In the 1970s and 1980s, civil society–based movements rose up to fight against authoritarian regimes in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Some of the most unexpected, and inspirational, of the actors involved were poor women. Many of them were mobilized through Christian “base communities,” lay study and action groups organized by the Catholic Church during its liberation theology period.

With the transition (back) to democracy in places such as Chile and Brazil, the surge of mobilization declined. What happened to the unusual protagonists of the redemocratization movement? This is the central question that Carol Drogus and Hannah Stewart-Gambino, ably assisted by two Brazilian researchers, Cecilia Loreto Mariz and Maria das Dores Campos Machado, seek to answer in Activist Faith. In 1999, they interviewed 73 women from base communities in Santiago, Chile, and São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to see whether—and in what ways—these women stayed active in sociopolitical issues. The authors also investigated the women's organizational development, particularly if they were sowing seeds for another movement “cycle.”

After Chapter 1 introduces the topic and its subjects, Chapter 2 is devoted to an overview of the concept of movement cycles. The authors claim that base communities “must be understood as social movements associated with processes of redemocratization” (p. 23), and moreover, since they are part of a cycle, they did not disappear with the restoration of “normal” politics (that is, politics channeled through political parties, elections, or state institutions). As with other “cycle” proponents, Drogus and Stewart-Gambino argue that important political work goes on even during periods of seeming quiescence; this work may be in personal, organizational, or network development.

The rest of the book explores the base community (or former base community) members' past, present, and potential future activism. Chapter 3 compares the development of base communities in Chile and Brazil under authoritarian rule. The Chilean communities became involved in radical political protest at the national level, whereas the Brazilian communities focused mainly on sociocultural transformation and local demands, such as day care. This differentiation reflected the structure of the national churches, as well as the nature of the regime in power. The Chilean Catholic Church exerted centralized control through its vicariate structure, helping the church, and base communities, respond to the repressive tactics of the Pinochet dictatorship. In contrast, the Brazilian Catholic Church permitted more autonomous development of its base communities, while the relatively less repressive Brazilian government allowed local demand making. Chapter 4 turns to the reasons for the decline in base community activism: The withdrawal or diminution of church support was the central factor in Chile, while other factors were as important in Brazil.

Despite the decline in church support, Chapter 5 reveals, in the late 1990s the majority of the interviewees were still engaged in some kind of social or political activism, mainly at the local level, through base communities or other organizations. Reflecting the more general opportunities for civil-society organizing in the two countries, poor Catholic women's organizing is more “networked” in Brazil, while in Chile there are more partisan divisions. Chapter 6 focuses on the potential for networking with poor Pentecostal women, since Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing religious affiliation in both countries; Chapter 7 turns to the possibilities of work with “classic” middle-class feminist groups. Neither sector offers much in the way of ongoing collaboration: Religious and class differences are hard to overcome, particularly in Chile, where coinciding rather than cross-cutting social cleavages are the norm. Overall, the authors find more evidence for the personal empowerment of individual women through their base community experiences, rather than for strong networks ready to support mobilizations.

The great strength of this book is its detailed examination of the impact that social movement participation has had on the lives of the women from base communities. The authors also assess the potential for future “visible” mobilization, and are sanguine (if hopeful) about the potential for larger network possibilities. In terms of the causal links they explore, their most valuable contribution is a clear-eyed assessment of the important role that the Catholic Church has played in both mobilizing and demobilizing these women; this work takes the variable of religious faith more seriously than do many social movement analyses.

Nevertheless, the book remains limited in the scope of its analysis. Given the excellent discussion of the church's role in women's organizing, the “political opportunity structure” approach, which addresses the importance of political context in social movement development, deserved at least a passing mention. More seriously, the definition of the movement under study is vague. Early on, the authors claim that the base communities themselves are social movements related to the larger redemocratization movement (pp. 23–24). But how exactly are organizations movements? And what is the next movement the authors hope will emerge? A “more organized and resistant civil society,” “protest politics,” fighting “poverty and community deprivation,” a “liberationist” movement, or one “rooted in poor urban communities or run by poor women” are variously mentioned. One problem here is the reliance on the overall redemocratization movement as the “cycle” in which the women participated. One senses some nostalgia for the good-old bad-old days, particularly reading phrases such as the “women did not go home in defeat” during the “low ebb” of mobilization (p. 36); surely, if they were part of the redemocratization movement, they were not defeated at all!

Although the authors take seriously several facets of their informants' multiple identities, they almost completely neglect the important dimension of race. The brief reference to race with respect to women's identity (pp. 149, 151) is within a religious framework (the importance of “African-based religious traditions” in Brazil). It is difficult to believe that race was not more central to poor Brazilian women's identity development or activism, considering that “poor” is often a synonym for “Afro-Brazilian.”

Activist Faith seems to be written for an audience that has a good background in the subject. The meaning of a “base community” is not given until page 40, and other key terms go undefined. Finally, the importance of these women to civil society at large is asserted rather than argued. According to the authors, “poor women making a first foray into critical politics through the church communities” were “the focal point of all the hopes and aspirations for stronger democracies in postmilitary Latin America” and thus “the critical social movement … to follow in order to understand the long-term impact of movements on postmilitary civil society” (p. 24). While this reviewer would agree with these statements, she fears that readers in the “main/malestream” of political science may not; and this story is at once too specific, and yet not explicit enough, about the importance of its subject to convince them.