Original subtitles

When God in Heaven wishes

The tortilla to turn over

When God in Heaven wishes

The tortilla to turn over

Let the tortilla turn over

Let the poor eat bread

And the rich eat shit

Long ago I embraced Marx's idea that religion is the opium of the people.

I'm one of the many baptized who stopped believing in God in adulthood.

I swapped Christian faith for the hope for radical political change,

the dream of a just and egalitarian society.

I became passionate about Latin America

and its tragic history of thwarted revolutions.

I have since traveled all over this continent.

Like those who visit archaeological ruins,

I look for the remains of its revolutionary drive,

meeting men and women who fought for the coming of the Kingdom

on earth rather than in heaven.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is always wonderful

when we're able to gather and celebrate Holy Mass

as a way to get closer to our Lord,

who's our great comrade in the revolutionary fight,

the God of the poor.

Today, we're celebrating Mass in a free village,

because we are gathered in liberated territory,

which was conquered

by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

One of our brothers and one of our sisters are here

to get married in Church.

God keeps walking among us

to build a new society,

in which we'll be able to live as brothers and sisters.

You are the God of the poor

The God that is humane and humble

The God that sweats on the streets

The God that has a tanned face

Long live the newlyweds!

A free nation...

Or death!

Our fatherland or death.

We will win!

My journey starts in El Salvador.

I was a child when this tiny country made the headlines:

a popular uprising was trying to oust

one of Latin America's oldest dictatorships.

For the international media, this was a civil war.

But for the thousands of peasants in guerrilla groups,

it was a revolution.

Belgian priest Roger Ponseele accompanied them for 12 years.

He never touched a gun.

I remember that on the day I joined

the Front, I sprained my ankle.

So I sat down

and told a comrade, "Look, I just sprained

my ankle.

I can't walk anymore."

"Get up and go," they said.

And I had to trudge on.

Then they said among themselves..

I could hear them.

They said, "We'll have to carry this fatso!"

With absolute contempt!

The fatso held out on the road for over 10 years,

facing rain, wind,

cold weather, bombs...

You held out.

Yes, I did.

Because we had

this conviction...

this very firm conviction

that it was a legitimate fight,

and that...

even if it took 10 or 12 years,

or longer still,

we would eventually triumph.

We shared that conviction.

When I considered

changing the way I was working

to focus more on political than pastoral actions,

the leaders told me,

"We have politicians, fighters,

but we don't have any priests,

to accompany these Christian people

in their fight."

We're getting ready to win.

Who is our enemy?

Yankee imperialism!

And I was happy accompanying them

and inspiring hope.

That's the most important thing.

I'm from a working-class family.

Of course when we got here

we discovered poverty we had never seen before.

We were poor as well,

but for Belgian standards.

We were poor as well.

But the extreme poverty

one could see in the shantytowns,

when I was in Zacamil, Tutunichapa,

had a strong impact on me.

That sparked in me

the desire to do something.

It sparked a mystic urge

to fight.

Otherwise, you can't cope.

You can't carry on.

We've learned something already, we've studied the syllable table.

Now we're going to try to make short sentences

about our life at the camp.

I remember that in the first few years,

we sympathized very much

with men like Martin Luther King,

nonviolence,

and Mahatma Gandhi,

nonviolence.

"The war is long."

We believed

that was the way forward,

fighting without violence.

Getting organized

in order to put pressure and force change,

without, however, starting an armed struggle.

We were Christians,

so we couldn't resort to armed violence.

See you tomorrow at the time agreed.

Please be punctual. Thank you.

I was still in San Salvador

in the late 1970s.

Peasants from here organized a march in San Salvador.

Their march was repressed,

and over thirty people were killed.

They asked me to celebrate Mass,

which I will never forget.

After celebrating Mass, with the altar surrounded by corpses,

I thought to myself,

Be it as it may,

we have to support the people,

even when the people chose armed struggle.

If we object to violence, we'll remain on the fringes.

We're not here to remain on the fringes,

but to get immersed in the people's struggle."

We decided to view violence as self-defense.

If it is legitimate to defend a person,

how could it not be legitimate

to stand up in defense

of an entire people's life?

We could describe El Salvador at the time

as a big coffee plantation,

owned by a handful of families.

Like everywhere in Latin America,

peasants starved to death and swelled the shantytowns.

People stopped believing in the development myth,

which held that poverty was only about economic lag.

Like many catechists, Ana Maria Calles and Irma Orellana

took up arms to defend the right to live.

I was six when Father David arrived here.

He used to say that in the beginning God created the land, the oceans,

the birds, the trees

and everything we have.

He said land belonged to everyone,

not only to a few families.

God didn't appoint anyone to own the land.

That message struck a chord

with the people, particularly with the poor,

because we could feel that we weren't

being treated as real children of God.

Every day, mere and more brothers and sisters in this country

realize that feeding the. hungry,

clothing the naked, sheltering the pilgrims

aren't merely works of charity,

but a way to join a people

in pursuit of their freedom

to build a more just and humane society.

Father David wasn't afraid.

He used to say

the first revolutionary to walk the Earth was Jesus.

And Jesus came to show us the way to liberation.

Father David used to preach with a megaphone,

saying, "Change your hearts.

If you won't give land to the peasants,

give them the chance to work

so they can support their families."

And I heard that sermon every time we attended Mass.

And my mother would say,

"They do say that priest is a troublemaker."

I started working as a catechist at the age of 13.

The first test Father David put us through

to select catechists was,

he placed two chairs upside down and said,

"One by one, I want you to sit

on these chairs."

My sister sat on the chair as it was, upside down,

as did most the other kids.

I thought,

"My sister sat on the chair like that.

But I can't do that, I'll turn the chair over."

So I did that and sat on the chair.

Father David just watched.

Out of the 80 catechists there,

only 20 of us turned the chair over.

When the activity was over, he said,

"I want to talk to those twenty."

Then he told us we had revolutionary minds

because we rearranged things that were not in order.

And we were very skillful.

He said, "Right how, our country is upside down like that chair.

What are we going to do?"

I answered, "Turn it over."

"But that's a process," he said.

I had already been denounced.

