A Fundamental Shift

The son of missionary parents, most of the first sixteen years of my life were spent in the outback of Brazil. Growing up in this way, un-self-consciously negotiating the differences and boundaries between three different cultures, my own deepest sense of self was also a rich multi-cultural mix. I was not only the white

“American” missionary kid, but embodied a very real Brazilian and Xavante sense of belonging and identity as well. And so when confronted in my teens with the realization that many of my Brazilian peers disliked the United States and Americans, this created not only an external conundrum but an internal one for me as well. (See the first two blog posts for more complete details on what is presented in summary form in this paragraph.)

Although not often at the forefront of my thinking, the question would linger, unanswered. What was it about the United States that created such animosity among my young Brazilian cohorts? It wouldn't be until almost fifteen years later that, reading a book by the Argentine Methodist pastor and theologian Jose Miguez Bonino,¹ the riddle would finally be resolved.

Although I had grown up in a multi-cultural milieu, my formal and family education was primarily “American.” Through seventh grade, with my Mom as teacher, I was home schooled using a correspondence curriculum from the U.S. Then for the eighth through tenth grades I attended an American missionary boarding school. Both these settings were informed by the perspective that, in more recent parlance, is called “American Exceptionalism.” This is the view that the United States is different from other countries. It is the idea that we are a special nation and special people with a mission of doing good in the world, that our unique destiny is to lead the world toward liberty and democracy.² This sense of the special quality and unique mission of America was amplified in the fundamentalist fervor of the evangelical mission context in which my family and other missionary families lived. And so, in that setting, there was nothing that could help me answer the puzzle.

But then during my college years I happened upon Bonino's book. In the first chapter he writes about the history of Latin America, dividing it into two movements. The first he calls “conquest and colonization” and the second “modernization and neo-colonialism.” The first was a period dominated by the colonial powers of Spain and of Portugal while the second, which began with the emancipation from the earlier powers, came to be dominated by what Bonino refers to as “Anglo-Saxon colonial and neo-colonial expansion.” “Our independence from Spain,” he writes, “made us available as suppliers of raw materials first and of cheap labor and manageable markets later on.” “Consequently, our so-called modernization was dictated by the needs and preferences of our overseas masters.”³

Initially led by the British, later this control of Latin American resources would be wielded (and managed through political, military and CIA-led interventions) by the United States. The nature of this relationship began to be understood and exposed all across Latin America during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. And with it came a growing critique of the United States and the kind of influence it represented in the region. And in learning this reality, the puzzle created by my experiences as a young adult was suddenly resolved. And with that resolution came a fundamental shift, a “conversion”⁴ if you will, in my understanding of history and of the true character of the United States.

1 Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation. 1975. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

2 For more information and an extensive bibliography, see online article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism

3 Bonino, p. 14.

4 See my September 29 post “Inner Shifts” at http://spiritandpraxis.blogspot.com/2012/09/inner-shifts.html