En la Lucha / In the Struggle: A Hispanic Women's Liberation Theology

by Ada María Isasi-Díaz

English Spanish

Genres: Theology, Feminism, Christianity, Latinx, Religion, Spirituality, Nonfiction

226 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

• Introduction
• Yolanda Tarango and I began the work of writing mujerista theology. Theology at large, it seemed to us, was lacking a key element that has since become the core of our work: providing a platform for the voices of Hispanic Women. For years we had been personally enriched by grassroot Latinas’ religious understandings and the way those understandings guide their daily lives. We firmly believe that those religious understandings are part of the ongoing revelation of God, present in the midst of the community of faith and giving strength to Hispanic Women’s struggle for liberation.
• This book is a platform for the voices of Latinas because their lived-experience is the source of mujerista theology. This book examines the links between Hispanic Women’s understandings and use of conciencia, moral agency, and praxis
• Yet this mujerista theology must be elaborated: how is it a liberative praxis, what is its role in the struggle for survival of Latinas, what are its key understandings?
• Naming ourselves: should we call ourselves Latinas of Hispanic Women? Hispanic feminists of feminist Latinas? Etc etc.
 We hardly ever use either term (Latinas or Hispanic women): most of us use the national adjective that refers to the countries we were born/of our ancestors
 Anyway this book takes turns: Hispanic Women in odd chapters, Latinas in evens. I do this not to avoid choosing but because I think that deciding on one term is premature.
 Feministas hispanis has been largely rejected though bc “feminism” is considered a concern of Anglo women.
 Mujerista is the term. This is a Latina who struggles to liberate herself not as an individual but as a member of the Hispanic community DEF
• Mujerista theology
 Insists on unity between systematic/dogmatic theology and moral theology/ethics.
 Insists on unity between those latter terms too–moral theology and ethics are the same. Theology ethics is social ethics.
• 1. Hispanic Ethnicity and Social Locality in Mujerista Theology
• Ethnicity is a social construct and the construction and maintenance of ethnicity is a vital process of Latina’s struggle to survive
• Ethnicity is not a collection of natural traits (language, race, natality, gender)--it can include some of these but also moves beyond to social, economic, and political
• Ethnicity then is a social construct not in the sense that it is a conceptual framework but in the sense that it is an organizational tool, a way of gathering the social forces that go into forming Latina women.
• Ethnicity for mujerista theologians starts with given-ness, particularity, reality, the specificity of our lives.
• Identifying Hispanic Women
 Three main groups: Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans
 When the term Hispanic Women is used, it is not to be understood as an attempt to mask differences,
• Mestizaje-Embracing and Celebrating Diversity
 Mestizaje, a sense that we are actively contributing to the creation of a new race, la raza cosmica, the cosmic race
 Mestizaje is grounded in the fact that we live in-between, at the intersection of our countries of origin and the U.S.A.
 Mujerista theologians affirm mestizaje as the coming together of different races and cultures in a creative way that necessarily precludes the subordination of one to another; we affirm it as the going forward of humankind.'*
• Survival–Hispanic Women’s Daily Bread
 For Hispanic Women the questions of ultimate meaning that form the core of mujerista theology are basically questions of survival, which here means much more than barely living. Survival has to do with the struggle to be fully. To survive, one has to have “the power to decide about one’s history and one’s vocation or historical mission?
 Survival starts with sustaining physical life, but it does not end there;-being or not being also includes the social dimension of life. Hispanic Women need bread, but we also need to celebrate. Today we need a roof over our heads, but we also need to have possibilities for a better future for ourselves and our children —a future with some cultural continuity to our past and our present.
 Survival is personal and communal
 It begins with in-depth analysis of the reality of oppression that we suffer (four forms of this: 1. Domination and 2. Subjugation 3. Exploitation 4. Repression
 Intersectionality: It is difficult to determine whether we are being oppressed bc of our gender, our ethnicity, or our economic status. We do not experience our oppression differently depending upon which of the modes of oppression is at work; neither do we experience the different modes independently of one another.
 What is central to our self-understanding is not our suffering oppression but rather our struggle to overcome that oppression and to survive.
• Socio-Economic Reality of Hispanic Women
 Mujerista theology is grounded in critical socio-economic analysis of the oppression of Hispanic Women
 [She surveys stats]
 Survival is cultural and economic. The cultural struggle is a struggle for life
• 2. Popular Religiosity, Spanish, and Proyecto Historico–Elements of Latinas’ Ethnicity
• When the present is limiting, one looks to the future to find a reason for living. Historically, religion has been used to encourage the oppressed to postpone hopes and expectations “to the next world.” But lib theology helps us move expectations to this world
• Proyecto Historico (historical project)
 DEF: refers to Latina liberation and the historical specifics needed to attain it. It is a key element in constructing Latina reality. This is not ab blueprint but it is defined enough to force options. Springing from lived-experience, it is a prediction of hopes and dreams toward survival.
 Based on understanding of salvation and liberation as two aspects of one process.
• SALVATION DEF: having a relationship with God, a relationship that does not exist if we do not love our neighbor.
• LIBERATION DEF: becoming agents of our own history, with having what one needs to live and to be able to strive towards human fulfillment. Liberation is the realization of the kin-dom of God.