There was this policeman,

my best friend's boyfriend,

who I went to school with.

One day he said to me,

"Ana Maria, give up the Bible.

Stop working as a catechist, give it up,

or I will kill you myself."

"Kill me."

I got it in my head that dying and living were the same.

"Kill me. I can't think of a more dignified death.

Because you're my best friend's boyfriend."

He said to me,

"This is an order, give up being a catechist."

"I won't give it up, period."

When repression hit for real, being a catechist

was a crime, catechists were delinquents.

You could end up in prison, with a lot of luck,

but you'd more likely end up in a common grave.

The fact that you has! Bible..

Scores of people died because they were catechists,

and they didn't leave their homes.

Just because they had a Bible and the catechist chant book at home,

they were murdered.

Many of us who had the Bible and that chant book,

what did you do? We hid them.

It was hard to understand'

why someone would kill you

just because you had the Bible.

Why?

These are the bodies of four nuns.

They were raped and murdered by the army.

A slogan went around in the Salvadoran military:

"Be a patriot, kill a priest."

They murdered 19 priests,

four preachers

and countless catechists and base ecclesial community members.

They called it "the dirty war",

the boundless repression against all grassroots movements

across Latin America.

A man spoke out against that violence:

Oscar Romero, archbishop of San Salvador.

There's this institutional violence

that is provoking anger among the people.

Violence is perpetrated by political right

as they preserve their privileges

and maintain oppression.

On the other hand, the oppressed people who react

are labelled leftists.

But their violence is the consequence of right-wing violence,

which is the actual culprit.

They're not taking into account

the project that is already being developed by organizations

they call left wing, but they're popular organizations.

-Revolutionary? -Indeed.

A reputed conservative,

he was appointed by the Vatican to cooperate with the army.

But in the face of repression,

he gradually switched to the side of the people.

His radio homilies were the last vehicle to challenge the regime.

He was called the spokesman of the voiceless.

No soldier

is obliged

to obey an order contrary to the law of God.

If a law is immoral,

no one has to comply with it.

I beseech you,

I implore you,

I command you, in the name of God,

stop repression.

We'd gather wherever there was a radio

to listen to Monsignor Romero's homily,

to hear Mass at the cathedral.

And as we listened to him,

it felt like he was giving us an elixir,

to all of us catechists and followers of the Word.

And in that context, we wondered,

"What will they do to the monsignor?"

We believed they'd never dare to lay a finger on him,

not a man Hike Him.

Oscar Romero was murdered during Mass

on 24 March 1980.

His funeral was marked by a new outbreak of violence,

which sped up the escalation to an armed conflict.

We were all there by the palace and on the street,

when we heard the first explosion.

Then another one. And then screams.

It was absolute chaos, things got out of control.

People started to panic.

And we all ran to get away

however we could, trying to stay down as much as possible.

And then we saw the barbarity of the army-.

It didn't spell the end

of what we were doing.

On the contrary, I'd say it was like a trigger.

From that moment on...

we had to show how far we were willing to go,

what we were prepared to do as Christians,

until that moment when Monsignor Romero was murdered.

In fact, the idea was to contain the rage of the people,

to stifle that popular organization.

It turned out the other way around.

The was no time to think.

Either you went away or you went away.

That's how the guerrilla movement started.

We went door to door looking for guns people weren't using.

They gave us books

about Marxism and Leninism,

all those ideas they were always talking about.

I think a lot of us didn't adhere to the Marxist-Leninist doctrine

and that kind of thing. We listened,

we asked questions, but I don't think we took much of it in,

or felt concerned by that.

We had our own agenda. As committed Christians that we were,

it was our duty to fight.

One day shall come

When we will all look up

And see a land

That offers freedom

Millions of Christians in Latin America,

joined social struggles in the name of their faith.

They formed small groups called Base Ecclesial Communities:

a new way of being Church on the fringes of the institution.

Long live Father Rutílio Sanchez.

Long live Father Rutílio Sanchez.

Long live Monsignor Romero.

Long live the elderly!

Long live the organization we are keeping up.

Long live our comrades who died fighting.

It is very sad that today in our community,

some people no longer want us to talk about our historical memory.

We have made a commitment to not forgetting it.

-Will we forget it? -No.

Good.

Otherwise, you know what? We will all die in oblivion.

Underlying their commitment was a practical theory of faith:

Liberation Theology.

It holds that the poor aren't charity objects,

but agents of their own history.

We're back with the same problems, aren't we?

No education, no healthcare, no this no that...

-We have our rights. -Yes.

We all have our rights.

If we don't say anything, nobody will speak for us.

Nobody will.

Liberation Theology was targeted by the US

as an even greater danger than the Communist Party.

In Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala...

wherever the interests of the wealthy were threatened,

Uncle Sam would frustrate aspirations for justice.

The US supported, funded and organized repression

military coups and counterinsurgencies,

always in the name of Christian values.

A good soldier

Is aggressive

Aggressive

He must kill

He must fight

Delinquents

Terrorists

Who we kill

Under the soles

Of our shoes

All of them

Here

There are soldiers

Trained

Togo

To war

In 1981,

US-trained soldiers murdered 1,000 villagers in El Mozote.

It was the biggest civilian massacre in Latin America's cold war.

They're still looking for victims 41 years later.

How can an 11-month-old child be a guerrilla?

Or someone who's 80 or 90, or even older?

They killed women

who had given birth a couple of days before!

And if someone left the place where they were hiding,

they'd shoot them from afar.

How does this exhumation process make you feel?

We hope it gives you some reparation too.

Whenever you want to go in that area,

let us know so we can accompany you.

I'm Roberto Girón Flores.

I'm the defense lawyer on the El Mozote case

for some of the army officers accused of this crime

although there's no evidence of their involvement in it.

In El Salvador, the men who promoted all those deaths

that occurred between 1980 and 1992..

A huge number of peasants died,

who had joined guerrilla groups,

deceived by the Catholic Church.

Not by the Catholic Church, but by so-called pseudo-priests

who claimed to be clergymen.

The Pope had rejected them.

They deceived, trained and armed those peasants.

So some army officers,

who didn't like what was happening

and could see how chaotic the situation was,

considered that their enemies were those priests.

