Between liberation theology and evils of the past

Carlos Alberto Montaner

His name is Fernando Lugo, a former Catholic bishop, and he projects the image of a good person, genuinely concerned by the calamities afflicting his Paraguayan compatriots.

What are those calamities? Basically, the poverty of much of society. Paraguay is South America's second-poorest country, trailing Bolivia. Its per capita income -- measured in purchasing power, which is the fairest way to gauge it -- barely reaches $4,000 annually. That's half of its Brazilian neighbor's, one-third of Argentina's.

Lugo also has denounced some of the causes of Paraguay's ills. He thinks the worst are corruption and patronage. He's probably right. According to Transparency International's rankings, released in 2007, Paraguay is one of the world's most corrupt countries, listed at no less than 138th place. On a scale of one to 10, where 10 is the most honest and one the most corrupt, the Paraguayans suffer a corruption index of 2.4. In Latin America, more rotted than Paraguay are only Ecuador (2.1) and Hugo Chávez's Venezuela (2.0), which is Ali Baba's den with 40,000 thieves who have exchanged their camels for Hummers.

In reality, all analyses agree on the same melancholy diagnosis. In Paraguay, no accounts are rendered, justice does not work and the quality of official management and public policies is pitiful. The result? Total divorce between society and state. A breakdown that explains another horrid fact: According to the latest Latinobarometer, only 33 percent of Paraguayans believe that democracy is the best form of government, while 36 percent would unabashedly support some sort of authoritarian adventure.

That state of frustration is the natural consequence of 61 years of misgovernment by the Colorado Party. But let's not forget that during that very long period, which includes the 35 years of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner's iron-fisted regime, the Colorado Party enjoyed the support of a substantial portion of the Paraguayan people. In the recent elections, Lugo was able to win with 40 percent of the vote because his Colorado rivals went to the polls bitterly split into two camps that garnered 30 and 21 percent of the vote, respectively.

The Paraguayans, therefore, have been the victims not only of the bad Colorado leaders but also of their accomplices, a fact that shouldn't scandalize us. It happens in all states where patronage-based relations exist. In them, political power becomes the grand source of wealth, privileges, public jobs and social prestige; or, at the other end, the hard hand that punishes, robs or cruelly persecutes its adversaries. That is why patronage-based governments (ask the Argentines about Peronism) have so many supporters.

Lamentably, Lugo, who is so accurate when identifying the ills that beset the country, proposes to correct them with the wrong ideas. He has declared himself to be a follower of Liberation Theology, a harebrained economic and philosophical prescription expounded in 1971 by a Peruvian priest, Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Who was he? A good man, poorly educated in economic issues, who attributed Latin Americans' poverty to the perfidy of capitalism and the evil designs of the prosperous nations of the developed world: a heartless center that had assigned societies in the periphery the sad role of suppliers of raw materials, a perverse abuse that justified a recourse to insurrection and explained the admiration felt by Gutiérrez and his followers for the Cuban dictatorship and Guevarist revolutionary violence.

It is a pity that Lugo opted for Gutiérrez, so totally misguided, instead of carefully reading American Catholic theologian Michael Novak, an advisor to Pope John Paul II and the author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.

It is sad that he wasted his time with the Theory of Dependency (the absurd concept behind Liberation Theology) instead of turning to another, truly enlightened priest, Robert Sirico. From his Acton Institute in Michigan, Sirico devotes all his energy to teaching priests and Catholic believers the basic elements of modern economy, lest they disseminate foolish ideas that aggravate the enormous problems suffered by the poor whom, paradoxically, they attempt to help.

Now that former Bishop Lugo is about to become president, it would behoove him to meditate upon the responsibility he has assumed. It is true that the Colorado Party ruled abominably during many decades, but if he takes the wrong road, he will inevitably worsen the existence of his compatriots. This would be an unforgivable outcome for someone who has spent his life preaching with sincerity the importance of compassion.