The Rise of Christo-Fascism

[Lauren Johnson]

Wayne Madsen writes on the rise of the radical religious fascism in Central and South America

The recent coup d'état in Bolivia that overthrew President Evo Morales was not merely a standard right-wing putsch aided and abetted by the US Central Intelligence Agency but also placed into power politicians affiliated with a rising fundamentalist Protestant movement in Latin America that can be termed "Christo-fascist." Many of the far-right and out-of-the-mainstream Protestant sects that have gained power in Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and, now, Bolivia have decried traditional Roman Catholicism in Latin America as heretical to their religious ideology and even pro-Communist. As for mainstream Protestant religions, the fundamentalist sects view them as hopelessly liberal, as well as heretical.

The recent military coup in Bolivia that ousted democratically-elected President Evo Morales from office involved senior active duty and retired high-ranking officers of the Bolivian armed forces, some of whom were trained and indoctrinated at the infamous US "School of the Americas," known since 2001 as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), located in Fort Benning, Georgia. One of the School of the Americas trainees is General Williams Kaliman, the now-former commander of the Bolivian armed forces who ordered Morales to step down as president. Kaliman's service to the coup was not very appreciated by its ringmasters, the fundamentalist Christians, among whom is the current acting president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez Chávez. One of Áñez's first moves after she seized power was to dismiss Kaliman as the head of the armed forces and replace him with General Carlos Orellana. Áñez was the second vice president of the Senate and assumed the Bolivian presidency after Morales and the senior members in the line of succession in the governing Movement for Socialism (MAS) party were forced to resign by the military.

In keeping with the tenets of Christo-fascism in Latin America, Áñez not only rejects Roman Catholicism but also the traditional beliefs of the indigenous Aymara people of Bolivia as "satanic." Morales was the first native Aymara to be elected president. During his tenure, Morales improved the living conditions of the Aymara and other poor people in Bolivia who had historically been treated as second-class citizens by the country's wealthy white European population. Under the direction of the Christo-fascist coup leaders, the homes of Morales and other MAS officials were ransacked by rioters and pro-Morales government and media officials were physically attacked. Bolivia TV, Nueva Patria Radio, and newspapers supporting Morales were shut down by the putschists. Bolivia's Wiphala flag, which served as Bolivia's second official flag and represents the 36 indigenous tribes of the country, was burned by the coup-supporting rioters.

The planning for the coup in Bolivia was reportedly backed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, President Donald Trump's first director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a Christo-fascist member of the right-wing breakaway from the Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

Other School of the Americas alumni were identified among the key Bolivian coup plotters. These include Manfred Reyes Villa, a former military officer, presidential candidate, mayor of Cochabamba, and governor of the Cochabamba Department, as well as General Remberto Siles Vasquez, Colonel Julio César Maldonado Leoni, Colonel Oscar Pacello Aguirre, and Colonel Teobaldo Cardozo Guevara.

One of the major Christo-fascist politicians who supported the coup against Morales is Luis Fernando Camacho, the head of a dubious "civic association" in Santa Cruz. The Bolivian media has described Camacho as "extremely right-wing" and a "Christian fascist." Camacho has also been linked to Croatian-Bolivian Branko Marinko, who fled to the United States in 2009 after he and other plotters attempted to overthrow the MAS government and assassinate Morales. Camacho's questionable business activities was exposed in the release of the "Panama Papers," which showed that he owned an offshore Panamanian company called Navi International Holding S.A.

Bolivian government officials who remain loyal to Evo Morales, who was forced to seek political asylum in Mexico, claim the coup was also supported by several foreign far-right and right-wing politicians, including Colombian President Ivan Duque; his political puppet master, former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe; Brazilian neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro, and US Senators Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida), Rick Scott (Republican-Florida), Ted Cruz (Republican-Texas), and Robert Menendez (Democrat-New Jersey). All the senators are closely linked to right-wing Cuban expatriate oligarchs who, for the most part, live in south Florida.