These exhumations are the expression of suppressed hate

for wounds of history that shouldn't be reopened.

Is this the position of the Church?

What do we learn

in the Gospels?

If someone slaps you,

turn to them the other cheek.

The armed conflict in El Salvador ended with a peace treaty

between the military and guerrilla groups.

Free elections were held,

but there were no in-depth social reforms.

The Berlin Wall had just fallen.

The end of History was hailed.

The age of the great utopias was over.

Oh Father our Father

When will this world be ours?

Our Father

Oh Father our Father

When will this world be ours?

Down with Bolsonaro!

Down with Bolsonaro!

When I first came to Brazil, in 2002,

I witnessed the first election win of Lula,

a former steelworker and resistant during the dictatorship.

I fell head over heels in love with this booming country,

which could only have a better future.

I could never have imagined that 16 years later

an ex-army officer rekindling the ghost of dictatorship.

Bolsonaro, never again!

Let's all say it together.

Bolsonaro, never again!

Down with mass murderer Bolsonaro!

A week ago

was the anniversary

of the 1964 coup

that introduced the dictatorship.

And Bolsonaro's gang of supporters

celebrated the coup.

They praised torture.

They defended torturers.

There's something I want to say here.

We're gathered here,

40 years later,

also to remember all those

who were killed

and tortured

by the military dictatorship in this country.

In 1969,

a group of young Dominican friars was arrested in São Paulo.

They were imprisoned, tortured

and accused of supporting the ALN,

the main armed attempted to overthrow the dictatorship.

53 years later,

Friar Betto revisits the place where he was questioned.

All of us Christians

are disciples of a political prisoner.

Many people have an idyllic view of Jesus.

He was very kind

and charitable.

If he were here, the world would be a better place.

Nobody wonders, or few people wonder,

"Why was he cruelly murdered?"

Because in the Kingdom of Caesar,

he dared announce the Kingdom of God,

the possibility of another kingdom.

The Kingdom is a political and civilizational project

based on two pillars:

interpersonal relations, which is love,

and social relations, which is the sharing of goods.

As Engels, Marx's partner,

states in his history of primitive Christianity,

the first Christians were to him the first communists,

because they shared their goods

and brought down the Roman Empire.

Marx who says religion is the opium of the people

is the same man who says

religion is the cry

from the heart of a heartless society.

It is a cry of protest, a cry of resistance.

Just read the full quotation.

Marx wasn't against religion.

He even wrote in a letter to Bakunin..

Bakunin suggested

that the First International

only accept self-declared atheists.

Marx replied to him, "You're mad.

We have to respect people's faith."

DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP

The Dominican Convent was under police watch.

All Mass services were recorded.

On the monastery walls, people wrote,

"Death to communist priests."

As a clergyman living in a Dominican conventual community in Sao Paulo,

I've never understood

how some friars and nuns can be against socialism.

Because we all live in a socialist microsociety.

We have to share our goods.

You can't set up your own material comfort in your room

when your neighbor doesn't have that.

Everything is socialized!

That's the word.

How can you not want that for society?

I don't understand.

We were convinced

that we had reached a moment when dictatorship didn't provide

any space for a nonviolent democratic struggle.

The regime started repressing student protests

very violently,

with guns, tanks and mounted police.

Our monastery

was famously a place

where the persecuted were given shelter.

We didn't only take in activists

of Marighella's group.

We took in activists of several groups,

who were seeking refuge.

Friar Tito de Alencar suffered the most brutal kinds of torture.

He never get ever it.

Thrown out of Brazil, he gave a testimony of his ordeal

short before committing suicide.

My name is Friar Tito de Alencar Lima.

I am 25 years old.

I am a friar.

I was tortured three days in a row.

On the third day, Captain Benoni Albernaz

tortured me for 20 consecutive hours.

On the fourth day, knowing I would be tortured again,

I attempted suicide by cutting my left wrist.

You still have a scar there.

Major Waldir said to me,

"Church is a great power

that has to be fought against.

Priests have to be tortured

to learn a lesson.

That's their way of saying,

"The only democratic institution in Brazil

is torture,

because it can be inflicted indiscriminately

on workers, priests, lawyers...

in short, on everyone.

It was impossible

for interrogators, who claimed to be Christians,

to understand that a clergyman, a friar...

could have embraced a revolutionary position,

while also using Marxism as a method to analyze reality.

In their heads,

I was a communist

who falsely posed as a clergyman.

I was a communist infiltrator in the Church.

They even did all they could to have us expelled by the Church,

which never happened, on the contrary.

In fact, until I went to prison,

I was convinced that my personal time would coincide with my historical time.

I would live to see Brazil as the socialist country

I was fighting for.

In prison, I Realized that I wouldn't.

However, my motto is, "Let's save pessimism for better days."

The Brazilian Church supported the military coup.

But little by little,

it became the main opponent of the dictatorship.

To many people, resistance was embodied in this frail looking man,

Hélder Câmara, the archbishop of Recife.

As he spoke out against torture,

Brazilian media wasn't allowed to mention him.

"We promise..."

"... with the help of God..."

"... to work united..."

"... with everyone in the community..."

"... to defend..."

"... our rights."

"The right to a home..."

"... and to freedom."

Hélder Câmara famously said,

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.

When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."

"... right to leisure."

The authorities say you advocate the revelation, monsignor.

Yes, tout I'm not afraid of that word.

If by revolution, we understand

a profound, even radical and quick change,

then I take the revolution!

-You're a revolutionary. -Yes.

But no bloody revolution.

The people are there We've conquered the square.

In the late 1970s, it became increasingly hard

for the dictatorship to contain the popular movements.

The Church gave refuge and a voice to social movements.

Its buildings hosted underground meetings,

tout also massive public assemblies

A powerful workers' movement emerged in Sao Paulo,

the country's industrial center.

1st MAY THE WORKERS' MASS

Jesus, the workers

have had to go on strike

to negotiate a small salary raise,

while big multinationals

make huge profits.

Jesus, help us to correct injustices.

So that the workers don't wait for liberation to fall from the sky,

but to stay united

to receive that gift from God...

The big Sao Paulo strikes shook the regime,

which never recovered.

