Thomas Merton's Latin America: a Space of Desire and Imagination

MARCELA RAGGIO

Denver, Colorado

Congreso; 19th General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society; 2025

Regis University & International Thomas Merton Society

Space is not just a location on a map or a name in an atlas. Instead, space is thelocation of culture and, as Setha Low (2017) states, space and place are alwaysembodied. This materiality refers to language, social interaction, memory, behaviorand practices that convey meaning and through which alternative solidarities andspatialities may be constructed and oƯer hope in a divided world, challenging us inour constitutive interrelatedness (Doreen Massey 2005).This workshop aims at presenting Thomas Merton’s deep interest in andinvolvement with Latin American people, countries, languages and culture. Throughan exploration of his letters, essays, journals and poetry, we will travel across LatinAmerica, appreciating and learning from Thomas Merton’s understanding of apeople, love of a language, and imagination of a land he did not ever visit (except forhis 1939 trip to Cuba).The workshop will provide not only an approach to Merton’s texts, but also amusical, visual, literary and cultural journey through the places Merton longed forand the homeland of friends he made especially during the last decade of his life,searching for wisdom and hope “south of the Equator”. Special attention will be paidto Merton’s friends from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Perú, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico,Cuba, and to cultural landmarks of these countries, in which Merton found thereason for the oddity of “so many Indians to be called Jesus”, as he writes in hisLetter to Pablo A. Cuadra.