Liberation Theology and the Socialist Utopia of a Nicaraguan Shoemaker

Author(s): Rosario Montoya

Source: Social History, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 23-43
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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 Rosario Montoya

Liberation theology and the socialist

utopia of a Nicaraguan shoemaker

INTRODUCTION'
Early in the I98os, only a few years after the Sandinista Front ousted the Somoza
dictatorship from Nicaragua, Francisco Berroteran,a shoemakerfrom the province of Rio
San Juan, wrote the following lines:
I have read some history and I am going to talk to you about some heavy things that
have happened since the time of Christ. Back then the most barbarous things
happened against the poor. Because the poor are the weakest, and the brute law began
with the strong, that is, before Christ. Those strong ones acquired control over the
weak and that's how they began to dominate. Suppose that ten strong ones dominated
one hundred weak ones. Through coercion, they forced them to work for them. They
made villages and erected themselves as authorities, and that's how class distinction
was formed. Afterward, the law of succession was formed and with time, kingdoms
were formed. The weak and the poor were the slaves. Of course among the poor there
were people who were physically strong and big. But the kings alreadydominated the
situation with their great armies and the organizationof dominion. . . . If there was a
small community, they fell upon it and swallowed it up . . . there were smart people
that in antiquity figured out how to communicate by means of signs, somewhat like
letters. This process increased and then came the distinction between the wise, the
stupid. Then the strong absorbed these intelligent people. To remain strong, they
monopolized all that was good. . . . With time, inventors, wise people, and teachers
emerged, and everything belonged to the kings. As the universe became more
populated, they understood that the slaves were useful for everything and they

1 I would like to thank Fernando Coronil,
Geoffrey Eley, Ada Ferrer, Jeffrey Gould, the
late Father Cesar Jerez, Karen Kampwirth,
Robin Kelley, Roger Lancaster, Roger Rouse,
Rebecca Scott, Michael Schroeder and David
Whisnant for their helpful comments on this
paper. Ruth Behar deserves special thanks for
encouraging me to work on this project and
commenting on the manuscript at various stages
of its preparation. To Abdollah Dashti I extend
my deepest gratitude for his generosity in
allowing me to work with Don Francisco's text,
as well as for many useful suggestions. Finally, I
wish to express my appreciation to the editors of
Social History for their close reading of the
original paper and careful suggestions for
revision.
24 Social History VOL. 20: NO. I

decided to leave them as such. Education and enjoyment was forbidden for them. . .
and they were no longer treated as human beings. The rich, the potentates, were
alreadyowners of everything and then came the invention of the blue blood, the titles
of nobility, the sir, the count, the marquis, the viscount, the duke and others. I don't
know much about these kinds of histories but I imagine that that's how it must have
been, because these things still exist today. Of course, with more moderation or less
obvious.2
Don Francisco departs from the traditional emphasis on the grace of God and the call for
acceptance of the status quo as 'God's creation'3and, following liberation theology, he re-
gards society as a historical product forged by human beings. Social classes are not God-
given; they are created and sustained by human beings through the deployment of coer-
cive and ideological power. A direct reference to analogous situations today shows Don
Francisco's appropriationof liberation theology's theory of class conflict and domination
as a lens through which to understand contemporarysocial inequality and oppression.

The relationships between the past and the present, and between dominant and
subordinate memories,4constitute the object of analysis in the study of popular memory.
The product of an active but selective construction of the past, popular memory is always
forged in dynamic engagement with the present. Present concerns structure what is
remembered about the past as well as how it is remembered; they also determine what is
actively forgotten.
To varying extents, present concerns, both private and collective, are shaped by
dominant interpretations of reality. Dominant memories, embodied in public represen-
tations and discourses are, unlike subordinate remembrances, systematic and to some
extent coherent. Through dissemination of official histories, dominant memories of the
past provide the frameworks for organizing personal recollections and rendering them
meaningful.'
In this essay, I examine the relationship between dominant and subordinate memories,
and between the past and the present, in a text written in the early I98os by Francisco
Berroteran. In this text, Don Francisco engages in a dialogue with liberationtheology that
illustrates with striking clarity the force of this theology as a language through which he
can make sense of past sufferings and articulate hopes for a future society free of
oppression. Following Lancaster,6 I argue that the appeal of liberation theology for Don

2 Francisco Berroteran, unpublished, un-
titled manuscript (San Carlos, Rio San Juan,
Nicaragua, 1983), 52-3.
3Phillip Berryman, The Religious Roots of
Rebellion: Christians in Central American
Revolutions (New York, 1984), 23.
I borrow the concept of dominant memory
from the Popular Memory Group, 'Popular
Memory: theory, politics, method' in R.
Johnson et al. (eds), Making Histories: Studies
in History Writing and Politics (Minneapolis,
I982), 207-1 x. Dominant memories are the
public representations and histories constructed
by those who control access to the means of
communication and which affect people's con-
ceptions of the past. I use the term subordinate
memories to refer to the alternative and
oppositional discourses and representationsthat
contest the dominant memories' constructions
of the past.
I ibid., 207.
6 Roger Lancaster, Thanks to God and the
Revolution: Popular Religion and Class Con-
sciousness in the New Nicaragua (New York,
I988).
January g995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 25

Francisco - as for other members of Nicaragua's subordinate classes - was based on a

convergence between key notions of radical Christianity and principles which are central
to peasant social ideals.7 Although, in the course of his life, Don Francisco lost his ties to
the land, his notion of an ideal society - a notion that was perhaps elaboratedin response to
liberation theology - remained rooted in the image of an independent, stable and
self-sufficient peasant community. In looking for the social bases of Don Francisco's
receptivity to liberation theology, this essay joins other efforts8 to transcend interpre-
tations that account for the mass base of the Sandinista revolution, particularlythe large
component of revolutionary Christians in the movement, by taking for granted a
presumed 'interest' of the working classes which is seen either to coincide or be identical
with the goals of the revolutionaryvanguard.9
While the importance of liberation theology in Nicaraguan revolutionary culture is
unquestionable, it is also true that dominant frameworks can rarely fully contain
subordinate interpretations. I thus want to explore the limits of the discourse of liberation
theology to incorporate Don Francisco's understandings and memories by carefully
examining the aspects of this theology that Don Francisco rejects. As I shall attempt to
show, it is those aspects of liberation theology that are incompatible with peasant ethical
principles and structures of authority - indeed, that potentially undermine those
structures which have allowed peasantsto fend for themselves in a hostile world -that Don
Francisco rejects. By reworking these aspects according to his own social premises, he
appropriatesand produces an interpretationof liberationtheology which is consistent with
his social and class identity.
Don Francisco's interaction with liberation theologians might be thought of as a
dialogue between an 'organic' intellectual and a group of 'traditional' intellectuals.'0
Gramsci defined organic intellectuals as thinkers whose membership in subordinate
classes allowed them to organize and direct the aspirations of their group." He defined
traditional intellectuals, on the other hand, as thinkers whose emergence is linked to social
classes of the past but who are generally ideologically and materiallytied to contemporary
ruling classes. In a striking parallelto the Nicaraguansituation, Gramsci'2argued that one
of the characteristicsof classes ascending to dominance was their ability to assimilate and
ideologically 'conquer' the society's traditional intellectuals. While in Nicaragua this
process took place during the war against Somoza as revolutionary Christians joined the

' I include among Nicaraguan subordinate
classes both the urban and rural poor. I follow
Roger Lancaster (ibid., 31) in regarding Nicara-
guan popular sectors who have migrated to the
cities as 'urban peasants'. As he notes, 'If a
classical peasantry scarcely exists on the econ-
omic terrain, this is more than offset by a very
widespread and persistent sense of peasant
culture in Nicaragua' (his emphasis).
8 Cf. Jeffrey Gould, To Lead as Equals:
Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in
Chinandega, Nicaragua, I9I2-1979 (Chapel
Hill, NorthCarolina,I990); Lancaster,opcit.
' For the most authoritative of these works,
see Carlos Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution:
National Liberation and Social Transformation
in Central America, trans. by Judy Butler (New
York, I986).
'0 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the
Prison Notebooks (New York, 1971), 6-.15.
" Jerome Karabel, 'Revolutionary contra-
dictions: Antonio Gramsci and the problem of
intellectuals', Politics and Society, VI, 2 (1976),
'5I'.
1 Gramsci, Op Ct., Io.
26 SocialHistory VOL. 20 : NO. I

movement in large numbers, the officialization of radical Christianity as one of the

sanctioned versions of Nicaraguan history that followed the 1979 triumph necessarily
entailed some separation from the continual nourishment of grass-roots perspectives. I
thus regard Don Francisco's reinterpretationand contestation of certain aspects of radical
Christianity as part of the process through which this separation was bridged during the
Sandinista period. More broadly, Don Francisco's writings exemplify one of the ways in
which popular sectors attempted to participate in shaping the direction of the revolution
under Sandinista leadership.

