By Manuel González Prada

Times of Struggle

I

     The conservatives of Peru have not succeeded in forming a normal and viable organization, since colonies or agglomerations of tardigrades do not deserve to be called a party: their head is missing. As in the novel by Paul de Kock, in which Mr. Avefría would wander in search for his wife, in our national politics, the ultramontanes are fishing for a leader. In their altar cloth or rallying banner, they ought to write this sole phrase: “a García Moreno is needed here”.

     Piérola (their messiah for many years) did not produce for them all that they desired, although he rejuvenated the churches, founded new dioceses, allowed opportunistic friars to take control of the convents and opposed the execution of the very few laws favorable to the secularization of our Civil Code. This individual, who introduces confusion and embroilment wherever he places his hands, could not satisfy even his fellow party members. The ideas inside Piérola’s skull are spider webs in the Cretan labyrinth. Aside from being bewildered, vacillating, and rambling, he leaves much to be desired by way of public and private virtues. Conservatives, who do not ask for much subcutaneous cleanliness, demand of their party members, and especially of their leaders, a wrapping, or an epidermis, free of suspicious stains or blemishes. Since they follow the law of keeping up appearances, they want their monster to keep its skin untarnished, even if its fangs are bloody.

     Romaña serves them as an appetizer while they wait for a Núñez, a Francia, or a García Moreno.¹ He does not fulfill the hopes of the clerical camp, because he is, rather than a man, a kind of automaton controlled by a Civilist, a Democrat, a Constitutionalist, a reverend father commander or a mother abbess.² He resembles a colorless, insipid and amorphous substance, a thick fluid that takes the shape of the container; thus, according to the wishes of the packer, he will acquire the form of a water pitcher, oil flask, wine jug, or something less clean. If he put forth good effort, “surpassing himself,” Romaña would solidify and even crystallize in the mold, but without obtaining the organic structure or ascending to the rank of a conscious person.

     If Conservatives found their man, and succeeded in building an organism, they would offer the Republic to the “Sacred Hearts,” repeal the laws that to any extent favor the individual’s emancipation, and carry out a true manhunt of their enemies. In the meantime, they should call themselves the party of snoozers, of the blessed who sleep the sleep of the marmots, who imagine that the twentieth century is not too distant from the year one thousand. Today, they can only rely on the crippled in body and soul, or on skullcaps and buns, only having been able to establish some poor and pitiful men’s “Catholic Unions” and many women’s associations or brotherhoods and confraternities, with baroque and eccentric names.

     II

     In the “Catholic Unions,” brotherhoods or confraternities, the baton is carried by some clerics who ingest Priapus in the Trinity, conciliate virginity with the propagation of twins, and serve as widows’ companions as much as they are husbands’ assistants. Along with the clerics, those who repent at the last hour stand out, the magistrates who soften and carry unction in their souls after having carried an ointment in their hands all of their lives. There are many buxom women of the look-but-do-not-touch type, or beautiful retirees that in illo tempore gave to the flesh what the flesh asked for and today offer the Lord the brightness of a chastity that no one would dare to subject to a test. There is no lack of girls of good appearance who affiliate with it for idleness, pretense, novelty or snobbery, since, to say truthfully, they do not dream of dying with palm fronds and a crown; they would rather have fun than rosary prayers and would happily let the devil carry them if during the trip they were to stumble upon nuptial bed or its equivalent. Around old and young women, some skinny premature lads would flirt, anemic of blood and money, like pirates in a divine ocean, devotedly stalking the rich to have in them the bank teller and the nurse.

     In the mob or body of choirs, stammering and puny old men abound, disenchanted already with worldly vanities, but driven by the hope of finding in heaven the happiness that their Catholic spouses did not give them in this world; there are also too many unhappy and helpless women or wives of little merit who desire to rub elbows with decent people, to act high and mighty as cultivated women and get help every once in a while to satisfy hunger and cover nudity.³

     All of the confraternities and brotherhoods, ostensibly founded with humanitarian and pious goals, serve the general encampment of the clergy to conserve and extend their “eternal and temporal” domination. While the national clerics govern publicly, the foreign priests operate dishonestly under the table, especially the Jesuits, given that the rest of the congregations have continued to lose the ascent that they had for many years in the society of Lima. In the feminine associations the most odious inequalities are consecrated, the strictest division of class is observed: respectful genuflections to pearl necklaces and ostrich feather hats, thoughtlessness and disdain, discolored garments, and frayed ponchos. Catholicism, which touts its love for the humble and disinherited, bows to the arrogant and powerful.

     The charity of devout women rings out of tune and sounds hollow. Compassion for the pain and the poverty of the fellow believer, inhumanity towards the bitterness and the helplessness of the unbeliever; in private homes, rations and clothes for the destitute who pray the novenas or take communion weekly; in hospitals and houses of mercy, lack of help or poor treatment of the sick who do not drink the water of Lourdes nor clamor for the blessing of the chaplain. Many of our humanitarian ladies forget the stomach devoured by hunger does not ask for prayers, but for bread, that the flesh suffering from pain does not want sprinkles of holy water nor psalms nor holy oils, but rather morphine injections.

