Latin American Liberation Analysis

Focusing heavily on the suffering of the Black-Americans and the suffering of Jesus Christ, it tries to find connections between the sufferings in an attempt to relate Black-Americans to Jesus Christ. A respected theologian and advocate of this concept, James H. Cone argues in his book A Black Theology of Liberation that the ultimate task of Black Theology is asking “What does Jesus Christ mean for the oppressed Blacks of the land?” (Cone 116). This question is the foundation for his book, as he goes on to state how “White conservatives and liberals alike present images of Jesus Christ that are completely alien to the liberation of the Black community” (Cone 117). This results in an image of Jesus Christ as a symbol of opposition to oppression.

The Independence of Latin America was a process caused by years of injustices, discriminations, and abuse, from the Spanish Crown upon the inhabitants of Latin America. Since the beginning the Spanish Crown used the Americas as a way to gain riches and become greater in power internationally. Three of the distinct causes leading Latin America to seek independence from Spain, were that Spain was restricting Latin America from financial growth, (this included restrictions from the Spain on international trade, tax burden, and laws which only allowed the Americas to buy from Spain), The different social groups within Latin America, felt the pressure of the reforms being implicated on them

The concept of freedom and its relation to the concept of resistance for Africans and Afro-descendants in colonial Latin America is a bit challenging to define. The primary issue with defining such concepts is that they are inherently subjective to region. Latin American identities are diverse and as such, it is difficult to apply typical definitions of freedom and resistance. In looking at the historiography of freedom and resistance in Latin America, particularly the essays by Camilla Townsend and Stuart Schwartz, it becomes clear that in order to have some workable understanding of the aforementioned concepts, a hybridized definition of both freedom and resistance is needed. For the purposes of this paper, I will examine the two aforementioned author’s contributions to

of oppression, understanding the central core of the Gospels as Jesus' identification with the poor

Upon “crashing” each of these waves paved the way for the next. As one reviewer notes: The still abstract recovery of the humanity of Jesus opened the way to a consideration of the concrete history and story of Jesus of Nazareth. Attentiveness to the specific ministry of Jesus led to a new appreciation of the contemporary context and challenge of discipleship. Sensitivity to the actual experience of following Jesus today raised new questions about the meaning of salvation in Christ for the poor, for women, for people of color. The everexpanding encounter of world religions posed anew the issue of Christ as universal savior.10 The third wave, with the view of Jesus as liberator, would give rise to liberation theology. Johnson outlines six basic characteristics of liberation theology: recognition of an oppressed group; action on behalf of justice; our relatedness to one another; use of social analysis; changing the unjust situation and the vision that the reign of God is already arriving.11 Johnson then highlights the three-part method of liberation theology: the oppressive situation is recognized; then the Christian tradition is analyzed for what may have contributed to the tradition and finally the Christian tradition is searched for elements that would yield a new understanding and a new practice that would be liberating.12

When the Europeans first arrived in Latin America, they didn’t realize the immensity of their actions. As history has proven, the Europeans have imposed many things on the Latin American territory have had a long, devastating effect on the indigenous people. In the centuries after 1492, Europeans would control much of South America and impose a foreign culture upon the already established civilizations that existed before their arrival. These imposed ideas left the continent weak and resulted in the loss of culture, the dependence on European countries, and a long standing ethnic tension between natives and settlers which is evident even to this day. The indigenous people of South America, which

This statement is completely false. Both revolutions sprung from the same desires: independence. The colonists wanted to be free from England, while the Latin American countries wanted to separate from Spain.

