Belief in Peru<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Manuel A. Paz y Mino

 

Since the arrival five hundred years ago of the Spanish and Portuguese Conquerors in the lands now known as Latin America, the predominant religion has been Catholicism, established by fire and sword among the native peoples of that continent. And since then the Indian people —the Incas, Aztecs, Auracans, etc.—have been dominated and exploited for their abundant land, gold and silver.

 

The native cults that worshiped natural forces were forbidden and their practicioners were pursued, tortured and killed by the colonizers. Yet those ancient cults still survive in spite of the ‘extermination of idolatries’. They have adapted to and mingled with the Roman Catholic rites. That religious syncretism may still be seen today in many provincial religious festivals — a result of racial and cultural mixing.

 

Religious Privilege

As in other parts of the world during the time of the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Inquisition pursued Jews and heretics. The Spanish domination of Peru and South America lasted until the ninetienth Century and part of their inheritance was a very rich and powerful Catholic Church owning money, houses and lands, many private schools and some universities. Even today the Peruvian State gives the Catholic Church special privileges such as exemption from taxes and makes payments to its higher representatives. The President of the Republic attends Catholic mass on Independence Day and gives his greeting to the image of the ‘Lord of the Miracles’ in Holy Week and in October. Buildings public as well as private — are inagurated with the blessing of a Catholic priest. And each of the Peruvian Armed Forces has its own image to venerate and mentions God in its official motto. Every August 29th the Peruvian Police´s higher officers give their public homage to Santa Rosa de Lima, a Dominican nun from the colonial period.

 

In public schools the official contents of the classes on religion have a Catholic orientation, and not a few of the directors and teachers make their students pray. However, any student can ask permission to stop attending that course.

 

Religion and Cults

Like any great ideological group, there are within Peruvian Catholicism both conservative and liberal tendencies and there is even a Charismatic Biblical revival similar to Protestant Pentecostalism. Despite most of the population declaring itself to be Catholic their religious observance is often reduced merely to taking the sacraments and not to the standards of Christian morality. Although there are many believers raised in a faith that they still hold, many have had a scientific training. But understandably, where there is more social injustice, material poverty and poor education, the majority of people will search for consolation in supernatural powers.

 

From the first decades of the Twentieth Century the successive Peruvian State Constitutions have guaranteed, at least on paper, liberty of conscience and belief. In the beginning of the century the first Protestant missions arrived in Peru and by the end of the century the number of sects was growing rapidly. For example, the well-known interdenominational American group, the Christian and Missionary Church has a temple in practically every district of Lima, the capital city, and in every important city in the country. Many bankrupt movie theaters have been bought or rented by Pentecostal preachers and healers for use as temples. There are also sects originating in Peru like the Mission of the Israeli New Pact, a Judeo-Christian group with a large number of followers living in the poorer quarters of Lima and among the farming colonies in the border regions of Peru (some of them even becoming congressmen in the National Parliament in 2000, like some members of Opus Dei).

 

A number of bizarre UFO cults have also appeared in Peru, like Alfa and Omega, and Rama. Alfa and Omega proclaims that Jesus Christ will return to Earth with his angels in flying saucers; the Chilean Luis Soto founded this cult and affirmed that his hundreds of drawings with ufological and biblical contents had been revealed by God through telepathy. Alfa and Omega has included Socialism in its theology. The other Peruvian cult, Rama, was founded by Sixto Paz Wells (b. 1955) who says he has had telepathic contact and space voyages since age of nineteen. The group has had several branches and followers in many Latin American countries as well as Spain.

 

Peruvian Non-belief

But what about of Peruvian non-believers? Like any other country in the Western hemisphere Peru had and still has them, many of them famous. A strong critic of the clergy and the Church was the anarchist writer of the end of the Nineteenth Century, Manuel González Prada, whose ideas influenced Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), whose candidate Alan García lost the Presidential election 2001-2006 to Alejandro Toledo. At present the most famous Peruvian non-believer is novelist Mario Vargas Llosa who is a declared agnostic. He lost in the elections for President of the Republic in 1990 against a candidate was initially supported by the Evangelicals: Alberto Fujimori. At that time the Catholic Church had such a fear of them that they organized a massive special procession with the Lord of Miracles.

 

We — in AERPFA or Peruvian Institute of Applied Philosophy began in 1994 to present a philosophy applied to human and social issues, with special emphasis on the criticism of supernatural, paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs, through lectures, books and periodicals. We are very glad to have translated and/or published papers and books by Humanist authors from both the American and European continents, such as Paul Kurtz and Finngeir Hiorth. To date we have published seventeen books and seven periodicals on paper or in electronic form. In 2002 we are going to launch a documentary video series with the support of the IHEU and a work by Antony Flew, a Humanist book for children and other publications. AERPFA has also its own Center for Inquiry with a Humanist and Skeptical library and a small room for meetings.

 

In 1998 we were co-founders of the Peruvian NonReligious Movement (MPA) and founders of the Peruvian Center for Investigation of the Paranormal, Pseudoscience and Irrationality (CIPSI-PERU). MPA organized 15 public debates with believers on diverse topics both metaphysical and ethicalpractical during 2000 and early 2001 and wrote 2 manifestos. Presently in 2002 MPA is organising about 10 lectures with non believers and religious freethinkers. These activities were and are conducted in the auditorium of the Red Owl Cultural

Association whose staff members were also cofounders of MPA.

 

CIPSI-PERU has as its main work monitoring media reports on the paranormal in order to send them the criticisms and explanations of their reported phenomena, and to organise video-forums mainly for students.

 

We know that there are many atheists and agnostics around, many of them the heirs of Marxism and Logical Positivism, some simply critics of the Establishment, unconscious Humanists. There are also many people searching for answers to their existential and intellectual questions in sources other than the religious or paranormal. They need and want to know about philosophical and scientific critics. But in Latin America, and especially in Peru, such information is rarely, if ever, to hand. All they have to do is understand that there are other people that think as them and that they are not alone. That is our mission.

 

Dr Manuel Paz is Director of AERPFA, an IHEU Member Organisation. He is directing a video series on Humanism, funded by the IHEU.