What might Marx think?

It was more like a church service than a formal 'political' gathering. Nagarote's Mayor is a good guy, the town likes him and there were admittedly 'less' voting anomalies here than elsewhere in Nicaragua...nevertheless, he has to promote the party position and all this ridiculous religious rhetoric that unfortunately goes with it these days. The Inauguration opened with the Evangelical pastor's evocation of our Lord Savior and the outgoing Deputy Mayor's public apology for not doing more to help the pueblo, he is, after all and as he reminded us, "only a man and only God is perfect." -thus granting himself and all politicians like him a blank check for corruption and the clean moral slate needed to get the dirty job done. Six songs later is was clear that this was a new gimmick...'prostelizing the so called revolution.' What gets me is that I'm a real admirer of liberation theology so the promise of politics finding meaning through people's lived experience-"the art of the possible" is extremely exciting to me. This had nothing to do with such a promise however, this involves co-opting religious language, in Nicaragua, the Christian language of the poor masses since the arrival of Northern missionaries in the early 90s (not exactly a Revolutionary act) and using people's faith to push a decisively political agenda. This is not the Revolutionary Nicaragua of the 80s...just a poor country staving off more political violence and unrest and trying to survive the best it can. Ortega's expensive political propaganda machine shouts down the message that, "To be close to the people is to be close to God," while his bright face smiles toward supposed prosperity. Red and black flags fly and event organizers cheer, "Viva la Revolucion, El Pueblo Unido..." It was clear that this message mixing was intoxicating to people. The Mayor in his final event address told us that, "We promise a Nicaragua, 100% Christian, putting into practice God's work to help the poor." I for one sincerely hope the work isn't all left to God...she's sure to have her hands full.