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LTA Boletín, Ep. 1 (Apr-Jun): Mujeres para el diálogo, 1979

Dear readers of the Liberation Theology Archives, since the election of Papa León XIV (Robert Francis Prevost) during the two days of May 7th and 8th, 2025, and the 2024 film Conclave, it might be helpful to use that same word, “conclave”, for the Puebla Conference, wherein the future of the Latin American church coincided with the election of a new Pope, John Paul II (Karol Józef Wojtyła), on October 16th, 1978.

The 1979 CELAM III Conference was a battleground between the liberationist and reactionary forces within the Catholic Church, receiving the attention of worldwide press and public, the machinations of government diplomats and secret agents, demanding the best strategies of two camps and an ambivalent middle in sharply dividing and dangerous times.

That was the situation in which the ad hoc movement and moment that was the Mujeres para el diálogo group came into being–women activists, strategists, theologians and thinkers who met together in 1979 to challenge not only the male hierarchy at the Third General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops (CELAM III) in Puebla but also the machismo of the Liberation Theology movement that they were marginalised within and yet a part of.

With so much going on forming the very moment that the Mujeres para el diálogo strategised and launched their movement, we begin with the bigger event itself, CELAM III, Puebla, the Third General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops. This is an introduction for new and acquainted researchers alike.

Structure:

Part 1. Puebla, México: Setting the Scene

Part 2. Introducing Las Mujeres

Part 3. Texts: Reintroduced and Translated

Part 4. Looking Forward: The Emergent Movement

Part One of this first LTA newsletter is intended to situate the Mujeres para el diálogo moment and movement within the fracas of the Third General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops. It is hard to overstate all that was at stake during those two weeks (Aug 24-Sep 06, 1979) for church people, and the continent as a whole, in what was already, well before it commenced, a battleground between opposing visions of the Church’s role in the revolutionary, reactionary and reprising politics of the 1970s going forward.

CELAM II (The Second General Latin American Episcopal Conference) in Medellín had famously represented a high watermark of liberationist commitments–explicated and endorsed by the bishops was the all-encompassing commitment to the cause of the poor–but even there women were all but ignored. The road from CELAM II (Medellín 1968) to CELAM III (Puebla 1979) was punishing for the liberationist sectors of the Church, with the CELAM structure essentially brought back into control by church allies of the groups and individuals who sought to profit most from the continued exploitation of the Latin American poor. The 1970s were described many times by the liberationist writers as a time of “cautividad” (captivity) because of the harsh repression that kept the hopes of liberation caged and deterred by severe violence. Meanwhile, women who made up the frontline and base of the liberationist, peoples-based church, suffered not only the frontline of anti-liberationist repression but also the more permanent fixture of a deeper and more daily oppression, endemic in the society as a whole and even within the movements for social change.

You can click forward by following these links: (1) Puebla: Setting the Scene, (2) Introducing las Mujeres, (3) Los Textos, with more to come, (4) From 1979 to 1985: The Emerging Women Doing Theology movement.

Part 1. CELAM III, Puebla, México: Setting the Scene

Three texts are selected for our background. These eye witnesses transform the moment that Puebla represented and now represents for us into the living, bustling, striving experiences of it, of the moment, from the perspectives of participants, commentators, and a watching world in which Puebla would be received with even more anticipation than 2025’s Vatican conclave. At CELAM III everything was at stake. Of these context-enlivening texts two are from the perspective of the most staunch opposition to liberation theology and to the women’s movement from a reporter dispatched from Rome to cover the conference for an Opus Dei magazine. Mary Martínez, nevertheless, gives some of the best press coverage of the atmosphere and the struggle for the meaning of the Third General Conference.

Two such contextualising resources gave such an insight into all that was contested for the broader liberationist struggle and for the women’s movement in particular, that they became video resources: LTA’s first attempt at such media. Enrique Dussel gives us the machinations and the strategies of the two sides. Rosemary Radford Ruether gives us an involved account of the Mujeres para el diálogo process. These videos were made in January, 2024: a precursor to the LT Archives, est. 2025. These initial attempts at making audio-visual content for this important moment may, with their limitations, help some folks listen in beyond the written texts here.

Part 2. Introducing Las Mujeres

This is a story about how women strategised and joined together during the most trying era for the liberationist movements within the Latin American and Caribbean churches, a situation that for women meant a double or triple oppression along lines of economic exploitation, gendered violence, and, in the case of some (many millions) racial discrimination and marginalisation. This group quickly established as a taskforce for the urgent raising of women’s realities at the Puebla conclave, deciding they would not be ignored as they were in the Second General CELAM Conference in Medellín, 1968.