• Three aspects of liberation:
o 1. Freedom/ Libertad: self-fulfillment that renounces any and all self-promotion while recognizing that commitment to the struggle and involvement in it are indeed self-realizing.
o 2. Faith community/Comunidad de fe: makes us face sin, both personal and social
o 3. Justice/Justicia: the political ,economic, and social structures we struggle to build that will make oppression of anyone impossible. the understanding that guide us, challenge us, and enable us to survive daily
 The project’s process
• 1. Denouncing oppressive structures
• 2. Proclaim what is not yet but what we are committed to bring about.
• Popular Religiosity as an Element of Mujerista Theology
 The starting point for a study of the popular religiosity of Latinas is our struggle to survive. Popular religiosity for us is a means of self-identification and our insistence on it is part of the struggle to exist with our own characteristics and peculiarities. Popular religiosity allows religion to remain central to our culture in spite of the neglect we suffer as a people from most organized religions in this country.
 Popular Religiosity DEF: religious considerations that form a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations…by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
• Symbols often arise from “official” Christian tradition. But the Christianity to which we relate, our way of relating with the divine and expressing such connection, is not “official” Christianity, nor does it necessarily have the church—either Catholic or Protestant—as its main point of reference.
 Five general characteristics of the popular religiosity of Latinas
• 1. It is a real religious subculture in the sense that it is a way of thinking and acting in their religious sphere not as individuals but as groups of persons. As a religious subculture it includes beliefs, attitudes, values, rituals, anything that expresses religiosity
• 2. Insofar as rituals are concerned, central position is given to certain aspects of the Catholic tradition considered marginal, eg. sacramentals
• 3. Popular religiosity, as I have already begun to suggest, is syncretic for it invests
• 4. “Official” religious practices are reinterpreted and given a different meaning
• 5. All these behaviors are transmitted as part of the Latino culture in contrast to being personal options
 The day-to-day acknowledgment of the role the divine plays in our lives as well as a firm belief in the ongoing revelation of God in the midst of and through the community of faith is what leads us to claim the lived-experience of Latinas as the source of mujerista theology.
• Spanish: “The Language of Angels”
 The Spanish language functions for Latinas not only as a means of communication but as a means of identification. Spanish has become “the incarnation and symbol” of our whole culture, making us feel that here in the U.S.A. we are one people, no matter what our country of origin is.
• Latino Ethnicity: Social Construct
 In these two first chapters I have analyzed the main elements of Latino ethnicity. Our ties with Latin America and the Spanish speaking Caribbean, mestizaje, our multilayered oppression and struggle for survival, popular religiosity, the insistence on speaking espanol, Spanish, and our proyecto historico—all of these are pieces that together constitute and shape Latinas ethnicity. the shared cultural norms, values, identities, and behaviors that form the core of our ethnicity are linked to these six elements we have explored.
 At the same time we know that these cultural norms, values, identities, and behaviors are irreversibly impacted by the prejudice and discrimina- tion to which we are subjected in this society.”
• 3. Mujerista Theology’s Methods: Understandings and Procedure
• It matters that she BEGAN her articulation of Mujerista theology and ethics with ethnicity: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR EVERYDAY WORLD, HOW WE UNDERSTAND AND DESCRIBE OUR BODILY AND MATERIAL EXISTENCE AS HISPANIC WOMEN.
• This chapter presents a mosaic of mujerista theology’s methods, a mosaic that will be seen in its totality only if one first notices and studies the pieces.
• Sociological Methods and Theories
 The the main sociological considerations that ground our method: 1. The moral agency of Latinas has to be the determining factor in our methodological consideration nad 2. Though we understand the elaboration itself of mujerista theology to be a liberative praxis, mujerista theology as discourse cannot be considered more important than Latina’s development as agents of our own lives and our own history.
 ETHNOMETHODOLOGY: a critique of professional social sciences that focuses on the particularities of the persons being investigated. Ethnomethodologists argue that it is difficult to find in sociological studies a real person with a biography and a history. The person to whom the studies keep referring is the creation of the social scientist, and therefore the self-understanding and everyday life of that person are absent from consideration. Ethnomethodology, on the other hand, is a theory of everyday life.
 So we’ll be ethnometholdologists and we will make us of ETHNOGRAPHY, that is, qualitative research grounded in the everyday lives of people. Use of Latinas “own words”
 META-ETHNOGRAPHY: aggregating info, a kind of synthesis that is inductive and interpretive. Uses an emic approach that is holistic and considers alternatives.
• What is the process used in meta-ethnography to arrive at knowledge synthesis? After the information is gathered from different persons over a certain period of time, the accounts of that information are read repeatedly, and commonalities and differences noted. Key ideas and understandings begin to emerge. The next step in the process is that of “translating the accounts into one another”:
 Mujerista Professional theologians are insiders–do theology from within their own communities. Three points to this
• 1. The role of the insider coreresponds with the understanding that the doing of mujerista theology is a liberative praxis
