Mario I. Aguilar

The Disappeared and the Mesa de Diálogo in Chile 1999–2001: Searching for Those Who Never Grew Old

This paper describes steps taken in order to deal with information regarding human rights abuses in Chile during the Pinochet regime, focusing on the most recent initiative, the Mesa de Dialogo (1999–2001) whose final report was given to president Lagos in January 2001. Two national initiatives, i.e. the establishment and reports of the Comision de Verdad y Reconciliacion (1991) and the following-up of this inquiry by the Corporacion Nacional de Reparacion y Reconciliacion (1996) preceded La Mesa and are discussed in this paper. The paper concludes by suggesting that the Chilean transition to democracy will remain incomplete if the fate of the disappeared is not fully known and legally investigated.

The Archaeology of Memory and the Issue of Colonialism Mimesis and the Controversial Tribute to Caesar in Mark 12:13-17

This article explores the “tribute to Caesar” episode in the context of its embeddedness in the ancient Hebrew social memory of imperial colonialism by continuing a previous exploration of social memory in the First Book of Maccabees. It points to the importance of the “tribute to Caesar” in a Roman colonial period in which a social divide has been established within religion and politics, a divide that was challenged within the Roman and Syrian colonial period in Palestine. It further challenges biblical scholars to reopen debates on the meaning of biblical texts by asking questions about the discontinuities expressed by social memories within the texts rather than by producing cognitive explanations about the literary continuities and the “historical truths.” Thus, the colonial and the postcolonial are products, not of a dysfunctional connection between cultures (Judean, Roman or otherwise) but of a contestation of memories, identities and social continuities.

Writing Biographies of Boorana: Social Histories at the Time of Kenya's Independence

In June 1963 Daudi Dabaso Wawera, who at that time was District Commissioner of Isiolo, and Chief Hajji Galma Diida were killed in a Somali ambush near Mado Gashi, fifty kilometers from Garba Tulla, in the area surrounding the Waso Nyiro river in Eastern Kenya. While both of them were killed, their companions and escorts were not touched, in an ambush that was premeditated and calculated. It was a political assassination, insignificant for the processes leading to Kenyas independence later that year, but quite significant for the subsequent historical responses offered by the Boorana of the area, to their eventual integration into a newly-created independent African nation. That integration was not at all easy; in particular, the time leading to Kenyas independence was a turbulent one for the Waso Boorana. They were part of a larger group of semi-nomadic pastoralists who made up most of the population of that colonial administrative segment of northern Kenya, known as the Northern Frontier District (N.F.D.) As a result they lived in a territory claimed by ethnic Somali to be part of the newly created Somali republic, and who still wanted the actual constitution of a Greater Somalia, a political and symbolic construction that would include all Somali living in northeast Africa. While support for the Somali cause was not unified among the peoples of northern Kenya, the Muslim Boorana of the Waso area of the Isiolo District in particular showed an immediate support for the claims of secession expressed by their Muslim Somali brothers.

Recreating a religious past in a Muslim setting: ‘Sacrificing’ coffee‐beans among the Waso Boorana of Garba Tulla, Kenya*

The Buna Qalla ceremony is a central ritual practice of the Oromo peoples of East Africa. In the case of the Muslim Waso Boorana the ritual has been transferred to a domestic sphere of local settlements. It is in that context that the ritual can be related to public statements of Boorana identity, and the social importance of women; the ritual being performed so as to create communal ties and to instruct younger generations on the Waso Boorana religious past and traditions. This article explores such ritual statements in the context of the historical and religious changes of the Waso Boorana since 1934.

Postcolonial African Theology in Kabasele Lumbala

[The author examines various trends and methodological developments in African Christian theology, particularly processes of “ordering” and subsequently “disordering” as a particularly African theological method. His framework suggests that colonialists and theologians shared a common purpose, namely ordering, and as a result, theology and colonialism developed related methodologies of ordering knowledge. In the postcolonial era a process of theological disordering is taking place led, among others, by François Kabasele Lumbala and his conception of the body within African liturgical theology.]

