University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Anthropology ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 5-2018 Relanzamiento of Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities: Forging New Models of Church and Society for the Twenty-First Century LARA M. GUNDERSON University of New Mexico - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds Part of the Anthropology Commons, Catholic Studies Commons, and the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation GUNDERSON, LARA M.. "Relanzamiento of Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities: Forging New Models of Church and Society for the Twenty-First Century." (2018). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds/143 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Lara Gunderson Candidate Anthropology Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: Dr. Les Field, Chairperson Dr. Suzanne Oakdale Dr. David Dinwoodie Dr. Kathleen Holscher i Relanzamiento of Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities Forging New Models of Church and Society for the Twenty-First Century by LARA GUNDERSON Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology, Western Washington University, 2002 Master of Arts, Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2011 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctorate of Philosophy Anthropology The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2018 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to my dissertation chair, Dr. Les Field, for your intellectual guidance, generous time, and shared preoccupation with Nicaragua. You met with me in the most challenging of times to help me progress as a scholar and through the doctoral process. I chose the University of New Mexico’s anthropology program specifically to study with you and I could not have chosen better for this endeavor I was so compelled to write. Thank you to my committee members Dr. Suzanne Oakdale and Dr. David Dinwoodie for guiding the development of my theoretical foundation. Your feedback and encouragement from those first semesters of graduate school to the final stages of this dissertation have shaped who I am as a scholar. Thank you to my outside member Dr. Kathleen Holscher for enriching my understanding of the varied, contested, and embodied ways of what it means for people to be Catholic. I was privileged to receive financial support for my research. I am grateful for the Latin American and Iberian Institute Field Research Grants and PhD Fellowships; the Karl Schwerin Graduate Fellowship in Ethnology; and the University of New Mexico’s Graduate and Professional Student Association, Anthropology Graduate Student Union, and Student Conference Award Program. Thank you to my friends and family who supported me through this long endeavor. Thank you to my family, Chris, Doug, Rachel, Zack, and Geoff: Life doesn’t stop for a PhD and a lot changed since I began this endeavor. Thank you to my Grandma for sharing her network of progressive activist Catholics who knew how to connect me with the Nicaragua CEBs. Thank you Nixie and Phil for ongoing encouragement and support throughout this process. My anthropology compañeros: Annie, Christina, Daniel, iii Elise, Gwen, Jara, Jen, Kelley, Miria, Olya, Pilar, Liz: Thank you for the intellectual conversations, camaraderie, emotional and actual nourishment, and so many needed laughs. Catie, thank you for mentorship, for employing me all these years, and for the invaluable professional development working for you has provided. Ellen, David, Leah, Dan, and Will: Thank you for the rich conversations, Toñas, and surf trips. Above all, thank you to my husband, Madison, for encouraging me and supporting me through the at-times grueling process of fieldwork and writing. I love you unconditionally and without hesitation. Most importantly, this dissertation would not be possible without Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities. Padre Arnaldo, doña Marta y su familia, Marsela, Kora, Daysi, Mayra, Carmen, José Luis, Isael, Marvin, Ana y el grupo de “jóvenes” de La Amistad, Ana y Efraín, Ester, los hermanos García, Hermanas Rosa y Carmen, la Pastoral de Juventud, todas y todos de las Samaritanas: Mil gracias por su apoyo, tiempo, y sabiduría. Mi tesis está hecho de su generosidad compartiendo su historia, su fuerza y solidez recontando experiencias a-veces traumáticas, y su paciencia y tiempo enseñándome sus practicas y valores. iv Relanzamiento of Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities Forging New Models of Church and Society for the Twenty-First Century By LARA GUNDERSON Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology, Western Washington University, 2002 Master of Arts, Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2018 ABSTRACT How do narrative practices used by members of Christian Base Communities (in Spanish, CEBs) construct particular Catholic-political subjectivities within the Church, the nation- state, and the larger global institutions? Christian Base Communities, the vehicle by which liberation theology is put into practice, played a significant role in Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. Their proclaimed renewal is happening under dramatically different contexts from which they first emerged. Their religious beliefs continue to justify and place a moral thrust on their struggle for a more egalitarian society despite the reduction of social programs on the part of neoliberal governments, including the current Sandinista party administration. I recorded elicited and un-elicited autobiographical narratives that are integral to participation as religious and political subjects. CEB participants recount processes of transformation, in which a new identity is being crafted by people on the economic margins capable of effecting change within the church and society. I focus upon liberation theology as a part of anthropology of Christianity and Catholicism. In that light I ask, might contemporary CEBs function as theological revolutionaries, seeking to transform Catholic practice? v Contents Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................... 1 My Introduction to Liberation Theology ........................................................................ 2 Research Statement......................................................................................................... 5 Nicaragua’s Christian Base Communities and My Fieldsite ........................................ 12 Contemporary Nicaragua.......................................................................................... 19 Current Institutional Relationship with the Catholic Church ................................... 20 Ethnographic Fieldwork............................................................................................ 21 Research Participants.................................................................................................... 22 Positionality .................................................................................................................. 23 Research Plan and Methods.......................................................................................... 24 Research Significance................................................................................................... 26 Chapter Summaries....................................................................................................... 28 The Narrators ................................................................................................................ 29 Chapter 2: The Anthropology of Christianity and Historical Ideological Forces in Nicaragua .......................................................................................................................... 36 Contemporary Christian Base Communities in Nicaragua........................................... 41 Anti-Imperial Struggle and Revolution .................................................................... 43 CEBs and Revolution................................................................................................ 49 Identity Scholarship in Nicaragua................................................................................. 52 Contemporary CEBs in the Second Sandinista Period ................................................. 53 Chapter 3: Relanzamiento of Liberation Theology........................................................... 61 Liberation Theology...................................................................................................... 61 Ebb and Flow of Christian Base Communities............................................................. 67 Relanzamiento............................................................................................................... 73 A Sisterhood in Service to CEBs, and the Desire for Religious Accompaniment ....... 79 Disjuncture.................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 4: Autobiographical Narrative and the Production of the Kingdom of God on Earth.................................................................................................................................