Gutierrez’s vs. Quijano’s Statements on Liberty Essay

“Theology seems to have avoided for a long time reflecting on the conflictual character of human history, the confrontations among individuals, social classes, and countries.” Gustavo Gutiérrez

“Race became the fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population into ranks, places, and roles in the new society’s structure of power.” Aníbal Quijano

Introduction

The theory of Liberation and Development is an idea brought forth by Gustavo. Through it, he establishes neutrality on the issues associated with liberation and development, thereby improving the lives of the poor. The Catholic Church supported those in power to maintain a status quo and imposed the catholic faith on indigenous people. This continued even after the 1970s, making the Catholic Church a pillar of strength (Gutiérrez, 2021). Between the 1970s and 1980s, Gustavo Gutierrez published the Liberation of the Liberation theory, a change of ideas towards land distribution, race, power, and economic development, which were economically intertwined. On the other hand, Quijano introduces the notion of race. This concept is used to bring in differences, place the blacks as inferior, and identify the colonizers as superior. Through the concept of race Quijano, therefore, tries to define the basis of the conquest of the Americans to the present and how race has played a significant role in ensuring that a long-standing pattern of power has emerged and brought about capitalism. Therefore, this paper analyses Gustavo’s statement, meaning, and significance, including its relationship and theological importance to Quijano’s statement.

Significance and Meaningfulness

From the statement, Gustavo introduces a new idea on what the church should do rather than remaining neutral on the issues affecting society, such as social classes, confrontations among individuals, countries, and human history. The Church doctrines should, in this case, direct the people leading to utmost consideration of the poor. However, in Latin America, the Catholic Church takes a neutral position on the issue. Gustavo, also known as the father of theology liberation, published a book, “A Theology of liberation,” and in his book distinguishes between three types of poverty; spiritual, voluntary, and material poverty (Gutiérrez, 2021). Spiritual poverty shows an individual’s sincere desire for God, while voluntary poverty is the act of detachment from worldly wealth in solidarity with the poor. Lastly, material poverty is described by Gustavo as being deprived of basic needs, which allows one to live a dignified life. The liberation theory, therefore, brings the idea that God takes the side of marginalized people and those subjected to material poverty (Gutiérrez, 2021). To follow God, an individual has to be in a position to share God’s preferential option for the poor and work towards eradicating poverty and marginalization.

Many liberalist theorists use the Marxist theory or critical thinking to make explicit the systems of oppression to help the poor get freedom. The idea of Liberation is, therefore, a fundamental reflection on praxis which follows an individual’s actions on the world, which are seeing, acting, and judging (Gutiérrez, 2021). Seeing, in this case, involves the perception of an unjust structure. On the other hand, Judging allows an individual to handle poverty in line with God, who fights for the oppressed. The systems promoting racism, poverty, and racial class should therefore be judged as structural sins since they reside in social and structural patterns within society. Finally, acting enables an individual to offer help by giving a hungry person food or engaging in legislative duties to help fight the oppressive systems (Gutiérrez, 2021). The idea, therefore, challenges a liberalist theologist to be open to the God of the marginalized, listen to the marginalized, and have the readiness to act to help the oppressed.

Relationship and Theological Importance to Quijano’s Statement

Before the American colonization, there was no hierarchy in terms of race; hence, Latin Americans were not differentiated according to race. After the colonization of America and its peripheries, two orders emerged; the colonizers and the colonized, with the former projecting a differentiation in races (Quijano, 2000). With the two distinct groups, the concept of race was later restructured to refer to differential biological structures between the two groups. The ideas of race led to the creation of identities such as blacks, Indians, and Americans. Languages such as Spanish and Portuguese were also used to connote a new identity of race rather than their initial connotation, which was used to refer to the origin of an individual (Quijano, 2000). With the kind of modernity being addressed by Quijano, new relations of dominations were constructed to act as primary social classifications.

Quijano does not apply a Marxist approach while bringing out his idea from the two statements. With time, the trait of an individual’s color was used to determine their racial category, which was initially established in the area of Anglo-American. The blacks were the most exploited and used as labor; hence, their race was inferior to that of the Americans, resulting in the introduction of a new global power (Quijano, 2000). The paradigm shift led to the dominant patterns of power that underpinned the causes and effects of colonialism. On the one hand, Gustavo also tries to offer a solution that can help do away with the issues of class, race, and conflicts based on a theological approach (Gutiérrez, 2021). On the other hand, Quijano states that the problems related to race and capitalism still exist and are still evolving, hence contradicting the idea of Gustavo that such systems can be done away with.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the statements by Gustavo and Quijano present critical perspectives in theology relative to liberty and development. According to Gustavo, sorting the problem of poverty can help redefine the Church’s position and help fight the war on classes. Gustavo’s statements contradict Quijano since they apply a Marxist theory to deal with issues. On the other hand, Quijano addresses the problems to have changed since colonization. His idea introduces new challenges such as globalization, race, and class between the colonized and colonizers. There is, therefore, a contradiction in the approach used since the statement by Gustavo gives hope while Quijano introduces problems without offering concrete solutions.

References

Gutiérrez, G. (2021). A theology of liberation: History, politics, and salvation. Orbis Books.

Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. Coloniality at Large, 1(3), 533–580. Web.