Vanguards of Liberation: Progressive Catholicism, the Student Movement, and Political Culture in Latin America, 1960-1973

Authors

Sandra M. Londono-Ardila, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

History

First Advisor's Name

Ana Maria Bidegain

First Advisor's Committee Title

Co-Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Victor Uribe-Urán

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Co-Committee Chair

Third Advisor's Name

Bianca Premo

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Jaime Pensado

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fifth Advisor's Name

Rebecca Friedman

Fifth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Latin American History, Catholic Church, Catholic Church History, Specialized Catholic Action, Student Activism, Lay Activism, Catholic Students, Catholic Student Movements, Latin American Student Movements, Latin American Sixties, Global Sixties, Review of Life Method, Intellectual and Political History from Below, Transnational History, Pax Romana IMCS, MIEC, IYCS, JEC, JUC

Date of Defense

11-10-2022

Abstract

Over the 1960s, a particular form of living the Christian faith bolstered student mobilization in Latin America. The Catholic episcopate supported the expansion of Catholic student organizations to strengthen the youth’s evangelization and form a Catholic intelligentsia that might inform social change and counter the elites’ de-Christianization. Significantly, dominant conservative views saw in these organizations the opportunity to halt Marxism in universities and society. Student organizations did not follow the latter path uncritically. They had their own agendas. Students built on multiple social theory developments, progressive theology—that reached momentum at Vatican II, and a shared apostolic method—the Review of Life. They produced common assessments of social reality. Significantly, organizations espoused the claims of their new members stemming from a social base already mobilized. Consequently, organizations crafted an alternative path that, following the gospel, sought to change society and a model of the Church deemed complicit with structural injustice.

Vanguards of Liberation is a transnational study about the identity, intellectual and spiritual journey, and regional mobilization of the Latin American Catholic student youth affiliated with two international movements: the International Movement of Catholic Students-MIEC/IMCS and the International Young Catholic Students-JECI/IYCS. This dissertation accesses the MIEC-JECI memories through the archival sources of its regional Secretariat and testimonies from former militants. It develops with a political and intellectual history-from-below approach that recognizes subaltern subjects’ agency in producing meaning and knowledge and involvement in conflicts over hegemony.

This study argues that Latin American MIEC and JECI organizations formed a transnational network and evolved into a social movement during the decade. Organizations converged around a common identity and agenda. Students’ embracing of Commitment as a form of spirituality, an apostolic attitude, and a historical project prompted militants to develop a committed apostolate into the milieu and go to the poor. In this decision and amid the Cold War’s unfolding, militants took many paths in a struggle for the liberation of the oppressed and engaged in varied expressions of the New Left. Consequences of this involvement, Catholics significantly impacted the region’s political culture while partaking in the Liberationist Christianity that crafted a new theology.

Identifier

FIDC010966

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9878-4100

Recommended Citation

Londono-Ardila, Sandra M., "Vanguards of Liberation: Progressive Catholicism, the Student Movement, and Political Culture in Latin America, 1960-1973" (2022). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5147.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5147