Abstract
This chapter considers the missing anti-systemic project in U.S. Latinx theologies. While this scholarly field has celebrated its genealogical connections to Latin American Liberation Theology, the liberationist impulse has long been at risk of assimilation and co-optation in the North American academy. This chapter looks back to review a sweeping critical proposal from Manuel Mejido, published in 2002, that sought to reorient Latinx theologies to their true vocation to Liberation Theology. I then consider whether a third way has emerged—that of decolonial theological studies—and whether it represents a decisive move beyond what Mejido called the liberationist paradigm of scholarship. I conclude that while there are strong gestures in that direction, a more anti-systemic perspective in North American Latinx theologies remains to be developed—one centered in challenges to the hegemony of global capitalist civilization. I close by proposing several perspectives and research projects that might advance a more anti-systemic, decolonial Latinx theology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
We also hear in mainstream political debates that these latter-day identifiers are marginal—and can even engender offense—among people of Latin American descent in the U.S. (Garger, 2021).
- 2.
Mejido cited
Karl Marx’s critique of the ideological function of philosophy and science, Friedrich Nietzsche’s repudiation of the autonomy of pure and practical reason via his notion of the “will to power,” Georg Lukács’ unmasking of the correlation between the scientific method and the capitalist mode of production, Theodor Adorno’s critique of positivism, Max Horkheimer’s critique of “traditional theory,” Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a “critical social science,” Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend’s social theoretically motivated critique of the Popperian philosophy of science, Michel Foucault’s “archaeological” de-centering of the knowing subject,” and Immanuel Wallerstein’s “historical reconstruction of the social sciences.” (38–9)
- 3.
Mejido notes that liberal theologies of culture were written by Protestant theologians (Ernst Troeltsch, Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, and Gordon Kaufman) and Catholics alike (Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, David Tracy, and Robert Schreiter).
- 4.
The internal quotes cite from Habermas’s Knowledge and Human Interests (1994).
- 5.
- 6.
The works of Michelle González (2006) toward an “Afro-Cuban theology,” and Néstor Medina’s study of mestizaje (Medina, 2009) in Latinx Catholic theology are key steps in this critique. I comment on them, and other second-generation assessments, in my article on “the Latina/o religious imaginary in the North American racial crucible” (Aquino, 2015a, b).
- 7.
Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Address (January 11, 1989),” archived by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia (a think tank on the study of the U.S. presidency), http://bit.ly/qJCupr
- 8.
See “Transcript of Speech by Clinton Accepting Democratic Nomination,” The New York Times, July 17, 1992, online at https://nyti.ms/2TtVRtQ (consulted July 1, 2021)
- 9.
Miguel de la Torre—with his usual fire—comments on how the American Dream regularly leaves Latinx peoples behind (De La Torre, 2010a). He stands up an “ética para joder” (more or less an “ethics to fuck with things”) that frontally critiques capitalism for its imperious Eurocentric ethics. See also De La Torre, 2010b.
- 10.
In fiscal year 2019, the U.S. deported 1719 Cuban-Americans back to Cuba, triple the number from the prior year. Deportations in 2018 had already nearly tripled (463) compared to 2017 (160). See U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report,” 2019, https://tinyurl.com/ybhwzvtj. By contrast, people from countries in northern or western Europe were deported about one-tenth as frequently as Cuban-Americans.
- 11.
Ramón Saúl Sánchez is the most outstanding example. He came to the U.S. on a “Freedom Flight” as a 12-year-old refugee in 1967, and spent the intervening years involved in campaigns against the Cuban regime as head of Movimiento Democracia in Miami. But like many Cuban-Americans, perhaps imagining their anti-communism as an ideological security shield against deportation, Sánchez never obtained a green card nor secured his citizenship. His applications for political asylum were rejected by the Trump administration (Jarvie, 2020). He was nearly deported—but delays in his deportation proceedings, and the advent of the Biden administration, have taken those threats off the table.
