Catholic priest and rad­i­cal social crit­ic Ivan Illich is best known for books like Deschool­ing Soci­ety and Med­ical Neme­sis that skew­ered the dom­i­nant insti­tu­tions of the West in the 1970s. Although com­mis­sioned in 1961 by Amer­i­can bish­ops to run a mis­sion­ary train­ing cen­ter in Cuer­nava­ca, Mex­i­co, Illich emerged as one of the major crit­ics of the mis­sion­ary move­ment. As he became a more con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure, his cen­ter evolved into CIDOC (Cen­tro Inter­cul­tur­al de Documentaci?n), an infor­mal uni­ver­si­ty that attract­ed a diverse group of intel­lec­tu­als and seek­ers from around the world. They came to Illich’s cen­ter to learn Span­ish, to attend sem­i­nars, and to sit at the feet of Illich, whose relent­less crit­i­cism of the Catholic Church and mod­ern West­ern cul­ture res­onat­ed with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary spir­it of the times. His 1967 arti­cle, “The Seamy Side of Char­i­ty,” a harsh attack on the Amer­i­can mis­sion­ary effort in Latin Amer­i­ca, and oth­er crit­i­cisms of the Church led to a tri­al at the Vat­i­can in 1968, after which he left the priest­hood. Illich’s writ­ings struck at the foun­da­tions of west­ern soci­ety, and envi­sioned utopi­an trans­for­ma­tions in the realms of edu­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. He was an inspi­ra­tion to a gen­er­a­tion of lib­er­a­tion the­olo­gians and oth­er left-wing intellectuals.

In The Prophet of Cuer­nava­ca Todd Hartch traces the devel­op­ment of Illich’s ideas from his work as a priest through his lat­er sec­u­lar peri­od, offer­ing one of the first book-length his­tor­i­cal treat­ments of his thought in English.

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