Acompañamiento: A Walk Toward Dignity for All

Central to being attentive to lo cotidiano is the need for an accurate read on that daily reality, with clear data about the conditions that dictate the life of the poor, the life of women, the life of children, the elderly, natives, the environment. Lo cotidiano acknowledges that the social sciences as well as the witness of personal experiences have much to contribute to the theological enterprise. Hope is perennially the stuff of grand theories of liberation and salvation. But in lo cotidiano hope becomes a more real and concrete expression of liberation – a concrete act of friendship and hospitality, the prospect of a life lived with dignity and without violence, public acknowledgment and celebration that each culture counts as a blessed contribution to the human family.2

Shared Humanity, Vulnerability

We are familiar with the accompaniment that takes place during wakes or when a loved one is experiencing particular hardship. Acompañamiento suggests a richer meaning that opens the door to faith trans- formation or conversion. It means both a walking with and a bearing with the poor – whoever these may be, near or far, their struggles for a life with dignidad, dignity. Acompañamiento entails a double recognition, first, that our neighbor’s humanity is under threat because of injustice and suffering, and, second, that the dignity of all (poor and non-poor) must be upheld. A practice of acompañamiento does not differentiate between legal status or gender, geographical proximity or nationality. It practices solidarity that goes beyond financial contributions, extending to friendship, praying and worshipping together, sharing a meal, lobbying together for more humane policies, becoming a sanctuary church. This practice can include taking on some of the vulnerability of those who face physical and political risk. At the heart of acompañamiento is the understand- ing that life lived in mutual relationships of care is necessary to uphold the dignity of all. For Latino/a and mujerista theologies, dignidad challenges any atomistic or individualistic understanding of the person or human rights. As a human family we are people living in community, community defined beyond the legal limits of borders, political identities, or religious practices.3

Giving further urgency to these theologies is the concept of mestizaje, a term of remembrance and a call to political awareness and engagement. For a number of us, we do not have to travel too far into the past to discover how mestizaje operated in the production of our own humanity. My own family line traces back to a woman forcibly brought to the Caribbean from Africa only four generations ago. Derived from the word for the mix of cultures, races, and ethnicities that engender the Latino or Hispanic, mestizaje is used often as both a reminder of our past histories of violence, conquista, slavery, and oppression, as well as the celebration of the resilience and diversity of the Latino people. Though some have historically tried to blur or overlook the personal stories of mestizaje, I consider its recovery essential to a full understanding of our humanity. In my case, I’ve chosen to honor this by naming one of my daughters Petra, a name that in most Spanish- speaking Caribbean circles is associated with the African legacy of our ethnicity, slavery, and servitude.

Like lo cotidiano, mestizaje presses us to reflect honestly on our shared histories with other groups sometimes considered radically other, leading to the understanding that in fact all of us share a complex mix of characteristics – some by choice, others by force – that should ground us in a common and shared destiny. Through mestizaje, Latino/a and mujerista theologies examine both the “never again” of the kind of violent conquest that originated the Latino people – that tendency of empires to extend their military power and economic reach as far as possible without concern for native peoples or imported slave labor – as well as the celebration that the human spirit borne of such violence carries with- in the seed of peace and the flower of justice. Most importantly, mestizaje can be applied to everyone’s sojourner identity – our shared migrant condition on earth, our universal quest for life.

Combined with the social teaching of our religious traditions and the best of civil society, the insights of Latino/a and mujerista theologies invite us to look at particularly hard questions from the practical perspectives of lo cotidiano, acompañamiento, dignidad, and mestizaje. When we come to understand our humanity as intimately tied to the quest for life of all people on the move, especially the migrant, our own unsustainable practices of consumption, discrimination, and participation in a culture of hate dominated by perspectives of scarcity and threat, come into stark relief. It is here that the tools offered by Latino/a and mujerista theologies provide rich resources to churches. They encourage taking stock of one’s human condition in light of the suffering of others, to consider social transformation and policy decisions that were not considered possible prior to encountering these ideas, to over- come the inhuman determinism that resigns us to accept the brokenness of the human family as an accident of birth.