Solentiname’s Utopian Legacies and the Contemporary Comunidades Eclesiales del Base (CEBs)

Authors

  • Les Field
  • Lara Gunderson University of New Mexico

Keywords:

Nicaragua; revolution; Comunidades Eclesiales del Base (CEB); Ernesto Cardenal; Camilo Torres; Christianity; Marxism

Abstract

In this article, Lara Gunderson and I will converse textually about the relationship between the historically utopian character of Nicaragua’s Solentiname commune and the contemporary Comunidades Eclesiales del Base (Ecclesiastical Base Communities; CEBs is the Spanish acronym) that she studies and worked with for her dissertation (Gunderson 2018). The article is part of a book that is currently under construction which explores the manifestations of utopia, dystopia, anti-utopia, and other types of futurism which I and several of my current and former students have encountered in our ethnographic research in Nicaragua, Colombia, Palestine, Native North America, and Greenland. The book does not follow a case-study strategy, in which these examples form part of an overall inductive or deductive argument about utopia, dystopia, anti-utopia and other futurisms. While the ethnographic portraits are not random—they follow the genuine interests I, and my students in dialogue with me, have developed—neither are they curated or crafted toward making a particular set of arguments.  Yet, I hope that in the end certain conclusions may be drawn—that remains to be seen.

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Published

2021-05-18

How to Cite

Field, L., & Gunderson, L. (2021). Solentiname’s Utopian Legacies and the Contemporary Comunidades Eclesiales del Base (CEBs). A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 18(3), 311–337. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/2133

Issue

Section

Exchanges / Intercambios