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