CULTURE IN THE REVOLUTION: THE WRITINGS OF DON

FRANCISCO
The day after the 1979 triumph of the Sandinista revolution, the government announced
the establishment of a Ministry of Culture whose task it would be to encourage and
facilitate a 'popular, nationalist, anti-imperialist revolutionary culture'.'3 It was recog-
nized that, in concert with the broad democratic and redistributive aims of the revolution
in the political and economic realms, the existing relations of cultural production needed
to be restructuredso as to create spaces for popular cultural expression and dissemination.
It was likewise recognized that the attainment of national unity that was required to
consolidate the revolution hinged not only on popular participation in mass political and
economic organizationsand militias, but also in the construction of a new national identity
and a collective memory of struggle.'4
As part of this attempt to foster and harness popular creativity, a massive literacy
campaign was launched in I980, and a series of follow-up programmes, such as
community cultural centres, poetry workshops and adult education courses, were
established to provide a context for using the new skills in ways consonant with the goals of
the revolution.'5 Through the channels provided by these projects, popular accounts and
perspectives entered the arenaof multiple parallel,overlappingand contradictoryversions
of history being produced, circulating and juggling for position in the country. 16

t Ernesto Cardenal, 'Cultura Revolucion-
aria, Popular, Nacional, Antimperialista' in
Nicarauac, Revista Bimestral del Ministerio de
Cultura,i, I (Managua,mayoy junio, I980),
I63.
'4 Elizabeth Dore, 'Culture' in T. Walker
(ed.), Nicaragua: The First Five Years (New
York, I985), 418-19.
Is Robert F. Arnove, Education and Revol-
ution in Nicaragua (New York, I986); Deborah
Barndt, 'Popular education' in Walker, op. cit.;
David Craven, The New Concept of Art and
Popular Culture in Nicaragua Since the Revol-
ution in 1979: An Analytical Essay and
Compendium of Illustrations, Latin American
Series, vol. I (Lewiston, I989); 'The state of
cultural democracy in Cuba and Nicaragua
during the I98os', Latin American Perspectives,
XVII, 3 (Summer I990), IOO-19; Karyn Hollis,
Poesia del Pueblo Para el Pueblo (San Jose,
Costa Rica, 199I).
16 Some of the works produced in these
contexts can be found in David Gullette (ed.),
Nicaraguan Peasant Poetry from Solentiname
(Albuquerque, 1988); Hollis, op. cit.; Kent
Johnson (ed.), A Nation of Poets: Writingsfrom
the Poetry Workshops (Los Angeles, 1985);
Poemsfrom the Sandinista Workshopsin Nicar-
agua (San Rafael, California, I985); Mayra
Jimenez (ed.), Poesia de la Nueva Nicaragua:
Talleres Populares de Poest'a (Mexico, I983);
Fogata en la Oscurana: Los Talleres de Poesia
en laAlfabetizacion (Managua, I985); Poesia de
las Fuerzas Armadas (Managua, i985); and
Julio Valle-Castillo (ed.), Poesia Libre, i8 vols
(Managua, I98i-6). It is important to point out
that the struggle over interpretations of history
in Nicaraguawas most poignant between the left
January 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 27

Don Francisco's work emerged in this context and was part of the movement of voices
from the periphery into various centres of ideological production. The text is a
handwritten document 146 pages long. Early in I986, he sent it as a gift to Abdollah
Dashti, an anthropologist working in a village located close to San Carlos, the small
provincial capital of Rio San Juan where Don Francisco lived. 17 They had met three years
earlier, during one of Dashti's visits to San Carlos. Subsequently, they had spoken several
times when Don Francisco had come to Mojarra'8,the anthropologist's field site, to visit
his sister, Dofia Felipa Berroteran.
Don Francisco was already an elderly man when he wrote the text; the date which seals
the prologue is April I983. He had been born in Mojarra in i922, the son of a peasant
shoemaker and a former hacienda cook. He took up his father's profession, staying in
Mojarrauntil age twenty-four, when he moved with his wife and children to the nearby
town of San Miguelito. Four years later, in I950, he left San Miguelito for the provincial
capital of San Carlos, where he lived until his death in August i989.'"
It is unclear how Don Francisco learned to read and when he began to write. He
indicated in his text that at age eight he had one year of schooling in which he 'half-learned
to read'. Subsequently, he read 'everything that fell in [his] hands'.20In his text, Don
Francisco described himself as 'restless' (inquieto), a term which connotes an avid
curiosity and constant desire for knowledge. He noted that he was always 'deriving
conclusions'2' from readings and from history. For him, as for Menocchio, that literate
sixteenth-century miller whose thought Ginzburg22has analysed, reading was a deeply
creative act. Don Francisco's creative reading led him to transform the meanings of the
and conservative, right-wing groups rep- on the ContemporaryCrisis (New York, 1988).
resented especially by the church hierarchy and For comparative cases see D. Vincent's many
the bourgeoisie. Means of communication such works, especially his Testaments of Radicalism:
as newspapers, literary journals and the radio Memoirs of Working-Class Politicians, I 790-
were key arenas in which this struggle was i 885 (1977) andhis'Declineof theoraltradition
waged. Discussions of various aspects of this in nineteenth-century England' in Robert D.
process, some of which include descriptions of Storch (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in
Sandinista cultural projects and critiques level- Nineteenth-Century England (1982). See also
led at them, can be found in Craven, The New his Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom:A Study of
Concept of Art, op. cit.; 'The state of cultural Nineteenth-Century WorkingClass Autobiogra-
democracy in Cuba and Nicaragua during the phy (I98I) and Literacy and Popular Culture:
I98os', op. cit.; Dore, op. cit.; Hollis, op. cit.; England,1750-1914 (Cambridge,I989).
Armand Mattelhart (ed.), Communicating in 17 Don Francisco initially sent the book to his
Popular Nicaragua (New York, I986); David son Pedro, who worked at a community cultural
Whisnant, 'Ruben Dario as a focal cultural centre in the city of Granada. Pedro began typing
figure in Nicaragua: the ideological uses of the manuscript but was unable to finish as fast as
cultural capital', Latin American Research Don Francisco would have liked, and had to
Review, xxvii, 3 (1992), 7-50; and Steven return it at his father's request. It was after this
White, Poets of Nicaragua: A Bilingual An- incident that Don Francisco sent it to Dashti.
thology, 191r8-I979 (Greensboro, North Ca- 18 Mojarra is a fictitious name given to this
rolina, I982). Whisnant provides an overview of village by Dashti to protect the anonymity of his
Sandinista cultural policy more generally and informants.
discusses the problems and challenges the 19 Dashti, personal communication.
Sandinista government faced in this domain 20
Berroteran,
Op. Cit., I-2.
during their years in power in his 'Sandinista ibid., 32.
21

cultural policy: notes toward an analysis in 22Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the
historical context' in Ralph Lee Woodward Jr Worns: the Cosmos of a s6th century Miller
(ed.), Central America: Historical Perspectives (Baltimore, 1980).
28 SocialHistory VOL. 20: NO. I

