The Prophet of Cuernavaca: Ivan Illich and the Crisis of the West

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 Documentación), an informal u...