Frei Betto

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Carlos Alberto Libânio Christo, known as Frei Betto (born in 1944, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) is a Brazilian writer, political activist, and Dominican friar. As a writer he won the Prêmio Jabuti award and wrote 34 books.

[edit] Political Activities

As a political activist, Frei Betto was imprisoned by the military dictatorship in 1969 for smuggling people out of Brazil. He has also been an advocate for the poor and currently works for the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He is politically a Christian socialist and active in programs against hunger. He is a strong supporter of Fidel Castro as they share a socialist outlook and hostility to Capitalism.[1]

Recently, on January 26, 2006, Frei Betto joined other internationally renowned figures and Latin American authors such as Nobel-laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Benedetti, Ernesto Sábato, Thiago de Mello, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Armando Fernández, Carlos Monsiváis, Jorge Enrique Adoum, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Montero, Ana Lydia Vega and world famous singer/composer Pablo Milanés, in demanding sovereignty for Puerto Rico and adding their name and signatue to the Latin American and Caribbean Congress' Proclamation for the Independence of Puerto Rico, which approved a resolution favoring the island-nation's right to assert its independence, as ratified unanimously by political parties hailing from twenty two Latin American countries in November of 2006. [2] Frei Betto's public demand for the recognition of Puerto Rico's independence -in unison with other Latin American writers and figures in the cultural world- was obtained at the behest of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP).[3]