- 12.
The U.S. Postal Service became a lever in Trump’s bid to limit Democratic voter turnout in 2020, as COVID was confining people to their homes and the mail service became indispensable to voting.
- 13.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said in the call. “Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break” (Scanlan, 2021). The call was direct evidence of Trump’s criminal bid to overturn the election.
- 14.
Fidel Castro had been on the ballot that year seeking a seat in Cuba’s House of Representatives. Batista’s coup ruined Castro’s chances for a career in electoral politics, accelerating his passage to guerrilla warfare and a Leninist approach to power.
- 15.
Batista’s ethno-racial identity as a mulatto seems to contradict the anti-Black venom of his counter-insurgency policies. The reality is that Batista was haunted by his own blackness and the exclusions it arrayed around him. It is legendary in Cuba that Batista’s dignity never recovered from the slight of being denied membership in the elite Havana Biltmore Yacht & Country Club, which did not enroll “negros” as members.
- 16.
- 17.
I would sharply distinguish Marx from Lenin here—thinking with Marx’s analytics of capitalism, but dispensing with Lenin, and the latter-day Leninist, Fidel Castro, whose approaches to revolution and society were too vertical and dictatorial. I am much more committed to the vision of horizontal social revolution, such as we find in, say, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, or in indigenous anti-globalization or eco-politics movements. Such movements are anti-systemic without imposing dictatorship. The approach of horizontal social revolution in fact is wholly consistent with popular Christian religious visions of democratic social justice in the ambit of Liberation Theology.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Jorge A. Aquino, “¿Crepúsculo del ídolo o de la vida planetaria? Reflexiones sobre Laudato Si, el fatalismo climático y la civilización capitalista global,” forthcoming in 2023 in a publication from the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO). I argue there that Francis’s critique of throwaway culture actually does not turn fully anti-capitalist. The words “capitalist” and “capitalism” are nowhere to be found in Laudato Si. Rather, Francis calls for investors to find their humanity and conscience and voluntarily work to ratchet down emissions and other destructive environmental practices. In my opinion this is a pipe dream—that capital will always seek its most profitable options unless constrained by a higher sovereign force. Such a force rarely materializes, however, because most governments are in fact owned subsidiaries of capitalist enterprise. I chalk this shortcoming in the pope’s message to an ideological amnesia the magisterium has suffered since it opted to marginalize almost all recourse to Marxist critical theory after the 1970s.
- 23.
Tony Lin’s study of Latinx Pentecostals—Prosperity Gospel Latinos and their American Dream (2020)—is one of the rare ethnographies studying Latinx Christians on the theme of the American Dream. Lin’s work shows a richly nuanced understanding of the sociological passages of Latinx Pentecostals, and paints their prosperity theology as an extreme and paradoxical celebration of the American Dream.
- 24.
Sociologically, Miranda belongs to Puerto Rico’s Nuyorican diaspora. He maintains strong family and professional ties to the island, one of the last direct colonial possessions of the United States. His assimilation of Hamilton to a multiculturalist American Dream defies the present-day colonial realities that are slowly destroying the Puerto Rican homeland.
- 25.
Some outstanding examples: Fernando Segovia’s pathbreaking forays in postcolonial biblical criticism (Segovia 2000a, b); Mayra Rivera’s postcolonial theology of God (2007); David Sánchez’s study of guadalupan discourse as anti-imperial resistance (2008); my work on the Crash of 2008 and the role of racial formation in the history of Latin America (Aquino 2013, 2015a); Jacqueline Hidalgo’s study of utopics in the Chicano movement (2016); Nestor Medina’s historical rethinking of Christian culture in decolonial perspective (2018, 2019), and Melissa Pagán’s approach to a decolonial feminist theology from the critical standpoint of the coloniality of gender (2020).
References
Althusser, L. (1969). For Marx (Ben Brewster, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy, and other essays. Monthly Review Press.
