Abstract
The Latin American indigenous question has represented over the centuries, between modern and contemporary age, a laboratory that is apparently marginal but in its own way singularly powerful for the Italian Catholic cultural world. The question has in fact contributed to the elaboration of political symbols and instruments, cultural, religious, moral and solidarity projects. The construction of an original perspective, mirror of a distant world, has in fact allowed Italian Catholicism to carry out a sort of self-analysis, in the face of modernization processes, the relationship between power and law, between local and global perspectives, between past and present. With this in mind, 1992 represented a real crossroads. While the global Cold War was closing, the disputed celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the “discovery” and European conquest of the Americas, together with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Maya Quiché Rigoberta Menchú Tum and the Genoese celebrations for the “Colombiadi”, opened an intense debate in Italy. In particular, a group of Catholic intellectuals, laity and religious, tried to reflect on the legacies and contradictions of that Euro-American encounter-clash produced and on the transformation of the global history that ensued. A reflection that connected to the ongoing debate on the violations of human rights in Latin American dictatorships was calling into question the responsibilities of Europe as a community in the making.
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Notes
- 1.
Rizzi , “Premessa”, 9.
- 2.
De Giuseppe, L’altra America. Cattolici italiani e America latina. Da Medellín a Francesco, 264–280.
- 3.
It is interesting to compare this Italian conception of development in Latin America with that of the United States; see Leary, A Cultural History, 1–22.
- 4.
Mani tese Archive: Centro Documentazione, Sezione congressi, 1992, Materiali preparatori, Poster.
- 5.
Orlandi, Le ragioni di un convegno, 10.
- 6.
Masina, Davide, un uomo ingombrante.
- 7.
Turoldo, La parola ai fanciulli, 6–7. There was even a text from as far back as 1980 called Celebrazione per l’America Amerindia, in Archivio Turoldo, Opere, Prosa, 14.
- 8.
Letter from D. M. Turoldo to E. Cardenal , 1 May 1987, in Archivio Turoldo, Opere, Poesia, 9, Quetzalcoatl.
- 9.
TPP, La conquista dell’America e il Diritto Internazionale: sentenza, sessione speciale, Padua-Venice, 5–9 October 1992, in Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso, sezione internazionale, documenti.
- 10.
L. Bimbi, Tanti piccoli fuochi inestinguibili. Scritti sull’America latina e il diritto dei popoli (ed. A. Mulas), Nuova Delphi, Roma 2018.
- 11.
Bimbi, “Esperienza di ascolto”, 110–111.
- 12.
Tognoni, “Ipotesi”, 96.
- 13.
Dacomo, “1992, oltre la conquista”, 101.
- 14.
Kalci, A 500 anni dalla conquista, 2.
- 15.
Galeano, Persino la carta geografica mente, 4.
- 16.
Gutiérrez, La storia dell’altro, 14–15.
- 17.
La Bella, Perù: il tempo della vergogna.
- 18.
Mazzolari, “Guatemala”, 3–4.
- 19.
Pedrone , “Guatemala”, 4–5.
- 20.
Balducci , Fede e cultura, 79. Other authors who contributed to that issue included Mario Cuminetti , Mario Gozzini, Joseph Comblin , Antonio Fragoso, Pablo Richard and Leonidas Proaño .
- 21.
E. Balducci, L’uomo planetario, 12–13.
- 22.
This topic deeply influenced Girardi’s entire body of work, starting with the publication of his first book in 1966—Marxismo e cristianesimo—which had a great impact on the student movement of the time and initiated a dialogue with important figures such as Lucio Lombardo Radice and Roger Garaudy ; up to his last book—Che Guevara visto da un cristiano—published only a few months before his death. The theologian dedicated many of his works to this dichotomy, and indirectly to the relationship between rebellion and religion and conflict and liberation. Some noteworthy examples include his books from 1971, Cristianesimo, liberazione umana, lotta di classe, and from 1986, Sandinismo, marxismo e cristianesimo.
- 23.
Gerbi, La disputa del Nuovo mondo, pp. 616–617.
- 24.
Girardi G. (2006), Los pueblos indígenas, nuevos sujetos históricos, 34.
- 25.
The UN declared 1993 as the year of the “world’s indigenous peoples”; that same year, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations approved a draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. On this topic, see Giraudo, La questione indigena in America latina.
- 26.
While the first World Social Forum was being held in Porto Alegre in 2001, the UN Human Rights Committee named Mexican anthropologist Rodolfo Stavenhagen as Special Rapporteur on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples. Montagnini, Il movimento leggero.
- 27.
Girardi, Los pueblos indígenas, 20–21.
- 28.
Girardi, La nostra resistenza, 28–29. Most of the documents contained in this volume came from the Centro de Derechos humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas. One of the more notable essays was Bugliani R., Dal Messico all’Ecuador: mappe dell’insurgencia nel XXI secolo.
- 29.
MLAL was a movement of lay volunteers involved in projects of solidarity in Latin America, founded in 1966, with the approval of Pope Paul VI, by Armando Oberti. MLAL published for two decades the Quaderni ASAL series, an interesting collection of books dedicated to the religious and social problems of Latin American Church.
- 30.
Lutte G., Habed N., L’amicizia liberatrice, in www.amistrada.net
- 31.
Girardi, La conquista dell’America. Dalla parte dei vinti and Gli esclusi costruiranno la loro storia? A big amount of other documents coming from the personal papers of the Italian catholic intellectuals are now conserved in the Fondo Giulio Girardi at Archivio Storico della Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso , in Rome.
- 32.
Girardi , Samuel Ruiz, 9–10. On this theme, see also an interesting article written by the journalist Maurizio Chierici , the Latin American expert of Il Corriere della Sera; this article was used as preface to a book dedicated to the bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz , published in Italy by the Catholic trade union CISL: M. Chierici , Prefazione, VII–XIII.
- 33.
From the opening dedication (“to all Latin American crucifixes”) in Dussels , 1492–1992. La Chiesa in america latina (1492–1992), 3.
Abbreviations
- 500-IBPR:
-
500 Years of Indigenous Black and Popular Resistance
- ASAL:
-
Associazione Studi America Latina (Latin American Study Association)
- CELAM:
-
Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Latin American Episcopal Council)
- CISL:
-
Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori (Italian Confederation of Trade Unions)
- CONAIE:
-
Confederación de nacionalidades indígenas (Confederation of Indigenous Nations)
- EZLN:
-
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army)
- FSLN:
-
Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front)
- FMLN:
-
Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front)
- LIDLIP:
-
Lega Internazionale per i Diritti e la Liberazione dei Popoli (in English: ILPRL International League for People’s Rights and Liberation)
- MLAL:
-
Movimento Laici per l’America Latina (LMLA—Laity Movement for Latin America)
- MOJOCA:
-
Movimiento de los Jóvenes de la Calles (Movement of Street Youth)
- MST:
-
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement)
- PC:
-
Pax Christi
- PCI:
-
Pax Christi International
- TPP:
-
Tribunale Permanente dei Popoli (PPT—Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal)
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De Giuseppe, M. (2019). Italian Catholic Intellectuals and Indigenous Latin Americans: Transnational Networks and Violence at the End of the Cold War. In: Tarquini, A., Guiso, A. (eds) Italian Intellectuals and International Politics, 1945–1992. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24938-0_6
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