books he read and to weave new texts from the meanings he produced. This process was
facilitated by a singularly aggressivestance toward reading and knowledge: as he informed
the reader, 'WhateverI do not read, I imagine.'23
In particular, Don Francisco's writings suggest that he used the books he read as raw
materials for constructing a social consciousness and an understanding of the historical
significance of his actions as a member of the working classes.24 In this sense, Don
Francisco was like those working-classautobiographersin nineteenth-century England for
whom 'the "use"of [book] knowledge was nothing less than to effect a transformationin
[their] consciousness and in [their] relationship with the external world'.25Indeed, as in
the case of these autobiographers,26Don Francisco wrote his account as a response to
major societal transformations which he attempted to take part in shaping through his
literary work.
Written in book form (with a prologue, chapters and epilogue), the work is a personal
account of a chapter of his life in which, as a young man, he visited his aunt and cousin who
lived in a valley of Rfo San Juan called Los Arroyos. The account conforms to some of the
key features of the testimonial genre - the urgent tone of the narrativeand its organization
around a significant event in the life of the narratorwho is the central protagonistof a story
told in the first person.27Although the account is held together as a unit by the story form,
his discussion often moves away from narrativetoward interpretationand argument.28He
develops most of his arguments in a series of philosophical homilies in which he ponders
the meaning of what he is encountering in that valley, subsequently tying it to ultimate
questions about human nature, society and history.
It is in the context of a discussion of socialism that he engages in a dialogue with
liberation theology. I hope to show that Don Francisco's engagement in such dialogue
represents an attempt to advance his own understandingof socialism, one which differs in
important respects from that of liberationtheologians. In advancing his own perspectives,

23Berroterin, op. cit., IOO.
24 Don Francisco's writings have, in common
with the genre of working-classautobiographies,
an understanding of society and the place of
working people in it. For useful discussions of
this and related genres, see Vincent, Testaments
of Radicalism, op. cit.; Bread, Knowledge, and
Freedom, op. cit.; and Carolyn Steedman, The
Radical Soldier's Tak: 7ohn Pearman, 18i9-
7908 (I988).
2 Vincent, Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom,
op. cit., 135.
26Vincent, Testaments ofRadicalism, op. cit.,
5, Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom, op. cit., 25,
'The decline of the oral tradition in popular
culture', Op. cit., 31.
27 For a discussion of the main characteristics
of testimonial literaturein Latin America and its
political context, see John Beverly, Del
Lazarillo al Sandinismo: Estudios Sobre la
Funcion Ideol6gica de la Literatura Espahola e
Hispanoamericana (Minneapolis, I987), chap.
7; John Beverly and Marc Zimmerman, Litera-
ture and Politics in the Central American
Revolutions (Austin, I990), chap. 7; and
Hernan Vidal y Rena Jara (eds), Testimonioy
Literatura (Minneapolis, I986).
'g In this sense, Don Francisco's work re-
sembles the memoir written toward the end of
his life by John Pearman, a radical English
soldier whose life spanned most of the last
centuryand into the early I9OOs. Although,in
certain places, Don Francisco's testimony ex-
hibits qualities of spoken language, for the most
part, it is, like Pearman's'Memoir', the work of a
literate man conscious of himself as a writer and
what constructing an argument in writing is all
about (Steedman, op. cit., 82). As Steedman
(ibid., 74-5) has shown in her analysis of
Pearman's 'Memoir', however, self-conscious-
ness as a writer does not entail full command of a
writer'sskills. For an analysisof Pearman'sskills
as a writer, see section 5 in Part I of The Radical
Soldier's Tale.
January 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 29

Don Francisco transforms himself, both literally and metaphorically, from reader to
writer of history in his own right. As such, his wori must be seen as a form of active
participation, a decisive intervention in the struggle over meanings and processes of
transformationthat were taking place in revolutionary Nicaragua.

DON FRANCISCO'S THEORY OF HISTORY

Don Francisco's engagement with liberation theology had probably begun some time in
the 1970s through his friendship with Elbis Chavarria,a participantin the nearby Ecclesial
Base Community of Solentiname (CEB).29CEBs were small local Christiangroups which
came together to discuss the country's social and political situation in light of the teachings
of liberation theology. CEBs had been introduced into Nicaragua in the late I96os by a
number of young clergy recently trained in the spirit of Vatican ii (I962) and the meeting
of Latin American Bishops at Medellin (i968).30 Throughout the I970S, CEBs had been
moving into the spaces created by the weak presence of the institutional church at the
grass-roots level in both urban and rural areas.31
As in the case of Don Francisco, liberation theology provided CEB members with
conceptual tools for forging their own interpretation of Nicaragua's situation. In
particular, this theology provided elements for countering the paralysing message of the
institutional Catholic church that believers must obey their rulers and accept their lot in
life as divinely ordained.32Key to this process of politicization which participants termed
concientizacion, or consciousness raising, was a transformationin their understanding of
poverty. Thus, instead of regarding poverty as a reflection of the will of God, they
denounced it as a form of 'institutionalized violence' produced by a sinful system against
which they felt called to struggle.33
The calling to struggle against sin became more urgent as the popular movement led by
the Sandinista Front against Somoza intensified in the latter half of the 1970s. During this
period, elements of the clergy, base communities and other Christian organizations
became increasingly militant, joining the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional
(FSLN) in unprecedented numbers. Dodson's observation that CEBs tended to
9 Interview with Rommel Novoa (a friend of Ernesto Cardenal offers an important interpre-
Don Francisco's), San Carlos, Rio San Juan, tation of these issues from a Nicaraguan
August I989. perspective in The Gospelin Solentiname, trans.
`0 See Daniel Levine, 'Religion, the poor and by Donald D. Walsh (New York, 4 vols,
politics in Latin America today' in D. H. Levine 1976-82). For a useful intellectualhistory of
(ed.), Religion and Political Conflict in Latin liberation theology in Nicaragua see Donald
America (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, i986), Hodges, Intellectual Foundations of the Nicara-
for an excellent discussion of the impact in Latin guan Revolution (Austin, 1986), chap. 8.
America of the Second Vatican Council and the 31 Michael Dodson, 'Nicaragua: the struggle
meetings of Latin American bishops at Medellin for the church' in Levine, op. cit., 85.
and Puebla. Latin American theological reflec- 32 Berryman, op. cit., 55; Luis H. Serra,
tions on Christianity and the role of the church 'Religious institutions and bourgeois ideology in
in society, along the lines first articulated in the Nicaraguan revolution' in Laura N.
Medellin, can be found in Gustavo Gutierrez, O'Shaughnessy and Luis H. Serra (eds), The
The Power of the Poor in History (New York, Church and Revolution in Nicaragua (Athens,
I983); A Theology of Liberation (New York, Ohio, I986), 54.
I984); and Rosino Gibellini (ed.), Frontiers of 3 Levine, op. cit., 6, 8-i i; Gutierez, The
Theology in Latin America (New York, 1983). Power of the Poor in History, op. cit., 13I-6.
30 Social History VOL. 20: NO. I

