“Cultivando para los Compas”: Indigenous Activism and Liberation Theology in 1980s–90s Mexico

In the 1980s, parallel movements on the Mexican left came together in ways that would transform both of them. Progressive Catholics, under the banner of Liberation Theology, argued passionately for addressing the social and structural sins of the world to build a more just and Christian society. Indigenous activists - demanding autonomy, cultural revitalization, and state resources - were increasingly organizing across Mexico against discrimination and the remnants of a colonial past that kept them as second-class citizens.

In this paper, I outline the ways in which these two broad movements met in Tehuacan, Puebla and argue that their meeting transformed both. Practitioners of liberation theology, increasingly in contact with indigenous peoples, abandoned a strict focus on class struggle to increasingly incorporate indigenous religiosity and cultural revitalization into the center of Catholic practices. Indigenous movements, while wary of the institution of the Church, increasingly embraced progressive clergy and lay activists as key allies in their struggles. Finally, I show how, in 1994-5, both activists and clergy were caught up in a sweeping wave of state repression as the Mexican government feared a contagious spread of indigenous rebellion in the aftermath of the Zapatista rebellion.