With Mario López, PhD

The Center for Research and Social Action of Central America (Ciasca), an atypical project of Jesuit intellectuals and young priests in Central America between 1966 and 1996, was initiated by those who sought to accompany the poor and their aspirations for transformation, a ministry less available to them in universities at the time. In 1973, immersed in the renewing currents of the Second Vatican Council, Liberation Theology and Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, they founded a community of insertion in a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City. From there, they dedicated time and energy, doing research and social action, to contribute to the emergence of a critical-transforming consciousness found in multiple popular expressions of the country: university students, young professionals, teachers’ and workers’ unions, urban slum dwellers, parishes, pastoral agents, priests and nuns, but above all, Indigenous and mestizo peasants, whose growing organization and mobilization challenged the Guatemalan status quo at the end of the 1970s. The very particular circumstances of their development and their contributions have not yet been studied in depth. The rise of the guerrillas, on the one hand, with its theoretical limitations on the participation of civil society and of Indigenous peoples, and, on the other hand, the counterinsurgency policies, state terror and genocide, have obscured for forty years the complex web that was woven during those years. However, the ongoing process of rediscovery and then organization of the Ciasca archive offers new possibilities to return to that privileged moment and learn more about the complexity, the limitations and, undoubtedly, the insights of those Jesuits committed to faith and justice. In this luncheon exchange, López will share the research process he and others been undertaking on the Jesuit community of Zone 5 in Guatemala during the years 1973-1993, and his working hypotheses about this experience. 

About the speaker:

López is a Professor of Philosophy, with a Master's degree in Education & Learning, and Doctorate in Sociology, and Guatemalan. He has specialized in social and political philosophy, with experience in curriculum development, teaching, and qualitative research in critical social sciences. A member of the Xavier Zubiri’s Seminar of Guatemala since 2017, he has investigated community-based struggle constellations in Guatemala and their possibilities for social transformation. His current interest is to deepen in the developments in Latin American & Caribbean critical theory. He is currently researching and writing about the history of the Jesuits of the Centro de Investigación y Acción Social de Centroamérica (Ciasca) and their participation in the progressive processes in Guatemala in the 70's and 80's of the last century.

A light lunch to be served.  RSVP at tinyurl.com/LopezRSVP

Co-sponsored by the Theology Dept., the Clough School of Theology and Ministry, and the Faith, Peace and Justice program.