concentrate where the fighting was most intense and resistance most effective during the
popular insurrection suggests the extent to which CEBs had fused into the Sandinista
movement by the time of the 1979 victory over Somoza.34
Paralleling these events at the national level, in 1977 the Solentiname CEB dissolved
when its core members joined the FSLN. It is possible that Don Francisco's friendship
with Elbis developed in the period just prior to this, when they had attempted to extend
their message to some youth in San Carlos.3sIn any case, he also had ample opportunities
to engage in these discussions after the triumph of the revolution. Since radical
Christianity had been introduced into the Sandinista movement from the grass roots,36by
the time the Sandinistas took power it had become a dominant ideology of the
revolutionary culture, articulating other revolutionary ideologies such as Sandinism,
Marxism and Leninism.37And, as in Nicaragua more generally, revolutionaryChristians
and the CEBs (now constituted as the Popularchurch) continued to be visible actors in the
transformationstaking place in the Rio San Juan area in which Don Francisco lived.
Let us now turn to Don Francisco'stext. As we read his writings we should keep in mind
that it is not Don Francisco's mind that we are exploring: all we have is the text that he
wrote and it is through this text that his interpretations reach us. Taking account of this
entails watching carefully for the way in which Don Francisco constructs his narrative-
studying his choice and use of words, and searching for systematic relationships between
terms and the propositions and arguments he puts forth. We are also interested, however,
in looking beyond the text, at the way in which his arguments both shape, and are shaped
by, discourses and processes taking place in the world of which he is a part. In particular,
we are interested in exploring the way in which Don Francisco's discourse emerges from
the interaction of his personal understandings and memories with the systematized
ideology provided by liberation theology.
As the readerwill recall from the citation at the beginning of this paper, Don Francisco
discusses class society not as divinely ordained, but ratheras a product of coercive human
power. Using the Marxist distinction between manual and intellectual labour, he
describes oppression as entailing both exploitation and ideological domination. In the
following passage, he begins to discuss humanity's historical movement away from
oppression. We see that he merges the Sandinista interpretation of literacy as a tool for
liberation with the notion so central to radical Christianity that the coming to
consciousness of the poor is the sparkthat ignites their historical struggle for liberation:
AlejandroDumas and Victor Hugo, even if it doesn't seem like it, gave materialwith
their novels to continue struggling to abolish that corrupt society. That is why today
there is that preoccupation with reducing illiteracy. Because the person that knows
how to read, becomes conscious that it is important to learn for many reasons. A
person who learns has the opportunity to discover, to realize that we are human
beings without discrimination, with equal rights. There are people who say, 'I don't
read cheap novels, I don't waste my time.' I say the contrary. If a person didn't have
the opportunity to go to school, and through other means learned, and liked to read

34 Cf. Levine, op. cit., 85. 36 Hodges, op. Cit., 276.

35 Margaret Randall, Christians in the 37 Lancaster, op.Cit., 57, 59.
Nicaraguan Revolution (Vancouver, 1983), 76.
Yanuary 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 31

and reads Alejandro Dumas' La Toma de la Bastilla, he finds out about the struggle
of evil and against good. And because there is struggle, the barbarityof the absolutist
power is defined, the preponderance of the strong that wants to destroy the weak
because they are a threat to their power. If he reads Quo Vadis Domine he becomes
elevated to a spiritual plane of conscience. The difference of love with which
Christians died to propagateequal rights. In those cheap histories man is seeking and
finding and defining the cultural process.38
Don Francisco utilizes liberation theology's theory of history to begin to weave a narrative
of the past based on historical examples with which he is familiar. Gutierrez39argues that
by awakening the memory of past struggles, liberation theology elicits a 'subversive
memory' which, in turn, 'lends sustenance and force to [its] positions'. More than
'awakening' fully formed memories, however, Don Francisco's discourse suggests an
active reinterpretation of historical struggles. Thus, he constructs a genealogy of
Christianity's world-historical battle against the forces of oppression by casting disparate
social movements as struggles linked historically by their common quest for social justice.
With this, Don Francisco transmutes history into myth, creating a messianic vision which
collapses historical time and 'marksthe eternal triumph of revolt and revolution'.40
We have seen that Don Francisco appropriatesthe narrativeof liberation theology as a
frameworkwhich, together with elements of other ideologies, allows him to make sense of
both the past and the present. To locate the compelling force of this narrative for Don
Francisco, however, we must not only look at the way the discourse allows him to bring his
knowledge and experiences into the fold of universal human history, but also at processes
operating simultaneously in the world around him that makethis interpretationpossible. I
am referring to the mutually constituting and confirming dialectic between the interpre-
tation of history offered by liberation theology and the ideology and practice of the
Sandinista movement. In this case, it is the Sandinista policy on literacy that is at issue.
Don Francisco links current efforts to bring literacy to the Nicaraguan people with
Christianity's historical struggle for equality and justice. At the time of his writing, Don
Francisco had just witnessed the massive literacy crusade of 1980 which took literacy
brigades to all corners of the country. In addition to using military metaphors to tap into
the memories of the recent struggle against Somoza, the symbolism of the literacy
campaign - constructed as a crusade against illiteracy - fed into the millenarian strand of
Nicaraguanrevolutionaryculture and the association of literacy and liberation so salient in
revolutionary movements of this century.41 Don Francisco's words echo the purpose and
description given by the Ministry of Education of the National Literacy Crusade: 'to carry
out a literacy project and consolidate it with a level of education equivalent to the first
grades of primary school, is to democratize a society. It gives the popular masses the first
instruments needed to develop an awareness of their exploitation and to fight for

3 Berroteran,op. cit., 63-4.
39Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History,
op. cit., 8o.
40 Lancaster, op. cit., xviii.
41 Arnove, op. cit., chap. 2; Richard Fagen,
The Transformationof Political Culture in Cuba
(Stanford, I969); Peter Kenez, The Birth of the
Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass
Mobilization, 19r 7-1929 (Cambridge, I985),
chap. 3; Vincent, Literacy and Popular Culture,
op. cit., 2.
32 SocialHistory VOL. 20: NO. I

liberation. Therefore, literacy training was something that the dictatorship could not
accept without contradicting itself.42
As always, Don Francisco's acceptance of the Sandinista rationale seems to have been
grounded in his own experience with reading materials. As the passage above suggests,
he identifies his own social consciousness as largely emergent from his confrontation with
the printed word.43 The fact that the Sandinistas were attempting to bring literacy to
the Nicaraguan people was, for Don Francisco, a sign that they stood on the side of the
oppressed. Thus he writes in the prologue to his work: 'I am pleased to be witnessing the
development of literacy, the facility that the few give so that the many can learn.'"
Don Francisco continues his narrativeby echoing what is perhaps liberation theology's
most novel and important interpretation: that human beings create history through
acceptance of the Christian doctrine of equality and justice.45This entails a conception of
Christ as liberator, as a revolutionarywho sides with the poor and through his doctrine of
struggle for justice releases them from oppression.46 As Guti6rrez47notes, 'The God of the
Bible is a God who not only governs history, but who [orients] it in the direction of
establishment of justice and right.' Following are some of Don Francisco's statements
which clearly convey the same message:
Jehovah decided to attract men through love, because of course, he knew that in the
world there was good and evil . . . that evil reigned but that with his new doctrine
men of faith, of love, of healthy sentiments like Saint Peter, Saint Mathew, would
emerge. He knew that his coming would revolutionize the world, with good
struggling against evil and evil against good. And something to note, that evil always
prevails with its harshness and atrocities. But in the end, it is crushed with
denigration and the good marches ahead with dignity.48

. . .for two thousand years now, there has been a total effort which is very advanced.
In matters of humanism, there have been great wars in favour of the oppressed. Just
over there, in the United States, there was a decision to abolish slavery. Movements
in favour of equality have advanced much. Writers have written much. Political
doctrines have been created, brotherhoodsof all kinds. . . and one thing is that now it