Medellín was understood all over as an institutional commitment of a whole continental church governance to the radical message of being with, alongside, and involved with the causes that concern the poorest and most oppressed. Yet women were essentially missing from the pronouncements of that liberationist win. At Puebla the women who gathered under the banner of the Mujeres para el diálogo were determined to push the conversation forward, albeit in a situation where the liberationist Christianities they were involved in were enduring serious reprisals from those sectors who wanted to “turn back the clock” to a pre-Medellín and pre-Liberation Theology era.

The Mujeres para el diálogo had to assert their cause against the backdrop of violence as usual and the forefront of a particular reprisal that would, church-wise, reach its own high watermark in the takeover of CELAM, the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops Conference, by reactionary and ultra-conservative interests. The Mujeres moreover had to demand a place in the liberationist movements of which they were the rank and file majority, but somehow, as late as 1979, still silenced and secondary. They had to rise up against second class citizenship, in the Church at large and in the movement too. Women’s realities involved a permanent violence of non-personhood (lack of freedom, lack of wages, lack of prospects, and equality, lives of endless work, the subjection to a servant existence) and the present and ever ready possibility, made plain in many murders, of the extreme and final violence of the spouse, the family, the boss, the company, the police, not to mention the same groups who were now, more than ever, marking liberationists and subversives for death.

The Mujeres para el diálogo met and joined forces amidst all of this, intent on changing the reality by speaking the truth. But who were the particular women who became the Mujeres para el diálogo in 1979?

Of the names that appear in the lineup from their initial meetings, taking place in Cuernavaca (Jan 23-26) and then in Puebla itself during the CELAM III Conference (Jan 27-Feb 13), there are some who became famous figures in the movement, others who already were, and women who were not a part so much of anything like that, anything called feminism, liberation theology, and so on, but lived lives that demanded justice. They were “religious nuns, lay women, married, single, separated, divorced, mothers of all ages including one expectant mother” and “other women who had decided to come to talk with the bishops.” [1] “Among the women that gathered for the Mujeres project, there were several women pastors of base communities, two from Cuernavaca and one from Mexicali. Both religious and lay women are found among such leaders.” [2]

Of the names that the present reader may most quickly recognise, there was Leonor Aída Concha (Mexico), Ada María Isasi-Diaz (Cuba and USA), and Itziar Lozano Urbieta (Spain and Mexico). Others, like Carmen Laura de Amesz (Peru), whose article was the very first digitised for this boletín, bring up in a Google search only our own ltarchives and the work of Natalie Gasparowicz (see below), but presentations such as hers came from the grassroots of women fighting for women in the society and in the church. Carmen Laura de Amesz’s address speaks the truth very clearly:

“the lower class woman suffers a double oppression and exploitation […] 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.”

Carmen Laura de Amesz (Peru), 1979 [3]

One of the women who was there to talk to the bishops was Thelma Dorothy Jara de Cabezas, who came to bring the situation in Argentina home for those meeting. Her son was kidnapped in May, 1976. “[S]he was seized by the Security Police May, 1979”, wrote Fitzpatrick, “[s]he, too, is now one of the disappeared.” [4] It would be these experiences and testimonies that the United States women (and those from Canada and Europe) brought back with them to the solidarity networks were busy raising awareness of the human costs of North Atlantic economic strategies on the continent.

The U.S. participants included Helen Volkomener, Ruth McDonough Fitzpatrick, and Mary O’Keefe, the same team who by July that same year made major presentations available to English-language readers as a companion piece to the CELAM III translations then in circulation. Prof. Rosemary Radford Ruether was in Puebla, too, with students of hers, and ran “afternoon sessions in English” to the burgeoning crowd of reporters and male liberationists paying attention to the Mujeres group. [5] Her Feminism and Liberation Theology talks were not included in the Women in Dialogue publication in a “conscious decision to include […] only those papers presented by the Latin American women.” [6] “[We] were there in larger numbers than first expected”, wrote Fitzpatrick. “We were not there to impose our views as North American Catholics. We had come in solidarity to listen and learn and to join in dialogue.” [7] Participants from all parts of the continents and from across the Atlantic travelled together from the week of preparation in Cuernavaca to the frenetic Puebla “outside the walls” of the closed of Palafoxiano Seminary where the bishops (stacked with conservatives and reactionaries) were set to meet.