• 2. one of the characteristics of ethnographic methodology is the dialogic relationship between the researcher and those being researched. Dialogue is a horizontal relationship between equals which involves communication and intercommunication.
• 3. The third consideration has to do with factoring in the experience and understanding of a professional theologian-researcher who is more an insider than an outsider.
• mujerista theologians must present in our writings particular voices from the communities in which our theology is rooted. Otherwise we will run the risk either of objectifying grassroot Hispanic Women by talking about “them” and for “them,” or we will speak exclusively for and by ourselves instead of providing a forum for the theological voice of our communities
• 4. In Their Own Words: Latinas as Moral Agents
• This chapter presents the voices of nine Latinas to make their lived-experience available for other Latinas as we struggle to be agents of our own history. These voices are presented as unmediated as possible.
• Why have this chapter–these voices?
 1. There is a richness of the understandings and experiences Latinas have shared and been willing to entrust
 2. The materials presented here fill a vacuum–little attention has been paid to Latinas’ religious experiences and practices
 3. These voices show how and why religion is a central vivifying element of Latino culture
 4. mujerista theology wishes to respect variations among Latinas’ religious moods, motivations, and practices, and such variations can best be appreciated by listening to what the women themselves have to say.
• The second part of this chapter begins to formulate what meta-ethnography calls “knowledge synthesis.” Knowledge synthesis points out commonalities and differences; it provides generative themes, central elements in the enablement of the moral agency of Latinas;‘ it protects mujerista theology from schemas imposed from the outside on the reality—that is, practical, everyday living (survival) —of Latinas. In short, knowledge synthesis is part of the method that mwjerista theologians use to gather the the lived-experience of Latinas as the source of our theology.
• The purpose of this knowledge synthesis is not to establish norms and values—though they may be deduced quite easily — but to elucidate the self- understanding of Latinas in order to contribute to the enhancement of their moral agency. The purpose of this knowledge synthesis is not to create categories, illumine issues, or answer classical theological questions, but to enable Latinas to grasp better their daily lives so they can more effectively struggle for survival and liberation
• Ok I skimmed the interviews sue me.
• General Themes Central to Latinas
 1. Above all else, there is a sense in these Latinas that they have to act, that whatever is going to happen is going to happen because they see to it that it happens. But their doing is not a thoughtless process, a routine kind of action, empty of reflection. On the contrary, the more critical the action becomes, the more reflection it requires. All of them insist in their own way that only if they depend on themselves can they depend on God. AKA PRAXIS
 2. there is in these women a strong awareness, almost a passion, for claiming and asserting their value and their self-worth. these women want their voices heard, that they believe they have a contribution to make to the doing of mujerista theology. AKA MORAL AGENCY
• 5. Conscience, Conscientization, and Moral Agency in Mujerista Theology
• “Mi conciencia me dice,” my conscience tells me, is a phrase often heard among Hispanic Women.
• Conscience is invoked frequently but not lightly.
• Against the Catholic Bishop’s Understandings of Conscience, we must support and enhance the development of LAtina conscience–their right and duty to develop their own moral agency
 Catholic Bishops’ conscience: the authoritative hierarchical magisterium is the decisive factor. They vest the hierarchy’s opinions with the same authority as word of God. This is the authoritarian conscience. The catholic body is not whole.
 Historical development of it: moral theology became a very practical discipline concerned with training confessors for the Sacrament of Penance especially in their role as judges about the existence and gravity of sin. Moral theology was cut off from its speculative roots as well as from dogmatic and spiritual theology
• Protestant Consciencences understand conscience as having no directive role before the action takes place. This is bc Protestantism holds sin peripheral to relation of the person to God. Moral life lacks religious seriousness
• Mujerista conscience is wholistic: conscience is integral to person and not a faculty that can be ascertained and examined separately. focuses on the person as agent of her own life, able to determine, and responsible for, who she is and what she does. Consciousness DEF: awareness of oneself as agent, experiencing oneself in one’s own experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding
• So FORMING OF THAT CONSCIOUSNESS has to do with enabling the process of conscientization of the person. This involves (1) recognizing the distinction between nature in its inevitability and culture in its changeability; (2) unmasking the myths that allow oppressors to dominate society by blurring this distinction; and (3) exploring the alternatives available under the fundamental “generative theme” of our epoch, namely, liberation
• 6. Praxis and Lived-Experience in Mujerista Theology
• What grounds mujerista theology as a praxis? It is grounded by and rises from the lived-experience of Latinas, which in turn leads to future lived-experience that enables and expresses our moral agency.
• Centrality of praxis has been clear.
• PRAXIS DEF: a political action which seeks to change the oppressive economic-socio-cultural structures of society.? This political action is a liberative action which requires a historical project, human agency, intentionality, and a political commitment to change the infrastructure in relationship to the suprastructures. Always liberative. It is critical reflective action. Reflection does not follow action or is at the service of action–both action and reflection are inseparable moments though neither can be reduced

