Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Indian Tribalism: The Communist-Missionary Ideal for Brazil in the Twenty-First Century

Opposed to tradition, the new missionaries could not fail to mention the pioneers with brutal one-sidedness.

44. Pioneers, the Greatest Predators and Indian Killers

From the bulletin CIC - Catholic Information Center - commenting on the 5th meeting of the Southern Region of CIMI:

The participants [of the meeting], representing different outposts in Indian areas of the State of São Paulo, were better able to feel the situation in which nearly 700 Guarani, Caingangue and Terena Indians live, 'surviving, they say, the robberies, plunders, and all kinds of injustices of which they were the victims in the land whence departed the greatest predators and Indian killers - today considered national heroes - the pioneers.' (Doc. 32)

45.  Discoverers and Pioneers: Malefactors

From the autobiography of Bishop Pedro Casaldaliga:

I have finally understood, and even felt, the whole mass of racist superiority, of deified dominion and inhuman exploitation with which the new worlds were discovered, colonized, and many times evangelized. 'To colonize' and 'to civilize' have already ceased to be human verbs for me, as have also the new colonizing formulas of 'pacifying' and 'integrating' the Indians here where I live and suffer. Imperialism, Colonialism, and Capitalism merit, in my 'creed', the same anathema. The monuments to the discoverers and the pioneers are repugnant to me. The monument to Anhanguera in a public square of Goiania causes me physical pain (Doc. 33, p. 176).

Commentary

Doubtless colonialism, in America and elsewhere, sometimes conquered through the practice of abominable crimes.

Nevertheless, it is absurd to affirm that colonization is intrinsically evil, and moreover, to hold that the discoveries are evil.

It is contrary to historical fact to maintain that there was nothing but crime in the colonization of the Americas, and that no considerable advantages for humanity derived from it.

The unilaterality of Bishop Casaldaliga's assessments becomes especially clear in the last two phrases of the text which designates the "discoverers" and "pioneers" as nothing more than malefactors.

Next

Previous

Contents