Iglesia y cuestión social: la intervención de la Iglesia Católica en la construcción de demandas de educación, tierra y vivienda en el Gran Buenos Aires

the aim of this paper is to analyse the types of intervention of catholic church agencies in the building of territorially grounded sectorial demands made by popular stratum from buenos aires outskirts, relating these demands to the transformation of social public policies into assistencialismo [clientelistic policy] and outsourcing in the past decades. to accomplish it, we will present and compare two case studies from an ethnographic standpoint: the building of educational demands and its progressive integration into structures binded to the bishopric of san isidro; and the intervention of the vicariate of quilmes bishopric's social pastoral in the social conflicts involving organizations for land and home and the local government. thus, our purpose is to show the limits and possibilities of these types of intervention by the catholic church in the recomposition of popular organizational forms and to stress local and historical specificities of each diocese, as well as their common logic, which guide them.