Pope Francis Tuesday

The Pope has been visiting Cuba over the weekend. That visit called to mind this song by Kate Campbell that references an earlier papal visit to the island.

Rosa's Coronas 11/30/2014

Joshua McElwee reports on Pope Francis' major speech in La Habana at the Plaza de la Revolución in Under image of Che Guevara, Francis says Christian service 'never ideological' National Catholic Reporter 09/20/2015

This combination of images of two of the most famous Argentines is surely more jarring for an American audience than for Argentines. When I visited the Presidential Palace Casa Rosada) in Buenos Aires in 2012, the entry hall had two portraits prominently displayed together: Che Guevara and the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered by a death squad while presiding over Mass in a hospital. Pope Francis formally declared Romero a martyr this year and he's on the road to sainthood. I doubt any Pope will canonize Ernesto Guevara. Although there was and maybe still is a folk shrine to "St. Che" near the place in Bolivia where he was assassinated in 1967. I think a few miraculous cures have been reported there. Go figure.

The staunchly anti-Communist and theologically conservative Pope Juan Paul II also celebrated mass in Plaza de la Revolución on his visit to Cuba in 1998.

This was also an interesting part of the Pope's message: "At the end of the Mass, the pope appealed to Colombia's government and Marxist FARC guerrillas to ensure that nearly three years of peace talks in Cuba are successful in order to end their 'long night' of war." (Pope meets Fidel Castro, warns against ideology on Cuba trip Buenos Aires Herald 09/20/2015) Cuba has hosted peace talks to end that long-running conflict.

Darío Pignotti notes in Página/12 (Cuba se viste de blanco y amarillo por el Papa 19.09.2015) that the chatter in Cuba he heard before Francis' arrival included many mentions of the "Argentine Pope." (Pignotti goes a bit Tommy Friedman in this piece and reports on an interview with a taxi driver.)

How much of the Pontiff's worldview is actually consistent with that of a government like Cuba's?

Eric Bugyis in a post which,so far as I can tell, is supportive of Pope Francis, argues that there is a great deal of philosophical/ideological agreement It Is Marxism! Commonweal 09/22/2015:

In Bolivia, Francis called for "the just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor" saying that this is "about giving to the poor and to peoples what is theirs by right." Linking the fruits of labor to rights in this way suggests the "labor theory of value" that one finds in Thomas Aquinas and in the social encyclicals beginning with Rerum Novarum, but it is also the theory of value that one finds in Marx. It is the theory that says that those who work to produce goods and services, through agriculture or manufacture, ought to have a share in the ownership of those goods. It is a rejection of the wage slavery whereby workers are shackled by policies that seek to interrupt the worker's relationship with the fruits of his or her labor by turning this labor into a commodity itself. The price of this commodity, then, must be weighed against the expected profits to be gained through the sale of commodities owed by stockholders. On this account, it should be made clear, the stockholder owns both the workers (now often more honestly referred to as "human resources") and the commodities that these workers produce and profit to the extent that the stockholder (and the market) values the former less than the latter. Thus, when Francis talks about a "formal market" in which people are "exploited like slaves," what else could he be talking about but the alienation of workers from the means of production? And when he calls for governments to promote "the strengthening, improvement, coordination and expansion of forms of popular economy and communitarian production," what could he be referring to other than supporting the formation of unions (another thing endorsed by the social encyclicals) and empowering local commerce by limiting the monopolistic practices of transnational corporations? All of which, I assume, Mr. Langone would rightly identify as "Marxism." [my emphasis]

Now, I'm hardly allergic to Marxist perspectives, as any of my numerous posts about the Frankfurt School thinkers can illustrate. And I'm definitely in sympathy with the perspectives of the Pope described here.

But this just gets some history wrong. No St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25-1274) did not invent the "labor theory of value." Marx' version built on those of the distinctly modern philosophers and political economists Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772-1823). Marx also made a clear distinction between chattel slavery, where the workers actually are owned, and wage labor, which Marxists also call wage slavery, in which it is not the case that "the stockholder owns ... the workers," as Bugyis puts it.

A great undergraduate professor of mine, the late Howard Bavender, was my adviser on this now long-ago paper ("Just War Concept and American Churches in the American Antiwar Movement" 1974). As I was trying to sort through the relationship of Catholic theology to dissenting movements, he stressed that while the Church took strong positions on issues of social justice and the just war that at times were in accord with left political positions, the Church had never abandoned its criticism of Marxism on matters where it contradicted the Church's view of the nature of humanity.

In fact, what I wrote where I took his advice on that wasn't bad:

The Roman Catholic Church, in the United States and around the world, had been staunchly opposed to "atheistic Communism" before and after World War II. The American hierarchy continued to speak strongly against Communism even during the wartime alliance with Soviet Russia. Many Roman Catholic churchmen really believed that the United States was threatened by Communism, but they were also interested in acquiring American aid in their world-wide battle with Communist governments, particularly in Eastern Europe where the Soviet Urion attempted to break the political power of the church. ...

However, around the time of Pope John XXIII's ascendancy, Catholic attitudes toward international relations began to change. Pope John issued his encyclical Pacem in Terris, which many Catholics took to be "a clear call for total pacifism in a nuclear age." [1970 quote from Francine du Plessix Gray] Pope John stated in that famous document, as quoted above, that war was unacceptable in the nuclear era. The support of the Catholic Church for such projects as the Cold War against Communism was clearly decreasing, although the Church has never abandoned its opposition to those elements of Communism which challenge the Christian conception of man. This notable decrease in support nevertheless was to be an element in the future Catholic opposition to Vietnam policies in the United States.

It's also important to remember that when the Church has criticized capitalism or aspects of it, that also comes from centuries of theoretical development that has some of its roots in pre-capitalist concepts and economic arrangements, i.e., European feudalism. "Corporate state" arrangements like those in Mussolini's Italy or the Austrian Standestaat of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt von Schuschnigg were forms of government with which the Catholic Church of that time were generally comfortable.

The Catholic Church is a worldwide institution that has congregations within the entire spectrum of contemporary forms of government: secular ones and ones with established religions (Christian and otherwise); military and civilian; democracies and dictatorships, and varying degrees of both. The Catholic Church doesn't take the position of American neocons that they shouldn't even have formal conversations with governments they finding displeasing. On the contrary, they are interested in negotiating the best possible arrangements for the Church and its members even in countries hostile to the Catholic Church.

Eduardo Valdés, the Argentine Ambassador to the Vatican, notes that Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of La Habana, has played a key role in the current process of rapprochement between the US and Cuba which the Holy See has helped to mediate. (Premonición Página/12 19.09.2015)

The Catholic News Service provides this description of Fidel Castro's view of Christianity as expressed in a 1985 book of interviews with Fidel in which he positioned himself as supportive of the views of liberation theology: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Christ, Marx and Che: Fidel Castro offers pope his religious views National Catholic Reporter 09/21/2015. Pope Francis has views more friendly to liberation theology than his two immediate predecessors. John Paul II was a bitter opponent of it. Benedict XVI was known before and during his Papacy as generally reactionary on theological and political issues. However, both of them also took positions based on Catholic social teaching (feudal roots and all) that challenged politically conservative positions. They also took pacifist positions at odds with the normal power politics on which the world runs far too much.

Vatican Radio reports on the meeting between Francis and Fidel in Pope Francis meets former Cuban president Fidel Castro 09/20/2015:

Pope Francis gave Castro several books, including one by Italian priest Alessandro Pronzato and another by Spanish Jesuit Segundo Llorentea. The Holy Father also gave him a book and two CDs of his homilies, as well as his two encyclical letters, Lumen Fidei and Laudato si'.

In return, Castro gave Pope Francis an interview book entitled, "Fidel and Religion," written in 1985 by Brazilian priest Frei Betto. The dedication reads: "For Pope Francis, on occasion of his visit to Cuba, with the admiration and respect of the Cuban people."

The head of the Vatican Press Office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "familiar and informal," and the two men spoke about "protecting the environment and the great problems of the contemporary world."

Father Lombardi compared the private encounter to that which took place with Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, saying Fidel Castro asked Pope Benedict many questions, while Sunday's meeting with Pope Francis was "more of a conversation."

