La inmigración latinoamericana en Bélgica: la experiencia de Riches Claires en Bruselas1

Abstract

The parish of Riches Claires, in downtown Brussels, is a meeting point for a community of Latino Americans of all ages and from different countries. Who are these immigrants? Why do they meet at this church? What do they look for and what do they find here? The article is a life testimony from a community that has found in its faith and its religious practices an instrument for constructing a new identity in exile. A page of the not well-known recent religious history of Latin America, interlaced now with European religious history in these diaspora communities. From this point of view, the text describes and unfolds a first interpretation of the religious role played –in this case played by the Catholic Church– as “intercultural bridge” and “welcome place” for Latin American immigrants. This circumstance raises new questions: Does religion help for the construction of a “new identity” in exile? Does this identitarian construction generate community ghettization or on the contrary, is such process helping Latin American immigrants positively in the difficult process of integration, without resigning to their cultural background and inheritance?