I've said it from day 1.

And I insist on telling you this,

the greatest recognition to me, Lula,

would be getting arrested and tortured.

What about you, workers?

Lula! Lula! Lula!

Lula emerged as the movement leader.

On this banner, he is compared with Jesus.

He modeled the Workers' Party on the base ecclesial communities.

Also in rural areas,

hunger and anger were stronger than fear of the army.

Brazil was the last American country to abolish slavery,

In the most unequal country in the world,

land distribution has hardly changed since colonization.

In the late 1970s,

Catholic and Protestant Church members

accompanied a huge wave of land occupation by peasants.

South of Brazil,

1,500 landless peasant families invaded Fazenda Annoni:

10,000 hectares belonging to one landowner.

Father Arnildo Fritzen accompanied the occupation from the beginning.

We also bring the symbol of life,

the symbol of hope.

In our procession, we bring

the first child that was born

on Fazenda Annoni. This child is the symbol of life,

the symbol of hope,

the symbol of the land

we're fighting for so that everyone can live.

On a very cold winter evening,

I gave shelter at home, in the church over there,

to five families.

We lodged them in the office, in the bedroom, in the kitchen.

On that evening I read a biblical text to them,

which is to me

the key principle.

It's a text from The Book of Exodus,

in which God speaks to Moses and says,

"I have heard the cry of My people,

and I have made a decision

to rescue them from slavery."

And He says, "Moses,

go and negotiate with the Pharaoh

to rescue those people from slavery in Egypt."

I spent that evening meditating on that text.

On the following day we talked,

and I asked them a question I remember to this day.

"Who is that Moses

who must now go and negotiate with the Pharaoh

to rescue people from slavery?"

We had a very beautiful discussion

because they realized that it couldn't be only one person.

How could one person stand up against the government?

It's impossible.

They discussed it among themselves

and reached a consensus:

it was a collective person.

It had to be a group.

"We that are gathered here

must go and negotiate if with the government

to set everyone else free."

-The people united... -Will never be defeated.

Land reform..

Now!

The children united...

Will never be defeated!

The people organized...

Will never, be oppressed!

-Land reform... -Now!

When I first started

meeting with them there,

I noticed they had small crosses near their cabins?

They had an inscription that read "Save your soul."

So I asked them,

"Only our souls? What about our bodies?

You're living in great poverty, with nothing to eat and so on."

Little by little they began to develop the idea

that we have to save one's life.

One's life, not only their soul.

"And how can we represent our struggle to save lives?"

That's how the cross appeared.

It's a thick cross,

strong and rough, because it is heavy.

No one can carry it alone, it must be carried collectively.

The military dictatorship government

deployed massive repression

against the peasant camp.

A colonel was sent there

with all the military apparatus

to dismantle the camp.

It was a terrible moment,

because he rounded everyone up...

He summoned everyone

and delivered a speech typical of an army officer

who thinks people must die because they disobeyed him.

Squad, move forward in a column. Block the road.

Block the road, squad.

Moses led the way

Now we are Moses

Standing up against oppression

We are your people, Lord

-Land reform... -Now!

-We don't want war. -We want land!

Land reform!

Land conflicts in Brazil have claimed thousands of lives since the 1960s.

Despite repression, Fazenda Annoni conquered legality in 1993.

The occupations gave birth to the Landless Workers' Movement, MST.

Since it was set up,

over 5 million Brazilians have conquered land by fighting.

Darci Mascio is manager of the Fazenda Annoni cooperative.

In fact,

the priests helped you engage in reflection.

They didn't lead the movement.

We had to lead it.

I was young and single.

It was different.

But we had a great responsibility on our backs,

because 1,500 families relied on us.

They relied on us and we couldn't make any faux pas

or make false promises to our comrades.

I mean, you'd get a piece of plastic sheeting.

You'd turn that into your home...

That...

Nowadays,

it may sound I'm being nostalgic.

But that's a reality that few people today would have the courage to face.

A month went by, then two months.

Then six months, a year,

two years, three years...

And you kept living under a black tent,

hoping to get a plot of land.

Without these people by our side

whose faith helped us to resist,

we wouldn't have resisted.

There wasn't a real land reform under Lula.

The Left failed to correct inequalities,

despite all hopes placed on it.

Forty years after it was set up,

the MST is still claiming its promised land.

MST!

Fighting to the end.

-When do we want-land reform? -Now.

-When? -Now.

Streets and highways are spaces of political struggle.

Young people who dare fight!

1979.

A revolution finally triumphed in Latin America

for the first time since Cuba.

After two decades of coups d'état and crushed revolutions,

the people of Nicaragua ousted the Somoza dynasty:

three generations of dictators in the pay of Washington.

Four priests took part in the first Sandinista government.

The most famous one of them was Ernesto Cardenal.

Also a poet, he came out from underground after two years in exile.

What we are all feeling new in Nicaragua

is like we're living in a dream.

But this dream is a reality.

Nicaragua without the National Guard!

This is the dawn of a new day.

A country without terror,

without dynastic tyranny.

Comrades, a new day has dawned.

It's already here.

To many Christians, on that day,

it felt like the Kingdom of God had come.

It was the fulfilment of the message of the Liberation Church,

whose influence kept growing in Latin America since the 1960s.

Maria Lopez Vigil, a journalist and a theologian,

was one of thousands of Catholics

who Game to Nicaragua to experience the revolutionary process.

I was someone

who found, in Liberation Theology,

the meaning of her own life.

Liberation Theology is not a theory.

It's a praxis.

It is a way of being in the world.

And it spread greatly in Latin America.

That's why it was a cultural revolution.

Its central idea is:

God is not neutral.

God is on the side of the poor.

The poor are not good.

They may be good, bad or very bad.

Not because they're poor.

The poor aren't good, they're poor.

You have to support them

so that they stop being poor.

That idea is central to Liberation Theology.

A society in which people starve to death

is a society in sin.

Why?

Because hunger can be prevented,

and hunger has structural reasons.

Therefore, there are structural sins.

What are those structural sins?

Well, ignorance.

A society that doesn't provide education.

A society that doesn't ensure food to everyone.

Sin isn't only about personal issues.

