The Church We Imagine for Latin America: Faith and Identity in Today’s Globalized World (Journal of Latin American Theology. V.14, N.2, 2014, 139-157) (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Soy el Sol que Nace y el Dia que Muere:" The Historical Construction of Latin America's Identity
Identity: a quality that has the power to define deeply personal yet unimaginably expansive societal characteristics. Its overlap, its intersectionality is continuously changing in the lens of modern Latin American culture as an entire people with a shared story hurdle to a progressive future they were seemingly destined for. Unsurprisingly, this contemporary moment has been molding, colliding, and restructuring itself because of an extensive history. The nature of identity within Latin America's narratives is a paramount analysis into understanding the complexity of an entire region, riddled with diverse traditions, ideologies, and values. Quite simply, the fluidity of identity directly contributed to Latin America's turbulent historical timeline from colonial powerhouse to democratic bastion through the changing perceptions of race and ethnicity, the shared continental nationalist sentiments within revolutionary and independence movements, and the widespread cross-class sociopolitical engagements, all of which have shaped a unique legacy and a promise of hope for the future.
Reconstructed Identities in Latin America: Spectacle and Fiction
America, the question of identity has been a recurrent, and always pressing issue that permeates all its concepts of self-representation. It has been a difficult question of high priority, elusive and inapprehensible, continuously formulated from different perspectives and for a range of different purposes. In Latin America, " who we are " and " how we are " has been an enigma that has constantly been explored, both in practical and in theoretical terms. 1 Many reasons can be found for the recurrent appearance of this question of identity, and probably as many answers can be given to it. In this essay, however, I am neither going to examine possible reasons nor am I going to discuss the variety of answers that we encounter. On the contrary, I intend to articulate some worries and to give voice to some feelings of unease, which, I believe, result from the fact that, historically, it has always been necessary to pose that question again and again. Therefore, this essay sets out to come to terms with some phenomena that accompany this continuous attempt at self-definition and that also make us question the significance of some of the notions and actions with which we try to explain what is happening politically, socially and culturally in Latin America at the moment. Focusing on some of the present problems of revolutionary Venezuela, I thus do not attempt to establish a comprehensive and systematic thesis, but rather discuss some ideas, some of the 'answers' that are taken for granted and have hardly been questioned so far. 1 Historically, the question of " Latin American identity " has produced several different kinds of answers, which range from the affirmation and rescue of its pre-Hispanic origin to the detailed examination of the colonial past or the republican present, including the analysis of the emancipation processes. All these answers have been formulated from ideologically framed theoretical perspectives. The question has produced essentialist and historical answers: some understand identity as something given, others as something that transforms over time. In spite of the apparent heterogeneity of answers, all of them are formulated in terms of an idea of unity, a unity that homogenizes and generalizes, obfuscating the diversity.
Papers on Social Representations, 2019
The construction of Otherness plays a crucial role in societies. In Latin America, “the question of the Other” is a key element for understanding the region’s history and the identity dynamics related to this social category. In this paper, we discuss a study that aimed to analyze social (meta)representations of Latin Americans among Brazilians, Chileans, and Mexicans, that is, we analyzed what participants think about Latin Americans and what they believe that those who are not from Latin America think about the region’s inhabitants. We conducted a survey with 213 undergraduate and graduate students, from these three countries, through an online questionnaire. Following the theoretical-methodological orientation of the structural approach of Social Representations Theory, data were processed with EVOC software. The participants’ representations regarding others’ representations about Latin Americans were mainly shaped by negative stereotypes, and focused on poverty, violence, expressiveness, and the lack of instrumentality and responsibility of Latin Americans. Facing these hegemonic social representations, the students (re)elaborate representations that also comprise elements of polemic typology, therefore creating and/or focusing on different dimensions of comparison, as an attempt to enhance the ingroup’s value. Moreover, the findings are discussed in terms of continuities and changes involved in the elaboration of social representations of Latin Americans, through elements that are (re)constructed based on the themata that sustain them (mainly derived from the relation between Self and Other). These representations contribute to the different possibilities of identification with Latin America, reaffirming the dynamic, ambiguous and polyphasic nature of social thought.
Culture and religion in Latin America
2006
O UR RAINBOW OF FAITH CONFRONTS global factors that tend to be totalitarian. Often we are being told to believe in one way and not in another. However, in Latin America there are many forms of Christianity, manifested in so-called people's religion and spirituality. Inculturation (often understood as a new concern in the Church of today) has been carried out throughout the centuries, by mestizo,1 Afro-American, and indigenous peoples. All of this is significant for churches in other regions of the world, since a deep human desire is to be persons Of faith, within different cultural paths, and in a common praise for the gift of life. We would wish these links be not an unbalanced relationship between North and South, West and East, but rather a co-responsible search for a new humanity that loves this earth and longs for heaven. This aim needs to motivate the communication between us, so that we appreciate our differences and can build an authentic global reality. In this process,...
THE SEMANTICS OF ASYMMETRIC COUNTERCONCEPTS: THE CASE OF “LATIN AMERICA” IN THE US
This article focuses on a crucial aspect of the history of the concept of Latin America in the United States: the ways in which representations of Spanish Americans and Brazilians are constructed as typically Latin America. The guiding hypothesis here is that the concept of Latin America acquires coherence in North American attributes texts, speeches and images that were not originally meant to convey them. A testimony of a Brazilian rural worker, a painting of a Mexican muralist, the thoughts of a Colombian writer, all these communicative acts, are thus appropriated and become pregnant with other meanings. This work aims at exposing those ascribed meanings as well the ones that were hidden by the synecdochical operation.
‘Latin American Modernity, and Yet …’1
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2011
The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.
The Semantics of Asymetric Counterconcepts : the Case of “Latin America” in the US
2005
This article focuses on a crucial aspect of the history of the concept of Latin America in the United States: the ways in which representations of Spanish Americans and Brazilians are constructed as typically Latin America. The guiding hypothesis here is that the concept of Latin America acquires coherence in North American attributes texts, speeches and images that were not originally meant to convey them. A testimony of a Brazilian rural worker, a painting of a Mexican muralist, the thoughts of a Colombian writer, all these communicative acts, are thus appropriated and become pregnant with other meanings. This work aims at exposing those ascribed meanings as well the ones that were hidden by the synecdochical operation.
Latin America: What's in a Name
This is the first section of my introductory essay in A Companion to Latin American History. Waltham, MA: Wiley/Blackwell, 2008. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405131616.html It traces efforts by people of European origin to give the territories of the Western Hemisphere a generic name. Noting that America derives from Amerigo Vespucci [on that saga, see the recent book by Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World (NY: Free Press, 2009), this essay then explores the emergence of the "Latin" qualifier in the 19th century, related to efforts by French intellectuals to establish a cultural sphere of "Latin" peoples, and the subsequent adoption of the term, largely for the sake of convenience, by others in both North and South America. The bibliography points to various sources, some of them rather obscure, that support the interpretive narrative.