Hanging On and Rising Up

Renewing, Re-envisioning, and Rebuilding the Cross from the "Marginalized"

Patricia Cuyatti Chávez

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532651601
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Hanging On and Rising Up invites readers to enter into key aspects of Christology, making use of women's perspectives from the Andean Peruvian contexts by using novels by Clorinda Matto de Turner and Jose Maria Arguedas. Studying the social, racial, and cultural experiences in challenging contexts, the book confirms the nearness of God in Jesus Christ, who makes hope possible as a sign of resurrection and encourages persons to celebrate it daily.

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The Latin American Christology

Resurrection of the Body of the Poor

The fifteenth century serves as a milestone to understand, in part, the present in Latin America. The consequences of the encounter of different cultures cannot be denied. Conquered, exploited, and possessed, the native population increased in poverty. The conquest endorsed the presence of new subjects, Europeans and Africans—slaves to replace indigenous slavery. In the following periods of the conquest, prosperity and subjugation were intrinsically present changing the social structure and adding levels of servitude. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, movements for independence awakened. The invitation to live in freedom was contradicted by the reality of servitude as absence 115 of life.

The dream of liberty, modernity, and democracy was imported from Europe becoming real for some but not for many. Liberty was an illusion,116 a formalism that prolonged the colonial system especially in the rural areas of the Andes and the Amazon. After independence in 1928, the Indigenous did not gain rights; they were not citizens. Only years later, the legalization of their rights gave them rights to vote, to be elected, and to enter into legal transactions. But freedom, in such circumstances, was not innocuous. The Indigenous lost half of their communal lands117 (their lands of connection and spirituality) to the capitalist system. Liberty brought along aggressive economic transactions and a dramatic change to the ‘trueque’118 practice.

Capitalism accentuated dependence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its methods and values were imposed and did not resolve problems linked to poverty. Additionally, technology, relevant for production, increased the costs, reduced the need for workers and made it difficult to produce and to compete in the international market. Production depending on modern technology and international investment pushed inflated more the external debt.

Democracy could not help overcoming the desire for supremacy between countries causing rivalries ending in wars. For instance, the “triple alliance”119 (1865–1870) between Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay against Paraguay resulted in the loss of a vast territory of Paraguay. The Pacific War120 (1879–1884) between Chile and Peru resulted in the loss of territory in Bolivia and Peru to Chile. In both wars, the British Empire supported the conflict. In the twentieth century, most of the countries in Latin America democratically elected their governments, but the international cold war tensions between the USA and Russia brought a side effect. The United States tried to align the countries through economic dependence against communism. The USA, in negotiations with leaders in Latin America, prompted a period of militarism during the 1960s to the 1980s in almost all the countries. These actions reinforced financial and technological dependency. Theologians, in this context, started to touch the root meaning and cause of dependency and unjust domination. Analyzing the characteristics of commercial relations between the industrialized and poor nations, they recognized these adverse conditions as idolatry and vain promises of a better future in the poor continent. Aware of the economic disparities, theologians based on a dialogue between text/Bible and reality, set up bases to analyze Christology and the presence of Christianity in the continent.

Protestantism in the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries

In the fifteenth century, Latin America experienced the arrival of Roman Catholic and non Roman Catholics in the continent. Protestants, moved by commercial and colonial interests, arrived in Venezuela around 1529, in Brazil in 1555 and on the coast of Florida121 in 1562. To prevent a Protestant influx, Spain moved its Inquisition machinery, accusing the British, Dutch, and French of piracy and of being heretics.122 Protestants settled sporadically, influencing the populations. The British and Dutch settled in the Caribbean, the French in Haiti, the British in Panama, and the French again in Brazil.123 The Roman Catholic colonizers prevented the arrival of Protestants but could not prevent Protestants from engaging in commercial endeavors.

In the eighteenth century, the well-establi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Conquest, an Encounter with Another God—Christ Arriving in the New World
• The Latin American Christology
• Christologies from Latin American Women’s/Feminists’ Perspective
• Christ in Peruvian Evangelization
• Suffering and Salvation in the Novels of Clorinda Matto de Turner
• Who Do You Say that I Am? A Relational Christology
• Conclusion
• Bibliography