The putsch against Morales began within the Policía Nacional de Bolivia (PNB) ranks. The commander of the police who ordered the police revolt is Colonel Vladimir Calderón, who has strong ties to a CIA-influenced group based in Washington, Police Attachés of Latin America in the United States of America (APALA). Just prior to the launch of the coup, Trump spoke to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Annual Conference and Exposition in Chicago, another CIA liaison and recruiting ground for police assets, including those in Latin America. In 2018, the IACP welcomed Colonel Calderon, the initial coup leader, to its membership. It is also noteworthy that one of the financiers of the IACP is 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg's Bloomberg Foundation.

The coup in Bolivia followed the template of the initial presidential actions of Bolsonaro in Brazil. Bolsonaro is another fundamentalist Christo-fascist, who, since his inauguration, has worked to oust Morales from power. The first steps of the new Bolivian foreign minister, Karen Longaric, was to sever diplomatic relations with Venezuela, expel the Venezuelan embassy staff, recognize the CIA-backed opposition Venezuelan government of Juan Guaido, and expel several Cuban diplomats and arrest Cuban doctors. The actions taken against Cuban doctors mirrors that of Bolsonaro in Brazil and President Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, the latter having turned his country away from progressive policies to become a lapdog for the CIA and Pentagon.

The coup in Bolivia had an uncanny resemblance to the 2010 attempted putsch by the Ecuadorian National Police against President Rafael Correa, an ally of Bolivia's Morales. Correa was held as a virtual hostage at the Police Hospital in Quito for the greater part of a day prior to his being freed by loyal Ecuadorian military personnel.

There is little doubt that the Bolivian coup involved disciples of the Virginia-based Brazilian Christo-fascist "guru" Olavo de Carvalho. Among Carvalho's disciples are Bolsonaro, Brazilian foreign minister Ernesto Araújo, and Brazilian Education Minister Abraham Weintraub. Carvalho has identified himself as a fundamentalist Christian and an astrologer and not only doubts the Earth revolves around the sun but harbors a belief that the Earth is actually flat. Carvalho's teachings about climate change being a "Marxist conspiracy" have directly influenced Bolsonaro's policies on further destruction of the Amazon rainforest through unbridled industrial exploitation. Carvalho demonized Brazil's two Workers' Party presidents, Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and removed from office on phony charges, and Rouseff's popular predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was recently released from prison after he was convicted on trumped up charges by right-wing prosecutor Sergio Moro, who now served as Bolsonaro's Justice Minister.

One of the first and most notorious Christo-fascist leaders in Latin America was Guatemala's dictator, Efraín Ríos Montt, also known as "Brother Efraín," who was a member of the Guatemalan chapter of the Gospel Outreach Church of Eureka, California. Montt and the church had close ties to US Christo-fascist leaders, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Montt, who was militarily backed by the Ronald Reagan administration and Israel, carried out a genocidal scorched-earth war against Guatemala's indigenous Mayan population. A favorite extermination target of Christo-fascists is the native indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere, who, as charged by Bolivia's interim president Áñez, are "Satanists" because they continue to practice their traditional religious rituals.

As was the case in Bolivia, Christo-fascist fundamentalists have been mobilized against the progressive governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

There is something else that binds the Christo-fascists that has little to do with religion and everything to do with making quick profits: narcotics smuggling. Rios Montt's paramilitary death squads financed their operations by smuggling drugs, particularly cocaine. During Montt's rule, Guatemala was a link in the chain of CIA drug smuggling operations that involved the Nicaraguan contras, Colombian narco-terrorist cartels, and Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

The narco-traffickers have been buoyed by the Christo-fascist takeover of Bolivia. Interim President Áñez is married to Héctor Hernando Hincapié Carvajal of the Colombian Conservative Party, an ally of the narco-terrorist-backed Duque administration and its political puppet masters, former President Uribe and his financiers in the Medellin-based Ochoa clan drug cartel. Ever since Morales legalized in Bolivia the production of coca leaves, used in traditional Aymara medicines and as a tea refreshment, Latin American drug cartels have seen their profits go into a tailspin. Bolivia was competing with the Colombian cartels as a source for legally grown coca leaves. The Christo-fascists may believe in the Bible, but they also understand that their religious movements can be supported by cash from the narco-trade.

