From symbols of the sacred to symbols of subversion to simply obscure: Maryknoll women religious in Guatemala, 1953 to 1967

Americas

Volumn 61, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 189-216

  Behrens, Susan Fitzpatrick ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949793148     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2004.0127     Document Type: Review

References (82)

1. Edward T. Brett, The U.S. Catholic Press on Central America: From Cold War Anticommunism to Social Justice (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003)
2. "For Two Nuns Needs of the Poor Hid the Danger," New York Times, 7 December 1980, p. 9
3. and "El Salvador: 1984," NACLA: Report on the Americas, vol. XVIII, no. 2 (March/April 1984), pp. 13-47. A woman and her daughter were killed with the six Jesuit priests and accounts consistently referred to the massacre as the "murder of six Jesuit priests, their cook , and her daughter," implying that these women's significance was exclusively in their association with the Jesuits
4. Jean Franco, "Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Children," in Critical Passions: Selected Essays, Edited and with an introduction by Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), p. 15
5. Donna Whitson Brett and Edward T. Brett, Murdered in Central America: The Stories of Eleven U.S. Missionaries (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988)
6. and Phillip Berryman, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1984) which provide background to the work of the women religious, represent two important exceptions to the accounts about the women religious who were killed in El Salvador. Recently the case brought by Bill Ford, Ita Ford's brother, has led to increased press coverage of the case
7. Gail Pellet, Justice and the Generals, Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2002 provides some additional insight into the women and their case. Nonetheless, given their almost iconic status it is somewhat surprising how little information there was about the Sisters' work and history at the time they were killed. The work seems especially limited when one compares it to that available on the Jesuit Priests murdered in 1989 about whom there is an extensive bibliography and a number of documentaries
8. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded (New York and London: WW Norton and Co., 1993), p. 277
9. and Georgia Dullea, "Memories of Deaths Linger at Maryknoll," New York Times, 26 April 1981 (3 pages)
10. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 79
11. For women/gender and Catholicism see: Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)
12. Robert A. Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)
13. Mary Gordon, "Father Chuck: A Reading of Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, or Why Priests Made Us Crazy," in Catholic Lives, Contemporary America. Thomas J. Ferraro, ed. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 65-75
14. James K. Kenneally, The History of American Catholic Women (New York: Crossroad, 1990)
15. For fascinating cases of people who seemed to defy all established gender norms, but still to function within the framework of the Catholic community see: James Terence Fisher, The Catholic Counterculture in America: 1933-1962 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989)
16. especially the chapter on Dorothy Day; James Terence Fisher, Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927-1961 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997)
17. and Kathleen A. Brosnan, "Public Presence, Public Silence: Nuns, Bishops, and the Gendered Space of Early Chicago," forthcoming in The Catholic Historical Review
18. For the Maryknoll Sisters see: Penny Lernoux, Hearts on Fire: The Story of the Maryknoll Sisters (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993)
19. John Leo, "Nun Said to Lead Guatemala Plot: Maryknoll Reports Plan to Smuggle Arms to Left-ists," New York Times 22 January 1968, p. 14
20. Christine Kovic, Mayan Voices for Human Rights: Displaced Catholics in Highland Chiapas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005) Kovic demonstrates that theology and experience went hand-in-hand in transforming Catholic clergy and laity and provides an excellent analysis of Mayan Catholicism
21. "Number of Sisters in the Congregation, Decade by Decade" 12 June 1995. Lists: Membership Statistics, H1.4. MMA
22. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound, p. 87
23. "New Horizons," 1947 Formation Program Vocational Literature, Maryknoll Sisters, Al0 Box 8, MMA
24. Joan Chatfield, "First Choice: Mission, The Maryknoll Sisters, 1912-1975" (Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, 1983), p. 130
25. Archbishop Richard Gushing reported in 1947 that "In all the American hierarchy, resident in the United States, there is not known to me one bishop, archbishop or cardinal whose father or mother was a college graduate. Every one of our bishops and archbishops is the son of a working man and a working man's wife." Quoted in James Hennessey, S. J. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 284
26. See also Andrew M. Greeley, The American Catholic: A Social Portrait (New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1977)
27. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
28. Bernie Becomes a Maryknoll Sister, 1957, Formation Program Vocational Literature AlO, Box 8 MMA
29. Maryknoll Sisters Directory 1952, 27, MMA
30. See also Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., La Iglesia en el Perú (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru Fondo Editorial, 1996)
