Lost for Words?: Brazilian Liberationism in the 1990s (Pitt Latin American Series)

Lost for Words? explores the rise and decline of progressive Catholic grassroots activism and its drive for social justice and democratic change in four low-income neighborhoods in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. Ottmann focuses on the obstacles faced by the poor who took seriously the claim that \u0022the people\u0022 were to transform Brazilian society \u0022from the bottom up.\u0022 He follows their travails through periods of democratization, mass unemployment, and conservative backlash within the Church. Frank Goetz Ottmann moves beyond purely political analysis to record how residents and progressive Catholic activists were drawn into a struggle for a \u0022juster\u0022 society, and how this movement began to unravel even before it reached its peak in the early 1980s. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation, and drawing on theoretical insights from recent debates on social movements and the sociology of religion, he examines how, by the early 1990s, the liberationist movement had lost its following, lost its allies, failed to achieve its core goals, and seemed to die. Ottmann then shows how in recent years activists have worked to create a new and pragmatic form of religious activism, one that draws on a range of agendas, including Catholic feminism.