The Cry of Blood – Folha de S. Paulo, December 5, 1971
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
When the recent Chilean presidential election brought Allende to power, the meaning of the vote—confusing at first glance—led me to write an article for Folha de S. Paulo showing that the victory of the Popular Unity was simply the result of electoral maneuvering: in fact, the Marxist and communist electorate had decreased since the 1964 election.
Regarding the recent Uruguayan presidential election, no further explanation is necessary. It’s clear that the communists were defeated, as they were part of the Broad Front, which received the fewest votes in the election.
This was so heavily reported by the press that I don’t need to dwell on it. I will make just one point: communism didn’t just lose; it suffered a resounding defeat.
In fact, the clearly anticommunist vote should be calculated based not only on the votes for the winning party—the Colorado Party—but also on those for the other bourgeois party, the Blanco Party, which was close behind in the count. Thus, according to the results I have, specifically those published in Thursday’s Folha de S. Paulo, adding the 593,900 Colorado votes to the 583,248 Blanco votes gives a total of 1,177,148 votes for the two non-communist parties. Considering that the Broad Front received 270,553 votes, we can conclude it was nowhere near capable of winning power.
This disproves all the propaganda spread by some advertising machines in Uruguay and abroad, claiming that Uruguay was about to choose a communist regime.
The false nature of this propaganda becomes even clearer because the Broad Front’s voters are not all communists. They include various leftists and — sadly — Catholics as well. Therefore, the communist voters are only a small part of those who voted for the Broad Front.
This last point deserves special attention. It is undeniable, for example, that the Broad Front received a significant number of Catholic votes. Similar to what happened in Chile, the bishops in Uruguay acted in ways that favored the victory of Marxism. Therefore, in mid-September, after a lengthy meeting, the Uruguayan Episcopal Conference issued a complex statement, in which, based on the incompatibility of Marxist (Broad Front) and liberal (Blanco and Colorado parties) doctrines with Church teachings, it granted Catholics full freedom to vote for any party. In the Broad Front, of course! They explicitly stated: “We do not have sufficient reasons to recommend … nor to consider as illicit the vote for any of the parties participating (sic) in this year’s elections.”
This position is misleading. It overlooks the fact that, when faced with three equally bad options, Catholics cannot vote for any of them, but must pick the least harmful one. In other words, in the Uruguayan case, they must prefer the bad liberal option over the terrible communist option.
This ideological-electoral maneuver exposes the sympathies within the Uruguayan Bishops Conference for the slate that included communists.
Now, such sympathies clearly could not have been limited to just publishing a note. The Church’s influence on the press, radio, television, education, charitable and welfare activities, and in the pulpits and confessionals must have primarily been exercised according to the bishops’ sympathies.
Therefore, many naive non-Marxist Catholics will have been influenced.
However, one aspect of the bishops’ attitude toward the Uruguayan elections unfortunately did not occur during the Chilean elections. On his own initiative, a Uruguayan bishop issued a strongly anticommunist Pastoral Letter, which naturally helped to distance his flock from any collaboration with communists. Although one might not agree with some of the social claims made in his Pastoral Letter, the author’s name deserves respect: Most Rev. Antonio Corso, bishop of Maldonado, Punta del Este.
How satisfying it is to recall this example and mention this name during a week when the eyes of Brazilian Catholics were stained—there’s no other way to put it—by the scandalous photograph of Cardinal Silva Henriquez smiling as he shook the bloodstained hand of Fidel Castro!
* * *
However, we cannot focus only on the Uruguayan elections. Another important event that happened this week also deserves analysis.
No one can deny that the communist government installed in Prague is illegitimate. Two factors weaken its legitimacy. First, its very communist nature. A government entirely committed to destroying the natural and Christian order and building an unnatural and anti-Christian order cannot be considered legitimate. Any authority that consistently and seriously opposes the rights of God and the country inherently lacks legitimacy.
On the other hand, the Prague government is composed of puppets installed by Soviet tanks. Since the Soviet occupation is illegal, the government imposed by the occupier is usurping authority.
Aware of their complete lack of roots in Czechoslovakia, the puppets in Prague trembled at the thought of the elections they were required to call to fill all the legislative chambers of the Republic and the municipalities.
To face the test, they organized the dirtiest elections in history. Outlawed, the opposition was limited in every way. Only the ruling party submitted lists of candidates. Voting occurred on a workday, allowing civil servants and workers to be transported directly from their jobs to the polling stations. There, a mockery of secret voting awaited them. Each polling station had a booth for those who “wanted” to cast their vote secretly. However, anyone who did so was subject to suspicion and persecution by the communist, police-boss state. Of course, few would “want” to do it, so everyone was forced to vote openly.
Under these conditions, even the mildest forms of opposition, such as abstentions, null votes, and blank votes, were not allowed.
As for the election’s outcome, it could only be a victory for the government.
All of this, along with the data I present below, is documented. I obtained them from the Brazilian daily press, Bologna’s August CSEO, and Prague’s Katolicke Noviny, dated the third of this month.
I ask readers if they are not outraged by this farce and would like to shake hands with any of the rulers or officials, a mix of scoundrels and clowns, who helped create this fake election. Certainly not!
Here is the harsh truth: in a collective pastoral letter to Czechoslovak Catholics, the episcopate of that country advised them to vote for the communist candidates. I emphasize this sentence from the document: “We will naturally place our trust in men who devote all their physical and spiritual strength to the welfare of the nation and society.” This is how the episcopate views the puppets of the Russian occupiers!
Most Rev. Alex Horak delivered a speech in which he declared that “the authority of the State is of divine origin and this principle becomes even more valid when the promoter of this authority is the entire people.” To comment on just one aspect, I recall that affirming the power of the people in that martyred nation is a sin against the Holy Spirit, for it amounts to denying the truth known as such.
Finally, during his speech to the Czech Minister of Agriculture, in the presence of the bishops of Bohemia and Moravia, Most Rev. Stepan Trochta bluntly stated: “Christians are men and want to live well. Today, it is not our desire to discuss post-mortem problems and our ideas about eternity, but rather to concern ourselves with material and current issues, including the conditions for a peaceful human life. If, therefore, man and life are at the center of our and your interests, as the first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and president of the People’s Front, Gustav Husak, has said, let us devote all our efforts to a happy life on earth.”
Two resounding lies. One, that it is proper for the Church, now or at any time, to cease “discussing the problems of the afterlife” and focus on “a happy life on earth” as “the center of its interests.”
Another, more minor but still important falsehood is that man and his earthly happiness are at the center of what the puppets in Prague care about.
* * *
Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, Prague… Three defections, three scandals, and I honestly don’t even know what to say anymore.
However, what I do not say, the angels of God will say on Judgment Day.
Meanwhile, as the 20th century draws to a close, insulted by these pastoral scandals, the blood of the victims of communism, like that of Abel in early humanity, rises to Heaven and cries out to God for justice.
