Description
In Twentieth-Century Guatemala, Women religious and religious women performed the primary work of Catholic mission and by doing so built the human infrastructure for revolutionary social change. In Guatemala City, nuns directed schools for elite girls, ran hospitals, assisted the poor. In rural Guatemala, they directed primary and secondary schools and centers for popular education and catechesis, oversaw hospitals and health clinics, trained health promoters and midwives, and ran radio stations. They transcended geographic, ethnic, and class divisions that were at the root of the country’s social inequality. Despite the breadth and depth of their labor, nuns remain largely invisible in the historiography of contemporary Guatemala.
This paper seeks to address two interconnected oversights in the historiography of contemporary Guatemala. It documents nuts and bolts labor of women religious by providing a composite mapping of some of their work throughout the country. By doing so, the paper illustrates ways that women religious acted as agents of Catholic modernization facilitating both personal transformation and the creation of global networks. Just as Silvia Arrom argues for nineteenth century Mexico, Catholic networks intersected with and contributed to revolutionary social and political change. My second contribution is to suggest, that “Cold War Conflicts” in Guatemala may have been akin to religious civil wars. This claim draws on Pamel Voekel’s argument that Latin America’s Age of Revolution, while it may have relied on French Enlightenment ideals, was defined by the way these ideals were imbibed and transformed by Catholic thinkers and actors. Women religious, my paper argues, were crucial, though largely unconscious and unintentional agents in an analogous process of transformation in Cold WarGuatemala.
About the Speaker
Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens examines the history of transnational Catholic movements during the era of the Cold War in Central and South America. She seeks to highlight Catholic social actors on the margins of the Church and society – religious sisters, indigenous catechists, lay women – examining their roles as agents of personal and social transformation whose work contributed directly and indirectly to modernization, globalization, and reform. Fitzpatrick Behrens is the author of The Maryknoll Catholic Mission in Peru, 1943-1989: Transnational Faith and Transformation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) and with David Orique, O.P. and Virginia Garrard, is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). She has published numerous articles and book chapters, including “Canadian and US Catholic Promotion of Co-operatives in Central America and the Caribbean and their Political Implications,” Mary Hilson, Silke Neunsinger, & Greg Patmore, eds. A Global History of Consumer Co-Operation Since 1850: Movements and Businesses, (Brill Press, 2017) co-authored with Catherine LeGrand. She received support for her research from distinct sources, including the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Commentator
Silvia Marina Arrom, Brandeis University
About the Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar Series
The Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar explores topics in religion and culture including social history, biography, cultural studies, visual and material culture, urban studies, and the history of ideas. We are interested in how religious belief has affected society, rather than creedal or theological focused studies. Seminars are conversational and free and open to faculty, graduate students, and members of the public, who register in advance to request papers.
Registration
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance and space is limited. To register and request a copy of the pre-circulated paper, click below. Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
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