Emphasizing some of the differences between the Church and the Cuban regime, Martín Granovsky reports (Ortega, el cardenal de las negociaciones secretas Página/12 19.09.2015):

¿Piensa el cardenal Ortega que el proceso de normalización ya es irreversible? Está en camino a serlo, pero según él “Obama y Raúl tienen enemigos y hay que protegerlos a ambos porque los dos saben que antes de irse todavía tienen mucho que hacer”. Cuando habla de los retos a Raúl, Ortega describe el peso de lo que él llama “ideología”, o sea el resabio del modelo soviético y de la rigidez. Para el cardenal el efecto se nota aún en sectores del Partido Comunista Cubano, en los medios controlados por él, en la TV, la radio y la prensa escrita.

Contó un ejemplo. El periodista Amaury Pérez lo entrevistó para la tele cubana y en vez de la media hora habitual le dio una hora. Era el primer reportaje televisivo en 60 años. El director de TV se opuso. Quería revisar y cortar partes. “La entrevista se pasa sin tocar una coma”, le dijeron a Ortega que fue la frase de Castro. El diálogo se puede ver haciendo click en http://bit.ly/1JCqhe7.

[Does Cardinal think that the process of normalization is now irreversible? It's on the way to being so, according to him: "Obama and Raúl {Castro} have enemies, and we have to protect both of them because the two know that before they leave {the political scene}, there is still a lot to do." When he speaks of Raúl's challenges, Ortega describes the weight of what he calls "ideology," that is, the bad taste of the Soviet model and the rigidity. For the cardinal, the effect can be observed even in sectors of the Cuban Communist Party, in the media controlled by them, in TV, radio and the written press.

He gave an example. The journalist Amaury Pérez interviewed him for Cuban television and gave him an hour instead of the usual half hour. It was the first television report {featuring Ortega?} in 60 years. The TV director opposed it. He wanted to edit it and cut parts. "The interview will air with touching a comma," Ortega was told was the phrase {Raúl} Castro used.]

It's reasonable to assume that when Francis spoke about the problem of "ideology" in Cuba, his meaning was the same or similar to that in which Cardinal Ortega is using it.

In the TV interview referenced, Ortega recounts a conversation he had with Pope Benedict XVI, in which Benedict said that the Church is not in the world to change governments. It's in the world to spread the Gospel. Ortega says it in a context that makes it clear he agrees with that perspective. And he also says that is the perspective of Pope Francis.

Granovsky continues to report on Church-related consequence of the long-standing embargo:

El desafío para la Iglesia es ganar feligreses, sobre todo entre la juventud, y conseguir fondos propios para ayuda humanitaria. Por el bloqueo la Iglesia no puede recibir dólares porque los aportes de afuera son interferidos en algún punto de su curso por Estados Unidos. Ocurrió con fondos regalados por Los Caballeros de Colón, por la Isla de Malta y por grupos irlandeses. Llegaron a Cuba tras operaciones clandestinas e incluso algún obispo debió recorrer el mundo con 200 mil dólares ocultos en una valija. En La Habana no hubo problemas.

[The challenge for the Church is to win parishioners, above all among youth, and obtain its own funds for humanitarian support. Because of the {US} blockade, the Church is not able to receive dollars because donations from outside are intercepted at some point in their course from the United States. That has occurred with funds donated by the Knights of Columbus, from the island of Malta and from Irish groups. They arrived in Cuba after {via} clandestine operations, including one bishop who has said to have traversed the world with $200,000 hidden in a valise. In Havana, he had no problems.]

Meanwhile, columnist George Will prior to the Pope's arrival in the US is griping about the Jesuit Francis defending science on the topic of climate change. (Anthony Annett, On Fact-Free Flamboyance: George Will vs. Pope Francis Commonweal 09/21/2015) Awesome.

Wars, refugees and complexities of anti-imperialism

The single most constructive thing that the United States, the Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and even France and Britain could do to ease the refugee crisis in Europe would be to stop promoting wars and "regime change" operations in the Middle East.

Wofgang Münchau (The deadly disunity of the Europeans Financial Times 09/06/2015) writes on the EU and the European refugee crisis: "Angela Merkel is, for once, on the right side of the argument." (my emphasis) That is truly an historic moment!

He also says:

The EU has 500m inhabitants. Setting aside refugees, net immigration — the difference between those coming into and those leaving the EU — was 539,000 in 2013, about 0.1 per cent of the total population. Net immigration was higher in 2010, when it stood at 750,000. ...

Net immigration including refugees is clearly rising. Still, this is not an immigration crisis. It is a collective action crisis.

Its solution would be straightforward in the presence of a central authority empowered to take decisions. But this is not how the EU works. It works through co-ordination and harmonisation — through fiscal rules, banking regulation and neighbourhood policies. But none of them prevented the crisis, and none of them helps solve it.

As Yanis Varoufakis recently called attention to the way in which the dysfunctional response to the financial/debt crisis in the eurozone has compounded the problems the EU has in developed common policies and implementing them effectively, now particularly in the refugee crisis (On CNBC discussing Greece and Europe – full transcript, 4th September 2015 09/04/2015):

You’re quite right; in the end we created a common currency which divided us. And the deeper those divisions grew, the greater the failure to be united when it came to other matters. For instance, the refugee crisis. For instance, ways of dealing with the dearth of investment throughout Europe. Instead of getting closer together we were torn apart. In the United States, in the 19th Century, there was one financial crisis after another. Even at the beginning of the 20th century – and especially after 1929. Every time, the United States faced a major financial crisis it managed to consolidate. To get closer together. To create institutions that were common and which created shock absorbers for the system. In Europe, the idea was that we must bind ourselves together by means of the same currency in order to create this process. But, the first time a crisis tested us, following the financial that began in Wall Street, the City of London, and so on – we failed. Instead of consolidating, we are dividing and multiplying. And failing at other realms. So Europe’s monetary failure is spreading to other realms. [my emphasis]

Thalif Deen writes in Europe Invaded Mostly by “Regime Change” Refugees Inter Press Service 09/03/2015:

The military conflicts and political instability driving hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe were triggered largely by U.S. and Western military interventions for regime change – specifically in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria (a regime change in-the-making).

The United States was provided with strong military support by countries such as Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Spain, while the no-fly zone to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was led by France and the UK in 2011 and aided by Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Canada, among others.

And the article highlights the concept of "regime change refugees":

The United States was directly involved in regime change in Afghanistan (in 2001) and Iraq (in 2003) – and has been providing support for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad battling a civil war now in its fifth year.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who says he is “horrified and heartbroken” at the loss of lives of refugees and migrants in the Mediterranean and Europe, points out that a large majority of people “undertaking these arduous and dangerous journeys are refugees fleeing from places such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

James A. Paul, former executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, told IPS the term “regime change refugees” is an excellent way to change the empty conversation about the refugee crisis.

Obviously, there are many causes, but “regime change” helps focus on a crucial part of the picture, he added.

And the use of that term is a reminder that the anodyne phrase "regime change" describes a reality that can and sometimes does produce conditions that are catastrophically bad. Syrian and Ukraine are two current examples of that.

The left-Peronist site La Batalla Cultural raises an important point about regime-change operations in Los idiotas funcionales al imperialismo (Sept 2015; accessed 09/07/2015). The title, "The Useful Idiots of Imperialism," has a definite Leninist ring to it. But the point made by the article is a fairly basic one. Powerful countries like the US for Britain or France are happy to use democratic- and humanitarian-sounding claims and slogans to promote interventions whose aims are primarily narrow power-political ones. The difference in the US between "humanitarian hawks" and neoconservatives when it comes to advocating war is getting harder and harder to discern. Even the rhetoric is similar. Neocons are more likely to use cynically pragmatic arguments, but they have always used humanitarian claims to promote war as well.

The fact that a regime is bad in some way, even seriously bad, does not in itself justify military action against it. All the considerations of classic Just War theory still apply, including considering realistically whether the military action has a reasonable prospect of success. Any military action like the Iraq War of 2003 that produces more than a decade of civil war, massive population displacement and intensified international conflict is hard to see as one that ended up in a success in anything much more than killing a lot of Arabs and Kurds. Those who pointed the small chances of a good outcome prior to the invasion were not sympathizers of Saddam Hussein, as the Republicans inevitably called us. Actual sympathy for Saddam Hussein's general form of governance in the US was effectively nonexistent.

