Volume 21, Number 1 (2019)

From the Editor

First published in 1993 as a printed academic quarterly, the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology became an online journal after nearly a decade of uninterrupted printed volumes. It continued uninterrupted as an e-journal for several years. After a hiatus due to administrative challenges, JHLT resumes publication with this issue–Volume 21, Number 1—and, with this rebirth, anticipates many more years of lively study and conversation.

JHLT has always been an intentionally ecumenical journal, focused on U.S. Latinoa theology and religious studies. (It includes Latin American fields and topics to the degree that these engage U.S. Latinoa studies.) JHLT was and remains a refereed journal, committed to the highest standards of scholarship, privileging and highlighting Latinoa theological and religious studies research. Its rebirth marks the return of one of Latinoa theology's most important and respected venues.

This journal remains an editorially autonomous publication of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the U.S. (ACHTUS). This means that ACHTUS supports, but does not suggest, censor, or control the scholarly works published in and by JHLT. The ACHTUS board of directors does, however, appoint the journal's chief editor. I was the journal's founder and first chief editor (1992) and remained in that position for almost seven years. Professor Jean-Pierre Ruiz became the second chief editor and Professor Gilberto Cavazos-González was the third. Then the unanticipated hiatus occurred. After a few years, Professor Jorge Aquino was appointed interim editor and served until the ACHTUS board asked me to return to the journal as JHLT's fourth editor. It is not often that someone can say, “All my successors were also all of my predecessors!”

I thank Professors María Teresa Dávila and Néstor Medina, the new associate editors, for agreeing to actively support the editorial work that makes possible our periodical, and Professor Rebecca Berrú-Davis, for continuing to serve as book review editor. I also thank all the members of our new and distinguished editorial board for their support and their work on behalf of JHLT. A list of the editorial board members appears in this issue.

I know from experience that publishing a scholarly periodical is not easy. Without the collaboration of its readership, which frequently includes its authors, no journal could survive. I thank you, our readers, for the support that made possible the rebirth of JHLT. This gratitude is accompanied by the heartfelt request that you consider our journal as a venue for your academic work. Our hope—our commitment—is for JHLT henceforth to be published three times per calendar year.

This issue of the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology offers three substantive articles and six new reviews of books pertinent to our readers' scholarship. Jacqueline Hidalgo (Williams College) presents us with an expansion and modification of her 2018 ACHTUS presidential address, in which she developed "home" as a hoped-for goal of la lucha, even as the latter is also and already "home." Carmen Nanko-Fernández (Catholic Theological Union) focuses on the city as locus, context, and hermeneutic for “reading" the environment latinamente, examining time and space through the lens of the urban ecosystem and related imaginings, texts, and practices of creation and eschatology. Jeremy V. Cruz (St. John's University, New York) studies the context and content of the egalitarian moral vision of César Chávez, whose labor organizing activities and speeches are, according to Cruz, a vital and underappreciated part of the U.S. Catholic social tradition in the twentieth century. These three respected Latinoa scholars have given us wise, well-argued, and well researched texts. This JHLT issue's book reviewers insightfully assess some important titles now contributing to Latinoa theology and religious studies.

I hope the journal's readers will note the continued scholarly excellence of JHLT. I also hope and pray that they will want to consider it as a frequent venue for publication of their scholarship. Finally, I hope that they will continue to share the journal’s contents with their students and colleagues, thus expanding the reach and vitality of our field.

Orlando O. Espín

University of San Diego

Chief Editor