Even the Rain

There's a movie I watched recently that ren.der.ed. me. speechless man (and since then I've watched it three more times)... and I'm not even kidding you that it impacted me so much that I now consider it my favorite movie ever. It's called "Even the Rain" and it deals with the tension that exists between many of the indigenous people and the 'conquistadors' in much of all the Americas.

The movie is like "a movie within a movie within a movie" because it's about a group of actors who are filming a historical piece in Cochabamba Bolivia about the colonization of the indigenous people while they simultaneously do a documentary about what happens to their actors and their "extras" in real life.

Really ironic picture with Franklin and I and a colonizer statue 

...I don't want to explain the whole story, because it'd be cooler if you just watched the movie on your own, but basically, the craziest irony in it all is that the injustice and segregation that existed between the indigenous folk and the colonizers hundreds of years back - those injustices continue to exist today, in some form or another, between citizens of the higher classes towards people from the lower classes... especially against the  indigenous people for example, in countries like Peru and Bolivia.

There's a part where the actor who acts like the director (and yeah - I know that that sounds really contradictory but that's honestly the way it is)... the director feels like he's spent and he just wants to throw in the towel and quit filming, but his best friend who is charge of all the logistics approaches him and reminds him of the instance in which he realized that his friend had truly gotten inspired, and that this movie about showing the whole world the tragedy of the brutality and exploitation of the conquistadors towards the indigenous people - this movie was definitely worth finishing...

It was definitely worth finishing because the presently disheartened director had called his friend some seven years back at like two in the morning telling him that he had found a quote by a priest named Montessinos in the sixteenth century that was the first "voice of conscience" in the New World.

To this priest (and that, as if it were just one man against a whole empire), from a humble structure made of straw, it is attributed to have said the following:    
    

I am the voice of Christ from the desert of this island.
You are in mortal sin.
You live in it and in it you die.

One of the first pictures I took in San Jose (smiling Nukak man)

Why? Because of the cruelty and tyranny with which you use against these innocent people. Tell me this: with what right, and with what kind of justice do you so cruelly and horribly enslave these indigenous people who lived so peacefully in their lands? With what authority have you initiated such detestable wars with these people? With what right do you have them so oppressed? So exhausted and famished? They are dying because of our own fault! Or better said you are killing them! How could you be so asleep? How could you be so zoned out in this lethargic dream?... Look at the indians in their eyes! Are they not human? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not by chance obligated to love them as you would yourself?

Are we not by chance obligated to love our neighbor as we would ourselves (Mark 12:31)?

Yes, we are.

And I have never seen a better example of a group of people that are following through with this commandment so clearly - especially towards indigenous people - like the missionaries I got to serve and serve along with, when I lived in San Jose such as Johan and Lyda, Jack, Suso and Elga, America, Julio and Nadia, and Gustavo and Rosiris.

                    

           

              

...In contrast with the conquistadors that left it all in the sixteenth century in the pursuit of gold - these missionaries that I just mentioned left it all in the twenty and twenty first centuries as a result of the joy that the discovery of the love of Christ produced in them when they were compelled to share it with others (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

Amen!

Would you like to join in this mission as well?

Above: Working with people from "El Refugio" community the first time I met them in 2009.
Top Middle: Visiting the Perafan parents from the Refugio community with some of my best friends from San Jose in 2010.
Bottom Middle: Acting like a goof with Adrian Perafan in 2011
Bottom: Nathan Harris and I visiting Adrian and his brother in 2012
Remark: All of the people from the Refugio community are really cool and speak Spanish but currently have no missionary working with them.