Category: Intercultural spirituality

Amira Rahim | Cholula | 2017

Seedbed on decolonial spiritualities and theologies in Cholula Subjectivities, bodies and territories as theological sites of resistance

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 home had been taking shape, thanks to "womb experiences," as Kochurani says, where I realized 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.

∂

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

August 30, 2026
Carlos Mendoza | Carolino Building, Third Cloister Corridor | Puebla, 2026

Between Benin, Porto Alegre and Puebla On the World Social Forum and the public university of half a century ago

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The World Forum Theology and Liberation returns to the territory

A week has passed since the return from the lands of West Africa, still marked by the memory of modern slavery, with its back-and-forth diasporas, its wounds still open as a collective memory of a young, modern nation barely sixty years old. The Beninese people's attempt to proudly reclaim their ancestral Vodou religion, beyond the demonization it suffered at the hands of Western Christian missionaries for centuries, remains uncertain, as they now face political manipulation by their populist leaders. What is certain is that the Beninese people are now torn between a unique Western modernity and a return to their ancestral roots, a yearning that will take decades to explore.

Beninese theologians, for example, centered on their evangelical Christian identity that gives the Bible centrality as a key to interpreting life, are now asking themselves, listening to Silvia Regina de Lima Silva, a fellow member of the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, about the devastating effects of “the coloniality of the soul” that must be recognized and confronted in order to give way to a “dialogue of knowledges” in their own bodies, minds and spiritual and thought practices for the liberation of subjectivities and imaginaries that unfold dignity and hope for the peoples of today.

In contrast, the Dominican friars of the West African province, from what I gathered in brief conversations with them, do not seem to grasp this horizon of decoloniality. In their community life and in their service to the youth of the young nation's capital through the university chaplaincy, they prioritize a model of African Christianity with a Western predominance in liturgy, thought, and moral life. It remains to be seen whether the new generations will be encouraged to explore this "dual belonging" to the faith in Christ and fidelity to the spirituality of their ancestors. In decolonial theology, we call this process the "interculturation" of Christianity with the ancestral knowledge of the peoples.

A telling sign of this country's current predicament is its economy, trapped in the still-persistent ties of French colonization, the strategic presence of the United States to neutralize the Soviet influence of decades past in the region, and the Chinese power that is encroaching upon the country with mining and resource extraction projects. Even after the devastation of French colonialism and the civil war that preceded the transition to democracy, the wealth of natural resources and the vitality of the Beninese people remain. But decolonial resistance in the Trump era is becoming increasingly arduous, as we witnessed in the tortuous organization of the World Social Forum, with pressure from authorities to reduce its impact on the Beninese people, neighboring communities, and, above all, on international public opinion.

In any case, the World Forum on Theology and Liberation, which brought together eighty colleagues from five continents, displayed surprising vitality, giving rise to a new generation of theologians from the Global South to continue walking alongside peoples resisting the systemic violence of extractive capitalism as a form of colonial power on a global scale. Regional gatherings and interdisciplinary, ecumenical, and interreligious reflection groups are on the horizon as commitments to strengthening the bonds of local communities in their territories. Confronting systemic violence requires communities of resistance on all fronts: ecological and spiritual, intellectual, and in the creation of socioeconomic and theological alternatives. In the years to come, we will explore the strength of these initiatives that yearn for a return to the “spirit of Porto Alegre.”.

The utopia of half a century ago in Puebla

In 1976, a generation of young people from Puebla began high school with great enthusiasm and aspirations for social change in Mexico. The Emiliano Zapata Popular Preparatory School of the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla embodied the vision of the university reform undertaken by engineer Luis Rivera Terrazas to give public universities social relevance for the political and cultural transformation of the country. The motto of that reform, "For a democratic, critical, and popular university," expressed the utopia of that generation. Public universities thus sought a new model of education, finding in Puebla, Sinaloa, and Guerrero the cultural and social context to launch initiatives. Years earlier, far-right groups, such as El Yunque in Puebla and El Muro in Mexico City, had attempted to seize control of university life, without success, with the acquiescence of the Catholic high clergy and business leaders who saw the shadow of atheistic communism looming over the country's public life.

