Chapters: Carmen Laura de Amesz, “The Theology of Liberation and Woman”, 1979

Introduction

The woman is at the crux of the theme I am going to discuss today. From the perspective of Latin America, it is necessary to say that the woman who appears in the history of the continent is the woman from the masses-the lower classes. She typifies, in a paradigmatic manner, the poor of our continent.

That is not a gratuitous statement. The Latin American woman suffers from exploitation and oppression in all aspects of her existence. And at the same time it is easy to recognize how she has affected and is affecting the liberating praxis of the people, not only in recent years but for many years past.

I would like by way of introduction to be able to state some strong ideas that identify the character of the Theology of Liberation without which it would be perhaps difficult to understand the focus of that exploitation.

A. The Theology of Liberation is an effort of reflection and comprehension of a living faith personified in a concrete historic form, like faith is always lived. [1]

What is meant by that?

In the first place that our faith is a gift from God, that His Word enlightens and nourishes. The Theology of Liberation should have as a referential main point the Word of the Lord received in faith.

In the second place that faith does not lie in permanent affirmations but in the precise form in which we practice it every day. Our response of faith to the Lord is not proven if the Word is not acted upon. Deeds are the measure of our faith. Therefore, the other referential point of the Theology of Liberation will be the live experience of that faith reflected in the Christian community.

In the third place this practice that the Word requires has essentially a social dimension.

It is ruled by love in its universal dimension and demands a definite choice: to make oneself poor (hacerse pobre). Faith calls us permanently to conversion and this is not separable from its social dimension. 

That is the third point of the Theology of Liberation – to understand faith from its historic and social dimensions: how faith is experienced in specified historic and social conditions.

B. The Theology of Liberation is an attempt at reflection and comprehension of faith of the people of Latin America who have lived and live under very precise conditions of exploitation; who have had a process of evangelization, a growth of faith different from other countries of the world, who seek to define and realize their own specific historic plan. The interlocutors of the Theology of Liberation are exploited people who are also believers, and who are reclaiming their right to decide their own history and their reasons for their hope in God.

I. Basic Biblical Keys from Which to Bring into Focus the Reality of the Woman

1. Woman: Human being

Following the outline method, the first postulate that will reaffirm the Theology of Liberation is that the Word reveals that woman is a human being. (Gen. 1,27: “God created man in His own image and likeness, man and woman he created them”.) We know that this text has a greater credibility than that which comes after in the second chapter, in which we find the famous passage of the rib.

The reading of that text from the Bible shows us two things:

• the essential equality of woman and man in regard to creation, to their human condition and as children of God.
• that the Word is revealed to a definite people who think in a determined manner, with cultural values, who will regulate the manner of interpretation and receive this word. For the Hebrew people to be a woman was a misfortune (Hebrew men bless Yahweh every day for three things: for being a human and not an animal, for being a Jew and not a gentile, for being a man and not a woman). The passage in Chapter 2 clearly has a pedagogical intention, to make itself understood. The marvel of the Bible is that it also keeps the original story, that which transmits the Message, the story that speaks of faith, not only of cultural comprehension..

Woman as human being: participant in the story of Salvation

The Word reveals equally that woman has actively figured in the story of Salvation since the Old Testament. To treat this aspect more extensively here would take too long (and would be more proper in a special study on Women in the Bible), but we think the presence of women in the story of Salvation is highly significant. We could point out some characteristics of that participation.

• that which defines her participation in the story of Salvation is her ability to take part in the collective story of the liberation of her people.
• her moral prestige (the prostitute is saved: Js. 2,9 and following)
• her faithfulness to her dead husband (Judith 9, 10-14)
• her condition as mother (Mc. 7)
• her solidarity with the project of her people is the main determinant. That is what will make her a participant in salvation.

This affirmation is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible and in the New Testament.

Mary Magdalene, the adultress, and Mary, who accepted the destiny of her suffering as a mother, relive this tradition:

• Mary Magdalene accepts it better than the pharisee
• Mary accepts the suffering of being the mother of the Lord (Lc. 2,48-51)

Woman: expression of being the first chosen because she is part of the poor whose rights are denied

• Ruth, the stranger who guaranteed the posterity of the Jewish people
• The Samaritan (Jn. 4, 7-9; 15; 19…)
• The widow who gives him everything (Is. 21, 1-4).

