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From this Friday you can visit the exhibition Peasant rekové of the Spanish priest and photographer, nationalized Paraguayan, José María Blanch. The exhibition brings together the black and white analog photographs that are part of his archive, which have been digitized and systematized.

Its archive has around 50 thousand photos, but some 25 thousand belong to the peasant theme, widely developed in the 70s. The exhibition is inaugurated within the framework of International Women’s Day, and is curated by Luis Vera.

Father Blanch explains that his contact with the field was through his colleagues from the Christian Agrarian Leagues. “I was interested in the education and the reflection that they carried through the peasant schools. They spent several years going to the settlements and other groups that met in companies, that worked together in solidarity. They were like experiments in life forms. While I wasn’t scheduled to take photos, I took them when I could, ”Blanch once said.

For his part, as curator of the exhibition, Luis Vera pointed out that “take the magnifying glass of analog times to see contact copies, and folders with some 25 thousand photos, to focus on one aspect, marking a topic such as the Christian Agrarian Leagues , between 1974 and 1984, and from there approaching the gaze to the women who were photographed, was a task that brought to the surface the atrocities that peasants suffered during the dictatorship ”.

The Christian Agrarian Leagues were peasant organizations that, between 1960 and 1975, brought together thousands of people, mainly from the countryside, around the Christian ideal of living as brothers. Through the peasant schools, they cultivated brotherhood, conscience and autonomy, which made them grow spiritually, socially and economically, so much so that the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner brutally ended them through confiscations, expulsions, arrests, torture and murders.

The Peasant Rekové exhibition is available from this Friday, March 12, at the Fulgencia Almirón photo gallery in the Plaza de la Democracia (National Independence and Cerro Corá).