     According to the ideas of some orthodox minds, the good children of the Church cannot call themselves friends with the enemies of God nor should they have compassion towards those who act likewise towards Jesus Christ when they deny him or offend him. From there, the sui generis charity of these pious souls, charity formed by a mix of rigidness and cabotinage.

     Just as doctors who do not come to see the sick as a person but rather a case, many people do not look at the invalid as a brother, but as a scheme, an ill and ruinous wall where they can plaster an enormous sign that announces the excellence of evangelic charity. The Catholics of profession would invent poverty and sickness to have the pride to exclaim: let the world admire the way we help the poor and assist the sick. Such charity seems to be exploitative business, more than disinterested action: he would give one in the name of God so that he could compensate with one thousand, one is worth less than begging in the name of Humanity, without asking for some kind of thanks or something in return from anyone.

     There exist charities that inspire hate of charity, just like there are some virtues that inspire love for vice.

III

     There are only two types of men who profess Catholicism with sincerity: the old for lack of fuel in the engine, the young for scarcity of weight in the head. As peoples and individuals always take from religion what most fits their defects and what is convenient to their interests, we have adopted extravagance in devoutness, in superstitions and sumptuous festivities; we could not implant in our hearts the small good of evangelic morality. From there, Religion, instead of acting as a force towards internal perfection, only serves as an external veneer to conceal our vices or as a password to acquire a share of the honors, power, and wealth.

     Where are the Catholics driven by a spirit of generosity and justice, humble and generous, ready to sacrifice themselves for integrity of their belief? All hypocrites or accommodators, the minister, hoping to attract the clientele of the devoted rich, takes communion with his students, and after consummating behind closed doors fifty or sixty executions of revolutionaries, enters a church, kneels, makes a cross with his arms and kisses the steps of the main altar. If convenience blows from the divine, the most irreligious will carry a candle in processions, wear a religious image on their chests, and go to mass every Sunday: this we see today; but if the day were to arrive that Luther, Mohammed, Buda, or Moses gave out honors, salaries and farmland, the most ardent Catholics would enter the Protestant church, the mosque, the pagoda, or the synagogue. If a radical and freethinking president governed Peru, the archbishop would extol the virtues of Renan, the most conspicuous members of the Catholic Union would leave the scapular and wear the effigy of Virgil.⁴ Max Radiguet, a French sailor who visited Peru fifty or sixty years ago, writes: “if the people of Lima believe in mass, they also believe a lot in money.”⁵ And we can add that money, whether or not it has the water of baptism, is Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman.

     The religiosity or Catholicism of women, really, does not surprise us. Since, as St. Paul suggests, “a woman should not separate herself from the husband even if he does not believe,“ there is no doubt that the wives will follow the husbands in all the evolutions and metamorphoses. During the Chilean occupation, some charitable women declared themselves “neutral”; when a bad Christian governs, many Catholics will proclaim themselves “tolerant.”⁶ By a general rule, women profess an epidermal, elastic, and accommodating religion that permits them to marry a protestant or Jew, if only to play hide and seek or blind man’s bluff with a Catalan friar or an Italian Monsignor.

     Many go to heaven by cabin, practicing charity with loud drums, firecrackers and chiming bells, generating blessings at someone else’s expense, giving cash daily or at three percent every month and angelically enjoying the money illicitly earned by their predatory husbands. If not, which honored and scrupulous matron separates from her husband upon knowing his swindles and venality? All tranquilly eat the bread snatched from some hapless mouth. All undauntedly wear the bought silk with gold subtracted from the state’s coffers. We do not know what Saint Paul says about a woman’s participation in the husband’s intrigues, intrigues worthy of calling to attention, with the hands that cross in church are those that operate better inside the neighbor’s pocket and in the Nation’s treasury. But we have no reason to be surprised because the excess of fanaticism and lack of morals often coincide. Morality requires more elevation of the soul than does religiosity; hence, while morals without religion bloom in men of great culture, in uncultivated women and men, a religion without morals abounds.

     All that has been said does not prevent that there are honorable and sincere people in the brotherhoods and women’s confraternities, deserving in respect and veneration, sufficiently anemic of brain to follow with good success the profession of saints. They would call themselves Catholic, Apostolic and Roman as Lutherans or Calvinists call themselves, without knowing it or understanding it. The theological science of some matrons reaches ineffable and sublime heights that if in her New Devotional we were to bind some pages of La Terre or the Philosophic Dictionary, these distinguished women would take Zola for the thirteenth apostle, and Voltaire for the fifth evangelist.⁷

IV

     It is convenient to ask ourselves now, are Peru’s Catholics an overwhelming cerebral force? They talk and write without others sealing their lips and without others denouncing their writings; they congregate and speechify without anyone preventing or dissolving their meetings; they possess the tribune and pulpit, the professorship and newspaper, the parlor and the street, but why do they not dominate with their words nor impose with their writings? They publish periodical, brochures, and books. Where are the pages bulging with science and literature? They give sermons and speeches. Where are the phrases that whip and hurt like luminous swords? Whether they talk or write, they do nothing more than introduce variations of the old tunes of Balmes, Donoso Cortés and Auguste Nicolas.⁸ Sophistic, rambling, and biblical, they leave syllogism to digress, and they stop digressing to fall into the citing of the Sacred Books. There is not one of them that would stray from the prominent and narrow orbit: Malchuses of a new species, they move in circles around their own ignorance; divine cattle, today they digest the religious pasture that their ancestors chewed and ruminated over ten or twenty centuries ago.

