Reviews

Looking for God in Brazil: The
Progressive Catholic Church in
Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena by John Burdick, University of Califor- nia Press, 1993, 280 pp., $45 (cloth).
In overwhelmingly Catholic Latin
America, a region beset by deep
social and economic inequality, the
progressive Catholic Church would
seem ideally situated to prosper.
Paradoxically however, the libera-
tion theology-inspired Christian
base communities (CEBs) have not
enjoyed a popular groundswell.
Even in Brazil, the Latin American
country with the most CEBs,
Catholicism is losing ground against
the African-Brazilian religion um-
banda and the evangelical churches.
In this incisive, immensely read-
able book, anthropologist John
Burdick explores the reasons for the
Catholic Church’s decline by ana-
lyzing the choices of religious affil-
iation made by the residents of Sdo
Jorge in the outskirts of Rio de
Janeiro. Unlike much previous
scholarship about the Church which
has tended to ignore competing reli-
gions, Burdick sees the religious
arena as a fluid one in which reli-
gious migration is the norm, not the
exception. He compares how
Catholicism, umbanda and pente-
costalism fare in addressing the
experiential predicaments of some
of the most marginal sectors of the
working class, unmarried youths, married women facing domestic
conflict, and African Brazilians in
Sdo Jorge. In each case, progressive
Catholicism comes up short.
Given that the CEBs are losing the
battle for souls in Brazil’s urban
periphery, the question of whether
the Catholic Church is the only reli-
gious vehicle for social change be-
comes more urgent. Burdick points
out that many CEB members have
not made the leap into political
activism despite the Church’s teach-
ings, while pentecostalism-often
caricatured as the religion of the sta-
tus quo-does offer possibilities for
active political engagement.
Shadows of Tender Fury: The
Letters and Communiques of
Subcomandante Marcos and
the Zapatista Army of National
Liberation Monthly Review Press, 1995, 272 pp., $30.00 (cloth), $15.00 (paper).
In the space of a few weeks in Jan-
uary, 1994, the ski-masked guerrilla
leader who calls himself Marcos,
through a skillful mix of political
audacity, literary irony and high-
tech media manipulation, trans-
formed himself and the indigenous
communities of the state of Chiapas
into Mexican national icons. This
transformation probably began with
one of his earliest and best-known
communiques, in which he replies
to a government offer to pardon his
peasant troops. “Who must ask for
pardon,” he asks, “and who can
grant it? Those who for years and
years have satiated themselves at
full tables, while death sat beside us
so regularly that we finally stopped
being afraid of it? Those who filled
our pockets and our souls with
promises and empty declarations?”
This timely collection, ably trans-
lated by Frank Bardacke and Leslie
L6pez, is essential reading for any-
one interested in the ongoing
Zapatista uprising, the shape of
peasant insurgency in the post-Cold
War era, Mexico’s widespread
political-economic crisis, or politi-
cally engaged Latin American liter-
ature. (For those who read Spanish,
Marcos is well worth reading in the
original. Virtually the same collec-
tion is available in Mexico as
EZLN: Documentos y comunicados
(Ediciones Era, 1994), with a pow-
erful introduction by Antonio
Garcia de Le6n.) In addition to
revealing Marcos’ poetic talents,
these letters and communiques pro-
vide an excellent introduction to the
nature of plunder and misery in
Chiapas. With explanatory com-
mentary by John Ross and Frank
Bardacke, the book offers a first-
rate snapshot of the struggle which
is the fruit of that plunder.