Review Of Justo L. Gonzalez, Santa Bibli The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes

His parents were both devoutly catholic; he went to a catholic school; he lived in a catholic neighborhood; he went to mass every week; and he had an entirely catholic extended family. He describes the differences between being a Mexican catholic and being a gringo catholic, he explains all the things that the Catholic Church taught him and he believes that it was the only place that recognized his parents’ intelligence. He is grateful for the way the church introduced him to all stages of life, including death, because it prepared him to take on the world. Rodriguez still attends church every Sunday, but he misses the way church used to be and dislikes the changes his church has

Latin American society is strictly Catholic due to historical reasons of being colonies of Catholic Spain and Portugal, therefore the influence of Catholic Church is very sensible, especially in literature. Mexican people’s view of Catholicism differs from European that is why it is important to compare it with the verses from the Bible, understand their interpretation and find its motives in the novel.

When it comes to certain topics, multiple interpretations can be revealed, as an argument progresses. Sometimes it may be hard to tell which side is in the right. Subsequently, opinions continuously fly back and forth between individuals who can’t seem to stop disagreeing with each other. Moreover, internal conflicts occasionally arise as well, within each individual, due to new information that develops from their personal trials. Finding a piece of literature where the reader can relate to is a great fortune. In my opinion, Americo Paredes created an effective work, within his book George Washington Gomez. He successfully touched base on certain struggles that an individual with Mexican legacy encounters in this world that is run predominantly

When you look at a large mass of people, a large portion of them are Hispanic. Hispanics are all over America, but sometimes aren’t treated as equals. In fact, many Hispanic figures have helped shape America into the country that it is today. In America, Hispanics can face many struggles such as immigration issues, education problems unemployment and stereotypes. How on earth have they dealt with these issues you might wonder? Life for Hispanics has been hard, and they deserved to be recognized for enduring so much pain and difficulty.

Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible connects biblical stories and images to the politics, music and, religion, the book shows how important the Bible is to black culture. African Americans first came to know the Bible because of slavery and at that time the religious groups would read it to them instead of teaching them by letting them encounter it for themselves. Later the Bibles stories became the source of spirituals and songs, and after the Civil War motivation for learning to read. Allen Callahan traces the Bible culture that developed during and following enslavement. He identifies the most important biblical images for African Americans, Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel and discusses their recurrence and the relationship they have with African Americans and African American culture. In chapter one Callahan described the ways enslaved African Americans first encountered the bible; he goes on to describe that these encounters with the Bible where facilitated by colonist, the African Americans couldn’t encounter it

Chicano is well known and recognized around the world. Their devotion to Catholic Church and tradition is unparalleled. Their contribution to human development has been substantial and unique (Long, np). Latino culture maintains self-reliance but not in expense of family betrayal as the family is the center of psychological function. Approval of the family is extremely important when one is engaging in any adventure. There are feelings of guilt and anguish when one goes against family members. Compliance is also crucial in preserving meaningful psychological stability (Baugh

Between the period 1500-1800, Christianity made its way to the Americas, changing many societies in Latin America. The overall cause for the expansion of the Christian faith was the Western Schism, the split in the Roman Catholic Church, which resulted in lots of tension for the Christian faith and pressure on the Church to spread the word. A little later, the New World had been discovered and Europeans were beginning to come to the New World. Here, the Europeans brought disease, chattel slavery, and their faith, referred to as the Columbian Exchange. Those Europeans began to make efforts to westernize the New World as well as the indigenous people, which resulted in the Christian faith to be encouraged to the point that indigenous people were

Adan Argueta is the senior pastor for a Latino congregation of around thirty individuals. He describes his unique church as a multi-cultural congregation that speaks the same language. To be a pastor of a Latino church, one must be a “pastor of the people”. You have to eat with them, be apart of their family. Argueta understands the importance of interpersonal relationships within a Latino culture.

People poured their heart into the movement and they began to realize the symbolic importance of giving farm workers rights on the field. In chapter 2 it states, “‘We seek our basic, God-given rights as human beings… we have suffered-and are not afraid to suffer-in order to survive, we are ready to give up everything, even our lives, in our fight for social justice.’ And for those who recognized the farmworkers’ struggles not just as a labor issue, but as a larger social movement…‘We know that the poverty of Mexican or Filipino worker in California is the same as that of all farm workers across the country… all the races that comprise the oppressed minorities of the United States,’” (Montoya and Stavans 50). This, to me, proves that the movement was much more than a fight for higher pay; it was a fight for a higher consideration and the right to be looked upon by the white people as an equal. These poor people are sick and tired of the inequality they face daily and want to be included in our county’s “clique”. Most importantly, the movement and all it stood for inspired the younger generation to stand up for their rights and challenge society as a whole. At the end of chapter 2, it states, “... the farmworkers’ struggle was a foundation for the Chicano Movement. César Chávez and Dolores Huerta became Chicano icons, and Chicano activists who worked with the unionists were able to employ similar grassroots tactics for causes such as school reform, political campaigns, and community self-determination. Not least, the farmworker struggle showed the Mexican American community that it was possible to stand up against injustice and dare to win,” (Montoya and Stavans 63). With a history filled with labor abuse and being taken advantage of, this Mexican and Mexican American community is finally

