Tag: Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada

  • La fiesta de la Ruah divina Reflexiones sobre la memoria viva de los pueblos en movimientoAntún Kojtom | Mural 500 OP Chiapas | Detail: sketch of Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada with Lacandon Sage | Sots´leb, 2026

    The Feast of the Divine Ruah Reflections on the living memory of peoples on the move

    By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

    Fifty days after Easter, Christian communities around the world celebrate the overabundance of divine love, reaping the fruits of the messianic age, gathered with joy in the midst of suffering, as the Hebrew poet says: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:5).

    Two thousand years ago, after mourning the brutal execution of Jesus, the Galilean, by the Roman Empire—in collusion with the Temple authorities of Jerusalem and the enraged mob as part of the infernal mimetic cycle—a period of mourning was necessary for his community of friends and companions to grasp the senselessness of the innocent's death. This question still arises today in the grieving hearts of those who have survived lynchings, both ancient and modern. It is a questioning of the meaning of absence that also beats in the hearts of the Mothers Searching for their disappeared children in Mexico today, a cry that becomes a plea to find their offspring and help them "come home.".

    Celebrate that Love is as strong as death and, even more, that Love conquers hate or that Life resists and re-exists At first glance, it seems like an evasion that ignores the suffering of the victims and the urgency of justice. On the contrary, it seems to me that precisely in that hopeful suffering The heart beats with the ethical, political, and spiritual indignation of survivors of so much violence. A cry that is expressed in the public squares of Gaza and Tehran, Beirut and Mexico, Kakuma and Dadaab in Kenya, by those who dedicate their bodies, hearts, and minds to the service of life in the midst of death.

    The celebration of Pentecost is rooted in the joy of peoples who, after confronting horror, are able to go further in healing from trauma and quietly cultivating hope. Without denying the painful past, nor the undeniable need to hold the perpetrators accountable, what matters to those who survived is to stand up and live again with hope. This is what I have been learning, step by step, from the collectives queer/cuir  who face gender phobias of various kinds, women facing abuse and femicide, as well as indigenous peoples who strengthen their resistance through processes of autonomy of bodies and territories, from the Inuit in Canada to the Mapuche in the far south of our continent.

    How can we celebrate the harvest of the divine Ruah in these times of such profound uncertainty? We are witnessing alarming signs of a return to barbarism at the hands of genocidal governments in the Middle East and Africa, as well as in failed states trapped by the complicity of their rulers with transnational criminal organizations, as is the case in Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. This spiral of genocidal hatred is being transmitted in real time through the attacks of the Israeli Zionist state, which is committing crimes against humanity with the complicity of the United States and the European Union, and the indifference of the international community, against entire populations that stand in the way of its geopolitical power.

    Strengthening resistance movements must also confront fundamental debates to find the path to utopia in times of dystopia. Collective memory, which lies at the heart of these processes, is now a battleground. Who tells the story and how they tell it are questions the Zapatistas in Chiapas, like the Sumud Global Flotilla, are asking themselves, attempting to give visibility to those who always remain in the shadows of the power that kills.

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    We Dominicans are not exempt from these debates, especially now that we commemorate 500 years since the arrival of the friars to what we now call Veracruz in Mexico, on July 25, 1526. The great feat of evangelization—which undoubtedly brought missionaries inspired by Renaissance utopia and by the zeal for reform of the religious orders to return to their origins of following Christ—was also marked by the libido dominandi of the conquerors who followed that maxim of Western modernity so forcefully expressed by Enrique Dussel: conquiro, ergo sum, that is, "I conquer, therefore I am".

