Evangelical death squads? WTF?
By gshenaut
Monday Mar 05, 2007 · 11:49 AM CST
OK, this NY Times article is an interesting story about a situation between El Salvador and Guatemala in which several important Salvadoreans were allegedly murdered by a Guatemalan death squad. Read the article, it's worthwhile. But what really caught my eye was a two-paragraph throw-away, as follows:
A high-ranking United Nations official here, who requested anonymity to protect his diplomatic neutrality, said he believed the Interior Ministry and the National Police created death squads over the last three years, trying to combat the wave of violent crime by gangs . . . .
The officers in those squads belong to evangelical churches, the official said, and see the extrajudicial killings of gang members, known here as “social cleansing,” as holy work. But they have also begun to commit crimes for their own profit. “It gets out of their hands,” the official said. “They create a Frankenstein.”
The picture presented in the cited text took my breath away. It is widely known that Evangelicalism is spreading like wildfire in Latin America, and has been for two or more decades. But that there is an intimate connection there between Bible-thumping and death squads was not known by me.
I'm posting this diary for two reasons: if in fact this is a major force in Latin America today, this Christian-justified "social cleansing", then more people need to know about it. And secondly, I'm really hoping that other denizens of dKos will post informative comments, because I'd really like to understand the dimensions and significance of the phenomenon.
I can't resist mentioning the obvious parallel between the kind of violence promoted by Shiite death squads, the Taliban, and even the strongly Wahhabist al-Qaeda, and "social cleansing" by evangically-oriented groups in Latin America. I mean, what's the world coming to?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/3/5/308333/-
(Short article, no more at link.)
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Evangelicals and the Death Squads
By on October 19, 2003
On the first day of September, 1991, in room 419 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, there was a hearing that had been structured in such a way as to elicit as little public attention as possible. Experts were on hand to speak in tones pitched to guarantee boredom. Committee members, typically half-prepared and distracted, seemed to ensure an atmosphere of monotony and torpor. The Subcommittee on “Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations” of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was taking evidence on the murky and obscure workings of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), an institution which in the months ahead was to become known as the “Bank of Crooks and Spies.” In various postures of piety and relaxation were Sens. Jesse Helms (R-NC), James Jeffords (R-VT), Claiborne Pell (D-RI), Paul Simon (D-IL), Alan Cranston (D-CA), and John Kerry (D-MA), the subcommittee chairman.
The two witnesses were Jack Blum, a former investigator for the subcommittee, and William von Rabb, U.S. Customs commissioner under Presidents Reagan and – until just that previous month – Bush – and dull their revelations were not. As Blum and von Rabb got deeper and deeper into their testimony, a number of reporters who had shown up – more out of habit and having nothing better to do – began to catch one another’s eye; in the seats reserved for the public, quiet gave way to murmurs and even a few whistles of astonishment.
Did the Federal Reserve possess a list of names of prominent Washingtonians who had taken kickbacks from BCCI? Yes, it did. Had BCCI helped certain outlaw states acquire American nuclear technology? Yes, it had. Had payments been made through BCCI to drug runners, gun smugglers, death-squad leaders? You bet. Had the Treasury Department known about BCCI? Sure. What about the Justice Department? They knew what was up, and seemed most concerned that no others would.[1]
The testimony which began to slowly emerge in the weeks and months which followed should have concerned any evangelical with the patience to follow the hearings; it revealed a sinister and noxious web of relationships which connected BCCI, to the CIA, the State Department, the Justice Department, the Middle East, drug-smuggling, money-laundering, the Contras, the Vatican, a number of rich North American and Latin American businessmen, Clark Clifford, Manuel Noriega, the Calero brothers, the Medellin Drug Cartel, D’Aubuisson, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, the Death Squads, killings, torture, “disappearances,” etc. – essentially all those elements which in any way had been connected to the defeat of communism in Central and South America. And there, in the midst of it all, were the evangelicals.
Many evangelicals, of course, will say that their involvement with such things (and people) had been worth it – the defeat of communism in Central and South America! But was it really? Can any good ever come out of such enterprises? such entanglements? – the torture! the “disappearances!” the drug-smuggling! the money laundering! etc. There is a price to be paid when one involves himself in such things – the defilement of one’s soul; the contamination of one’s psyche; the corruption of one’s character. That’s why the Scriptures warn that it’s better for Christians – especially when acting together as a “community of faith” – to suffer evil and the wrong-doing of others than to take matters into one’s own hands and strike back – even when they are apparently justified in doing so, as when, for example, the goal is the defeat of communist subversion:
“But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also … Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Please see Matt. 5:39-48)
More:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=1271
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I ACCUSE # 10: “CIA behind missionaries in Latin America!”