The numbers of First World women at the second Mujeres para el diálogo gathering, in Tepeyac, October, were drastically reduced. It was decided that,

“regarding the participation of women from the United States, the companions think it would be good if some of them attended the seminar, but no more than two. They think that if more come, the discussions could become slower and more difficult due to possible differences in both approaches and knowledge of the reality of Latin America.”

Itziar Lozano writing to Sergio Torres, 27 July, 1979 [8]

The discussion that Dr. Saúl Espino Armendáriz commits to this transition from the bicultural Mujeres para el diáogo / Women for Dialogue taskforce to a Latin American-exclusive organisation heading in new horizons brings up many important questions that problematise both the sentiment that the intercontinental group was all “united by our experiences, hopes and visions” (Fitzpatrick) and also that the differences and tensions that emerged and rearranged the group can be put down to a binary of First World Feminist Women fighting for women’s ordination and Third World Liberationist Women fighting for life itself. [9]

I don’t attempt to repeat and rearrange Espino Armendáriz’s discussion of the journey here. His delineation of the roots and routes of the movement are second to none. His attention to the experience of the U.S.-based, Cuban-born Ada María Isasi-Díaz, in the borderland of U.S. Latinidad, is particularly of interest for the discussion that the Mujeres moment itself represents–who is included and excluded in our circles of concern for justice. I could not add anything to his treatment of the personal archives where her story is told in her own words. Linked below:

  • Espino Armendáriz, Saúl. ‘Feminismo católico en México: La historia del CIDHAL y sus redes transnacionales (c. 1960–1990)’. PhD diss., El Colegio de México, 2019. [Outside Link: Academia.edu]
  • Gasparowicz, Natalie. “‘Women, the Key to Liberation?’: A Feminist Theology of Liberation at the Catholic Women’s Conference at Puebla.” In Liberation Theology and Praxis in Contemporary Latin America: As It Was in the Beginning?, edited by Pablo Bradbury and Niall H. D. Geraghty, 159–78. University of London Press, 2025. [Outside Link: Jstor]

Moreover, both Gasparowicz [10] and Espino Armendáriz detail the organisational makeup of the Mujeres para el diálogo group and pay close attention to the foundational vision of “the indomitable” Elisabeth ‘Betsie’ Hollants. [11] Their work represents a present generation remembering and honouring the Mujeres who challenged Puebla, the Latin American, and the global church in 1979, through close attention to the archives wherein close attentiveness can be paid to the voices.

Part 3. Reintroducing the Texts

Libro: Women in Dialogue: Inter-American Meeting (Notre Dame, Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry)

From the English translations of the initial and emergency meetings of this task force we have digitised five major addresses, so far, including the paper by Itziar Lozano Urbieta which was distributed to press, the public and to the bishops themselves who met in the battleground of Puebla to decide the future of the Latin American and Caribbean church. From that 1979 translation we have also digitised the Presentation of Materials, the Forward and the Preface, plus the Press Release, setting the scene for the content within the addresses.

The same group, albeit transformed and transforming, met again in October, 1979, some months after the January-February fracas where they had gathered as witnesses to the realities of women in life and work, in family and marriage, church and neighbourhood, in the movements and among the liberationist Christian scenes that were then emerging in every country of the continent. The contents of that latter meeting were published in a 1981 title, Mujer Latinoamericana: Iglesia y Teología (sine nomine), which is, as far as we can tell, being translated here for the first time, at least in part. Four conference addresses are being made available throughout June, including as side-by-side English-Español/Spanish-Inglés versions for your classroom, study group, and other dual language spaces engaged in the same struggle that the Mujeres para el diálogo engaged in their own time. As above, the front and back material are included here.

  • PRESENTACIÓN / PRESENTATION – Mujeres para el diálogo, 1981 [Available to public] [Coming Soon]
  • CHAPTER 3 – AUSENCIAS Y PRESENCIAS DE LA MUJER LATINOAMERICANA EN EL CONFLICTO ENTRE LA FE Y LA PRAXIS POLÍTICA – Flora Castro R., México – [Esp] [Eng] [Side-by-side Dual Language Available: Google Doc]
  • CHAPTER 6 – LA LUCHA DE LA MUJER MEXICANA Y LA IGLESIA – Leonor Aída Concha, México – [Esp] [Eng] [Coming Soon]
  • CHAPTER 7 – LA MUJER EN LA PROBLEMÁTICA ECLESIAL – Cora Ferro, Costa Rica – [Esp] [Eng] [Coming Soon]
  • CHAPTER 8 – LA MUJER, LA PRAXIS POLÍTICA Y LA TRADICIÓN PROFÉTICA – María Pilar Aquino V., México – [Esp] [Eng] [Coming Soon]
  • CHAPTER 14 – CONCLUSIONES DEL SEMINARIO: LA MUJER LATINOAMERICAN, LA PRAXIS Y LA TEOLOGÍA DE LA LIBERACIÓN – Mujeres para el diálogo, México D.F. [Available to public] [Coming Soon]