And it is not God that is offended by sin.

Sin offends other men and women,

the others around. Right?

The greater the power, the more accountable the sin is.

When Liberation Theology referred to personal sin,

personal sin would be failing to contribute to change,

in a society that lives in structural sin.

But that's not about my own relationship with God,

about an offense against God.

Nobody offends God.

I mean, is God so weak that He can be offended by me?

That's absurd.

Offense is always done against another person,

either because I did something or because I failed to do something.

Liberation Theology taught us that.

You are the God of the poor

The God who's humane and modest

The God who sweats on the streets

The God whose face is tanned

That's why I talk to you

The way my people talk

Because you are the working God

Jesus Christ the worker

The Church was deeply divided by the Revelation.

Rafael Aragón, a Spanish priest,

accompanied it along the ten years of the Sandinista experience.

The Sandinista Revolution

wouldn't have been successful without the participation

of the majority of Nicaraguan people,

who were Christians.

Most of them are Christians.

So the massive participation of the people...

Not of the Church hierarchy.

The Church hierarchy never approved

of the participation of Christians in the revolutionary process.

Never.

Hence, the slogan that went

"Between Christianity and Revolution, there is no contradiction."

Because they were fully engaged

in the revolutionary process.

They didn't feel there was any contradiction

in organizing the people in the Literacy Crusade,

or in organizing the people in the public health brigades.

Those are

Christian values:

teaching how to read,

providing medical care for the sick.

You couldn't question that!

We all took part in the Literacy Crusade with great enthusiasm.

We used Paulo Freire's method,

pedagogy of the oppressed, obviously.

The aim was to raise awareness beyond teaching people to read and write.

It was about making the poor aware

of their dignity as people and of their possibility

to transform themselves

from poor and resigned people

into agents of a transforming commitment.

There was great enthusiasm,

but we also criticized things.

I remember that in my first homily in San Judas,

up on the hill,

in memory of those who had died, the martyrs,

I said we shouldn't absolutize the Revolution.

We had to be critical. As I entered the neighborhood,

I saw many Sandinistas

looting the houses of army officers.

So I said, "We have won the war.

Now let's seek reconciliation and peace,

not revenge.

How and when did you realize

the Revolution wouldn't turn out exactly

the way you had dreamed it.

Listen,

when you have a critical eye, you realize that in all processes.

Plus, the very harsh reality of the counter-revolutionary war

didn't allow you to make a strong criticism.

If you criticized the government,

you were reproducing the US discourse.

Much can be said against the mistakes of this revolution

and its leaders' dogmatism.

But how could we forget the Contra War?

The counter-revolutionary war funded by Reagan

claimed over 30,000 lives.

Long live the fight

in defense of our nation.

When Pope John Paul II announced his visit,

the people expected strong words for peace,

against the attack on Nicaragua.

4 March 1983.

That's when the Pope came here.

Pope John Paul II destroyed

the cultural momentum and the cultural transformation

which Liberation Theology produced in Latin America.

He was from Poland and an anticommunist.

He viewed the Nicaraguan Revolution as communism.

Right?

I was asked to cover the Pope's visit in Managua.

Therefore, the first act took place at the airport.

We had made a gigantic mural that read,

"Nicaragua is free thanks to God and the Revolution."

That was written in gigantic letters.

As soon as he disembarked at the airport, I saw him.

The minute I saw him, I knew there would be trouble.

Because his expression transpired

rage.

As a journalist, I drew a portrait

of Karol Wojtyla:

"He's Polish, and he's coming with the best of intentions

to see what's going on in Nicaragua..." Bla bla bla.

He was greeting

the ministers, who were lined up,

and got to Ernesto Cardenal, Minister of Culture.

Ernesto knelt expecting to receive the Pope's blessing

or to kiss his hand.

The Pope wagged his finger like this

and went away.

Ernesto got back up.

I was near them.

An Associated Press journalist came running

and asked me, "What did the Pope say to Ernesto?"

Ernesto, rather naughtily,

cunningly,

said, "I believe it proper to say he blessed me."

That's what I said to that journalist,

and in the first wire issued about the Pope's visit,

the Associated Press said the Pope Had blessed Ernesto.

BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND REVOLUTION THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION

MONSIGNOR ROMERO SHOWED US THE WAY WELCOME JOHN PAUL

WELCOME TO FREE NICARAGUA THANKS TO GOD AND THE REVOLUTION

My dear brothers and sisters,

when Christians

prefer any other doctrine or ideology

to the teachings of the Apostles and the Church

the unity of the Church is weakened!

We want peace!

Silence.

The Church is the first to want peace!

We want peace!

Jesus Christ!

It ended badly.

When the Pope left the square for the airport,

he was very frightened.

You could see it, he was practically running away.

It showed us that John Paul II wasn't neutral.

What hurt the most was the indignation of the modest people,

who thought, "The Pope doesn’t love us.

The Pope loves some, and doesn't love others.

Power to the people.

On 4 March, Pope John Paul II

refused to extend his hand to Ernesto.

The following day, he extended it to Roberto D’Aubuisson,

the President of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador

back then, in 1983.

He was the intellectual assassin of Monsignor Romero,

and we knew that already.

Liberation Theology played a role at a moment in history.

At the current moment in history,

I think that it simply doesn't exist.

It didn't die, it was murdered

by the violent cultural war

that Pope John Paul II waged against it.

Seminaries were closed, media outlets were closed.

Priests and nuns were killed,

because they were practically all

followers of Liberation Theology,

knowingly or not.,

The conflict with the Vatican and the Contras

considerably weakened the Revolution.

After ten years at war, the Sandinista Front lost the elections.

It same back to power in 2006, determined to never lose it again.

The revolutionary symbols are now merely a kitschy setting

for a regime whose sole goal is to outlive itself.

Its leader, Daniel Ortega, crushes all opposition.

He murders protesters by the hundreds

and sends to prison his former Liberation Theology comrades.

The Front concentrated on fighting

for economic and political power,

and forgot the people.

Union leaders became businessmen.

And they didn't step down as union leaders.

They're businessmen who decide what the workers have to do.

The neighborhood associations were extinguished.

