User:Studentbreese/Basic ecclesial community

Mexico
As elsewhere in Latin America, Mexico's base communities began spreading organically early in the 1960s, eventually finding institutional backing in the preferential option for the poor proposed at Vatican II and affirmed by CELAM at the Second Conference of Latin America Bishops in 1968 at Medellín, Colombia. One of the main causes for the spread of base communities in the country were concerns over widespread poverty and malnutrition, in addition to the increasing gap in the ratio of Catholic priests to parishioners characteristic of all of Latin America during the 20th century. At times, an entire diocese of over 50,000 people might have only one priest; this was especially true in rural areas that were difficult to reach. Church officials considered the BEC's promotion of lay training, participation, and leadership, along with the "See-Judge-Act" method practiced within, as a potential solution to both of these problems and thus encouraged their development throughout the country. Beginning in the 1980s, an additional factor inspiring the formation of base communities in Mexico was support and solidarity for refugees fleeing from civil wars and military dictatorships in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Though often considered a rural phenomenon, there is a considerable presence of base communities in urban areas as well, often located within colonias populares, such as the base communities of Santa Cecilia, Guadalajara, or Oaxaca City, Oaxaca.

Mexico's base communities have historically relied on the continued support of the Church hierarchy — that is, the Bishop or Archbishop of the region — in order to both arise and persist. In dioceses where the Church leadership was unsympathetic to BECs or the progressive Theology of Liberation, communities struggled to establish themselves and existing groups quickly sputtered out, for instance in cases where a Bishop was moved to another diocese or replaced with a conservative one, such as occurred with the Regional Seminary of the Southeast (SERESURE) when its leadership was changed by the Vatican in 1990. Today, Mexico's base community network continues to thrive, and continues to release pastoral plans every few years.

Guadalajara
The base communities of Santa Cecilia, Guadalajara stand out for the predominant presence of women as members, organizers, and leaders. Beginning as small reflection groups, the nuns of the Religiosas del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús (RSCJ) gathered women from throughout the city to discuss domestic and neighborhood issues. Soon, these small groups grew into flourishing base communities, featuring both women's and men's Bible study/reflection groups, undertaking community projects such as establishing water and trash services, and hosting education programs that encouraged members to practice the "See-Judge-Act" method of conscientization and activism developed by Paulo Freire. By 1972, at least twenty different base community groups met regularly in Santa Cecilia, additionally training members as catechists to provide religious service to thousands of parishioners. In an era dominated by machismo, in which institutional and familial patriarchy relegated women to the domestic sphere, women's experiences in the Santa Cecilia base communities were especially significant. Indeed, the women of these communities worked tirelessly to confront the double standards of their time and break free from the "dominant culture's public-private division" which relegated them to the household. A key part of this liberatory experience for the women of Santa Cecilia's base communities were empowering moments of confronting, challenging, and defeating powerful men such as bosses, factory owners, or even their own husbands and fathers.

When the RSCJ Nuns left Santa Cecilia in 1985, it was difficult for the communities to maintain such a high degree of organization and participation, eventually dissolving. Yet, while the communities themselves may not have persisted, the conscientizing education and empowering experiences they facilitated served as the basis for further community activism, establishing networks that continued to support and promote popular movements and education.

Oaxaca
By 1980, the parish of San Juan Chapultepec was the largest in Oaxaca City, with nearly 50,000 members. The first base community in the city was founded the same year, in the nearby colonia popular Emiliano Zapata. Soon after, in 1982, Sisters Regina Johnson, Mildred Payne, and Carmen Lechthaler of the Maryknoll order arrived in the city to help organize and manage within the community, leading classes and Bible study groups. By 1989, there were no fewer than twenty-six base communities in the parish, and yet more in the other colonias of the city. The Sisters began their work by addressing some of the key issues of the neighborhood: malnutrition, and poverty. Within the small study groups characteristic of the base community model, they led conscientizing discussions which taught members that their poverty was not a natural state of the world, nor was it God's will — both common narratives up to this point — but rather a result of Mexico's glaring social inequalities and stark economic hierarchy, always returning to the Bible as their source of reflection. Additionally, courses on agriculture and health encouraged members to take up soybean planting as a more cost-effective source of protein than meat, which was costly to the point of unaffordability.

Coahuila
In Torreón, Coahuila, a group of progressive priests known as the Nazas-Aguanaval group were influential in the creation of base communities and other grassroots political organizing. The group formed early in the 1970s, part of a pastoral plan supported by Church authorities in the diocese that sought to bring more priests to the countryside, and included fathers Benigno Martínez, José Batarse, and Jesús de la Torre, among others.