     Sterile in science and poor in literature, they show themselves fecund and rich slander and brazenness, in falsehood and in libel. See them maneuver in their press, in those newspapers supported not by the alms of the crowds, but rather for the subsidies of convents, bishops and political authorities. Shielded in anonymity, with the ability to land a punch without suffering the consequences, they give free reign to the shamelessness of the courtesan and the ferocity of the redskins. Incapable of witty jokes and sharp humor, they use choking profanity and tawdry vulgarity. Nothing of the delicacy and refinement of the cultivated and educated man; everything of the impertinence of a mosquito and the felony of a microbe. It has been said: “tell me what you eat and I will tell who you are”; it can be certain also: tell me the venom that you secrete and I will tell you what religion you profess. The secretors of poisonous blessings, the agglomerates of divine manure, have a peculiarity: they live raging. And the anger denounces the impotence and lies, that the force never made a gala of the insolent, nor did truth get built with the tooth of a viper. Catholic journalists of Lima, Cusco, Arequipa, etc., are not serene or reasonable men who wield a light, they lift it up high and they pass in the middle of the darkness; they are legions of madmen that dip their heads in a sewer and shake it in all directions.

     If Catholics and conservatives don’t represent the cerebral force of the country, do they constitute at least the muscular or numerical force? When we witness a procession or a simulation of pilgrimage to the Grotta di Lourdes, when we distinguish the flower and birth of the religious youth, when we see those unashamed bald men at twenty five, those heads in the form of truncated cones, those protruding and ruddy or earthy cheeks, those jaws of Charles II, the Bewitched, those diminutive backs with the half-hunch of Polichinela, those narrow and concave chests, those long arms that end in rough hands of a reptile, those atrophied hips of an orangutan, and finally those numerous legs that come together in knees to remedy an eclipse, or already touching themselves in their knee caps and they separate in bunions to form an angle, we cannot but exclaim: valiant defenders of religion!⁹ They come, some wrapping their juvenile rheumatisms in flannel, others bundling their adorned and decayed teeth with enormous head scarves, others breathing some disinfectant to contain their incoercible decomposition, others proliferating that dry and tenacious cough that asks for Jauja’s air and announces the approximation of the pit, all, anyway, moving cautiously and jealously, as if a breath of wind were to break them or the most light crash would be enough to disarticulate them and take them apart.¹⁰ Double victims of bad heredity and of their own vice, they go weakened and rotten from all their pleasures, but not for the legitimate ones of Venus Cytherea. We take the advantage of the occasion to salute that glorious youth that personifies ignorance and fatuity, incarnated in rickets, tubercules, and swollen glands.

     Neither the force of brains nor the force of muscles. There is, thus, not any raw material from which to extract a great conservative party: a leader is lacking, and good soldiers are scarce. So, what is there to fear? Not much from a conservative organization, and very much from their adversaries. A party’s force is often based only on the nullity of its enemies; and the power of national clericalism lies in liberals’ impotence or bad faith. Politicians of colossal ambitions and Lilliputian vision, declare the intangibility of the religious question, and contribute to the priests monopolizing the education of the town and consolidating their domination. If here a true conservative party does not exist, there is a great mass subjected to the clerical yoke: the women, especially those with a car and three butlers, want to obstruct the invasion of ideas with the most powerful dike – ignorance.

     Useless wish. Even if the Catholic Religion’s defenders were to possess the brain of a Spencer and the muscles of Hercules, even if they were as numerous as the armies of Sesostris and Xerxes, they would not impede the death of those condemned to die. Rivers don’t go back to their source neither do expired religions go back to their youth. In Catholicism, one sees nothing more than appearances of life, impotent efforts to exist, the desperate kicking of a moribund. In botanical gardens of plants there are exotic and venerable trees, which far from appearing young and vigorous, which upon a closer look, denounce decrepitude and wilting: with solid horseshoes made of steel they sustain their broken branches and their wobbly trunks; with scouring plaster, they hide the type of senile gangrene that gnaws at its insides. They no longer produce fruit nor flowers; but upon returning each Spring, they are crowned from an anemic, discolored, scant foliage, like disheveled locks of hair on the bald head of a nonagenarian.

     That tree is the symbolic representation of Catholicism.

1902