Fernando Lugo, the new President of Paraguay, hailed by his supporters as the "bishop of the poor", too has raised these questions. To him, liberation and salvation are the same thing. The first step towards salvation is the transformation of society: the poor must be freed from economic, political and social oppression. In December 2006, Fernando Lugo decided to contest the presidential poll and renounced priesthood with an official letter to The Vatican. "From today onwards, the whole nation will be my cathedral," Lugo said.

As expected, it created a storm in The Vatican. His request was turned down and he received canonical admonition for his act. "The priesthood is a lifelong commitment that goes beyond human determination to end it", said the Vatican. Lugo’s response was equally firm: "accept my decision or punish me. But I am in politics already." Though once he got elected, Pope Benedict XVI granted him an unprecedented waiver to remove his clerical status.

R. Viswanathan, India’s Ambassador to Argentina, who attended Fernando Lugo’s inauguration in capital Asuncion, says, "Lugo wore sandals and a simple white shirt and trousers for his inauguration as President of Paraguay on August 15, this year. Somebody called it as Revolucion Sandalia—Sandal Revolution." He also announced he would forego the presidential salary of $ 40,000 per year and would continue to live in his own modest house.

No one knows whether President Lugo has read Gandhi or not though Ambassador Viswanathan had gifted him Gandhiji’s autobiography in Spanish last July. But the "bishop of the poor" has certainly imbibed many Gandhian values. In 2001 Lugo organised a rally of around 10,000 persons, who blocked a road to pressurise the authorities for building a pucca highway, linking rural San Pedro in central Paraguay to Asuncion. When armed police personnel warned the crowd, Lugo’s firm response was very much Gandhian: "You can do what you want, but you will have to come through me first." An act similar to Gandhi’s when he became a "one-man boundary" (to borrow a phrase from Lord Mountbatten) after the Noakhali riots. Lugo, too, stood firm forcing the authorities to withdraw. Two days later Paraguay’s Congress approved the highway.

Though trained as a teacher, Fernando Lugo decided to serve the church. He joined the Divine Word Missionaries. In 1977, he was ordained. The following year he went to Ecuador where met the Bishop of Riobamba, Leonidas Proano who was a leading liberation theologist. Lugo devoted his time to the welfare of the indigenous people of Latin America. As writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez said, Latin America wasn’t so much "discovered" as invented, leaving all those who were living there in a state of limbo. Globalisation has increased the risks for indigenous peoples living on lands that contain strategic resources like water, oil, forests, minerals and biodiversity for market exploitation.

It was in Ecuador, where Lugo worked among the poor and the indigent; he saw parallels with his country and the Guaranis, the indigenous people. In 1994 Lugo became the bishop of San Pedro. His battles on behalf of these people ruffled many political feathers in San Pedro and Asuncion.

Fernando Lugo’s ideology is hard to define. Is he a communist, a revolutionary, a Chavist or a traitor to the church? No one knows. Because at his inauguration address, he said he had no revolution to export, or any agenda to change the world. He made no reference to foreign policy. His only priority is to better the lives of the poor and the indigenous.

President Lugo has appointed Margarita Mbywangi, an indigenous woman who was sold into forced labour as a child, as his minister of indigenous affairs. She is currently studying for her high school diploma. Lugo delivered his speech partly in Guarani, native tongue of the indigenous people. He is often seen in the open-necked shirt, known as the ao poi, the garment that the Guaranis wear. With anybody else these may seem like populist measures but for Lugo this is a way of connecting with these people. As Ambassador Viswanathan says, "it is not only the politics of Latin America which is changing. The presidential attire too is undergoing a revolution." For the betterment of his people he has sought the advice of Joseph Stiglitz, World Bank’s.former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist.

Thanks to indigenous activism, the new constitutions of Colombia and Brazil enshrine a number of indigenous rights. A principal demand of indigenous organisations in both Guatemala and Ecuador is the revision of the constitution to recognise those countries as plurinational states. Latin America has finally come of age. Implications of the sandal revolution are not hard to discern.