Given the high demand for enrollment, preparatory schools were overwhelmed, and it became necessary to call upon young undergraduate and graduate students to volunteer as high school teachers, without a guaranteed salary, to meet this high demand for upper secondary education. This is how the popular preparatory schools in Puebla, such as Emiliano Zapata, Alfonso Calderón, and others, were born.

Without fully realizing the underlying national project at stake within the public university, I entered Prepa Zapata, assigned by lottery. The school was then located in the Carolino building, the former Jesuit Colegio del Espíritu Santo. I was assigned the morning shift, with classes from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Every morning I left at dawn to take the bus from my family home in the San Manuel neighborhood, near the University City, to the city center. I never imagined that high school, which at that time was a two-year program, would so radically shape my personal, professional, political, and spiritual life.

Group IV of the 1976-1978 Generation consisted of 70 restless young people, several of them sympathizers of the Communist Party, others militant Catholics, some from Catholic schools and others from families with a religious tradition, as in my case. Perhaps most of us had arrived by chance, but with the encouragement of our young teachers, we began to create an atmosphere of friendship, play, collective learning, and open discussion about the social issues that most concerned our generation. Looking back on those years, I see now that we were living through the times of the Dirty War waged by the PRI governments against guerrilla groups in many regions of the country that opposed a corrupt political system that, through union corporatism and perks for the government elites, was plundering the country. Barely eight years had passed since the 1968 student movement for democratic freedoms in the country, which left more than 300 students dead; and barely five years have passed since the repression of the "Corpus Christi Thursday" against students protesting the lack of autonomy at the University of Nuevo León that left 180 dead.

The more politically engaged members of our group raised these issues in philosophy, economics, and history classes, which we then continued in discussions in the third courtyard of the Carolino building and in gatherings with friends at a café or during marches in the street. The contentious topic of Catholicism as an ally of the system frequently came up, opening up the debate about the role of religion as the opiate of the masses or as a source of freedom. At that time, I couldn't yet grasp the impact of liberation theology, which was developing precisely then in Peru and Brazil, much less did I have any idea of what Ivan Illich was proposing in Cuernavaca—a radical Christianity that would later have an impact throughout the continent.

At the heart of our discussions, a deep affection grew, expressed through games, parties, cultural outings, and trips to concerts organized by the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, which brought the finest music, theater, and ballet companies from communist countries to Puebla. As part of this "cultural battle," local business leaders created their own festivals of great artistic quality. This resulted in a cultural education of exceptional aesthetic, political, and spiritual depth for those young generations of students.

The personal and professional calling of many of us was forged in that effervescent atmosphere of social awareness of injustice, of experiences of beauty as a creation of the human spirit, and of a passion for truth that arises from critical thinking. For some of us, there was also a spiritual undercurrent; the source from which all that passion flowed was the thirst for transcendence, where the human and the divine met.

In my life story, that was the fertile ground where the seed of God's Word fell, received in my family, rooted in the faith of post-Vatican II Catholicism and later cultivated in the Dominican style as a constant search for the saving truth. I'll tell you that story another time.

Puebla de los Ángeles y de Zaragoza, August 15, 2026

August 23, 2026
Carlos Mendoza | Door of no return (detail) | Cotonou, August 1, 2026

The door of no return Some echoes of the XII World Forum on Theology and Liberation

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

Ouidah is the symbolic port of captivity, human trafficking, and African slavery at the dawn of modernity. It represents the dark side of the moon of the egoic dream of Western reason, which became a nightmare for those subjected to the dominating libido of European conquering power.

This small city on the Atlantic coast of Benin, in West Africa, has slowly transformed the memory of the atrocious suffering endured by around fourteen million people - who were enslaved by Portuguese traders, from the 16th to the 18th century - into a territory of resistance and hope for its survivors.

