Mobilizing the Dead: Latin American Migrant-led Movements Re-member the Crucified Body

Political theology is emerging from Latin American migrant-led social movements in the United States. Research collaborators interpret organizing practices of Movimiento Cosecha as a form of theological praxis in which migrant communities confront experiences of dismemberment, social death, and political exclusion by retrieving the dead—ancestors, martyrs, and historical figures of resistance—in order to construct a political movement body capable of collective action. Through practices of “re-membering,” fragments produced by migration, detention, deportation, and displacement are brought together into a communal body that becomes both a site of resistance and a theological image of the crucified body of Christ. The practices described illuminate three emerging theological trajectories within contemporary migrant struggles: The development of a grassroots populist political theology, the emergence of a migrant theology centered on a migrant divinity, and the need to decolonize the concept of religion through new practices of solidarity and articulation.