My hypothesis is that the growth of the Theology of Liberation during the period of dictatorships may fruitfully be understood as an anguished articulation of precisely this failure of the established order. The intolerable situation across a whole continent, of chronic poverty and of massive, systemic human rights abuses, seems to have coincided with a new religious awakening, catalysed by the reforms of Vatican II and their appropriation by the Latin American Bishops (CELAM) at their conference at Medell´ın in 1968. The notion of an ‘option for the poor’ is grounded in a new appreciation of the ‘exceptionality’ of God’s partisan action in history on behalf of the oppressed. This religious appreciation, combined with political developments such as the socialist revolutions in Cuba and, later, Nicaragua, held out for a whole continent the prospect of a definitive resistance and rejection of the existing political and economic order.