When this article appeared, Dom Helder was Archbishop of Recife Olinda, Brazil. His witness of simplicity, identification with the poor, and nonviolence has made him known throughout the world. On a visit to the U.S., he addressed this message to Americans.
Is the so-called free world really free? When you became upset with Russian or Chinese expansion, are you really concerned about saving freedom? Or are you more concerned about saving a system which has been beneficial to you and which you have adopted?
The system which you have adopted seems to you anti-totalitarian and indispensable for saving human dignity and freedom. How do you explain to yourself then that this system has not been able to eliminate huge pockets of poverty and misery within your own country? You know well that it is possible to write a geography of hunger within the United States of America.
Before the absurd and unjustifiable reality of two-thirds of humanity living in a sub-human condition, you are forced to recognize that the problem of problems is not the confrontation between East and West but the inequality between the northern and southern hemispheres.
Do not try to fool yourselves into saying that you don’t need help from outside and that you can return to the tranquility of isolationism. The injustices that need to be redressed are too many and too serious. There is, for example, the injustice of so-called aid-for-development being accompanied by the international political takeover of trade in raw materials.
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