Latin American Religion

This essay addresses the intersection between religion and race in the context of Brazil. It situates Brazil within the larger context of Latin America, particularly in respect to the common colonial background. The conquest of Latin America by the Portuguese and the Spanish empires took place in a context in which religion, economics, and politics were intertwined. Luis Rivera-Pagan has demonstrated how the conquest necessitated a legitimizing theological language to be possible. On the other hand, from an indigenous perspective, there was always the impression that the God motivating the Spaniards’ colonial enterprise was in fact gold. Implicitly or explicitly, behind all this there was an assumption of the superiority of the European civilization, culture, and religion upon the indigenous civilizations and religion they found in the …show more content…
Before physical aggression takes place, or cocomitantly with it, there is some sort of symbolical aggression, which attacks the cultures that are facing the iminence of violence and destruction.
Given this reality, Christian theology in Latin America needs to address at the same time issues of class, gender, race, and culture. Latin American liberation theology was the first theological expressions developed by Christians in Latin America. Its method was novel, and it influenced the formation of other sorts of liberationist theologizing in different parts of the world. On the other hand, it took a while for Latin American liberation theology to include matters of race and culture, on top of its class