Week 12: Gender and Liberation Theology in Social Change

In a conversation I had with a friend, he said that atheists are the best theologians. This struck me as profound and it became my way of thinking, as well: who could be better to study religion than someone with very little stake in it. However, in my time spent in Central America and Mexico I have seen religion and theology take completely different forms.

Graffiti that says: "Women to Power, Happy Women´s Day."

In response to military/governmental oppression in the forms of torture, disappearances, and overwhelming economic disparity in Latin America, certain sects within the Catholic Church began to question what their role was in the process of social change, and re-read the bible in a different perspective—one that took a preferential stance on the side of the poor. Priests and Bishops took off their gold jewelry and priestly robes, to walk in solidarity with the poor.
Dr. R Aida Hernandez Castillo, a cultural anthropologist who lived in Guatemalan refugee camps in Chiapas Mexico, talked to us about her research on women and religion in the context of social movements such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas. The Zapatista movement, which is an ongoing struggle of indigenous people demanding that their voices be heard by their country, is a continued struggle against contemporary conquest in the form of Neoliberalism. The initial armed struggle was a result of three main issues: economic structural reforms that negatively affected the rural economy, racism and exclusion against indigenous peoples and state violence against peasant and indigenous organizations. The Zapatistas took control of certain areas within the state of Chiapas using guerilla warfare tactics, but what made the movement different from others was their inclusion of women, their anti-racist approach, and the fact that they were the 1st guerilla movement to have a gender agenda as a part of their political demands[1]. Liberation theology played a large role in organizing the people, and manifested itself in Chiapas in nuanced ways compared to the role it played in Central America. It saw a transformation from a strictly Marxist analysis of class and economic oppression, to include racial, sexual and gender oppression in its analysis.

"To take communion is to become dangerous
We come to cause trouble
With faith and commitment your kingdom will come"[2]

Similar to the use of religion as a tool for social change, we visited a women’s education center that used feminist theory in a Latina American context to empower women. They talked about the politics of the body, and for a feminist movement to take hold the body needs to be the first thing that is recovered. This means that women need to have access to nutrition, health, protection from domestic violence and safe and legal abortions. They talked about the difficulties they face working in a conservative and patriarchal system, and offered that feminism needs to be incorporated into our daily lives, because theory is theory, but it has to be lived[3]. This I how my perspective of theologians and theorists has changed, because it doesn’t matter who is doing the theorizing as long as it is used to strip the power from systems of oppression and bring it back to the people.

A mural depicting a woman and her child.

-by Walter Gies

[1] Talk with Dra. R. Aida Hernandez Castillo 4-15-2008 titled: Social Movements in Chiapas- Women and Religion
[2] Hymn from the diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Translated by Ann Lutterman- Aguilar.
[3] Talk at CIDAL, 4-18-2008