Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena by John Burdick, University of Califor- nia Press, 1993, 280 pp., $45 (cloth). In overwhelmingly Catholic Latin America, a region beset by deep social and economic inequality, the progressive Catholic Church would seem ideally situated to prosper. Paradoxically however, the libera- tion theology-inspired Christian base communities (CEBs) have not enjoyed a popular groundswell. Even in Brazil, the Latin American country with the most CEBs, Catholicism is losing ground against the African-Brazilian religion um- banda and the evangelical churches. In this incisive, immensely read- able book, anthropologist John Burdick explores the reasons for the Catholic Church's decline by ana- lyzing the choices of religious affil- iation made by the residents of Sdo Jorge in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Unlike much previous scholarship about the Church which has tended to ignore competing reli- gions, Burdick sees the religious arena as a fluid one in which reli- gious migration is the norm, not the exception. He compares how Catholicism, umbanda and pente- costalism fare in addressing the experiential predicaments of some of the most marginal sectors of the working class, unmarried youths, married women facing domestic conflict, and African Brazilians in Sdo Jorge. In each case, progressive Catholicism comes up short. Given that the CEBs are losing the battle for souls in Brazil's urban periphery, the question of whether the Catholic Church is the only reli- gious vehicle for social change be- comes more urgent. Burdick points out that many CEB members have not made the leap into political activism despite the Church's teach- ings, while pentecostalism-often caricatured as the religion of the sta- tus quo-does offer possibilities for active political engagement. Shadows of Tender Fury: The Letters and Communiques of Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation Monthly Review Press, 1995, 272 pp., $30.00 (cloth), $15.00 (paper). In the space of a few weeks in Jan- uary, 1994, the ski-masked guerrilla leader who calls himself Marcos, through a skillful mix of political audacity, literary irony and high- tech media manipulation, trans- formed himself and the indigenous communities of the state of Chiapas into Mexican national icons. This transformation probably began with one of his earliest and best-known communiques, in which he replies to a government offer to pardon his peasant troops. "Who must ask for pardon," he asks, "and who can grant it? Those who for years and years have satiated themselves at full tables, while death sat beside us so regularly that we finally stopped being afraid of it? Those who filled our pockets and our souls with promises and empty declarations?" This timely collection, ably trans- lated by Frank Bardacke and Leslie L6pez, is essential reading for any- one interested in the ongoing Zapatista uprising, the shape of peasant insurgency in the post-Cold War era, Mexico's widespread political-economic crisis, or politi- cally engaged Latin American liter- ature. (For those who read Spanish, Marcos is well worth reading in the original. Virtually the same collec- tion is available in Mexico as EZLN: Documentos y comunicados (Ediciones Era, 1994), with a pow- erful introduction by Antonio Garcia de Le6n.) In addition to revealing Marcos' poetic talents, these letters and communiques pro- vide an excellent introduction to the nature of plunder and misery in Chiapas. With explanatory com- mentary by John Ross and Frank Bardacke, the book offers a first- rate snapshot of the struggle which is the fruit of that plunder.
