Liberation and dependency: a theological reading of social sciences in Latin America

Abstract

Introduction: In the early 1970s, social movements directed Latin American theology to a creative process of deprivatization of the Christian faith, reconfiguring – from the community practices of liberation and their holistic implications – the theoretical exercise concerning its political and social commitment. Consequently, the notion of liberation began to be addressed by the opposite equivalent of dependency within the methodological framework of the biblical-theological approach. Objective: To understand the meaning of the opposite correlation between liberation and dependency from their specificities in accordance with the vision of liberation intellectuals, and identify the way in which dependency was appropriate to respond to the responsive and socio-analytical theoretical framework of these intellectuals, linking the reading of reality to the Latin American community practice. Methods: Historical and systematic research, exploratory, under an analytical-descriptive orientation,
organized from conceptual schemes. Results: Based on the finding regarding the
theoretical refraction of dependency through liberation, the concept emerges as the theological interpretation of an entire theoretical field taken indistinctly, namely the Dependency Theory. Conclusion: The opposite correlation between dependency and liberation as a finding that reveals the similarity between the real that is theorized (dependency) and the hypothetical conceptualization of maxims of action (liberation), comprehended within the general theory of anti-imperialism, resulted in an interdisciplinary theological reflection.