These texts show us how to treat the theme of the poor, the stranger, the ostracized, the servant, the despoiled; the Bible does not fail to take a woman as an example, on the contrary she is symptomatically present.

2. Woman: Sexually differentiated

At the same time that the revealed word affirms the humanity of women and men it affirms their sexual differences. It would be an equally large theme in addition to all the work to describe all the very rich scenes about sexuality in the Bible. I would just like to mention only some features:

1. her function as propagator of the human species. Fertility as a blessing and gift from God strongly underscores that aspect.
2. sexual life as a means of understanding between human beings. The love between two people is described in all its eroticism in a singular manner in the “Song of Songs” with all the erotic exaltation of infinite happiness and permanent search and encounter that is the physical life of a couple.
3. maternity basically characterizes the woman but it will always be maternity with a universal vocation. Maternity is the experience of human pain, but also of human happiness; of the hope of a people. The mother has the experience of giving her life for her child, but she should be willing that her son/daughter give his/her life for others.
4. the role of the woman is at once strong and soft. Seducer and beheader, concealer and revealer, mourner and perfumer (the samaritan and the prostitute). She is the one who serves, but also leaves domestic activity to listen to the Word (Martha and Mary). The conduct of woman throughout the Bible is sexually characterized through roles and capabilities in accordance with her sex but these are not limitations, on the contrary they are put to the service of the liberation of the people of God.

3. Woman: Active member of the Christian community

From the time of Mary the Christian community has always been formed by women (Lc. 8, 1-3). And they are progressively in the first Christian communities. In spite of the famous anti-feminist tradition that Paul espoused in some of his letters, it is important to know that in that epoch, many women had a leading role in the Church, and had great responsibilities. Some of these women are mentioned by Paul in his epistles: Prisca and the deaconess Phoebe.

4. Woman: from the other side of the story

Nevertheless, in the manner in which the Church is going to meet the Roman world and is going to become more institutionalized, the cultural standards in effect cause the participation of women in leading positions in the Christian communities to disappear. Her participation seems to become passive but here we have to distrust written history to which we can refer immediately. This history was written by men whose cultural attitudes caused them to systematically exclude or distrust woman.

In the study of the Middle Ages, for example, throughout the period of the heretic movement, many historians have given hasty and false interpretations of the part of woman in that movement. They have given the impression that woman is a being of weak reasoning power; of little conviction and therefore easily taken into the ranks of the heretics. Recent historic studies are demonstrating the falsehood and subjectivity of that interpretation.

In general the stereotype of the part of woman in history is characterized by her power of seduction, her involvement in decadent government and as a courtesan where she is a sensual symbol; the cause of treason, whose attitude is totally insensitive to the situation of the people. In the history of the Church, nevertheless, it is significant that figures such as Theresa of Avila have prevailed, exponent of a current full of spiritual vitality: Mysticism. The history of domination has not been able to erase her figure. We think that there lies a gold mine that we must follow, discover and to make known.

This historic vein is also an important field of work for the Theology of Liberation since one of the forms that contribute more efficiently to maintain domination over the people is to erase its historic memory. This affirmation is profoundly true for Latin America and by extension for all that is part of humanity which suffers from oppression. As a consequence it is valid, for women in history in general as well as in the history of the Church. [2]

II. From the Word to Social Practice

The biblical keys to which we have referred give us the norms to place the woman from the Word of God, in her vocation, and in her response to that call of God in the story of Salvation pointed out in the Bible.

From the point of the Theology of Liberation the integral condition of Salvation is underlined. It is not possible to respond to the call of the Lord if one is not free from the whole structure of oppression. Daily life shows us that the presence of sin in the world crosses all human realities. There is a personal dimension but also a collective dimension to sin. There is an economic dimension of oppression and exploitation but there is also a cultural dimension of oppression. Liberation for this theology covers three levels: (1) the socio-economic and political structures that fall directly in a situation of collective sin; (2) the cultural structures that determine the existence of oppression in relations between people and that are determined by ideological standards; (3) the personal dimension that supposes the liberation of each one from human obstacles to receive and accept the vocation of the Lord.

For the Theology of Liberation, the liberation of woman as well as all men should encompass those three levels of liberation or it will not be faithful to the purpose of the Lord.

If we approach the reality of Latin America, we find that woman is not an abstract being, she can never be that in any society. As a human being she participates in the oppressing structures and unfailing oppression that would assume a primary requirement of choice, of taking position.