A proper symbol for Latin America's Christo-fascists would be the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro wearing a pair of ammunition bandoliers while standing on a couple of bricks of cocaine.

[James Lateer]

Sorry, but I guess I am like that New Testament Icon, the "Doubting Thomas".

Since the current Pope is from Argentina and has historical ties to the Argentinian Junta of the 70's and 80's, it's hard to imagine how any Protestant Christian Fascists could be positioned to the right of the Catholic Church in Latin America.

Just off the top of my head, this looks like a "bait and switch" operation.

So Mike Pompeo is a member of a Evangelical Presbyterian sect. As I am a very active Methodist who was raised Presbyterian, I can say pretty much for sure that any "breakaway" Presbyterian Church (which I have never heard of before) couldn't possibly be a conspiratorial covert ops force of any kind whatever.

Mainline Protestant churches are kind of "on the ropes" due to the mainstream media brainwashing that convinces people that Jesus was a Republican and that Evangelicals should officially become Republican.

If there is a resurgence of right wing Fascism in Latin America, (which is apparently the case), then the blame would overwhelmingly point to the "usual suspects", i.e. the people who gave us Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.

This leopard can't really change its stripes. We are talking about an institution that has been continually in operation since the first century AD. If somebody thinks that Latin America could up and reject Catholicism in favor of The Assembly of God or similar narrow-minded and hard-bitten sects, then I would personally have to see a heck of a lot of proof before I would buy that sort of concept.

I think that P T Barnum said that "there's a sucker born every minute." This "Evangelical Latin America" theory seems to be a theory invented to convince a very naive part of the world (and American) population.

James Lateer

[Lauren Johnson]

Actually JL, the conservative protestant church in central and south America is quite real. I have experienced it first hand in three trips I took to Nicaragua and Guatemala. The population was either protestant or catholic. The protestant churches were were obnoxious -- really obnoxious. The worst was in Guatemala where the protestant churches played their "music" with their amps and drums cranked up to "painful" and musically unrecognizable. The preachers would scream horrible invectives towards the Catholics about how they were all going to hell. The worst was in the city of Chichicastenango. This city is famous as a center of Mayan culture, its market, and the 400 year old Iglesia de Santo Tomas. I was in a hotel a half mile from the protestant church and could barely sleep with the window shut, ear plugs in my ears, and the pillow wrapped around my head.

It is well known that the CIA has used the evangelical churches as their assets to destabilize and infiltrate the catholic cultures of the rural areas. The urban catholic churches are more Rome centered whereas the rural areas are more liberation theology (Marxist) oriented. I heard a sermon given to a small catholic church about the rich man and the poor man -- el rico y el pobre.

And yes, the people who brought over the nazis after WWII are the ones who helped introduce fascist christianity. It's very real. In fact, it's very real in the US and has been nurtured by the CIA as well.

[James Lateer]

Thanks to you, Lauren for shining the light on my (admittedly) arm-chair knowledge of Latin America. Your travels there sound very significant regarding these issues. Myself, I have only been one week in Cancun, and a day trip each to Nogales and Tijuana.

Never having been to those Latin American places, I admit I may be thinking in stereotypes. Further, my personal childhood experience with Protestant/Catholic hostility also colors my perceptions.

I have at least twice been surprised by major actual facts. First, my publisher Kris Millegan suggested that I read "Thy Will Be Done..." by Gerard Colby. That book details the generations-long (and multi-million dollar) effort by the Rockefellers to promote their Baptist religion everywhere in Latin America. I had no clue about that.

Further, I had always been taught since high school that the Colony/State of Maryland was a refuge for Catholics during the Colonial period. After just having finished a colonial history of Maryland recently, the reality was very different. Maryland was, in fact, mostly a refuge for Puritans fleeing Virginia.

There were five generations of Lords Baltimore. The first were Catholic by the later ones actually renounced their Catholicism in order to keep the title to their patent, i.e. to keep their title to Maryland. It seems that almost all of the colonies were overwhelmingly anti-Catholic all though some colonies were much more tolerant of all "dissenters" including Catholics.

