The Rev. Dr. Miguel A. De La Torre has written dozens of books, but it took making a film alongside his son and his wife to reach the crowds he’s yet to reach through his books.
De La Torre, professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, recently delivering the 115th Sprunt Lectures at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. Before his first talk, De La Torre screened the award-winning 2017 film “Trails of Hope and Terror.” Watch the trailer here. His initial Sprunt Lecture is here.
“Nobody reads my books except other scholars. You’ve got to be a bit of a theological nerd,” De La Torre told those gathered in Lake Chapel at Union Presbyterian Seminary and online. “More people saw the film in the first week than the people who have read all my books put together.”
“How do we as scholars find new ways to communicate the work we’re doing? Making this film was part of that venture,” he said, urging the gathered scholars and others to “think of creative ways to get this information out to a wider audience that desperately needs it. Making complex issues accessible is the job of the true scholar.”
Filmmakers interviewed immigrants seeking to cross the border between Mexico and the United States as well as people who oppose such attempts. Among those interviewed are a pair of Presbyterian pastors: the Rev. John Fife, the emeritus pastor at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, Moderator of the 204th General Assembly (1992) and a co-founder of Sanctuary movement and organizer of No More Deaths; and Fife’s successor at Southside, the Rev. Alison J. Harrington.
After the screening, De La Torre highlighted some of the scenes the film depicts, including a Border Patrol agent kicking over jugs of water placed in the desert to aid migrants. In another scene, an agent dumps the water on the ground, then challenges the filmmakers by asking them, with cameras rolling, if they’d left the water. “If we said yes, they’d arrest us for littering,” De La Torre said.
At one point, U.S. authorities did detain De La Torre’s team. They’d found a bale of marijuana nearby and threatened team members with arrest on charges of drug trafficking. “I went to their leader and said, ‘I am a professor at a seminary and these students will be pastors one day,’” he said. “I think you may want to check with your supervisor before you charge us with drug trafficking.”
Meanwhile, it was time for a worship service, and De La Torre and his students invited the authorities to join them. Instead, they held the team for a few more hours until word came from headquarters in Washington to let them go — but not before De La Torre’s identification had been run through a law enforcement database.
Perhaps not coincidentally, De La Torre has seen his tax returns audited every year since.
“I told John Fife that, and he said, ‘Welcome to the club,’” De La Torre said.
“Sometimes I just break down” while viewing his own film, he said, “and it’s kind of embarrassing. It still breaks my heart, especially after I got to know these people.”
During a question-and-answer session following his talk, De La Torre said filmmakers have recouped most of the money invested in the film, and plan to make the film accessible to the public.
“For some people, it’s better to embrace ignorance than it is even to watch a film,” he said. “I have had people watch the film and then threaten me because it rocked their self-identity. I believe my job as a scholar is to provide the means by which to raise consciousness.”
De La Torre is teaming with the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb to edit a book scheduled for publication in September. “Tear Down These Walls: Decolonial Approaches to Barriers and Liberation” will have a look at “walls around the world,” De La Torre said. “We want the labor — we just don’t want the bodies attached to that labor.”
Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
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Loving God, you created us for life together. Help us create life-giving patterns of community. In the name of Jesus Christ, who came that we might have life in all its fullness. Amen.
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