Padre Carney demonstrates another type of interpretation of sacred scripture: liberation theology. He taught the word of God for years in rural Honduras. Carney stresses that the interpretation of the Bible from the perspective of the poor reveals the oppression and exploitation that some Hondurans have undergone for decades. Liberation Theology represents the first, and probably the most important, step in freeing the country from the claws of the oppressor. Carney underlines that God wanted all humans to be equal, thus true Christians ought to liberate the ones who are treated unequally. According to him, we are all brothers and sisters and must help each other given that people do not have the same privileges. Nonetheless, Carney also argues

Houston then lists various biblical scriptures referring to the poor to get a better definition of what Luke and even more importantly Jesus, would define as poor. “The poor to whom Jesus and the early church brought Good News included the naked, the hungry, the disabled, the oppressed, the imprisoned, the sick, the bereaved widows, and orphans” (page 155). Houston then uses a narrated play to describe who the poor are today; “it is the blind, the lame, the mothers who lose their children before they are five years old, the husbands who lose their wives and the children who lose their mothers from preventable deaths in childbirth, it is the people who cannot read, the children who cannot go to school, the refugees who have lost their homes, the orphans, the prostitutes, the children of the streets, the teenage losing their futures to drugs, violence or/and promiscuity, the prisoners, the destitute” ( pages 156-157). Now it may be my pregnancy hormones running rampant, but this short narrated play really opened my eyes to social issues that could be prevented and it made me very emotional. It puts in perspective that even

Latin America has been, and still is, highly influenced by the Catholic Church. As a product of colonization –a process in which Catholicism intervened directly-, Latin American’s politics, economic and cultural aspects are strictly related to religion until these days, in which religious leaders continue to affect state decisions and religious communities are unafraid to demand the preservation of conservative practices to the governments. However, the Catholic Church was not only influential, but also influenced, by the Latin American context, and had as a result a new approach to religion known as liberation theology. Maria Clara Lucchetti Bingemer describes this approach in the book Latin American Theology, in which she does not only analyze the origins

In Africa and Latin America, the development of nation-states had the need of breaking away from the Europeans, in order to gain independence. This was due to the reason that in the two areas the native people didn’t receive basic rights and were also forced to work, to benefit the Europeans instead of working to help themselves. Yet, in Latin America, they needed to overcome the social hierarchies, as the Europeans divided the nation into groups, with Europeans and creoles on the top and on the bottom would be the natives and slaves. On the other hand, Africa needed to overcome tribalism instead, since the Europeans made the tribes go against one another, in order for there to be a feud between the groups, which would allow for the Europeans

In our broken world and the actual increasing poverty rate there is much need for Christian transformational development workers refuting a god-less economic system that is transforming every thing, also human beings, into a commodity, and—expanding through Globalization that demands for Imperialistic models of exploitation often carried out through militarism and violence.

Venezuela was one of the very first colonies to gain their independence from Spain. At the time Venezuela was a Spanish ruled colony and the people of Venezuela felt that Spain was ruling their colony terribly (Adelblue). The people were led by Simon Bolivar, whose nickname was “The Liberator” since he liberated Venezuela and worked with San Martin to liberate most of Northern South America (Adelblue). Venezuela declared their independence in 1810 and finally gained their independence after the Battle of Carabobo in 1821 (Minster). Three symbolic elements of the Venezuelan Revolution are used to portray Simon Bolivar, the speech Simon gave to the Second National Congress in 1819 to encourage the type of government he had in mind, and the high taxation which was the main cause of the revolution (Ellis and Esler 705).

I will be using the Revelational Christian Ethic to show, according to the Bible, what should be our attitudes toward those in poverty and how our lack of action reflects on our Christian walk. The position I want to stress, in conclusion, is that we, as Christians, are instructed, even commanded, to help those in poverty without hesitation or concern for our personal wealth or assumption of superiority.

To successfully cash in on the conquest of Latin America, the conquistadors needed laborers to harvest the natural resources. The two main labor sources that were exploited for European profit were the indigenous population through the repartimiento system and the African population through the slave trade. Since the initial conquest of Latin America, the growing diversity of the population needed to be systematically controlled through legislation and social structure to ensure Spain could maintain long-distance rule through their minority colonial population.