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Christians for Socialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gonzalo Arroyo S.J.
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Extract

A Chilean Jesuit priest who is also an expert on agricultural economics, Gonzalo Arroyo was a technical adviser on problems relating to agricultural reform for the ten years previous to the overthrow of the Allende government in 1973, and is one of the founders of the world-wide movement called Christians for Socialism. Now living in exile, he gave this interview last June. Here, utilising in his argument methods proper to the Theology of Liberation, he gives his reasons for believing this world-wide movement is going to be of rapidly growing importance in the uncertain years ahead.

Q. In your opinion, what are the principal problems facing mankind?

A. I shall restrict myself to the five which seem to me the most crucial.

1. The ecological problem, that is the problem of conservation and renewal of natural resources like water, soil, air and forests which capitalist industrialisation does not manage to take seriously, subject as it is to the dictates of the frantic race for production and consumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 55 , Issue 654 , November 1974 , pp. 488 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 See Lester R. Brown, in The Human Interest: A Strategy to Stabilize World Population (W. W. Norton and Co., New York 1974), p. 26. The moderate eshmates of the UN differ from more conservative estimates predioting 6,000 million in the year 2000 and 9,200 million in the year 2050, and also from mure generous ones predicting 7,100 million in 2000 and 13,800 million in 2050. Loc.cit.

2 See James W. Howe et al., The US and the Developing World: Agenda for Action 1974 (Praeger, New York, 1974), p. 174.

3 Howe et al., op.cit. p. 180.

4 See ibid p. 183. Estimated revenue from petrol in the 11 oil producing and exporting countries (Canada and US excluded) has increased f i a 12.1m. in 1971 to 14.5m. in 1972, to 22.7m. in 1973 and to 85.2m. in 1974 (ibid., p. 182).

5 See Howe et al., op. cit., p. 179.

6 From 1972 to 1973 prices rose from 9.40 to 19.00 per one hundred pounds of rice; from 1.75 to 3.80 for a bushel of corn; and from 3.38 to 6.20 for a bushel of soya beans. See L. R. Brown, op. cit., p. 59.

7 Rabert McNarnara, President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, spoke similarly in a lecture he gave in a sym justice organised by the Overseas Development Council at Aspen, Colorado last July in which Gonzalo Arroyo participated.