    When recounting the history of the Dominican presence in this region of the continent—called Tierra Firme by Western navigators and Mesoamerica by later geographers—we cannot forget that a fundamental contradiction marked the evangelizing work of the Dominican friars in the 16th century, as rigorously studied by Friar Daniel Ulloa Herrero in his doctoral dissertation at El Colegio de México: an observant current led by Friar Domingo de Betanzos, and a prophetic tendency championed by Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. Undoubtedly, there were many nuances between these two tendencies when it came to evangelizing the colonized lands that later gave rise to the golden age of New Spain, the era of the Baroque churches along the Dominican route from Mexico City to Guatemala, traversing the entire central and southern regions of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

    The splendor of the Baroque art of the convent churches of Puebla, Oaxaca, and Chiapas has shaped a worldview in which Mexico was the axis mundi From that early era of modernity, a meeting point between Asia and Europe, Mexico City was also a laboratory for cosmopolitan culture, as Friar Julián Pablo Fernández liked to say when he was prior of the ruins of the Imperial Convent of Santo Domingo in Mexico City. This era gave birth to a Creole and mestizo culture of universal value, as UNAM historian José Rubén Romero Galván recounts. However, we cannot forget that this Creole culture subjugated and rendered invisible the Indigenous peoples, as contemporary decolonial readings emphasize.

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    These reflections come to mind when accompanying a great Tseltal Maya painter, the master Antún Kojtom, who is currently creating a mural commemorating the arrival of the Dominicans in Chiapas, on a wall located in the main square of Sots'leb, between the temple and the market, in the municipal capital of Zinacantán.

    For the past six months we have been discussing the narrative of the emerging mural, emphasizing what we now call a "dialogue of knowledge" between the Mayan peoples of Chiapas and the Dominican friars.

    We chose a tone conversational The mural depicts scenes that highlight the ancestral religion of the Tsotsil people, particularly their religious roles such as grandmothers, seers, and stewards, with their ritual prayers on the hills, ancestral blessings, and community responsibilities. Through this narrative, we seek to underscore the centuries-old legacy that remains alive today in the pastoral life of the parish of San Lorenzo Mártir in Zinacantán.

    In the center of the mural appears the meeting between a Tsotsil steward and a Dominican friar, Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, both standing with the same dignity, exchanging words, each with his symbol of authority, the staff of command for the first, the Bible for the second.

    On the right, a third scene brings together the prophetic Church that has flourished in the Highlands of Chiapas and the Lacandon Jungle from the 16th century to the present day: a group of friars, with Friar Matías de Córdoba who promoted the independence of Chiapas in the 19th century and Friar Raúl Vera with jTotik Samuel beside him, bishops of the Church of the poor and excluded in the 20th century. Above their heads, like kites moved by the wind of the divine Ruah, are the martyrs of the San Cristóbal Church of recent decades: Ignacio Pérez López, pre-deacon of Chicomuselo, Father Marcelo Pérez, parish priest of Guadalupe in Jobel, Simón Pedro Pérez López, member of Las Abejas de Acteal, and Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, survivor of the Acteal massacre.

    On the far right appears a highly symbolic scene for the recreation of the historical memory of the Dominican friars in Chiapas, recounting stories of creative rebellion: Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada conversing with a Lacandon sage, both seated on rocks in the shade of a large ceiba tree, the sacred tree of the Maya, with the glyphs of the flowery word emerging from their mouths. The friar moves his hands, signifying eloquence, as he listens. The Lacandon sage touches his heart with one hand and points to Mother Earth with the other. One is dressed in his white habit and black cape; the other, adorned with a jade necklace and white loincloth. They are accompanied by a group of Lacandon women, young people, and children, attentive to the dialogue. This scene seeks to represent the apostolic adventure undertaken by a friar who wanted to go beyond the limits of Christian norms, as Jan de Vos masterfully recounts in his biography of Friar Pedro Lorenzo. What we felt was most important to highlight about the founder of modern Palenque was the audacity of the rebellious friar who "went into nowhere," as the prior of the Santo Domingo de San Cristóbal convent told him when Friar Pedro Lorenzo insisted on going into the jungle to find its inhabitants and announce the Good News. Escaping from the convent, he was lost for several years, later reappearing in the land of the Tsendal people, where he founded Palenque. During his apostolic journey, he reached Pochutla and Lake Lacam-Tum, now known as Miramar, a sacred center for the Lacandon people. From that time, some baptismal records are preserved in the diocesan archives, bearing his new name: Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada (Friar Pedro Lorenzo of Nothingness).

