The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America - autonomous ...

Pollution, Contradiction, and Salvation 117
pie know that their rights should not be at the mercy of rulers, but
that they are immanent in Nature, inalienable and sacred." The
plantations, owned by the "industrial lords," show no respect for
these rights. What is more, the industrial lords are seen as dedicated
to sugarcane—to a thing—and not to people. Repeatedly, this refrain
is heard from peasants recounting their history: "God gave the land
in common to all the world, to everybody. God said that 'My land
can neither be sold nor bargained.'"
These ideals and those concerning the sharing of wealth and labor
increasingly diverge from the practices of everyday life. The Golden
Age of plentiful land and food, mutual aid, labor exchanges, and
fiesta work parties is invoked all the more heartrenderingly as the
ideals of equality and reciprocity are subverted. But it is these ideals
that give force to the moral outrage and censure of the community.
Sorcery is but one manifestation of this moral code in action.
Wealth should be shared, as should the means of production. Fear of
sorcery is tantamount to fear of having more than others, and having
more indicates failure to share. Sorcery is evil. But its roots are embedded
in legitimate concerns in areas in which competition pits individualism
and communalism against each other. The shopkeepers
who constantly employ magic to exorcise their businesses out of
fear of rivals and of the poor are a clear example of this. The alleged
proletarian devil contract is a different manifestation of the same
repertoire of concerns. Since inequalities are inevitable, particularly
with the new economic conditions, the contradiction between making
a living and being equal is inescapable. Such is the basic nature
of the filth that is exorcised by curing rites; filth is the contradiction
that assails the idealized principles of equality.
But what is meant by equality? In his essay "Ideology and Conflict
in Lower Class Communities," Jayawardena distinguishes between
two radically different conceptions of equality. On the one hand, he
presents the equality of persons deriving from their intrinsic personal
or human worth, rooted in the human condition and in the capacity
of all human beings to feel, to suffer, and to enjoy. He argues
that this notion of human equality is usually dominant in a subgroup
to the extent that that group is denied social equality by the
wider society or by its dominant class. On the other hand, he gives
us the equality derived from the concept of equality of rights and opportunities,
as analyzed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his discussion of
egalitarianism in the United States. This idea of equality ignores the
total human being and concentrates instead on one facet of a person's
existence; thus, equality can be measured quantitatively. As
Jayawardena notes, the same point was made by Marx in his "Cri-