By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Dec 3 1996 (IPS)

Eighteen Jesuit leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean have issued a letter denouncing the increase in levels of poverty and the tendency towards individualism in the region.

In the first declaration of its kind to be issued since 1967, leaders of the Jesuit Order (known as “provincials”) blamed the problems on economic adjustment programmes being implemented in nations across the continent. They said the consequences of such programmes were not acceptable.

Adjustment had increased the number of poor people, widened the social gap, and caused popular unrest, crime, political instability and deterioration of the environment, the Jesuits said.

Arturo Sosa, the provincial from Venezuela, said the “Rio Letter” of 1967 was the last time the 18 Jesuit superiors issued a statement on the Latin American situation. That came at a time when the region was going through a period of political and social turmoil.

This new letter was the product of a meeting attended by a representative grouping of some of the region’s 3,500 Jesuits. Held between Nov. 11 and 15 in Mexico, it included participation of the order’s General Superior, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, also known as the “Black Pope.”

The Jesuits rejected the idea that there was no alternative to the “bitter medicine” of the impoverishment of millions of Latin americans “as the inevitable cost of future growth.”

Disseminated on Tuesday in Caracas, the letter calls for the promotion of models that emerge from Latin American society itself, and which were based on a greater degree of humanism, justice and solidarity.

The Jesuits admit that there have been some benefits of the neo- liberal model, such as the control of inflation, the incentives to productivity, the limitations placed on government action, the promotion of fiscal austerity, and the push towards commercial integration.

But they also say that these factors do not make up for the “enormous imbalances” such as concentration of income, wealth and land ownership. Nor the increase in urban unemployment and precarious jobs, the closing down of companies, the displacement of indigenous and rural communities, and the growth of drug trafficking and corruption.

Neoliberalism, they argue, is based on a conception of human beings and social life which is “unacceptable and foreign to Christianity.”

They argue that it promotes a double reduction of men and women. On the one hand, it promotes individualism while on the other hand that fulfillment is reduced to the capacity for generating income, winning the race for possessions and legitimizing any means used in order to achieve this.

The process had undervalued many cultural and human expressions. The concept of humanity was transformed into a uniform one through “dominant forms imposed on the market by a globalization which is understood unilaterally.”

Incapable of dialoguing with their own people, they become foreigners in their own countries, and the promoters of an alienation of their own roots,” they say.

The result is a “lack of sensitivity.” It was considered normal for millions of children to be born into poverty. The spectacle of misery was no longer cause for outrage, the Jesuits argue.

“There is also a lack of recognition of the social structures in the world today as generators of injustice,” said the 18 superiors. The Jesuit provinces are defined the numbers of followers, thus all of Central America is one province, while in Brazil there are four.

The response that the Jesuits want to promote is the construction of “the society that we want,” with the attributes of justice, solidarity, fraternity, productivity, equitable distribution, as well respectful of cultural and other types of diversity.

The Jesuits acknowledge that this goal is difficult, because it implies a change in attitudes, habits and values, while also requiring “appropriating the positive elements of modernity, like work, organization and efficiency, without which we cannot build the society that we dream about.”

In their letter, the Jesuits also announce that they will support popular organizations and form solidarity communities as a way of transforming the social and political structures which are now causing injustice.

They also propose a “great intellectual exercise” to deal with the complexity of the situation created by globalization and the decade of the adjustment programmes in the region, and to propose “viable alternatives.”

The letter also states that this is not a solitary task but rather one in which allies must be sought out, within a solidary structure “where science, technology and the markets” are at the service of the people.”

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