father Joseph Fitzpatrick, of Ford-
ham, who was helping Illich plan San
Juan's Day.' "I've been watching
Father Illich, and I think there will be
thirty thousand," Father Fitzpatrick
said. Enough police were assigned to
handle a crowd of eight thousand. The
event was scheduled for noon, but
streams of Puerto Rican families began
converging on Fordham at dawn, and
by noon there were thirty-five thousand
people in the quadrangle. It was a kind
of turning point for New York's
Puerto Ricans-the first time they
had gathered in such numbers to as-
sert their cultural identity. Illich had
arranged for national flags and native
bands, and had programmed speeches
in Spanish by Puerto Rican leaders and
New York officials, including Mayor
Robert Wagner. He had also provided
a large traditional pinata-a gaily col-
ored paper vessel that when hit with a
hat spills out hundreds of gifts for chil-
dren to scramble over. Breaking open
the pinata was to bring the fiesta to its
climax. The Cardinal knew what hap-
pens when at pinata is broken, but some
of the police-already tense because
of the unexpected size of the crowd-
did not. As the gifts spilled out of
the pinata, thirty-five thousand Puerto
Ricans shouted and seemed to converge
upon the Cardinal. The police, fearing
a riot, whisked the Cardinal out of the
Fordham quadrangle, though he was
reluctant to leave. "CROWDS SWAMP
CARDINAL, MAYOR" was the front-
page headline of the News the follow-
ing (lay. "What did the Big Boss
think?" one of Illich's friends asked a
chancery official the next morning.
"He's thrilled" was the reply. "With-
out Illich's mob scene, the story would
barely have made page 17." By that
time, the Cardinal had concluded, for
many reasons, that Illich was a key
man in his diocese, and a key man in
the American Church. A few months
after the mob scene at Fordham, Spell-
man agreed to Illich's appointment as
vice-rector of the Catholic University
of Puerto Rico, where he was to start
a pioneering center for the training of
American priests in Latin-American
culture. A year later, the Cardinal
made Illich the youngest monsignor in
the New York archdiocese. The nom
de plume Peter Canon disappeared.
The new monsignor be-
gan to sign his essays
?The Very Rev. Ivan
Illich, Ph.D."
The relationship be-
tween Spellman and Illich
was a remarkable one.
The champion of Catholic traditional-
ism and the adventurous thinker whose
ideas would radicalize thousands of
American Catholics had a deep respect
for each other. Illich recently described
Spellman as "a simple man, rigorously
true to himself, for whose consistency
I had the most profound admiration."
Spellman trusted and admired Illich,
used him for a number of delicate dip-
lomatic missions, sanctioned all his proj-
ects, and served as his protector as long
as he lived. The two met many times,
and disagreed three times out of four.
"So you know better than the Arch-
bishop of New York," Spellman would
say, with a big smile. "Well, you'd
better succeed."
With typical efficiency, Illich, with-
in three months of his arrival in Puerto
Rico, in November of 1956, had or-
ganized a conference of the heads of
the largest Catholic universities in the
United States to discuss the problems of
Latin-American studies for missionaries.
By the following summer, he had
started an intensive language program
to teach Spanish to American priests.
The training center was called the In-
stitute of Intercultural Communica-
tions. Its purpose was to steep Ameri-
can priests in various aspects of Puerto
Rican and Latin-American culture, or,
as a Brooklyn priest put it, "to stop
the Irish malarkey of imposing our
ways on other people." In 1957, Car-
dinal Spellman sent half his new-
ly ordained priests there for training.
The center was often crowded to
overflowing. When rooms were scarce,
Illich would set up a cot in the kitchen,
where he read arcane European jour-
nals of theology late into the night. In
the daytime, he tortured his students.
He made them live on the simplest of
native diets, inspired them to travel to
the wildest mountain regions of Puerto
Rico on foot and on horseback, and
grilled them with cross-examinations
worthy of a Jesuit novice-master.
Father Edmund Burke, a priest in
Brooklyn's Ocean Hill-Brownsville dis-
trict, reported that during his first trip
to the Institute he was often "ready to
throw Illich into the Caribbean." Ac-
cording to Father Burke, "Illich ran
a disorganized Latin-American shop,
never appeared anywhere on time, and
at midnight he came into my room and
psychoanalyzed me until dawn. What
he was doing was forcing Burke to take
a good look at Burke, to get him rid
of all the Yankee hangups." Father
Burke, after overcoming the shock of
his initial exposure to Illich, returned to
Puerto Rico for three years in a row
and became one of Illich's most de-
voted friends.
During the nineteen-fifties, the
Catholic Church on the island had
grown increasingly inimical to the pro-
gressive government of Luis Munoz
Marin. Illich, however, made friends
with a number of the island's highest
officials, and worked for four years, in
the face of much criticism from the
local hierarchy, to reconcile the Church
to Mufioz Marin's government. His
difficulties with the island hierarchy
came to a head in the election year of
1960, when Bishop James P. Davis, of
San Juan, and Bishop James E. Mc-,
Manus, of Ponce, both of whom were
outraged by a birth-control program
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that Mutioz Marin had developed,
formed a Catholic political party to op-
pose him. The bishops threatened ex-
communication for any Catholic who
voted for Muiioz Marin, but Illich
soon became known as an opponentof
the Catholic party. "As a historian, I
saw that it violated the American tra-
dition of church and state separation,"
he said later of this episode. "As a poli-
tician, I predicted that there wasn't
enough strength in Catholic ranks' to
create a meaningful platform, and that
the failure of the Catholic party would
be disastrous to the already frail pres-
tige of the Church in Puerto Rico.:As
a theologian, I held that th,e Church
must always condemn injustice in the
light of the Gospel but never has the
right to speak out in favor of a spe-
cific political party." And as a satirist,
Illich found that a political party or-
ganized on a birth-control issue, cam-
paigning under a banner decorated
with a crucifix and a rosary was down-
right comical. He ridiculedthe Catholic
party frequently in private conversa-
tion and drew upon himself the grow-
ing animosity of the head of his diocese,
Bishop McManus. In Octooer, when
the election campaign was at its peak,
Cardinal Spellman was expected in San
Juan to consecrate Bishop Davis' as
archbishop. A few weeks before Spell-
mail was due to arrive, a prominent
Puerto Rican layman with wide in-
fluence in his government came to New
York to ask the Cardinal if he would
lunch with Governor Mwioz Marin
while he was in San Juan, Cardinal
Spellman readily agreed, and after the
two had had lunch together they also
attended a banquet honoring the new
archbishop. Because Munoz Marin was
to be at the banquet, Bishop McManus
had not only refused an invitation to
attend but had forbidden any of his
clergy to attend. Illich blithely over-
looked the ban and went to the banquet
with the Cardinal and the Governor.
Within twenty-four hours, Bishop Mc-
Manus-who is said to be convinced to
this day that Illich arranged the meet-
ing between Spellman and Munoz
Marin-had written Illich a stinging
letter ordering him to leave the Ponce
diocese. Illicit returned to New York,
where he was appointed to a position
on the faculty of Fordham University
that allowed him to travel and con-
tinue to work on his own projects.
Bishop McManus shortly thereafter
was relieved of his post.
For several weeks after his return
from Puerto Rico, Illich studied a map
of Latin America, searching, he said,
for "a valley with an excellent climate,
with a town not more than an hour
away from a great library and a good
university, where housing and food
would be cheap enough to accommo-
date many students." Still obsessed with
the problem of missionary training in
Latin America, he flew to Santiago,
Chile, and proceeded to walk and
hitchhike to Caracas, Venezuela-a
distance of three thousand miles. In
moments of crisis or decision through-
out his career, Illich has imposed
on himself many austere disciplines-
fasts, retreats, pilgrimages-of a kind
that many of his contemporaries con-
sider outdated. At the age of eighteen,
when he decided to he a priest, he had
gone into a thirty-day retreat under a
Jesuit spiritual director to decide wheth-
er he should become a Jesuit. In 1959,
he had undertaken a forty-day medita-
tion at a monastery in the Sahara. His
trip from Santiago to Caracas, which
took him four months, was a form of
pilgrimage that marked another turn-
ing point in his life. When asked what
he learned on that walk, he smiles and
answers, "I learned the meaning of
distance." But it is evident that he was
also searching for a place to start a
new center of missionary training; he
observed with growing alarm the con-
tingents of Yankee priests who were
dotting the slums of Lima, Buenos
Aires, and Quito with smug brick rec-
tories and parish schools in imitation
of those in Chicago, Brooklyn, and St.
Louis.
South America yielded no valley
that met Illich's specifications, and lie
continued his search northward. In the
spring of 1961, he found himself in
Cuernavaca, Mexico, comparing the
prices of the vegetables in its mar-
ketplace and the housing facilities
with those in other Latin-American
countries, and reflecting upon the de-
lights of the city's perennially dry,
sunny climate. The Bishop of Cuerna-
vaca, Sergio Mendez Arceo, was
known for his open-mindedness. One
day, Illich rang the Bishop's door-
hell, was ushered into his study, sat
down on his couch, and announced,
"I would like to start, tinder your aus-
pices, a center of de-Yankeefication."
The two men talked without interrup-
tion for nine hours. Illich settled in
Cuernavaca because, he said, "I found
in the Bishop, a man for whom le bon
ton, le bon gout were of supreme
importance, a man with whom I
could communicate on my own wave-
length. I knew from the start that we
could please and even surprise each oth-
er." The Bishop, for his part, agreed
to sponsor the educational venture be-
cause he found Illich to be "an extraor-
dinary man with startlingly lucid ideas,
who I knew would live in a state of
perpetual renewal."
The center of de-Yankeefication
was launched tinder the most respect-
able Yankee auspices. It had the ex-
press approval of Cardinal Spellman,
who considered it a continuation of
the missionary training center that
Illich had established in Puerto Rico.
It had the joint support of Fordham
University and the Bishops' Committee
on Latin America. Richard Cardinal
Cushing, of Boston, who described
Illich's venture as "by far the best,
training center we have," helped to get
it on its feet by setting tip scholar-
ships for his priests, and several other
Catholic hierarchs did the same. It was
first called CFF, for Center of Intercul-
tural Formation, but that was later
changed to CIDOC, for Center of Inter-
cultural Documentation. At a confer-
ence at CEDOC shortly after it opened in
1961, the keynote address was given by
Monsignor Helder Pesscia Camara, of
Rio de Janeiro, who,, translating Illich's
epithet into Portuguese, approvingly
called the school "un centro de digrin-
goacRo." 1961 was the year that the
Alliance for Progress was launched,
ad also the year that the Pope issued a
call for the North American Church to
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send ten per cent of its personnel-or
about twenty thousand priests and reli-
gious-to Latin America in order to
alleviate the critical shortage of clergy
on that continent. Illich saw an omi-
nous conjunction between the two
projects. He was sarcastic about the Al-
liance for Progress, which he labelled
"an alliance for the progress of the
middle classes," and he predicted that
the kind of Yankee missionaries who
responded to the Pope's call would
be "pawns of United States cultural
imperialism." Illich's cIDOC-part
language school, part conference cen-
ter, part free university, part publish-
ing house--was designed not so much
to train missionaries as to keep all but
the most progressive of them away.
IT is ironic that Ivan Illich should
have chosen to settle down for the
next phase of his career as priest-edu-
cator in a country that has produced
one of the world's most reactionary
brands of Catholicism. Mexico was the
first of the new lands to be evangelized
in the missionary zeal of the Counter
Reformation, and it became the most
powerful theocracy in Latin America.
The spirit of dedication and of poverty
represented by the first wave of mis-
sionaries-Franciscan, Dominican, and
Augustinian friars-was soon pervert-
ed by the C~iurch's growing riches. At
the end of the eighteenth century, the
Catholic Church owned more than
half the money in circulation in Mexico
and more than half its land. During
the revolutions that swept through Lat-
in America in the nineteenth century,
the Mexican Church aligned itself
closely with the wealthy landowners
and sought: alliances with the numer-
ous foreign powers that periodically
invaded the country to com-
bat its movements of libera-
tion. For these reasons,
among others, the Church in
Mexico was more violently
persecuted by the nineteenth
century's revolutionary gov-
ernments and by the twenti-
eth century's progressive re-
gimes than it was in any
other nation on the conti-
nent. In the eighteen-fifties,
the number of priests in the
nation had been reduced to
a mere five hundred. The Mexican
Church's funds, lands, schools, and
hospitals were expropriated, its libraries
confiscated and its seminaries closed,
and well into the twentieth century the
Mexican Church was deprived of most
means of scholarship and theological
research. For most of the past cen-
tury, Mexican priests have been for-
bidden by their government (rather
prophetically, it has turned out) to
wear clerical clothing in public. In
the nineteen-twenties, under the re-
gime of President Plutarco Calles,
church worship was severely restricted.
And in that decade a prominent elected
public official, Governor Tomas Cana-
bal, of the state of Tabasco, publicly
flaunted his hatred of Catholicism by
naming his two sons Lucifer and Len-
in, decreed that only married priests
could reside in his state, ordered every
church in his province torn down, and
commanded his troops to shoot any
groups of peasants who might congre-
gate in the ruins of a church building.
The hierarchy of the Mexican Church
has emerged from these persecutions
impoverished and bitter, nostalgic for
its lost power. It ranks today, along
with the Colombian hierarchy, as the
most conservative in Latin America.
The tenor of its theology Js cautious
and regressive, and the most popular
forms of religious expression are still
steeped in a worship of the Virgin
that verges on idolatry. Mexican Ca-
tholicism today is marked by what the-
ologians call integralism-that wed-
ding of reactionary politics with reac-
tionary theology which has played a
large role in protecting the interests of
oligarchies in many parts of the Latin-
American continent. Yet in the midst
of the aggressively conservative men
who compose the Mexican episcopate
there is one maverick. Bishop Mendez
Arceo, of Cuernavaca, was to startle
the world in 1962-a year after Ivan
Illich had settled in Cuernavaca-by
emerging as a leader of the Second
Vatican Council's ultra-progressive ec-
umenical wing. Indeed, it is quite clear
by now that Illich's inquisi-
tion in the bowels of the
Vatican was aimed not only
at removing Illich from
Mexico but also at removing
the bishop who has sponsored
and protected him.
Sergio Mendez Arceo,
seventh Bishop of Cuerna-
vaca, is an erect and portly
man in his early sixties, with
warm brown eyes that are
both witty and thoughtful, a
luminous smile, and a most
informal manner. His frayed cassocks,
worn shoes, and modest way of life
evidence a profound disdain for com-
fort, for worldly goods, and for any
outward show of authority. The son
of a prosperous lawyer in southern
Mexico, he studied in Rome, wrote
his doctoral dissertation on early-six-
teenth-century humanism, and is the
leading authority in Mexico on the
thought of Erasmus. He lives in two
austere, high-ceilinged rooms by the
side of the Cuernavaca cathedral, his
study stacked high with advanced in-
tellectual journals in numerous lan-
guages and sparsely furnished with a
few pieces of worn furniture that sug-
gest a very aristocratic kind of poverty.
On the walls hang a large painting
(left by a previous occupant) of a saint
whose name the Bishop can't remem-
ber, a portrait of Pope John XXIII
drawn by a Protestant lay theologian,
and a drawing of a Madonna with In-
dian features, done by the Mexican
painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, a for-
mer leader of Mexico's Communist
Party and a longtime resident of Cuer-
navaca. In these simple quarters, the
Bishop lives alone, without a secretary,
cook, or housekeeper, and he takes his
meals-frugal fare brought in by nuns
from a neighboring convent-with the
twelve clergymen of the city in a little
room off the cathedral cloister. Men-
dez Arceo's diocese, which is in the
state of Morelos, south of Mexico City,
was the terrain of Zapata's revolution,
from 1911 to 1916, and the Bishop
has always declared himself to he a
staunch Zapatista. "To say that I am
a Zapatista is to say that I am a cit-
izen of Morelos," he has said. "Zapa-
ta was the only leader of the revolu-
tion with a coherent social program."
Unlike most of his colleagues, Men-
dez Arceo takes great pride in the pov-
erty of the Mexican Church, and of
the Catholic Church in the United
States he has said, "Its tragedy is its
huge human organization and its hor-
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irible riches."
