La COMARCA FIJA de LIBORIO

Documentary trailer.

A very short excerpt from my documentary "The Real Comarca of Liborio" as an example of how oral tradition, in this case music, can remain as the only testimonial of a major social and political movement.




Liborio Mateo was a peasant born in a remote village of the Dominican Republic, near the border with Haiti at the beginning of the 1900.




He suddenly disappeared during a hurricane and his family, thinking he had died, started arranging for his funeral.




Liborio showed up the day of his funeral saying that God had lifted him up to the sky during the storm, investing him, despite Liborio' s reluctance, with supernatural powers to heal and counsel humanity for a period of 33 years.




Very soon many people started following Liborio and his Christian values based on humility and altruism, elevating him to the pantheon of popular religion as a living saint.




Liborio moved to the mountains and started living with an ever-increasing group of followers, while performing miraculous healings and even resuscitating the dead, as oral tradition largely recalls.




Apparently Comarca, Liborio's music was always present in the life of the Liborio camp, accompanying many everyday events, from social gatherings, to prayers, to supernatural healings.




Comarca lyrics, sung over a fairly simple melodic and rhythmic structure, talked about religious values and supernatural events but also commented very boldly on social injustice and political corruption.




Around 1920, a time of great changes in the Dominican society, rapidly moving towards the industrial age in the middle of a North American military occupation, Liborio and his followers became a very unwelcome and potentially dangerous phenomenon for both politicians and the military.




The altruistic, peaceful but at the same time socially rebellious aspect of Liborio's message and way of life was feared by the occupying forces as destabilizing the political situation in the country.

The US Marines finally assassinated Liborio, in 1922.




But Liborio's philosophy did not die with the man. Instead it kept resurfacing for many years, with different leaders and always on the beat of Comarca music, until it was finally destroyed, as a social movement, in the massacre of Palma Sola in 1962, where hundreds of followers, men, women and children where murdered in cold blood by the Dominican Army.




Nevertheless Liborismo still exists today, not openly as a social movement anymore, but in the heart and soul of many lower class Dominicans and through Comarca music, still being performed mostly at religious events by small groups of old musicians who try their best to pass it on to their sons and grandsons.

One of the most popular Comarca song goes: " They say Liborio is dead -- Liborio is not dead at all...."

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Comarca
• Liborio
• oral tradition
• TEDx Mediterranean
• Giovanni Savino

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