    When sharing the sketches of the mural in progress with friends, there has been no shortage of praise for the initiative, especially since it was the result of a long dialogue with civil and religious authorities in Zinacantán. Others have appreciated that the invited artist is a renowned master of contemporary Mayan art. Some critical voices have pointed out the underrepresentation of women, or the prominence of the friars in the images. For my part, once I had agreed with Maestro Antún on the tone From the narrative with the importance of the symbols of the two traditions to be represented in the mural, I received with respect and great admiration the visual proposal of the artist who, with his own genius, will undoubtedly leave us a pictorial legacy that is the gift of the Dominican friars to the people of Zinacantán in this commemoration.

    In a couple of weeks we will be celebrating this event in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and Zinacantán.

    I'll tell you about the new seeds being sown on this path of living memory.

    Jobel, May 22, 2026

  • La casa de la Palabra encarnada Una apuesta por el diálogo social y cultural en Chiapas al estilo de los dominicosPilar Emitxin | Embodied poetics | 2019

    The House of the Incarnate Word A commitment to social and cultural dialogue in Chiapas in the style of the Dominicans

    By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

    A few days ago, we opened a new space for dialogue in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas on the feast day of Saint Thomas Aquinas. This was the first event in a year-long celebration of the fifth centenary of the arrival of the Dominican friars to Tierra Firme, as the American continent was then called. Abya Yala. Next June we will be holding various cultural and religious events, both in San Cristóbal and in Zinacantán, with the program 500-OP Chiapas which we will announce soon.

    Together with Abraham and Angélica, dear friends from Ecosur with whom we worked in university ministry at CUC years ago in Mexico City, and with Carmen and Ricardo, friends involved in social and cultural activism in the city, we have been imagining together a project to continue cultivating the great legacy of the School of San Cristóbal, as it is called Pablo Romo to critical thinking and inculturated liberation theology that has developed in the Highlands of Chiapas for more than half a century, with the specific contribution of the Dominicans in these lands. There are many cultural forums that currently exist here—such as CIDECI and Dialectics in the Museum. jTatik Samuel, El Paliacate, Galería MUY and many more – where it is possible to talk about urgent and important issues for the cosmopolitan society that lives here – a microcosm of Mayan, mestizo and foreign peoples – with its many local, regional and global connections.

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    Since the 1970s, San Cristóbal de Las Casas has been the scene of important meetings such as the First Indigenous Congress convened by Bishop Samuel Ruiz and leaders of indigenous communities in 1974, it proved to be a watershed moment in the indigenous consciousness of Mexico, as it refers Fabiola Ramírez in her Master of Arts thesis at Tulane University. She also highlights the First International Symposium of Lascasistas, The event, organized by Manuel Velasco Suárez, Agustín Yáñez, and the Dominican friar Enrique Ruiz, was held in 1974. Both events shared a common thread—starting with the fifth centenary of the birth of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas—the search for paths to promote justice for the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, subjected for almost five hundred years to a racist system, marked by centuries of social injustice and the suppression of their collective imaginaries in their cultural and religious expressions. The spirit of liberation theology, as a creative reception of the Second Vatican Council, was mediated by the prophetic force of the Second General Assembly of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops in Medellín in 1968, ecclesial events in which they participated. jTatik Samuel Ruiz, made their presence felt with vigor and creative imagination in these lands.

    Two decades of sowing the Gospel in the diocese, with its message of liberation for oppressed peoples, allowed that seed to germinate into a diocesan synod, intimately connected with the indigenous cause, which found in the Zapatista movement one of its most relevant expressions for promoting the autonomy of native peoples. There were other fruitful fruits, such as indigenous theology, which, not without difficulty with Vatican authorities, also expressed the vitality of a profound ecclesial process that continues to this day.

    But the old Royal City of the colonial era, inhabited by a mestizo and Creole population that called itself intercultural, He had become accustomed to living with the "Indians" in modern times with a normalized racism, which was expressed as paternalistic assistance from the caxlanes or Creole chieftains towards the Indians, as Rosario Castellanos masterfully recounted in her collection of short stories Ciudad Real.

