With Rousseau in Latin America

As darkness fell, a tropical rainstorm pelted the bulletproof van that drove me to the Casa Blanca in San Salvador to meet briefly with President José Napoleon Duarte last month. Pulled from one meeting to another, the president finally found 15 minutes for me. Halfway through, the guerrillas blew a light tower, and without pausing the chief of state continued to converse in total darkness, until the emergency generator kicked in.

The president (whom I greatly admire) knew that I was lecturing on “Creation Theology” in El Salvador and Guatemala, as I had in Brazil and Argentina. He expressed a touch of impatience with my emphasis on economics. My theme was that democracies must help the poor to “better their condition” or else lose legitimacy. “My priorities,” he responded, “are hominization, pacification, participation, democratization, and reactivization,” pronouncing the words precisely as if they should be italicized. Only under the last heading did he include the word he preferred not to use, economics. He worried more about helping the informal economy than the formal one.

About the Author

Michael Novak

Michael Novak was a Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat.

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As darkness fell, a tropical rainstorm pelted the bulletproof van that drove me to the Casa Blanca in San Salvador to meet briefly with President José Napoleon Duarte last month. Pulled from one meeting to another, the president finally found 15 minutes for me. Halfway through, the guerrillas blew a light tower, and without pausing the chief of state continued to converse in total darkness, until the emergency generator kicked in.

The president (whom I greatly admire) knew that I was lecturing on “Creation Theology” in El Salvador and Guatemala, as I had in Brazil and Argentina. He expressed a touch of impatience with my emphasis on economics. My theme was that democracies must help the poor to “better their condition” or else lose legitimacy. “My priorities,” he responded, “are hominization, pacification, participation, democratization, and reactivization,” pronouncing the words precisely as if they should be italicized. Only under the last heading did he include the word he preferred not to use, economics. He worried more about helping the informal economy than the formal one.