«"Africa Decides" is a cultural community center that promotes the healing of the collective memory of the survivors of those individuals and communities deported to Brazil five hundred years ago. It was an unprecedented diaspora that crossed "the door of no return," a succinct expression to describe the horror of those generations who never went home.

In the 19th century, after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888, some decided to return from northeastern Brazil to their homeland in Benin, the former kingdom of Dahomey. They returned with the longing to find the land from which they had been taken, the land that was etched into their bodies, hearts, and souls. That indelible mark was what drew them back.

But upon returning, these new generations from the diaspora discovered a different time and place, where they didn't recognize their families or their crops. Their land had been colonized by France in the 18th century until its independence in 1960. Another period of dispossession that, to this day, has left a mark of impoverishment on the daily lives of its people. The country had a brief socialist period between 1960 and 1975 that left a legacy of social unrest, until it transitioned to a Western-style democracy with a strong influence in the West African region.

Those who had been resurrected had returned to reunite with their ancestors and reclaim their path as a diaspora people with those who remained behind. The revival of Vodou in present-day Benin represents a way of recovering precisely that collective memory that was stolen from them and left tattooed on their bodies and souls. It is a radically different mark from the brand of slavery imposed with a hot iron on their black skin, by which the trafficker assigned them an owner, a plantation, and a task that ranged from forced labor on the farms to systematic sexual abuse. These were practices that lasted for centuries and proved to be the foundation of the enrichment by dispossession that created modern European wealth.

∂

Silvia Regina de Lima Silva is a decolonial feminist theologian who has participated in the World Forum on Theology and Liberation for many years. She spoke to us from her own history as an Afro-Brazilian woman, rooted in both Christianity and Candomblé. She wove a narrative from her diasporic history of "returning home." Silvia proposed that we consider decoloniality as a process of liberation from diverse colonialities—those of power-knowledge-being analyzed by the Peruvian Aníbal Quijano—in which she delved into the spiritual depths of this devastating process she called "coloniality of the soul," a process of domination that, in her own words, consists of "killing one's own beliefs from within." The deepest aspect of modern coloniality, intrinsically linked to racism, is, for her, this servitude of being in its deepest spiritual impulses.

In dialogue with Silvia Regina, we have begun a joint theological reflection to consider the new forms of Christianity that can emerge from this process of "decolonizing the soul," engaging in creative dialogue with the spiritual traditions that inhabit our bodies and imaginations. Each of us, from our own "place," our "body," our "deepest being of believers," explores dialogues, mixtures, dynamic syntheses, and other practices of diverse spiritualities that we now call "dual belonging," or perhaps "mutual belonging," until we find no other way to speak of new ways of living in the divine Ruah.

Whether in South Africa or Brazil, in Benin or Chiapas, we, the people, are living through the time of that "return," to give a decolonial turn to the history of coloniality of yesterday and today, giving way to spiritualities of the pluriverse.

The "no return" signifies today a generating impulse of new spiritual communities of shared belonging, where traditions leave behind the logic of the coloniality of the soul to give way to a "decoloniality of believing" as a source of full life for all the spiritual traditions of humanity.

∂

The World Social Forum is about to take place in Benin, updating the "spirit of Porto Alegre" that inspired social movements in the Global South to seek "other possible worlds." As an alternative to the Davos Forum, controlled by governments and transnational corporations from the Global North, this forum has, for more than twenty-five years, sought to build networks of solidarity among social movements for justice, human rights, and the care of the planet from an alter-globalization perspective.

In the context of de-globalization, the financial oligarchy and the "warlords" who control the global economy and world politics today, enormous challenges are emerging for the articulation of resistance to this "war against humanity," as the Zapatistas from southeastern Mexico call it.

In the coming days, we will learn how these networks are being woven amidst an uncertain local context. It is a time for creativity, for mutual listening, support, South-South solidarity, and the cross-cutting nature of resistance. Indigenous peoples, women, children, and youth, along with so many other collectives resisting systemic violence, continue to weave their voices, where the recovery of each people's soul will be the compass for the birth of these other worlds, "where many worlds fit.".

Cotonou, August 2, 2026

August 2, 2026

English