JUSTIce, Peace and Freedom Current Predicaments

So Paulo, SP, Brazil

Frei betto

The major powers of todays world the U.S.A., Russia, United Kingdom, and France believe that peace will be the outcome of a balance of power; which in fact is imbalance. The more and better weapons a country possesses, the better it will deter potential adversaries and thus prevent terrorist actions and military conflicts. The exception is China, which does not engage in international conflicts and does not deploy soldiers not even to strengthen the blue helmets the UN peace troops in foreign lands. Seven centuries before Christ, prophet Isaiah had already emphasized that true peace can only be a fruit of justice (Isaiah 32, 17). As long as inequality among nations remains, conflicts will hardly cease. While the fall of the Berlin wall ended the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the wealth disparity between North and South is still an obstacle to the dream of peace. Another factor that hinders the achievement of peace is religious fundamentalism: the belief that my belief should take prevalence over any other. And that I should undertake every effort to ensure that all the others enter into my religious group. That is the belief that only my religion holds the whole truth. Even among Christians it has not been easy to walk the path of ecumenism. The Second Vatican Council was labeled Ecumenical, but since the pontificate of John Paul II, Rome insists that only the Catholic Church has the full means of salvation. In many Latin American countries where the Protestant brand of Neo-Pentecostalism expands, the bishops call these churches sects... What to say then about inter-religious dialogue? Rome, and most Bishops look with presumption and contempt towards religious traditions of indigenous (like the Santo Daime in Brazil), African (candombl, santera, umbanda), and Eastern (i.e. the various streams of Buddhism) origins, etc. Hidden behind this impasse in ecumenical and interreligious dialogues is power struggle. It may
40

merely be a religious struggle, over the conquest of believers and amplification of the religious denomination patrimony. It also may be political, of doctrinal supremacy over civil laws. In many Latin American countries, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal Churches repeat the (unsuccessful) experience of the Catholic Church in founding a Christian Democratic Party. The difference now is that the name of the party is not always religiously qualified, but they seek, through (a conservative) existing party, to choose the largest number of politicians, in general their own pastors, to create civil laws that require citizens to live according to the doctrinal parameters of a religious confession, hence the growing phenomenon of homophobia, and the elimination of debate regarding the decriminalization of abortion and drugs. If peace is now hampered by so many structural injustices favored by the capitalist neoliberal hegemony (which divinizes private appropriation of wealth), what is there to say about freedom? What does it mean to be free? For capitalism, freedom, democracy, and the market are synonymous (free enterprise, free market, etc.), up to the point of considering a freedoms right the exploitation of other peoples labor and private accumulation of surplus value. Free is everything that strengthens the system: media in service of the ruling class interests; land and real estate speculation; porn industry; manufacture and sale of harmful food to children; military industry; science and technology at the service of the few rich in society. In this context, the intent to resist the tentacles of the system, as for example, by establishing regulatory parameters for the functioning of media and internet,- as Venezuela, Ecuador and Argentina did- the chorus of censorship, and undue State intervention, can soon be heard! In other words, freedom as conceived by neoliberalism is associated with the right of a few to appropriate the freedom of the many. Those countries

Translation by Jos Moreira

that adopted the Anglo-Saxon model of democracy, governed by the predominance of capital are considered free. Why does Puerto Rico remain under the U.S. tutelage since 1898? Why are Western powers troops free to act as intervening police at any point of the planet as they deem it necessary? It is not the interest of the system for the world to be free. In consequence, a growing number of people choose security over freedom. The system has all the interest to fear in us: from the street, from the unknown, from the neighbor, from the poor, from those who do not profess our belief or have a different skin color. Where citizens feel free, as in the internet, he or she is in fact exposed to those interested in capturing all their personal data and in monitoring their preferences and relationships, in order to avoid potential enemies and encourage the markets expansion. Today, freedom is restricted to consumerism. We are free to choose between different brands of electronic equipment or cars. Do not dare to declare you would prefer other possible worlds! We are free to want what the system wants; in exchange for our freedom, the system offers us security, so that we remain permanently under the Big Brothers control, and our lives restricted, devoid of sense, idealism and utopia. Fortunately, not everything is lost. The system itself is in crisis. The emperor has no clothes, as voters vote for politicians, but are governed by the IMF, the European Central Bank and the U.S. rating agencies. The outrage grows, taking multitudes to the streets in protest. Native peoples and alternative communities teach us that freedom is always associated to the community and to a project of society. Free are all those who commit themselves into making others free and happy the indigenous peoples, the landless of Brazil, the monks secluded in their monasteries, the militants of utopia, blacks committed to tear down discrimination, women fighting for their rights, homosexuals engaged in their dignity to be recognized ... and, finally, all those who are already convinced that the right to be different (the imperative of justice and freedom) shall not result in q divergence, but in establishing peace.

41