When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, there began a new way of the cross, traced for five hundred years in the lives of the poor and oppressed peoples of the Americas. These short meditations on the stations--by such figures as Gustavo Guiterrez, Enrique Dussel, Leonardo Boff, Helder Camara, Elsa Tamez, and Jon Sobrino--reflect on the passion of Christ against the background of conquest. They write, as Virgil Elizondo says in his preface, to "invite our readers to take this journey with us, to share our suffering, to experience our crucifixion, and to taste in anticipation our Easter joy. We invite all--rich and poor, black and brown and white, clerics and lay people--to a profound conversion that will stimulate us to build a better world in the Americas, a world of the new humanity enjoying justice, freedom, and love."

This book challenges the unwritten laws that dominate U.S. society, creating great wealth and even greater poverty. Social (Structural) Analysis uncovers the hidden agenda behind this system of political economy that exploit the majority while enriching the few. Modern liberal economics holds the proverbial carrot in front of the world's population while the real winners, the multi-national banks and corporations, reap scandalous profits. This political/economic monopoly treats the living earth as if it was a disposable resource and turns the majority of the world's population into mere cogs in its machinery. Like a cancer, if untreated it will destroy its host.

Social analysis cannot cure this cancer, but it can remove the rose-colored glasses from people's eyes so that they can understand it.

Free Market Capitalism has undoubted benefits. It becomes evil when it is a law unto itself. A system of political economy, endowed with a wider vision and a more just definition of profits, might evolve out of the dialogue between the mechanisms of Capitalism and the priorities of socialism. Such a system would allow all peoples to enjoy a decent life while preserving the integrity of the earth. Utopia, the perfect society, may never become a reality, but we should never stop trying to implement it. Social analysis is a necessary first step towards a more just world.