The women's associations were closed.

Because they focused on articulating the big economic power.

Daniel Ortega is perhaps now

one of Nicaragua's big tycoons.

This happened because they lost the ideological,

conceptual and political foundations of revolution.

If I say what I truly think at Sunday Mass,

I get taken to prison.

Rafael Aragón went into exile a few weeks after our interview.

He was banished from the country to which he devoted 45 years of his life.

In Managua as everywhere else,

Liberation Christianity is kicked out of the churches.

Only its frescoes are left,

a shameful legacy, the Catholic hierarchy tries to erase.

Liberation Theology didn't only support the poor and resistance to tyranny.

It also embodied the most radical internal critique of the Church

since the Reformation.

I went to meet one of its founders,

Leonardo Boff, of Brazil.

Religion has two roles.

One of them is to appease the poor to prevent the revolution.

The other one is to justify the rich,

because if the rich are good and hand out alms,

they're following the Gospel and securing eternal salvation.

When; in the"fourth century AD,

the Church joined forces with the power

and took on all the imperial symbols,

which endure to this day in popes' and cardinals' regalia,

like the tiara and the stole...

The Catholic Church has a lot of rites, pomp,

glory and palaces.

The base communities, on the other hand,

who read the Gospel say,

"But Jesus was poor.

He didn't create any seminaries, or bishops and priests.

Why do we have those?"

So there's a conflict between the base Church,

which follows historical Jesus,

and the hierarchical Church, which follows glorified Christ,

the Pantocrator, the universal king.

He's a far cry from Jesus of Nazareth,

who was poor like us.

He didn't die from being run over by a horse or a camel.

He died on the cross, howling in despair.

A key moment in your life and work

was the publishing of your book Church, Charism and Power.

Why did that book bother the Vatican so much?

Liberation Theology expressed a critique of society and oppression.

However, no liberation theologian criticized the Church's structures,

because they said the real enemy was the Capital system,

not the Church.

I said, "If the Church advocates liberation,

"it has to have internal liberation relations,

but it doesn't embrace those liberations.

It marginalizes laypeople.

It renders women invisible.

It centralizes power in priests, bishops and popes.

And it easily forms alliances with the powerful,

through its very structure.

So the Church is internally oppressive.

And if it is to have legitimacy

in demanding liberation in society,

it has to embody the principle of liberation itself.

Rome didn't understand that.

The Vatican didn't like it.

They summoned me and said,

"Since your book has been read across the Church,

you will be tried here in Rome."

I had the honor to sit on the same chair Galileo Galilei sat on.

I paid veneration to it.

The cardinal was furious:

"Sit there and defend your faith!"

I asked what faith.

He said, "I determine it."

I said, "You don't determine faith, the creed does."

You're not entitled to know who accused you.

You're not entitled to a lawyer.

You're not entitled to defense.

I said to Ratzinger,

"The Vatican is behind the Soviet Union,

which is atheist.

Over there, defendants have lawyers.

And they have access to the court minutes.

You don't have that."

The sentence was obsequious silence.

Indefinitely.

I wasn't allowed to speak or write or lecture.

Why did you decide to leave ministry?

When the Earth Summit was held in Rio, in 1992,

I said the Abrahamic religions

- Judaism, Christianity and Islam - were the most belligerent ones.

At the end of my lecture Cardinal Baggio,

who was the nuncio of Brazil,

withdrew his hand when I greeted him.

He said, "You've learned nothing from obsequious silence.

You have offended the Church again,

by saying it wages wars."

I replied, "Yes! It burnt thousands of witches.

It fought the Hundred Years' War.

It's always fighting wars.

So he said, "You have until noon tomorrow to choose

either the Philippines, which has a Franciscan Convent,

or South Korea, which also has Franciscans.

I said, "I'm 50 years old.

I'm not going.

The first time I accepted silence, it was an act of humility.

This is humiliation.

Humiliating is a sin, I won't accept it."

He said, "You have until noon tomorrow.'

I replied, "I have decided, I won't go."

"So go your own way," he said.

And I had to leave ministry.

He convicted about 114 theologians, both men and women.

From Spain, Latin America, North America, Germany...

They created a closed church

and appointed conservative bishops everywhere,

most of whom had trained in canon law.

That's the worst school for a bishop.

There's no pastoral vision to listen to the people.

It's all about laws and rules.

I have often traveled in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state.

12 indigenous peoples have survived the genocide

perpetrated by the cross and sword alliance.

They were able to appropriate the colonizers' religion.

Liberation Theology took root in Chiapas in the 1960s

driven by a young archbishop named Samuel Ruiz.

He often said he was more interested in liberation than in theology.

Friar Gonzalo Ituarte was at his side for decades.

Although I'm Mexican,

that part of Mexico was like another planet to me.

It was a totally different world

from the one I had heard of,

where Native Indians had been heroes in the past

and our old civilizations had built pyramids,

the glory of the dead natives.

What I found there was the misery of the living natives.

When I arrived in Chiapas,

you could still notice among the older generations

the signs of very harsh living conditions.

Women with no teeth.

Their skin was nearly green as a result of diseases.

Many blind people.

Conditions were dramatic!

The indigenous people,

even if they lived isolated in traditional indigenous villages,

considered themselves inferior to white people,

"the people of reason" as they called them.

"There are natives and people of reason."

Their submission was fully internalized.

A culture had been created

of normalized servitude.

Native Indians were supposed to serve their master,

they were supposed to serve the hacienda or the estate owner

And they were supposed to listen to priests and teachers.

Their dependence was taken as natural.

And religion played a major role

because it was the estate owner

that took the priest there.

The priest stayed with the owner at the Big House.

Then he'd see the natives, sprinkle them with holy water.

He'd administer the main sacraments, especially baptism.

And that's all.

There was this natural conviction

that religion

acknowledged that God wanted it to be that way.

Their poverty and dependence was natural because it was the will of God.

God Almighty

By the sign of the Holy Cross,

of our enemies, deliver us oh Lord.

God Almighty, please grant health to the Chamulas.

Do not forget us, your children, who are so poor.

Let not white people harm us.

It was in that context

that bishop Samuel Ruiz came along, in 1960.

