Producer: Paul Espinosa

In Development

The Dawning of Liberty: Padre Martinez and the Making of America is a 90-minute documentary film on the life and times of Padre Antonio José Martínez, an activist priest and public intellectual in the American Southwest during the 19th century. A man caught between three worlds in conflict – his Mexican culture which was struggling to create a new democracy, the Native peoples whose rights he defended and the growing threat of Anglo Americans in his homeland of New Mexico – Martínez navigated the volatile years during which the Southwest became part of the United States. Along with over 100,000 of his countrymen, Padre Martínez struggled to make sense of the rapidly changing world of the borderlands after the conquest of this territory in 1848.

In presenting a story lost to the conventional American narrative, the film offers an alternative re-telling of U.S. history from the site of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Based on extensive consultations carried out with humanities scholars, the film utilizes a variety of elements including: an engaging narrative, a wealth of colorful archival images, impressionistic animation of key historical scenes, the creative presentation of the historical words of Martínez and his contemporaries, informed interviews with articulate scholars, and attractive scenes of contemporary Southwestern architecture and landscapes.