Aquino, M. P. (2002). Latina feminist theology: Central features. In M. P. Aquino, D. L. Machado, & J. Rodriguez (Eds.), A reader in Latina feminist theology: Religion and justice (pp. 133–160). University of Texas Press.
Aquino, J. A. (2006). The prophetic horizon of latino theology. In Miguel A. de la Torre & Gastón Espinosa (Eds.), Rethinking latino(a) religion and identity (pp. 101–25). Pilgrim Press.
Aquino, J. A. (2013). Poverty and prosperity after the crash of 2008: Insights from liberation theology on zero-sum capitalism at the twilight of American exceptionalism. In P. O. Myhre (Ed.), Religious and ethical perspectives for the twenty-first century (pp. 238–260). Anselm Academic.
Aquino, J. A. (2015a). Historia, Poder e Ideología: La Ideología Racial Como Producción Del Sistema-Mundo Capitalista Moderno. Horizontes Decoloniales, 1(1), 103–142.
Aquino, J. A. (2015b). Mestizaje: The Latina/o religious imaginary in the north American racial crucible. In O. O. Espín (Ed.), Wiley-Blackwell companion to U.S. Latino theology (pp. 283–311). Wiley-Blackwell.
Aquino, J. A. (forthcoming, 2023). ¿Crepúsculo del ídolo o de la vida planetaria? Reflexiones sobre Laudato Si, el fatalismo climático y la civilización capitalista global. Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales.
Becker, M. (n.d.). History of U.S. interventions in Latin America. https://tinyurl.com/yylaay2p. Accessed 9 Jan 2022.
Boff, C. (1993). Epistemology and method of the theology of liberation. In I. Ellacuría & J. Sobrino (Eds.), Mysterium liberationis: Fundamental concepts of liberation theology (pp. 57–85). Orbis.
Boff, L., & Boff, C. (1987). Introducing liberation theology. Orbis.
Butler, J. (1997a). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative. Routledge.
Butler, J. (1997b). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford University Press.
Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Žižek, S. (2000). Contingency, hegemony, universality: Contemporary dialogues on the left. Verso.
Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and development in Latin America (Marjory Mattingly Urquidi, Trans.). University of California Press.
Chilcote, R. H. (Ed.). (1982). Dependency and Marxism: Toward a resolution of the debate. Latin American perspectives series, no. 1. Westview Press.
De La Torre, M. (2010a). Left behind: The American Dream and the Hispanic Dilemma. Review and Expositor, 107, 513–524.
De La Torre, M. (2010b). Latina/o social ethics: Moving beyond Eurocentric moral thinking. Baylor University Press.
Douglas, K. B. (2015). Stand your ground: Black bodies and the justice of god. Orbis Books.
Dussel, E. D. (1984). Cuaderno Tecnológico-Histórico (Extractos de La Lectura B 56, Londres 1851) (Enrique Dussel Peters, Trans.). Universidad Autónoma de Puebla.
Dussel, E. D. (1985). La Producción Teórica de Marx: Un Comentario a Los Grundrisse. 1a ed. Biblioteca Del Pensamiento Socialista. Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
Dussel, E. D. (1988). Hacia Un Marx Desconocido: Un Comentario de Los Manuscritos (pp. 61–63). Signo XXI Editores.
Dussel, E. D. (1990a). El Último Marx (1863–1882) y La Liberación Latinoamericana: Un Comentario a La Tercera y a La Cuarta Redacción de “El Capital”. 1. ed. Biblioteca Del Pensamiento Socialista. Siglo Veintiuno Editores.
Dussel, E. D. (1990b). Teología de la Liberación y Marxismo. In I. Ellacuría & J. Sobrino (Eds.), Mysterium Liberationis: Conceptos Fundamentales de la Teología de la Liberación (pp. 115–144). UCA.
Dussel, E. D. (1993). Las Metáforas Teológicas de Marx. Verbo Divino.
