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***Ö thereís a question Iíve wanted to ask you.
There are many people, many friends who are familiar with Punta de Vacas Park
of the Message and the other parks in the world like this one.
But we know that these were constructed only recently.
Could you tell us a little about their origins and how all this developed?
This construction,
which the locals called the Hermitage,
is in reality a replica.
Some of our friends built it
many years after the original was built
near a geyser-like spray on the other side
of those two rushing rivers.
But after our discourse, the Discourse on the Healing of Suffering
and other events of 1969,
the original was completely destroyed,
leveled, and only rubble remained.
Of course you can visit the site,
but getting there isnít simple.
Once we had built the hermitage,
a few friends came to visit,
on occasion we would use it for meetings,
and I had the opportunity to write a few things there.
Starting from there
we began to develop other places
where we could meet and study.
As a place for study it was a bit complicated,
but it fulfilled the function
at a time when you could not have
public or outdoor gatherings
but only small meetings.
Since it was just us and the rocks it was permitted.
Thatís where things started.
But it didnít end there, right?
No, the thing didnít end. Thatís where the thing of building began,
but after the disasters they brought about
we left for the north of this country
- on the border with Bolivia - the jungle -
a place that is called, or was called, San Pedro de Jujuy.
There we made a big clearing. We cut down trees
and cleared an area in the middle of the jungle.
There we built a house. Not with stone like this hermitage,
but since this was a tropical forest, a log house.
This was one of our first changes of location.
***, that happened in San Pedro de JujuyÖ
but you moved to other places, tooÖ
Sure, because they destroyed our log cabin. They leveled it to the ground with machine guns.
Of course, after the log cabin was flattened
we went to another place in the north,
a place known as Yala,
where we built another house. This one was made of wood and stone,
a large house, a substantial house, but we had to abandon that place, too.
Then we looked for something in the center of the country,
since we'd already tried the mountains and we'd gone to the jungleÖ
So now we found a flat area
in the middle of the country, in Cordoba, and there we established a Center of Work.
We were able to work fairly well there since people could get to it easily.
People could get there, we could interchange, we could talk among ourselves,
and look into many things that we wanted to check out.
And that also came to an end -- we had finished our work,
but it ended badly -- people jailed, people deported, etc.
Öyes, wasn't it there at the end of the year that everyone was jailed?
And that forced people to leave for other places.
ExactlyÖ
so then there weren't many places left for us to go.
We could have gone south, to the south pole,
but that was getting a little complicated.
To make matters worse,
military dictatorships were in power throughout Latin America.
Like in La Plata, near Buenos Aires,
they assassinated friends of ours, our people.
And they were putting many of our friends in prison
in different places tooÖ
In Chile, for example, they set up real concentration camps
-they imprisoned some of our people in Pisagua, in the north of Chile.
We were quite uncomfortable with the situation,
and decided not simply to change our geographic location by one or two countries,
but to change continents.
And so we left--and landed up by the Aegean Sea,
where we established another Center of Work, in Corfu.
In that Center of Work we were able to work without any problems whatsoever.
Letís remember, this was also near our friends in Europe.
At that time it wasn't as easy to travel as it is now.
With the Center of Work in Corfu,
well, people could come from all parts of Europe,
and we were able to make progress
until we finished our work there and went on to other places.
***Ö are we saying that the only active places were those
meeting and retreat places, or were there other things going on?
There were many other places that werenít Centers of Work or retreats.
Remember, there were meeting centers of all kinds,
there were things set up in the street, we were doing public relations,
we were doing all kinds of political and social activities.
But right now we're talking about the places where we carried out studies
and retreats and different kinds of work,
where people received training and were discussing and understanding things.
Many people were also participating in those other activities, but more peripherally.
We were able to do a lot of things,
but we also needed to coordinate all our activities,
and we achieved this coordination by setting up a coordinating center
on some other islands, on the Canary Islands.
Then different activities were coordinated from there.
But the Centers of Study and the Centers of Work
had a different direction from the coordination activities,
the more superficial activities
-- which of course were also important and were how
our Movement became known.
It seems that in any case this flood of activities
once again alarmed thoseÖ
those ìdark forces,î Iím not sure what to call them.
yes, yes... those ìdark forces,î
They no longer attack physically, but they have their people
who they pay and give instructions to,
like the opinion-makers and those who slander us on the Internet.
They donít want people to know about us -- so they create distortions about our activities,
they hinder us from circulating accurate information,
they ban our books, they donít want people to read our booksÖ
they donít want anyone to know about us
they donít want anyone to know, that is the point...
-- itís a tacit agreement --
if people know about us, then whatever information they have should be distorted.
That explains the disinformation that exists around us,
the great disinformation there is around everything we do, it seems to meÖ
In terms of disinformation and all of that,
after the physical assaults stopped in Latin America especially,
there were small attacks but nothing very significantÖ
they burned down two of our meeting centers in France,
they broke the windows of many centers in Spain, in GermanyÖ
Ö in Egypt.
No, Egypt was more recent.
It was an attack through the press and all that,
but as I say, to my knowledge
there werenít the kinds of physical assaults that there were back then.
And so thatís how, Alicia, this whole thing of assaults and other tactics continued,
this arranging things so that ìno one knows,î
the suppression and destruction of books, all of thatÖ
ÖAnd so that was why we kept moving from place to place,
jumping like fleas from place to place, because there was no other way.
And then we began with more permanent constructions in different parts of the world.
We began building
what weíve called Parks, Halls, little halls,
meeting places of the Communities of The Message.
Little by little, those more lasting constructions
were erected in different places.
There we also began
or continued studies that had been to some degree interrupted
in other moments.
And there is the seed of what we call the Works of School,
extremely complicated works, complex, very complex.
But those places that were started
about four years ago continue moving ahead, and thatís not going to stop
because they are being built throughout Latin America, in North America,
Europe, Asia, Africa.
We canít yet say that there are Halls in Oceania and that area...
but the thing is advancing.
And thatís how weíve reached the present moment.
We havenít reached the future yetÖbut we'll get there.