But it is possible to distinguish between the particular regime and the nature of a particular war. The Malvinas/Falklands War of 1982 is an excellent example. It pitted a cruel and unpopular dictatorship in Argentina against democratic Britain.

But Argentina had by far the better claim on the territorial question of to which country the islands belong. As the UN webpage on decolonization says as of this writing, " At present, 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs) across the globe remain to be decolonized, home to nearly 2 million people." The NSGT designation is a euphemism for "illegal colony." The Malvinas Islands are one of those cases. Ten of the 17, including the Malvinas and Gibraltar, are controlled by Great Britain.

In 1982, the Argentine military dictatorship landed its armed forces on the Malvinas. Britain retook the islands. But despite the unpopularity of the dictatorship, the war was tremendously popular among Argentines. That, of course, was part of the dictatorship's calculation. They hoped for a patriotic rallying to the government. Instead, the defeat of Argentina in that popular military cause was the nail in the coffin of the dictatorship. Losing wars is always unpopular. Losing wars that the public considers genuinely patriotic and justified is especially unpopular.

The current Argentine government headed by Cristina Fernández and the previous one held by her late husband Néstor Kirchner both strongly emphasized human rights and insisted on a thorough legal and educational reckoning with the crimes of the dictatorship.

But they also have pressed the claims of Argentina to the Malvinas - including the rights to major oil reserves to be controlled by the country that controls the islands - and have made a big deal out of honoring the veterans of the Malvinas War of 1982. Their recognition of the justness of Argentina's claim to the Malvinas in the 1982 war does not mean that they or their supporters admire the government that conducted the war. They don't even recognize the legal or moral legitimacy of that extra-constitutional and criminal dictatorship.

The Argentine Pope also supports the nation's legitimate claim to the Malvinas, as illustrated by this photo from August of this year, with him holding a sign saying, "It's time for dialogue between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Malvinas":

In an article appearing on Cristina's website, Alicia Barrios writes (A Francisco nadie lo toma por sorpresa #MalvinasArgentinas 21.08.2015):

Francisco es, fue y será muy malvinero. Todos los años, el 2 de abril, celebraba misa en la Catedral metropolitana junto a todos los familiares y ex combatientes de Malvinas. Los alentó y abrazó siempre. A las seis de la tarde las puertas del templo se abrían de par en par para ellos. Recordaba con emoción a los 649 caídos en combate. En ese día glorioso y doloroso para la memoria de los argentinos, de la misa salían con una sonrisa. Esperanzados para seguir luchando un año más. Antes era un ruego desde el país, ahora es desde el Vaticano para el mundo. Al Papa no lo tomó de sorpresa la presencia de Gustavo Hoyo, director de Diálogo Malvinas. Se acercó. Tomó la pancarta en sus manos y les dijo: “Sigan adelante”. Posó para la foto. Nunca dudó, sus homilías así lo demuestran, que las Malvinas son argentinas. Él sabe mejor que nadie, que decir la verdad no conforma a todos.

[Francisco is, was and will be a malvinero [i.e., supporter of Argentina's claim to the Malvinas]. Every year on April 2, he celebrated Mass in the Catedral metropolitana together with all the relative and ex-combatants of the Malvinas [from the 1982 war]. He always encouraged and embraced them. At 6:00 in the evening, the doors of the temple opened wide for them. He recalled with emotion the 649 fallen in combat. On this glorious and mournful day for the memory of Argentines, the left the Mass with a smile. We hoped to keep to keep fighting another year. Then it was a prayer from the country, today it is from the Vatican for the world. The Pope was not surprised by the presence of Gustavo Hoyo, director of Diálogo Malvinas [Diálogo por Malvinas, a campaign promoting Argentina's claims to the Malvinas]. He took the poster in his hands and told them, "Keep going forward." He posed for the photo. He never doubted, as demonstrated by his homilies, that the Malvinas are Argentine. He knows better than anyone to state the truth not accepted by everyone.]

For whatever reason, the Vatican decided they needed a little diplomatic dissimulation on that particular event, presumably to avoid the impression that the Pontiff was directly endorsing a particular political campaign, in this case on an issue rather than a candidate. (Nadia Khomami, Pope Francis 'tricked' into calling for Falklands talks The Guardian 08/20/2015)

See also: Carlos Cué, El Papa sostiene un cartel a favor del diálogo para las Malvinas El País 19.08.2015; Rosie Scammell, Pope Francis holds sign urging Falkland Islands dialogue, causes stir in Argentina Religion News Service/National Catholic Reporter 08/21/2015. The points Barrios makes about how Francis knew very well what he was doing are convincing. Who knows what the diplomatic mealy-mouthing afterward from Vatican press people was about?

Getting back to the polemical article in La Batalla Cultural, they are taking an anti-imperialist position informed by a Latin American view not so familiar to most Americans, and not always a comfortable one for people in the US and Europe. One widely-held perspective on the Argentine dictatorship of 1976-83 is known as the Two Devils theory, a kind of Both Sides Do It approach in which the crimes of the dictatorship are considered together with violent actions by the leftwing guerrillas in Argentina before and during the dictatorship. The latter are certainly a major part of the historical story. The now-annual journal La Lucha Armada en la Argentina, for instance, is a journal devoted primarily to a serious historical study of the leftwing guerrilla movements of that period.

But the crimes committed by the military government not only were far more massive in number. They also were done in the name of the Argentine nation and under general cover of law. And of the Christian religion, as the dictatorship endorsed a strong reactionary/national brand of Christianity that was deeply rooted in part of the Argentine Catholic Church. (Pope Francis has no justification for being proud of the general role he played during the dictatorship. But it's clear that he now identifies more with the liberation theology that was violently and murderously persecuted by the dictatorship.)

Americans can understand how the Two Devils theory can be misused as a defense of the dictatorship by reference to the current political movement in the US known as Black Lives Matter. White racists who want to see the widespread practice of (mostly white) police killing unarmed African-Americans (mostly men) continue, are eager to make a both-sides-do-it argument, arguing that the advocates against criminal violence by police practiced on young black men is somehow an incitement to active violence and murder against police. It is a bad-faith argument that really is directed only at providing phony justification for police murdering African-Americans at will and with impunity. (See Charlie Pierce, who addresses this issue though not exactly like I'm going here in Texas Cop Killing Could Spark National Backlash Against #BlackLivesMatter Esquire Politics Blog 08/31/2015)

Sometimes "both sides do it" is really an attempt to validate the actions of one side.

La Batalla Cultural (LBC) argues that not only is the Two Devils framing dominant in the way Argentines think about the dictatorship and the guerrillas. It also argues that this attitude carries over into views of foreign policy, and specifically to the Syrian conflict. LBC makes the point that a Two Devils approach to a situation like Syria, in which the Assad regime in Syria is equated with ISIS/Daesh and its Sunni backers can make an effective cover for regime-change intervention by countries like the US, France and Britain for whom alleged humanitarian concerns are entirely subordinate to other power-political consideration. LBC puts it this way:

Tenemos ahora en Medio Oriente un clásico escenario de invasión imperialista. Los Estados Unidos y sus amigos de la OTAN (en una palabra, el Occidente capitalista y cristiano) están poniendo la mesa para entrar con todo en Siria y hacer allí un nuevo Irak o Afganistán, para luego apropiarse de los recursos naturales y disponer de la suerte de los pueblos. ¿Cómo? Con estas sencillas jugadas, que son de manual:

1. Financiando y armando a los grupos llamados “rebeldes” sirios, que son lo equivalente a la oposición cipaya de Venezuela o Argentina (o de cualquier otra semicolonia) hasta fogonear bien la guerra civil
2. Con la guerra civil en marcha, poniendo en el territorio al “Estado Islámico” o ISIS, un tercer actor para complicar y desestabilizar aún más.

