The Global Church Era · 1960s-1990s · Brazil, Central America
Latin American Base Communities
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About This Movement
From the 1960s, in Brazil and then across Latin America, small groups of poor Catholics began meeting to read the Bible together, often led by a lay coordinator or a catechist, and usually reading the gospel against their own week. At Medellín in 1968 the Latin American bishops met and gave the practice their backing. Ernesto Cardenal published four volumes of the conversations his peasant neighbours at Solentiname had about the Sunday gospel, beginning in 1975 — one of the few places anywhere you can read poor people doing theology in their own words, printed as they said them. Gustavo Gutiérrez had named the theology in 1971. Many of these communities' people were killed: Rutilio Grande in 1977, Óscar Romero at the altar in March 1980, four American churchwomen later that year, six Jesuits of the UCA in 1989. Rome's doctrinal office issued two instructions on liberation theology, in 1984 and 1986.
Sources
- CELAM II Medellin conclusions (Aug-Sept 1968): La Iglesia en la actual transformacion de America Latina a la luz del Concilio; Puebla (1979) (primary)
- Ernesto Cardenal, El Evangelio en Solentiname (4 vols, from 1975; Orbis ET); CEB intereclesial assembly records (Brazil, 1975-) (primary)
- Martyr records: Romero's homilies and diary (d. 1980, canonized 2018); the four US churchwomen (1980); the UCA Jesuits (1989); Rutilio Grande (1977) (primary) — Truth-commission records are a separate, formal legal layer of evidence, distinct from the movement's own devotional record.
- Gustavo Gutierrez, Teologia de la liberacion (CEP Lima, 1971; Orbis ET A Theology of Liberation, 1973); Boff, Ecclesiogenesis (1977; ET 1986); the 1984/1986 CDF instructions (primary) — The CDF's instructions are carried here as the record of that institutional tension, representing both sides.
- John Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil (California, 1993); Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (1980) (secondary) — Lernoux writes as an advocacy journalist, not a disinterested observer.
- The tension-sibling evidence (census relations line): David Martin, Tongues of Fire (Blackwell, 1990) with Pew 2006 (verified) as CD counter; CHC vol. 9 (reference)