Before being appointed to the dio-
cese of Cuernavaca, Mendez Arceo
was spiritual director of students at the
largest seminary in Mexico, and he is
distinguished from other bishops by an
immense interest and trust in the
young. Seminarians are assigned to
answer his phone on a rotating basis,
so that he can become "intimately ac-
quainted with the wishes of the young
generation." He spends two days a
month in retreat with the sixty priests
of his diocese to "receive their impres-
sions" of the work that has to be
done-in fact, to allow them a chance
to participate in the running o the dio-
cese. And he has encouraged weekly
meetings at which his young prie-Its
get together without him to discuss
means of part-time secular employ-
ment, so that they can adapt them-
selves to what he calls "the inevitable
."
secularization of the future clergy
Although Mendez Arceo is loved by
his priests as few bishops are, he is
gently criticized by some of the older
men for one fault: he is too mod-
est. "He is so simple, so approachable,"
one of them has said. "He does not
satisfy our people's regressive need for
authority, their need for pomp, for for-
mality, for great personages." But au-
thoritarianism is not in the ch.:iracter of
Mendez Arceo. He is a man who be-
lieves that "the desire for human pow-
er over others is demonic, the clearest
manifestation of original sin," and he
has said, "The bishop must preside
with the greatest simplicity. He must
advise rather than direct. He must .re-
spect the free spirit of scientific investi-
gation. The bishop is the h .amble co-
ordinator of the work of the Holy
Spirit." A Mexican proverb that dates
hack to the evangelic spirit o? the early
sixteenth century goes, " 11heulo ' de
oro, obispo do Palo. Bt culo de p(vlo,
obispo de oro"-"Golden staff, wood-
en bishop. Wooden staff, golden bjsh-
op." Mendez Arceo's staff is a simple
oak stick, which he begged, one Chr;ist-
nias week in Cuernavaca, from a boy
dressed as a shepherd for a holiday
procession. "That's just the staff I've
been looking for!" the Bishop cx-
claimed as the child came clown ?the
street. "May I have it, brother?" The
Bishop has used this staff in his cathe-
dral ever since, at Masses that he cele-
brates dressed in a chasuble of rough
Indian hemp and a mitre of white cot-
ton.
When Mendez Arceo began the
renovation of his cathedral-one of the
oldest in Mexico-in the nineteen-
fifties, he stripped the interior of its
baroque altar and nineteenth-century
ornaments, and stripped it, too, to the
fury of the conservatives, of its statuary
santos. He retained, at the left of
the altar, one ]one nineteenth-century
statue of the Virgin Mary. The in-
terior of the cathedral as he has re-
stored it has the grandiose ruggedness
of the early Franciscan mission style.
Its furnishings have a severe modern
elegance. The altar, a single slab of
stone, is dominated by a plain bronze
ciborium, which is flanked by stark
bronze lecterns and a filiform wooden
cross. "A cathedral, like a bishop, must
be stripped and denuded of all mate-
rial wealth," the Bishop says. "One
hears the Lord best in the desert." On
portions of the basilica's coarse interior
walls, wherever the architects were
able to restore the original seventeenth-
century frescoes, is depicted the martyr-
dom of the missionary priest St. Philip,
Mexico's only saint. Pointing to the
image of St. Philip, hanging, thin and
cerulean blue, from a gallows, the
Bishop says, with a mischievous smile,
"We are too poor to have more than
one saint. Our poverty is our greatest
asset."
To the discomfort of conservative
Mexicans, the Bishop's Sunday Mass has
become the chief tourist attraction of the
state of Morelos. The music is based
on folk melodies of Mexico, Chile, and
Brazil, and is played, from the An-
gelus to the last Alleluia, by a native
mariachi hand of violins, drums, guitars,
and trumpets. The mariachi Mass origi-
nated at CIDOC, where Illich, who had
commissioned it from a young Canadi-
an musicologist-priest, first had it per-
formed. The Bishop heard it there, liked
it, and, as an American in Cuernavaca
says, "brought it to Broadway." The
worshippers, who fill the cathedral
long before the eleven-o'clock service
begins, join lustily in the syncopated
singing, and some of the younger mem-
hers of the congregation literally dance
to the altar at Communion time to the
rhythm of a Chilean folk song. Be-
tween refrains, the Bishop frequently
engages in a dialogue homily with his
congregation. It is an animated, pente-
costal atmosphere, for the Bishop is a
great admirer of pentecostal sects, and
of their "trust in the Holy Spirit." He
believes in creating--and his arms flail
the air powerfully as he says this-"an
explosion of the Gospel through litur-
gy." Although in the rest of Mexico re-
ligion is considered a woman's thing and
barely ten per cent of the Catholic men
attend Mass, there is spectacular en-
thusiasm for religion in the Cuernavaca
diocese because of the excitement and
vigor of its liturgy. One young citizen
of Cuernavaca has said that he and
his friends have started to go to Mass
again because Bishop Mendez Arceo
has restored masculinity to religion. "It
is evident," a young New York priest
said recently, "that under such a bishop
no Underground Church would ever
need to exist."
The conservatives who were startled
by the modernism of Mendez Arceo's
liturgy were scandalized when he
sanctioned the use of psychotherapy
by a whole community of Benedictine
monks in the dry, sage-covered hills
above Cuernavaca. The experiment
was started by the prior of the monas-
tery of Santa Maria de ]a Resurrec-
cioin, Gregoire Lernercier. Lemercier
had settled in Cuernavaca with his
community of Benedictines in 1951
after they were chased at gunpoint by a
monk turned bandit from their former
abbey, in southern Mexico. He quickly
became a close friend of the Bishop's,
and he was considered an eccentric
from the start. His community of Ben-
edictines was singing Mass in the
Spanish vernacular as early as 1951,
and its avant.-gardism was a major in-
fluence on the Bishop's evolution toward
modernism; for until his arrival in
Morelos, Mendez Arceo had been a
relatively conservative man, primarily
known for his rigorously classical Rn-
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man training. Lemercier, an intelli-
gent, humorless Belgian with icy blue
eyes, sought psychiatric help after ex-
periencing a vision one night in Oc-
tober, 1960, while lying in bed aft-
er compline. He describes the vision
in a recent book, "Dialogues with
Christ": "I saw a multitude of light-
ning shafts of all colors, an exces-
sively beautiful spectacle..... My eyes
were wide open and I delighted in-
finitely in these fireworks, which I
would have liked to prolong for-
ever.... A sort of screen then ap-
peared on the wall of my cell, on which
I saw a rapid succession of human faces.
This kaleidoscope focussed on a very
beautiful face of great kindness. I start-
ed to weep with extreme violence, in-
vaded by the profound consciousness of
being loved by God, and of not de-
serving His love because of my sins."
Lemercier entered into psychoanalysis
three months later to. allay his sense
of guilt and to "purify his vocation,"
as he put it-particularly to aid him
with the problems posed by celibacy.
His monks, who had the same prob-
lems, also sought psychiatric help, and
before long therapists were coming
from Mexico City twice a week to hold
group-therapy sessions at the monas-
tery. Lemercier, with a typically Ben-
edictine concern for productivity, ob-
served that his monks worked faster
and better under therapy-that they
tilled more land, grew more vegetables,
produced more stained glass. But the
experiment: outraged the Mexican hier-
archy, which branded it "a repugnant
i to m o r a l i t y" and " `aggiornamento'
and progress converted to heresy." For
the fourth session of the Second Vatican
Council, in 1965, Mendez Arceo never-
theless chose Lemercier to accompany
him to Rome as his special theological
adviser-a choice that hardly enhanced
the Bishop's reputation at home.
Mendez Arceo was the only Mexi-
can bishop who spoke at the Council.
He spoke a great deal. And he startled
observers by agreeing with the progres-
sive Northern European bishops about
most of the items on the agenda. The
Mexican hierarchy's triumphalist view
that the Church had never erred, and
had nothing to learn or be sorry for,
epitomized the traditionalists' resistance
to ecunienisni, whereas Mendez Ar-
ceo's concept of a sinful pilgrim Church
("scmpcr renovanda, sempar ref or-
manda"), which should apologize to all
those whom it had estranged through-
out history, put him in the vanguard of
the ecumenical movement. Mendez
Arceo had been the only bishop at the
Council's first session, and was the
first bishop at its second session, to
suggest that the Church ask the "for-
giveness" of the Jews-a request the
Council fathers finally made. "'l'ilt
purification of the Church by the
Council," Mendez Arceo said, "could
not proceed without a humble declara-
tion of regret at all the injustices com-
mitted throughout history against the
Jewish people." His crusade for rap-
prochenrent with the Protestants was
equally intense, for he has often said
that lie would like to be known as "a
bishop of both confessions," in the sense
that Karl Barth has helm called "a
theologian of both confessions." Since
anti-Protestantisul is more prevalent in
Mexico than anti-Semitism, the Bish-
op's sympathy with Protestants was
even more controversial in his country
than his crusade for the Jews' forgive-
ness. The Bishop also urged that the
ban of excommunication be lifted from
all North and South American Free-
masons, which prompter] Gantt, an of-
ficial paper of the organization called
Opus I)ci, to urge immediate excom-
munication for him.
Mendez Arceo was progressive on
many other points at the Council. He
was, for example, a staunch supporter
of collegiality, the decentralizing phi-
losophy that aims at democratizing
Church structures by giving
the bishops a voice equal to
the Pope's. At one point, after
belittling such legalisms as re-
quirements for fasts and defi-
nitions of venial sins, lie de-
scribed Christ's teaching as "a
deliverance from the servitude
of the law, in such a manner
that the veritable Christian law
is not one written in stone but
one written in hearts." He
urged the Holy See to freely
allow marriage for those priests
who asked to return to the lay state.
"The consciousness of a possibility of a
return to the lay state and to the dis-
pensation of the celibacy vows would
be not a peril but a source of greater
fidelity and serenity among priests," lie
said. And during the debate on religious
liberty he took the floor to urge the
Church to recognize the benefits of
psychoanalysis. "The Church has as-
sumed a position toward psychoanaly-
sis that recalls the history of Galileo,'"
he said. "This has been due in part to
the anti-Christian dogmatism of some
psychoanalysts; but, because of her
distrustful approach, the Church up to
now has had no influence on those en-
gaged in this science." Going still fur-
ther, he suggested that the methods of
psychoanalysis might he used in clerical
circles "to purify vocations." Although
he warned that psychoanalysis might he
harmful if it became overconfident of
its methods, lie praised it as "a precious
tool for the spiritual and psychological
liberation of man" and as "a most
efficacious tool for discerning religious
vocations and for elevating souls toward
the way of evangelical virtue and
Christian holiness."
But nothing the Bishop said at the
Council shocked his compatriots more
than his attempt to decmphasize the
cult of Mary. The question whether
a statement on the Virgin Mary should
be included in the schema "On the
Church in the Modern World" or
should appear in a separate document
produced one of the Council's most
heated debates. As the progressives saw
it, a separate schema on Marv would
encourage further excesses of devotion
to the Virgin, and thus widen the
cleavage between Catholics and Prot-
estants. In the view of the traditional-
ists, who included the hard-line Raman
Curialists and most Spanish-speaking
clerics, Mary should have a schema to
herself because "the mystery of Mary
is greater than the mystery of the
Church." The conservatives wanted to
see the Church in the context of Marv,
whereas the progressives wanted-to see
Mary in the context of the
Church. '1'hroughoLit these de-
hates, Mcndcz Arceo sided
fervently with progressive
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Northern European Council
fathers like Bernard Jan Car-
dinal Alfrink, of the Nether-
lands, saying that the worship
of Mary must he restrained in
order to correct excesses in
popular devotion and to fur-
ther ecumenical reunion be-
tween the Catholic Church
and other Christian sects.
"Devotion to Mary and the saints at
times obscures devotion to Christ,"
Mendez Arcco argued. He was an-
grily rebutted by a Spanish bishop, who
stated that without a schema of her
own the Virgin would he seen "in
a passive role as the Church's eld-
est daughter, not as the Mother of the
Church." To this, Mendez Arceo re-
plied that the epithet "Mother of the
Church" was nonsense. Mary is a
member of the Church, he said, and so
how can she be her own mother,' Let
us just say, he urged, that she is the
one closest to Christ, the first ~Df the
moved. The progressive faction won,
and Mary was included in the larger
schema, but the victory was a, very
close one and left much bitterness.
Mendez Arceo's attack on "the ex-
cesses of Marian devotion" had par-
ticularly violent repercussions in Mex-
ico, where the cult of the Virgin still
persists as passionately as ever and !
where the saying "Mary came to save
us, Christ came to condemn us" is a
popular proverb. In once more center-
ing Catholicism upon the pemon of
Christ, the Bishop not only wa; mas-
culinizing and modernizing his nation's;
religiousness but was subtly threaten-'
ing the very fabric of Mexican society.
Psychologists have often noted that the'
machismo of Latin men and the passiv-
ity of Latin women are closely related;
to the sentimental cult of the suffering
Mother Goddess. "To do away with!
the cult of Mary would he to cinanci-
pate the women of Mexico and make!;
us ready to act in social change," a
progressive young Mexican woman, a
sociologist, has said. "That's why Mn_:
edez Arceo is considered so revolution
ary, and why he is so feared."
In 1968, Mendez Arceo was the
only Mexican bishop who refused to
sign a declaration drawn up by Mexi-
can clerics in support of the Pope's new
ban on artificial contraception. That
same summer, he was the only mem-
ber of the Mexican hierarchy to de-
plore the Mexican government's re-
pressive measures against students in
the riots at the University of Mex-
ico. And still later that same year he
published a strong condemnation of
America's Vietnam policy, and de-
clared that the United States should
"renounce its role of world police, con-
secrating itself instead to the common
good." The statement was praised by
former President Lazaro Cardenas-a
circumstance that produced a certain
amount of notoriety in itself, for no
one could recall another occasion on
which a successful liberal political figure
had supported a member of the Church
hierarchy on any subject whatever.
But Mendez Arceo was facing in-
creasing opposition within the Church;
in fact, a group had been organized
for the express purpose of getting the
Bishop removed from his diocese. It
called itself El Comite pro-Reivindica-
cion de ]a Iglesia Cathlica en Cuerna-
vaca (the Committee for the Recovery
of the Catholic Church in Cuernava-
ca). The membership included Catho-
lics in Guadelajara, Puebla, Michoa-
can, and provinces two thousand miles
from Cuernavaca who had never been
to Cuernavaca and had no intention of
ever going there but considered the
Bishop's modernism a threat to na-
tional security. Articles criticizing the
Bishop began to appear with increas-
ing frequency in the right-wing Mexi-
can press. One stated that Mendez
Arceo's "amicable relations with athe-
ists, Freemasons, and Marxists" were
proof that he was contributing to the
infiltration of Communism into the
Church throughout the world. Anoth-
er denounced the Bishop for playing
"music of dangerous folkloric char-
acter" in his cathedral and for allow-
ing his liturgy to he attended by "the-
atrical personages of doubtful moral
character." An editorial in the Opus
Dei paper Gente, after quoting the
Bishop's statement at the Council that
"we must establish a dialogue with all
men, notwithstanding how much of
Marx or Freud they have in them, for
Christ is in all men," concluded that
"the only fitting music for the Cuerna-
vaca liturgy would be the 'Internation-
ale.' " Still another article, after de-
nouncing the Bishop's views on the
Virgin Mary, on Protestantism, on
Jews, and on Freemasons, concentrat-
ed its fire on his friends, and particular-
ly on the serious harm that he was do-
ing to Catholicism by harboring at his
side "that strange, devious, and slip-
pery personage, crawling with inde-
finable nationalities, who is called, or
claims to he called, Ivan Illich." In a
letter to the Holy See published in the
form of a paid advertisement in all
Mexican dailies, the Committee for the
Recovery of the Catholic Church in
Cuernavaca complained of "the shame-
ful events concealed under the veil of
Freudian psychoanalysis" at Gregoird
Lemercier's Benedictiine monastery and
of "the heretic ideas of the enigmatic
Ivan Illich," and urged Pope Paul to
"make a final end to this fearful drama,
which threatens with such danger the
faith of so many souls, and which has
so harmed the prestige of our Church."
Mendez Arceo remained serene and
undaunted under the barrage of his
compatriots' criticism;, never wavering
in his belief that "the Church must
retain, within her unity, the diversity
of the Holy Spirit." His love of di-
versity is perhaps most clearly evi-
denced by the fact that the two chief
sources of controversy in his entourage,
Gregoire Lemercier and Ivan Illich,
have a profound dislike for each other.
I.cmercier has characterized Illicit as
"un genie rlctraque en grand hesoin de
psychoanalyse"-"an unbalanced gen-
ius in great need of psychoanalysis."
Illich, who was brought up in the
Viennese psychoanalytic milieu, has said
that he is "vigorously opposed to any
religious community's being used as a
base for psychoanalytic experiment."
The two men have seen each other
only about five times in the years
that both have spent in Cuernavaca,
though they live less than three miles
apart. As Lemercier says, in a Belgian
idiom, "Nos atomes ne se sont jamais
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crochus"--"Our atoms never hooked
tip." And yet the Committee for the
Recovery of the Catholic Church in
Cuernavaca had the two men so in-
extricably linked that the second ques-
tion in the Vatican's questionnaire for
Illich, directly parroting accusations of
the right-wing press, went, "Is it true
that, beginning in 1960, and especially
under the influence of the Benedictine
monk and psychoanalyst Gregoire Lc-
mercier, there has been in you a dan-
gerous general development of new
ideas and disintegrating tendencies of a
humanitarian and libertarian nature?"
Mendez Arceo has had to act all
along as a buffer between "the two
volcanoes of Cuernavaca," as Mexi-
cans sometimes call Illich and Le-
mercier, in an allusion to the two
mountains that dominate Mexico City.
"Whenever I give one of them the
other's latest article to read, he moans,
`It's ghastly!"' the Bishop once said.
"I have tolerated with the greatest
diplomacy the mutual dislike of two
extraordinary men." And with an in-
genuous smile, he added, "I am very
pleased with myself."
