Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America , livre ebook

Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America: As It Was in the Beginning?
Edited by
Pablo Bradbury and Niall H. D. Geraghty
Available to purchase in print or download for free at https://uolpress.co.uk
First published 2025 by
University of London Press
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© the Authors 2025
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ISBN 978-1-915249-59-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-915249-61-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-915249-64-7 (.epub)
ISBN 978-1-915249-63-0 (.pdf)
ISBN 978-1-915249-62-3 (.html)
DOI https:// doi .org /10 .14296 /hflc8361
Cover image: Pablo Roberto Suárez, Martirologio y gloria de los santos anónimos . Photography by Viviana Gil courtesy of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art).
Cover design for University of London Press by Hayley Warnham.
Book design by Nigel French.
Text set by Westchester Publishing Services UK in Meta Serif and Meta, designed by Erik Spiekermann.
Contents Notes on contributors Foreword: Theology in the footsteps of the martyrs The legacy of the martyrs commits us The risk of squandering this legacy The method of doing theology in the footsteps of the martyrs To conclude Notes References Acknowledgements Introduction: As it was in the beginning? Pablo Bradbury and Niall H. D. Geraghty Notes References 1.     Conflict and ecclesiology: Obedience, institutionality and people of God in the Movement of Priests for the Third World Pablo Bradbury Conflict and privilege Verticality and horizontality Containment and transgression Fragmentation Conclusion Notes References 2.     Legacies of the ‘bridge man’: Catholic accompaniment, inter-class relations and the classification of surplus in Montevideo Patrick O’Hare Those who come bearing gifts Roots of Catholic confluence in the Cruz Acompañamiento amid structural sin: between reciprocity and unconditional charity Bridges, networks and the (in)dignity of waste Conclusion Notes References 3.     Orlando Fals Borda’s participatory action research: At and beyond the crossroads of Camilo Torres’s neo-socialism and liberation theology Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo From critique of violence to rebellious social science Camilo Torres’s pluralism and the liberation social science tradition Engaged research and the theological question of social ethics In search of a methodological approach to Praxis PAR and liberation theology: epistemological differences and common challenges Notes References 4.     The impact of liberation theology in the Latin American built environment Fernando Luiz Lara Participatory processes rising in the 1960s Abstraction as a tool for privilege Participatory processes in Latin American architecture Liberation theology and Paulo Freire as antidotes to abstraction Colectivos and the heritage of liberation theology Notes References 5.     When liberation theology met human rights Anna Grimaldi Introduction Brazil’s liberation theology and transnational human rights Developing the rights of the poor Friends and networks of the liberationist mission The incidental exile of liberation theology Dom H é lder C â mara’s European tour Conclusion Notes References 6.     ‘Women, the key to liberation?’: A feminist theology of liberation at the Catholic women’s conference at Puebla Natalie Gasparowicz Introduction Literature review Background The Latin American woman as subject Population politics, the pill and the future of liberation Conclusion Notes References 7.     Towards the possibility of an ecofeminist political theology: The case of the Con-spirando collective Ely Orrego Torres Women’s bodies and Radical Evil Ecofeminist answers to a post-secular world The case of the Con-spirando collective: an ecofeminist alternative in a post-secular world Final reflections Notes References Afterword. Contemporary witnesses to life and liberation: The persistent and evolving reality of Latin American martyrdom Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo Latin American martyrdom: as it was in the beginning? The persistence of Latin American martyrdom: from origins to contemporary reality The theological challenge of contemporary martyrdom Creative synchronicity with the ‘living martyrs’ of today Notes References Index
Notes on contributors
Pablo Bradbury holds a PhD in History from the University of Liverpool, writing his thesis on the emergence and mobilisation of liberation Christianity in Argentina, and particularly its political responses to state terrorism. His research more broadly focuses on left-wing political cultures and social movements in Latin America’s Cold War, exploring religion, international solidarity and strategies towards state repression. He currently teaches at the University of Greenwich.
Juan Mario Dí az-Ar é valo is an interdisciplinary researcher, with much of his work focusing on the interlocking challenges of conflict, violence and social injustice through the practice of participatory action research. He is a research fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield. He completed a BPhil in Philosophy and Letters and a BA in Theology, followed by an MA in Latin American Literature. In 2017, he completed his PhD in History at the University of Roehampton, London. He is currently working on an intellectual history of sociologist Orlando Fals Borda.
Natalie Gasparowicz received her PhD from Duke University (USA). Her dissertation explores Catholic debates over sex, marriage and pleasure, following the creation of the newly invented birth control pill, in late twentieth-century Mexico. She is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship and the American Catholic Historical Association’s John Tracy Ellis Dissertation Award.
Niall H. D. Geraghty is Associate Professor in Latin American Cultural Studies at University College London. Niall’s first book was The Polyphonic Machine: Capitalism, Political Violence, and Resistance in Contemporary Argentine Literature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). He has published articles and book chapters on literature and film from Latin America, with a particular interest in memory, urban culture and religion in the region. He is currently working on a project involving a radical re-examination of the work of Argentine artist Le ó n Ferrari (1920–2013), which also explores the interrelations between politics and religion in twentieth-century Argentina, and the potential correlations between contemporary philosophy and liberation theology.
Anna Grimaldi is a lecturer in international development at the University of Leeds. In 2023, she published her first book, Brazil and the Transnational Human Rights Movement, 1964–1985 (Anthem Press). Currently, her work focuses on the pedagogy of Cold War Latin American History, including a recent project to study the far right in the region. Her work is inspired by solidarity in its myriad forms.
Fernando Luiz Lara is a Professor of Architecture at the Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. His recent publications includes edited volumes on Spatial Concepts for Decolonizing the Americas (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) and Decolonizing the Spatial History of the Americas (Texas Center for American Architecture and Design, 2021), and the books Street Matters: A Critical History of Twentieth-Century Urban Policy in Brazil (with Ana Paula Koury, University of Pittsburgh, 2022), Excepcionalidad del Modernismo Brasileño (Romano Guerra, 2019) and Modern Architecture in Latin America: Art, Technology and Utopia (with Luis Carranza, Texas Press, 2015).
Elizabeth O’Donnell Gandolfo is the Earley Associate Professor of Catholic and Latin American Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. A constructive feminist theologian rooted in the Catholic tradition, her teaching and research places Christian theology in conversation with human resilience and resistance to vulnerability and violence, especially in contexts of social injustice and ecological degradation. Gandolfo’s most recent publications include Ecomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home (Orbis, 2023) and the co-authored book Re-membering the Reign of God: The Decolonial Witness of El Salvador’s Church of the Poor (Lexington, 2022).
Patrick O’Hare is a Senior Researcher and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of St Andrews. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology (Cambridge, 2017) and has held research positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Surrey, conducting research in Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina and the UK on themes relating to labour, waste, recycling and plastics. He is the author of Rubbish Belongs to the Poor: Hygienic Enclosure and the Waste Commons (Pluto Press, 2022), co-author of Taking Form, Making Worlds: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America (Texas University Press, 2022) and co-editor of Circular Economies in an Unequal World (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Ely Orrego Torres was born and raised in Chile and is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois). Currently, she is a visiting PhD student at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po-Paris. She was a Northwestern Buffett Gl