[Today we have in the Middle East a classic scenario of imperialist invasion. The United States and its friends in NATO (in a word, the capitalist West) are setting the table to enter Syria in full force and make a new Iraq or Afghanistan there, in order to later appropriate their natural resources and control the fortune of the peoples. How? With these open plays that are right out of the book:

1. Financing and arming groups called Syrian "rebels," that are the equivalent of the opposition loyal to foreigners of Venezuela or Argentina (or of any other semi-colony) to the point of fomenting civil war
2. With the civil war in progress, set up a third actor in the territory of the "Islamic States" or ISIS to further complicate and destabilize {the situation}.]

LBC particularly calls attention to the way that the ugly consequences of these policies, like today's refugee crisis between the Middle East and Europe, can be used by warmongers as excuses to continue and intensify the very policies that generate the problem in the first place.

This is why, despite the record of some its major figures like Henry Kissinger, I can't give up my fondness for the "realist" school of foreign policy theory. At its best - as in Stephen Walt's work - it emphasizes careful evaluation of the potential negative consequences of foreign policy decisions and the dangers to clear thinking that comes from taking one's side's own propaganda too seriously.

And LBC is also reminding its presumably mainly Argentine readers that a regime-change approach used in one part of the world without effective international criticism and resistance can be used in other parts, as well.

Anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina

Today is the 37th anniversary of the military coup of 1976 that installed a brutal and murderous military dictatorship that remained in power until 1983. Prosecutions of officials who committed crimes during that dictatorship, known as El Proceso from its preferred name for its project of purging democracy and democratic freedoms from Argentina forever. Forever last only seven years.

Here is a report from TV Pública argentina on the anniversary, featuring a brief presentation by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, A 37 años del golpe cívico militar 22.03.2013:

Here is a longer report of a the speech of Cristina's excerpted in the report above, Cristina inauguró nuevos Espacios de la Memoria (2 de 2) TV Pública argentina 22.03.2012:

She posted the following to her Facebook wall:

24 de marzo, un aniversario que no quisiéramos tener los argentinos, pero que tenemos la obligación de recordar. Un recuerdo que no es patrimonio de ningún sector político de la Argentina. Cuando se atenta contra la democracia, se atenta contra la forma de vida en que queremos vivir todos los argentinos. Entendamos que esta es una fecha de la democracia, que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar: Lo que pasó no fue por casualidad. Si uno mira los índices que tenía el país de ocupación, calidad de vida, industrialización, desarrollo social al momento de producirse el golpe, y cómo terminamos en 1983 cuando llega la democracia, y luego lo que pasó en la segunda parte, cómo terminamos en el 2001... vemos que el mejor homenaje que se puede hacer a todos los que hoy no están, o los que están y sufrieron, es seguir logrando esta Argentina, una Argentina con mayor inclusión social, con mayor trabajo, de fábricas abiertas, de ciencia y tecnología.

El objetivo del golpe no sólo era un país sin industrias, un país donde manejara solamente el capital financiero, era además instalar en cada uno de los argentinos que no valía la pena ocuparse del otro, porque si te ocupabas del otro te podía pasar algo. El miedo. Y al miedo le siguió el egoísmo. El egoísmo es el hijo del miedo. Los que no tienen miedo son solidarios. Seguir luchando por más igualdad, por los que menos tienen, para estar siempre junto a ellos, ese es el mandato de los 30.000 desaparecidos.

Recuerdo palabras de él [Néstor Kirchner], 24/3/2004: “Hablemos claro: no es rencor ni odio lo que nos guía y me guía, es justicia y lucha contra la impunidad. Dejaremos todo para lograr un país más equitativo, con inclusión social, luchando contra la desocupación, la injusticia, y todo lo que nos dejó en su última etapa esta lamentable década del ’90 como epílogo de las cosas que nos tocaron vivir. Hermanas y hermanos, compañeros que están presentes por más que no estén aquí, Madres, Abuelas, chicos: gracias por el ejemplo de lucha. Defendamos con fe, con capacidad de amar, que no nos llenen el espíritu de odio porque no lo tenemos, pero tampoco queremos la impunidad. Queremos que haya justicia, queremos que realmente haya una recuperación fortísima de la memoria. Que en esta Argentina se vuelvan a recordar y tomar como ejemplo a aquellos que son capaces de dar todo por los valores que tienen. Una generación en la Argentina que fue capaz de hacer eso, ha dejado un sendero, su vida, sus madres, sus abuelas y sus hijos."

Página/12 reports on this message in CFK: "Esta es una fecha de la democracia que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar" 24.03.2013. In it, she makes a moving statement about how the dictatorship's state terror functioned (quoted above in Spanish in a slightly different form; just after 18:30 in the last video; my translation from the video version):

... the objective of the coup was not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things; it was also to install in every one of the Argentines that it was not worth it to be concerned with others, because if you concerned yourself with other something could happen to you. Better to be concerned with yourself, and if your were concerned with yourself, nothing would happen to you. Fear. And after fear follows egoism. Egoism is the child of fear. Don't ever forget it. Only those who are afraid can be egoists. Those who are not afraid are those who practice solidarity.

She also says, "... we are going to fight for more equality, for more equality for those who have the leaset, for the poorest, to always be there together with them, this is the mandate of the 30,000 desaparecidos" i.e, the "disappeared", those kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship.

She speaks from experience. She was a human rights attorney during the dictatorship who worked actively to help its victims. It surely one of the sources of tension between her and Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I, who was anything but a profile in courage during the dictatorship, and probably actively collaborated in dishonorable ways.

I just read Emilio Mignone's 1986 book, Iglesia y dictadura: El papel de la iglesia a la luz de sus relaciones con el régimen militar (2006), which has figured in the news reports on Bergoglio's conduct in relationship to the dictatorship. Mignone's daughter Mónica was kidnapped by the dictatorship in 1976, taken from their home. Mignone and his wife Chela were never able to contact her. He died in 1998 without ever knowing for sure what happened to Mónica, or where her remains lay. Although he assumes that she was likely tortured and murdered, the usual fate of the desaparecidos.

This is how state terror works. Not only was she arrested but was held incommunicado, never given any kind of a public trial, her parents and other relatives and friends were never able to see her in prison, and never knew for sure what happened to her.

It's very common for Americans to hear something like this about another country and think how this shows the superiority of the United States and our political system to the benighted "Third World." But Americans are generally unaware of the nature of the United States long interaction with Latin America. St. Reagan approved of the Argentine junta, as Robert Perry reports in Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts? Consortium News 07/06/2012:

Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.

When President Jimmy Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, berated the Argentine junta for its brutality, Reagan used his newspaper column to chide her, suggesting that Derian should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [For details, see Martin Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto. {Perry's note}]

Reagan understood that the Argentine generals played a central role in the anti-communist crusade that was turning Latin America into a nightmare of unspeakable repression. The leaders of the Argentine junta saw themselves as something of pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. ...

After becoming President in January 1981, Reagan entered into a covert alliance with the Argentine junta. He ordered the CIA to collaborate with Dirty War experts in training the [Nicaraguan] Contras, who were soon rampaging through towns in northern Nicaragua, raping women and dragging local officials into public squares for executions.

Perry's article contains other details about the domestic conduct of the Argentine junta.

The Reagan Presidential Library's website has the gall to implicitly credit St. Reagan with somehow restoring democracy in Argentina, a gag-inducing idea: "While President Reagan was in the White House, Free, democratic elections were held for the first time in many years in the Republic of Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the Philippines. By the time President Reagan left office, the number of people in Latin America living under freely elected governments tripled from what it had been ten years earlier." (my emphasis) (President Reagan's Foreign Policy: Making the World Over Again; n/d, accessed 03/24/2013)

Robert Perry also writes about St. Reagan and the Argentine junta in Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities Consortium News 02/06/2011. Ironically - or, more accurately, highly cynically - the "neoconservatives" who understand themselves as continuing the kind of policies Reagan practiced in Central America will treat even negotiating with countries with which they want to go to war (Iran, right now) as immoral connivance in whatever bad thing the regime may be doing at home.

