Navigating “La Política": Women Religious and Political Engagement in Revolutionary Central America

American Catholic women religious who ministered in Central America between the sixties and eighties hardly could avoid some measure of political involvement. The isthmus saw a wave of dictatorial military leaders, violent revolution, and long-lasting civil war. The Maryknoll Sisters’ story in Central America spanned almost every country on the continent and gives insight into the nuances of women religious’ political involvement, but what did the “political” actually mean to these Sisters? Margarita Melville developed a social justice program for middle-class Guatemalan girls and would join Guatemala’s guerrilla organization Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes with several of her colleagues, which in turn led to her expulsion from the country. Maura Clarke took to the streets in Nicaragua to march for socio-economic reform for the poor. Later she engaged in solidarity work with the poor of El Salvador and was brutally murdered by the military. Joan Uhlen gave weekend workshops on human dignity to rural Nicaraguan women, coordinated covert prayer meetings for refugees during the revolution, and participated in the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional) literacy campaign. These women’s lives, interconnected by geography, religious life, and revolution, demonstrate the centrality of political engagement among women religious. Melville, Clarke, and Uhlen used programs of religious renewal and socio-economic reform with Catholic social teaching and liberation theology to broaden their understanding of mission as political engagement. The Maryknoll Sisters created a politically-embedded mission that varied between partisan participation, social protest, and implicit partisan support as a way to witness to the Reign of God amidst revolution and violence.