Abstract
Martyrdom is usually associated to the religious sphere, obscuring the ways in which it appears in secular practices and especially in social movements. The paper resorts to the notion of “migrations of the holy” (Cavanaugh 2011) to make a sociohistorical analysis of martyrdom as a social phenomenon. It addresses the problem of the division of spheres and the frequent overlaps between the religious and the political that Western modernity ignores by establishing a normative and functional differentiation of spheres, and will consider several cases taken from Latin American political history to illustrate how martyrdom narratives appear beyond religious institutional practices The paper looks at hope as one of the essential components in the construction of narratives that allow the conformation of martyrdom figures and that, like them, is derived from religious constructs that are socially transferred to the secular. To do so, the paper considers the case of Sebastian Acevedo in Chile (1983-1990). Mr. Acevedo set himself on fire at Concepcion main square in 1983 and died a few hours later. He was attempting to put pressure on the Chilean government in general and CNI in particular so they released his children. They were detained two days before and remained missing at that point. Acevedo´s death became a crucial event in the dictatorship and provoked several protests against it between 1983 and 1990. The paler blends social and political studies with religious studies.
Presenters
Marisol Lopez MenendezProfessor, Social and Political Sciences, Universidad Iberoameriana-Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Secularity, Social mobilization, Human rights, Martyrdom, Latin America
