Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Published with permission: Chilton Williamson Jr.** 
and  Crisis Magazine 

My late father-in-law, Neil McCaffrey (founder of Arlington House publishers, The Conservative Book Club, etc.), remarked back in the 1960s that bishops would do well to learn something about economics, given their predilection for instructing the faithful and indeed the world in that discipline in its moral dimension. It has seemed to me for the past 30 years that churchmen would do equally well to read up on matters in all sorts of fields relating to immigration and migration—from South to North and from the Third World to the First especially. It seems the prudent thing for them to do, and Christ and the Church have always counseled prudence.

I was reminded of this apparent gap in their education while reading a recent account in The Daily Mail of a riot on New Year’s Eve at the Cieneguillas penitentiary for men in the Mexican state of Zacatecas. According to the Mail, the ructions erupted from what was planned as a “friendly” soccer match between incarcerated members of the Gulf and Zetas drug cartels. Following an argument over an asserted dirty tackle in the penalties box, players drew guns and fired them. Three hours later, the federales, the National Guard, and prison officials managed to subdue the mayhem in which 16 inmates were killed and five wounded. In the aftermath, the prison conducted a search that yielded—in addition to more guns—“knives, 77 bags of marijuana, a saw, three pairs of scissors, nine phones, phone chargers, two hammers and a bottle of liquor.” The suspicion is that all this contraband had been smuggled into Cieneguillas by relatives of the inmates during visiting hours on New Year’s.

It goes without saying that Mexico has no monopoly on crime, including prison crime. Americans of a certain age will remember the 1971 “rebellion” at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York. It was the worst prison outbreak in American history: 1,281 of the prison’s approximately 2,200 inmates rioted, gained control of the prison, and took 42 of the prison staff hostage. Subsequently, other prison riots have occurred in the nearly five decades since Attica, but none of them was near as deadly as the one in Zacatecas.

Defendió y promovió la República como sistema de gobierno que evita la dictadura sea de uno, de varios o de muchos. Marco Tulio Cicerón nació en Arpino, actual Italia, el 3 de enero del año 106 a.C., descendiente de una familia plebeya terrateniente. Es educado con los jóvenes nobles de su época.

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LA CONCEPCIÓN SOCIAL CRISTIANA DE LAS RELACIONES INTERNACIONALES

Resumen

En esta ponencia se destacan las fuentes, influencias recientes, valores y prin- cipios, y políticas del social cristianismo en el campo de las relaciones inter- nacionales. Asimismo, se estudia el papel de los intereses en la formulación de la política exterior, el concepto y las etapas de las relaciones internaciona- les y la globalización; así como las expresiones internacionales organizadas del social cristianismo, especialmente la Internacional Demócrata de Centro y la ODCA.

Una visión de las relaciones internacionales desde la concepción socialcristiana

Tratamos aquí, de la concepción social cristiana de las relaciones in- ternacionales.
Las Relaciones Internacionales son en su sentido más clásico relacio- nes entre los estados nacionales. Tomando en cuenta que actualmente son miembros plenos de las Naciones Unidas más de 190 estados, entonces, las relaciones internacionales pueden ser entendidas como las relaciones entre todos estos miembros de la comunidad internacional. Sin embargo, conviene aclarar que actualmente se incluyen como actores de las relaciones inter- nacionales no sólo a los estados nacionales sino también a las empresas, los organismos internacionales, diversas entidades de la sociedad civil y las mismas personas. Hoy día entonces, las relaciones internacionales son el conjunto de interacciones entre actores internacionales. Los socialcristianos han destacado el papel de la persona en la sociedad internacional.

Hay que distinguir también entre las relaciones internacionales como realidad mundial y las relaciones internacionales como disciplina académica. Dentro de ésta última generalmente se distingue entre las concepciones realistas que entienden la política internacional como lucha por el poder y creen en una naturaleza inmutable del ser humano, y las concepciones idealistas que se basan en valores y principios, y confían en que el ser humano es perfectible y el mundo internacional mejorable. Dentro de esta inclinación idealista podemos ubicar la concepción social cristiana de las relaciones in- ternacionales.

Entre las fuentes doctrinarias de dicha concepción se puede mencionar el humanismo griego, especialmente el aporte de Aristóteles, el derecho romano, la tradición judeo-cristiana, la ilustración, la doctrina social de las iglesias cristianas, el derecho internacional fundado por Francisco de Vitoria y las ideas democráticas.

 Ask any Taiwanese who owns Taiwan, and the answer invariably will be "the Taiwanese people" or sometimes simply "the people". That the country should belong to its people should be obvious, but this is not always the case in a place where equality is lacking and entitlement is rife. Thailand is a telling example.

In Thailand, public demands for democracy revolve around political parties, constitutions, elections and the parliament. While these democratic institutions are instrumental and indispensable, they are neither decisive nor the most basic. For democracy to take root in the long term, Thai people should feel and act like they own the country in equal share, no one more than others. Previous constitutions, after all, stipulated that "sovereignty belongs to the people", implying that each and every Thai person owns Thai sovereignty, covering everything from territory and resources to the government.

While liberty, its associated rights and basic freedoms are critical, the value and virtue of equality under a commonly enforceable and fair set of laws are arguably the most vital and decisive in the construction of democracy. This represents the notion that all citizens are fundamentally equal despite differences in wealth, race, gender, religious faiths and education levels, underpinning the cardinal "one-citizen, one-vote" principle in the election of representatives who are to govern on behalf of and for the benefit of the people.

Demands for democracy are often explicit on such freedoms and rights but mostly implicit on equality. Without respect and acceptance of basic equality, liberty and freedom can lead to abuse of power and misrule.