Time, Communion, and Ancestry in African Biblical Interpretation: A Contextual Note on 1 Maccabees 2:49–70

Because behaviors and values described in the Bible most often have no analogues among contemporary Euro-Americans, social scientific biblical interpretation uses appropriate, explicit models of behavior verifiable among contemporary peoples through which to process behavior described in biblical documents. While the process sounds anachronistic, models are judged as structurally appropriate when they accord with all relevant biblical data and thus generate new understanding. Among biblical data in search of a verifiable, explicit model is that of ancestrism and ancestor veneration. In this essay, data from First Maccabees describing Israelite time and ancestrism are viewed in comparative perspective, at a high level of abstraction, with ancestrism perspectives provided by sub-Saharan African biblical scholars and theologians. During the last thirty years the amount of work produced by African scholars has increased to the point that it can be considered a large corpus of original research. In their selection of biblical texts to work on, African scholars have stressed those passages that relate to their own cultural experience. These quite often embrace the social structures and cultural values described in the Old Testament. This essay will explore the categories of time and ancestry by comparing ancient Israelite and African perspectives, while noting the wide ranging contributions of African scholarship.

Religion as culture or culture as religion? The status quaestionis of ritual and performance

This paper examines some of the current ideas and methods that have problematised the study of religion within a globalised community. Religion and culture cannot be considered bounded entities, to be described as unchangeable. However, their constant process of change is not something new. It becomes new due to writing patterns and contemporary ideas on the relevance of religion or the creativity of culture. By analysing some discussions on possession cults, the paper suggests that ritual and performance constitute the moments when culture and religion are mediated. It is through ritual that religious practices are adapted, and it is in a ritual performance where culture is contested and challenged. Religion becomes ‘confused culture’, that once again is re‐organised and made orderly by reflection on ritual practices. Finally, the paper suggests that the agenda for an anthropology of religion for this new century is two‐fold. Firstly, to try to become more conversant with ever changing localised practices of ritual, and secondly, to try to converse about those practices with other practitioners and scholars from different fields and in different fields.

Muslim-State Relations in Kenya

On April 2, 2015, a group of armed men belonging to the Islamist movement Al-Shabab attacked and killed 147 students at the University of Garissa in Eastern Kenya.1 The attack followed previous terrorist attacks on the US Embassy in Nairobi (August 7, 1998, attack combined with an attack on the US Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam) and at a shopping mall in Nairobi (September 21, 2013, 67 dead). The worrying factor in the Garissa incident was the fact that those holding student hostages requested them to cite parts of the Qur’an in order to be certified as Muslims. Those who either were dressed as Muslims or were able to recite verses from the Qur’an were spared while Christians and those unable to recite the Qur’an were assassinated. The attackers spoke of discrimination against Muslims in Kenya while some within Kenya openly suggested that Somali Muslims should be expelled from Kenya. It is a fact that throughout the postattack analysis questions were once and again asked about the loyalty of a minority Muslim community to the state of Kenya and also about the military involvement of Kenya in Somalia. These questions of state allegiance by Muslims in Kenya, their rights, and obligations has been a recurrent theme in Muslim-state relations in Kenya since Kenya’s independence.

Sacred Rules and Secular Politics: Religion and Rules

This article explores the relationship between rules and politics in the intersection of the secular and the sacred. When identity in Europe was firmly fixed to Christianity, the rules governing the sacred and secular neatly meshed. With the onset of modernity, however, a cleavage arose between those two sets of rules, leading to theoretical and political conflict and confusion. Understanding the role of rules within modern religious traditions reveals the tension between symbols and authority, a conflict found in secular contexts as well. Hermeneutics, the study of interpretation which had its roots in biblical interpretation, also provides insights on rules and rule-making.

The Hermeneutics of Bones: Liberation Theology for the Twenty-First Century

The advent of Vatican II (1962–1965) and the Medellin conference of bishops in Latin America (1968) created the possibilities for a Christian reflection on poverty in Latin America.1 Not only was poverty assumed as a reality but also it was accepted that such reality affected the actions and thoughts of the church. The materially poor entered the church’s reflection not solely to request rights and human dignity but their reality challenged the very life of the church, which for all purposes appeared materially rich and powerful. Pastoral agents and clergy started a change in their lifestyle assuming that if they were closer to the poor they would be indeed be closer to Christ (Gutierrez 1993, 250).