Don Samuel decided he would change his accommodation

from the owner's to the natives' house.

When he visited a community, he didn't stay with the boss.

He went to the natives' cabins and huts,

and he lived with them.

That spurred a quick reaction from the landowners,

who felt they were losing

the Church, which they had always kept protected

and at their own service.

Good morning, my brother.

Good morning, my brother.

God's Word was transferred to them.

Priests and nuns no longer did the teaching.

Native Indians who had been trained by the diocese

read the Gospel in their own language within their communities,

with a participative methodology.

They aren't poor because they don't work.

Much on the contrary.

They're poor because they work hard,

but the fruit of their work goes elsewhere.

That's what needs changing.

So in 1974,

an indigenous congress was held

to promote a dialogue among all representatives

in order to discuss their life in the faith,

especially in relation to their reality.

Don Samuel organized that congress.

They started thinking about and discussing

the conditions of the Tzetal, the Tzotzil,

the Ch'ol, the Tojolabal

in the different areas of Chiapas.

They found out there were tens of thousands of them,

who were all excluded and rejected.

So they took into their own hands the fight for land,

for healthcare, education, trade,

and they set up organizations.

The big question is, who does this land belong to?

Back then, there were farm laborers whose forefathers were born there.

However, the land didn't belong to them.

So they wondered, "Who owns this land we have worked for generations?

Who does the land belong to?"

The answer was, "This land is ours.

This land, which God gave our Mayan forefathers,

is no one's property, not even ours.

This land is our life.

The Church was accused of driving the natives to rebel.

Father Joel Padron was sent to prison for his work with the natives.

There was a land recovery process.

It entailed a great deal of violence.

The 1980s were very difficult years,

with extremely severe repression everywhere in Chiapas.

The alleged landowner didn't live on the estate,

in the community.

He lived in the city.

He appointed a manager.

So everyone worked

for the landowner.

So they spoke to the landowners

and said,

"Listen, you owe us a lot of money.

Because as laborers,

we need fair wages, so you owe us a certain amount

a day.

And you've owed us this since our grandparents."

So the landowners owed the natives

four or five times the value of the property.

That was, let's say, the land recovery process.

Eventually they said, "This land is ours,

you're not allowed here anymore."

WE WANT LAND

WE WANT DECENT HOMES

On New Year's night 1994,

the Zapatista Army of National Liberation burst into history,

taking by surprise several Chiapas towns.

As the free trade agreement with the US came into force,

thousands of natives negated neoliberal globalization's triumphant discourse.

They let out a dry to the world:

Ya basta! Enough!

The uprising triggered massive popular support.

Zapata is alive!

For the first time, a guerrilla movement didn't claim power,

but justice and democracy for everyone.

Their guns weren't an end,

but the means to make themselves heard.

Like many others, I was fascinated by their spokesman,

Subcomandante Marcos.

A white atheist, Marcos sometimes overshadowed his native comrades.

David, Ester, Josue, Zebedee, Moises, Abraham...

The biblical origins of their monikers weren't accidental.

Many Zapatista leaders were former catechists.

We were accused of founding the Zapatista Army.

As I have very often said,

without the diocese, the Zapatista Army wouldn't have developed.

For sure, organization and awareness

provided the breeding ground that made possible Zapatista action.

But it was their action.

We respected it, but it was independent,

and yet they put it down to us.

Besides, the Zapatistas were out there flying the flags

of what we had, for many years, fought for with the people.

Shortly after the uprising, I was accused of being Marcos.

They would say I was Marcos,

big stories would come out

in the country's most popular magazines,

"Joel Padron is Marcos"

They drew a sketch with a photo of Marcos

and a drawing of my face, because that's all they had.

They drew me with a balaclava,

to make me look like Marcos.

That was probably the most absurd part.

Don Samuel was also accused...

Just the same.

They said he was the commander.

Marcos was the sub-commander

and Don Samuel was the commander.

Samuel Ruiz mediated the negotiations between Zapatistas and government.

The agreement marked a watershed in indigenous rights.

But the state never kept its word.

It continued to wage a low-intensity war:

military deployment, the arming of paramilitary groups,

corruption and the dividing of communities,

forced displacement.

In 1997, in Acteal,

45 natives were murdered while they prayed.

That state crime remains unpunished to this day.

Despite persecution, the Zapatista territories continue

their fascinating self-government experiment,

with full independence of the state.

EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE NOT FOR OURSELVES

COUNCIL OF GOOD GOVERNMENT

May the Lord remind us

how we started to build His church

and the mission He gave us from the beginning.

The Gospel says, He called the twelve to Himself

and began to send them out two by two

to spread the Good News.

This is very important, brothers and sisters.

In the Church, there is no place for individualism.

Individualism is the beginning, let's say...

of death.

In the Church, there is no place for inequality.

There is no place for arrogance.

No one is better than anyone. No!

Two brothers,

with the same dignity,

the same rights, the same commitment.

Nobody will defeat us if we go united.

There will always be someone there to protect us.

That's why

those who have power try to divide us, isn't it?

Two by two. Together side by side.

Such is the Church.

True praying isn't about reciting.

The Lord's Prayer sounds like words, but it's a program, absolutely.

"Your kingdom of justice come." Let it come.

But who's going to bring it?

If I myself don't do the things I am praying,

that's not praying.

Our Lord's Prayer

has to be lived, it has to be performed.

It's not about saying it.

"Our daily bread" is like "You give them something to eat."

You! Share what you have fairly.

It's for everyone.

For everyone.

You give them something to eat.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

Our daily bread.

That's not about accumulation,

which defines the entire capitalistic economic system,

or neoliberal, or whatever.

The daily bread principle

is about ensuring your right to not go hungry today.

But you're not supposed to accumulate either.

A Jesuit allegedly said,

"Poor Mexico,

so far from God and so close to the United States."

Everyday, thousands leave Central America.

They stow away on a freight train to cross Mexico.

It was dubbed "la Bestia, the Beast,

because of all the disappeared it has devoured.

Liberation Theology aimed for something beyond charity,

where "Love Thy Neighbor" was effective and promoted collective emancipation.

How do you do that when the poor are fragmented,

dumped on roads, dreaming of their own individual utopias.