In June of 1967, psychotherapy
at Lemercier's Benedictine monastery
was ordered stopped by a direct edict
of the Holy See. The edict came
after what Lemercier calls "une serie
d'evenements abracadabrants," one of
which was Lemercier's own inquisition
at the Vatican, in 1966. For eight
months, be had sat in a room of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith answering questions in writing,
and had never once seen either one of
his judges. At the end of the eight
months, he sent Pope Paul a list of his
expenses in Rome and a long letter
stating his opinion that he was being
used as a pawn in an inquisition that
was in fact aimed not at him but at
Bishop Mendez Arceo. When the pa-
pal edict banning psychotherapy at Le-
rnercier's monastery was issued, the
monks were given the choice of stop-
ping their therapy or continuing it and
being dispensed from their vows. The
following Sunday, as his weekly ser-
mon, Mendez Arceo read an extraor-
dinary pastoral letter. Instead of pass-
ing any judgment on his Benedictine
friends' experience, he urged his flock
to- become more open than eves to the
spirit of renewal in the Church. "I ask
you to place yourselves before the Holy
Spirit," he said, "that Spirit whose ac-
tion lies deeper than institutions or so-
ciological changes, that Spirit who is
present in the- hearts of the people of
God." And in asking his flock to offer
the monks of Santa Maria de la Resur-
recci6n their prayers and their brotherly
support, Mendez Arceo made this un-
usual statement of conscience: "I feel
deeply the pain of breaking with the
past, the uncertainty of being far from
land on uncharted seas. But I also feel
the purifying emptiness of poverty in
being stripped of the very riches that
the past has given us."
Of Lemercier's community, which
consisted of twenty-four monks, twen-
ty-one, including Lemercier himself,
chose to leave their order and remain
in therapy. In July, 1967, soon after
renouncing his vows and turning his
monastery into a secular community
for group therapy, Lemercier got mar-
ried with some fanfare-in a manner
that Illich criticized as "extremely in-
correct."
ILLICH, gesticulating with his long,
gangling arms, conversing in sev-
eral languages, walks swiftly through
the rooms of CIDOC, which is housed
in an elegant villa in the flowered
hills above Cuernavaca. "I would
like to help people smile-smile the
social system apart," he says. "Here at
CIDOC, we smile violence apart. It is a
place where violent people can come
and learn a respcto Para la vida. Real
revolutionaries are men who look with
a deep sense of humor-with sar-
casm-upon their institutions. Sarcasm
is adult playfulness. Cynicism is its op-
posite. Instead of freedom and inde-
pendence, cynicism produces not real
revolution but a regressive attachment
to slogans and self-worship. For dead-
ly serious revolutionaries-non, nscrci.
But sarcasm is essential, to purify us of
our illusions. As Marx said, we must
go beyond our illusions to change the
conditions that made them necessary.
That is two paragraphs before the
mention of religion as the opiate of
the people, in his commentary upon
Hegel's philosophy of the law. When it
comes to change, I do not really like to
use the words `. iolence' and `non-vio-
lence.' At times, idols must be shattered.
A flower grows through stone and
breaks the stone. Is that violence?"
And he rushes out of the room to
attend to some business. It is typical
Illich tactics to let the visitor answer
tough questions by himself.
Another time, walking around his
luxuriant garden, bending solicitously
over his flower beds, he says, "What
makes the place run here is le bon ton,
our basically correct behavior, our con-
cern for the garden. I am attacked by
both the left and the right because I
insist on rigorously correct behavior,. I
am profoundly opposed to the Under-
ground Church, because it is counter-
revolutionary. You reform by staying
within the system. I believe in good
manners, in playing by the rules of the
game. If you don't like the rules of
chess, stop playing it, but do not try
to change its rules. The Yankee Un-
derground Church is not civil disobe-
dience but civil unkemptness. I have
never seen effective change achieved
through means of civil unkemptness. I
am attacked by my liberal ecumenical
friends because I insist on good man-
ners. An American priest comes here
and takes a glass-not even a beautiful
glass, the ugliest glass he can find-and
starts-saying Mass in a sports shirt, an
ugly black-and-white striped sports
shirt. Qurlle horreur! Underground
churchmen? No, thank you. On n'cst
as frirrrs et cochons avcc le Seigneur.
I am theologically a profound conserva-
tive. I could teach with deep relish a
course in preconciliar theology. I
would like to have lived in the Middle
Ages, one of the high points of man's
spirit. We want to keep CIDOC a free
island, an oasis for the free exchange
of knowledge and experience. The
only rules we hold are: one, you may
talk for ten minutes without being in-
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terrtlpted; two, do not try to proselytize
or brainwash; three, do not organize
any direct political, economic, or social
action-not even religious movements.
CIDOC is in the deepest sense a con-
templative place, not a conspiratorial
place, and this is scandalous to both the
left and the right." Illich smiles and
throws back his shock of long black
hair with a boyish gesture. In the long
face, with its beaklike nose, the deep-
set brown eyes are both gentle and
probing, and the wide mouth curves up
in a way that is mocking and kjiowing
yet kind and ingenuous.
The catalogue of publications rinted
at CIDOC under Illich's supervision for
the benefit of those studying sociologi-
cal and cultural change in Latin Amer-
ica includes, along with some forty
other listings:
Peruvian Catechisms in the Sixteenth
Century
Socialization of Medicine in Mexico,
1965-68
Che Guevara: Reactions of the. Ameri-
can Press Concerning the Conse-
quences of His Death, 1967-68
Birth Control in Brazil, 1'966-67
The Religious Beliefs of the Aymara
Indian Tribes of Bolivia
Concubinage in Central America
Pentecostal Sects Among the Puerto
Ricans of New York City
Missionary Attitudes of the Latin-
American Episcopate 'Toward Indians
in the Sixteenth Century (six vol-
umes)
Guerrilla Violence in Peru, Bolivia,
Colombia, and Ecuador from 1960-68
(twelve volumes)
In preparation is a work that will
summarize the findings of every dio-
cesan council and synod held in Latin
America since the year 1531 and will
en
include a bibliography of all religious he re-
documents, periodicals and pamphlets dfi "Another conception form of of grace, , h our
ever published on the continent. Its cdi- l), e lied, ne g
, time, can he attained through night
to a young Mexican priest named
r folio Torres, predicts that the work school." Illich believes deeply in adult
education, and he would like to see all
will fill at least twenty-five! volumes traditional school systems abolished,
and may take him his entire lifetime to because, he says, they favor the privi-
prepare. The primary purpose of the 1 ? d middle classes at the ex p of
work will he, Torres says, "to provide `ge p
a pastoral method more deeply rooted the marginal groups; only through a
in the cultural tradition of Latin radically transformed system of adult
America, and to combat the prevailing education can the underprivileged rise
trend of developed countries' impos- from misery to the secular grace of
ing their solutions on underdeveloped
countries." It will serve as basic text
for extensive seminars on the history of
the Church in Latin America.
Among the thirty-odd courses of-
fered at CIDOC in recent summers
were:
Social Change and Argentine Literature,
1945-65
The Peasant Leagues in Northeastern
Brazil, 1955-63
Camilo Torres: The Development of His
Ideas
University Reforms and Student Move-
ments in Latin America Today
Revolutionary Awareness in Brazilian
Popular Culture and Contemporary
Art
Cuban Fiction Under Castro
Attitudes Toward Authority in Mexican
Culture
An Analysis of the Haitian Press
A New Concept of Literacy Training
The last of these courses has been
taught by Paolo Freire, a prominent
Brazilian educator, jailed and later
exiled, who has claimed that he could
teach fifteen million illiterate Brazilians
to read in six weeks if the government
would allow all its teachers to use his
method-a method based on what
Freire calls the principle of "conscien-
tization," or "awakening the political
conscience of the deprived." He has
already demonstrated, in small experi-
mental groups throughout Latin Amer-
ica, that adults can he taught to read
in six weeks of evening classes if the
teaching vocabulary is built around
emotion-loaded phrases that are related
to their social conditions. For example,
one lesson might start out with the
words "This land produces our food.
The land must he ours."
Illich was asked recently to
\Vh
enlightenment. He also believes that
wealthy nations foment violence by
trying to impose their values on under-
developed countries, and that priests,
social workers, and government em-
ployees must acquire formidable exper-
tise in the economic, social, and politi-
cal problems of any underdeveloped
country they work in if they are to
avoid fomenting violence themselves.
CIDOC can thus he looked upon as a
kind of secular monastery, where men
come to immerse themselves in Latin-
American culture, and where all the
forms of education-seminars, civilized
discourse, language training, library re-
search-are the sacraments of Illich's
secular grace.
The CIDOC library's collection of
material pertaining to social and politi-
cal change in contemporary Latin
America has few equals. It includes,
for instance, the only complete collec-
tion in existence of the writings of
Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest
who was killed by government troops
in 1966 when he joined Colombia's
guerrilla hands. Another unique serv-
ice offered by CIDOC is its language
school. Many of its students learn
faultless Spanish or Portuguese in
twelve weeks, and the school, by which
CIDOC is largely financed, is said to he
one of the two best language schools in
the American hemisphere. The other
one is in PetrSpolis, Brazil, where
i'IiOC has set up a small sister or-
.r:uliration, and where Illich himself
learned to speak impeccable Portuguese
in three weeks.
CIDOC was established primarily to
provide training for those doing mis-
sionary work in Latin America, and in
its first ),cars its attendance was pre-
dominantly clerical. It gradually grew
more secular, however-in par( because
Illich rejected numbers of priests who
he decided could never be "de-Yanki-
fied" enough to serve properly in Latin
America. The sort of North American
clergymen who became devoted. to
CIDOC were tough-minded and brilliant
progressives such as Monsignor Robert
Fox and Father Robert Stern, of the
New York archdiocese, and Father
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Joseph Fitzpatrick, of Fordham's So-
ciology Department, who feel that
CIDOC serves an important function
in breaking down "the savior com-
plex" of t:he American clergy, and
who look upon Illich as a prophetic
genius working to build the Church
of the future. The students-?---secular
and lay-who survive C:IDQC: and like
it are an unusual assortment. The
Protestant theologian Harvey Cox, of
Harvard, who taught a course in "Re-
ligious and Social Change in Latin
and North America" at CIDOC in the
summer of 1968, described some of
the thirty students who attended his
seminar in these words: "There was
a very brilliant, very radical French
nun who had worked for years in
Mexican slums, a Panamanian priest
who was also deeply involved in so-
cial work, a young Maryknoll semi-
narian from the Middle West who
was probably the most radical man I've
ever met. The rest were lay: a couple
of Belgian sociologists, a Ph.D. stu-
dent in zoology f om Berkeley, anoth-
er Ph.D. student in sociology-a ni-
sei-from the University of Chicago,
an S.D.S. leader from Radcliffe. It
was the most interesting hunch of stu-
dents I've had in all my years of
teaching."
Illich began his operations in Cuer-
navaca, hack in 1961, in an old ho-
tel on the southwestern slope of the
city, which delighted Bishop Mendez
Arceo because of "its spirit of Christian
poverty, its so un-American way of
life." The present, far more splendid,
home in the northwestern part of the
city suggests anything but poverty, and
reflects Illich's austerely sophisticated
tastes. The main building is a white col-
onnaded structure built in a U shape
around a swimming pool in an idyllic
setting of pines, flowering trees, and
tropical plants. The rooms are large,
white, serene, and sparsely furnished
with modern pieces designed by Illich's
brother Aleksander, an architect. The
tiled floors are scattered with starkly
handsome Indian rugs in lines of brown
and tan. There are a few abstract
crucifixes here and there. CIDOC has cused him of not believing in canon
its own printing plant, lecture rooms law, Illich once said, "We are called
equipped with earphone systems for to observe -the law, not to believe
simultaneous translation, a film pro- in it." He enjoys teaching by puzzle-
jection room, a row of forty cubicles ment, and answers questions with cryp-
where the language courses are given tic aphorisms worthy of the toughest
to groups of four students per class, Zen master. "Being a Christian is like
and study space for visiting scholars, understanding the joke in the story,"
Its atmosphere of rarefied scholarship he told a young Catholic not long ago.
evokes the style of the great medieval "A story is told to a group of people.
monasteries where laymen came to Only the Christian smiles. Only he gets
steep themselves in study and in learned the joke. And some men smile who do
dialogues. And yet CIDOC's super-ef- not know that they are Christians."
ficicncy, the impeccable institutional Another young Catholic asked him
courtesy of its staff members, and the what faith was all about. "Faith is a
dazed expression on the faces of young readiness for the surprise," Illich re.-
Americans in the process of cultural plied. "We must have a sarcastic readi-
transformation also suggest a very mod-
ern and luxin?ious private clinic. Like a
phys?cian making his rounds, Illich
moves constantly through the rooms,
pausing to deliver a short discourse on
St. John of the Cross, to suggest that a
student look into Wittgenstein's philos-
ophy of language, to startle a priest by
drawing a parallel between tenth-cen-
tury monastic groups and twentieth-
century hippie communes. Sometimes,
however, Illich deliberately makes him-
self unavailable to his trainees, in or-
der to force them to work out their
own problems-the way they will have
to when they are in the mountains of
Peru. And to keep an appointment
with an American overly possessed
of Anglo-Saxon punctuality, the habit-
ually punctual Illich will arrive an
hour late to teach him the Latin sense
of time.
Illich refuses to he anybody's hero,
and befuddles men on both the left
and the right by his rigorously conven-
tional behavior. Underground clerics
who have come to Cuernavaca to steep
themselves in Illich's progressive think-
ing are appalled to hear that he rises at
six every morning to say his breviary,
goes to confession in an old-fashioned
booth, dutifully receives Communion
every Sunday at Bishop Mendez Ar-
ceo's Mass, and delights in observin
g
o
ankee
saints' days, holy days, and other an- student radicals ex ressin ]
ness for all surprises, including the
ultimate surprise of death." ("I love
the way Illicit tortures his missionaries,"
Bishop Mendez Arceo once said.
"Sometimes I cry with emotion at see-
ing aged men, elderly priests, shed their
old selves under his care.")
Illich is at least as hard on himself
as he is on others. To come to grips
with a certain discomfort he has felt
about Mexican culture ("I was ter-
rified of their gods, of the devour..
ing eyes of their sculptures"), he fre..
quent]y goes to spend the night alone
on the desolate peak of Xochicalco, a
Toltec ruin near Cuernavaca filled
with terrifying has-reliefs of sacrificial
themes, where he sleeps on a flat
mountain ]edge, wrapped in a sarape.
Illich is at his roughest with those
who take a romantic view of revolu-
tion, especially those who try to use
CIDOC as a center for political prose-
lytizing. When a group of S.D.S. stu-
dents picketed cIDOC in protest against
the presence of Grayson Kirk, then the
president of Columbia University, who
had been invited to dine at the center,
Illich sent an Argentine Jesuit, an au-
thority on guerrilla warfare, to accuse
them of practicing Yankee imperialism.
What made them think they had the
right to tell a Mexican institution
what it could or could not d
? Y
cient feasts of the Catholic Church, g rc mi ran
for Central American guerrilla bands
ds
Talking with a traditionalist who ac- are packed off to the library to read
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Goethe. The progressive priests who
express admiration for Camilo "Torres
(whom Illich knew as "an adorable
drinking companion" but never invit-
ed to CIDOC) are coldly reminded
that Torres shed his clerical status be-
fore going into the hills, and that this
was "the canonically proper thing to!.:
do." For although Illich is primarily:
known as a progressive, he insists that a
priest must abstain from direct politi=
cal action. He believes that although
through history the Church has con=
stantly participated in the shaping of
political change, blessing some govern'
merits and condemning others, the time
has come for it to withdraw from any
specific social initiative. It is a modern
rendering unto Caesar. Illieh traces
this belief to what he calls his "pr(-
found Jewish roots," and quotes, " 'Do
not use Yahweh's name in vain.' " S(1-
cial problems must he solved by secular
ideologies. The Church must condemn
all forms of injustice but never sup-
port any specific program to combat it.
Within the framework of this logic,
Illich has as much scorn for a progres-
sive Catholic party such as Chilq's
Christian Democrats as he hat, for Co-
lombia's equally Catholic but reactioi'i-
ary Conservative Party. He once said
that the function of the Church is 'to'
recognize the presence of Christ among
us through liturgical celebration, and
to charge human beings, through these
celebrations, with the proper emotions
toward social action." And he added,
with a smile, "The less effcient he
Church is as a power, the mire effec-
tive it is as a celebrant of the mystery.
Let us follow the example of the
Pope-let its have the courage to al-
low churchmen to make statements so
ephemeral that they could never 'he
construed as the Church's teaching."
Another of his epigrams: "I celebrate
my faith for no reason at all."
The notion that the place for a
priest is at the altar is distasteful to
the young Yankee clergymen who
flock to Cuernavaca in the hope, of
finding it a center of social activism.
Two such priests of the Lets Angeles
diocese Caine to CIDOC once to com-
plain to Illich that James Francis Car-
dinal McIntyre, the arch-conservative
of the United States hierarchy, had
not allowed them to march in dem-
onstrations for civil-rights legislation.
