“Conversación con Magnus Mörner”
Carlos Contreras & Magnus Lundberg
Publicado en Histórica, vol. XXXII:2 (2008)
Una entrevista de 2009 con el destacado historiador sueco Magnus Mörner (1924-2012), conocido internacionalmente por sus muchos estudios latinoamericanistas.
El artículo completo se encuentra aquí.
See also my obituary in Hispanic American Historical Review 92:4 (2012) here
Requiescat in pace
“Overcoming or Silencing Conflicts: The Catholic Church and the Building of the Costa Rican Welfare State”
Magnus Lundberg
Originally held as a lecture at the University of Groningen in 2006; lightly revised in 2016
In this article, I briefly analyse the role of religion in the construction of the Costa Rican society from the 1930s onwards. I focus on the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Costa Rican government. It is always difficult to speak about the position of the church. To avoid hasty generalisations, I will therefore limit myself to the public statements made by the Costa Rican archbishops. Even more concretely, I am interested in the archbishops’ concern with what usually is called la cuestión social – the social issue. That is, their treatment of themes such as poverty and inequality.
Religion i Latinamerika
Magnus Lundberg, David Westerlund (red)
Stockholm: Dialogos förlag, 2012
David Westerlund, professor i religionshistoria, och jag gav 2012 ut en omfattande introduktion till det religiösa landskapet i dagens Latinamerika, men med en betydande historisk bakgrund
De flesta latinamerikanska länder har under århundraden präglats av katolicism. Men idag är den religiösa situationen i Latinamerika mer mångfasetterad och svåröverskådlig än någonsin tidigare, och många av de omkring 600 miljoner invånarna bekänner sig till andra trosinriktningar.
Boken är en bred översikt av religion i Latinamerika och består av tio delar, varav två är inriktade på indianska religioner. Den innehåller historiska tillbakablickar, men fokus ligger på nutiden.
Det finns ingen liknande bok på svenska och även i internationell jämförelse är den unik. Målgruppen är de som läser religionsvetenskap och andra humanistiska och samhällsvetenskapliga discipliner på högskolenivå, men också journalister, biståndsarbetare och andra med intresse för Latinamerika.
Here are some titles I have enjoyed during 2015 and which have little to do with my main research.
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
V.S. Naipul, The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Colonial Societies
Judith Schalansky, Atlas över avlägsna öar: Femtio öar som jag aldrig besökt och aldrig kommer att besöka
Judith Schalansky, Giraffens hals: En bildningsroman
Anna Gavalda, Tillsammans är man mindre ensam
Emile Ajar, Med livet framför sej
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84, del 1-3
Lorena Macianskaite (red.), Litauen berättar: Att avregistrera ett spöke
Marie-Elena John, Unburnable
Hubert Wolf, The Nuns of Sant’ Ambrogio
Gerard Russell, Heirs of the Forgotten Kingdom
“The Archbishop and the Virgin: Alonso de Montúfar and the Early Cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe”
Magnus Lundberg
Article published online in 2015 (but based on a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, defended in 2002).
In this article, I critically assess a number of documents related to the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac in the mid-sixteenth century. It seeks to counteract the many bad scholarly contributions on Guadalupe, published in both theologically “conservative” and “radical”/”contextual” circles.
It is, of course, interesting to study how Guadalupe has been interpreted throughout the ages and what role she plays today. Still, to establish facts about the origin of a cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe requires a very close assessment of the existing sources. There are so many farfetched interpretations of documents (and “silences”) that have been made into truths and there are even fabricated sources that support certain ideological views. Thus, a source critical study of a very traditional kind can do much good.
In the documents that without a doubt can be dated to Alonso de Montúfar’s time as archbishop of Mexico (1554-1572), I have not found any foundation for the story about Juan Diego and Bishop Zumárraga that, at least since the 1640s, has been associated with the cult. Still, there are indications that at least an outline of story of about the miraculous origin of the image and the direct imprint of the Virgin on an indigenous man’s cloak, was known by the 1610s or 1620s (but that will be the subject of another article)
“El clero indígena en Hispanoamérica: De la legislación a la implementación y práctica eclesiástica”
Magnus Lundberg
Articulo publicado en Estudios de Historia Novohispana 38 (2008)
En este artículo se estudia la formación de un clero indígena en Hispanoamérica durante la época colonial. Usamos fuentes primarias, pero el artículo también pretende analizar la rica historiografía que existe sobre el asunto. Revisamos la legislación eclesiástica y particularmente los decretos de los concilios provinciales del siglo XVI, pero también las opiniones de teólogos y juristas. Además tratamos la implementación de estas leyes y la inclusión de un limitado pero creciente número de hombres indígenas en el sacerdocio desde la segunda parte del siglo XVII hasta fines de la época colonial.
Magnus Lundberg 