After all that has been said and written on Gandhi and nonviolent action, we continue to discover the richness and universality of his thought as applied to evolving situations in diverse latitudes and over time. I would like to refer to contemporary social movements in Latin America–a large generalization in itself–to explore their implicit approximations to Satyagraha. Specifically, to contextualize what may be three levels of approximation–religious roots, the ideal of self-realization and method/technique–in Gandhi’s Satyagraha in order to suggest not simply their relevance but to the process or reinvigoration of action and thought for deep social change.

During the 1960s and almost through the early 1980s, coming from a classic left tradition, many of Latin America’s social revolutionary movements would have had trouble with the notion that there could be a non-violent path to political and social revolution. Second, and also in very general terms, there would was an underestimation on the importance of personal revolution, as understood by Gandhi, that went hand in hand, as opposed to becoming derivative, from social revolution.