To characterise Latin America – or any other area of the world – as ‘Third World’ is to relate it to the history of its incorporation into the ‘First World’ area of influence. This process has had different times, conditions and characteristics. For Latin America, it starts at the end of the fifteenth century from Spain and Portugal and takes the form of the appropriation of the land and the subjection of the indigenous populations of the south of what is now called North America, some of the Caribbean islands and the totality of Central and South America. In order to understand the ‘theologies’ that have developed in these lands we would need to take into account the conditions – religious, cultural, social, economic, political – of these lands before the ‘appropriation’, the corresponding characteristics of the ‘appropriator’, and of the process of ‘appropriation’ and then follow the developments that have brought us to the present. Although it is quite evident that this is not possible within the limits of this chapter, we need at least to enumerate some of these factors. In order to try to design this sort of vademecum I suggest we distinguish four periods: (1) invasion, control and colonisation (1492–1808); (2) emancipation and nation building (1808–1960); (3) the crisis of the development project (1961–72); and (4) ‘the national security doctrine’ and the conditions of globalisation (1973 onwards).