A tale of two priests: three decades of liberation theology in the Brazilian northeast
This paper examines two successful rural struggles in the semiarid backlands of northeastern Brazil that were shaped by, and helped define, two generations of pastoral agents inspired by liberation theology. The first was the movement for recognition and land by a group of rural workers who were to...
| Published in: | Working paper |
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Notre Dame/Ind
Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies
2006
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| In: |
Working paper (328)
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| Series/Journal: | Working Paper
No. 328 |
| Further subjects: | B
Poverty
B Liberation theology B Blacks B The Americas B Indians B State B Brazil Verhältnis Religionsgemeinschaft - Staat Liberation theology Grundbesitz Landumverteilung / Landverteilung Armutsbekämpfung Autochthone Indians Afroamerikaner B Brazil B Religious organization B Real estate B Struggle against B Land distribution policy B Indigenous peoples |
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Volltext (Aggregator) |
| Summary: | This paper examines two successful rural struggles in the semiarid backlands of northeastern Brazil that were shaped by, and helped define, two generations of pastoral agents inspired by liberation theology. The first was the movement for recognition and land by a group of rural workers who were to become the Xocó tribe in the wake of the formation of the Indigenist Missionary Council of the Catholic Church and the implementation of the Indian Statute in the early 1970s. Their struggle began in 1971, during the darkest days of the military dictatorship, when Frei Enoque, a Catholic seminarian associated with Hélder Câmara, came to Sergipe to minister to the rural poor. The second involved a community of rural workers, neighbors of the Xocó, who gained recognition and land as a quilombo (community of descendants of fugitive slaves) under the 1988 Constitution. The quilombo movement, which began in 1992, was nurtured by Padre Isaías, a priest born and raised in Sergipe, and the nuns and lay religious workers of the Pastoral Land Commission, who supported and cajoled members of the community to pursue a new legal identity. The stories of these two struggles, so closely tied to the Catholic Church and its pastoral agents, explore what is meant by saying that the Brazilian Church became more conservative in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. The goal is to historicize understanding of liberation theology as a project implemented by successive generations of priests, nuns, and bishops. The claim that progressive Catholicism has “failed” ignores the continuing importance of liberation theology doctrine as part of the Church’s local relations with the rural poor. This paper compares these two struggles in terms of their relationship to the internal politics of the Church within the context of shifting Church-State relations and uses them as two examples of how liberationist Catholicism has continued to shape the work of pastoral agents and the people who live in the backlands. (KelloggGIGA) Este trabajo examina dos luchas rurales exitosas en los territories semiáridos del Nordeste de Brasil. Dos generaciones de agentes pastorals inspirados por la teología de la liberación dieron forma y fueron definidas por estas luchas. La primera fue el movimiento por el reconocimiento y la tierra llevado adelante por un grupo de trabajadores rurales que devendrían la tribu Xocó en vísperas de la formación del Consejo Indigenista Misionario de la Iglesia Católica y de la implementación del Estatuto Indio en inicios de los años 70s. Su lucha comenzó en 1971, durante los días más oscuros de la dictadura militar, cuando Fray Enoque, un seminarista católico asociado a Hélder Câmara, llegó a Sergipe para predicar a las poblaciones rurales pobres. La segunda involucró a una comunidad de trabajado |
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