Vicente Ferrer, who has died aged 89, was regarded by Spanish supporters of his aid work in India as a "lay saint". More than 100,000 attended his funeral in Anantapur, a testament to the reverence in which he was held and the impact of his work in the region of Andhra Pradesh.
Ferrer was born in Barcelona. Just before the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936, he joined the revolutionary party POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification). He fought in the Battle of the Ebro in late 1938 and, like many, was forced to retreat all the way into France with the Republic's defeated army. There he was interned in the Argelès-sur-Mer camp. Returning to Spain, he was sent for the rest of 1939 to Franco's Betanzos concentration camp before being forced to do three years' military service. He then began to study law, but gave it up in 1944 to train as a Jesuit priest, with the idea of "helping others".
In 1952 he volunteered to go to India. At first he devoted himself to his spiritual development in Pune, but, surrounded by desolation, he soon moved from reflection to action. He started with a school and 12 acres of land at Manmad, north-east of Mumbai. In an arid area, he persuaded farmers to dig wells, offering them oil and wheat while they dug. Then, the digger of one well would help another, in a system Ferrer termed "linked brotherhood".
He was to spend the rest of his life in India, entering into conflict with landowners and political bosses because of his co-operative methods, emphasis on education and challenges to the caste system and to the subjugation of women. He lived and worked among the poorest, especially the dalits (untouchables), who lacked all rights and were mostly illiterate.
Ferrer attacked governments, both western and Indian, for ignoring the poor, arguing forcefully that mass poverty could be eradicated only by official action. He also believed in direct action, which led him to clash with local authorities. In 1968, pressure from the latter led to Ferrer's expulsion from India. Some 30,000 peasant farmers marched 150 miles in protest. The prime minister, Indira Gandhi, defused the revolt, saying he could take a "short holiday" and return, as long as he agreed to live in another part of the country.
In October 1969 Ferrer settled in Anantapur, by some accounts because Andhra Pradesh was the only state that would accept him. His life here changed radically and entered its most fruitful period. He left the Jesuits in March 1970 and married a 22-year-old Englishwoman, Anne Perry. She had been on a round-the-world trip with her brother, ran out of money in India, and was sent to interview Ferrer for a newspaper. Impressed by his drive and ability "to make the impossible possible", she never completed her trip or journalism training, but stayed on as a volunteer.
Later in 1970 Ferrer founded the Rural Development Trust (later the Ferrer Foundation), through which he channelled all his work. Though trained by the Jesuits as an intellectual, his popularity owed much to his pithy use of language. "Misery and suffering are not meant to be understood, but to be solved," and "I've declared war on pain and suffering" were two phrases that helped him raise money, not just from leftwing Catholics (he was never friends with the church hierarchy, who were unrepresented at his funeral) but from a wide base of donors. In 1996 the Vicente Ferrer Foundation was established in Spain, and it receives more than €10m a year from about 150,000 people.
By the time of Ferrer's death, his foundation had opened and supported 1,700 village schools, serving 125,000 children and employing 2,000 teachers, and three general hospitals with 1,300 staff. It had planted 3m trees and opened libraries, an Aids clinic and family-planning clinics. It organised wells and irrigation schemes. Several projects focus on women, especially dalits, whose lives are blighted by constant childbearing, rape and murder.
One characteristic Ferrer project was to lend destitute women money, interest-free, to buy cows. The women then sold milk to other dalits, repaying the loan. With a very different style and ideology to that of the most famous 20th-century missionary, Mother Teresa, Ferrer emphasized sustainable development and providing the poor with the basic education and material means to take control of their own lives. Approximately 2 million people have been helped by his projects.
In recent years Ferrer was awarded numerous prizes for humanitarian work, most notably Spain's Prince of Asturias Concord prize in 1998. He is survived by Anne and their three children, Tara, Moncho and Yamuna.
• Vicente Ferrer i Moncho, humanitarian activist, born 9 April 1920; died 19 June 2009
By Michael Eaude.
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15 comments:
With a CV like that I'm surprised the Vatican didn't excommunicate him. Come to think of it they probably did.
Anything known?
Did he ever give up on his faith? If not he has truely lived the life that his faith said he should. If he did then he truley livd the life his conscience said he should. Then again he probably did both. A great piece Mick
The POUM were virulently anti-communist. Agent of the British State and writer of lists of communists, Eric Arthur Blair, was amongst their admirers. Would this help explain the Catholic church’s toleration of Ferrer?
Aon, my understanding is that they were anti-stalinist not anti communist.
