Back to Basics Mexican Style: Radical Catholicism and Survival on the Margins1

Abstract— The significance of radical Catholic movements among the urban poor in Latin American cities has been the subject of much debate over recent years, though Mexican cases have received less attention. This paper argues that their practical, material objectives cannot be understood in isolation from the holistic religious and moral community in which participants project for themselves. It is also argued that the social justice sought within the base communities is as much a product of a long, if varied, radical, Christian tradition as it is of the particular circumstances of political and economic marginalisation in contemporary Mexican cities.