La tierra y las cenizas

Brazil is a country of intense drives where the most extreme poverty and wealth, the most terrible injustice and solidarity, the populist right and the idealist left, the most exuberant nature and predatory lobbies coexist. A country that is a mirror of the complexities and great contradictions of the world, where nothing is ever what it seems nor has a simple explanation. It has generated magnetic figures like Lula or Casaldàliga, leaders who try to change the world to progress, and at the same time populist forces like Bolsonarism that fight against them. The renowned journalist Francesc Escribano traveled to Brazil for the first time in the spring of 1985, when he met Pedro Casaldàliga. He has now returned to capture the pulse of current Brazilian society and take stock of the residue left by the causes defended by "the people's priest" (the distribution of wealth, justice, the right to land). The result is a fascinating book that reveals the underlying currents that move society towards opposite poles and that shows the double passion of a journalist for a country and for a reference in life.