Holy motives, holy virtues

The Research Centre in Sociology of Religion (ISOR-UAB) is organising the seminar “Santos motivos, santas virtudes” on 11 December, which will focus on racialisation, whiteness, and popular pedagogies in Andean comics (1960–1980). It will feature Malena Bedoya, researcher from the University of Manchester, who will offer her perspective on racial representation and pedagogical dynamics in Andean comics. The event will take place at 1:00 p.m. in the Boardroom of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology.

The presentation will pay special attention to the cases of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru to analyse how this medium became a privileged space for promoting narratives linked to liberation theology and what is known as the “preferential option for the poor.” The talk focuses on two particularly influential figures of sainthood, Saint Peter Claver and Saint Martin de Porres, through a reading of the hagiographies and their translations into the language of comics. At the same time, the presentation will address the tensions between these liberating approaches and the persistence of the structures of whiteness in the graphic and symbolic construction of sainthood, and will propose a view of the comics not only as cultural or devotional products, but as pedagogical devices deeply rooted in debates about race, power, and political imagination in the Andes. The analysis aims to illuminate the ambivalences, potentials, and limits of comics as technologies for ethical formation, and as spaces in which identities, memories, and possible futures are negotiated.