By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez
During a lunch with Kochurani in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, a few weeks ago on the occasion of the World Forum on Theology and Liberation, we shared a common desire to create “cosmic homes” where we can meet, rooted in our land, to cultivate seeds of diverse theologies, with a shared yearning to flourish as individuals and collectives in resistance. Between Kerala and Cholula, a nascent connection was thus established to illuminate these homes, learning from our life stories, where it is possible to listen to the poignant questions arising from the survivors we accompany, while also allowing ourselves to be surprised by their unwavering hope. Places where it is also possible to share the poetic inspirations and intuitions of thought through which the Divine spells out for us in languages as diverse as the colors of the earth.
For at least a decade, in my case, the dream of that homeland had been taking shape, thanks to "mother experiences" where I grasped that something new was happening, often in seemingly insignificant times and places, but where the strength of the Ruah was clear and powerful.
Juan Carlos told me with emotion years ago, during a hike in Mount Hood—the ancient Wyeast of the Chinook people in Wuaregan land, now Oregon—how deeply moved he was by visiting Raimon Panikkar's little house in Catalonia, where the Christian-Hindu-Buddhist mystic and theologian liked to receive his close friends. Located on the outskirts of a small mountain village, his home was a space of hospitality that fostered dialogue among people of diverse faiths who drew from the same source of "cosmotheandric mystery," as the great mystic of our time liked to describe the reality of the interwoven world of life.
The Jesuits' cabin in Mapuche territory, with its wooden chapel adorned with woolen textiles and a small oil lamp, was another of those microcosms where infinity seemed to converge beneath a starry sky. I cherish that moment in my memory like a flame of sincere and generous hospitality from three fellow travelers who had chosen to allow themselves to be inhabited by the people of Wallmapu, thus opening themselves to the God of life who never ceases to call to us and surprise us as a source of fulfillment for all peoples.
A similar “place” – with all the Illichian echo of this noun – we seek to create a group of friends in a territory of Chollollan – or “falling water” in Nahuatl – the oldest inhabited city in America that blooms every year with its fruit trees in August and its cempasúchitl flowers in November, at the foot of the Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl volcanoes, near Puebla, my hometown of New Spain origin.
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Pending the opportunity to be received by that fertile land at a propitious time to plant the trees that will shelter the cabin-home in the years to come, we will hold a workshop on decolonial theologies in March of next year, with dear colleagues who were my university students years ago and are now companions on the path of theological work animated by spiritualities of life that resists and re-exists in the cracks of power that kills.
With Juan Jesús and Juan Carlos, I have explored for decades what theology with the Dominican stamp means in times of late modernity. Juan Jesús's questions about the conditioning of subjectivity, whether in its psychological dimension or in its powers of knowledge and action, helped me understand the emotional and practical foundation of the thought that we urgently need to weave in a society wounded by the libido dominandi. With Juan Carlos, I learned, from the time we shared the studium As part of our community work at the Pedro de Córdoba Institute in Santiago, Chile, we began to explore the mystique that sustains human rights defenders, inspired by liberation theology in their commitment to the poor and victims, while honestly examining the depths and power of our own shared histories of vulnerability. The path of mutual spiritual and theological accompaniment was born there, at the foot of the Andes, like a river with its own course that has irrigated other valleys in various parts of the world.
Cleusa and Pedro Igor, with the power of Afro-Brazilian knowledge in dialogue with liberation theologies, have taught me to value the memory of the African diaspora on our continent, undoubtedly marked by the tragedy of centuries of slavery, but above all by the strength and beauty of its peoples in resistance throughout five centuries. The new epistemologies of Blackness, the wisdom of living ancestral religions, and the power of Afro-diasporic feminisms are all ways of exploring the subjectivities denied by colonial modernity, which I began to explore in my doctoral dissertation and which I now discover with new nuances and depths thanks to these friends of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora.
For the past six years, I've walked alongside Laurel, Sole, Martín, and Francis in Massachusetts—having come to Boston College from Chile and Ohio—to discover the strength of new generations of theologians feeling and thinking from their bodies, subjectivities, and territories, with their wounds and the power of their experiences that subvert systemic violence. Whether through the liberating emphasis of grassroots ecclesial communities in El Salvador and Chile, or through the feminist and queer zeal to incorporate these contested territories of gender, or through thinking about politics from the margins of empire in times of escalating techno-fascism, these new voices of feminist, liberation, and decolonial theology are nourishing my life and thought in astonishing ways.
Next March, we will experience the thrill of meeting again, as we did a year ago in Rio de Janeiro, to reflect on what we have learned together, to continue “conspiring,” as Ivan Illich said and as Javier Sicilia likes to think—that is, sharing the promptings of the divine Ruah that animates, challenges, seduces, and encourages us to “give a reason for the hope that is in us to anyone who asks us,” according to the biblical author's vision in 1 Peter 3:15. For our generation, living in dark times on a global scale, this prompting certainly means glimpsing the glimmers of hope that emerge from the cracks and rubble of Gaza, from the mass graves, from the refugee camps in South Sudan, and from so many other places of death transformed into places of life by survivors and collective resistance movements. During those days, we will also present the collective book that is the fruit of that Rio colloquium, like a seed we wish to plant in that sacred ground. We will tell you more about the details of the seedbed in gestation later.
Chollollan will welcome us as a territory of ancient and new wisdom where we want to "sow seeds and light fires," as the native peoples of Our America say, and prepare the hearth of the cabin-home that awaits us.
Huitepec, Chiapas, August 29, 2026