Subordinate to this primary separation, we are certain that in this part of the continent woman is the object of an ambivalent sexual oppression. Because of the cultural make-up of Latin America there prevails an accentuated machismo that is combined with a valuation of woman as a sexual object. And that is not limited to Latin American society but is one of the strong ideas of the capitalistic system.

If this oppression stems from sexual characteristics that concern the Latin American woman as a whole the control of machismo that is its counterpart disagrees in accordance with the social class to which this woman belongs. And there is the ambiguous character of the feminine sexual lib-eration. That is not to say that that perspective should not be taken into account, since sexual life is a part of the personal reality of human beings; in addition in the evangelization that has been given on the continent, sex has played a very important role as a criterion of sin.

Looking at the majority of Latin American people, one can say that the lower class woman suffers a double oppression and exploitation: that which stems from a series of cultural standards because of which the woman is a being without value in the society. In a society of poverty such as ours this worthlessness reaches levels of inhuman conditions: no right to education, greater level of exploitation at work because she is considered inferior, social conditioning toward prostitution that seems like a natural function of woman and that many times she has to accept because of the conditions of servitude in which she lives.

Liberation that encompasses the three levels

This situation in which the Latin American woman of the lower classes lives, demands that her liberation encompasses in her totality as a human being, as the Word of God states in the Bible. And it is in this perspective that we establish that the most significant feminine liberation movements are oriented in Latin America.

According to the method of the Theology of Liberation it is necessary to immerse oneself in the practice of the lower classes, of those groups who are involved in this struggle to confront themselves with the Word. What we find is encouraging. In our countries the women who are aware of the right to liberation are committed to the project of the people in various ways. The content of their struggle is in the building of a liberation for all; there is no room for a sectorial particularism.

I should like to cite as very concrete examples the case of Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, and others.

Liberation that is built from a collective experience

A second characteristic that I should like to point out is that the woman who participates in the process of liberation is strongly bound to a community; she is the bearer of the interests and the restless feelings of that community.

Liberation that builds a feminine identity

The women of our continent are not fighting for “equal rights”, they are fighting to be human beings and in their manner of living they find:

• the work for liberation is diverse, that both men and women must work for it；
• but that there are dimensions of femininity that develop in the struggle: a capacity of caring, of service, of valiant commitment, a capacity to challenge the coward;
• the Latin American woman is thus constructing a liberation that is not only for her but for her and everyone else.

III Conclusion

Woman is a central theme in the Theology of Liberation in the manner in which it is in the bible and in the process of liberation that is alive in Latin America. The point of meeting with the theme is therefore the concrete practice of woman in the collective plan of liberation.

I want to strongly underline the global character of this liberation on its three levels and especially the woman in her condition as part of the poor, doubly exploited and living marginally.

The flags that the liberation hoists in Latin America are not flags that hide its cause but those that make it explicit to others. That is proper to the dynamic of the plan of Liberation of Latin America. It does not respond to partial interests, to groups that cohabit as incommunicative parts. The Liberation in Latin America has a universal vocation that ought to understand the particular realities, such as race, culture, regional problems, in order to consolidate for efficiency.

[1]

Gutierrez, G., The Theology of Liberation, 1971, Chapter I. [sic]

The Historic Power of the Poor, 1978, Chapter II. [sic]

[2]

Gutierrez, G., Theology from the Reverse of History, CEP, 1978. [sic]

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Women in Dialogue: Inter-American Meeting. Notre Dame, Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979

January 27 to February 13, 1979, in Puebla, México, gathered the bishops of the Latin American and Caribbean Roman Catholic Church for a conclave that would decide the future of Christian commitments on the continent. Meanwhile, “an international group of Catholic women met for three intensive days in Cuernavaca, Mexico [… working] over the preliminary Working Document the bishops would be using. The sessions continued in Puebla, during which many more Latin American women participated in the dialogue” recalls Ruth McDonough in the Forward, “We named ourselves ‘Mujeres para el Diálogo’.” That group bussed to Puebla city to intervene and make sure that women would not be ignored in the episcopal conference as they had been in the past.

The English translations here were the work of The [U.S.] National Assembly of Women Religious, in collaboration with the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, who published this text for English-reading audiences who might join in solidarity with the women of the Latin American and Caribbean churches facing violence on all fronts.

For the story open up the first LTA boletín.