Ecumenical Department of Investigations: a privileged place to understand the Latin American reality and the thought of liberation

Abstract

Until the beginning of the second decade of the 2000s, in Brazil, there were no academic postgraduate studies that assumed the Latin American liberation thought as a starting point or object of study in non-confessional teaching and research institutions - perhaps due to the proximity with the Catholic religion, which is interpreted from the point of view of modern European academic traditions, it appears as a synonym for “backwardness” or pre-modern traditionalism. However, in the second half of the 20th century, an intense production of content in social sciences emerged in Latin America influenced by liberation theology, but not necessarily confessional. This production in different fields of knowledge comes to be understood under the nickname of liberation thinking.