Cristina's reference to the goal of the junta as "not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things" isn't just a rhetorical flourish. The junta, like its predecessor and contemporary in the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, set out to implement the "free market" policies that would favor American capital in particular, the policies most of the world knows as neoliberalism. But it didn't look much like a "free" free market to industrialists who were targeted by the junta for economic reasons. Investigations over the last year of the conduct of the junta office known as the Comisión Nacional de Valores (CNV, the National Commission of Values) has brought to public light information on junta kidnappings of businesspeople in 1978-9 especially, not for political reasons as such but in order to implement the neoliberal economic policies of Economics Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz (1925-2013), who died just this month. Though some of the kidnapped businesspeople were accused of providing funds to guerrillas. Part of the motivation, though, may have been that they were running out of what they considered the most plausible political targets and the CNV still wanted to find subversives to fight. Something all countries should consider when building up massive internal security apparatuses, including the United States. They all need to justify their existence by showing some kind of results. And sometimes they just like exercising their power. (See Alejandra Dandan, La trama financiera de la última dictadura Página/12 24.03.2013)

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Cristina Fernández has an audience with papa Francisco I

Argentine President Cristina Fernández had an audience with the Pope today. She raised the issue of Britain's continuing occupation of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. (CFK: "Le pedimos a Francisco que interceda en el diálogo entre Argentina y Gran Bretaña" Página/12 18.03.2013) It will be interesting to see if Bergoglio/Pope Francis I gets actively involved in promoting serious diplomatic negotiations between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas. In his previous positions, he has indicated his support for Argentina regaining its rightful control over the islands. But that was a very safe position in Argentine politics, since it's supported across the political spectrum.

Cristina recalled that Pope John Paul II had helped mediate negotiations between Argentina and Chile over a long-running border dispute when both were ruled by dictatorships. Since Argentina and Britain are both democratic countries now, conditions for similar negotiations over the Malvinas are more favorable, she said.

She also said they expressed their mutual agreement on the need to oppose human trafficking and slave labor. And she invited him to visit Argentina in his new role.

It's nice to know the Pope is opposed to slavery.

Cristina praised Bergoglio/Francis for referring to Latin America as "la Patria Grande," a term associated with San Martín y Bolívar, heroes of the Latin American independence movement and which emphasizes the unity of Latin American nations.

Here is the video released by the President's office, la Casa Rosada, of Cristina's press conference talking about her meeting with the Pope, 18 de MAR. Conferencia de prensa de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Asunción Francisco I (Spanish with Italian translations):

Osvaldo Pepe editorializes in the anti-Cristina Clarín in a piece called Una oportunidad para Cristina 18.03.13. The opportunity of which the title speaks? He basically says it's an opportunity for Cristina and her supporters to shut the hell up about Bergoglio's actions or lack thereof during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Liberation theologian Jon Sobrino discusses the new Pope in an interview published in Noticias de Gipuzkoa, "Bergoglio no fue un Romero, se alejó de los pobres durante el genocidio argentino" by Concha Lago 16.03.02013; Commonweal, which has been reporting on the questions around Bergoglio's dealings with the Argentine junta, includes a partial translation in Sobrino on Bergoglio by Eduardo Peñalver 03/18/2013.

Sobrino emphasizes his hope that Bergoglio/Francis will take seriously the need to make the Church genuinely a Church exercising a preferential option for the poor and not a Church that sides with the wealthy against the poor. He also stresses the need to improve the status of women within the Church, to give greater attention to environmental issues, and to reform the Vatican Curia. His comment on abortion in this interview is ambiguous and could be read as approval of Bergoglio's outspoken anti-abortion stand in Argentina.

On the question of Bergoglio's dealings with the dictatorship, Sobrino is careful not to accuse him of "culpability" in the dictatorship's crimes. But he effectively judges him guilty of irresponsibility and possibly even cowardice - though he doesn't use either word - by noting that he distanced himself from the "popular Church" that was actively engaged with poor communities and paying attention to their material as well as spiritual needs. Which, of course, fit in with the program of the junta for the Church.It's hard not to see a touch of bitter sarcasm in what he says of Bergoglio here:

En todo ello se aprecia una forma suya específica de hacer la opción por los pobres. No así en salir activa y arriesgadamente en su defensa en las épocas de represión de las criminales dictaduras militares. La complicidad de la jerarquía eclesiástica con las dictaduras es conocida. Bergoglio fue superior de los jesuitas de Argentina desde 1973 hasta 1979, en los años de mayor represión del genocidio cívico militar.

{In all that, one can assess his specific way of making the option for the poor. Not in actively going out and risking oneself in their defense in the periods of repression of the criminal military dictatorships. The complicity of the Church hierarchy with the dictatorships is known. Bergoglio was superior of the Jesuits in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, in the years of the worst repression of civil-military genocide.} [from the translation used by Peñalver with my corrections]

He also pointedly refers to the examples of Latin American Church leaders who literally became martyrs or who suffered or were seriously persecuted during that period because of their defense of human rights, including Óscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, Juan José Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala, Leónidas Proaño of Ecuador, Helder Camara, Aloysius Lorscheider of Brazil, and Samuel Ruiz of Mexico. He says that "los mártires por la justicia, es lo mejor que tenemos en la Iglesia. Es lo que la hacen parecida a Jesús de Nazaret" ("the martyrs for justice, that is the best that we have in the Church. It is what makes it resemble Jesus of Nazareth.")

This is not, as the dissembling Jesuit Bergoglio partisan Thomas Reese might like us to believe, demanding that "every Christian" be a martyr. It's holding up the highest examples as a way of judging where Bergoglio falls on the continuum between principled resistance and crass collaboration.

Peñalver in his blog posts has been focusing on the issues raised by Bergoglio's relationship to the dictatorship. In Popes and Dirty Wars 03/13/2013, he writes:

The Church has a lot of ugly secrets in Latin America. Liberation Theology, whatever its flaws, represented — as a cultural matter — an historic break with shameful tradition in which church, army and oligarchy stood together to defend an unjust status quo, by any means necessary. Keeping silent or perhaps even working quietly behind the scenes in a few cases while thousands were tortured, raped and killed for the crime of demanding political freedom and economic dignity was — for those in a position to do more — often a form of complicity. Even that limited intercession raises questions, since it would not have been possible without ties to the murderous regime. To their credit, some in the Argentine hierarchy refused to stay quiet. Our new Pope was not among them.

In More on Bergoglio and the Dirty War 03/17/2013, he provides an article by political scientist Charles Kenney, which is the best summary I've seen in English so far on the issues relating to Bergoglio and the dictatorship, though it doesn't include anything specific about his connection to the Iron Guard group.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, falklands, francis i, jon sobrino, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo, malvinas

Bergoglio/Francis' election as Pope brings new focus on some important aspects of Argentine history

I mentioned yesterday that Robert Perry of Consortium News has been using the event of Jorge Bergoglio's election as Pope Francis I to highlight some of the broader issues of the "dirty war" period in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America that, among other things, produced the Iran-Contra scandal.

On 03/15/2013 he republished an article from 08/19/1998 by Marta Gurvich, Argentina’s Dapper State Terrorist, on Jorge Rafael Videla, who she describes as "the dapper dictator who launched the so-called Dirty War in 1976." Videla was the first head of the junta that overthrew the constitutional government of Argentina in 1976. Argentina had seen military dictatorships before, all of which brought their share of arbitrariness and cruelty. But the junta, who called their project El Proceso, took things to the next level, as we say these days.

Her article focuses on the kidnappings of babies from political prisoners, a heart-rending issue that persists today as a major concern in Argentina:

Videla, known for his English-tailored suits and his ruthless counterinsurgency theories, stands accused of permitting — and concealing — a scheme to harvest infants from pregnant women who were kept alive in military prisons only long enough to give birth.

According to the charges, the babies were taken from the new mothers, sometimes by late-night Caesarean sections, and then distributed to military families or shipped to orphanages. After the babies were pulled away, the mothers were removed to another site for their executions.

Last year I posted links to a mini-series run by TV Publica argentina, Volver a nacer, that deals with this issue in a moving way. (YouTube playlist for the entire miniseries here.)