42 Cited in Arnove, op. cit., I8.
43 Don Francisco's idea that reading is a
subversive act that threatens those in power
appears several times in his narrative. In one
scene where he is talking to a hacienda worker,
we hear the following exchange: 'I repeat, "and
do you know how to read?""No", he tells me,
"no one around here knows anything about that.
The patron says that no one needs to know how
to read. Learning how to work is enough"'
(Berroteran, op. cit., io). Nevertheless, as his
discussion of intellectuals in the quote at the
beginning of this paper indicates, Don Fran-
cisco is well aware that books, and knowledge
more generally, are important tools of the
powerful. He is similarly aware of the risks
entailed in reading uncritically as, using an
example from his favourite book, he repeatedly
warns readers that simply 'absorbing' readings
can turn people into Quijotes (ibid., 29,95). His
comments in this passage must thus be seen in
the context of the particular argument he is
advancing at that point.
44ibid., x.
4S Gutierrez, The Powerofthe Poor in History,
op. cit., 5; Randall, op. cit., I I2.
46Berryman, op. cit., II, 17, 23; Guti6rrez,
The Power of the Poor in History, op. cit., 6, 8,
13-14.
4' ibid.,7.
"8Berroteran,op. cit., 55
7anuary 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 33
is not only a rebellion of the poor because there are rich people who are in agreement
and struggle against the exploitation of man by man. Socialism, communism, have
cemented and, what a thing my friend! That these anti-slavist purposes can only
happen with the dogma of the good.49
In these passages, we discern the messianic power of liberation theology as it is released by
the articulation of radical Christianity with the Sandinista revolution. As we saw earlier,
Don Francisco's narrative brings together disparate historical struggles, casting them as
the Christians'transhistoricstruggle for equality and justice. In the last passage, he brings
this interpretation forward to include more recent struggles and movements, connecting
them directly, if not explicitly, with the Nicaraguan popular revolution. Thus we can see
once again that Don Francisco's discourse, perhaps even his acceptance of liberation
theology's messianic message was based in important ways on its convergence with recent
developments in Nicaragua. Consider, for example, Don Francisco's belief that 'It is no
longer so much poor people's rebellion, since there are rich people who are very much in
agreement and struggle against the exploitation of man by man.' Surely this statement
finds a context in various aspects of recent Nicaraguan history: the mobilization of urban
middle-class revolutionaries during the insurrection and the literacy campaign; the often
privileged background of liberation theologians; and the unprecedented fact of the
country's leadership carrying out societal changes intended to improve the lives of the
poor.
We have seen earlier that, in accordance with liberation theology, Don Francisco
identifies Christianity unambiguously with the cause of the poor. In this passage, he goes
one step further, positing an inextricable link between Christian struggles through history
and the cementing of socialism and communism, a process which he interprets as the
triumph of good over evil. Once again, this statement is far from an abstract proposition
for Don Francisco. Indeed, from his perspective its reality is confirmed by the very
existence of the Nicaraguan revolution and, specifically, by the fact that the massive
participation of Christians in the struggle against Somoza made possible an eventual
victory over the dictatorship.
Don Francisco, then, participates in the discourse of liberation theology because this
theology both confirms and is confirmed by Nicaragua's revolutionary transformations
more generally. There are, however, other equally powerful reasons for the appeal of this
theology for Don Francisco. To explore these, we must turn to Don Francisco's own life.

DON FRANCISCO'S SOCIALIST UTOPIA

Don Francisco's visit to the valley of Los Arroyos was a salient experience in his life or, at
least, so it seemed in the early I98os when he wrote his narrative.50His story about that
experience works in multiple ways in his text: it serves as the centre on which he organizes
his account, as a reference point for the many other stories he tells, and as a springboardfor
his arguments about society and history. Indeed, in a general sense, Don Francisco's

49 ibid., 72. experience' in working-class autobiographical

5 See Popular Memory Group, op. cit., 229, accounts.
for a discussion of the concept of 'salient
34 SocialHistory VOL. 20 : NO. I

entire story about Los Arroyos is meant to serve as 'evidence' for the theory that informs
his interpretation of history.
Don Francisco portraysthe community of Los Arroyos as unique in the region in that it
was egalitarian, largely unmonetized and self-sufficient. In his retrospective interpre-
tation, which was clearly informed by contemporary revolutionary discourses in
Nicaragua, Don Francisco casts Los Arroyos as a socialist community, saying that the
people in that valley'practised that socialist, cooperativist, communitariancustom, even
though they knew nothing about politics'.5'
The peasantcommunity that Don Francisco visited in the valley of Los Arroyos appears
to have been established late in the nineteenth century. By the time of his visit, some time
in the 1930S, there were about twenty-two families living in this community, and another
fifty in scattered homesteads across the valley.52Don Francisco notes that these people
practised subsistence agriculturesupplemented by the sale of hens, chickens, eggs and rice
in the marketplace of a nearby town, where they acquired soap, kerosene, clothes,
mosquito nets, thread, 'and one or another trifle'.53He claims that between the families of
this valley, however, no monetary transactionstook place.
Don Francisco constructs an idyllic version of life in Los Arroyos, focusing on the
positive, non-capitalist aspects of his experience in that peasant community, and he
explicitly offers his account as a model of a socialist order. As in other peasant
communities, the key unit of production, consumption and ownership of resources in Los
Arroyos was the household. Relations between households were structured and under-
written by various forms of reciprocity generally found in situations in which everyone
depends on others from time to time. This is how Don Francisco recounts his cousin's
description of relations between families in the valley:
As I was telling you, you don't see money exchanged between people here, whether
they live close or far apart, because everything is in common . . . for example, all that
work that you see, we did it together. I spend my time helping them and if my rice
harvest goes bad, we don't worry because they give us what we don't have, and
whatever I harvest is theirs. If I kill a pig, I sound [that horn] and they come to pick
up their piece. We also have cows and they do too, if I see a cow or calf with worms, I
cure it as if it were mine and they do the same with everyone else's.54
The convergences between this image and the principles of equality, brotherhood and
sharing preached by liberation theologians were not lost on Don Francisco. My claim is
that, just as his experience in Los Arroyos fostered his receptivity to the message of
liberation theology many years later by lending it credibility, so the new theology informed
Don Francisco's retrospective interpretationin which he cast Los Arroyos as an example
of an ideal socialist community. Of course, the extent to which Los Arroyos was in fact
egalitarian and unmonetized is an open question, but it is clear that this community was
much more peripheral to capitalism than surrounding villages and, thus, life there was

51Berroterin, op. cit., I. Identity in Nicaragua' (Ph.D. dissertation,

52 Abdollah Dashti, 'The Forbidden Revol- University of Michigan, 1994), chap. 7.
ution: Participatory Democracy and the Cul- " Berroteran,op. Cit., 21-2.
tural Politics of Class, Community and National 54 ibid., 2I.
J7anuaryI995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 35
much closer to a 'pure' peasant existence than anything Don Francisco had known before.
Indeed, the forms of reciprocity described in this passage, which entail no immediate
return of what is given, presuppose an ideal of household equality and a stance of
intolerance toward the development of invidious distinctions within the community.55
The legitimization of the idea of socialism for Don Francisco, then, was made possible
by the apparent convergence between life at Los Arroyos and the image of socialism
offered by liberation theology. There is another factor, however, that dovetailed with this
dynamic to make Don Francisco's interpretation possible. If we look carefully at the
message of revolutionary Christianity from this perspective, we can see that the values of
this theology are in important ways consonant with peasant values and, more specifically,
with peasant utopian ideals.
As Lancaster56 notes, liberation theology's vision of social good is reminiscent of the
ideals of closed corporate peasant communities. It is normative, anti-modern and
traditional, 'antithetical to liberalism and progressivism'.57The social relation underlying
such 'traditional' ideals is levelling, meaning, specifically, that 'one's property is not
exactly one's own, that property entails obligation, and that the demands of the group take
precedence over the whims of the individual in disposing of his property'. The vision of
society that emanates from this perspective is therefore grounded in unity, reciprocity and
stability.58This is consistent with Don Francisco'sstatements in the passage above, where
he exalts equality, reciprocity and unity as general features of society at Los Arroyos.
So far, I have arguedthat liberation theology provided the language through which Don
Francisco constructs his consciousness of class by trying to demonstrate the relationship
between Don Francisco'sexperience and peasant ideals, and the specificforn of liberation
theology as a discourse. But while life at Los Arroyos- at least, as he now remembered it -
must surely have resonated with the image of social good depicted by revolutionary
Christianity, it would be too much to say that the appeal of the idea of socialism for Don
Francisco was solely based on this experience coupled to an abstractpeasant utopian ideal.
It makes more sense, instead, to look for additional grounding in his own social
experience.