    The Zapatista uprising, in addition to its political effects—with the 1996 San Andrés Accords betrayed by the federal government and the creation of the Caracoles or Zapatista autonomous municipalities—had a cultural impact on the city, which suddenly became more cosmopolitan in its daily life, as they tell university students Immigrants in the Highlands of Chiapas since the years surrounding the uprising. As early as the 1950s, Harvard anthropologists and linguists from the Summer School of the Bible had arrived in the Jobel Valley to settle in the colonial city, turning it into a base for their research trips to the indigenous communities they studied, mostly using an extractive academic or religious model.

    But over time, the gentrification of the city of traditional neighborhoods It grew in an unusual way as a result of the rebellion of the canyons that impacted the Highlands of Chiapas in the last three decades.

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    Today, more than fifty years after that Indigenous Congress of 1974, and thirty-two years after the Zapatista uprising of 1994, much has changed in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Indigenous communities have achieved diverse forms of autonomy in the political, social, and cultural spheres, including religious matters, surpassing the vision of their initial proponents. These communities are no longer under the tutelage of political parties, churches, universities, or civil society organizations. The cultural fusion of Indigenous peoples with hip-hop music, audiovisual culture, and contemporary art will surprise many. Indigenous identity now transcends even revolutionary movements.

    And like a boomerang effect, the mixed-race and foreign population living in the city also blends into this landscape of identities. An event about Gaza primarily draws university students and members of civil society, but attracts few of the displaced Indigenous people who live in the northern part of the city. A hip-hop concert, on the other hand, fills plazas. And then there's the Sinaloan band invited to the Zinacantán festival, which will keep the Tsotsil youth on tenterhooks for hours, mesmerized by a professional stage that rivals any pop or ranchera music festival in any major city in the country—and, incidentally, managed by a young entrepreneur from Zinacantán.

    How can we participate in these ongoing cultural changes using the Dominican word itself, not only from the past but also from the present, in its diverse forms of life with friars, sisters, and lay people inspired by the charism of preaching? What signs of the times... deglobalization It is necessary to interpret in order to scrutinize the passage of the God of Life, As the Dominican friar Gustavo Gutiérrez said in Peru, what is needed for a humanity bewildered by global violence?

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    The roaming This is a vital attitude of the Dominicans since their founding by Dominic of Guzmán in the 13th century, a time of transition from feudal to urban society. "Holy preaching," the initial name of Dominic's apostolic project conceived with Bishop Diego de Osma, the layman Peter Seila of Toulouse, and Wilhelmina and Raymonda Claret, sisters from Prouille in southern France, expresses the original inspiration of a spiritual tradition that has dedicated itself for eight centuries to seeking truth in every age, trusting in the power of the Word made flesh. Therefore, it is not just any truth that is being sought, but the truth that liberates, saves, and redeems humankind, humanity, and the cosmos from the bonds of evil, as did the Galilean.

    The Dominican-style study is, therefore, the spring of hope According to that beautiful reflection by Friar Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Order of Preachers, this spirit led the friars to disperse throughout Europe from the beginning, going to universities "to study and found monasteries," that is, communities of life centered on the Incarnate Word. This impetus took them as far as Mongolia in search of Genghis Khan. This itinerancy was described by Matthew of Paris, the staunch enemy of the new friars at the Sorbonne in the 13th century, who scornfully declared: "Their cloister is the oceans and their cell the world," thus defining for posterity the daemon or the genius of the religious order that was emerging in the medieval towns, as Father Chenu repeatedly reminded us doctoral students in Paris.

    Centuries later, already in Chiapas, that same itinerant journey led Friar Pedro Lorenzo to the Jataté canyons and the Lacandon Jungle to search there, “in the middle of nowhere,” as the prior of Santo Domingo de Ciudad Real admonished him for his rebellion, for the people who lived there. That is why from then on he decided to call himself Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, according to Jan de Vos.

    In our times of the Great Catastrophe—begun in Gaza and now spread throughout the world in the Trump era—itinerantness leads us to new territories to be created as places of conviviality of the Word. Here in the Highlands of Chiapas, we'll do it like new. itinerant space, where we can foster creative dialogues in search of the truth that saves.

    San Cristóbal de Las Casas, February 7, 2026

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