Please read the first part of Chapter Three of Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle, pp. 25-43.

Please also read the statement on “The Poverty of the Church,” adopted at the Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellin, Colombia in 1968. This document is mentioned in the chapter you are reading for this unit and is often held up as one of the founding testaments of the movement known as “liberation theology.”

Questions connected to both of these readings can be found in the Learning Circle section of this unit; if you do not have a learning circle, you may wish to engage these questions in your journal.