They (lid not receive the sympathy
they had expected. "If I were your
cardinal, I would not allow you to
march, either," Illich snapped. "If you
want to parade against discrimination
in general, O.K., but not for the pas-
sage of another lousy stopgap law. Or
else take off your white collars." When
Father Daniel Berrigan, the radical
American Jesuit, was sent to cool his
heels in Cuernavaca after his anti-
Vietnam War activities had alarmed
his superiors, he found in Illich "a lot
of intellectual violence aimed at our
religious left." ("It's too had Illich
isn't a Jesuit," Berrigan once said.
"He's such a caricature of us.") When
asked to comment on Thomas and
Marjorie Melville, two former Mary-
knoll missionaries, now married, who
had helped Guatemalan guerrillas to
arm, and who spent a night at CIDOC
on their way home to the United
States, Illich shrugged disdainfully and
said, "Dilettantes! Ingenues! One
does not take shortcuts." Nothing
could he more foreign to Illich than
the type of.guerrilla activities engaged
in by the Melvilles or the acts of wit-
ness chosen by Daniel Berrigan and
his brother Philip. For Illich, the
proper way to force an upheaval in
society is through a revolution in the
education process-teaching a million
Brazilian peasants to read in six weeks
of night school, ridding a few thou-
s:utd missionaries of their Yankee
hangups. Providing such adult educa-
tion, in Illich's view, is far more radical
than training guerrillas or going to jail
in protest. One of Illich's close friends
has said, "Ivan would never be tram-
pled by the wheels of revolution-he'd
he at the huh of the wheel, at dead
center."
What Yankee progressives cone to
recognize, if they stay long enough at
CIDOC, is that removing the Church
from the political sphere in Latin Amer-
ica could in itself he a supra-political
act. As recently as 1937, the Arch-
bishop of Lima had this praise for the
Latin-American status quo: "Poverty is
the most certain road to eternal felicity.
Only the state which succeeds in mak-
ing the poor appreciate the spiritual
treasures of poverty can solve
its social problems." In coun-
tries where the Church has
been diligent in providing such
comfortable justifications for ex-
tremes of wealth and poverty,
the removal of Church support might
mean the collapse of an entire network
of oligarchies. And so Illich's demand
that the Church stay out of politics is
in fact highly political. His position,
however, continues to puzzle those who
know of his expertise in international
affairs and of his frequent vitriolic at-
tacks on United States foreignpolicy.
There is something about the Yan-
kee way of life that evokes more sar-
casm from Illich than any other brand
of nationalism. And it is generally be-
lieved that some of his anti-American
statements had more than a little to do
with his visit to the cellars of the Vati-
can. He found himself frustrated and
amazed, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, by
the inability of his North American stu
dents to relate the problems of the
ghettos and Vietnam to the Yankee-
bred violence in Latin America. In a
speech to the Foreign Policy Associ-
ation in 1966, he referred to Guate-
mala as "Vietlat." And lie compared
the peace movement to "cough syrup
given to nineteenth-century syphilitics,"
because of its failure to protest United
States intervention in Latin America
as vigorously as it protested Vietnam.
Noting that the Alliance for Progress
had tripled the amount of revenue
flowing into the United States from
Latin America, he labelled it "an alli-
ance pregnant with violence that has
maintained or swept into power military
regimes in two-thirds of Latin Ameri-
can countries," "a deception designed to
maintain the status quo," "a hone
thrown to the dog, that lie remain quiet
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in the hack yard of the Americas." Vio-
lence in Watts, Vietnam, and Guate-
mala, he wrote in 1967, had a common
cause, which he identified as United
States messianism. He referred to "the
failure to win hearts and minds of peo-
ple by an outpouring of money and
human `lives that Americans perceive
as an expression of heroic generosity,"
and added, "It is not the American
way of life lived by a handful of mil-
lions that sickens the billions, but rath-
er the growing awareness that those
who live the American way of life will
not tire until the superiority of their
quasi-religious persuasions is accepted
by the underdog." He compared the
Alliance for Progress to the war on
poverty in the United States: "Both
programs were designed to have the
poor join in the American dream. Both
programs failed. The poor re-
fused to dream on command."
And in another anti-Yankee
polemic he said, "Only God
can create values. The United
States breeds violence by im-
posing its values on other nations." For,
according to Illich, the world is divided
not so much into nations or political
blocs; rather, it is divided into an inter-
national middle class that takes its style
and values from the United States and
billions of underprivileged who are in-
creasingly alienated from that middle
class. Illich has the aristocrat's senti-
mental attraction-recalling Tol-
stoy's-to cultures of poverty untainted
by bourgeois aspirations. As in his early
days among the Puerto Ricans, he de-
lights in seeing people celebrate in their
native fashion. "Peasant cultures pro-
vide categories which endow even ex-
treme rural privation with dignity," he
has said. "I am for those who want to
deepen life rather than lengthen it."
The peasant is richer and wiser than
the Alliance for Progress. Let him en-
joy himself at his traditional fiestas and
die young, rather than live on pow-
dered milk from the Yankees' sacristy
and yearn for the vulgar Coca-Cola
culture imported by United States for-
eign aid. For this attitude, which in
sonic ways resembles that of the reac-
tionary Archbishop of Lima and which
could serve to support the most oligar-
chic status quo, Illich continues to be at-
tacked as often by liberals as by con-
servatives.
MAKE a scrupulous distinction,"
Illich once said, "between the
Church as She and the Church as It."
("That one can only say in English,"
he noted with a smile.) "She is that
surprise in the net, the pearl. She is the
mystery, the kingdom among us. The
identity of the Church as She will re-
main through whatever changes She's
currently undergoing, which are no
greater than the changes She under-
went under Constantine, or in Abe-
lard_'s-time. Those who believe in Her
believe in something that cannot he
said in words. No pronouncements,
however stupid, he they out birth control
or on clerical celibacy, can lessen my
love for Her and my faith in Her mys-
tery. People who leave the Church be-
cause of what She says don't understand
love. It, however, is the institution, the
temporary incarnational form. I can
talk ahout It only in sociological terms.
I've never had trouble creating factions
and dissent toward the Church as It."
By the time Illich began his forays
against the Church as It, in the mid-
sixties, the Church in Latin America,
which holds one-third of the world's
Catholic population, had realized for a
decade that it was in a state of acute
emergency. Surveys conducted by the
Freach Jesuit sociologists Francois
Hontart and Emil Pin, whose work
has had a great influence on Illich, re-
vealed that in sonic regions of Latin
America--in parts of the llomini-
can Republic and Guatemala, for in-
stance-there was one priest for every
seventy thousand Catholics, in contrast
to an average of one priest for every
six hundred Catholics in the United
Status; that in some Brazilian dioceses
the average rate of ordination was two
per year; that only some ten per cent
of the nominally Catholic population
of Brazil took any part in religious ob-
servances; and that in some of Latin
America's largest cities, such as Buenos
Aires, only five per cent of the baptized
Catholics attended Sunday Mass. It
was in response to this crisis that
in 1961 the Pope issued the decree
calling for ten per cent of all North
Am: rican religious to migrate to Latin
America. But by 1967 the influx of
North American religious had reached
only six thousand of the twenty thou-
sand called for by the Pope. At this
point, Illich created a sensation with an
article titled "The Seamy Side of Char-
ity," published in the Jesuit magazine
Rmi?rica, in which he rejoiced over the
failure of the program and called for
its immediate discontinuance. Like all
his writings, the article was polemical,
bristling with barbed aphorisms that
were calculated to provoke. His central
thesis in the article, which infuriated
hierarchies on both sides of the border,
was that the papal plan was nothing but
"part of the many-faceted effort to
keep Latin America within the ideolo-
"ics of the West." Missionaries of the
kind that were being sent south of
the border, he wrote, were "pawns in
a world ideological struggle;" they
played the role of "a colonial power's
lackey chaplain;" they transformed
"the old-style haciendas of God into the
Lord's Supermarket." In Illich's view,
the chief function of these priests and
nuns was to buttress private institu-
tions, such as Church schools serving
the upper and middle classes, at the ex-
pense of the underprivileged. He re-
lated it to the general swamping of
Latin America by United States values?
"The influx of U.S. missioners coin-?
cidcs with the Alliance for Progress,
Camelot, and C.I.A. projects, and
looks like a baptism of these," he de-
clared. He has since acknowledged
that he wrote the article angrily and in
a hurry, right after the March, 1967,
issue of the magazine Ramparts ex-
posed the C.I.A.'s hacking of the Na-
tional Student Association. "I 'wrote
the article fast, to make it clear that
within the Church there were pcopl8
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who refused to take funds Irom Alli-
ance for Progress and similar sources."
Yet Illich's purpose in writing the
article was fundamentally religious
rather than political. For in that short-
age of Latin-American clergy which
had panicked the Vatican he saw a
rare and precious chance to pioneer
new forms of the priesthood. Illich's
passionate involvement in Latin-Amer-
ican affairs stemmed in part from his
realization that both its religious Crisis
and its turbulent political changes made
it a valuable laboratory for the society
of the future. What conservatives diag-
nosed as a crisis of scarcity in the priest-
hood Illich saw as actually a sur-
plus, and a great blessing. "Exporting
Church employees to Latin America
masks a universal and unconscious fear
of a new church," he wrote. "The
promise of more clergy is like a be-
witching siren. It makes the chronic
surplus of clergy in Latn America
invisible and it makes i1. impossible
to diagnose this surplus as the gravest
illness of the Church.... If North
America and Europe send enough
priests to fill the vacant parishes, there
is no need to consider laymen to ful-
fill most evangelical tasks; no need to
re-examine the structure of the parish,
the function of the priest; no need for
exploring the use of the married diac-
onate, and new forms of celebra-
tion." In Illich's view, ir,creasin!g the
clergy on any continent was a way of
maintaining an irrelevant Church. Il-
lich compared this cure to that of doc-
tors who prefer aspirin tc? radical sur-
gery. ""They feel no guilt it having the
patient die of cancer, but fear the risk
of applying the knife."
To diagnose the symptoms of the
cancerous structure had been Illich's
task in another controversial article,
"The Vanishing Clergyman." Writ-
ten in German in 1961, it remains un-
surpassed among his works for its hold
prophecy of new forms of ministry. Its
demand for a return to early-style
Christianity, unsullied by riches and
secular power, is similar in many ways
to the romantic longings of the Under-
ground Church ; but it is expressed in
Illich's rigorous methodological man-
ner, and cloaked in his Apollonian sar-
casm. "The Roman Church is the
world's largest non-governmental hu-
reaucracy," the article begins, and it
goes on to say, "Men suspect that it
has lost its relevance to the Gospel and
to the world. Wavering, doubt, and
confusion reign among its directors,
functionaries, and employees. The gi-
ant begins to totter before it collapses.
Some Church personnel react to the
breakdown with pain, anguish, and
fright. Some make heroic efforts and
tragic sacrifices to prevent it....I
would like to suggest that we welcome
the disappearance of institutional bu-
reaucracy in a spirit of deep joy." Illich
called the traditional clergyman "a
folkloric phantom," "a member of the
aristocracy of the only feudal power
remaining in the world," "a man sen-
tenced to disappear, whether the
Church wishes it or not, by the changes
in modern society." Employing He-
gelian dialectics, he argued that if the
Church was to retain men to preach
the Gospel, the traditional antithesis
between pastor and layman would have
to produce a new synthesis, which
would transcend the old categories.
And the leisure society of the future,
with its reduced working hours and its
early retirement age, would allow this
synthesis to takv place. Illich predicted
that the leisure society would free or-
dinary laymen to accept. vllcations for
part-time ministerial functions-men
chosen for "a sense of the Church,"
which they would cultivate by prayer,
by scriptural study, and by a pure life.
"An adult layman will preside over the
normal Christian community of the
future," he wrote. "The ministry will
he an exercise of leisure rather than a
job. The `diaconia' [an informal com-
munity of worshippers meeting in each
other's homes] will supplant the parish
as the fundamental unit of the Church.
I he periodic meeting of friends will
replace the Sunday assemblage of stran-
gers. A self-supporting dentist, fac..
tory worker, professor, rather than a
Church-cmployed scribe or function..
ary, will preside over the meeting.
Only with the emergence of such a
part-time priesthood will the Church
free itself from the restrictive system of
benefices and from that gigantic bu-
reaucratic efficiency which corrupts
Christian testimony more subtly than
power." Illich himself, since the day he
was ordained, has consistently refused
to accept a stipend for any priestly
function, and has always expressed
disdain for the economics and the in-
stitutional pomp of the Church. "The
title of Monsignor," he once said of his
own rank, "is rather akin to the sexu-
ality of a mule."
"The Vanishing Clergyman" went
oil to say that celibacy was an admirable
way of life but that it had nothing
whatsoever to do with the priesthood,
the two states--priesthood and celi-
bacy-having been linked by custom
within a set of historical circumstances
that no longer exist. Illich said he was
all for celibacy, as long as it was chosen
freely, for its own sake, and was
stripped of any magic or ritualistic signif-
icance. "The Christian who renounces
marriage and children for the king-
dom's sake seeks no abstract or ccm-
crete reasons for his decision," Illiich
wrote, in a uniquely lyrical passage that
reveals his profound strain of mysticism.
"His choice is pure risk in faith, the
result of the intimate and mysterious
experience of the heart. His decision to
renounce a spouse is as intimate and
uncommunicable as another's decision
to prefer his spouse over all others."
But should the Vatican therefore be
petitioned to relax its laws of com-
pulsory celibacy? Certainly not, Illich
wrote, reverting to a sarcastic vein. He
was against married priests, because the
Church already had too many unmar-
ried ones, and such halfway "aggior?na-
mento" would slow up any true revo-
lution in the structure of the Church.
"The clerical mass exodus will only
last as long as the present clerical sys-
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tem exists," he wrote. "During this
time, ordination of married men would
he a sad mistake. It would only delay
needed radical reforms." Illich believed
in strictly adhering to the Pope's edicts
on compulsory celibacy, because "his
position helps assure the speedy death
of the clergy."
And Illich boldly called for defec-
tions, for an increasing exodus of
priests to insure this speedy death of
the traditional priesthood. "May we
pray for an increase of priests who choose
radical secularization?" he wrote. "For
priests who leave the clergy in order
to pioneer the Church of the future?
For priests who, faithfully dedicated to
and loving the Church, risk misunder-
standing and suspension? For extraor-
dinary priests, willing to live today
the ordinary life of tomorrow's priests?"
And he urged all clergymen to ask
themselves a question that has tor-
mented an increasing number of Cath-
?olies in the past decade: "Should I,
a man totally at the service of the
Church, stay in the structure in order
to subvert it, or leave in order to live
the model of the future?"
"The Vanishing Clergyman" en-
raged many progressive Catholics in
the United States by its sarcastic logic
and its haughty dismissal of any possi-
bility of meaningful reform in our
generation. But it enraged the Latin
Americans even more (so had "The
Seamy Side of Charity"), because of its
description of the Church as being
"priest-ridden." A Mexican country
priest who has remained a staunch sup-
porter (')f Illich has said, "A few years
ago, in a southern province, I was the
only priest for forty thousand parish-
ioners. The terrain was so rough that
it took me one week to cross my parish
territory on muleback. And even then
I could do it only in the seasons when
the rivers were not too high. In the
Peruvian Andes, priests often (lie in
their early thirties, from overwork
and heart ailments. And he tells us
that we're priest-ridden!" Even Bishop
Mendez Arceo criticized the article,
calling it "a caricature that missed the
whole supernatural factor of the priest-
hood," and commenting that Illich had
"projected the realities of the United
States Church into Latin America."
If Illich's progressive supporters
were annoyed by the two articles, one
need not try hard to imagine the rage
of the Mexican right wing. It was
in the fall of 1967, after the publica-.
tion of these articles, that concerted ef-
forts were begun to bring the full dis-
cipline of the Church down upon "el
tenebroso Ddlmata Illich," and also
upon the bishop who countenanced his
activities. The attack was theatrically
launched on October 4th by the open
letter to the Pope published in Mexico's
largest dailies as a paid advertisement
by the Committee for the Recovery of
the Catholic Church in Cuernavaca.
The letter, signed by about twenty
prominent laymen and priests, con-
cluded, "The spectacular and theatrical
liturgy that we have seen in the Cuer-
navaca cathedral, the new so-called
Gospel that its bishop preaches, the
psychoanalyzed and degenerate com-
munity fostered under him, the touris-
tic hotel run by Monsignor Illich,
where bizarre things have been wit-
nessed-these are not, cannot be, the
work of God." Almost simultaneously,
the Archbishop of Puebla, who hap-
pened to be a cousin of President Diaz
Ordaz, and who was president of the
Conference of Mexican Bishops that
year, wrote to Cardinal Spellman ask-
ing that Illich be recalled to the New
York archdiocese. Cardinal Spellman
replied courteously in mid-November,
stating that "Illich is a priest of excel-
lent standing in my diocese, in every
way obedient," and informing the
Mexican bishop that he would not re-
call Illich to New York, because Illich
had academic contracts in Cuernavaca
to which the Cardinal had given ex-
plicit approval.
