Global Hermeneutics? - International Voices in Biblical Studies ...

MAY 27
“hermeneutical rupture” because traditional First World readings have obscured or
even eliminated the poor as the text’s historical subject; texts have been
“expropriated” by the powerful to serve their own interests and must be “reappropriated”
by the poor. 10
Narciso Farias of Brazil, in a study of the biblical land tradition, states these
ideas directly: “When we read the Bible, taking the land as reference, as the
promise of Yahweh, the text opens an impressive contact with the events of today’s
reality ... Upon finding that the Bible is a story of popular struggle, it becomes alive
in such a way that it rescues the concrete story of a people in their struggle for life,
continually in search of the promised land.” 11 Barros and Caravias repeat the idea:
“The word ´adamah insists that there is a relation between people and the earth. It
refers to the peasant, the simple one, without social value.” 12 For these authors and
others, the historical subject is the peasant farmer.
Methodologically, then, biblical studies and theological work in general in
Latin America typically begin with discussions of contemporary reality. For
example, Marcelo Barros (Brazil) and José Luis Caravias (Paraguay) begin their
important book on the land, Teologia da Terra, 13 with presentations on the land
situation. Only in their third chapter do they begin their discussion of the biblical
land themes. To follow this methodology, then, I will briefly present the land
situation in Latin America.
LAND IN LATIN AMERICA TODAY
With neoliberal economics, “globalisation” and rapid urbanisation, land has
virtually disappeared from the public agenda. This is partly because most Latin
Americans now live in cities, a fact that often obscures the demographic reality that
millions still live in rural areas. Indeed, living in cities is preferable to the rural
areas because it is in rural areas that poverty is the most grinding. At least thirtyseven
percent of Latin America’s poor are rural but in Bolivia, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru—countries with large indigenous
populations—at least half the population is rural and seventy percent of the rural
population lives in often extreme poverty. Even in Mexico, a country that has
strongly embraced neoliberal economic policies, thirty-one percent of the rural
people do not have sufficient income to pay for a minimum food basket. 14 Clearly
10 Ibid., 40–47.
11 N. Farias, “Libertar a terra, salvar a vida—A libertaçao da terra,” Estudos Bíblicos
19 (1988), 26–41.
12 M. Barros and J. L. Caravias, Teologia de la tierra (Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas,
1988), 188.
13 Ibid.
14 World Bank, “Beyond the City: the Rural Contribution to Development.” Press
release, February 14, 2005.