CLASS TRANSFORMATION AND MEMORY IN THE

CONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIALIST UTOPIA
Don Francisco's depiction of Los Arroyos as an ideal socialist society expresses a nostalgic
longing for peasant worlds that were lost to history during his own lifetime and whose loss
affected him personally. The disappearanceof a peasant way of life in Rio San Juan, as in
the rest of the country, was a result of the large-scale penetration of capitalism into the
region that occurred with a shift that took place at the national level during the 1940S and
1950S from limited to intensive commodity production for the world market.59Thus Don

ss Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics 58 ibid., 54.

(Chicago, 1972), chap. 5. 5' Dashti, op. cit., chap. 7; MIDINRA,
56 Lancaster, op. cit., 84. Historia Economica de Rio San_7uan (Managua,
S7 ibid., 213. n.d.).
36 Social History VOL. 20: NO. I

Francisco's class trajectory is emblematic of larger processes of transformationthat took

place in Nicaragua during these years.60
As mentioned earlier, Don Francisco lived in Mojarrauntil age twenty-four, working
both as a shoemakerand cultivator. His family was part of a largerclass of landless peasants
which, together with a small class of merchants and shopkeepers, constituted the bulk of
Mojarra'sinhabitants. Don Francisco's family engaged in agriculture as a supplement to
their income from making and repairingshoes. In this they differed somewhat from most
landless families in the village, who earned their living primarily from subsistence
agriculture on land rented from surrounding haciendas.6'
The estates in the municipality of Morrito were remnants of colonial cattle haciendas
held by absentee owners from the city of Granada who occasionally used them for
recreationalpurposes. In accordancewith the paternalismgoverning production relations
in these estates, Mojarra'slandless families obtained usufructuaryrights to an unrestricted
amount of land in exchange for occasional labour (repairing fences, clearing pasture and
the like) provided to the hacienda as the need arose. In some cases, usufructuary rights
were obtained through a nominal payment of rent which required that peasants engage in
occasional wage labour in the haciendas.62Thus, although the Mojarrefiopeasantrynever
owned their own land, easy access to the estates' land provided for a semblance of a peasant
existence.
Beginning in the 1940s, the social landscape of the municipality of Morrito began to be
radicallytransformed. In response to an increasing demand for beef in the world market,
Somoza turned his entrepreneurial gaze toward Rio San Juan and, especially, the
municipality of Morrito.63Between 1942 and I960, he used legal purchase, force and other
means to appropriate over 76 per cent of the land in the municipality. This included a
sizeable portion of the land owned by smallholders and all of the large estates, except one
owned by a political opponent who refused to budge in the face of Somoza's pressures.
Somoza also seized the land in the valley of Los Arroyos, dislodging the peasantswho lived
there.64
Under the ownership of Somoza, the municipality's haciendas were transformed into
highly capitalized ranches. Intensificationof cattle production entailed the introduction of
new methods and factors of production as well as increased labour demands. These
changes brought with them a drastic transformation of production relations within the
estates.65 Most importantly, all land became subject to rental payments in cash and a
ceiling was placed on the amount of land that cultivators were allowed to till. By limiting
peasants' possibilities for surplus production, Somoza sharply curtailed their access to
cash. Thus he secured a labour force for his new agrarianenterprises, turning Mojarrefno
peasants into a class of peasant-workers.66
Don Francisco's own class trajectorywas similarly reshapedby these transformationsin

60 Although having its own particularities, 61

Dashti, op. cit., chap. 5.
Don Francisco's class trajectory is not unlike 62 ibid.
that of peasants in western Nicaragua, where the 63 MIDINRA,
op. cit., ii6.
spread of cotton cultivation in the 1gS9s set in 64Dashti, op. cit., chap. 7.
motion similar processes of curtailment of 65 MIDINRA, op. IcI6.
cit.,
peasant access to land and proletarianization. 66Dashti,oP.cit., chap 7-
Cf. Gould, op. cit.
January 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 37
the hinterland of Rfo San Juan. Some time in the I940s, when Somoza came into the
region, Don Francisco abandoned agriculture and became a full-time craftsman, moving
to the village of San Miguelito and, four years later, in 1950, to San Carlos.67The
severance of Don Francisco's ties to peasant agriculture went hand in hand with the
increased commoditization of the region and the transformation of the Rio San Juan
peasantryinto a labour reserve for surrounding haciendas, a position which Don Francisco
was able to avoid thanks to the possibility of an alternative livelihood offered by his craft.
None the less, Don Francisco's text reveals a deep sense of loss of a peasant way of life.
It is significant that the experiential basis for Don Francisco'svision of socialism was not
simply based on life in Mojarrawhich was, after all, a stratifiedand fully monetized village.
Rather, his vision emerged from an implicit comparison between the life of the peasantry
in Mojarraand in the community in Los Arroyos. For while Don Francisco'sexperience of
Los Arroyos must have exalted his consciousness of the positive, non-capitalist aspects of
his own experience as a peasant in Mojarra, it also showed, by implication, the extent to
which these relations had been eroded (or, perhaps, had never existed) in peasant villages
across the region, including Mojarra.Just as importantly, however, Los Arroyos provided
a concrete instance of a way of life structured to a much greaterextent than he had known,
by principles alien to the logic of the larger capitalist system. As such, from his vantage
point in i983, Los Arroyos became as much a symbol of a non-capitalist (i.e. 'socialist')
world for Don Francisco, as a reminder of the loss of such a world under the assault of
capitalism both before and, especially, after the coming of Somoza.

HIERARCHY AND AUTHORITY IN DON FRANCISCO'S

UTOPIA
Don Francisco's receptivity to the message of radical Christianity was grounded, as we
have seen, in a complex dynamic between his own life experiences, his memories of the
past, and his views on the Nicaraguan revolutionary process which he seems to have
found, at least on the issues discussed, consonant with the new theology. But while Don
Francisco seems to have accepted all of the basic premises of radicalChristianity, there are
also instances in which he rejects or modifies certain aspects of this theology.
Consider the question of the nature of God, a central issue in liberation theology from
which flow its perspectives on religiosity and Christianfaith. According to Guti6rrez,68 the
God of the Bible is the God who sides with the poor. Those who call themselves Christians
but who speak of God in order to oppress the poor arenot adoring God but an idol, a fetish.
Despite some conceptual differences,69liberation theologians converge in considering that
commitment to the poor follows from Christian faith in God. As Lancaster70points out,
the project of liberation theology is collectivist, equating faith with social consciousness

67 Dashti, personal communication.
' Gutierrez, The Power of the Poor in History,
op. cit., 19.
69 For example, in Father Cardenal's the-
ology, perhaps the most influential strand of
liberation theology in Nicaragua, even those
who think of themselves as atheists are Chris-
tians if they love the poor and struggle for their
cause (Cardenal, The Gospelin Solentiname, op.
cit., vOl. 4, 114-15). This is because in this
interpretation, God is love, the love among
people which can only exist with commitment to
equality and justice (ibid., vol. 3, 101-3).
70
Lancaster, op. cit., 67.
38 SocialHistory VOL. 20: NO. I

and making biblical interpretation a class or community (as opposed to individual)