Spellman',, letter reaffirming his loy-
alty to Illich was one of the last letters read it, was able to see a copy of it. It
he ever wrote. He died a fortnight was clear that officials of the Vatican
later. Twelve days after Spellman's continued to view the Illich case
death, the New York chancery re-
ceived a new series of letters asking that
Illich be recalled. Some of these letters
were from Mexico; others emanated
from the arch-conservative Roman
Curialist Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani,
acting under Mexican pressure. "The
timing was totally obscene," an official
of the New York chancery has said.
"Cardinal Spellman'-, body was scarce-
ly buried. They knew that Illich had
lost a staunch friend, and they did not
have the decency to wait a week." On
December 19th, Spellman's provisional
successor, Bishop John Maguire, wrote
to Illich requesting that. he return to
New York immediately, on orders
from Rome. Illich, in a letter to Ma-
guire postmarked January 6th, ex-
pressed "profound embarrassment"
over what he called his "unavailabil-
ity," and went on to explain that his
duties at CIDOC made it impossible for
him to come to New York at that time.
Bishop Maguire, who turned out to he
as staunch a supporter of Illich as Spell-
man had been, excused him from the
trip and communicated Illich's state-
ment to Ottaviani.
Meanwhile, the liberal factions of
the Latin-American hierarchy rallied to
counteract the intrigues being mounted
against the diocese of Cuernavaca. Bish-
op Avelar Brandao Vilela, of Brazil,
who was president of the Conference
of Latin-American Bishops, asked two
theologians-Father Lucio Gera, of
Argentina, and I3ish0p Caiidido Pad in,
of Lorena, Brazil-to make a formal
investigation of CIDOC, and after visit-
ing Cuernavaca in November, 1967,
these men compiled a highly favorable
report on the center. They sent their
report to 1Zonte at the end of the
month, but four months later, in
March, its receipt had still not been ac-
knowledged. The report had apparent-
ly vanished. Neither Bishops Wridez
Arceo nor the Apostolic Delegate to
Mexico, who made repeated requests to
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through the eyes of the Mexican hier-
archy. "There was a moment when I
felt that they would not return to
an authoritarian style, but the path of
dialogue was interrupted," a promi-
nent Latin-American bishop wrote to
Illich.
Illich made an attempt to open a dia-
logue of his own directly with the Holy
See, but this, too, came to nothing.
In January, 1968, he wrote a letter to
the Pope, couched in an ecclesiastical
style that some progressives deplored
for what they called its attitude of
"creeping humility" before the Papacy.
"'Most Holy Father, I, the undersigned
Ivan Illich, am humbly prostrated be-
fore Your Holiness," he wrote. "With
all respect and humility, I beg Your
Holiness, if I have failed in any way
against faith or morality, to coinmuni-
cate to me how I have so failed, cis-
posed as I am to immediately retract
my mistakes. ...I humbly kiss your
rin~ and submit myself to your kind
ness." The letter was never answered.
As the right-wing attacks upon the.
diocese of Cuernavaca mounted, Illich
found himself accused of some ex-
traordinary activities: consorting with
witch doctors, practicing voodoo black
magic in the mountain hinterland of
Brazil, conspiring to kidnap the Arch;
bishop of Guatemala. Finally, on June
10th, the Apostolic Delegate to Mexi.
co, Guido de Mestri, instructed Illich
to fly to Rome immediately and pre-
sent himself for an interrogation at then
Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. De Mestri had frequently visit
ed CIDOC to observe Illich's activities,
and had always found his conduct
above reproach. "Your position is so
canonically impeccable," the had once
said to Mich, "that I doubt if you are
even a Christian."
J^OR six months after being told by
JL' Cardinal 5eper to get going and
never come hack, Illich scrupulously re-
frained from making any publi,: state=
ment about his session with the inquisi
tors. "I was so terribly embarrassed for
the Church," he explains. But in Janu-
ary, 1969, the Vatican made a second
move against him, and this prompted
him to break his silence. The move took
the form of an order forbidding all
Catholic priests, monks, and nuns to at-
tend any more courses or seminars at
Illich's educational center. No reasons
were given for the ban except that the
Vatican had received "many com-
plaints," left unspecified, about the
center's "unfortunate effects," also un-
specified, upon the Catholic world. Il-
lich, responding in what his friends call
his "Roman manner," immediately tel-
ephoned the religion editor of the New
York Times, Edward B. Fiske, and
said he had a story that he thought
might interest the Timer. Fiske flew
down to Mexico, where Illich released
the questionnaire that had been pre-
sented to him in Rome six months
earlier and described the entire episode
in detail.
That was Illich's chesslike move
against the Church as It. His lasting
love for the Church as She was ex-
pressed that same week in a letter to
Bishop Mendez Arceo. "I am deep-
ly saddened by this procedure of the
Holy See, which is the supreme teach-
ing authority of the Church," he
wrote. "I am distressed as I watch the
Roman Curia launch a grave and glob-
al accusation against a nonsectarian
institution of higher learning, without
ever mentioning a single charge.... I
am indeed sad, yet hopeful. The roots
of my mind and of my heart have
taken in the soil of the Roman Church.
I am embarrassed by this decree, but
my embarrassment will fade as it has
before in front of Her immense contri-
bution to beauty, truth, and aware-
ness."
Illich also wrote in the letter to
Bishop Mendez Arceo, "We shall
leave it to others to express their indig-
nation at the precedent-setting inter-
vention of Rome in academic life
through the ecclesiastical ban of an
entire academic community." And, in
the months that followed, a good deal
of indignation was expressed. Even the
Brooklyn Tablet, long considered
the most reactionary Catholic paper in
the United States, came to Illich's sup-
port. After making it clear that they
opposed most of Illich's ideas, the Tab-
let's editors declared, "One need not
agree at all with Monsignor Illich, only
believe in human dignity.... This en-
tire controversy must accelerate practi-
cal implementation of procedures for
due process within the Church ... to
eliminate ecclesiastical procedures which
are a scandal to responsible men within
and outside the Church."
There was vigorous applause for the
ban from the Mexican right, however.
Paid advertisements in the Mexican
papers reproduced the text of a tele-
gram to the Pope thanking him for the
ban on CIDOC: "This comforting news
fully confirmed our views that any
effort to sow confusion. in the Church's
dogmatic truths on the pretext of clari-
fying Her message to modern man will
he rejected by the robust and total faith
of the Mexican people."
Illich had always maintained that a
priest is under obligation to abandon his
clerical status as soon as lie becomes
controversial. And in March, 1969, lie
announced that lie had decided to with-
draw permanently from the institution
of the Church as It, though lie would
remain an ever-faithful member of the
Church as She. The announcement
was made in a letter written to Spell-
man's successor, Archbishop Terence
Cooke, shortly before he was made a
cardinal. "Your Excellency," Illich
wrote. "By now the press has exten-
sively covered the proceedings of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith (the former Holy Office) which
were aimed at my work and my repu-
tation. These proceedings have cast
over me the shadow of a `notorious
churchman,' and this interferes with
my ministry, my work as an educator,
and my personal decision to live as a
Christian....I now want to inform
you of my irrevocable decision to resign
entirely from Church service, to sus-
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pend the exercise of priestly functions,
and to renounce totally all titles, of-
fices, benefits, and privileges which are
due to me as a cleric." In closing, Illich
stated that lie would not ask to be dis-
pensed. from two priestly prerogatives.
He wished to retain the obligation to
say his daily breviary, and the obliga-
tion to remain celibate. Cardinal Cooke
has not commented publicly on Illich's
status. Church authorities have said that
although Illich has ceased to function as
a cleric he nevertheless remains a priest.
In this age rife with civil disobedi-
ence in both church and state, the
Pope's order forbidding all Catholic
priests, monks, and nuns to attend
CIDOC produced a flood of applications
from progressive priests, monks, and
nuns throughout the world. And in
June, 1969, under pressure from lib-
eral bishops in several countries, the
Vatican revoked its ban. The new
order, which Pope Paul personally ex-
plained to Bishop Mendez Arcco in an
audience, specified that CII)OC must re-
turn to "the spirit of its foundation"
and that its teaching must be super-
vised by the Conference of Latin-
American Bishops. In addition, Illich
was invited to resign from the center
"within a reasonable time." Illich, who
has given no indication that lie intends
to resign, has been busy arranging a
marathon seminar on education being
held at CIDOC this spring, attended by
Paul Goodman, Jerome Bruner, Jona-
than Kozol, Paolo Freire, and other
prominent specialists from many coun-
tries. He was recently asked to com-
ment on the relaxation of the papal
ban, and said only that it would have
no more effect than the previous rul-
ing, since CIDOC had always been-
and he emphasized the words-"a sec-
ular organization."
Illich's half-in, half-out position in
the priesthood has caused speculation
and consternation among Catholics the
world over. How do his actions fit in
with his theories? He prophesied a
Church of sacramental laymen, and he
himself has ended up as an unsacra-
nmental priest. As a theologian, Illich
has made a rigorous distinction between
the priest as bearer of the Nord and
the priest as administrator. As a man,
he has found that the two are not so
easily separable; he has had to disso-
ciate himself, with great sorrow, from
the sacramental life. And yet he re-
mains a priest. It is all marvellously
complex and enigmatic, like the man.
As their Church's most agitated decade
since the sixteenth century came to an
end, Illich's puzzling status raised
many questions in the minds of progres-
sive Catholics about their own status.
How much can one disdain the Church
as It without severing relations with
the Church as She? How much criti-
cism of It can one indulge in before
losing contact with Her? The Catholic
hierarchy has stiffened its position on
many levels and denied most of the
hopes inspired by John XXIII and the
reformers of the Vatican Council. The
ability of any progressive Catholic to
remain in the institutional Church
seems to depend more than ever on the
mystery of faith, on what Illich calls
"the childlike simplicity of the Christian
faith."
"Father Illich felt that lie had to re-
sign some of his priestly faculties he-
cause he couldn't stand the institution's
lack of trust," said a close friend of his
who is highly placed in a chancery in
the United States. "His position as a
Christian is so at odds with that of the
Holy See that lie felt uncomfortable
continuing as an officer of the institu-
tion. Canonically, he remains a priest,
but there was a profound sadness
among many of us in this country who
love and admire him when he re-
nounced his faculties. It was the feel-
ing `If he can't make it, how can I?' "
-FRANCINE DU PLESSIX GRAY
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Wa P 4 n D 6oaw
MEMORANDUM
RM-6048-RC
MAY 1969
THE PERUVIAN MILITARY:
A SUMMARY POLITICAL ANALYSIS
Luigi R. Einaudi
PREFACE
This RAND Memorandum summarizes findings of long-term RAND
research on the Peruvian Military. The author conceived the study
after Peruvian military behavior during and after the 1962 coup did not
appear to conform to predominant expectations among U.S. observers.
Substantial field research was undertaken in 1964-65, supported entirely
by RAND Corporation funds. Detailed findings of the study have not yet
been published, but the decision to make this summary available was
based on its timeliness as background in considering the events pre-
cipitated by the 1968 coup in Peru.
The text of this Memorandum is a slightly expanded version of the
author's opening statement of April 14, 1969 before the Subcommittee
on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations of
the United States Senate.
This Memorandum, drawing as it does on a RAND-supported study
without a client, thus cannot, and of course does not, reflect the views
or beliefs of any governmental sponsors of RAND research or of The
RAND Corporation. In fact, though the author gratefully acknowledges
recurring dialogues with his colleagues Herbert Goldhamer, Hans Heymann,
Richard Maullin, Alfred Stepan, and William Stewart, the views expressed
here are entirely his own.
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SUMMARY
Contrary to much conventional wisdom, which casts the Peruvian
military in a monolithic, oppressive, and reactionary mold, the Peruvian
military is in fact institutionally and politically a much more com-
plex force. Their actions and attitudes reflect the many tensions of
contemporary Peruvian life, which continues to shape military behavior
even as the military develop greater institutional integrity.
The political posture of the military combines the provincial
middle-class background of many Army officers with their membership
in a reasonably efficient bureaucracy based on discipline and a highly
developed military educational system. Many officers, including Presi-
dent Velasco, rose through the ranks. They feel little identification
with the urban coastal elite and are suspicious of civilian politicians,
plutocrats, and foreigners.
Attainment of relatively high professional standards has not
taken the Peruvian military out of politics. In fact, the development
of excellence in military education has increased political diversity
and contributed to a shift in the political role of the military, from
that of temporary warden to that of policymaker and participant.
The continued loosening of the military's ties with the urban
social elite, increasing self-consciousness at having been maneuvered
in the past into an automatically conservative and repressive role,
and improved knowledge of.political and social problems have also
helped to move the military toward a politically independent position,
substantially urienled toward positive national development goals.
This independence is solidly based. No single group, domestic
or foreign, can any longer intimidate the military. Peruvian military
behavior may vacillate, but it is more likely to do so within a spectrum
defined by institutional solidarity and national politics than in
response to personal whims or narrow group interests.
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CONTENTS
PREFACE
SUMMARY
Section
1. INTRODUCTION ...........................................
II. INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT ..............................
Social Origins and Position of the Officer Corps .....
Military Education ...................................
Relations with Other Sectors of Society ..............
IV. THE 1968 COUP ..........................................
The Future ...........................................
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I. INTRODUCTION
Relations with Peru have become a matter of public concern in the
United States since the emergence in October 1968 of the military gov-
ernment headed by Division General Juan Velasco Alvarado. The mili-
tary appear to have used the seizure of the International Petroleum
Company to forge a nationalist coalition. This act has endangered
U.S. assistance programs and the entire fabric of U.S.-Peruvian rela-
tions. While the military government evidences considerable disaffec-
tion from organized civilian political groups and liberal democratic
procedures, it also reflects widespread desires for national political
and economic affirmation.
This analysis attempts to provide background information against
which to assess recent Peruvian events. It begins by considering the
increasing complexity and autonomy of the military institutions in
Peru during the 20th century. It then analyzes the major patterns of
political behavior of the military, noting the recent trend away from
the role of political arbiter to that of policymaker and participant.
It concludes by arguing that despite the coup of October 3, 1968,
military behavior continues to reflect more traditional constraints of
caution and diversity.
The basic research on which this summary is based has drawn on
published materials as well as interviews with many Peruvian officers
and other persons in Peruvian political, cultural, and economic life.
Unfortunately, the policy of secrecy which the Peruvian Command
instituted at the time of the 1941 conflict with Ecuador denied
the author access to information often more freely available in other
Latin American countries or in the United States. In spite of this,
through interviews and other sources of a less official nature, includ-
ing residence and extensive travel within Peru and friendships with
several officers who have played important roles in Peruvian political
history, the author was able to-assemble a significant body of previ-
ously unavailable information. These statistical, descriptive, and
historical materials will be presented in the final study, to which
this summary can only serve as an introduction.
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II. INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
It is generally agreed that the Peruvian armed forces are one of
the three or four most effective military establishments in Latin
America. Their effectiveness is due more to their level of profession-
alism than to their size, which is modest for a country of twelve
million people. The Army has an officer corps of approximately 3,500,
with 30,000-plus enlisted men. The Navy and the Air Force each have
about 600 officers and 5,000 enlisted men. The military consume an
important slice of the Peruvian budget. From 1960 to 1968, the three
services accounted for approximately 17 percent of government expendi-
tures, which is in the middle range for Latin America. Even in the
face of the undervaluation of gross national product characteristic of
heavily agrarian societies, however, these military expenditures have
amounted to roughly 3 percent of GNP.
The armed forces are represented in the cabinet by three senior
military officers holding the portfolios of Defense., Air, and Navy.
Constitutional and other legal provisions regulating their relations
with civilian authorities are ambiguous and the military enjoy con-
siderable autonomy, aided by secrecy (generally even from government
agencies) in such matters as finances, personnel, and organization.
Article 213, Title 12, of the Constitution of 1933 provides an
interesting example of ambiguity in a fundamental matter. It provides
that "the purpose of the Armed Forces is to guarantee the rights of
the Republic, the fulfillment of the Constitution and the Laws, and
the conservation of public order." Although this provision does not
conform to U.S. and European constitutional traditions, similar
formulas are common in Latin America, where they have often been
employed by constitution writers seeking to check potential executive
Comparisons of military expenditures in Latin America often fail
to make explicit whether such items as military pensions or para-
military police forces are included. Peruvian budgetary practice, which
the above figures follow, includes pensions, but excludes the police
forces. Since the Guardia Civil and the Guardia Republicana have played
a secondary political role, they are also excluded from this summary
analysis.
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abuse. Civilian governments whose popular support is declining and
whose policies are under attack on grounds-of constitutionality must
of necessity consider military views with great care.
The elimination of a major guerrilla challenge to the government
in 1965-66, and the more recent purchase of French Mirage fighters
are evidence of military proficiency and political power. Both can
be further understood, together with the increasing independence of
the military as a political actor, by analyzing the social structure
of the officer corps as well as the institutional growth of a ration-
alized military bureaucracy and a political outlook centering on
national development as epitomized in the doctrines of the Center for
Higher Military Studies (CAEM).