Frank, A. G. (1972). Lumpenbourgeoisie / lumpendevelopment: Dependence, class, and politics in Latin America. Monthly Review Press.
Frank, A. G. (1984). Critique and anti-critique: Essays on dependence and reformism. Praeger.
García-Rivera, A. (1999). The community of the beautiful: A theological aesthetics. Liturgical Press.
Garger, K. (2021, December 7). 40 Percent of Hispanic voters are offended by term ‘Latinx,’ poll finds. New York Post. https://wp.me/pb3Qpq-1nzUv
Goizueta, R. S. (1995). Caminemos con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/Latino theology of accompaniment. Orbis Books.
González, M. A. (2006). Afro-Cuban theology: Religion, race, culture, and identity. University Press of Florida.
Habermas, J. (1994). Knowledge & human interests (Jeremy J. Shapiro, Trans.). Polity Press.
Hidalgo, J. M. (2016). Revelation in Aztlán: Scriptures, utopias, and the Chicano movement. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hinkelammert, F. J. (1981). Las Armas Ideológicas de La Muerte (2nd ed.). Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones.
Hinkelammert, F. J. (1998). Sacrificios humanos y sociedad occidental: Lucifer y la bestia. DEI.
Hinkelammert, F. J. (2015). Solidaridad o Suicidio Colectivo. Primera edición. Arlekín.
Hinkelammert, F. J. (2017). La Vida o El Capital: El Grito Del Sujeto Vivo y Corporal Frente a La Ley Del Mercado: Antología Esencial, Estela Fernández Nadal (Ed.). CLACSO.
Jarvie, J. (2020, February 20). After living in the U.S. for more than half a century, this Cuban activist may be deported. Los Angeles Times. https://lat.ms/3R3TGpH
Lin, T. T.-R. (2020). Prosperity gospel Latinos and their American dream. University of North Carolina Press.
Lukács, G. (2013). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics (Rodney Livingstone, Trans.). MIT Press.
Maduro, O. (1979). Religión y Lucha de Clases. Editorial Ateneo.
Maduro, O. (1980). Religión y Conflicto Social. Centro de Estudios Ecuménicos.
Maduro, O. (1982). La Cuestión Religiosa En El Engels Pre-Marxista: Estudio Sobre La Génesis de Un Punto de Vista En Sociología de Las Religiones. Monte Ávila Editores.
Maduro, O. (2004). Mapas Para La Fiesta : Reflexiones Latinoamericanas Sobre La Crisis y El Conocimiento. Fundación Centro Gumilla.
McGovern, A. F. (1989). Liberation theology and its critics: Toward an assessment. Orbis Books.
Medina, N. (2009). Mestizaje: (Re)mapping race, culture, and faith in Latina/o Catholicism. Studies in Latino/a Catholicism. Orbis Books.
Medina, N. (2018). Christianity, Empire, and the Spirit: (Re)Configuring faith and the cultural. Theology and mission in World Christianity (Vol. 11). Brill.
Medina, N. (2019). The doctrine of discovery, LatinXo theoethics, and human rights. Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 21(2), 157–173.
Mejido, M. J. (2001). A critique of the ‘aesthetic turn’ in U.S. Hispanic theology: A dialogue with Roberto Goizueta and the positing of a new paradigm. Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 8(3), 18–48.
Mejido, M. J. (2002). Propaedeutic to the critique of the study of U.S. Hispanic religion: A polemic against intellectual assimilation. Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 10(2), 31–63.
Packer, G. (2020, March 2). The president is winning his war on American institutions. The Atlantic. https://tinyurl.com/qoqgoy9
Pagán, M. (2020). Cultivating a decolonial feminist integral ecology: Extractive zones and the nexus of the coloniality of being / coloniality of gender. Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology, 22(1), 72.
