By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez
I am in Europe for a few weeks, enjoying time to read and write, fundamental acts of culture, so sorely missed in Boston and now in Chiapas. I am able to enjoy this time thanks to the hospitality of a good colleague and friend, Professor Martin Kirschner, and this space of studium, which offers me the opportunity to give some classes and lectures at this university in the interior of Bavaria.
For years, my friend Piotr, originally from Silesia in southern Poland, had invited me to visit him and his family in Pomerania. I had no idea where this place was, with a name that reminded me of the novel The Lord of the Rings, until a few weeks ago when I was preparing my trip from Eichstätt.
A long weekend during the German stay provided the perfect opportunity to travel to the Baltic Sea coast, landing in Gdansk, a port that symbolizes the modern-day labor movement. Solidarność led by Lech Walesa, which initiated the collapse of the Iron Curtain, with the manipulation of the famous Wojtyla-Regan-Thatcher trinity, which took advantage of that historical juncture of the crack opened by the Polish working class to advance its geopolitical agenda.
Having just arrived in this coastal land, a stroll through the historic center was a must. Piotr took great care in recounting the history of the Teutonic Knights who ruled and administered these lands from the 13th century, as a precursor to the Prussian Empire which, later, in modern times, would command its armies to extend its power over all the Slavic nations, from Poland and the Czech Republic to Hungary. After the failure of their mission to guard the Holy Land, this militia of medieval and early modern Christendom transitioned to a far-reaching territorial power until the beginning of the 15th century, when it moved to Königsberg and then to Austria during the Prussian era. Europe's largest castle is located in Pomerania, in the city of Malbork, with its red bricks typical of Baltic Gothic architecture that, at sunset in spring, shine like fire on the banks of the Nogat River, a tributary of the Vistula, which runs from south to north through all of Poland, from Silesia to the Baltic.
For Poles today, those Gothic roots are part of their cultural identity, although they maintain a distance from neighboring and wealthy Germany, as well as from Imperial Russia, which is once again a real threat of war and invasion in the region.
I also sensed that fear of war in my conversations with colleagues in Eichstätt, both because of the Russian threat and Trump's unbridled power. The complicit silence of the European Union and NATO in supporting the US and Israeli arms industries during this time of genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, the invasion of Lebanon, and the war with Iran will soon bear bitter fruit for Europe. What worries those most aware of the current civilizational crisis is the dismantling of international law being carried out by that "handful of tyrants," as Pope Leo XIV called them, who control the world through global war.
Once in Pomerania, I had the opportunity to visit some inland villages which, according to my hosts Piotr and Aga, are in the poorest region of present-day Poland. Peasant farms are scattered across rolling hills, where grains, potatoes, and fodder for livestock are grown in spring and summer. There are also small towns with good roads and urban planning. A strong agricultural culture is evident, blended with a rural atmosphere, where the arts and sports are integral to the daily lives of families.
Aga is a painter who has opened her studio-gallery, Ligo, in the barn of the old farmhouse, where she presents exhibitions of her paintings once a year. These exhibitions primarily feature nudes and portraits with a somewhat Impressionist, colorful, and naive style. When we visited the beach in the famous resort town of Sopot, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, I could see how much the whole family, including her three intelligent and beautiful daughters, enjoyed the sea in springtime. I sensed there a kind of poetic recreation that springs from the Baltic soul.
During a conversation with friends of Piotr and Aga, particularly with a psychotherapist from Gdansk, the topic arose of the vulnerability of rural Polish youth to the uncertainty of work and war, which contributes to a growing social isolation, with the inability to form personal bonds beyond their virtual circle.
I perceived other faces of Europe in Pomerania, today marked by uncertainty and the still-present trauma of the war.
I've been discussing this other Europe with my friend Martin for at least five years, ever since he first invited me to Eichstätt in 2021 to talk about political theology for Europe in times of increasing polarization. In that discussion, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversation revolved around how to improve the conditions for democratic life in this region of the world, with the unquestionable value, at that time, of international law and human rights as a universal framework for coexistence among nations. Five years later, politics seems to be playing out on an even more fundamental level: that of survival in a context of global war, facing lethal transnational networks.
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Next week I will participate, together with my German friend, in an international colloquium organized by my Austrian colleague Isabella Bruckner, at the Anselmian Athenaeum of the Benedictines in Rome, on the theological legacy of Ivan Illich, on the centenary of his birth.
As in many places around the world, people from academia and social movements are now rereading his work to find light in the darkness of this civilizational crisis that we are going through as humanity.
I became acquainted with Illich's work thanks to Javier Sicilia and Jean Robert, who, since 1996 in the Bajo el Volcán bookstore, were discussing my doctoral thesis Deus Liberans —where I traced a genealogy of modernity as a denial of the other, the Indian, following Las Casas and Dussel in discussion with Levinas and Ricoeur—both mentioned the urgency of returning to Illich because of his devastating critique of the era of systems. Since then, I have continued reading the Austrian thinker, participated in colloquia in Cuernavaca, and organized roundtables on his legacy, first at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and later at Boston College.
Illich is almost always read as a critical thinker of instrumental reason, but without considering his theological background. This was the astute approach of Gustavo Esteva, for whom Illich's contribution stood on its own as a philosophy of proximity and critique of systems, but without its connection to Christianity. Gustavo disagreed with this approach during our conversations in Santa Fe.
That is why the Rome colloquium seems so relevant to me today, because it is about seeking the source. theological From Illich's critique of modernity, to enrich the analysis arising from secularized thought. In this way, it will be possible, in my view, to contribute to making visible and promoting the spiritualities of resistance, those woven by the victims of the systems age as survivors of the logic of the machine and the algorithm. We will discuss experiences of conviviality in Germany during COVID-19, resistances of autonomy of bodies and territories in Mexico, as well as forms of proximity, the recovery of the vernacular, and the radical nature of care as clues to confronting the systemic violence that often overwhelms us.
In the next post I will tell you my impressions about that meeting that will take place on the Aventine Hill in Rome.
Koślinka and Eichstätt, May 8, 2026