SOCIAL ORIGINS AND POSITION OF THE OFFICER CORPS
In a culture which perhaps more than most abhors physical and
particularly manual labor, professional pursuits have high prestige.
For the military this status is strengthened by their closeness to the
symbols of nationality and sources of power. During the colonial
period, military prestige was enhanced by the officers' relations to
the Spanish crown, whose prestige and power they partially shared.
In the present century, however, the Peruvian officer has been consid-
ered as belonging to an honorable but nonetheless marginal profession.
The relative decline in military prestige reflected in this mar-
ginal professional status is due to factors rather similar to those
which have operated elsewhere. In the Peruvian case these are repre-
sented by the military's loss of contact with an aristocratic tradition
and social group during the wars of independence from Spain; with the
associated loss of independent sources of wealth, which has reduced
the officer's career to a way of earning a living; and by the progres-
sive loss of nationa. security functions in the decades which followed
the War of the ?acific (1879-1883), which were only partially revived
by the 1941 Ecuadorean conflict and the 1965 guerrilla campaign.
In recent Peruvian history, the translation of these abstractions
into practice has varied considerably, but the trend is clearly
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toward increased representation of the so-called "popular" classes in
the officer corps.
At the turn of the century, the Peruvian officer was likely to
be a young man from a relatively good family in Lima or one of the
major provincial capitals whose opportunities were limited by the
then aristocratic orientation of the University of San Marcos, or by
the general impoverishment of Peru following the disastrous defeat at
the hands of Chile during the War of'the Pacific. The Military Academy
offered a free higher education leading to a respectable profession,
and many young men from impoverished but relatively good families found
this an acceptable escape from the uncertainties of Peruvian life and
the restrictions of a narrowly elitist civilian educational system.
Peru has come a long way in the past fifty years. A middle or
upper middle class youth today may first seek admission to the Catholic
University or the National Engineering University before considering:
the University of San Marcos, yet still may have several other universi-
ties to which he can apply without having to settle for a military
career. Apart from greater opportunities in medicine, law, and engin-
eering, there has also been a substantial increase in the financial re-
wards afforded by alternate marginal professions (such as school teach-
ing) which have the added advantage of allowing more personal freedom
than is found in a military career.
It is clear, then, that the officer corps has in this century
never been identical with the social and financial elite. Membership
in the officer corps has never, for instance, overlapped with the mem-
bership of the most exclusive social club or of the boards of directors
of the largest corporations. At the other end of the social scale,
Indian peasants have been largely excluded by the educational and the
height requirements of the Military Academy.
In the broad range between the oligarchy with its "40 Families"
and the Indian peasant masses, the shift within the officer corps in
recent decades has been away from the whitish upper middle classes
and toward the darker lower classes. It has been away from the coastal
urban centers and particularly Lima, and toward the rural provincial
towns of the interior. And the shift has been felt throughout the
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,officer corps. Fifty-six percent of the men who attained the rank of
general in the Army between 1955 and 1965 were born either in the
central highlands (sierra) or in the Amazon jungles (selva). Accord-
ing'to the author's calculations, 94. percent of the directors of Peru's
largest corporations in the same period were born in Lima or else-
where on the coast. This separation is further accentuated by the
fact that many generals, including President Velasco, rose through the
ranks, gaining admission to the Military Academy only after service
as ordinary soldiers.
Two political consequences follow from the social position of
the officer corps. The first is that most officers experience a sense
of exclusion or frustration in their relations with the top elite.
They do not come fr?m it and cannot expect to rise into it during even
the most succer;sful military career. They tend in fact to be hostile
to what they themselves often call the plutocracy. The second.point
is that the officer corps is sufficiently distinct from the masses to
feel no particular identification with them either, with the possible
exception of a paternalistic regard for the Indian. Both points indi-
cate military ,apartness, not to say isolation, from important sectors
of Peruvian society.
MILITARY EDUCATION
This sense of separation, of a distinctive military group and out-
look and of the desirability and feasibility of an independent social
role for the military is considerably enhanced by an additional factor:
the high level of military education.
Peru has one of the most sophisticated military training systems
in Latin America. The Military Academy has been functioning continu-
ously since 1896. Begun under French tutelage, it is now a wholly
Peruvian institution giving a 4-year university-level education to
some 1,000 cadets. The Navy and Air Force have similar, smaller acade-
mies of their own. The Superior War College (the Peruvian general
staff college) has been graduating classes since 1905 and conducts
a 2-year course often attended by officers from other Latin American
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countries. The Center for Higher Military Studies (CAEM), which opened
in 1950, offers a 1-year course largely devoted to social, economic,
and political problems to a selected group of colonels and generals.
Officers may also follow specialized military or civilian courses,
in Peru and abroad, usually at government expense. Peruvian officers
have studied in Europe and the United States for 60 years, often win-
ning recognition as the best foreign students.
As William F. Whyte has suggested, most Peruvians do not believe
that success in life is based on merit. Within the military, however,
the emphasis on professional training and education in the promotion
process has, for many years, made the military perhaps the most merit-
oriented sector at least of the state bureaucracy, if not of the society.
All Navy and Air Force officers and more than 90 percent of all Army
officers are Academy graduates. The continuing value of education in
the Peruvian military career may be inferred from the fact that of
the Division Generals on active duty between 1940 and 1965, no fewer
than 80 percent had graduated in the top quarter of their class at the
Military Academy.
All this gives Peruvian officers self-confidence in their own
ideas and programs, and a-desire to be heard on a broad range of issues.
In the past, these issues were understood in crude terms centering on
concepts of honor, duty, efficiency, and patriotism, usually leading
to bitter complaints about the incompetence of civilians, and particu-
larly politicians, plutocrats, and foreigners. As military education
has improved and spread, these concerns have been transformed into an
interest in economic planning and national integration. In this "age
of total war," the largely frontier-minded nationalism of the past has
been supplanted by a sense that national development is essential to
defense. Some officers may have increasingly found in these discussions
of national development an, outlet for growing social and political
resentments.
The Center for Higher Military Studies (CAEM) has consistently
taught that, in accordance with Article 213 of the Peruvian Constitution,
the military must defend national sovereignty. In practice, this has
been defined to mean the increasing of Peru's capacity for maneuver
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in dealing with the outside world, and particularly the United States.
Recognition of the Soviet Union, coupled with some marginal trade,
could be in harmony with this interpretation of the Constitutional
mandate. Similarly, the Constitutional prescription for the mainte-
nance of order has been interpreted by the CAEM as the need to ensure
an order conducive to the "national well-being" of all Peruvians, not
just that of the dominant social classes. Some officers believe they
are the only ones competent to deal with these problems: they usually
emphasize the need for authoritarian government and efficiency. Others
believe that military expertise should be utilized by the civilian
authorities: they usually emphasize the dangers inherent in military
involvement in politics. All officers agree that the military must
play a substantial role in national development.
This increased sophistication may entail political costs. Although
one result of studying political and social problems may be to realize
their complexity, another may be to undermine the credibility of com-
peting solutons advanced by political parties, thereby weakening the
legitimacy of civilian leadership.
RELATIONS WITH OTHER SECTORS OF SOCIETY
So much for the outlook of the military. Leaving aside 'for the
time being the question of specific actions or coups, how do other
sectors of society tend to view them in general?
The "oligarchy," however defined, is best characterized as ambiv-
alently hostile. For the older families of wealth, the social and
cultural gulf between them and the military often leads to contempt
for the military, only partly checked by the hope that the military
may act as a brake on social upheaval. But the cost and dangers to
the oligarchy are both considerable. State support for a largely
autonomous bureaucracy is expensive and may provide the basis for
the development of a powerful and uncontrollable political force, which
could take political actions hostile to conservative interests.
Among the middle clas.ses, a set of clearcut attitudes toward the
military is hard to find. Public employees are envious of the mili-
tary's retirement''' benefits .and special privileges. Some intellectuals
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and students react negatively to any group as closely linked to author-
ity as is the military: others are favorably disposed precisely be-
cause the Army represents authority and force. Political parties
exert an influence somewhat hostile to the military. The politicians
themselves are nonetheless constantly looking for ways to bind the
military to their particular interests. This may help account for the
fact that within Peru itself no significant voices were raised against
the purchase of supersonic Mirage fighters by the Peruvian Air Force.
The only generalization that can therefore be made about the middle
sectors is that their attitudes toward the military are ambivalent and
that their actual behavior is likely to be pragmatic, not to say oppor-
tunistic.
Among the urban lower classes, the reaction to the military is
more generally favorable. The military is associated with patriotic
sentiments to a greater extent than is true among the more cynical
upper classes. The military is generally welcomed in civic action
efforts in the slums, and there seems to be relatively little penetra-
tion of anti-military doctrines in the working class. Many lower-
class persons share with the military an appreciation of popular
"CriolZo " culture and a sense of social solidarity, particularly with
the enlisted cadre and with lower-ranking military officers. In addi-
tion, the lower classes, like some of the military, are often not averse
to forceful or strong-arm solutions to critical problems. While a
Mirage symbolizes national power, a coup symbolizes a housecleaning.
The situation is still different in the rural areas. The Indian
peasant in Peru has learned through long and bitter experience to fear
authority -- whether public or private. He has therefore adopted a
personal strategy of sullen passivity, often mistaken for laziness or
stupidity. In dealing with the military, this strategy takes the form
of avoidance and minimal necessary cooperation. The Indian serves as
conscript when he must; otherwise, he has few dealings with the military.
This picture of resigned hostility may be changing. One factor
is the vastly improved treatment of the Indian conscript by the Army.
Another is the spread of communication and agitation, often with un-
usual results. In 1962, a young agronomy student, Hugo Blanco,
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attempted to organize peasant leagues in a potentially rich but remote
Andean valley. For a time, the isolation of the area from both public
and private authority favored him. Even so, the local population
proved very difficult to organize. By 1964, when the author visited
the Convenci6n Valley, Hugo Blanco was in jail. But more important
was the presence of military engineers, building a road to end the
valley's isolation and provide an outlet for its agricultural produce.
When the military first arrived, about 60 percent of the population
of the closest village had prudently left, taking their possessions
with them. In six months, they were back. The relationships worked
out in this manner viithstood the subsequent attempts by pro-Cuban intel-
lectuals to establish guerrillas in the area in 1965, and may have be-
come a basis for the erosion of traditional attitudes among both Indians
and military le:ader$.
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III. MILITARY POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
Given the relative isolation of the military from other sectors
of Peruvian society, and the gradual development of a relatively modern
military force in which (since 1960) engineers outnumber cavalrymen,
and generals go to school, what can we say about the overall patterns
of military political behavior?
It is commonplace to say that the behavior of any group cannot
be understood out of its historical context. The fact that the mili-
tary mounted major political interventions in 1914, 1930, 1948, and
1962 prior to the current intervention of 1968 has created a series
of particular political traditions and relationships, which qualify
any discussion of general tendencies, but some patterns do emerge
from the labyrinth of past military involvement in Peruvian politics.
The first general characteristic of Peruvian military behavior
that needs to be stressed is its internal diversity. It is easy to
assume that the military, with its excellent organization, its pro-
fessional competence and solidarity, and its well-maintained discipline,
is politically monolithic. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To begin with, personal and service rivalries and tensions often gen-
erate political differences. Other dissatisfactions often divide
the officer corps internally along generational lines. Nearly all
political groups, interests, and attitudes find some representation
or expression within the officer corps. To these are added specifically
military complications: officers who personally favor the same politi-
cal party or outlook may disagree on whether the military should be-
come involved, how, and to what extent.
The major limit on this internal diversity may well be the
development of a military ethic setting the military apart from civil-
ians in general and from civilian politicians in particular. Even
the frequently mentioned opposition of military leaders to the Ameri-
can Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) Party is probably today
less a manifestation of a specific hatred for APRA based on historical
tension than it is a dislike mainly based on the perception of APRA
as "another unreliable civilian political party." The continued
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presence of Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, founder of the party in 1924
but now aged and moderate, certainly helps to stoke the fires of tra-
ditional suspicions. Ironically, the image of APRA as unreliable has
been strengthened rather than diminished by APRA's recent moderation,
which has come at a time when many officers were becoming disenchanted
with moderate civilian solutions.
Internal Political diversity leads to a second characteristic:
caution born of fear lest internal disagreements imperil the solidarity
and hence stability of the military institutions. Though one frequently
hears of military plotting, and some have suggested that conspiracy is
inherent to the profession in Latin America, analysis of military in-
terventions in Peru reveals considerable reluctance, even under heavy
pressure, to take overt actions against established governments and a
primary interest in institutional preservation in the face of real or
imagined threats to the military establishment itself. Once in power,
the military has as a rule tended to behave cautiously and conserva-
tively, using its power largely to ensure its own survival.
In contrast to the relative permanence of these two factors of
political diversity and caution, it is possible to isolate two recent
trends in the political behavior of the military. The first is essen-
tially a change in style, but one with important consequences. The
individual military leader or Caudillo who seizes and maintains power
largely in personal terms is fading from the scene. During both the
1962 and 1968 coups, for example, power was seized not by a prestigious
general with troop command and a personal following, but jointly by
the Commanding Generals of the three services under the chairmanship
of the Chief of the Joint Staff. These officers referred to their
coup as an "institutional movement" undertaken by the Armed Forces in
support of the Constitution under the authority of Article 213. The
1968 coup may have been more clearly the work of a given group of of-
ficers than was the case in 1962, but institutional unity and even
the appearance of an institutional movement were carefully preserved.
ProfessiDnalization, therefore, has obviously not taken the mili-
tary out of politics. On the contrary, by giving officers an interest
in economic development and Peruvian political integration, it has
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promoted a new interest in governmental affairs and a sense of tech-
nical and perhaps political leadership. Incomplete data even suggest
a positive correlation between military education and political activ-
ism: ever since the opening of the Military Academy, the more advanced
the education of a particular officer, the more likely he has been to
participate in national politico when compared to his less-trained
fellow officers.
But professionalization has also contributed to the bureaucratiza-
tion of the military, to the reinforcement of hierarchical relationships,
and to underscoring the importance of preserving the profession and
the institution from excessive individual adventurism. Generals, not
colonels, take command of coups in Peru, and not since 1932 has there
been a general under 46 years of age.
The second new development, partly related to the first, is that
the military has shifted from the role of temporary warden to that of
policymaker. The continued loosening of the military's ties with the
elite, increasing self-consciousness at having been maneuvered in the
past into an automatically conservative and repressive role, and im-
proved knowledge of political and social problems have helped to move
the military toward a politically independent position, which enables
it to look in a relatively disinterested fashion at the claims and
policies of competing groups.
Clearly, the role of policymaker (or even merely of policy-
supporter) is more complicated than that of a simple warden who acts
sporadically in a limited sphere. If the powers of the state are
to be expanded and used to direct national development, as most
officers would now prefer, the problems become much more complicated
and may require continuous intervention or participation of a relatively
sophisticated variety.
It is at this point that most fears about the military's future
role arise. Some observers argue that the military's interest in
social problems is potentially dangerous to established political pat-
terns. Specifically, there is talk of the emergence of the military
as a nationalist or revolutionary force expressing social, provincial,
and racial antagonisms in a heavy-handed authoritarian effort to remake
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Peruvian society. In 1962, prior aspects of military behavior --
caution, diversity, and aloofness from the corrupt civilian world ---
ultimately dominated. Will the same hold true after the 1968 coup?
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IV. THE 1968 COUP
What lies behind the coup of October 3, 1968, in which the mili-
tary, acting as an institutional unit, replaced Fernando Belainde
Terry, the reformist civilian President they had helped to elect in
1963, with General Juan Velasco Alvarado, until then the little-known
Chief of the Joint Staff?
This question holds particular urgency because the seizure by the
military government of the assets of the International Petroleum Company
(registered in Canada, but in fact a wholly-owned subsidiary of Standard
Oil of New Jersey), threatened to set in motion the Hickenlooper ma-
chinery and disrupt the economic fabric (as well as the weakened polit-
ical and military framework) of relations between the United States
and Peru.
Already in 1962-63, the governing junta was more than a little
influenced by a combination of nationalism and a desire to bring about
basic social reforms. In the end, the normal patterns of military
caution dominated policy: the military junta contented itself with
establishing a basic law for agrarian reform, founding the National
Planning Institute, and ensuring the election of the one civilian
politician, Fernando Belaunde Terry, who seemed most closely to repre-
sent their views (and who had most assiduously courted military favor).
By 1968, enough had changed so that the military was no longer
willing to act in this relatively restrained and more or less arbitral
fashion, but was rather prepared to accept institutional responsibility
for the direction of national policy for an extended period of time.
Some reasons for this change are to be found in the altered framework
of immediate prior military and political experience. In 1962, the
reference point for military government was the rule from 1948-56 of
General Manuel Odria, which had left many officers with a bitter taste
of corruption and unpopularity and made them unwilling to risk the
military institutions on new adventures. By 1968, however, the
reference point was no longer the Odria government, but the more
positive record of the 1962-63 junta. The political experience of the
intervening five years of civilian rule, moreover, seemed to demonstrate
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to many officers that the military junta of 1962-63 had acted with
excessive caution and had not pushed its reform program far enough.