The 2005 film Cautiva also deals with this issue and is available with English subtitles. At this writing, the film is also available on YouTube without subtitles. Here is Part 1, posted 09/27/2009. This is the video of the first part, which is unfortunately a poor quality reproduction:

Consortium News also on 03/16/2013 reprints an article of 01/07/1999 by Georg Hodel, Evita, the Swiss and the Nazis, that reminds us that the Catholic Church and the first Peronist regime cooperated to some significant degree in facilitating the immigration of former Nazis, some of them serious war criminals. Peronism was widely regarded in the United States in real time as a more-or-less fascist government. The view persists, and is reflected in Hodel's article: "During World War II, Gen. Peron — a populist military leader — made no secret of his sympathies for Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Even as the Third Reich crumbled in the spring of 1945, Peron remained a pro-fascist stalwart, making available more than 1,000 blank passports for Nazi collaborators fleeing Europe."

Peronism is a devilishly complex political phenomenon. Not least among its complications is that Peron did admire aspects of Mussolini's and Hitler's regimes. Hodel engages in some legitimate speculation based on circumstantial suggestions about what role Evita Perón may have played in the immigration of former Nazis.

But he makes polemical claims about Evita that are false: "Born in 1919 as an illegitimate child, she became a prostitute to survive and to get acting roles. As she climbed the social ladder lover by lover, she built up deep resentments toward the traditional elites. As a mistress to other army officers, she caught the eye of handsome military strongman Juan Peron. After a public love affair, they married in 1945." There is no evidence that Evita ever was a prostitute, that she slept her way up the "social ladder" - she always had contempt for the traditional "social ladder" of oligarchical Argentina - or that she was the girlfriend or "mistress" of any army officer other than Juan Perón. This kind of careless reproduction of gossip doesn't boost confidence in Hodel's speculations in the rest of the article.

This excerpt from the excellent 1996 Spanish-language film Eva Perón gives a sample of the contradictory nature of Evita and her politics, Eva Perón hablándole a los trabajadores ferroviarios:

The current President Cristina Fernández is head of the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) and proudly uses both Juan and Eva Perón as positive symbols of her democratic and prolabor policies. What a political figure represents in popular memory and historical symbolism may be very different from what they really were. That's part of why we have historians.

These two videos from TV Publica argentina show Cristina speaking about Evita.

Cristina inauguró un mural sobre Evita 26.07.2011:

Cristina: "Evita cumplió su propia profecía de volver a una Argentina diferente" (35:55 minutes) 26.07.2012 on the 60th anniversary of Evita's death:

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, eva perón, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Alibis, ahoy! Bergoglio/Francis and the 1976-83 Argentine dictatorship

The National Catholic Reporter's work around the selection of the new Pope has been mixed. On the one hand, John Allen, Jr.'s sketches of the candidates and his descriptions of the various decision factors have been very helpful.

Then there's this St. Patrick's Day column by Jesuit Thomas Reese, whose author's biography from NCR describes him as "author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church and was editor of America magazine from 1998 to 2005": Francis, the Jesuits and the Dirty War 03/17/2013. It's a blanket alibi for the actions and inactions of Jorge Bergoglio/Francis I during the 1976-32 dictatorship.

It ends up with boilerplate that pretty much any scoundrel could use with only slight modifications in such a situation:

More recently, Cardinal Bergoglio was involved in getting the Argentine bishops to ask forgiveness for not having done enough during the dirty war, as it was called in Argentina.

In the face of tyranny, there are those who take a prophetic stance and die martyrs. There are those who collaborate with the regime. And there are others who do what they can while keeping their heads low. When admirers tried to claim that John Paul worked in the underground against Nazism, he set them straight and said he was no hero.

Those who have not lived under a dictatorship should not be quick to judge those who have, whether the dictatorship was in ancient Rome, Latin America, Africa, Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe, or today’s China. We should revere martyrs, but not demand every Christian be one.

Earlier in the article, Reese gave a clear sign that his article was hackwork:

Father Bergoglio, like Pope John Paul II, had serious reservations about liberation theology, which was embraced by many other Latin American Jesuits. As a North American I have trouble understanding these disputes since John Paul and Bergoglio obviously wanted justice for the poor while the liberation theologians were not in favor of violent revolution as their detractors claimed. But clearly this was an issue that divided the church in Latin America.

The five seven-year editor of the US Jesuits flagship journal America don't really know much a' nothin' about this here liberation theology stuff? It would be funny if it weren't such painfully bad hokum.

The issues around Begoglio's relationship to El Proceso, the dictatorship of 1976-83 in Argentina, is of course not over whether he should have been a martyr. He's very obviously not that!

The issues have to do with what role he played not only in his general conduct toward the state terror then practiced, but also in particular cases like the arrest and torture of Jesuit priests Franz (Francisco) Jalics and Orlando Yorio in 1976. His later testimony about some aspects of his dealings with the dictatorship were not fully in line with documentation of those incidents in the Argentine Church files.

It's important to keep in mind that this doesn't just have to do with 30-year-old history, though that is significant enough in itself. His new office's initial response, and those of his shameless partisans like Thomas Reese comes off to be in the article cited, to real and substantial questions about Bergoglio's role in the dictatorship and its aftermath has been to take a touchy defensive stance, accuse the critics of "anticlerical" malice, and, as with Reese, use boilerplate defenses that would embarrass a PR hack trying to gussy up the image of some nasty regime and its officials.

Horacio Verbitsky, who has researched the role of the Argentine Church during the dictatorship and was one of the unnamed targets of the Vatican's defense statement on Friday, describes some of the substantive issues in Cambio de piel Página 12 17.03.2013. Reese's polemical article mentions Verbitsky in passing, making him sound like someone who exonerates Bergoglio's conduct during El Proceso. Quite the opposite is the case.

Verbitsky notes that Bergoglio dealt in person and on apparent terms of familiarity with Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera during the dictatorship, and that the two of them had ties to a rightwing Peronist group called the Iron Guard (Guardia de Hierro). Ricardo Ragendorfer writes about the Iron Guard and Bergoglio's history with it in Guardia de Hierro: la organización peronista en la que militó Francisco Tiempo argentino 17.03.2013. He confirms again that Friday's defensive statement from the Vatican was directed in particular at the research of Horacio Verbitsky, and lists some of the major concerns: the Jalics-Yorio case; Bergoglio's attitude toward the theft of babies from political prisoners; and, his specific relationship to Massera during the dictatorship. Ragendorfer describes the rightwing paramilitary Guardia de Hierro, of which the new Pope was a member in 1972-4, the last two years of its existence. Massera later claimed that the Guardia de Hierro, albeit formally disbanded, supported the 1976 coup.

It's not only the sex abuse scandal and the Vatican Bank about which the new Pope has some explaining to do.

Tags: argentina, el proceso, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Bergoglio/Francis, Argentina, the Malvinas and the shadow of dictatorship

Robert Perry of Consortium News is using the occasion of the newly public controversy over Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I's relationship to the dictatorship of 1976-83 in Argentina to highlight some broader issues with the Catholic Church and the war against real and imagined subversives in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Pope Francis, CIA and 'Death Squads' 03/16/2013, he refers to Friday's very defensive and to my mind obnoxious response of the Vatican to questions raised about the kidnapping and torture of two Jesuit priests in 1976, Franz (Francisco) Jalics and Orlando Yorio. (See Vatican Rejects 'Dirty War' Accusations Against Pontiff Bloomberg News 03/15/2013) Perry observes:

The Vatican's fiercely defensive reaction to the reemergence of these questions as they relate to the new Pope also is reminiscent of the pattern of deceptive denials that became another hallmark of that era when propaganda was viewed as an integral part of the "anticommunist" struggles, which were often supported financially and militarily by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

It appears that Bergoglio, who was head of the Jesuit order in Buenos Aires during Argentina's grim "dirty war," mostly tended to his bureaucratic rise within the Church as Argentine security forces "disappeared" some 30,000 people for torture and murder from 1976 to 1983, including 150 Catholic priests suspected of believing in "liberation theology."

Much as Pope Pius XII didn't directly challenge the Nazis during the Holocaust, Father Bergoglio avoided any direct confrontation with the neo-Nazis who were terrorizing Argentina. Pope Francis's defenders today, like apologists for Pope Pius, claim he did intervene quietly to save some individuals.

