Las Hermanas: Chicana/Latina Religious-Political Activism in the U.S. Catholic Church (review)

This is a welcome supplemental text for anyone interested in the history of Latina activism within the Catholic Church. The author has constructed a detailed narrative based on interviews with the women who organized and developed Las Hermanas. Organized into five compact chapters, the book begins with a sketch of how the Second Vatican Council helped transform a history of ecclesiastical discrimination against Latinos and women, in combination with the Chicano Movement and support for the United Farm Workers in creating a vehicle for religious sisters and nuns to show solidarity with various Latino causes since the early 1970s. In the confluence of these powerful and turbulent tides, Las Hermanas emerged as a beachhead where various struggles were engaged.

Medina has a sure touch with her informants, the leaders of Las Hermanas. Her descriptions provide a reliable account of the events and circumstances that shaped the organization. After a beginning that was principally focused on support for the union led by César Chávez, Las Hermanas gradually embraced more ambitious goals that included both the policy and structures of the Catholic Church, the United States government, and liberal capitalism. The author shows how the unifying theme for this expanding agenda was always on women and their capacity for change. Most readers will find in this text all the information they will need to conclude with the author that "Las Hermanas expands our understanding of the role that women and religion have played and continue to play in the struggle for self-determination" (p. 150). This is especially true if the reader shares with the author a keen interest in "feminist praxis and Latina sisterhood." One is led to see that the contemporary weakness of the national structure—a "lack of money, goals, leadership"—and the limited membership of Las Hermanas have actually benefited a more radical and liberating agenda.

Medina's perspective, however, obscures an important issue that generally besets any organization that arises from successful social movements. As the movements achieve some or all of their goals, the reasons for their existence come into question and create a crisis. In fact, the successes of Las Hermanas in representing women's needs within the Church during the 1970s meant that by the middle of the 1980s there was some question as to whether or not the organization was any longer needed. In confronting this crisis, Las Hermanas adopted new goals that went beyond the limitations of the Church. Yet by interviewing almost exclusively those who stayed with Las Hermanas as the organization adopted to new goals, and by not providing much information on those who left in dissent, we have only half of the story. The definition of feminism, support for reproductive rights, and the participation in mujerista rituals that supplanted the mass celebrated by a priest are all identified by Medina as key issues in the post-1986 development of Las Hermanas, but the reader is not provided with a clear statement of how or why these issues were controversial or conflicted with the views of certain members.

Perhaps this one-sided partisanship can be excused, since the book is about feminism and activism. Still, while knowledgeable about ecclesiastical matters, in lacking precision on certain issues (e.g., the split in the Leadership Conference of Religious Women) Medina shows that she has herself not been in the religious sisterhood. She also gives an ambivalent interpretation of collaboration between the women in Las Hermanas and the priests in the organization, PADRES. The narrative provides multiple instances of collaboration and mutual support, but the author identifies the priests as justifying patriarchy, stating at one point: "Ultimately, an attitude of male clerical superiority within PADRES hampered its ability to relate to Las Hermanas as equals and endorse fully the equal status of women in the church" (p. 4). All in all, this modest volume provides a...