Part 4. The Emerging ‘Women Doing Theology’ Movement

Finally, from today looking back at the Mujeres para el diálogo (MPD) who fought in and beyond the Puebla moment, establishing a network which grew into a movement, we have been blessed to chat with Prof. Elsa Támez who was present the whole way and the key organiser of the movement as it moved forward through the 1980s and 1990s under the banner of Mujeres haciendo teología. We spoke over email and over video call. The soon-coming text and video combine with Prof. Taméz’s autobiographical reflections in Tamayo y Bosch’s Panorama (2000) [outside link] to form journeying view of the path from 1979 to 1985 and beyond. We discussed all kinds of things “liberation”. The conversation is a down to earth inside view of the liberation theology movement from the perspective of a 35-year-old Elsa Támez who was tasked with the creation of the Latin American Women’s Commission for the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT/ASSET) with the help of Sergio Torres’ “invisible check”. Watch this space!

Meanwhile, dig into Saúl Espino Armendáriz’s work, cited above and below, for the crossovers and collaborations that took place before, during and after the Mujeres para el diálogo moment . . .

. . . 1700 years since Nicea, and just after the Papal Conclave elected Papa León as successor of Papa Francisco, I hope that the testimonies shared here enliven your own reflections and embolden your commitments. Over the course of June, and pushing back a little into July, more of the above will be revealed. I’ve been travelling in Argentina the past three weeks digging in the archives of MSTM priests Carlos Mugica and José María Meisegeier for the July-September Issue of the LTA Boletín. I’m grateful for the support you can offer by purchasing the republished Black Faith and Black Solidarity, 1973/2025, with a 90-day subscription to the LTA. Your support will help us translate the rest of the Mujeres documents into this amazing dual-language–“Interlinea[RL]”–resource for bilingual study in your church, your community group and your activism.

I thank you once again for your support of the newly founded Liberation Theology Archives,

Alexander Jordan Holmes-Brown

June 01, 2025

References:

[1] Fitzpatrick, Ruth McDonough, “Forward”, Women in Dialogue. Puebla, Mexico, January 27 to February 13, 1979, Notre Dame, Indiana, The Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979 [LT Archives Public]

[2] Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Consciousness-Raising at Puebla: Women Speak to the Latin Church,” Christianity and Crisis, 39,. (April 2, 1979), 78 and 80 [Outside Link: Boston College: PDF]

[3] de Amesz, Carmen Laura, “The Theology of Woman and Liberation”, Women in Dialogue. Puebla, Mexico, January 27 to February 13, 1979, Notre Dame, Indiana, The Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979 [LT Archives Subscribers]
Alternatively, the physical archives: Notre Dame, In: Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979. Series 2, Box 1, Folder 5, AMIDP.

[4] Fitzpatrick, ibid.

[5] Ruether, ibid.

[6] O’Keefe, Mary, “Preface”, Women in Dialogue. Puebla, Mexico, January 27 to February 13, 1979, Notre Dame, Indiana, The Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, 1979 [LT Archives Public]

[7] Fitzpatrick, ibid.

[8] Espino Armendáriz, Raúl, “Feminismo católico en México: La historia del CIDHAL y sus redes transnacionales (c. 1960–1990)”, PhD diss., El Colegio de México, 2019. In this amazing research based upon the personal exchanges of the various participants during the precursor, immediate and antecedent phases of the MPD, Armendáriz cites the following archival reference: COLUMBIA-EATWOT, caja 9, exp. 4, carta de Itziar Lozano a Sergio Torres, 27 de julio de 1979

[9] See also Espino Armendáriz, Disidencias feministas en la Iglesia católica mexicana: el movimiento para la ordenación de mujeres durante los setenta del siglo XX. Hist. mex. [online]. 2022, vol.71, n.4, pp.1723-1763. [Read it on Scielo.org]

[10] See also Gasparowicz, “Catholic Women’s Activism for Abortion in Late Twentieth-Century Mexico and Contests over Legitimacy” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2024) 40 (2): 280–304.

[11] Ruether, ibid.