Liberation Theology and Andean Syncretism in Peru

Peru was a formative center of liberation theology, a Latin American Catholic movement emphasizing social justice and preferential option for the poor, articulated influentially by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez in his 1971 book A Theology of Liberation, a movement that drew both passionate support among clergy working in poor and indigenous communities and sustained opposition from the Vatican under Pope John Paul II, who moved to discipline several of its proponents during the 1980s amid Cold War concerns about its Marxist-influenced analysis.

The Shining Path Maoist insurgency that convulsed Peru from 1980 through the 1990s targeted both the institutional Catholic Church and rural communities practicing syncretic Andean Catholicism, viewing organized religion generally as an obstacle to its revolutionary program, and the conflict killed an estimated seventy thousand people, many in areas where Andean indigenous religious identity was strong.

Peru's Qoyllur Rit'i festival, an Andean Catholic pilgrimage to a high-altitude glacier shrine near Cusco blending devotion to an apparition of Christ with indigenous mountain spirit veneration, exemplifies the enduring depth of Andean-Catholic syncretism and draws tens of thousands of pilgrims annually, recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.