Recent obituaries

Underapprecated effects on our world and this country

Gustavo Gutiérrez was one of two noteworthy Latin-surnamed obituaries in today’s paper. Many of you will recall the second, Dodger’s pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, who passed the same week his erstwhile team hosts the first game of the World Series in Los Angeles tomorrow evening. The juxtaposition in our attention to the influence of these two men from a huge, diverse region most Americans only know through memes fascinates me.

Valenzuela was a pudgy (common on, it was true) pitcher who wowed all in several ways. Particularly a screwball specialist, Valenzuela burst into the majors in 1981 when he began the year pitching eight straight victories. The left-hander could not, of course, maintain the unparalleled success throughout his career but he had made his mark. Cheered for his peculiar windup, an aerobatic move providing him superb power for the delivery in conjunction with such intense concentration it appeared (as the Times reminded us) that his eyes rolled to the back of his head. The Mexican-born hurler thrilled crowds in the early 1980s amidst what became known as “fernandomania”. Valenzuela’s power earned him the Cy Young Award in 1981 as he simultaneously won Rookie of the Year honors, the first season of his decade pitching in the majors.

This sounds pretty ho hum today but baseball’s ethnic composition forty-five years ago was far different. Valenzuela emerged from rural Mexico at a time when many fewer Latins signed in this country. According to the Society for Baseball Research, 11.1% of MLB players were Latins in the 1981 season when Valenzuela first appeared at Dodger Stadium. In 2016, Latin players constituted more than 27% of the league. For the last completed season in 2023, that number rose to more than 30%, although white players are still almost twice as likely to be on MLB teams.

The excitement, the pride, the energy of Latin players really erupted with fernandomania. Of course puertoriqueño players as American citizens, along with some others from the Caribbean, had been important in the game for years, it seemed that Mexico and the remainder of the region really emerged with this particular pitcher. This occurred at precisely the same time that concerns about immigrants—and let’s be blunt, people too often don’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants—began rising again during the 1980s. At that point, we were still able to negotiate as a society to compromise to pass legislation to address our policy concerns. Ronald Reagan signed an immigration reform package in 1986 called Simpson-Mazzoli, named after Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli of Kentucky.

You most likely have absolutely no clue why I would note Gutiérrez Merino passing yet he was a priest with incredible impact on the largest Roman Catholic portion of the world and, ultimately, on the future of the church. He was the father of the Theology of Liberation which turned the Catholic faith on its head for much of the 1970s and 80s.

Everyone who studied Latin America recognized the struggle for the region’s future interwoven with the issues Gutiérrez Merino raised. Power historically linked the Church with landowners, traditionalist forces seeking to continue their grip on wealth and decision-making to the deliberate exclusion of the overwhelming majority of the region. Indeed, the Church played a central role in the tragedy of eradicating millions of indigenous Latins through the practice of encomienda: putting indigenous populations under the Church’s tutelage to Christianize them in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries only to also use them as labor for the expanding mineral explorations and later large agricultural holdings. The Twentieth Century Peruvian priest turned that structure on his head by arguing that the Church’s preference ought be towards the poor, the disenfranchised, and the excluded.

The Vatican II reforms in the mid-1960s represented an initial shift towards Gutiérrez Merino’s voiceless by opening the Church to local languages replacing Latin in the liturgy for Mass while endorsing more dedicated work with inner city parishes. Gutiérrez Merino’s 1971 advocacy in Teología de la Liberación, seen in the context of the Cold War controversies, opened a door to schisms the Church still struggles to address by directly advocating to empower those who had the least against powerful forces.

His Liberation Theology thesis, merely by its title, coincided with Chilean Socialist president Salvador Allende Gossens’s efforts to remake his country’s relationship with copper mining companies and others. Liberation theologians became vocal critics of conservative governments working against what Gutiérrez Merino called the God’s bias towards the poor, a radical idea within a Church predisposed towards the wealthier in almost all societies. Were these priests Marxists? Surely some were primarily politically motivated while others concerned themselves more with the realtime wellbeing of their flocks.

Liberation theology accompanied a concomitant division within U.S. Catholics, some who preferred “pre-Vatican II” approaches. Many, particularly lay people, embraced “social justice” as a rallying cry to address the woes so endemic in a period linked to Vietnam, racial disparities, the rise of anti-nuclear awareness, and gender equity demands. The murder of social justice advocate Bishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador in the early 1980s heightened tensions within the American Church, establishing dividing lines for how one perceived the region as a whole. As a graduate student a decade after Gutiérrez Merino’s work appeared, I saw this first hand at Notre Dame which was perhaps the most intense gathering point for these discussions.

Liberation theology remains a central focus of Catholicism in the region but global events had consequences for Gutiérrez Merino’s advocacy. Pope John Paul II, with scars from anti-Soviet experiences in his native Poland, ultimately demanded that priests either become political advocates or remain faithful to Rome’s dicta. Many priests, particularly in the favelas of Brazil, took the former path by taking off their vestments. I cannot prove the impact but will note that Brazil today is a major focus of evangelical Protestant movements, perhaps because the post-1980s Catholic Church did not seem as relevant to their lives. War in Central American states also undermined credibility for those advocating for long-term social justice since the left and the right each proved unwilling to move towards those most affected by the conflict, creating a new stalemate by excluding most those living in poverty and increasingly violent conditions across that region. It is those afflicted with these twin scourges who increasingly come north in search of a less violent, better life as immigrants—illegal and legal—to the United States.

Gutiérrez Merino remained loyal to the Church, spending much time during his final years at Notre Dame while retaining the voice for the poor in countries where social experiments often did little for the least prosperous. It’s extraordinary that his obituary notes he is survived by an older sister, not a bad comment on life in Peru if one passes at 96.

Latins across the world play important roles around the world, although their diversity is tremendously underappreciated. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a puertoriqueña, or Senator Marco Rubio, of cubano heritage, are the most prominent Latin government officials in the country today as we have never had a serious run by any candidate for national office from that background. Baseball players probably are the best known regional examples in the country.

Latins are the fastest growing population yet one too many other Americans see only through the darkest of lenses. Yet Latins’ role in this country grows consistently and will continue doing so as they become an ever greater portion of the population. Projections are that Latinos will constitute fully a quarter of the population within thirty-five years or two generations. Latin Americans are as varied as anyone else, far from a single political view, behavior or trajectory. It’s just noticeable that two important ones in the world, both of whom left a major mark on their fields, happened to pass away the same week. It’s been a quite a week.

Thank you for reading Actions today or any other day. I welcome your thoughts, questions, or comments so please, please chime in. Thank you to the subscribers but I welcome each and every one of you here as I write to expand our civil, measured dialogue in hopes of diminishing screaming and disrespect.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Bill Friskics-Warren, “Gustavo Gutiérrez, Father of Liberation Theology, Dies at 96”, NewYorkTimes.com, 23 October 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/world/americas/gustavo-gutierrez-dead.html

Suzanne Gamboa, “Over 1 in 4 Americans will be Latino by 2060, census projects”, NBCNews.com, 9 November 2023, retrieved at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/1-4-americans-will-latino-2060-census-projects-rcna124244

Richard Sandomir, “Fernando Valenzuela, Pitcher Whose Screwballs Eluded Batters, dies at 63”, NewYorkTimes.com, 23 October 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/sports/fernando-valenzuela-dead.html

“Share of MLB players by ethnicity, in 2023”, statista.com, retrieved at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1310428/racial-diversity-mlb-players/

Society for American Baseball Research, “Baseball Demographics, 1947-2016”, sabr.org, retrieved at https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2016/