In Maryland in 1655 we had the "Battle of the Severn" which was a pitched armed conflict between Cromwell and Royalist sympathizers, (i.e. Protestant vs. Catholic) in coastal Maryland.

In examining the distribution of Catholicism and Protestantism around the world, I have notices the following: some countries like Italy are almost 99% Catholic and others maybe 1% Catholic. By contrast, it seems like most foreign countries have around 5% Protestant citizens, no matter their geographical location. But not very many are majority Protestant, not nearly as many as are majority Catholic.

Getting to my main point, your highlighting of the recent "stealth revival" of Latin-American fascism is a huge story and a huge issue. Much more needs to be said and analyzed.

Sadly, American historians and textbooks tend to completely whitewash religious differences and their influence on recent (U.S.) history. The flagrant examples are the Christian vs. Buddhist bad blood in Vietnam and also the religious nature of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade.

In reality, IMHO Communism was at least a quasi-religion. It was battled almost exclusively worldwide by the Russian Orthodox Church and established churches in Europe, again mostly (but not exclusively) Catholic.

Let me get to the point----this website could use much more info from you and others about this nasty turn of events in Latin America, be it in Brazil, in Bolivia or in Venezuela.

I totally believe that right-wing Protestant sects are ripe for exploitation by the CIA in their covert ops in Latin America. But IMHO, that issue is totally beside the point compared to the question as to opinion (and position) of the Catholic Church about Christo-Fascism.

Most notably, you mentioned that urban Catholics in Latin-America are Rome-centered and rural Catholics are fans of "Liberation Theology". But please tell us your opinion about what that means DYNAMICALLY in the current political and power struggles in Bolivia, Venezuala, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba, etc. etc. etc.

When you tell us that the cities are Rome-centered (by comparison to the rural areas), does Rome-centered equal extreme right-wing? Or does it mean that the Catholic Church (in these recent events) is neutral or is trying to be neutral?

What I do feel that I learned from my studies involving European Catholic political action in the 1930's and the 1940's is that the Vatican is over-blown in its alleged power and influence.

From what I have found, the Vatican has only 109 acres in Rome and that includes St Peter's church. So they just don't have space for a large bureaucracy or a "Vatican Pentagon" so to speak.

As far as I have found, in their limited quarters, they have only a library, an archives, a bank and one Secretary of State (in addition to living quarters). The power and influence (according to some experts) resides in the Bishops of whatever country is the most powerful at a given time. Just before WWII, that happened to be Germany. Further, in the mid-20th Century, half of all the Vatican revenues came just from Germany alone.

In fact, before the 1929 Lateran Treaty with Mussolini, the Vatican was basically financially bankrupt.

Backing your side in the debate of the above issues, it would be easy to see that Protestant Evangelical sects would be much better candidates for CIA exploitation than the worldwide Catholic Church. In fact, I could more easily imagine the Catholic hierarchy exploiting the CIA rather than the other way around.

My final point is that one of the major problems, maybe the most important of all surrounding this Latin American question is the role of Methodist Clergy (which is significant) as well as the role of other Christian groups in setting up this immigration "Trail of Tears" leading through Latin Amerca where children are being grossly exploited for extremely evil purposes. I could see the hand of the CIA in this also.

Thanks again for the terrific attention you have drawn to this growing problem in our Western Hemisphere neighborhood. I wonder how long it will be before US troops are again deployed in Latin America (as has been the history there)?

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

[James Lateer]

After listening to the first of the above videos, it seemed to me that the speaker Chris Hedges spoke a lot of words but didn't really get to the point regarding anything.

As for my two cents---Karl Barth wrote that Calvin, (the most influential of Protestant theorists) was mainly responsible for bringing Christianity into synchrony with the Age of Enlightenment (Thomas Jefferson, French Revolution, Descartes, Newton, etc.).

Because the Calvinists harnessed the raw power that comes from true belief in rationalism, the Calvinists in Germany, England, Netherlands and the fugitive Huguenots from France basically took over the world in very short order.

