Dorothy Stang: Monkeys Cry and the Poor Die, Earth Stewardship as Liberation Ecology

Abstract

Latin American liberation philosophical and theological traditions locate environmental ethics in political economy and the history of conflicts, too often violent, over the use and abuse of nature and people. It is in this historical context that Earth Stewardship should be understood in this region. Sectors of the Latin American Church, such as US naturalized Brazilian Sister Dorothy Stang in the Amazon, long have defended social justice and in recent years have integrated concern for the natural environment into their social justice agendas, often at great personal cost. Methodologically this theoretical reflection is done as a “second step” following the “first step” of active engagement on behalf of socio-ecological justice, and incorporates local realities and cultures, or “interculturality”, into the formulation of liberation environmental ethics. This results in an amplified concept of moral community, understood within the framework of alterity theory, and corresponds to situational realties and struggles for socio-ecological transformation producing, what might be called, “liberation ecology” or even “liberation stewardship.”