project.
The collectivist project of radical Christianity, however, is inseparable from a
requirement for an inner transformation and rationalized form of religiosity based on
individual commitment to social justice. This perspective has made for a number of
interpretive streamlinings which attempt to demystify traditionalreligious practices. Like
other post-Vatican ii theologies, liberation theology regards many Christian rites and
devotions, such as the worship of saints, as meaningless, betraying 'a mechanical, hollow
faith, tied to forms rather than profounder realities'.71 Liberation theologians, therefore,
strive to shape a 'purer,' more self-conscious form of religiosity when they equate faith
with social vision and religious practice with political struggle.72
Don Francisco accepts the equation of faith with social vision. As we have seen, he
believes that God's presence is revealed in the historic struggle of the poor. However, he
regardstraditionalbeliefs and rites as an important part of this general commitment to the
social good. Speaking of patronal saint devotion in Los Arroyos, he says: 'Don't you see
how in this place that Saint Joseph is taken from house to house? That unites them in love
and respect.'73 Like villagers in other parts of the world who have been affected by the
rationalizingreforms of Vatican II,74 Don Francisco insists on including more 'enchanted'
practices as part of the Christianreligious repertoire. In his own analysis, practicessuch as
patronal saint devotion are socially beneficial because they promote love and respect
among members of the community.
Don Francisco'sconcern with love and respect seems, at first, to reflect an acceptance of
liberation theology's premise that faith in God and commitment to equality and social
justice are grounded in feelings of brotherly love. For example, in another passage, he
explicitly refers to the people in Los Arroyos, the model for his ideal society, as
comprising 'a great family'75united by love and respect. Such relations generate a feeling
of trust among community members: in Los Arroyos, he tells us, nobody steals so most
houses do not even have doors.76 On closer examination, however, we find that his
understanding of what enables love, respect and trust to exist among people is quite
different from radical Christian views which focus on an ethic based on personal
commitment to social justice.
Don Francisco's views become clear when we look at the premises which sustain his
71 Ruth Behar, 'The struggle for the church: priest as agent of secularizationin ruralSpain' in
popular anticlericalism and religiosity in post- J.B. Aceves et al. (eds), Economic Transform-
Franco Spain' in E. Badone (ed.), Religious ations and Steady-State Values: Essays in the
Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Ethnographyof Spain (Flushing, N.Y., I976);
Society (Princeton, I990); Randall, op. cit., 72, William Christian, Person and God in a Spanish
74. Valley (New York, I972); and Joyce Riegel-
72 As Lancaster, op. cit., 68, notes, 'The haupft, 'Festas and padres: the organization of
distinction drawn is not between the social and religious action in a Portuguese parish', Amen-
the spiritual, but between the social and the can Anthropologist, LXXV (I973), 835-52;
individual. Allied with and superimposed upon 'Popular anticlericalism and religiosity in pre-
the category "the social" is the spiritual, the 1974 Portugal'in E. Wolf (ed.), Religion,Power,
divine, the religious; social vision is thereby and Protest in Local Communities: The North-
identical tofaith' (his emphasis). ern Shore of the Mediterranean (Berlin, I984).
73 Berroterfin,op. cit., 63. 75 Berroterin, op. cit., 21.
74 See Behar, op. cit.; Stanley Brandes, 'The 76 ibid., 26.
January 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 39
views on religion. Beginning with his perspective on God and the saints, we discover that
Don Francisco considers the saints' role as intercessors with God as important to local
villagers. Thus, he agrees with his aunt that:
God is the king of the universe. But he is very straight, serious and ill-tempered. He
doesn't forgive easily . . . one has to have the saints as intermediaries with God
because since they were once human like us, they understand our sufferings.77
This image of God as a distant, stern judge dispensing grace or punishment is inimical to
liberation theology's attempt to make God less threatening and more directly accessible to
people. However, it is congruent with Don Francisco'sviews about human nature and the
constraints required to keep it 'in line'. Here we note an adherence to the classic Christian
notion of a 'fallen' humankind whose evil inclinations need to be restrained through the
threat of divine punishment.78 This also explains why Don Francisco considers that,
besides interceding with God and fostering community solidarity, belief in saints and
other traditional practices are not only not irrelevant, but are in fact essential to promoting
a good Christian life.
Their faith makes them fearful of hell, of purgatory, and they are more respectful of
their parents, brothers and sisters, neighbours and friends.79

I think that this stuff about witchcraft is a fairytale, but nevertheless it is somewhat
beneficial because it makes them fearful of a supernatural being which can harm
them, and since these things are diabolical, they pray and commend themselves to the
saints and promise to give them crucifixes [as offerings]; there is, then, spiritual
relation. The one who does not believe does not fear God or the devil has a propensity
to do evil.80
The role of 'fear'in regulating humanity's evil propensities is key in Don Francisco'svision
of what is required to maintain a proper social life. As we have seen, he is even willing to
consider belief in witchcraft (which he does not himself believe in) as 'beneficial'as long as
the fear of supernaturalharm it is based on fosters respect and good deeds among people.
This view of human nature and religious practice is diametrically opposed to liberation
theology's doctrinal emphasis on rational, demystified religious practice based on feelings
of brotherly love. The reason for Don Francisco's rejection of the position of liberation
theologians, I argue, is that endorsing it would obviate the structures of authority which
have been key to the survival of Nicaraguan peasants' patrimony, the stability of their
communities, and their moral and religious beliefs.
In order to make my claim clear, it will be useful to refer to Jane Schneider's8'essay on
the relationship between reformist Christian movements such as the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation(of which Vatican ii is a successor) and the rise of capitalism. In this

77 ibid., 62. are] predisposed to being so.'

78 Don Francisco is explicit about humanity's 7 ibid., 63.
evil inclinations on several occasions. For 80 ibid., 82.
example, on p. 76 he writes: 'Maybe someone 8, Jane Schneider, 'Spirits and the spirit of
thinks [they are] a good person because [they capitalism' in Badone, op. cit.
haven't] had the opportunity to be evil but [they
40 Social History VOL. 20: NO. I

work, Schneider argues that there is an intimate link between the ethic of brotherly love
characteristic of reformist Christianity and local-level processes of class formation.
Historically, a key aspect of this process was the shift in the conception of God from the
righteous, feared deity of the Old Testament, to the benign, forgiving God whose limitless
mercy offered unconditional forgiveness as a model for human relations. Drawing
evidence from studies of popular religion in Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth
centuries, Schneider shows that, in areas where reformist Christianity made significant
inroads, the de-emphasis on personal accountability and the shift toward 'turning the
other cheek' shattered the prevailing equity-conscious ethics and unwittingly facilitated
processes of social differentiation.82
Schneider's study sheds light orrDon Francisco's differences with liberation theology,
as it suggests that their dissonances stem from a conflict in their respective ethical
principles. For while Don Francisco exalts brotherly love as central to life in Los Arroyos,
his discourse points to an ethical system more compatible with a 'tit-for-tat'ethics of equity
in which divine justice and the threat of divine retribution, and not unfettered individual
responsibility, play a central role in monitoring human behaviour.
To illustrate the workings of this system, I will begin with a model of a peasants'world
and way of life. Rouse83has offered such a model based on his work with peasants in
west-central Mexico. The starting point here was the centrality of the household as the
unit of production and consumption. Each household's ideal was to sustain an
independent, land-based, family-run operation, which entailed not only acquiring
sufficient resources but, more importantly, being able to hold on to them. The dissolution
of family resources could occur from either inside the family unit (as with family members
leaving inopportunely to take a job or get married) or from the external world (as with
animal thefts, intervention from the state or outsider acquisition of local land). In a world
where precariouscontrol over resources was the norm, both the division of labour and the
structure of authority were oriented toward holding together the family patrimony.
For our purposes, the most important aspect of this system was the way in which
authority was distributed within family units. Using a pyramidal representation, the
father would be at the top, with the mother at the centre, mediating between the father and
the children at the base. Among the children, men held authority over women and older
siblings over younger ones. Although, to some degree, individuals' goals were defined by
their position in this hierarchy, the strong hand of those with greater authority was
required to control subordinates and thus safeguardand ensure the integrity of the family
operation. The ability to control household members, particularly women, was also
important in the household's dealings with outsiders. As Rouse84 explains, women's
bodies represented the family operation's'most valued contents', so that the way the family
controlled its women and their bodies 'was thought to provide a particularly clear

