Coyuntura (conjunctural analysis), is a popular education strategy from Latin America that dramatically extends the important interventions of Paolo Freire's "pedagogy of the oppressed." Coyuntura literally means conjuncture. It is a tool of popular education that introduces a collective process of research, analysis and direct action that empowers a community. Inspired by the development of critical pedagogy and liberation theology in Latin America during the 70s and 80s, coyuntura invites participants to contribute to a description/elaboration of the current situation through the framing and posing of specific questions that allow for an examination of the intersections of the material, economic, political, social, and cultural forces affecting a particular community or group. Coyuntura is also a gathering for the purpose of a community to arrive at a shared analysis and agree on a plan of action that addresses the immediate relations of force affecting them at any given moment. As an analytical framework, it draws heavily on the major theoretical advancements of critical theory so in some ways the conjuncture can be viewed as an introduction to critical theory. This type of analysis and related facilitation strategies can serve activists in a wide variety of intellectual endeavors.