A Missionary Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Conscientization and the Lay Delegates of the Word in Eastern Nicaragua, 1967–75

Capuchin missioners, accompanied by nuns of the Sisters of St. Agnes convent, arrived in Nicaragua in 1939.  In the mid-1960s, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council and the success that other North American ecclesiastical groups were experiencing in employing more experimental models of church organization and practice, the Capuchins and Agnesians radically shifted their missiological praxis.  Rather than continuing their patient sacramental mission which dreamed of someday having an adequate number of priests for the population they were charged with serving, the U.S. missioners commenced an ambitious lay training program that emphasized community building and the quotidian concerns of local believers.  This training initiative, the lay Delegates of the Word, employed a deliberately Freirean pedagogy.  A major goal of each workshop was the conscientization of those attending.  I will examine the Freirean methodology at the heart of the Delegates program, investigating in close detail the way that the missioners carried out their training workshops and strove towards conscientization.  I will analyze the differences between the workshops for beginners and veterans as well as the details of the subsidiary training programs for health and literacy leaders and female empowerment.  The key argument framing this detailed examination of missionary pedagogy is that while it enlivened the missioners’ Nicaraguan parishioners into insurgent political action, the Capuchins and Agnesians employed it for theologically pragmatic reasons.  The U.S. missionaries cannot be treated unproblematically as members of Latin America’s upstart transnational New Left.