Excomuniones Electorales: El Conflicto Entre La Iglesia Y El Estado, Puerto Rico,1960

Silvia Álvarez Curbelo

doi:10.4151/07197969-Vol.12-Iss.3-Art.735

Authors

Silvia Álvarez Curbelo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4151/07197969-Vol.12-Iss.3-Art.735

Abstract

The United States and Puerto Rico underwent general elections in 1960. In both instances, the Catholic Church was a main political player though for different reasons. Kennedy’s campaign as the Democratic Party nominee unleashed an anti Catholic campaign and fueled speculations about the Vatican’s role in presidential decisions. In the case of Puerto Rico, the Catholic Church spearheaded a fiery campaign against the ruling Popular Democratic Party (PPD) and, particularly, against its leader, governor Luis Muñoz Marín. A new political party, the Christian Action Party (PAC), was organized with the acquiescence of the Catholic bishops, both of them Americanborn. The two principal conflicting issues were the birth control programs put in practice by the PPD and the government’s refusal to allow a weekly hour of religious instruction in the island’s public school system. Kennedy was elected president and Muñoz Marín was reelected for a fourth consecutive term. But the controversy was not settled in Puerto Rico as Church’s officials insisted that Catholic voters who supported the PPD in the ballot box were liable for excommunication. Applying discourse analysis methodology to a corpus of texts, we were able to identify the discursive matrix that organized the two ideological platforms. On the one hand, we found a strong anti-communist stance in the Church discourse as laicism spread thru government institutions and programs. But, on the other hand, we ascertained the presence of atavistic fears with millenarist undertones held by rural and traditional sectors regarding the role of women in society and the hierarchical nature of family.

Keywords: Puerto Rico, Catholic Church, birth control, religious education, Luis Muñoz Marín.

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