Through the story of the religious leader Papá Liborio, Nino Martínez Sosa’s 2021 film Liborio deftly contends with the cultural, spiritual, and political forces of a colonized Dominican Republic. After establishing a Black, self-sufficient community in the rural hills of the San Juan province of the Dominican Republic, Liborio and his followers endured pressures and pushback from the government and occupying U.S Marine forces. The dramatic changes that took place in the D.R. during the early twentieth century revolve around the struggle for independence and power.
Ahead of the film’s screening from February 24-28 at NYC’s Mishkin Gallery, I spoke to Sosa about what it was like to research and shoot this film in the remote mountain villages where Liborism is still practiced today, the effect of colonialism throughout the Caribbean, and how cinema can be a tool for inspiring empathy and change.
The Film Stage: Let’s start with how you got into filmmaking. What attracted you to this medium?
Nino Martínez Sosa: I have always been drawn to all forms of art expression. From a very young age I began to approach music through the guitar, I wrote poetry, and I ventured into the school theater group. So I saw in cinema the way to bring all this together and develop them. I believe it is a very comprehensive medium where one can explore the essence of what makes us human and, through this, attempt to foster change in society––a change that, even if minimal, I believe should be one of the functions of art.
What movies did you watch growing up, and who are some key influences, in film or any of the other forms you’re drawn towards?
As a child I grew up watching Hollywood films from the ’70s and ’80s. I vividly remember movies like Star Wars, E.T., The Goonies, and Indiana Jones. But in my teenage years, when my passion for cinema became clearer, I began to seek out different kinds of films––films that, unfortunately, I hadn’t had the chance to enjoy up until that point. I was lucky enough to work at a video-rental store, which gave me access to hundreds of titles. That’s where I discovered the films of Buñuel, Pasolini, Bergman, Glauber Rocha, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, the French New Wave, silent cinema, and Italian neorealism. You could say whenever I didn’t fully understand a film, I felt particularly drawn to it. I would watch it again and sometimes, the more I watched it, the less I understood.
That quality some films have––the way they continue to take shape in the viewer’s mind––fascinated me. It was like an oracle that needed to be interpreted in order to extract meaning. From that moment on I realized I wanted to approach filmmaking in a similar way––not by spoon-feeding everything to the audience, but by allowing them to be an active part of the process.
Nino Martinez Sosa
Growing up in the Dominican Republic, did you hear of Liborio? When did you first learn about the man and story?
Liborio’s story has not been well-addressed by our historiography. I was unaware of the true dimension of Liborio and had only heard of him in a very superficial way. Perhaps the first person I heard mention him was my third grandmother, María, who had worked in my maternal grandparents’ home since my mother was born and helped raise me. She was from San Juan de la Maguana, and within the rigid and conservative standards upheld in my grandparents’ home, she kept a small altar of popular religiosity in her room.
In my house there was little talk about any form of Dominican popular religiosity. The prevailing Catholicism was accepted as the unquestionable dogma, and everything else was dismissed under the stigma of “witchcraft,” which immediately disqualified it. My father, who was very proud of his Black heritage, wasn’t very Catholic and had all kinds of ritual drums in our living room, and every now and then he would be invited to a palo gathering. He would load the drums into the trunk of his car and disappear for an entire day. But they never let me go with him.
There was also a merengue by Luis Díaz about Liborio, which may have been the first direct mention I heard of him and the myth that he never died. But my real interest in Liborio arose when I began to realize that he was a figure who embodied the three heritages that shape Dominican cultural identity. Liborio’s story also unfolds against the backdrop of the great transformation that took place in the Dominican Republic at the beginning of the 20th century, when commercial capitalism fully took hold––first through U.S. influence and later through its invasion. It was during this time that large estates were established, most of the land was registered and sold, and peasants transitioned from being landowners to working for landlords who lived in the cities. The fact that all of this converged in a single figure fascinated me. The more I learned, the more convinced I became that I had to do something about it.
You spent eight years researching and making this film. Can you tell me about what the research process was like? What were some challenges and surprises?
I first arrived in Maguana Arriba, Liborio’s village, during the patron saint festivities on St. John’s Day, and I was welcomed with open arms by the entire community; I quickly made some friends. I always went with a camera and mentioned that I wanted to bring Liborio’s life to the screen. At the same time I began searching for everything that had been written about him––articles, books, recordings. Since I spend most of my time outside the Dominican Republic, I took advantage of every return trip to go back to La Maguana, reestablish those friendships, and interview the elders whom I risked never seeing again. I stayed to live with them for a while––bathing in the river, eating their food, and using their latrine. Later, I traveled through the heart of the mountain range, visiting the hard-to-reach places where Liborio had moved during his escape.
The big challenge was giving shape to all those accumulated experiences while also honoring the belief that remains alive in the valley. My greatest surprise was the level of acceptance I received from the people I approached––their eagerness to have their story told. At first I thought I would encounter a hermetic cult that I wouldn’t be able to access easily, but the experience was the complete opposite. It’s an inclusive practice where everything fits because they are clear that the experience of transcendence is the same, no matter what name you give it.
I like this notion that transcendence is the same regardless of the means used to arrive there. I’m wondering if, during your research, you went through (or were in search of) a “transcendent” experience.
It’s complicated to define why I started searching for Liborio and where the interest in getting close to those people comes from. On one hand, there’s the lack of knowledge about [him as a] figure and their way of understanding reality. The desire to learn more about an unknown past with mythological undertones. The desire for reconnection with my Black past, with my father as the representative of that Blackness.