There is a difference between being a non-communist and an anti-communist. The International Brigades whilst they were heavily compromised of communists also contained many non-communists who would have been critical of Stalin but accepting him as an anti-fascist. The POUM on the other hand attracted the likes of Orwell who was a rabid anti-communist, so much so that he compiled lists of ‘reds’ which were then passed on to British intelligence, Sean O’Casey was one of his prey. If this is the alternative to Stalin then it is hardly a socialist one. Loach’s film, for me, was not an anti-fascist film but an anti-communist one, he played fast and loose with the facts. His position on the Spanish civil war comes from his time as a member of the discredited, lunatic, WRP.
To attempt to smear all who were members of the POUM with the post war behavior of George Orwell is weird.
George Orwell was never a member of the POUM, he washed up in its militia due to his connections in the Independent Labour Party. What ever one may think about Orwell's connections with British intel, Homage to Catalonia is still one of the best books [written in the English language] about 1930s Spain.
To describe Loach's work as anti communist is ridiculous, unless that is you believe communism is a top down single party dictatorship, staffed by cringinly cowardly gofers who worship at the 'dear leaders' feet.
The great thing about Loach's work is he actually likes working class people and trust them enough to make judgment about their own lives.
As it happens as far as I'm aware, Ken Loach was never a member of the WRP, although for a time he was a member of the SLL and like many people who have been members of small left groups, he felt it was not for him.
Ken when asked has for decades supported working class people in struggle, internationally, from Ireland to Palestine, South Africa to Bosnia, etc, etc he has been rock solid, if he is an anti communist, then we need a few more like him.
Jemmy
All I know is he fell in love, left the Church and got married.
Mick, I must agree that Homeage to Catalonia is one of the great books. I read it many moons ago and felt it was amazing. Went ot Spain for the first time ever last summer and i stopped in a village in the mountains and I read it again it. Still brilliant but more painful this time.
I have admired Loach for many years so was disappointed by ‘Land and Freedom’ but given the time he spent within the orbit of the WRP it came as no real surprise. A trade union colleague and WRP member told me at the time how pleased they were with Ken’s film and how he had stayed true to their line on Spain. In truth it is not a line that the WRP have sole ownership of, any of the Trots could claim it as theirs.
The main protagonist in ‘Land and Freedom’ is a member of the CP who decides to go to Spain under his own volition and ends up in the POUM. Like I said Loach plays fast and loose with the facts here. The CP members who went to Spain were handpicked and did not end up in the ranks of the POUM. Loach was asked about these inaccuracies in an interview at the time and justified them by saying that the climax of the film is when the protagonist rips up his CP membership card, this makes the film anti-communist not anti-fascist, it is also an insult to all the veterans of the International Brigades, many of whom were not in the CP, who according to Loach were not fighting fascism but putting down a non-existent Trotskyist revolution. The POUM were something of a joke and did not play a decisive role in the defence of the Republic, the areas where they had some influence fell easily to the fascists because they were so disorganised. Centralism is the moral of this story or “top down single party dictatorship, staffed by cringinly cowardly gofers who worship at the 'dear leaders' feet” as Mick prefers to call it. A far better film is the documentary ‘The Good Fight’ about the members of the Lincoln Brigade from American who went to Spain but be warned the cast includes a few ‘cringinly cowardly gofers’.
I am constantly surprised by the left’s wish to either pardon or totally ignore Orwell’s career as a spy. Surely there is a link between his life-long hatred of communism and his extra-curricular activities for His Majesty’s Secret Service.
On Orwell, I feel his class background is more of a clue as an explanation for his post war links with the MI5 officer who was permanently stationed at the BBC. Orwell was a social democrat who believed in bourgeois democracy, thus it is hardly surprising he was an anti Communist.
As to members of the non labour party left pardoning his touting, I have never come across this myself. In any case it would be a black day if we only read books which are written by people who agree with us politically. (in my own case I would have nothing to read ;)
Your interpretation of a communist as someone who holds a party card is full of pitfalls, whatever side you take in the arguments over Stalinism. For if you are pro Stalin, the Soviet and European CPs were full of spies, traitors and murderers, hence the 1930s show trials and gulags were necessary. Or if you are anti Stalin the leadership [who survived the purges] of the Soviet party and Comintern murdered tens of thousands of their comrades on false evidence and for personal political advancement.
My memory of the CPGB membership is there were some fine comrades within it, but there was also a great deal of dross whose politics were to the right of many within the labour party[of the day] and they used their party membership to get a full time Trade Union officials job.
