“Do you have information on the transnationals’ investments all over the world? I think they must come to about $600 billion.”
“No, it’s $930 billion.”
“Nine hundred and thirty billion?”
“Yes, that’s the Third World’s foreign debt.”
Fidel said, “No, I’m asking about direct investments, not the debt.”
“They amounted to $640 billion in 1982.”
“Seventy-five percent of that is in the industrialized countries.”
“Yes,” Joelmir Beting agreed.
“So that means around $150 billion in the Third World.”
“Approximately.”
There was a break for coffee, which was immediately followed by a long, exclusive interview that Fidel Castro gave the Brazilian journalist concerning the Cuban proposal regarding an analysis of the poor countries’ foreign debts. I was present at the interview but didn’t take any notes, for the publication of that material is the interviewer’s responsibility; but he has allowed me to transcribe here the first part of his talk with the Cuban leader.
It was 5:30 a.m. Our host rose and said, “I still have to do my exercises and eat something. I haven’t had a bite in 15 hours.”
He walked through a doorway and invited us to follow him. We went into a private elevator that took us to the garage, in the basement of the Palace of the Revolution. We got into the comandante’s Mercedes Benz and drove through the streets of Havana, which were still dark in this pre-summer period. Another Mercedes, with guards, followed ours. A little later the cars parked in front of the house where we were staying. Fidel Castro got out; said a warm goodbye to Joelmir Beting, who had to be at the airport in two hours; and shook my hand as well. In the living room, still feeling the excitement of the long meeting, Joelmir and I had some whiskey and some Cuban cheese. Outside, the blushing night withdrew before the discreet arrival of the day.
Following Joelmir Beting’s return to Brazil I waited for the time I would be called to interview the comandante. It was a long wait, as all anxious waits are. My parents and I spent the days going around Havana: visiting the Federation of Cuban Women, where Vilma Espín greeted us warmly; a nursery school; and the national office of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). We strolled through the downtown part of the city, had icecream at Coppelia — the best icecream parlor in the world, where only fresh products are used — and went shopping in the international hotels’ shopping centers — dollar stores that are only for tourists. While paying a call on Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana, my mother was given a beautiful picture in color of an effigy of Our Lady of Charity, Cuba’s patron saint — a mulatta, as so many Latin American Marys are. Moreover, like our own Lady of the Apparition, it was found in the ocean by poor fishermen in 1607.
I had no hopes of interviewing Fidel Castro over the weekend. On Saturday afternoon, my parents went off to Varadero, which is considered the most beautiful beach in Cuba. I couldn’t go, because I was scheduled to give a public talk on Jesus’ spirituality that evening at the Dominican convent. Around 70 people attended, including several communist friends: Brazilian Hélio Dutra and his wife, Ela; Marta Harnecker of Chile, the author of several books on the fundamentals of Marxism; and Jorge Timossi, from Casa de las Américas. Two very dear friends were also there: Cintio Vitier, one of the best Cuban poets, and Fina, his wife. Among the priests was the congenial Father Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, vicar general of Havana and secretary of the Cuban Bishops’ Conference. Young and adult lay people, monks, nuns, and seminarians also attended. I gave the talk in the conference room of the convent. It brought to mind the lingering presence of the Dominican friars in Cuba; of Bartolomé de las Casas, defender of the indigenous peoples; and of those who founded the University of Havana in 1728. Now, there are only five Dominican friars on the entire island, two of whom are at the Vedado convent.
When we speak of spirituality, the word reminds us of spiritual retreats, quiet and secluded places, saintly people with photographs of sunsets by the sea or ponds like mirrors. Spiritual life sounds like something opposed to carnal, material life; something that entails a retreat from the world, from everyday life; a unique privilege for those poor mortals who don’t benefit from the haven offered by contemplative monasteries. There are countless “spiritualities” within the church: the Dominican, the Franciscan, the Jesuit, the Marian; those offered by workshops on Christianity; etc. Theologically, what does it mean to “adopt spirituality”? It means adopting a way of following Jesus. We can follow him the way Francis of Assisi or Theresa de Avila or Thomas à Kempis or Teilhard de Chardin did. Despite the fact that among the Latin American poorer classes several native, devotional, and pilgrim spiritualities sprang up around black- and brown-skinned Marys — such as Our Ladies of Charity, of Guadalupe, and of the Apparition — at the institutional level of the church the spiritualities imported from Europe prevailed. The theology was also imported. Religious schools taught a European, bourgeois way of following Jesus that contradicted not only our reality — which was characterized by flagrant social contradictions — but also the Gospel’s own prescriptions. Rome’s difficulties in understanding liberation theology are the result of its inability to accept a theology other than the one prepared in Europe within the church.
Can there be different theological approaches within one and the same church? When I lived in the hills of Santa María, in Victoria, a worker who lived next door asked me for a book on “the life of Jesus.” I gave him a copy of the New Testament. Every time I saw him I would ask, “Tell me Mr. Antonio, have you read the life of Jesus?” One day he told me, “Betto, I’ve read all the Gospels and learned a lot, yet I must tell you something: I found that the stories about Jesus are too repetitious.” This is a good example, showing that, in the Gospels themselves, there are four different theologies: Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s, and John’s. Theology is the reflection of faith within a given reality. Luke wrote his evangelical account with pagans in mind, whereas Matthew wrote for the Jews.
Who writes theology within the church? All Christians do. Theology is the fruit of the reflection that the Christian community — immersed in a reality — makes of its faith. Thus, each Christian theologizes just as each housewife economizes at the market. Not every housewife is an economist, just as not every Christian is a theologian. Theologians are those who have a good command of the scientific bases of theology and who, at the same time, grasp the reflection of faith given by the community and formulate it systematically.
After Vatican II the Latin American church started to formulate its own theology. It stopped importing it from Europe. Prior to this, every seminarian had had to speak some French in order to study the works on theology of Father Congar, de Lubac, Guardini, or Rahner. This theology, which came into being in the Christian base communities in the region and was the result of the challenge posed by the liberation process of the oppressed, has been systematized by such men as Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff. It differs from Europe’s “liberal theology” in its methodology. Theology is faith’s answer to the challenges posed by reality. What were the most important events in Europe during this century? Undoubtedly, World Wars I and II. They gave rise, in European culture, to disturbing questions regarding self, the value of the human being, and the purpose of life. All of the philosophical work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Karl Jaspers; the literary work of Albert Camus and Thomas Mann; and Buñuel’s and Fellini’s films try to answer that question. Theology is no exception. In its attempts to relate to European reality, it seeks the mediation of personalist philosophy, whose axis is the human being.
Now, then, what is the aspect that has characterized Latin America in this century? It is the collective, majority existence of millions of hungry people. It is the nonperson. And theology has discovered that the mediation of philosophy doesn’t suffice for understanding the political and structural reasons for the massive existence of the