SPECIAL
In Memoriam
John Paul II

Even if they cannot really afford food, clothes, books, university fees, or even computers, certainly, in one way or the other, nearly 6.5 billion people living on this planet, could inform themselves about the meaning of central concepts such as religion, ideology and theory, about world realities and fascist machinations.

 
SPECIAL
In Memoriam
John Paul II

Even if they cannot really afford food, clothes, books, university fees, or even computers, certainly, in one way or the other, nearly 6.5 billion people living on this planet, could inform themselves about the meaning of central concepts, such as religion, ideology and theory, about world realities and fascist machinations.

Especially in Venezuela ... as a result of huge, past alphabetization campaigns, of educational missions, Bolivarian schools and universities and the government donations of information computers, distributed to the indigenous peoples, reaching the very jungles ... there is no excuse anymore, not to study, not to know what happened to us historically, about colonial and neo-colonial thought slavery, about mind control and the intellectual holocaust, that since half-a-millennium have played havoc with our very vulnerable, precious existence.

And, yet, like in the case of Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Lady Di, in Europe, currently nearly 5 million pilgrims are marching on the Vatican.

For today, within the context of global mourning for the Pope, including globalized ruling class crocodile tears, it is pertinent to take up the most delicate concept of them all, the issue of colonial, neo-colonial and imperialist religion. Abusing of their most sacred human feelings and sentiments, it is simply horrible to see how unknowingly and ideologically millions subconsciously and deliberately are being led astray by massive, global propaganda, to participate in bombastic religious festivals that have nothing to do with their earthly well-being.

Under Globalization, the past, physical and material attacks on the bases of Afghanistan, Iraq and Venezuela are now being followed by the intellectual and ideological superstructural world war in Rome.

Any conscientious student of past history could detect, that in the social, global context, various regional polytheistic and monotheistic world religions, mainly the latter, in their dominant phases, corresponded to specific dominant classes that produced them, more precisely, belonged to definite modes of production; also, that they were used for imperial and imperialist purposes; they faded away with the decaying of the cultures and civilizations of these obsolete ruling classes themselves. Progressively other dominant religions and ideologies replaced them.

Of course, in the minds of the oppressed slaves, serfs, peasants and workers, this religiously induced strychnine still lived on for many centuries to come, causing serious problems for revolutionary and emancipatory efforts.

Long before the European conquistadores arrived in South and Central America, even in North America, the indigenous peoples had their very own beliefs, rituals and customs, sacred things and places, human feelings and sentiments.

What all these had to do with the European concept of God or Religion remains to be analyzed very precisely by ourselves.

Within this delicate context, we should recollect that what Che Guevara had underlined: the duty of all real, true revolutionaries "is to make the revolution", to act (práxis) and to think (theory) it.

In time, before the fascist night forever darkens our emancipatory horizons, this also implies to warn the comrades, the yearning masses of peoples, about mortal ideological dangers, no matter how delicate they may seem to be, even touching "forbidden fruits" and "sacred cows".

How often, I have heard: "I agree with everything that you say, but, please, do not touch my sacred religion!"

What we explain here is being done with great revolutionary responsibility, very lovingly and careful, it is not meant to offend or criticize anyone.

Well, it is our sacred emancipatory duty, transhistorically backed by billions of desperate prayers of poverty against opulent global fascism, to touch it, because, ever since the "discovery", it painfully touched us very deeply too. It painstakingly burned us on the stake, quartered us, threw millions of Africans slaves into the Atlantic Ocean, crucified our thinking faculties, changing them into passive, belief receptors. In the name of "Knoweth ye the Truth, and the Truth shall make thee free", representing the "wretched of the earth", I write this topical commentary, with the healthy watchword: errarum humanum est!

If we want to develop our own "ideology", our own "socialism", our own "Bolivarian Revolution", then it must be Venezuelan, Latin American. Nothing truly human is strange to us, and, really, we are not strangers to anything humane and humanist. If we want, if we need religion, our own religion, where is the problem? Let us have it!

However, we have to know ourselves, identify ourselves, and, hence, we have to discover the truths and realities of our very souls, to know what happened to them, and why, after 500 years, we are still in mental slave bondage. We have to uproot this Mental Holocaust; no European financial reparation could ever wipe away the tremendous damage caused in the colonial world by European Slavery, Feudalism and Capitalism.

It is so strange, generally, we radically criticize, condemn and abhor all the material evils that feudalism had brought upon Latin America, yet the worst one of them all, the particular, spiritual, repressive, oppressive, depressive and suppressive religious superstructure, that concerns every single individual that lives in Latin America ... something that historically was totally alien to America ... that the Dominican Order of the Spanish Inquisition, of the burning at the stake, has institutionalized here, we do not even daydream about eradicating it forever.

The conquerors' brutal, inhuman values were introduced; ever since "Colon", we were colonized, Europeanized. All this Eduardo Galeano and others have described in detail. An assimilation of indigenous and colonial peoples took place, we began to pray in Latin, learned to speak Spanish and Portuguese, were "talking in strange tonques", were begging in strange languages, we became Latin Americans, "Small Venicians", Venezuelans.

We liberated ourselves physically, but what about our thinking, thoughts, our spirits? Was this not also the liberation plea of Jose Marti, of Simon Bolivar?

And, what happened to our original sacred ideas, sentiments, feelings and emotions? Today still, across five centuries, hopefully they echo from the Orinoco Delta and Amazonia! At least, now, our truly democratic Bolivarian Constitution fully guarantees their rights of existence.

What tried to wipe them out completely? What replaced them? And, everywhere, in everyday life, why are we defending colonial and neocolonial religion and ideology with our very lives?

Why are we just afraid of alien socialists, communists, terrorists, atheists and Marxists? Who taught us to be afraid of them? And why do we love our imported religion so dearly, painting so many "white" angels? Do we know anything about how European Religion was theologically fabricated in the Old World, from Plato, to Plotinus, to St. Augustine, over Marc Aurelio, Epitectus, Seneca, to St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Gregory, etc.?

Apart from earning our daily bread, asking to be given our daily bread, we should know all these things, to know in what we believe! Even this is our sacred revolutionary duty! This is why we go to school, to the Bolivarian University.

To deepen the Bolivarian Revolution, to approximate its "ideological" mission, these are questions to be asked and studied, to be answered very seriously, before the next Conquest, the next Intellectual Holocaust of Big Brother: that is, before North America completely wipes out our very minds and souls! These urgent tasks have to be handled with special loving care, be published responsibly, and should not be ignored in our defense strategies and tactics, so that the critique of our arms ... the sword and the feather, práxis and theory ... really and truly becomes our arms of critique against Bush's aggressive Global Fascism.

Why do we want to conscientize the masses? Do they not have a conscience, are they not conscious? If not, what happened to their Christianized religious awareness over the last 500 years? How do we explain this strange phenomenon in our educational missions?

Hence, comrades, already between the devil and the deep, blue sea, to be fed to the sharks, let us challenge and access these revolutionary, sublime cliffs, where angels fear to tread!

Now, let us briefly summarize what the dialectical Negation within the French Revolution, that is, what true, real Socialism had criticized about the feudalist, absolutist, theological creation: about European, Colonial Religion in general; to know why Marx has underlined why all social revolutionary critique must begin with religious critique, with the critique of religious ideology.

Concerning European conscience and consciousness, that is, concerning the critique of religion, in the middle of the 19th century, the German philosopher and moralist, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804 - 1872) ... in his titanic work: Das Wesen des Christentums (1841; The Essence of Christianity) ... formulated the theory, that the European "civilized" man is to himself his own object of thought, and that Religion is nothing more than a “consciousness