I asked Sister Dolores Palencia that question.

She gives them shelter during a break on the road to exile.

If you're going away, be very careful about the train.

You have to take the through train.

Be careful. Orizaba is a place

where they're not fond of you.

Most of all, if they say "Let's go to the refuge",

ignore them.

There's no refuge in Orizaba.

Also, be prepared.

Migration authorities have carried out operations in Apizaco lately.

Be very careful in the Guanajuato area.

All those areas are very dangerous

for you and for everyone,

because of cartel fighting.

There are shoot-outs there every day.

Is that clear?

-Are there any questions? -No.

It is part of Liberation Theology

having to constantly confront, since Jesus,

all aspects pf life.

Even becoming a(disturbance

when necessary?

Well, yes.

Yes, I think it's a difficult balance,

particularly now.

My congregation aims to seek communion and reconciliation.

Seeking communion and reconciliation when you support the poor

can be very(difficult,

because you must confront.

It's awful when you ask a migrant in an interview,

"Were you the victim of a robbery, an attack,

kidnapping or anything on your journey?"

And they answer, "The normal stuff."

That sounds awful to me.

The first thing I say is, "There's nothing normal about that.

It's not normal for someone to attack you, or rob you,

or kidnap you."

It's about engaging in a process to change mindsets,

to restore someone’s sense of their own value.

In migrants you find

the cross and suffering,

but also a lot of resurrection.

In general, migrants are people of great hope,

and they always have a dream, a utopia.

They have a lot of freedom,

as they can get rid of everything on the road to keep going.

Some have been here three, four, five times.

I think we have to believe because after all

Jesus vanquished death and evil.

And that's our hope.

If we don't have hope now, and if we don't inspire hope,

we'll be contributing to a general collapse.

What remains of Liberation Theology?

I'm back in Brazil, where the movement was stronger than anywhere else.

Marginalized by the Vatican,

it gradually disappeared from the favelas.

I've often heard the following disenchanted joke:

If Liberation Theology chose the poor,

the poor chose the Evangelical churches.

I will place the money in your hands.

I will place the passport in your hands.

I know you better than you do yourself.

I was there when someone turned their back on you.

The day you were raped, I was your father and your mother.

I feel the grace of God to say to someone

the demon doesn't want to put a gun to your head and shoot.

I don't want that disease to kill you.

I don't want that trauma to kill you.

I don't want that depression to kill you.

Crack cocaine will go away.

The demon will go away.

Your misfortune will go away. Your disease will go away.

Your depression will go away.

Open your mouth. It has gone away.

Open your mouth to worship this God.

God saves your soul.

People will want to follow your path,

because I turn you into someone to turn to.

I live 100% for this ministry,

preaching and teaching theology.

Go there, we accept instant payments, credit and debit cards.

Have some biscuits and a coffee.

You'll be blessed, and you'll be helping me

to continue God's work.

Amen.

In Sao Paulo, all the movie theaters

became Charismatic churches,

which was all about suppressing the Church's revolutionary drive,

suppressing the Church's transforming drive.

Good morning.

He has something for you.

Must be a bill he needs to pay.

This is for you.

-Thank you. -You're welcome.

I just got a Saint Joseph.

How to believe in the coming of the Kingdom

when it has never seemed so far away.

Father Julio Lancellotti has lived for over 30 years with "the street people”.

The far right hates him.

In a meritocratic society,

living with those no one wants around

is an act of rebellion or insubordination.

What's the use of living with the poor?

Within the Establishment, it's useless.

Father Julio, pleased to see you.

It's about trying to see reality as it is.

Hence: See, Judge, Act.

Seeing: why am I poor?

Is it because I'm worthless? Or lazy?

Or a bum?

Or am I poor because poverty is produced?

Because the socioeconomic model produces and refuses.

I am a refuse.

Being a refuse, how am I going to fight

to live in dignity?

Why do some people have all the food in the world

while others have nothing?

A new day will come

A new sky, a new land, a new sea

And on that day

The oppressed

Will join their voices to sing freedom

On this Good Friday,

we're once again united,

carrying Jesus' Cross.

Let's gather outside public bureau buildings, town halls,

regional administration buildings.

Fascists, never again!

No more violence against our brothers and sisters in the streets.

Stop destroying homeless camps.

No more violence!

Let's all say, "Violence, never again!"

"Violence, never again!"

Those who seize things from street people are cowards.

Street people,

raise your fists and say,

"Mr. Mayor, come and live one day

on the sidewalk

to see if you can survive."

We strongly supported the Sandinista Revolution.

Look at Nicaragua's government now, the Sandinistas' struggle has vanished.

All the struggle in El Salvador.

Don Oscar Romero's struggle and martyrdom.

If you look at history objectively,

they all lost.

None of them won.

So we don't fight to achieve victory.

We fight for loyalty.

In this establishment we will lose,

but we will fight.

Mine is a defeated man's struggle.

Members of the Mangueira samba school,

let's sing Jesus of the People,

for all Our Ladies of Sorrows Brazil,

for tolerance, for love and for the joy of living.

Mangueira, dance Your samba is a prayer

Because of the power it has

Mangueira They'll say you have sinned

But I am on your side And on the side of samba as well

I am from the favela of Nazareth

Black face, Indian blood, a woman's body

A ragged kid in the heat of the hood

My name is Jesus of the People

I was born with my heart open My fist clenched

My father, an unemployed carpenter

My mother is Maria of Sorrows Brazil

I wipe the sweat of those going up and down the hill

I find myself in love that knows no borders

You'll see me in the ranks against oppression

I am hanging ail over the place On walls and mountain tops

But has everyone understood my message?

Once again my body has been pierced with nails

By the prophets of intolerance

Not knowing that hope

Shines brighter in the dark

Favela, get smart

There's no future without sharing And no Messiah with a gun

We don't always know why we make a movie.

I didn't undertake this one to find a faith that faded long ago.

I wanted to meet these believers

perhaps to try and keep up my faith in justice

in these times of darkness.

I envy them for the compass they have,

their faith that moves mountains,

their faith that laughs in the face of fear.

If they are the vanquished of history, their cause remains invincible.