Patricia Lopez Zaragoza

Secular humanism for a developing world

Patricia Lopez Zaragoza, Director of the Mexican Ethical-Rationalist Association, spoke at the World Atheist conference in Vijayawada, India, on 4-6 January 1996. Here is the text of her speech in which she emphasised the injustice of economic systems within and between countries.

IT'S A pleasure to be here bringing you the greetings of all those who take part in the Mexican Ethical-Rationalist Association. There are not many of us, but we work with great enthusiasm in the task of spreading the message and principles of secular humanism throughout Mexico, so they can be practised and become a way of living among the greater number of communities and social groups.

We consider this aim a great responsibility, since each day we can see how fundamentalist and theistic ideas try to take over aspects of ordinary daily life. This problem is of great consequence in underdeveloped countries like India and Mexico that openly declare themselves to be secular states.

However, the economic exploitation that the present world order imposes on all our economies contributes to the growing frailty found in the basic tenets of our republican citizens. Sovereignty is eroded, democracy is cancelled and postponed, pluralism is openly attacked in the media.

In the specific case of Mexico, neo-liberal economic policies have been enacted forcibly through the irresistible power of tmnsnational financial agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This is done with the open co-operation of an unending series of corrupt governments totally bent on serving the interests of local and global monopolies and financial speculators. This has wrought a growing inequality in the distribution of wealth, both among countries and among the social strata of all third world nations.

A handful of 24 billionaires enjoy disproportionate shares of all income and the rest of the people are affected by growing unemployment, lack of justice, undernourishment, open misery and political repression, This state of affairs causes great social uncertainty, which becomes an ideal recipe for irrational ideas both old and new, including traditional superstitions reinforced constantly by the mass media decrying the public education system.

Education promotes ancient learning methods based on memorisation techniques, rather than stimulation of critical thinking; all this works in favour of fundamentalist ideas in all their possible varieties, including, of course, the religious kind, but adding also the economic, political and social dogmas and beliefs of the new right. In the case of religious fundamentalism, theism and the adoration of virgins and countless saints and other entities become the only lifesaver for many people who stake their hope of happiness completely on the afterlife.

This apathetic attitude induces a complete lack of any kind of self-questioning and need to investigate as to whether there is perhaps a better explanation of what happens in this world. It causes a return to the most damaging atavisms for the most exploited classes and is used by the most powerful conservative groups like the National Action Party. This is the country's second political force which is completely in allegiance to the Catholic Church and has been gaining in electoral strength with more than the tacit approval of recent regimes. The religious right has asked for and received several amendments to the highly secular Constitution of Mexico, which now recognises all churches as legal organisations and allows them a greater use of the mass media and a greater role in the educational system.

A really overwhelming ideological barrage of theistic ideologies is continually sent out to the most marginal and impoverished, which creates a vicious circle sinking them into more misery. This circle needs to be broken immediately before a peaceful solution becomes impossible.

Besides analysing the internal situations within our countries, we need to study how recent geopolitical changes in the world have been showing clearly that the famed neo-liberal model, far from being the cure for all evils, has on the contrary created many more problems than it has solved. We see now how some former communist nations, who blindly and joyously embraced neo-liberal capitalistic solutions, are now in the process of getting rid of them as soon as possible.

It is important then to search for new ways of world tolerance, so that countries and societies can live together with fairness and justice. We need to let the voice of all humanists be heard in all international forums so that global policies may become much more rational and equitable. This means, for example, that all the third world's basic products, especially the strategic ones, must be paid for with their real price, which includes both production costs and provisions for reinvestment and the maintenance of an adequate reservoir of those that are mostly non-renewable. The powerful countries must not support authoritarian or illegal governments even those blatant dictatorships that masquerade as democracies. There is a need to apply real sanctions against those regimes that do not respect human rights and that do not do their share in the protection of all the world's ecological systems.

We need to establish an open and explicit will to improve the conditions of the life of billions of human beings that are being left behind by post-industrial progress that hasn't brought them better health, education, housing and jobs.

We must aspire to reach a situation where scientific, rational, ethical and even philosophical information reaches everyone and flourishes with a greater case. A form of positive atheism that will become the liberation of humankind from theistic falsities that tie all of us to pain, guilt, misery and permanent despair. We want freedom from irrationality and superstition for even the humblest and most marginal of all human beings.