Hispanics are the immigrants in the United States who are viewed as a minority in the country. They are viewed as poor and in lower social class. They faced numbers of oppression from American’s due to the color of their skin hence they suffer from racial discrimination. This has made them revolutionized to form liberation theology. Having being pushed by this suffering, Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, Leonardo Boff of Brazil, Juan Luis Segundo of Uruguay and Jon Sobrino of Spain, came together in the 1950s and 1960s to formulate how they would fight for social discrimination especially the

The Chicano Movement of the 1960s brought to the forefront of Mexican-American consciousness the need to identify as a self-determined group with unique histories, legends, heroes, triumphs, and legacies (Garcia). This belief in the importance of a renegotiation of Chicano subjectivity and the retrieval of a lost history is embedded in the text of Arturo Islas’ novel The Rain God. Miguel Chico puts forth in this story about a family of sinners—the Angel family—that literature can be utilized as a source of recovery through the acknowledgment of systems of oppression. Miguel, who is the narrator-protagonist of the story, as well as a closeted homosexual, writes, “Perhaps he had survived to tell others about Mama Chona and people like Maria.

Marquez’s book proves to readers that in Latin American history, culture, tradition, and legend are, almost, as important to the people as fact. Although, he was once hated by the people

Gonzalez looks into Biblical stories as they are seen through the Hispanic eyes of the people with a natural cultural understanding of being a stranger in a strange land. Not only having this culture but also dealing with the issues of poverty and marginality. Gonzalez states that interpretation of the Bible should be balanced in terms and perspective as earlier stated. The Bible cannot be interpreted unilaterally or in other words only fully understood by only one group of people. Rather, it be more universal and understood by all. Scripture to those who believe is the source of hope and strength for the powerless and the poor by reading the text interactively. What we can do through the five varying themes discussed in this book is being able to appreciate the themes and experiences of our Hispanic brothers and sisters in Christ. Clearly, I see Gonzalez’s aim and in the idea of understanding the Bible through one’s own context and perspective. When any reader engages the biblical text in dialogue their conditions and personal perspective will play a role in the understanding of the scripture and how Scripture speaks to them. By understanding this, we can appreciate differences and learn from them as well. It also seems that, Gonzalez did not ,in complete detail show the importance of the general public in his ideas of perspectival view of the Hispanic paradigms or model. Though he did pose a general Hispanic paradigms from the whole Hispanic community, there was something that he may of missed. Each perspective or life view can be scrutinized and filtered through the larger population. In other words, it is about how Hispanic views can be balanced along side the universal church. This book overall, gave me a lot to think about with the understanding that no matter of race and nationality we all have very

“Por primera vez en mi vida, comence a guachar como se portaban los batos, como eran las rucas, como pensaba la mayoria de la raza aca en los barrios.” “For the first time in my life, I began to see how the guys behaved, how the women were, how the majority of the people in the barrios thought.” When he put sources, he would put them exactly how the person stated it in Spanish; then he would rewrite an English version in case the reader couldn’t understand the Spanish version. Otherwise it would have been a very hard book to read and comprehend. Being able to speak the Spanish language gives him the identity and credibility of a Chicano.

In his Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes challenges many of the ideals of his society through a collision of differing values. This is seen throughout the novel by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza’s interactions with individuals of differing religions, social classes, and ethnicities. This intertwinement of cultures results in a social exploration of Spain, which inspires the question: How can societies embrace the growing diversity around them, while also promoting unity and maintaining their cultural identity? Thus, Cervantes’ critique of modernity functions to challenge the ideologies present in Spain, which promote social division among its people. Through the distortion of epic conventions, the presentation of advanced technologies, and the monetization of the Spanish economy, Cervantes grapples with the common misunderstanding that the past must be sacrificed in order to survive an advancing modern world. Therefore, he establishes a social commentary on the invasion of modernity in Spain, which leads to an untraditional form of liberation for our hero.