83 Roger Rouse, 'Mexican Migration to the

In her essay, Schneider compares the ethics
82
of animism and of reformist Christianity in United States: Family Relations in the Develop-
Europe. My claim is that Don Francisco's ment of a Transnational Migrant Circuit'
ethical principles are congruent with the social (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University,
ethic of reciprocity which characterizes animist 1989), 111-31.
beliefs and practices. 84 ibid., 129.
January 1995 Liberation theology and Nicaragua 41

indication, by analogy, of its ability to protect the wider claims it held on land, livestock,
and labour and thus of its merits as an ally'.85
Turning now to relations with the divine, we find that Rouse's model of peasant
authority hierarchy is roughly analogous to the sacred authority structure of Nicaraguan
popular religion. Lancaster86has described this hierarchy, running from the 'purely
sacred' to the 'purely profane', as follows: at the upper end, there is the Holy Trinity
(God), followed by the Virgin Mary, who is like a saint, but 'touched' by the divine. Just
below come the New Testament saints, then the patron saints and, lastly, profane
humanity. There is a correspondence in this hierarchybetween the roles of God and Mary
and those of the father and mother, who are 'collectors of grace and merit earned by the
children, and distributors of graces and punishments as they are deserved'.87Similarly,
the affective relations between friends, siblings, and between mother and child are like
those between people and their personal patron saints.88
According to Lancaster,89 besides representing the authority structure of popular
religion, the spiritual hierarchy 'establishes an authority structure in popular conscious-
ness more generally'. The figures along the hierarchy thus represent a continuum of
possible behaviour, from the most to the least desirable, corresponding to the poles of the
sacred and the profane. While it is a Christian'sduty to follow ideal religious behaviour as
closely as possible, it is understood that there will always be a gap between ordinary
people's behaviour and the pious, self-sacrificingbehaviour expected of priests, saints and
the divine.90Hence the necessity for this hierarchyof authorityfigures who watch over and
regulate human behaviour.
It is these characteristicsassociated with some peasant milieus that seem to explain Don
Francisco's difference with liberation theology's ethical principles and some of their views
on proper religiosity. In the world that informs his perspectives, too much is at stake to
allow individuals to monitor their own behaviour. Proper authority structures, both
spiritual and familial, may be dispensable in Nicaraguan middle-class environments, but
they are essential in the peasants' struggle to maintain household independence and
community integrity.9'
Having said all of this, it is important to stress that Don Francisco is not rejecting
liberation theology's general interpretation of history or the idea of socialism. Thus it is
clear that Los Arroyos is for him the examplepar excellence of the ideal Christian socialist

85 In another work currently under prep-
aration, I explore the cultural logic of household
boundary control and concomitant (gendered)
representations of patriarchal household struc-
tures in Nicaraguan peasant society. For an
insightful analysis of Nicaragua's culture of
machismo, see Roger Lancaster, Life is Hard:
Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power
in Nicaragua (Berkeley, 1992) .
f' Lancaster, Thanks to God and the Revol-
ution, op. cit., 33.
87 Christian, op. cit., 171
' These analogies were first established by
Christian for Spanish villagers in Person and
God in a Spanish Valley, op. cit., 171.
" Lancaster, Thanks to God and the Revol-
ution, op. cit., 33.
90 ibid., 34.
9' My claim is that such authority structures
have been important in peasant milieus in
Nicaragua. I do not want to suggest that such
hierarchies, with their age and gender inequali-
ties, are either universal or the only historically
possible forms through which peasants have, to
a greater or lesser extent, averted intrusions into
their patrimonies.
42 SocialHistory VOL. 20: NO. I

society arrived at through the world-historic struggle of the poor. Listen, for example, to
the following:
[The people of Los Arroyos] don't know that in the world people are fighting for what
they are easily living.92

In these valleys it is right (es propio) that a messiah be born.93

a great statesman can come to this valley, a lover of a good doctrine, to learn how
to make a good society. . . . Here they are going to find the medicine for so much evil
that has scourged humankind.94
Don Francisco, then, is engaging in a dialogue with liberation theology that attempts to
redefine what being Christian and socialist means in concrete terms. As such, his is an
alternative (but not oppositional) vision of the self and of religiosity in socialist society, one
more in line with the characteristicsof peasant life than with the middle-class notions of
individual responsibility and rationalizedpropositions of the new theology.

CONCLUSIONS
Since E.P. Thompson's seminal The Making of the English WorkingClass,95 the study of
class consciousness has moved away from a search for a 'correct' social consciousness,
springing unmediated from social position, to an examination of the ways in which life is
experienced and understood by those undergoing processes of class transformation. In
large measure, these studies strive to relate the conceptual resources availableto common
people for making sense of their situation with the experiences they are undergoing. A
number of studies, for example, have focused on forms of resistance to capitalism, looking
at spirit possessions,96 devil beliefs97 and ritual performances98as expressions of the
contradictions posed by capitalist relations to cherished principles of peasant life. A
common thread running through these studies is the assumption that newly prolet-
arianized peasantries are able to draw principles from their peasant world in order to
develop critiques of capitalism.99
But what form does popular consciousness take in places such as Rio San Juan, where
traditional corporate villages were largely absent? Gould's1??study of the development of

92Berroteran,op. cit., 72. Afiican People (Chicago, i985); Gerald Sider,

93 ibid., 93.- Culture and Class in Anthropologyand History:
94 ibid., 79-8o. A Newfoundland Illustration (New York,
95 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English I986).
WorkingClass (New York, I966). 9 James Scott, Weaponsof the Weak: Every-
96 Aihwa Ong, Spirits of Resistance and day Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven,
Capitalist Discipline: Factory Womenin Malay- I985); Craig Calhoun, 'The radicalism of
sia (Albany, New York, I987). tradition: community strength or venerable
97 Michael Taussig, The Devil and Com- disguise and borrowed language', American
modity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Journal of Sociology, LXXXVIII, 5 (I983), 883-
Hill, North Carolina, I980). 914.
98 Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of 100Gould, op. cit.
Resistance: The Culture and History of a South
January 1995 LiberationtheologyandNicaragua 43
class consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, suggests that in villages without a previous
local 'tradition' or moral economy, peasants may utilize available languages from the
dominant society in order to make sense of their situation. Although not explicitly stated,
this argument would seem to apply to the cane workerwho is the subject of Mintz's study,
Workerin the Cane.'0' In this work, Mintz suggests that his informant's conversion to
evangelical Protestantism, with its emphasis on individual responsibility for salvation, was
intimately tied to processes of individualization brought about by the penetration of US
capitalism into the Puerto Rican sugar industry.
The case examined in this paper also confirms this proposition, and like Gould's and
Mintz's works, it suggests that not just any dominant ideology will do. As I have tried to
show, a dominant ideology will only take root if there is a pre-existent basis in people's
experiences that will render these ideologies understandable. In this connection, I have
argued that 'experiential' may refer to something less than a lifetime experience in a
particular social world. In Don Francisco's case, it was an idealized image of a
remembered, or perhaps to some extent imagined, way of life in Los Arroyos that in
interaction with liberation theology produced Don Francisco's political consciousness.
In addition to Don Francisco's past, I have placed emphasis on the importance of his
recent experiences in fostering receptivity to the teachings of liberation theology. As we
saw, Don Francisco gave serious thought to all propositions of the new theology before
accepting (or rejecting) any. Thus it is clear that liberation theologians' theory of history
was compelling for Don Francisco due to the continuous confirmation it received from
Nicaragua's revolutionary struggle and changes. In turn, this was a result of the critical
role which liberation theology and revolutionary Christians played in forging the popular
movement in the country.
While Don Francisco shared important perspectives with liberation theologians, he
differed with aspects of their theology that were incongruous with ethical principles
shaped by peasant ways of life in Nicaragua. Specifically, he rejected those elements of
liberation theology which potentially undermined family authority structures that have
historically allowed Nicaraguan peasant villagers to fend for themselves in a hostile world.
Thus Don Francisco reminds us of the need to distinguish between traditionaland organic
intellectuals, and to listen to the voices of the latter as they attempt to shape social
movements and transformationsin accordancewith their ideal worlds.
University of Michigan

101
Sidney Mintz, Workerin the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History (New York, 1974).