Devotions, promises and miracles. How religious beliefs and practices support poor people´s agency in Latin America

Abstract

The article addresses Latin American poor people's religious beliefs and practices, analysing particularly three of them: devotion, promise, and miracle. We argue that these three religious features are related to people’s agency and can have impact on personal and community wellbeing. The data that support the analysis come from a case study in Buenos Aires based on two sources: 1. A questionnaire applied to a representative sample of Buenos Aires slum inhabitants. 2. In-depth interviews of women living in poor settlements. The theoretical discussions link the concept of popular religiosity as it is being addressed in Latin America, with approaches that emphasises agency. The main argument is that the bodily, emotonal, and relational aspects of religion, framed within a cosmological and holistic cultural matrix, shape poor people’s agency with positive outcomes.