Pablo Bradbury has written a compelling history of liberationist Christianity in Argentina, the social movement inspired by liberation theology's “preferential option for the poor” and anticolonial struggles. The analysis places liberationist Christianity within a broad scope of Argentine political and social history and emphasizes the heterogeneity of a movement made up of activist priests, lay organizations, and revolutionaries.
The opening chapter looks at the origins of liberationist Christianity in Argentina. Spanning the 1930s through the late 1960s, chapter 1 highlights the diverse political and theological foundations of the movement. These included Catholic nationalist groups that favored strict adherence to church doctrine and militarism as well as critiques of modern society. Bradbury also examines the Catholic nationalist roots of Peronism and the bitter and violent clashes that eventually erupted between the government of Juan Perón and ecclesiastic authorities in the mid-1950s. Following the 1955 military overthrow of Perón and the prohibition...