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. House of Representatives. (2019, December). The Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report. https://intelligence.house.gov/report/
Phillips, A. (2017, June 16). Analysis: ‘They’re Rapists.’ President Trump’s Campaign launch speech two years later, annotated. Washington Post. https://tinyurl.com/yc5qg39o
Pinn, A. B., & Valentín, B. (2001). The ties that bind: African American and Hispanic / American / Latino/a: A theology in dialogue. Continuum.
Pinn, A. B., & Valentín, B. (2009). Creating ourselves: African Americans and Hispanic Americans on popular culture and religious expression. Duke University Press.
Prebisch, R. (1950). The economic development of Latin America and its principal problems. E/CN.12/89/Rev. 1. United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America.
Quijano, A. (2000a). Colonialidad Del Poder y Clasificacion Social. Journal of World-Systems Research, 11(2), 342–386.
Quijano, A. (2000b). Coloniality of power, eurocentrism, and Latin America. Nepantla: Views from the South, 1(3), 533–580.
Quijano, A. (2014). Cuestiones y Horizontes: De La Dependencia Histórico-Estructural a La Colonialidad / Descolonialidad Del Poder, Daniel Assis Clímaco (Ed.). CLACSO.
Quijano, A., & Wallerstein, I. M. (1992). Americanity as a concept, or the Americas in the modern world-system. International Social Science Journal, 44(134), 549–557.
Reagan, R. (1989). “Farewell Address (January 11, 1989),” archived by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. http://bit.ly/qJCupr
Reed, I. (2020). The haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda: A two-act play. Archway Editions.
Rivera, M. (2007). The touch of transcendence: A postcolonial theology of god (1st ed.). Westminster John Knox Press.
Robinson, C. J. (1997). Black movements in America. Routledge.
Robinson, C. J. (2021). Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition. Rev. and Updated 3rd edn. The University of North Carolina Press.
Sánchez, D. A. (2008). From Patmos to the Barrio: Subverting imperial myths. Fortress Press.
Scanlan, Q. (2021, January 3). Trump demands Georgia secretary of state ‘find’ enough votes to hand him win. ABC News. https://tinyurl.com/y3d35dhg
Segovia, F. F. (2000a). Decolonizing biblical studies: A view from the margins. Orbis Books.
Segovia, F. F. (2000b). Interpreting beyond borders. Sheffield Academic Press.
So, A. Y. (1990). Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency, and World-Systems Theories, Sage Library of Social Research (v. 178). Sage Publications.
Sundaresh, J. (2019, February 21). Ishmael Reed doesn’t like Hamilton. Current Affairs. https://tinyurl.com/y585qrq5
Tirres, C. D. (2014). The aesthetics and ethics of faith: A dialogue between liberationist and pragmatic thought. Oxford University Press.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (2019). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2019 Enforcement and Removal Operations Report. https://www.ice.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Document/2019/eroReportFY2019.pdf
Wallerstein, I. M. (1974). The modern world-system, 3 vols. Academic Press.
Wallerstein, I. M. (1979). The capitalist world-economy: Essays. Studies in modern capitalism. Cambridge University Press.
Wallerstein, I. M. (1987). World-system analysis. In A. Giddens & J. H. Turner (Eds.), Social theory today. Stanford University Press.
Wallerstein, I. M. (1991). Geopolitics and geoculture: Essays on the changing world-system. Cambridge University Press.
Wallerstein, I. M. (1995). After liberalism. New Press.
Wallerstein, I. M. (2004). World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press.
West, C. (1991). The ethical dimensions of Marxist thought. Monthly Review Press.
Žižek, S. (1994). Mapping ideology. Verso.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Aquino, J.A. (2023). Liberalism, Liberation Theology, or Decolonial Theology? North American Latinx Theologies at the Crossroads of Ambivalence. In: Panotto, N., Martínez Andrade, L. (eds) Decolonizing Liberation Theologies. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31131-4_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31131-4_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-31130-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-31131-4
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)