ICONOCLASM AND HISTORY: Remembering the Via Crucis in a Nicaraguan comunidad eclesial de base

Abstract

This paper is a consideration of religious ritual as historical practice, and of the cultural mediation of the valuation and revaluation of signs in history. Specifically I am concerned with christological imagery as deployed in the performance of a Via Crucis Nicaraguenese, or "Stations of the Cross," conducted by a comunidad eclesial de base (CEB) in Managua, Nicaragua in 1976, and 1977. The 'data' include texts and illustrations employed during the performance, as well as the recollections of participants among whom I conducted a field study in 1984. CEBs are the socio-ecclesiastical units that practice what has come to be known as 'Liberation theology'. They constitute active bases of resistance in many areas of Latin America and are involved in a transformative 'Christian praxis' that emerges at the cusp of a narrativized tradition rooted in Church practice and a developing 'folk-Marxism' informing CEB exegesis. Over and against CEB members' claim to an unmeditated historical analysis of the biblical moment as recovered in the performance of the Via Crucis, my effort in this paper is to point to additional cultural resonances at play in this ritual of resistance.