‘I put the idea, the theme, the country, I travel first to get a first schedule and then we go already to record’ with the professionals, he says simply. The result is, documentaries that have not only achieved great international success, but have gone as far as changing laws to protect children. López and his team's latest endeavour is in Angola, where they have just recently travelled with a crew from the Spanish television station RTVE to record a new project that will delve into the extreme inequality in the African country and that will be broadcast in chapters in the station's programme entitled “Pueblo de Dios”.

Documentaries that transcend the screen

It was in 2017 that López took over the direction of the Mission Office's audiovisual projects, establishing the dynamic of producing a documentary ‘every two years with a different theme’. The turning point was a job in Colombia that coincided with the peace negotiations in that country. 'It was a bombshell,' he recalls. The novelty of bringing the protagonists to Europe opened the doors for them to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the United Nations in Geneva, as well as a meeting with the Pope in Rome.

Since then, he has promoted major projects on very harsh realities: child prostitution in Sierra Leone, minors in prisons, refugees, child labourers in the Dominican Republic...

A journey to the injustices of the world

Beyond the titles, each documentary is an immersion in extremely raw situations. ‘It is one thing to tell you about it and another if you see it,’ he says, recalling his first trip to Africa during the Ebola crisis in 2015. ‘In just one day I learnt more and had more to process than with the 200 emails the missionaries had sent me.’

Sierra Leone: inhuman prisons and changed laws

Perhaps one of his most extreme experiences was in the prisons of Sierra Leone. He documented the resignation of minors imprisoned for minor offences such as “breaking glass with a ball or walking aimlessly at night”, without their families even knowing about it, because the files get lost and they have no legal assistance.

Also in Sierra Leone, ‘Misiones Salesiana’'s documentary on child prostitution in this country managed to change the law on sexual violence: thanks to its impact, the police are now obliged to treat minors as victims and take them to Salesian centres instead of arresting them.

Togo: the atrocity of children accused of witchcraft

Another shocking situation that ‘Misiones Salesianas’ has made visible is minors accused of witchcraft in Togo. ‘Different children, more intelligent, albinos... the families believe they are witch doctors and blame them for any situation,’ he explains. To “prove it”, they subject them to torture such as putting their hands in boiling water or oil. They say that because they are witch doctors nothing will happen to them, but of course they disfigure them. They are scarred for life and it is something people do not know about.'

Syria: smiles in the midst of war

In Syria, in the midst of the war conflict, he discovered a lesson in resilience. ‘All the young people I was with had some relative who had died in the war, yet in all the photos I saw that they were smiling,’ he recalls. He found the explanation in the Salesian centres, which function as ‘oases of peace’ for them. There he also understood the intensity of their greetings: ‘When they meet again, they greet each other as if they had never seen each other, because they do not know if it will be the last time they will see each other’.

Next stop: Angola

After Colombia, Sierra Leone, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Argentina... the new project will be recorded in Angola, a country where the wealth of oil and diamonds coexists with extreme poverty. The script includes stops in the shantytown of Lixeira (which emblematically means ‘dump, rubbish’), where the Salesians educate 5,000 minors daily; a reportage among street children; a focus on the health work of the religious.

Lessons learnt

Despite having touched so many human miseries in his travels, López says that ‘the worst part is on the way back’, with the new impact on ‘such trivial concerns that we have’. His travels are a torrent of conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the pain of seeing ‘many disasters’, but on the other, life lessons. ‘They are enriching trips, because you learn a lot... These people don't know what they will experience tomorrow, but with what they have today they take a chair in their house and invite you for tea. They always smile, they are grateful. They give us impressive lessons. And I think they are happier than us.’

Despite the harshness of what he documents and his commitment to continue it - ‘the violation of rights, especially in children, is an area yet to be discovered and addressed,’ he says - his work allows him to see an encouraging truth. ‘You realise that there are so many good people in the world,’ concludes the Spanish journalist, who with each of his projects makes visible not only the injustices, but also the great work of ‘Misiones Salesianas’ and so many Salesians on behalf of the last and forgotten.

For more information, please visit: https://www.misionessalesianas.org/ 

Source: Salamanca RTV al día

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