But no one asserts that Bergoglio stood up publicly against the "anticommunist" terror, as some other Church leaders did in Latin America, most notably El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero who then became a victim of right-wing assassins in 1980.

In regard to that last point, no one criticizes people living in a dictatorship for not seeking out martyrdom. Archbishop Romero himself was not seeking martyrdom.

But it's also a fact that some people come out of dictatorships with a record they can be more proud of than others. I suspect one reason for tension between the current Argentine President Cristina Fernández and the new Pope comes from the fact that, although she also didn't seek out martyrdom, she was a human-rights attorney during the dictatorship and actively pursued the legal defense of people targeted by the regime for political reasons. She doesn't have to claim in retrospect that she engaged in whispered private interventions on behalf of the victims.

Cristina has an audience with the Pope in Rome on Monday, the first head to state to be so honored by the newly installed Francis I. The audience will take place prior to the formal installation ceremony. Nicolás Lantos reports in La primera audiencia con Francisco Página 12 17.03.2013 that the President's office characterizes the upcoming meeting as "a gesture of good will" offering the opportunity for "facilitate an acercamiento [rapprochement]" between the two leaders, a diplomatic acknowledgement that the two have significant differences over policy. Lantos writes that their "relación cuando Jorge Bergoglio ocupaba la Arquidiócesis de Buenos Aires y encabezaba la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina no era buena" ("relationship when Jorge Bergoglio occupied the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and headed the Episcopal Conference of Argentine were not good." Lantos reports that the meeting has an "open agenda."

The after-effects of the neoliberal policies which Bergoglio backed and which brought about the debt crisis of 2001 are evident in her trip plans. The Argentine Presidential plane, Tango One, will take her to Morocco, where she will switch to a charter plane for the trip to Rome. The reason is to avoid any attempt by US vulture funds that bought up the remainder of the bad debt held by Argentine creditors to seize Tango One, repeating an incident with an Argentine ship in Ghana last year. (See Seized Argentina navy ship Libertad leaves Ghana BBC News 12/19/2012)

Will the supposedly anti-poverty Pope provide any assistance in getting the vulture funds off Argentina's back? It would be nice to think so. But he's more likely to intervene to promote diplomatic movement on Argentine-British negotiations over the illegal British colonization of the Malvinas Islands. "In the past, the Argentine Pope Francis has insisted the Falkland Islands, which are a UK overseas territory, belong to Argentina. He has referred to them using the Argentine name for the islands, Las Malvinas." (UK welcomes election of new Pope Francis BBC News 03/14/2013) But it's worth noting that previously, that was a relatively safe position for an Argentine Church leader to take, since support for Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas is noncontroversial in Argentine politics; even the dictatorship went to war with Britain to take the islands. Reclaiming the Malvinas by peaceful means has been a major issue for Cristina Fernández. (On Bergoglio and the Malvinas, see also Senior Falklands Islands Catholic hopes Pope 'outside politics' BBC News 03/14/2013; Ian Traynor, Pope Francis is wrong on Falklands, says David Cameron Guardian 03/15/2013)

This is a Spanish-language report from TV Pública Argentina on Cameron's criticism of the new Pope, Cameron no está de acuerdo con Francisco 15.03.2013

Perry also notes of the American press treatment of Bergoglio/Pope Francis:

It is noteworthy that the orchestrated praise for Pope Francis in the U.S. news media has been to hail Bergoglio’s supposedly "humble" personality and his "commitment to the poor." However, Bergoglio’s approach fits with the Church’s attitude for centuries, to give "charity" to the poor while doing little to change their cruel circumstances – as Church grandees hobnob with the rich and powerful.

Pope John Paul II, another favorite of the U.S. news media, shared this classic outlook. He emphasized conservative social issues, telling the faithful to forgo contraceptives, treating women as second-class Catholics and condemning homosexuality. He promoted charity for the poor and sometimes criticized excesses of capitalism, but he disdained leftist governments that sought serious economic reforms.

So far, Bergoglio's record in Argentina gives us reason to suspect that he will follow the same pattern that Perry describes here.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, falklands, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo, malvinas,

El papa Francicso I and Argentine politics

Jorge Bergoglio begins his career with a record in Argentina of highly questionable (at best!) passivity in the face of the crimes of the military dictatorship of 1976-83, a passivity which continued after democracy and the rule of law had been restored in his reluctance to support the efforts of the government and human rights groups to hold the perpetrators accountable and to determine the fates of the many "disappeared" during the junta's brutal rule.

A sick example of how partisans of the dictatorship view the selection of Bergoglio as Pope came this past week, in a trial proceeding in which a number of functionaries of the junta were hearing testimony about kidnapping, torture and rape of which they are charged for being legally responsible. The defendants unveiled an insignia during the proceedings with the white and yellow colors of the Vatican. (Los genocidas de La Perla exhibieron los colores del Vaticano en sus solapas Página 12 13.03.2013)

These accused  perpetrators of kidnapping, torture and rape are fans of the new Pope

And despite his vague references to the needs of the poor and social justice, Bergoglio/Francis clearly aligned himself in Argentine politics with the representatives of the traditional oligarchía and the advocates of the neoliberal policies that brought Argentina to the brink of economic disaster in 2001 and caused a dramatic increase in poverty. And his stance has been distinctly against the left-Peronist government of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (known together in Argentina as "los K") and their policies that not only aimed at reducing poverty but have been dramatically successful in doing so. In the process, they expanded democratic rights and made defense of basic human rights a major priority, including the rights of children. But in their social policies and in their successful challenge to the "Washington Consensus" that prioritized the whims of international finance over the well-being of the Argentine people, Bergoglio made it very clear he was not on the side of los K.

Martín Caparrós writes in God Is an Argentine New York Times 03/14/2013 about what those who know the new Pope say about him. Including:

They highlight as well his words and deeds in service of the poor. These social stances often led to clashes with Néstor Kirchner and his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the back-to-back presidents of Argentina since 2003. Several times he publicly denounced their policies on poverty and inequality, and accused them of enriching themselves while pretending to serve the needy.

Another battle emerged in 2010, when, after opposing it for many years, Mrs. Kirchner endorsed the gay-marriage law that made Argentina the first country in Latin America with marriage equality. Cardinal Bergoglio called it a devil’s move and demanded a godly war. Mrs. Kirchner later accused him of attempting to re-enact the Inquisition.

So she was relieved when, in 2011, his term as head of the Argentine Catholic Church expired. She probably would never have guessed — did anyone? — that he would be made the master of the kingdom, God's representative on earth. It is a paradox that Mrs. Kirchner’s administration, so fond of nationalist exploits, is now unable to showcase what could have been presented as a major national triumph: the election of Our Pope, the Argentine who made it abroad, the final confirmation that, yes, God is Argentine.

Caparrós' comment is odd but revealing in its oddity.

For one thing, Cristina did make a big deal out of having an Argentine Pope. The oligarycy-mouthpiece paper La Nación as well as the anti-Cristina paper Clarín were eager to make it sound as though she and her supporters were dissing the new Argentine Pope. Caparrós here seems to be proceeding in the same frivolous way.

I'm reposting a video of Cristina's initial statement on Bergoglio's naming as the Pope, "Un día histórico" TV Pública argentina 03/14/2013

It is true that for those paying attention, her initial public statement of congratulations (CFK: “Nosotros siempre optamos por los pobres” Página 12 13.03.2013) included the pregnant phrase "la opción por los pobres" ("the option for the poor"). During the high tide of Vatican II sentiment, the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM) met in Medellín, Colombia in 1968 and produced a document emphasizing the need for the Church to take much greater concern for the material needs of the poor in particular, which framed the Latin American Church's positioning in terms that Bergoglio reflected even as he sided with neoliberal "free market" advocates over genuine defenders of human rights and the needs of the poor. Nine years after the Medellín conference, CELAM met in Puebla, Mexico. As Phillip Berryman describes in Liberation Theology: Essential Facts About the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America - And Beyond (1987):

Speaking of poverty, the bishops reaffirmed Medellín's "clear and prophetic option expressing preference for, and solidarity with, the poor." They then stated, "We affirm the need for a conversion on the part of the whole Church to a preferential ption for the poor, an option aimed at their integral liberation." The "preferential option for the poor" became a slogan encapsulating the central thrust of the Puebla meeting and endorsing solidarity with the poor as God's will for the church.