October 23, 2013 · by Peter Turner ·
How the US Central Intelligence Agency blatantly used religion to counteract the incoming tide of Liberation Theology is an amazing story! Anti-Catholic sects like the Pentecostalists didn’t need much persuading. What was needed was money and coordination, and this was soon forthcoming.
The main North American organisations that started this crusade against what they perceived to be Marxist takeovers with the backing of substantial sections of the RC church, were
•The Assemblies of God (Pentecostal)
•The Church of God (Pentecostal)
•The Word Church (Pentecostal)
•The Campus Crusade for Christ
•Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority
•Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network
•Trans World Missions
•World Vision
•The Gospel Crusade
•The Christian Emergency Relief Team
What all these ‘gringos’ had in common was
•They were all fundamentalists, i.e. they took the Bible literally
•They emphasized ‘personal salvation’, i.e. being ‘born again’
•The Pentecostalists especially went in for faith healing, exorcisms, and miracles (possibly an attractive option in a poor Latin American country where there is no free health service)
•They used televangelism, and that included radio too for those rural/low income areas without TV
•They supported a conservative political culture, one that was willing to acquiesce in military dictatorships or even to support them ardently!
•The Pentecostalists in particular tapped into a the ‘despised’ roots of some local popular cultures. Roots the Catholic Church had tried to suppress; a world of demons, spirits, revelations, divine cures, and exorcisms (See Zingcreed Post on the UCKG and What Conservative Christians believe)
The head honcho coordinating what the local Catholics called “the invasion of the protestant sects” was the notorious Colonel Oliver North. I shall be concentrating on what happened in Chile and Nicaragua, where conservative pro-Reagan North was against the elected left wing government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and for the military coup of general Pinochet that overthrew it. Likewise in the Central American republic of Nicaragua he was against the ruling revolutionary Sandinistas, and all for the right wing Contra rebels who were trying to overthrow them by force.
The “invasion of the sects” was indeed a US-promoted conspiracy against Liberation Theology and all social movements for the emancipation of the poor. Quite a few evangelical missions crudely identified their religious intervention in Latin America with the the interests of US foreign policy. US evangelicals helped North give political and military aid to the Contras. When it became evident that the Contras had some embarrassing habits such as destroying schools and clinics, rape, and murdering civilians, the US Congress suspended official aid. North promptly (with the covert backing of the White House) went behind Congress’s back and recruited anti-communist evangelicals into a private support network for the Contras. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network promptly handed over $2 million for the Contra guerilla army.
North pulled the strings from Washington, and advised the missions to create “rice bowl Christians”, that is to buy the loyalty of the poor through food handouts. Huge funds were made available for relief, church building and various development projects that by-passed the existing (often Catholic) institutions that were already on the ground.
The evangelical groups tried to dissuade Central Americans from joining movements for social change, by holding out the hope of spiritual alternatives to political action. They were the cheerleaders for US military intervention. Many North American missionary organisations were CIA fronts following orders from Washington. Evangelical growth was the direct result of strategic US planning. Evangelicalism was a spiritual con game, as the eventual disclosures of Oliver North were to reveal.
Evangelical Protestantism also appealed to the upper classes because it didn’t criticize the social structure from which they benefited, but indeed absolved them of any responsibility for it.
The differences between Catholics and Evangelicals were then , and still are now:
Roman Catholic Liberation Theology:
•consciousness raising among the people through grass roots activities
•commitment to the struggle of the poor for self-emancipation
•few friends in high places, persecution by death squads etc
•very few funds
Evangelicals:
•resignation and fatalism; acceptance of the status quo
•offer a safe surrender to Christ
•their churches are considered holy and respectable by the authorities
•ample funds from abroad (NB many of these churches now generate enough cash of their own not to need foreign funding, indeed some new fundamentalist sects have popped up in Latin America which owe nothing to the ‘Yanquis’.
More:
https://zingcreed.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/i-accuse-7-cia-behind-missionaries-in-latin-america/~
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