31. for details about the role of foreign women religious in elite education in Peru. Philip Berryman, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movements in Latin America and Beyond (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1987), p. 21
32. Marjorie and Thomas Melville, Whose Heaven, Whose Earth (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1971), p. 134
33. The history of the United States intervention in Guatemala in response to what it perceived as a communist threat is too well-known to value recounting here. While it is clear that communists participated in the government, it is also evident that they did not control it. Moreover, the reforms introduced by Arbenz were moderate and represented the last chance of ameliorating through peaceful means the political and economic exclusion of indigenous people in the country. See Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)
34. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
35. Jim Handy, Gift of the Devil
36. Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991)
37. and Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Expanded Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
38. Monte María Diary, 12 April 1954, MMA
39. Letter to Mother Mary Columba, 18 June 1954, MMA
40. Kathryn Burns, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999)
41. Monte María Diary, 5 December 1956, MMA
42. Monte María Diary 1 January 1957, MMA
43. Monte María Diary, April 1955, and December 1953, 2 January 1957 vacation house, MMA
44. Monte María Diary, March 1958, MMA
45. Sister Regina Johnson Interview, Oaxaca, Mexico
46. Letter to Mother Mary Columba from Sister Marian Peter, 6 December 1954. MMA
47. Thomas and Marjorie Melville, Whose Heaven, Whose Earth, 47
48. "Bringing Medicine to Guatemalan Indians, Box 8, F1, MMA
49. Mons. Hugo Martínez, Obispo de Huehuetenango, Maryknoll En Huehuetenango, 1943-1985
50. Annual Report Jacaltenango for the Year Ending December 31, 1967, MMA
51. San Pedro Necta, Maryknoll Sisters Diaries, March 1961. MMA
52. Maryknoll Spiritual Directory, Maryknoll Sisters Heritage, p. 88, MMA
53. Jacaltenango Diary Digest, January 1961-November 1961, MMA
54. Jacaltenango Diary, June 1966, MMA
55. Maryknoll Sisters Diary, Jacaltenango, Huehuetenango 1960. MMA
56. Sister Rose Agnes, Superior, "Evaluation Colegio Monte Maria," Monte María Diaries, 14 February 1967, MMA
57. Monte María Diaries, June 1956, MMA
58. Monte María Diaries, November 1960, MMA
59. "Guatemala's Seedling School," Sister Mary Mildred, Monte María Diaries, January 1961, MMA
60. Monte María Diary November 1961-November 1962, MMA
61. Monte María Diary November 1960-November 1961, MMA
62. Blase Bonpane, Guerrillas of Peace: Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution (New York: toExcel, 2000), p. 2
63. Marjorie and Thomas Melville, Whose Heaven, Whose Earth, p. 150
64. Leigh A. Fuller, S.J. "Catholic Missionary Work and National Development in Guatemala, 1943-1968: The Maryknoll Experience," (Master's Thesis, New York University, 1971), p. 180-181
65. César Macias, Mi Camino: La Guerrilla (Mexico: Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 1998), p. 160
66. Eduardo Galeano, With the Guerrillas in Guatemala
67. Reprinted by permission from Ramparts magazine, September 1967, in Latin America: Reform or Revolution? James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin, eds. (New York: Fawcet Publications, Inc. 1968), pp. 370-380
68. César Macias, Mi Camino, p. 160
69. Eduardo Galeano, Guatemala: Occupied Country. Trans. Cedric Beitrage (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1967), p. 24 note
70. Thomas Melville, "The Church of Tomorrow," quoted in Fuller, p. 168
71. Another Maryknoll priest, William Woods, also promoted a resettlement program in Ixcán. Woods was killed in an airplane accident on 20 November 1976. Many attributed his death to the military and suggested it was a direct response to his role in resettlement in a region which became known as the "Zone of the Generals" because of the high number of land grants taken over by high ranking military officials. The military also targeted many Catholic Catechists in this region. See Ricardo Falla, S.J., Masacres de la Selva: Ixcán Guatemala (1975-1982) (Editorial Universitaria: Guatemala, 1993), pp. 17-20
72. Edward T. and Donna Whitson Brett, The Bill Woods Story: Maryknoll Missionary in Guatemala (Maryknoll: Available through Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, 1988)
73. and Edward T. and Donna Whitson Brett, Murdered in Central America
74. "Revolution is Guatemala's Only Solution" Statement by Father Thomas Melville from National Catholic Reporter, January 31, 1968
75. Reprinted in Galeano, Guatemala: Occupied Country, pp. 149-159
76. Daniel Berrigan, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 53
77. The New York Times 21 January 1968
78. José McNiell, Interview by author. Jacaltenango, Guatemala 19 July 2004
79. Philip Berryman, Christians in Guatemala's Struggle (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1984), pp. 18-19
80. Daniel Levine, ed. Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986)
81. and Anna Peterson, Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion: Progressive Catholicism in El Salvador's Civil War: Progressive Catholicism in El Salvador's Civil War (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997)
82. Victoria Sanford, "From I Rigoberta to the Commissioning of Truth: Maya Women and the Reshaping of Guatemalan History," Cultural Critique, No. 47 (2001)