| Understood within an analytical framework and mediating theory of economic, political and cultural globalization, the purpose of this dissertation is to critically, socially and theologically reflect upon the violence and injustice that has been enacted and endured by people in Mexico and the United States in recent years (2006 to present) as a result of the so-called Drug War. To begin, I will attempt to outline the various dimensions of the phenomenon of globalization and the drug war, more specifically, and how the latter is a consequence of certain negative aspects of the former. Secondly, an ethical-political critique from a view of Christian salvation will be conducted as it pertains to this particular conflict, principally but not exclusively in its social sense. My method and epistemological approach will be guided by what has been called the transmodern thought of Enrique Dussel and Hans Urs von Balthasar, respectively -- Dussel with regard to historical and ethical-political concerns, and von Balthasar with special attention to his theological aesthetics and dramatics.;Dussel's re-reading of the history of modernity from the critical perspective of Latin American experience of colonial-capitalism, as well as his social appropriation of Levinas and arguably Schellingian-Marxian interpretation of economic relations, will be the primary lens through which I will try to situate and appreciate the problems posed by globalization and the drug war itself. Subsequently, in an effort to sensitize Dussel's approach to a view from "the eyes of faith", it is von Balthasar's meditation on the beauty of the Christ-form that will be appropriated in order to convey a less anthropocentric and more global, thoroughgoing Christian theo-political imagination. The study will culminate in an attempt to synthesize several key contributions of Dussel and von Balthasar by drawing on certain soteriological of Jon Sobrino and Mark Lewis Taylor's constructive analysis of "critical movements of resistance". Finally, to think concretely about an ecclesial Christian response that embodies neighborliness, several recent popular protests and resistance efforts in Mexico and Central America will be studied as examples of what form this neighborliness might take. |
