Although it deals with universal aspects of the tragedy of humankind, The Given Word — the play by writer and playwright Dias Gomes (1922–1999), published in 1959, and the film by Anselmo Duarte (1920–2009), from 1962 — is also a work of its time and place.

1960 was the year in which Brasília was founded, a gesture of renewal for a Brazil that, at the time, as now, found itself struggling towards the utopia of modernisation and democratisation. At the same time, it was a country home to an unjust society, a ruling elite swayed by authoritarianism, military leaders, capital and business, cutting-edge artists and, above all, a sea of poverty inherited from the colonial regime, slavery, and concentration of land ownership, wealth and power in the hands of the few over the many. The coup of 1964, executed with broad support from the Catholic church, rural landowners and the industrial bourgeoisie, shattered Brazil’s already fragile democracy and President Juscelino ‘JK’ Kubitschek’s expectations of “golden years” ahead. Built by poor candangos — the city’s construction workers who were prohibited from taking up residence — Brasília was a display of radical modernity where power took its seat: to use the terms of Gilberto Freyre, away from the Pilot Plan for the Casa Grande (“big house”), in the favelas, the invaded lands and the satellite cities there spread the senzalas (“slave quarters”).

Zé do Burro is a character straight out of the anonymous world of rural poverty, bearing the cross of his origins, his worldview and a belief system that blends Catholicism with the mysticism of Candomblé terreiros (houses). After his donkey is cured of a fatal wound, Zé vows to Iansã, a Candomblé spirit, and her Catholic equivalent, Santa Bárbara, that he will bear a crucifix on a pilgrimage to Salvador da Bahia, as well as dividing his property between other poor farmers. On this Way of the Cross to the city, and to a church whose doors its conservative priest will refuse to open, this “payer of promises” (the original Portuguese title) is accompanied by his wife, Rosa, at times loyal to Zé, at others distracted by Salvador and its charming, yet highly unsuitable, men.

The narrative’s linearity and Zé’s single-minded focus on fulfilling his vow are what drive this pilgrimage into the abyss — everything in Salvador, from the haughty priest and the Church hierarchy to the media’s manipulation of the story, the political readings of this radical act of conviction, and the suspicious authorities and secret police, all of this exists, for different reasons, to prevent the vow from being fulfilled. Not even the cultural potency of the Afro-Brazilian population of Salvador da Bahia itself — driven by Gilberto Freyre and the Afro-Brazilian Congresses of Recife, in 1935, and Salvador, in 1937 — is able to divert Zé, who insists on placing the cross in the Santa Bárbara Church rather than in a Iansã terreiro.

Surrounded by high walls and, at the top, the monumental façade of the church, the great staircase is the setting that finally closes in on Zé do Burro. There all the tensions and opportunism come spilling out: Zé is a heretic, mad, a simpleton, a disgrace, or a communist revolutionary: land should belong to those who work it, says Zé, without understanding the meaning of the expression “agrarian reform” put to him by one questioning journalist, who tries to turn him into a warrior figurehead for the dispossessed.  Zé do Burro’s innocence and strength of character make him the victim of the overwhelming, diverse and contradictory pressures trained on him.

Killed in the chaos that unfolds on the staircase and crucified by the capoeiristas on the same cross he had borne, Zé and his faith are transformed into a revolutionary weapon wielded by the poor, who break down the doors and occupy the church. Thus a kind of theology of liberation is fulfilled: Zé do Burro will be one of its martyrs by unintentionally transforming the tenacity of his mysticism and moral rectitude into a force exposing the contradictions of the powerful and the opportunistic. This infects those taking part in the Roda da Capoeira, who, gaining consciousness of themselves and the social class they represent, now mobilise in voice and political action. The “opium of the people”, that familiar metaphor that blames religion for stifling the struggle against poverty and servitude, can become gunpowder in the hands of the oppressed.

Meanwhile, neither the miracles of science and technology, nor the rationality and progress promised by modernisation, have been enough to overtake religious thinking. The gods may have lost their central position in the organisation of human life, but they remain alive. The world’s disenchantment and “de-magification” have not led to a disappearance of religious beliefs, but rather their fragmentation and shattering into pieces that re-emerge in new representations and individual and collective practices. The danger of theocracy remains.

Everything that makes us fragile, that we do not understand, that appears but fleetingly, that appears grandiose and “transcendent”, all that is strange, without explanation, all that amazes or terrifies us, can become a hierophany, a manifestation of the sacred. Even the most profane creatures never tire of inventing holy sites, relics and other more or less sacred objects. Summer Festivals and stadiums overflow with believers. Faith has flooded cyberspace. The Holy Land is being torn apart because there are those who firmly believe that a supernatural being has bestowed on them the right to occupy the land. The pope has his popemobile. Our Sunday pilgrimages are made to shopping centres for offers and promotions. Father Christmas is sponsored by Coca-Cola and Halloween by pumpkins. Globalisation mixes exotic divinities in with the established pantheon. Domestic worship is now held in front of the television and computer. The place of faith in the supernatural is disputed by algorithms and apps. God is an artificial intelligence and hell, instead of sulphur, emits CO2. Death, as always, haunts us.