Newberry Library Religion and Culture in the Americas Seminar

In Twentieth-Century Guatemala, Women religious and religious women performed the primary work of Catholic mission and by doing so built the human infrastructure for revolutionary social change. In Guatemala City, nuns directed schools for elite girls, ran hospitals, assisted the poor. In rural Guatemala, they directed primary and secondary schools and centers for popular education and catechesis, oversaw hospitals and health clinics, trained health promoters and midwives, and ran radio stations. They transcended geographic, ethnic, and class divisions that were at the root of the country’s social inequality. Despite the breadth and depth of their labor, nuns remain largely invisible in the historiography of contemporary Guatemala.

This paper seeks to address two interconnected oversights in the historiography of contemporary Guatemala. It documents nuts and bolts labor of women religious by providing a composite mapping of some of their work throughout the country. By doing so, the paper illustrates ways that women religious acted as agents of Catholic modernization facilitating both personal transformation and the creation of global networks.

About the Speaker

Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens examines the history of transnational Catholic movements during the era of the Cold War in Central and South America. She seeks to highlight Catholic social actors on the margins of the Church and society – religious sisters, indigenous catechists, lay women – examining their roles as agents of personal and social transformation whose work contributed directly and indirectly to modernization, globalization, and reform.

Commentator

Silvia Marina Arrom, Brandeis University