The tiny country of the Netherlands founded the City of New York as well as ruled the massive group of Islands that we now know as Indonesia. And then it promptly took over England, too in the "Glorious Revolution of 1688) The Calvinist Netherlands was truly "the mouse that roared". And there was much more on top of that.

Calvinists in England brought in the Cromwell government which founded the British Empire. In Germany, Calvinists were influential in German unification under Bismark and all the results that came from that.

Calvinists in England and the US ended the gigantic empires of France and Spain which were based on the tunnel vision of the Catholic rulers and clergy that ran them. The the French and Spanish empires simply self-destructed. And for the same reason, the Anglican (legally established Church) also brought about the failure of the British Empire in America and was the main cause for the American Revolution. And then the American Revolution morphed quickly into the French Revolution.

And what was the secret of the Calvinists that still rules in the world today though the power of the US (mainly) and to a lesser extent Germany and the UK? The secret is this:

The mainline US Protestant Churches are the only religions in the world that believe that your religion is purely your own affair. And that your relationship with God does not really involve your relationship with any other co-religionists at all, necessarily or (much less) primarily.

You come into the world as an individual single human being and you will leave this world the same way. We are born one at a time and we die one at a time.

Clergymen don't like it, but the teaching of Jesus is clear. When he revealed the Lord's Prayer, he "looked up to Heaven" and prayed, "Our Father, who art in Heaven". That's right. God is in Heaven. In the Greek it says that Jesus look up to the Heavens. The Greek word is ouranos, which means the firmament, the Zodiac, the Milky Way, etc. etc. etc.

The speaker on the above video, Chris Hedges, spoke strongly against "utopians." Well IMHO there are some religions that are not mostly with God up in "Heaven" but they are PURSUING WORLDLY GOALS.

Too many people view their religion like a labor union. If you're Catholic, then maybe you can get a job through your Catholic network. And there are other religions that are heavy into networking for jobs and money.

If you're a Muslim in Iran, then your religion runs the goverment. So that will be of major benefit to you RIGHT HERE IN THIS WORLD. If you're an atheist in Iran, you may have to pay the price. Probably a nasty price at that!

The watchword is this--James 4:4 "Friendship with the world means enmity with God".

Ironically, the Calvinists believed in (or invented) the separation of Church and State. That means that worldly affairs are just that---affairs of the world. Godly affairs are basically centered outside this world. We will see God, if we do at all, AFTER WE LEAVE THIS WORLD AND GO ONTO ANOTHER. Some even interpret the Bible as stating the "Satan is the ruler of the World". That makes sense to me. God created the world, but Satan through the fallen man, rules it (unfortunately).

So the Calvinists i.e. our forefathers, the Pilgrims and the founders of New Netherlands (New York) were free of having the "monkey-on-the-back" which (for others) was THE LEGALLY ESTABLISHED RELIGION with all it's coercion. This freedom allowed the Calvinists to welcome to New York and Pennsylvania especially, any and all forms of "dissenters". They let the Jews, Catholics, Quakers, Lutherans and others alone, or at least tolerated them, which was more than the coercive religions would allow.

They had a religion that was (theoretically) free from coercion (though they didn't much like witches)!!!! It was a matter of individual conscience, not coercion.

In the Anglican and Catholic empires of England, France and Spain, they were ridden by the oppressive efforts of taxpayer-funded clergy to suck the financial blood from their parishioners. A clergy that is supported only by voluntary donations, not tax money, is obviously more likely to be somewhat humble. And I would say, closer to God and further from the world.

To sum it up, your religion should work for you, you shouldn't work for your religion. You should work for your fellow man, which doesn't mean you work for your religion. IMHO your religion should not be a monkey-on-your-back, but should rest on your shoulder as lightly as a feather.

As written 1 Corinthians 7:15 "...for God wants his children to live in peace and harmony". This quote is in the context that people shouldn't feel a sense of bondage which requires them to live in a bad marriage. I personally believe that people should't have to live under any kind of coercion which is the same as bondage IMHO.

And so, I would maintain, that the above principles, if observed, will handle the problem of "Christo-Fascism" pretty easily. It should be pretty obvious that Jesus would not approve of Fascism.

Or Auschwitz.

James Lateer