This concept of the "preferential option for the poor" was one that lay at the heart of the project known as liberation theology, a movement and approach to theology that Bergoglio's two predecessors as Pope tried hard to squelch.

But the Argentine President is also scheduled to be the first head of state with whom the new Pope Francis I holds an audience, on Monday. (La primera audiencia del Papa Francisco será con Cristina Tiempo Argentino 16.03.2013)

We could ask Caparrós' question in the other direction, as well. The issue of the illegal British colonial occupation of the Malvinas Islands is one of the most important national issues in Argentina right now. Will the new Pope do anything to push Britain into a meaningful negotiation over leaving the Malvinas? Time will tell.

Caparrós also calls attention to the criticism Bergoglio has directed against los K, and specifically of their programs to combat poverty. The UN's ECLAC report 2012 Social Panorama of Latin America (Nov 2012) includes a table on poverty rates (p. 14), which allows a comparison of poverty rates from 2002 to 2011. Argentina's poverty rate was 39.4% by this measure in 2002 when Néstor Kirchner first became President in the wake of the economic collapse brought on by the neoliberal policies of which Bergoglio and his Church were at least tacitly supportive; a subset of the poor population consisting of the very indigent was 14.9% of the country's population. Bergoglio was sympathetic to the neoliberal wing of the Peronist party led by Carlos Menem, who as President the most aggressive practitioner since the dictatorship of the neoliberal Washington Consensus that devastated Argentina's economy.

By 2011, after nine years of kirchnerismo of which Bergoglio was so critical, Argentina's poverty rate was 5.7% and indigence 1.9%. Argentina, thanks in major part to the government of los K of which Bergoglio did not approve, Argentina has the lowest poverty rate in Latin America. The fact that Bergoglio aligned himself discreetly but clearly with the oligarchy and against the anti-poverty government of the Kirchners makes his well-known habits of personal austerity look more gimmicky than substantial.

Meanwhile, the Pope's partisans are starting to strike back against criticism of his role during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Vatikan weist Vorwürfe gegen Franziskus zurück Der Standard 15.03.2013; Eduardo Febbro, Una desmentida que no alcanza a desmentir Página 12 16.03.2013) The Vatican spokesperson Federico Lombardi made a statement that denied any failings of Bergoglio himself as a Church official during the dictatorship, adding a perfunctory nod to the recognition that the Church "didn't do enough during the dictatorship" for its victims.

But the thrust of the message is to accuse Bergoglio's critics of defamation and calumny and accuses them of being "anticlerical". The statement is concerned particularly with the accusation that has dogged him for years about the arrest of two Jesuit priests, and speaks of "a publication" promoting it, which evidently refers to Página 12, which I often quote on this blog, including this post, because it is the best of the major newspapers in Argentina at professional news reporting. The other two major papers, La Nación and Clarín, are each part of major media firms and are notably hostile to Cristina Fernández' government and their editorial position colors their coverage far more than it should. To put it politely.

This doesn't bode well for Bergoglio/Francis' handling of the sex abuse and coverup scandals and the issues with the Vatican Bank. Bergoglio owes his Church and the world a fuller accounting and position on not just the failures but acts of collaboration with the dictatorship and of Bergoglio's reluctance to put himself on the side of human rights advocates in pressing for justice for the disappeared and the location of the many children kidnapped from political prisoners. A frank and self-critical assessment of that period for the Argentine Church, which Bergoglio is now in a position to require and to assist with evidence from the Vatican Archives, would be good in itself but also a good sign for how he will manage the abuse scandal and the Vatican Bank problems.

Jeffrey Donovan and Eliana Raszewski report for Bloomberg News on what must be an encouraging development for Bergoglio/Francis in Vatican Rejects ‘Dirty War’ Accusations Against Pontiff 03/15/2013. It relates to the single most controversial accusation, that Bergoglio collaborated in the 1976 arrest and subsequent torture of two Jesuit priests, Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio. Yorio has since passed away. He accused Bergoglio of having essentially fingered the two priests for arrest. Jalics is still alive and living in Germany. They report:

Lombardi spoke after one of the priests, Francisco Jalics, said today that he’d reconciled with Francis long after he and the other priest, Orlando Yorio, were abducted and tortured in 1976. ...

In his statement today, Jalics said a layman working with him and Yorio joined the guerrillas and was captured. Nine months later, "assuming that we were collaborating with the guerrillas, we were arrested" and "kept blindfolded and handcuffed" for five months.

"I cannot comment on the role of Father Bergoglio during that period," he said.
In the book [El Silencio by Horacio Verbitsky], Bergoglio rejected the charges that he was complicit, telling the author in an interview that his meeting with two members of the ruling junta, Emilio Massera and Jorge Videla, was to seek the priests’ release.

Jalics said that years later he met and hugged Bergoglio, according to a statement today on the website of the Jesuits of Germany, where he now lives. "I'm reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed," said Jalics, adding that the two Jesuits later publicly celebrated mass together.

There's nothing in what Donovan and Raszewskil quote that has Jalics exonerating the new Pope. "I cannot comment on the role of Father Bergoglio during that period," could be construed as damning by faint praise!

Peter Franz (Francisco) Jalics - arrested and tortured in 1976  -  reconciled to the new Pope?

Here is the full statement Erklärung von Pater Franz Jalics SJ, as it appears on the German Jesuit website. Jalics, a native Hungarian, is using the German version of his name Franz here, Spanish Francisco:

Seit 1957 lebte ich in Buenos Aires. Im Jahre 1974, vom inneren Wunsch bewegt das Evangelium zu leben und auf die schreckliche Armut aufmerksam zu machen, und mit der Erlaubnis von Erzbischof Aramburu und den damaligen Provinzial P. Jorge Mario Bergoglio bin ich gemeinsam mit einen Mitbruder in eine „Favela“, ein Elendsviertel der Stadt, gezogen. Von dort aus haben wir unsere Lehrtätigkeit an der Universität fortgesetzt.

In der damaligen bürgerkriegsähnlichen Situation wurden von der Militärjunta binnen ein bis zwei Jahren ungefähr 30.000 Menschen, linksgerichtete Guerillas wie auch unschuldige Zivilisten, umgebracht. Wir zwei im Elendsviertel hatten weder mit der Junta noch mit den Guerilla Kontakt. Durch den damaligen Informationsmangel bedingt und durch gezielte Fehlinformationen war jedoch unsere Lage auch innerkirchlich missverständlich. In dieser Zeit haben wir die Verbindung zu einem unserer Laienmitarbeiter verloren, als die Person sich den Guerillas angeschlossen hatte. Nachdem er neun Monate später von den Soldaten der Junta gefangengenommen und verhört wurde, haben diese erfahren, dass er mit uns in Verbindung stand. In der Annahme, dass auch wir mit den Guerilla zu tun haben, wurden wir verhaftet. Nach einem fünftägigen Verhör hat uns der Offizier, der die Befragung geleitet hat, mit diesen Worten entlassen: „Patres, Sie hatten keine Schuld. Ich werde dafür sorgen, dass Sie ins Armenviertel zurückkehren können.“ Dieser Zusage zum Trotz wurden wir dann, auf eine für uns unerklärliche Weise fünf Monate lang mit verbundenen Augen und gefesselt in Haft gehalten. Ich kann keine Stellung zur Rolle von P. Bergoglio in diesen Vorgängen nehmen

Nach unserer Befreiung habe ich Argentinien verlassen. Erst Jahre später hatten wir die Gelegenheit mit P. Bergoglio, der inzwischen zum Erzbischof von Buenos Aires ernannt worden war, die Geschehnisse zu besprechen. Danach haben wir gemeinsam öffentlich Messe gefeiert und wir haben uns feierlich umarmt. Ich bin mit den Geschehnissen versöhnt und betrachte sie meinerseits als abgeschlossen.

Ich wünsche Papst Franziskus Gottes reichen Segen für sein Amt.

P. Franz Jalics SJ
15. März 2013

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo