The Meanings of Sanctuary in Latina/o/x Migrant Communities

The Meanings of Sanctuary in Latina/o/x Migrant Communities: A Conversation with Leo Guardado and Barbara Sostaita

Professor Leo Guardado, Assistant Professor, Department of Theology at Fordham University, grew up in a rural mountain town in northern El Salvador before fleeing to Los Angeles when he was nine. After High school in LA and college in the bay area of California, he became a Lasallian Volunteer in Brooklyn, NY where he served as campus minister at Bishop Loughlin HS. An interest in monastic life took him to live in a Trappist monastery in Northern California before completing an MTS in historical Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. A series of pastoral commitments led him to work in Tucson, Arizona with churches, dioceses, and NGOs focused on addressing the needs of persons migrating through the desert wilderness and attempting to survive in the US. The experience in the borderlands was a catalyst for pursing his PhD at the University of Notre Dame in a joint program between the theology department and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. His ongoing research on human displacement and its challenge to the church and its theology is informed by the multidisciplinary lenses necessary for addressing the critical issues of our time.

Barbara Sostaita, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Humanities Center at Harvard University, is a formerly undocumented alien turned ethnographer and scholar of migration and religion Barbara Sostaita’s work traces fugitive mobilities and hemispheric solidarities that yearn for, as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes, “connection in the face of utter disconnection.” Sostaita is editing a manuscript titled Sanctuary Everywhere: Fugitive Care on the Migrant Trail. Focused on the Sonora-Arizona borderlands, which documents moments of care and intimacy that expose the impermanence and instability of border militarization.
Post-Doctoral Fellow in Humanities Center

Sponsored by:
Latina/o Studies
Religion
The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Pathways for Inclusive Excellence
The Davis Center
W. Ford Schumann Class of ‘50 Program in Democratic Studies
The World War II Memorial Lecture Fund
The Lecture Committee