A Missionary “Pedagogy of the Oppressed:” Finding Freire in the Eastern Nicaraguan Wilds during the Long Sixties

• In Event: Before and After a Pedagogy of the Oppressed: From Cold War Politics to 21st-Century Social Action

Abstract

Capuchin missioners from Detroit, Michigan began clerical work in sparsely populated eastern Nicaragua in 1939, when they were put in sole charge of the Church’s Apostolic Vicariate of Bluefields. After nearly three decades of bland and ineffective mission practice, the priests radically altered their missiological praxis throughout 1967, crafting a mission they felt to be more in fashion with the changing meanings of church and Christianity. This new praxis, which evolved over the next decade but always emphasized notions of community, sustainability, and authenticity, borrowed extensively from the ideas of Paulo Freire. In fact, I argue, this praxis is predicated so heavily upon Freire that it should be called the missionary pedagogy of the oppressed. The most apparent linkage between the renewed Capuchin mission and the Brazilian thinker lies in the former’s efforts to redefine evangelization, the missionary task par excellence, as a process requiring the believer to undergo conscientization. The new praxis, then, was established as a way of fostering this crucial process of conscientization. Most importantly, the ties between Freire and the Capuchin mission offer broader lessons about the reach and influence of the sweeping changes of the global Long Sixties.

Author

• Ryne Clos, University of Notre Dame