Religion and politics have depended on and influenced one another since the origins of what we know as Latin America. Their relation is both mutual and multifaceted; mutual because religion and politics have evolved together over the years, taking material and symbolic support from one another, and multifaceted because it embraces interinstitutional conflict and accommodation (e.g., the “church-state” relations which dominated earlier scholarship) as well as more subtle and elusive exchanges whereby religious and political orders gave legitimacy and moral authority to one another. In this process, religious notions of hierarchy, authority, and obedience reflected and reinforced the pattern of existing social and political arrangements to such an extent that the two orders often seemed indistinguishable.

Ten years ago the Latin American Catholic Bishops held their Second General Conference in Medellín, Colombia. The conference had a great influence not only within the Catholic Church, but also on the formation of socioeconomic and political issues in Latin American countries. At the time of this writing, we are in the midst of preparations for the Third General Conference taking place in Puebla, Mexico, in October 1978. Therefore, this seems a good opportunity to reflect on the general processes of change in the Church leading to Puebla and their implications for the future.

After decades of neglect, interest in the political significance of Latin American Catholicism increased sharply in the late 1960s when it began to appear that the Church might have unimagined potential for promoting social change, particularly in a continent plagued by social upheaval and political instability (Drekonja, 1971: 59-65). In both word and deed, the postconciliar Church manifested a changing social orientation which entailed open involvement in political issues on behalf of the poor. In fact, by August 1968 and the convening of the Council of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) in Medellín, Colombia, the Church seemed to be changing its social and political attitudes so profoundly that reports of a revolutionary Church began to accompany discussions of the political situation in Latin America. Since Medellín, an important literature has evolved from efforts to understand this change in Latin American Catholicism.

In a book which has circulated rather widely in Latin America (Lieuwen, 1960), it was stated that, with the passage of time, Latin American military men would intervene less and less in politics. This was not an altogether mistaken belief, considering that in 1961 Paraguay was a “military island” in a sea of Latin American civilian governments. Today the situation has radically changed in many ways. On the one hand, more than half the population of Latin America lives under military regimes; on the other, military domination has a different cast: it is no longer a caudillo who takes over, but the armed forces, which have institutionalized their access to the government. Linked to the foregoing is the emergence of an authoritarian ideological platform—the military call it a doctrine of national security—which provides the armed forces with the necessary rationale for their political activities.

Over the past fifteen years the military have seized power in most major South American countries, leaving only Colombia and Venezuela with democratic regimes. The armed forces claim that only they are capable of controlling the domestic violence and social disruptions which accompanied the rapid political and economic changes of the 1960s. This process of social conflict and subsequent military intervention has been especially notable in the countries of the subcontinent region—Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay.

The Church in Chile, in its efforts to reach and evangelize the poor, crippled by a gradually diminishing clergy, has over more than a decade come to place extraordinary emphasis on the presence of religious personnel in marginal urban and rural areas. This pastoral priority has induced considerable numbers of religious women to leave their original works (especially education) to take part in the direct apostolate in marginal areas, while the majority of foreign religious women who have recently arrived have opted to follow their example.

Unlike churches in the rest of Latin America, those in Cuba did not embark at the outset of the 1960s on a period of liberalization and innovation in theology, pastoral forms, lay participation and political strategies. Rather, the coming to power in 1959 of a revolutionary government and the initiation of substantial societal restructuring reinforced conservatism within the churches. Strong challenges to the legitimacy of the government by the churches from 1959 through 1961 were not effective due largely to institutional limitations and their identification as bulwarks of prerevolutionary structures. Hence, in spite of a marked increase in participation and contributions, the churches' counterrevolutionary stance had limited impact. Contributing to this was the exodus of many religious activists to the United States and Spain, and a turning in upon themselves by the churches which came to serve as refuges from change.