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I came across this interesting power-point presentation of the Stations of the Cross by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Argentina, and I thought I would share it with you. What is different about these Stations is that the scenes of the Passion are actually contextualised to reflect current day realities.

This particular presentation is set in Latin America with commentary by Alastair McIntosh, a writer, lecturer, social activist, broadcaster and campaigning academic based in Scotland. It is based upon, and builds on, original text from CIDSE agencies (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité) that distributed the images.

Download the powerpoint presentation here. Amazing how this 2,000-year-old Gospel event can jump to life when set against a backdrop of current day socio-economic realities.

So Wolfowitz goes without being held accountable for his criminal scheming against Iraq.

After I wrote the piece below, an academic friend told me, “Although he did have to step down, it was hardly a fall — guy walks away with that statement about acting in good faith, plus a golden hand-shake of a year’s salary. The girlfriend gets to keep her pay increase and the pension of USD100k.” Well, he has a point.

Still, Wolfowitz’s gone, with his reputation in tatters. And, as an Indonesian activist told me when I was writing this piece, now that Wolfowitz is stepping down, it is time for people around the world to realise that the World Bank’s role is over. ”We must learn from Hugo Chavez that there is no development and democracy with the World Bank,” he stressed. ”I hope it’s not just Wolfowitz stepping down from the World Bank, but the World Bank must now ’step down’ from our country (Indonesia) and the world.”

PENANG, Malaysia, May 21 (IPS) - Paul Wolfowitz’s fall from grace is symptomatic of the double standards and hypocrisy of the World Bank and strains the marriage between neo-liberal policies and militarism that he embodied, say activists and analysts.

Wolfowitz, an architect of the war on Iraq, finally bowed to pressure after a favouritism scandal involving his girlfriend, ex-bank employee Shaha Riza. He is due to step down as Bank president on Jun. 30, three days after another key player in the aggression on Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, heads for the exit.

“It’s a humiliating, and, for many, not unwelcome, fall for Wolfowitz who thought he’d found a respectable bolt-hole at the World Bank after his criminal enterprise in Iraq,” said Glasgow-based political scientist John Hilley, who has written on militarism and neo-liberalism. ”Yet, it’s a dark irony that he has gone down for engaging in cheap, nepotistic malpractice while his high crimes, the design and execution of mass terror in Iraq, go unpunished.” Full article: World Bank should go with Wolfowitz - Activists

I find Latin America a fascinating continent, though I have never been there. But I am inspired by the stories of the suffering of countless numbers of ordinary people who resisted the authoritarian rule of US-backed right-wing regimes. Many of these regimes served to protect the economic interests of the local (largely white) wealthy elite as well as the economic agenda of US corporations.

Thousands were killed or tortured - brutally - at the hands of death squads during the Reagan years. Others simply disappeared.

Heroic peace- and justice-loving women and men rose to resist such tyranny and oppression through sheer moral force. And their blood soaked the soil of the continent. People like Oscar Romero (El Salvador), Chico Mendes (Brazil), Ita Ford (El Salvador)… It’s a long list. Today, their sacrifices have inspired a new generation to take a more independent political, economic and social path, rooted in their local indigenous cultures, towards justice and peace.

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Malaysian Herald last October…

When people wonder about the legacy of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while celebrating Mass in El Salvador in 1980, they need look no further than what is happening in Latin America today.

Romero fought for the rights of the peasants in El Salvador and was at the forefront of the Church’s struggle on behalf of the poor. This move of his angered the vested business and economic interests in the region.

Political analyst Noam Chomsky has said the United States virtually declared war on the Catholic Church in South America for taking the side of the poor. The United States would have been so much more comfortable if the Church had remained on the side of the rich and the powerful.

So many priests, activists and community leaders were tortured, murdered or simply ‘disappeared’ during the bloody 1970s and 1980s. In November 1989, six leading Jesuit intellectuals and two of their employees were murdered by a US-trained elite battalion.

Shortly before he was murdered in 1980, Romero wrote a letter to President Carter, pleading with him to end US support for state terror. Chomsky recounts how Romero informed the rector of the Jesuit University, Father Ellacuria, that he was prompted by his concern over a “new concept of special warfare, which consists in murderously eliminating every endeavour of the popular organisations under the allegation of Communism or terrorism…”

Carter never responded and instead sent more financial aid.

This tactic of smearing and targeting those who champion the interests of the people, especially the poor, continues to this day around the world.

Minutes before he was murdered, Romero had read from the Gospel of John: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit ”(Jn. 12:23-26).

Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in the history of El Salvador if not Latin America. The government was so nervous that it lobbed bombs into the crowd attending the funeral, killing some 30 people and injuring hundreds.

Today, Romero’s grain is bearing much fruit in Latin America. An entire continent is rising to resist the might of US-sponsored corporate-led globalisation, which promotes neo-liberal economics that widens the gap between the rich and the poor while fabulously enriching a tiny minority.