Honor Y Verguenza: Understanding Honor and Shame in Latin America

Abstract

The spectrum of guilt-shame-fear cultures has been studied by anthropologists for some time now. However, more recently Christian missiologists have begun to study the benefits and challenges each of these cultures present. Anthropologists and missiologists claim that shame culture includes the most people in the world. Examples of shame cultures include much of Asia and the Middle East, as well as Latin America. This paper studies honor-shame cultures in Latin America and challenges they pose to Christian preachers. It also offers solutions to these problems, namely, building relationships with people and showing honor by evangelizing groups rather than individuals. The research for this thesis was done by studying literature on shame cultures as well as anthropological studies of Latin America. For more insight, the author also interview missionaries who have served in Latin America.