Elsa Tamez, “The Bible and the Five Hundred Years of Conquest”
Yet another article is fascinating in its scope and depth of content. Tamez lays out the basis for the development of Liberation theology and Liberation biblical interpretation by showing the historical background of the methods used in South America for biblical interpretation. The author is attempting to show a line of progress in interpretive methods from the time of Conquest to the future, where she envisions indigenous populations and their religious viewpoints playing a vital role. Tamez divides the main hermeneutical positions used for biblical interpretation since 1492: 1) the Bible as it was used during the conquest by both conquistadores and dissenting priests; 2) rejection of the Bible by indigenous peoples who were holding fast to their local traditions; 3) what she refers to as a “popular” reading of the Bible, which in the US we would call “populist”; and 4) the integration of and dialogue with indigenous traditions.
The Bible was used and misused in many ways during the conquest. The main interpreters Tamez uses are Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was horrified by the casual slaughter and patently un-Christian activities of the Spanish, and Fr. Toribio de Benavente, also called Motolinia, who viewed the conquest of the local native populations as analogous to the plagues in Egypt. However, instead of the enslaved local natives taking the role of the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, Motolinia saw the Spanish as the Hebrews, with the plagues wrought by God as punishment on the Indians for their blasphemous religion.
The rejection of the Bible came when indigenous religious persons rejected the biblical interpretation of the world, the Christian need for salvation, and the Spanish use of the Bible as just cause for genocide. As a result, many of these indigenous holdouts were summarily executed as “tribute” for God’s providential support in Spanish victory. This section contained such a revelation for me. The letter to Pope John Paul II from a group of Latin and North American Indians returning the Bible to him was the most liberative paragraph I’ve read in a long time. The best quote for me: “Please, take your Bible and give it back to our oppressors, because they need its moral precepts more than we.”[1]
The popular, or populist, reading of the Bible seeks to view the Bible as part of how we understand our lives today, as well as vice versa. Therefore, those who are oppressed and marginalized must be able to liberate the Gospel from the view of the privileged European white perspective and see how the Bible speaks to the widow and the orphan, the battered wife and the sexually-abused child, the immigrant and the poor. This populist reading of the Bible moves the needle towards texts that are life-giving and constructive for the oppressed, as opposed to those texts that are used to keep the oppression in place.
The integration of and dialogue with indigenous communities is the last, most recent, and possible future of the Latin American liberative Bible interpretation. Tamez has difficulty with the integration of non-Christian belief into biblical interpretation, but she sees its value in both the illumination of texts as well as breaking down religious barriers that divide us as humans. I’m reading a lot about this in my other classes at the moment. Difficulty arises when Christians worry that they are losing something inherently Christian about their belief when they become open to other beliefs. Tamez does believe that those who ignore other beliefs and disagree with the integration of their practices are afraid of the “other,” not necessarily whatever beliefs they are rejecting. I believe we must be open to the possibility of revelation to other groups outside of Christianity. To believe that God speaks only to Christians seems very Eurocentric.
[1] Elsa Tamez, “The Bible and the Five Hundred Years of Conquest,” in Voices from the Margin: Intepreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R.S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2006), 18.
Embodied Theology 