The tragedy of the broad front centralist strategy that was forced on the CPS by Stalin was it ended in total failure. Unless you have forgotten the Republic was defeated. So I feel you are hardly in a position to crow about the success of Stalin's centralist strategy in Spain.
It was never going to work due to the massive influence of Spanish anarchism amongst the working classes and peasantry. The largest trade union federation was anarchist led, thus the CP should have worked with them, not attempted to liquidate their most militant leaders and ordered their militias to disband. They should have cut them some slack and gradually folded the anarchist units whole into the regular army.
Placing bourgeois politicians in the top jobs and returning the land confiscated by the anarchist led peasants to its former owners hardly helped the war effort, now did it?
Your correct about the POUM being a small organization which had no large support base and which was going no where. To my mind this only makes it even more of a crime for Stalin to export his bloody obsession with Trotsky to Spain.
As to why the Republic fell in the end has more to do with Western governments refusing to support the legitimate government of Spain, you seem to want to blame it on Stalin. There is an interesting bit in the ‘The Good Fight’ where one of the veterans shows the camera his Soviet made riffle that he kept, only the Soviets and Mexico supplied arms to the Republic. Under international law a democratically elected government has the right to be supplied arms to put down a coup. Of course international law means very little and cannot always be relied upon, in the end the Republic’s best hope was international solidarity.
Trots like to hold Stalin culpable for the Nazis coming to power blaming him for not entering into a front with social democrats (forgetting that social democrats were busy shooting communists in the twenties and supporting imperialist wars a few years before that), then they turn that criticism on its head and blame Stalin for Franco because he did enter into a front with social democrats. What charlatans they are.
Loach and Orwell’s narrative on Spain are mutually dodgy. One is tainted by his years in Trotskyist circles the other by his involved with the intelligence services of British imperialism. By all means read Orwell but don’t fall under his spell, he still is very much the literary darling of the left, his spying on the left brushed under the carpet. Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen both claim to be the heirs of Orwell, together they are nothing more than red-baiting pro-war reactionaries; at last someone has read Orwell correctly.
As I have already made clear I have yet to meet any leftists who brush Orwell's touting under the carpet, why you use the example of Cohen and Hitchens is beyond me as they are clearly no longer on the socialist left.
Funny how you have refused to deal with any of my points about the Spanish anarchists. Ah well there is always the next time.
The Spanish anarchists? Like the POUM they had a level of support from certain sections of society, this was very much a Spanish phenomena. History has shown that anarchism as a movement has inherent flaws that will prevent it from being successful. Could you really build anarchism in a liberated village when the one down the road was still fascist? The POUM were no better. Socialism in one village from the same people who said you couldn’t build socialism in one country. Their behaviour in the end was divisive and exploited as such by the fascists.
The Trot left still idolises Orwell; SWP, WRP, Socialist Party etc. None of them want to deal with his treachery, why would they? I would argue that it was the British left that taught Hitchens and Cohen about Orwell and they have only followed ‘Orwellism’ through to its logical conclusion by openly ditching any pretence of being socialists.
When I was at school they rammed Orwell down my throat, GCSE anti-communism I believe the subject was. Try and find a copy of the book ‘The Cattle Truck’ by the Spanish communist Jorge Semprun. He was an anti-fascist refugee in France who joined the French resistance, was capture by the Gestapo and sent to Buchenwald. Far too radical to ever be on the national curriculum. Enjoy your break.
Comrade,
I have just ordered the book you recommended, It was on Amazons US web site for $70 which was beyond my means, but I found a copy on the UK site for £8.99.
I will read it and get back to you. By the way, you are correct when you implied it was foolish to blame all the defeats/mistakes of the USSR/Comintern on one man, Stalin, which is what the Trotskyist tend to do.
I remember reading something similar by the italian party leader Togliatti, who was in Spain during the civil war.
I have encountered lefties who were inclined to brush Orwell's touting under the carpet, saying those who complained about it were "Stalinists" and that it was "understandable" that he should have done so, considering how evil Stalin was, etc etc.
Of course, if it was OK for Orwell to name names, it was also OK for Americans to name the Communists they knew to the HUAC and similar bodies, in either private or public sessions, in what was happening at about the same time as Orwell's bit of informing, in what has been called "the Great American Inquisition". The underlying logic is an anti-Communist one, as Anonymous notes.
Yet when Elia Kazan won an Academy Award in 1999, there were still people who brought up his naming names to the HUAC nearly fifty years before. I think even Nick Nolte, not particularly left-wing, was one of them. I really don't see why Orwell should get off when Kazan didn't.
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