4Boston Reflection: Liberation Theology

Liberation Theology: Lens of the Poor

Story

Roberto’s family was fairly well off by Nicaraguan standards: they owned two modest houses, two cars, and ate meat with their meals at least two times a day. During the time of the Somoza regime, he had worked in a private hospital and had maintained a medical practice for those patrons who had the ability to pay for consultations. Of course, that select group only included perhaps 15 percent of the Nicaraguan population. Nevertheless, Roberto was free to carry out his career in those ways he determined beneficial.
With the triumph of the revolution, health care was nationalized throughout Nicaragua. Doctors and other health care professionals were required to devote a large percentage of their consulting hours to popular clinics, and for their services they were compensated with a fixed salary which was considerably lower than that which they had previously earned. Roberto was livid about these changes, and regularly vented his anger with me: “Can you believe the totalitarian system which we have in this country?! You wouldn’t allow this to happen in the United States. You wouldn’t let your government tell you where to work and how much you are to be paid for doing it. The Sandinistas have taken our freedom from us!”
When I was not listening to Roberto’s diatribes in the evenings, during the daytime I was traveling to the city barrios and the countryside of Nicaragua in conjunction with the Protestant relief agency CEPAD. Everywhere I went, campesinos and workers were sharing with me the thrill of receiving medical attention for the first time in their lives. No longer did they have to face the inexpressible tragedy of sitting back and watching their children die simply because they did not have the money to buy medicine for them. “We now have the freedom to see a doctor,” they repeatedly exclaimed to me. “We thank God that the revolution has given us the possibility of life.”
To give yet one more perspective on how we view reality from the place where our feet are planted, it would be of interest to note the response I have commonly received when I retell this story to churches in the United States. In an adult Sunday school class held at a Baptist church in Oakland, I was sharing how we more often than not read both the Bible and our own history through the grid set by our social and economic commitments. To illustrate that point, I recalled the story of Roberto, who, consciously or not, held his rights of individual gain over the freedoms of the vast majority of the poor people in his country. At the end of the story, I was mildly shocked to hear one of the class members, the wife of a bank executive, respond: “No, Roberto was right! That government must be acting as a dictatorship; no one has the right to take away what he has worked so hard to earn!”
Once again it is clear that the perception of reality is never self-disclosing. Though neither Roberto nor the Baptist woman from Oakland would likely dispute the objective fact that poor people exist in society, they firmly resist any explanation for that condition which might challenge the privilege which they personally gain from that system which creates poverty. Assuming that their response is illustrative of a whole series of values which legitimates their place in that world, it would be safe to say that the poor should not expect any change in their situation to be initiated from those sectors which hold economic and social power in the society. More realistically, the poor should anticipate a forceful opposition, both ‘moral’ and rational, to any alternative rendering of that world to which they might arrive grounded in their own experience of history.



Quotes

“There is only one point of departure – a reality of social misery – and on goal – the liberation of the oppressed.”

“To know God is to do justice, is to be in solidarity with the poor person…as he or she actually exists today – as someone who is oppressed, as a member of an exploited class, or ethnic group, or culture, or nation…Thus, in order to know or love God, one must come to grips with the concrete life situation of the poor today, and undertake the radical transformation of a society that makes them poor.”

“Jesus Christ is precisely God become poor. This was the human life he took – a poor life.”

“A prior meditation takes place which empowers the poor to be the creators of their own reality, a process which is known throughout Latin America as conscientization…This awareness permits the poor to move beyond a dense, enveloping vision of a world from which there is no escape in order to acquire the ability to intervene in their reality as it is unveiled.”