The 1963-68 period, with its political temporizing and the execu-
tive jettisoning of social and economic programs that could not be
supported by a Congress dominated by opposing civilian political parties,
therefore led to increasing military disenchantment with civilian poli-
ticians and perhaps with the procedures of liberal democracy as well.
Belaunde thus appears to have been viewed by some military men as a
last chance for moderate civilian reform. If the military's previous
strategy of acting as a policy-supporter for a broad program of change
under civilian leadership was frittered away, then what alternatives
remained to taking over directly? As in Brazil, the more the military
developed a clear consciousness and commitment to social and political
development, the less likely they were to find civilian politicians
competent to carry them forward and implement their goals, and, perhaps
also the more likely to underestimate the difficulties of governing,
that had sapped the energies of Belaunde.
Although it will be some time before all the motivations for the
actual coup of October 3, 1968 become clear, it is therefore apparent
that both military opposition to APRA (which might have won the presi-
dential elections scheduled for 1969 and now cancelled) and the famous
"missing page" (used to symbolize civilian corruption) in Belaunde"s
proposed IPC settlement, are but fragments of a complicated set of
deteriorating relations between important elements within the Army
and some leaders of the civilian political elite. The collapse of
Belafinde's Ac i6n Popular Party, and the President's use of the national
police to retain control of his own party headquarters against his
followers' opposition was probably of considerable significance in
undermining Belaunde with the military.
THE FUTURE
Because the 1968 coup took place, it does not follow that all
traditional patterns have been thrown to the winds. Caution is still
very much a part of military behavior. One of the weaker links of
the military junta is its fear of isolation and the consequent need
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to maintain some civilian allies. Of the current reasonably broad
coalition represented by the military, no single element is basically
stable. Much of the elite may be alienated by the maintenance of high
taxation. The Left may be alienated by inability to produce reforms.
As the novelty wears off, the nationalist glue-binding such diverse
civilian groups to the military may also weaken.
In the absence of external pressure, these factors may with time
be enough to permit the civilian political elite to take advantage of
the political inexperience of the military as a whole to drive a wedge
between them and their current supporters, thereby reducing them to
their normal state of isolation. Should this happen, the military's
choice between withdrawal and the attempt to develop new allies, per-
haps by Peronist-style populism, may well hinge on whether or not there
is a graceful avenue open for institutional withdrawal that does not
appear to be a retreat.
The dispute with the International Petroleum Company is based on
long-standing historical and political conflicts. Perhaps even
more than the fishing industry (in which Peru now competes with Japan
for world primacy), petroleum fits the category of a basic national
resource. Contrary to some suspicions in the United States that
President Velasco has been irresponsible and unrepresentative in his
dealings with the IPC, he almost certainly acted with broad military
support. As early as February 5, 1960, the Joint Staff, over the
signature of the Commanding General of the Army, publicly recorded its
belief that the La Brea y PariPias agreements were "harmful to national
sovereignty." That it took nine years to put belief into practice is
a sign of institutional caution even if ultimately the seizure was
helped along by individual recklessness.
From a Peruvian standpoint, however, the seizure of the Inter-
national Petroleum Company may have seemed far less reckless than it
has seemed from the American perspective. In the first place, the
Peruvians may not have believed the United States would actually apply
the Hickenlooper amendments. A similar precedent, showing U.S. flexi-
bility when confronted by a determined Peruvian position, was the
belated willingness to make F-5 aircraft available once it became
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clear that the alternative was the Mirage purchase. In the second,
place, the Peruvians probably calculated that even if U.S. aid was lost,
it might be offset by the extra revenues obtained through nationaliza-
tion. Already under the Beladnde government, Peru's National Planning
Institute had calculated net annual foreign exchange earnings derived
from U.S. assistance over the years 1960-67 at something just over ten
million dollars per year -- not a very large sum, particularly if
increasing indebtedness were also considered. Finally, it is not:
clear that the dominant military group realized that it was also
placing its country's U.S. sugar quota in jeopardy.
The nationalist coalition forged on the petroleum issue has
strengths as well as weaknesses. But it is unlikely to withstand an
extension of nationalizations into other areas, just as it will be
strained if the Hickenlooper amendments are applied. Realizing this,
the predominant military view is as likely to oppose new measures that
would widen the area of policy disagreement as it is likely to stand
behind what has already been done. This interpretation is also in
harmony with the CAEM's doctrinal tendency to statism, awarding the
state a directivefrole in the economy, but decidedly not an exclusive
one.
This analysis has suggested that the military have too much inde-
pendence and pride to let themselves be manipulated for long by any
single political group, military or civilian, and too much concern with
professional solidarity and institutional stability to assume, com-
pletely on their own, a primary and authoritarian responsibility to
remake Peruvian society. Ultimately, it also suggests that their behav-
ior, in the Long run and on most issues, will be vacillating and will
continue to reflect tensions associated with general issues of Peruvian
development.
*
The real significance of the assistance, however, is impossible
to determine in the absence of information on gross earnings and expendi-
tures on international account. This is particularly true if the
possible effects of U.S.-Peruvian bilateral political relations an the
international investment climate are also considered.
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OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES/November 1969
The Soviet Union in the Third World:
Purpose in Search of Power
By FRITZ ERMARTH *
ABSTRACT: Although the Soviet Union inherited its ideo-
logical commitment to revolution in the Third World from
Lenin, it was only in Khrushchev's time, after industrializa-
tion and victory in World War II had made the Soviet Union
a world power, that this commitment became an important
component of Soviet foreign pblicy. Khrushchev envisaged
a fairly rapid transition by postcolonial states toward Soviet-
type "socialism." This process was to be guided by the
example of Soviet national development, protected by the
deterrent shield of Soviet strategic power, and accelerated
by a modicum of Soviet economic and military aid. But
Khrushchev's vision exceeded the Soviet Union's power to
fulfill it. Nationalists in power throughout the Third World
advanced their own visions of the future, often at variance
with Soviet views. And the Western powers were not
restrained from intervening actively in the Third World where
their interests were at stake. Khrushchev's successors have
been less sanguine. They have tended to concentrate on spe-
cific areas of the Third world and have also been more willing
to intervene in Third World military conflicts involving the
United States. Only the future will show whether they use
their increased power with the restraint that weakness imposed
upon them in the past.
Fritz Ermarth, M.A., Pacific Palisades, California, is a member of the Social Science
Department of The RAND Corporation and a specialist on Soviet foreign and military
policy.
* Any views expressed in this paper are those of the author. They should not be inter-
preted as reflecting the views of The RAND Corporation or the official policy or opinion of
any of Its governmental or private research sponsors.
65
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M OSCOW has been interested in the
Third World from the very birth
of the Soviet: state, Lenin's views on
the socioeconomic roots of politics and,
even more, his analysis of the prevail-
ing international order, advanced in
Imperialism, imparted to the Bolsheviks
a profound sensitivity to the revolu-
tionary potential of the East. Despite
their inevitable preoccupation with Eu-
rope, as Professor Ulam has written:
"From the beginning, the premises of
Soviet-Comm.tern policy in the East and
what is now known generally as the
underdeveloped world were sounder than
in the case of Europe." 1 Lenin's ulti-
mate hope that the postcolonial revolu-
tion would contribute substantially, even
decisively, to the collapse of the capi-
talist order, can be deemed illusory.
His more proximate anticipation, that
decolonization would revolutionize the
international system, was thoroughly re-
alistic. Not only was revolution in the
Third World just beginning in ear-
nest, but the Soviet Union of Lenin's
day clearly d.id not possess the power to
guide or shape this revolution in any
meaningful way. And, while he quickly
adjusted to the doctrinal and diplomatic
demands of Realpolitik, Lenin never
fully made the transition to the view
that Soviet -,tate power represented the
central ingredient of the revolutionary
process on a world scale.
Stalin completed'' this transition with
a vengeance: revolution become synony-
mous with Soviet !state power. Any-
thing which was beyond, or did not con-
tr'bute directly to,: that power was in-
herently suspect, if :not reactionary. At
the same time, Stalin's foreign policy
was cautious in practice and extremely
defensive in motivation. It was de-
signed to protect the process of forced
1-Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexis-
tence: The History o/ Soviet Foreign Policy,
1017-1967 (Nrw York: Frederick A. Praeger,
196).p. 12S.
industrialization from military threats
arising out of Europe and Japan. By
achieving industrialization and by filling
the territorial vacuums of Europe left
by the defeat of Nazi Germany, Stalin
did indeed revolutionize the Eurasian,
and hence the world, balance of power.
But it remained, in essence, a codti-
nental operation. The vacuums on
Soviet borders which the war had
created and which Soviet power had
filled were of prime importance.
Also important, however, were the
vacuums which developed, as a result of
the war, in colonial Asia and Africa, in
which the nationalist movements arose
which so dominated the events of the
ensuing two decades. In most un-
Leninist style, Stalin at first showed no
real interest in the opportunities open-
ing to Soviet policy in the colonial
areas. He was not in them militarily;
he could not get into them without
undue risk. He was notably susr)icious
of his own ability to control his only
-other instrument for projecting Soviet
influence into these regions-local Com-
munist parties, even where they were
strong enough to be relevant. Toward
the very end of his life, he began a
general reappraisal of Soviet policy,
including that toward the distant colo-
nial world' His death interrupted this
reappraisal, but 'iris successors com-
pleted it.
KHRUSHCHEV'S THIRD WORLD' VISIONS
Preceded by doctrinal revisions com-
mencing as early as 1952, the new
"Eastern" policy of Stalin's successors
was effectively instituted in 1955, the
year of Bandung, when Khrushchev and
Bulganin went to Asia and Soviet arms
began appearing in the Middle East.
In a very real sense, one can say that
the Kremlin leaders resurrected for their
s See Marshall D. Shulman, Stalin's Foreign-
Policy Reappraisal (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1963).
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foreign policy the ethos of world revolu-
tion which had perished at the gates
of Warsaw in 1920 and had been buried
under "socialism in one country."
Doctrinally, the Soviets elevated the
anticolonial metamorphosis, postcolonial
nation-building, and economic devel-
opment-all under the heading of the
national-liberation revolution-to the
status of a component part of the world
revolutionary process. The building
of communism-socialism in Communist
states, the national-liberation revolution,
and the struggle of the working class in
capitalist states were seen as comprising
this process. They recognized the "na-
tional bourgeoisie," that is, local na-
tionalists who were not workers or
peasants, as an "objectively progres-
sive" and, indeed, leading force, where
they had previously been rejected as
agents of the colonial powers. They
searched around, rather unsuccessfully,
for doctrinal constructs according to
which they could confidently describe
the transition of the newly independent
states toward socialism, as they con-
ceived it. A preponderant role in this
transition was assigned to the force of
the Soviet example as a developing soci-
ety. The role of local Communist
parties remained ambiguous in Soviet
doctrine for a variety of reasons.
Finally, they declared that the growing
nuclear power of the Soviet Union repre-
sented a stout shield that prevented the
military intervention of the imperialists
against the national-liberation move-
ment, often citing the Middle East
crises of the mid- and late 1950's as
representative. For example, according
to a basic doctrinal handbook of the
late 1950's:
The postwar years have convincingly dem-
onstrated the role of the socialist states as
a mighty factor of restraint against the
aggressiveness of the imperialists who, in
other circumstances, would fall on the na-
tional liberation movement with all their
power and crush it.'
In practice, the policy involved a
broadly based Soviet penetration of the
underdeveloped world, involving a vari-
ety of diplomatic, economic, semi-
official political, and military-aid activi-
ties. The total silhouette of the Soviet
political presence in the underdeveloped
world was markedly raised. In ultimate
political terms, the Soviets saw their
goal as the expulsion of Western influ-
ence from these regions and their.
gradual gravitation into the socialist
camp or commonwealth.
Initially, the Soviets were confident
that the systematic revolution in the
Third World could be largely self-
sustaining, that its favorable progress
would little tax their economic, even less
their military, resources. In any case
they had little of these to spare. During
the decade 1954-1964, Soviet economic
credits and grants to non-Communist
underdeveloped countries totaled slightly
more than $4 billion, of which only
about $1.5 billion had actually been
drawn.' By the end of 1964, Soviet
military assistance, mostly in the form
of long-term credits, had been extended
to more than fifteen countries, but at a
total volume of probably not over $3
billion.5 During the period 1946-1965,
total United States economic and mili-
tary aid to less developed areas ex-
ceeded $100 billion. In the main, the
Soviets hoped to accelerate, and to
guide by political means, an indige-
nous process.
S Osnovy Marksizma-Lenintzma (Moscow,
1959), p. 454.
'U.S., Congress, Joint Economic Committee,
Current Economic Indicators for the USSR
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Of-
fice, 1965), p. 174.
' The Soviet Military Aid Program as a
Reflection of Soviet Objectives (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown Research Project, Atlantic
Research Corporation, 1965).
67
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This simplified picture characterized
Soviet policy toward the Third World
from 1955 to 1160-1962. It comple-
mented Soviet concentration on internal
economic progress, the construction of
a viable nuclear deterrent, and a modu-
lated detente with the West which kept
the risk of war low while offering
opportunities to; press objectives in
Europe. It projected Soviet power and
influence into the Third World for the
first time, and it did so cheaply. No
doubt, when Khrushchev contemplated
the Third World in detail, he saw many
disturbing complexities. But he felt
confident in the sweep of history.
PROBLEMS OF VIOLENCE, CREDIBILITY,
AND CONTROL
From 1960 onward, the complexities
eroded the basis- for Soviet confidence.
Two fundamental problems arose which
challenged the relevance of the Soviet
approach to the Third World, both
connected with and aggravated by the
growing Sino-Soviet rift. One remained
essentially a doctrinal matter, but ex-
tended discussion of it, which is still
going on, indicated that important lead-
ers were worrying about the future of
policy. The Soviets began to wonder,
now that the colonial empires had
largely disappeared, how, in fact, the
transition from the nationalist to the
socialist phase of the revolution was
to take place. They saw nationalists
acquire power who, while anti-Western,
had their own notions about the future,
reciprocated Soviet opportunism in their
dealings with Moscow, and showed no
inclination to sten aside for the "objec-
tive laws of history" or to tolerate alter-
natives to their rule in local Communist
parties. Notwithstanding Moscow's his-
toric unconcern about the fate of local
parties when state issues were at stake,
the latter -problem became urgent in the
competition with! Peking. Although a
variety of ingenious formulae have been
invoked, such as "national democracy,"
"revolutionary democracy," and the
"noncapitalist path," and cautiously
ascribed to a changing number of de-
veloping countries, a satisfactory model
for postcolonial development has yet to
be worked out by the Soviets .6 In
practice, this doctrinal question has not
been demonstrably influential in shaping
immediate Soviet policy in the under-
developed world, but it has weighed
upon the minds of a leadership which
appeals consciously to an historical
Weltanschauung for its legitimacy and
political aims.
The second problem which emerged
around 1960 was far more vexatious and
pertinent to immediate action: the
problem of violence in the revolutionary
process and Soviet support for it. The
Soviet position on violence and the use
of military power in the Third World,
which stressed peaceful revolution be-
hind a deterrent shield and limited So-
viet military aid largely to established
governments in low-risk situations, came
under attack on two fronts. On the one
hand, the Chinese began to attack it
bitterly as representing excessive caution
at best or treason to the cause at worst.
Peaceful paths, they insisted, are pos-
sible only in exceptional circumstances,
and growing Soviet nuclear power now
broadens the scope for armed struggle
by inhibiting the response of imperial-
ism. To this, the Soviets replied by
backing deeper into the doctrinal box
of deterrence: the deterrent shield is
strong; therefore, peaceful methods are
to be preferred as less costly, and less
dangerous, unless the imperialists inter-
vene. They began admitting at this
point that their nuclear posture was
6 See Uri Ra'anan, "Moscow and the Third
World," Problems of Communism (January-
February 1965), pp. 22-31; and Robert F.
Lamberg, "Moskau and die Dritte Welt:
Vorzuege and Gefabren des Pluralismus,"
Osteurops (January 1968), pp. 992, $02.
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not as formidable a barrier as earlier
declared.
Khrushchev outlined the Soviet case
on armed conflict in the nuclear age in
his commentary on the 1960 Moscow
Declaration of eighty-one Communist
parties, itself an ambiguous document.
First, general nuclear war would be
an unmitigated catastrophe and must
be avoided. Moreover, despite the un-
changed aggressiveness of imperialism,
Soviet strength makes such avoidance
possible. Second, local conflicts are
very dangerous because escalation is
likely, and virtually certain if nuclear
powers get involved. Third, national-
liberation wars-local revolutionaries
fighting local reactionaries-are possible
and just; Moscow must "support" them
when they occur. It is one of the major
ironies of our time that this thesis was
totally misread by the new Kennedy
administration as a wholesale Soviet en-
dorsement of subliminal violence in the
Third World. It meant precisely the
opposite, as the Chinese lost no time in
pointing out. Khrushchev was keenly
aware, and hoped others would be as
well, that the line between national
liberation and local wars had to be an
obscure one, especially if great-power
interests became involved. National-
liberation struggles could easily become
local wars, which could easily escalate
to general war, in spite of Moscow's
proclaimed nuclear might. This was as
powerful a brief for caution in the use
of violence and as explicit an admission
of Soviet weakness as Khrushchev could
bring himself to make. As a general
principle, he did not want national-
liberation wars, and, if they had to
occur, he did not want to get involved
militarily. In practice, he deviated
from this doctrine under pressure of
events, but only slightly as the very
cautious behavior of the Soviets in the
Congo, in Laos, and in Vietnam through
1964 indicates. Unfortunately for
Khrushchev, his line was not per-
suasive in Peking and not understood in
Washington.'
