ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ
Dunbar-Ortiz’s books include Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, The Great Sioux Nation, and the forthcoming Home of the Brave: Indigenous History of the United States.

She said today: “In Jamestown, what was to become the U.S. was founded as a commercial corporate enterprise. We are still saddled with much of this legacy. Jamestown was not founded for the welfare of its inhabitants. Its purpose was to facilitate the creation of profit for people back in Britain. Thirteen years after its founding, slavery of Africans would be introduced. The natives thought that they were in control and that the colonial settlers did not pose a threat. They welcomed the English trading posts; they didn’t see the infrastructure of European capitalism, such as the stock-holding companies and banking system, and soon were trading land for European manufactured items.” Dunbar-Ortiz is professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at California State University East Bay in Hayward, California.
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BLASE BONPANE
Director of the Office of the Americas, Bonpane’s books include “Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution.” He said today: “One of the major things the Pope needs to face in Latin America is the continuation of liberation theology, which he as Cardinal Ratzinger tried to stamp out. Liberation theology is often dismissed as Marxist, but of course Jesus was born long before Marx and Marx was probably influenced by Jesus. Read the ‘Marxist’ Acts of the Apostles: ‘The faithful all lived together and owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and shared out the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed.’ (Acts 2:44)

“History can clarify the situation. Back in the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicaea on the Turkish coast and paid the way for the attending bishops, imperial theology was born. The sword and the cross came together in building empires, in the Crusades, the Inquisition, the conquistadors and most recently among the ‘Christian’ war mongers who are cheerleaders for the war in Iraq.

“Liberation theology is simply an effort to dissolve the heretical imperial theology which has tainted Christianity for centuries. Making war in the name of Jesus is heresy. Jesus firmly embraced a preferential option for the poor. The Church must do the same.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020