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT OVERVIEW OF "MUJERISTA" THEOLOGY

Ada María Isasi-Díaz (born 1943) is professor of ethics and theology at Drew University, as well as the founder and co-director of the Hispanic Institute of Theology. She is also the developer of "Mujerista theology." ("Mujer" is Spanish for "woman." It is thus related to Alice Walker's concept of "womanism".) She has also written 'Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century,' 'Hispanic/Latino Theology,' 'La Lucha Continues: Mujerista Theology,' etc.

She wrote in the Introduction to this 1993 book, "This book pushes further and deeper the ideas and methods presented in ('Hispanic Women')... it is a platform for the voices of Latinas because their lived-experience is the source of mujerista theology." She defines mujerista as "a Hispanic Woman who struggles to liberate herself not as an individual but as a member of a Hispanic community." (Pg. 4)

She suggests that effective solidarity with Latinas demands "a preferential option for the oppressed." (Pg. 42) She notes that the Christianity which became an intrinsic part of the Latina culture "uses the Bible in a very limited way, emphasizing instead the traditions and customs of the Spanish church." (Pg. 46)

She asserts that as mujerista theologians they claim that even the attempt to be objective is flawed; "our theological enterprise has to do with the reality Hispanic Women create and confront every day... we claim that the lived-experience of Hispanic Women (is) the source of mujerista theology." (Pg. 175) She summarizes, that mujerista theology is "more about questioning the way theology is done than making a niche for ourselves within the structures of contemporary theology and academia." (Pg. 176)

This book is an excellent extension of Diaz's earlier writings.

[Luke Hillier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isasi-Díaz is a phenomenal scholar and this is packed with insightful, brilliant methodology that could not have been more expertly executed. She frames the importance of re-situating theology into the hands and minds of grassroots people, particularly Hispanic women within this particular framework. Not only does she argue for that, however, but she demonstrates how it is done with an ethnography of a number of Hispanic women regarding their thoughts on ethics and decision-making.

This is well done, and yet I felt that what we were given was lacking? She referenced that each interview lasted at least 2 hours, and yet we only see the answers to three of the questions. I understand the need for restraint and am sure that book benefited from staying so tight, but it also seemed like an opportune moment to hear more directly what these women thought about God and I was surprised that was nowhere to be found.

Although I enjoyed reading this quite a bit, particularly the first two-thirds of the book, I lost steam for the final portion and began to feel as though we were going in repetitive circles with some of the ideas and arguments. I'll admit that, at least for my copy, the font was exceptionally small, which made the experience of reading this book feel a bit more arduous and trying and may have influenced my score.

[ben adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book! The rudimentary premise is that The*logy is done by all people, not just professionals. It argues that the work of The*logy happens primarily in the lived-experience of people and is therefore shaped by social, cultural, and political realities. The author utilizes ethnographic, qualitative research tools to put for the The*logy of Hispanic Women better known as Mujeristas. She makes the complementary argument that, in contrast to other The*logians of Liberation who view The*logy as a second step of reflection after praxis, Mujerista Liberation The*logy is in and of itself praxis because it denounces and announces oppression and liberation, respectively, in the lives of Latina Women and there religious/social/political/personal lives. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Hispanic The*logy and Liberation The*logy.