The disconnection between the countryside and the city is huge, and I come from a mixed family where my father was from the countryside and my mother was from the city. Maybe that’s why I have this huge interest that persists in having true and meaningful experiences with people from the countryside. So Liborio was a gateway for me to get closer to the rural world and popular religiosity.
You shot on location and with some people that actively live and believe in Liborism. What was this experience like?
Filming in the mountains with a crew of almost 40 people was a highly complex production challenge. Sometimes, to reach the set, we had to walk several kilometers through the mountains, and on top of that, the weather was often bad. It rained every afternoon, which heavily impacted the shooting. We had several accidents––mostly due to insect bites, people falling off the horses transporting them, or slipping in the mud while walking. Fortunately, none of them were serious or of major concern; they just became anecdotes. I had trained physically for a triathlon, knowing that the shoot would demand a lot of physical effort, but not everyone on the team was in the same condition. The crew jokingly called the film “Liborio Fitness.” What we all knew for sure was that we couldn’t have filmed the movie any other way; being able to access beautiful, magical places that had never been filmed before was a luxury we couldn’t waste.
Working with the local people was also something wonderful. I already knew many of them and had maintained a close relationship, but for many others it was the first time I had met them. And yet we found open doors and a constant willingness to cooperate. That also boosted the crew’s morale; seeing the townspeople so involved made all of us want to give our best. The circle was completed when we brought the finished film to Maguana and screened it in a plaza packed with people.
Why did you choose to present this story as historical fiction versus a documentary?
Because, at that time, my approach to the subject had more to do with a mystical text than with a historical essay. And for this, the form of that hybrid fiction that the film ultimately became suited me much better. Now I’m finishing editing a documentary on the same topic, which I’m making using all the material I generated during the years of research as a foundation. So that dual approach of poetry vs. essay was also present in my mind. I chose one over the other, but I didn’t discard the documentary.
Liborio is subtle in its handling of specifics and details, but effective in capturing the feeling of power, lore, and spirit around the man and the movement. This is achieved in part by your approach to telling the story through the lens of seven different characters and their relationship with Liborio, creating (as you’ve said) “a cubist portrait of the myth, the character, the belief.” After making this film as a writer, director, and editor, how has it informed or changed your approach to storytelling? What do you think makes a good story or good storytelling?
There are many conclusions I’ve reached throughout this process, and I think I can summarize them as follows: cinema has to move you. It must touch the core that makes us feel alive. It shouldn’t just entertain, but also provide sensations that generate emotions which then develop into feelings. Cinema should serve as a doorway to the transcendent; it should help us approach the mystery. Through perception, it should take us to places we can’t reach in any other way. It’s not about understanding but about experiencing the ineffable, and––from that experience––proposing a cosmic perspective on the issues that make us grow as individuals. Cinema must be a generator of empathy. It should show the “other” so that we can discover ourselves in them. It should teach truth––that common denominator that defines us as human beings––and from there create a bond that unites us and helps us build community and tear down walls. Cinema must seek identity, the lost primordial paradise.
As a representative of the diaspora, I ask myself where I come from to know my present and try to foresee where I’m going. I discover my identity through the denial of what I am not and the affirmation of what I am. I learned to look in the mirror and integrate that fragmented identity shaped by the violence that defines the Caribbean. Cinema must serve to recover memory. It should rescue fragile manifestations that haven’t been sufficiently highlighted. It should help showcase orality that has served as a refuge for an ancestral way of understanding life.
Something that stood out to me was how the film depicts certain contradictions. For example: the U.S. forces coming to install “peace and order” and instead inflicting destruction and violence, or government officials feeling threatened by Liborio and his community because they live outside the realm of “conventional” society. For me, all of this expresses how enacting a deeply human desire to live freely on the land––to be self-determined and have agency in one’s life––is seen as a threat to political powers and agendas. What do you take away from this story? What does Liborism mean to you?
The role of the United States in Caribbean politics has always been very ambiguous. As the heir to colonial empires, the U.S. imposed a way of understanding life inherited from European modernity. This imposition was meant to control, as neo-colonies, all the countries within its sphere of influence. In our country it began with the appropriation of customs and the introduction of economic control mechanisms, and it ended with the loss of sovereignty through a military invasion in 1916. This didn’t just happen in the Dominican Republic; Haiti was invaded a year earlier, and Cuba and Puerto Rico a decade before had also come under control.
An agro-industrial model of large estates was imposed, promoting the monoculture of sugarcane; the plantation policy that the Spanish had brought centuries earlier was being reenacted. Liborio opposed this. Not from a political standpoint, but by creating a social movement that used religion as a form of resistance to reclaim an ancestral heritage that history had denied. A way of life based on community, demanding that the land should belong to those who worked it.
For me, Liborio becomes an example to follow: an exceptional man, a great leader, someone who never hid his peasant identity, a man who united, who accepted, who tore down walls, and whose life marked a horizon of hope for all of us who approach his figure. The journey of the film, my personal journey, is about understanding that those people I once felt were “other” are actually myself––that Liborio’s assassination is part of “my” history, that those landless and hungry individuals who still keep the flame of Liborismo alive today are part of who I am. Integrating that past with my present is the very reason for all of this. That’s why, today, I can affirm that Liborio is still alive.
Liborio screens from February 24-28 at NYC’s Mishkin Gallery.