The Kennedy administration, im-
pelled, among other things, by its read-
ing of the Soviet line, mounted the
second challenge to Khrushchev's posi-
tion by rapidly developing the capa-
bility, and declaring the intention, to
intervene directly against insurgent
movements which it believed to be
Communist-inspired or otherwise dan-
gerous. Indeed, it expanded American
capabilities for action across the entire
spectrum of limited-conflict situations
while dramatically fortifying its posture
for general nuclear war.
The strategic basis for Khrushchev's
optimism of the 1955-1959 period was
further weakened by the Cuban missile
crisis. The core of Soviet strategic
posture was demonstrably too weak to
sustain an assertive foreign policy in
Europe and the Third World. Khrush-
chev reacted by retrenching his foreign-
policy objectives, seeking detente with
the United States, and turning his major
attention to civilian economic develop-
ment and an effort to stem the dis-
integration of international communism.
Developments between 1962 and 1964
in Southeast Asia also inflicted consider-
able damage on the pattern of political
assumptions and perceptions support-
ing Khrushchev's policy. Despite a
substantial material and political in-
vestment in the region, in Indonesia,
Kbrushchev adhered to his position of
disengagement from the armed conflicts
of Indochina. The Soviets did supply
limited military assistance to the insur-
gent movements in Laos and Vietnam
during this period, but,. such as it was,
7 This reading of Khrushchev's "national.
liberation doctrine" is elaborated in the au-
thor's waster's thesis, "Current Soviet Doc-
trine on National Liberation," 1963, on deposit
in the Russian Research Center, Harvard Uni-
versity.
69
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it seemed aimed; primarily at retaining tum toward socialism, and on all this
some leverage against escalation. In meant for the Soviets in terms of
Vietnam, however, the conflict did esca- domestic and international alignments.
late, and it became a test case on which Nationalism was one difficulty. The
the Soviet, position was highly vulner- Soviets did not underestimate its power;
able. First, it proved that neither So- on the contrary, they bet heavily on it.
Viet military power at the general nu- But they ignored its capacity to gen-
clear level nor Soviet restraint in local erate its own political visions, including
theaters of conflict could prevent the visions of "Arab," "African," and. other
growing intervention of the United "socialisms" which sorely troubled doc-
States. Second, it seemed to prove that trinal monopolists in Moscow. The
a properly managed armed insurgency volatility of politics within developing
could succeed against local resistance countries was another factor that the
massively supported by the United Soviets underestimated, largely as a re-
States. Third, if a major risk was sult of their ideologically motivated
involved at this point, it was that of search for "class forces." And they
United States attacks on North Vietnam found many of their early convictions
which would bring into play quasi- about economic development to be ex-
alliance responsibilities to a Communist cessively optimistic.
state. As events proceeded, especially Essentially, the problem was one of
after the Tonkin episode of August power. In a decade of intensive effort,
1964, Khrushchev's stance of disengage- the Soviets exercised the ability to pene-
ment appeared to look more and more trate and operate in the underdeveloped
like the appeasement which Peking al- world, but they could not shape it. In
ways insisted ii< was. Khrushchev fell political, socioeconomic, and military
from power for a variety of reasons, but terms, the events and developments over
this was probably one of them. The which they could a :ert determining in-
new leadership promised to take a new fluence seemed far outranked in im-
look at its relations with China and its portance by those which were beyond
policy on Vietnam. their control.
To as,;ert that the disintegration of PRAGMATISM SINCE KHRUSHCHEV
Khrushchev's policy toward the Third
World represented its failure, in a lit- Developments confronting Soviet pol-
eral sense, would obviously be inappro- icy in the Third World since 1964 have
priate. At worst, his reach considerably contributed further to the sobering les-
exceeded his grasp; but his grasp was sons being drawn in the years just
sufficient to bring a substantial penetra- before Khrushchev's fall. In addition,
tion of Soviet influence in areas geo- there have been some rather rude
graphically important to the Soviet shocks. Among the latter must be
Union and among elite groups playing numbered the early phases of the United
vital roles throughout the underdevel- States bombing campaign against North
oped world. The weakness of the Vietnam in 1965, and the June 1967
Khrushchev policy was the intellectual Middle East war. In Vietnam, the
weakness of Marxism, its overreliance United States seemed able to attack a
on the operation of self-generated con- socialist state with impunity. In the
ceptions of historical inevitability. The Middle East, the Soviets found their
policy as a whole rested heavily on the fully armed clients unable to defend
"objective necessity" of the postcolonial themselves against a numerically in-
revolution's moving of its own momen- ferior opponent. Moscow's Third World
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"deterrent shield" looked disturbingly
thin. Equally shocking to Moscow
were a series of political coups in under-
developed countries of Africa and Asia
which removed leaders highly favored
by Moscow-foremost among whom
were Ben Bella of Algeria and Nkrumah
of Ghana-and testified to the political
fragility of states that Moscow had
deemed traversing the "noncapitalist
path" to socialism. In fact, these events,
coupled with rising pressure on Soviet
authority in Eastern Europe, produced a
somewhat hysterical doctrinal reaction
against what Moscow perceived as the
"global counterattack of imperialism."
Other trends were less dramatic, but
unsettling, nevertheless. Moscow found
large segments of the Third World, in-
cluding the elites of countries with
which relations were cordial, such as
India, moving into positions of truculent
and, to Moscow's mind, undiscrimi-
nating, irritation toward both the super-
powers. The Soviet Union was lumped
with the United States as part of the
prosperous North and was found, for
that reason, to owe the developing
South more extensive economic aid .8
Similarly annoying to the Soviets was
the view, which "has also gained cur-
rency among political leaders of some
developing states," that Soviet support
for the nonproliferation treatly repre-
sented a dictatorial condominium of the
superpowers.' Finally, each passing
year of continued backwardness and
population growth in the underdevel-
oped world, plus technological and eco-
nomic progress in the industrialized
8 As evidence of Moscow's annoyance
over this, see Soviet comment surrounding
TTNCTAD'S 1968 sessions and, inter alia, A.
Kodachenko, "The Developing Countries and
Economic Progress," Ekononiicheskaya Gazeta,
no. 10 (March 1969), p. 45.
Y I. Shatalov, "The Leninist Foreign Policy
and the National Liberation Movement," In-
ternational Affairs, no. 1 (January 1969), p.
74.
world, seemed to lengthen enormously
the time-perspective in which the
former could be -een as moving toward
socialism.
All was not uniformly gloomy, how-
ever. If Moscow's performance in
defense of the national-liberation move-
ment failed to measure up to previously
proclaimed standards, these failings did
not redound to the undiluted benefit of
the United States. The Soviets found
that, with patience and good luck,
mainly in the form of American re-
straint, they could recover lost ground
or, at least, cut losses. In Vietnam, the
Soviets found that they could provide
military support which may have been
as critical to the endurance of Hanoi as
United States intervention in 1965 was
deemed critical to the survival of the
Saigon government. The United States
could intervene with force, but it could
not win; and stalemate in Vietnam
seemed to be undermining the entire
American commitment to the Third
World. In the Middle East, expensive
as it was to redeem the losses of the
June war, the net effect within a year
of the dramatic setback seemed to be
an augmented Soviet position in the
region.
The patient diplomacy of the Bre-
zhnev-Kosygin regime consolidated ex-
isting positions and opened new ones in
a number of Third World states. The
Soviet Union managed to improve its
relations with Pakistan without serious
damage to Soviet-Indian relations, and
even 'facilitated control of conflict be-
tween the two neighbors throughout the
Tashkent summit. Both Turkey and
Iran were courted, with considerable
success, a trend that the Soviet Union
hoped would improve its position in the
Middle East and vis-a-vis the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Even Latin America, a region of the
Third World hitherto most likely to be
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termed a United. States preserve, was
proving susceptible to Soviet diplomatic
and commercial blandishments.
Another trend; which certainly en-
couraged the Soviets, although hardly a
function o" their own behavior, was the
progressive political isolation of China
in the Third World as a result of her
intemperate behavior and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. A
similar if somewhat less prominent de-
velopment was a slight ebbing of Castro-
ite appeal in Latin America upon the
failure of GGuevara's Bolivian adventure.
Both case:; represented a reduction of
pressure :.'roan the Left, first, upon
Moscow's political ties to Communist
parties in he Third World, and, second,
upon Moscow's doctrinal disinclination
to grant a blanket endorsement to the
tactics of guerrilla insurgency. The
threat of "ultraleftism" among Mos-
cow's coreligionists and doctrinal allies
remained, but became somewhat more
diffuse.
Finally, a plus not to be discounted
was the growing intellectual sophistica-
tion of Soviet thinking about the Third
World.10 Khrushchev's doctrinal opti-
mism of the late 1950's and early
1960's was reflected in, and reinforced
by, scholarship and journalism founded
on equally unjustifiable optimism. But
under the impact of specific reversals
and disillusionments, Soviet observers
tended to become more sensitive to the
political, social, and economic "complex-
ities" at work in the Third World.
(The term slot/anosti or "complexities"
is a sure sign that difficulties are being
encountered which do not fit the desired
pattern.) If one takes seriously the
private claims voiced by many Soviet
social scie:itists and area specialists that
they have lately enjoyed improved
10 See Elizabeth Kridl Valkeni(.r, "Recent
Trends in Soviet Re.-carcll on the Developing
Countries," World Politics (July 196$), p.
644 if.
access to decision-makers, one would
assume that this sophistication contrib-
uted to the caution of Soviet policy in
many regions of the Third World.
As the Soviet leaders have drawn a
running tally of their recent experiences,
they appear to have developed a number
of rough operational guidelines to shape
their Third World policies.
(1) They have seen fit to concentrate
their attention and resources geographi-
cally. The Arab world, from Morocco
to the Persian Gulf, and South Asia,
from Iran to India, represent the high-
priority targets for Soviet diplomatic,
economic, and military efforts. Latin
America, Subsaharan Africa, and South-
east Asia (apart from Vietnam) are
clearly accorded a lower priority. Of
course, the concentration of Soviet at-
tention in the Arab world and South
Asia is not new; it was prevalent
under Khrushchev. But it has notice-
ably increased under his successors.
For example, according to data pub-
lished by the State Department of the
United States, new extensions of eco-
nomic credit and grants to the Arab-
Mediterranean area (including Turkey
and Sudan) and South Asia increased
from about 80 percent of total new
extensions to underdeveloped countries
during 1954-1964 to about 90 percent
in the years 1965-1967, even though
five additional recipients were added in
other areas."' Were recent data on
military assistance available, the con-
centration might be even more marked.
Although much of the shift is accounted
for by the deterioration of Soviet-
Indonesian relations after 1965, and
71 U.S., Department of State, Director of
Intelligence and Research, "Communist Gov-
ernments and Ceve:oping Nations: Aid and
Trade in 1965," Re_earcli \Ieniorandum,
1LS13-50, June 17, 1566; and "Communist
Covernmr_r.ts and D:v iopieg Nations: Aid
and Trade in 1,67,"' Research Memorandum
RSI3-120, August 14, 1963.
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does not include Soviet aid to North
Vietnam, the trend is nevertheless
noteworthy.
The reasons for this choice are fairly
obvious. These are regions where suc-
cessful past investments have been made
and can be protected. ,.Their location
gives them some strategic importance
in relation to Moscow's European and
anti-Chinese goals. The other regions
are seen to offer targets of opportunity
for low-cost, occasional efforts rather
than a sustained campaign. It remains
to be seen whether Brezhnev's rather
dramatic, if elliptical, call for an "Asian
security system," clearly a response to
Sino-Soviet hostility and the prospects
of post-Vietnam policy adjustments by
the United States, will lead to signifi-
cant increases in Soviet attention to
Southeast Asia as a region." For the
moment, the center of gravity of Soviet
Asian policy remains in India, Pakistan,
and Afghanistan.13
(2) The Soviets remain convinced
that, for the present, their interests will
not generally be served by intranational
or international violence in the Third
World. They are even more convinced
that, should such violence occur, their
support of it or participation in it must
be most circumspect. Indicative of this
mood is a recent Soviet rejoinder to
calls for more military involvement in
national-liberation conflicts.
Tice in the lifetime of one generation,
Soviet people fought with unexampled
energy and valor against the principal
forces of imperialist aggression, saving the
world and all mankind. The Soviet Union
has never shirked and does not intend to
shirk its responsibilities for peace and
world progress. But this does not mean
that the principle of military support
should irrationally be made absolute. In
the age of atomic weapons, calls to settle
11 Pravda, June 8, 1969.
"See V. Matveyev, "Saturated 'Vacuum,' "
Izvestiya. May 29, 1969.
scores with imperialism by the military
might of the Socialist countries are ex-
tremely reckless. They conceal . . . the
desire of their authors to evade their own
duty of creating a powerful, united, mass
anti-imperialist movement."
Despite this general stance, however,
the Soviet Union has seen fit to engage
itself deeply, if indirectly, in two Third
World conflicts fraught with risks of
escalation. It concluded that the risks
in Vietnam and the Middle East were
manageable and that the costs of dis-
engagement would be too high to bear.
It may learn from these conflicts that
its past inhibitions about limited con-
flict in third areas are unjustifiably con-
fining in an environment of increased
Soviet strategic and regional power.
Furthermore, it has diverted scarce re-
sources to the expansion of its capability
to establish a visible military presence
in third areas, in the Mediterranean
and, so far, only intermittently, in the
Indian Ocean.16
(3) On a doctrinal plane, the Soviets
seem comparatively disinclined to ad-
vance elaborate models of the develop-
mental process which describe the tran-
sition of postcolonial, backward societies
to some form of socialism. They are
eager to understand the developmen-
tal process and even to prescribe, ex
cathedra, the paths which they insist
must be taken, sooner or later, to
assure the real emergence of the
emerging nations. The "revolutionary
democracy," with its mass-based radical
politics, the "noncapitalist path," with
its socialized and Soviet-oriented eco-
nomics, remain meaningful symbols of
the true way. The Soviets are still
troubled by the almost uniform refusal
14 Shatalov, "The Leninist Foreign Policy
and the National-Liberation Movement," p.
72.
"'See Thomas W. Wolfe, The Soviet Quest
for More Globally Mobile Military Power
(Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1967).
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 Approved For Release 2005/01/11 : CIA-RDP88-01314R000300550002-1
of their non-Communist favorites to
tolerate the participation of Communist
parties in their countries' politics.16 But,
in theory, they are prepared to admit
that the developmental process will be
long and complex, and is not susceptible
to detailed. prognostications at the pres-
ent time. And, in practice, these doc-
trinal issues, while reflecting the con-
cern of many Communist decision-
makers with ultimate goals, do not
impose real constraints on Soviet foreign
policy.
CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS
Soviet policy, like everything else,
manifests continuity and change at any
given moment. The present Soviet
rulers are the legitimate heirs of Lenin's
conviction that the Third World is an
arena of revolutionary transformation
in which vital elements of the ultimate
world political order are being forged.
They inherit from Stalin, among
other things, the conviction that aug-
mentation of Soviet state power is the
main vehicle of world revolution. This
16 On thes,; doctrinal themes, see K. Brutents,
"On RevolutionaryDemocracy," hfirovaya
Ekonomika i bfezhdunarodniya O1nosheniya,
no. 3 (March 1968), p. 15 if., and ibid., no. 4
(April 1968, pp. 24 #.); and Ye. Zhukov, "The
National Liberation Movement of the Peoples
of Asia and Africa," Kommunist, no. 4
(March 19651), pp. 31 g.
imposes upon them general tactical cau?
tiousncss in foreign affairs and a set of
international priorities in which Soviet
internal development, the strategic rela-
tionship with the United States, and
interests in Europe come before goals
in the Third World. Nevertheless, as a
result of their cumulative inheritance,
their power to act upon, if not neces-
sarily to shape, the international en-
vironment, including the Third World,
is far greater today than it was in the
past. And, as a result of Khrushchev's
ambitious policies, they are committed
in strength to vital areas of the Third
World.
In short, the Soviet Union is be-
coming-in the sense that the United
States has been for nearly three dec-
ades-a truly global power, perceiving
interests and possessing strength which
easily dominates the local powers in
many areas of the Third World. It is
beginning to acquire the power to match
the universal pretentious born with the
Soviet state itself. The vital question
is: Upon attaining such power, after
a half-century of containment and
self-conscious inferiority, will the Soviet
Union be as conscious of the limitations
of power in the Third World as the
United States has become, at no insig-
nificant cost? History, as usual, does
not offer a confident answer.
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