"Mary sang here about equality. A society with no social classes. Everyone alike."

He has shown the strength of his arms; he conquers those with proud hearts 

Old THOMAS, who can't read but who always talks with great wisdom:  "They are the rich, because they think they are above us and they look down on us.  Since they have the money . . . .  And a poor person comes to their house and they won't even turn around to look at him.  They don't have anything more than we do, except money.  Only money and pride, and that's all they have that we don't."

ANGEL says:  "I don't believe that's true.  There are humble rich people and there are proud poor people.  If we weren't proud we wouldn't be divided, and us poor are divided."

LAUREANO:  "We're divided because the rich divide us.  Or because a poor person often wants to be like a rich one.  He yearns to be rich, and then he's an exploiter in his heart, that is, the poor person has the mentality of the exploiter."

OLIVIA:  "That's why Mary talks about people with proud hearts.  It's not a matter of having money or not, but of having the mentality of an exploiter or not."

I said that nevertheless it cannot be denied that in general the rich person is a proud man,  the poor one. 

And TOMAS said:  "Yes, because the poor person doesn't have anything.  What has he got to be proud of?   That's why I said the rich are proud, because they have the money.  But that's the only thing they have we don't have, money and the pride that goes with having money."

He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble.  He fills the simple with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing.

One said:  "The mighty is the same as the rich.  The mighty are rich and the rich are mighty."

TERESITA:  "Mary says that God raised up the humble.  That's what he did to Mary."

And MARIITA:  "And what he did to Jesus who was poor and to Mary, and to all the others who followed Jesus who were Poor."

I asked what they thought of Herod would have said if he had known that a woman of the people had sung that God had pulled down the mighty and raised up the humble, filled the hungry with good things and the rich with nothing.

NATALIA laughed and said:  "He'd say she was crazy."

ROSITA:  "That she was a communist."

LAUREANO:  "The point isn't that they would say the Virgin was a communist.  She was a communist."

"And what would they say in Nicaragua if they heard what we're saying here in Solentiname?"

Several voices:  "That we're communists."

Someone asked:  "That part about filling the hungry with good things?"
A young man answered:  "The hungry are going to eat."

And another:  "The Revolution."

LAUREANO:  "That is the Revolution.  The rich person or the mighty is brought down and the poor person, the one who was down, is raised up."

Still another:  "If God is against the mighty, then he has to be on the side of the poor."

ANDREA,  Oscar's wife, asked: "That promise that the poor would have those good things, was it for then, for Mary's time, or would it happen in our time?  I ask because I don't know."

One of the young people answered:  "She spoke for the future, it seems to me, because we are just barely beginning to see the liberation she announces."  

As a deep skeptic of the effectiveness of revolution for improving things I have come to think that this basis of a revolution of leveling to equality is the only one that is likely to have a better chance than the kind that have happened so far. 

He helps the nation of Israel his servant, in remembrance of his love; as he has promised to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his descendants forever. 

ALEJANDRO:  "That nation of Israel that she speaks about is the new people that Jesus formed, and we are his people."

WILLIAM:  "It's the people who will be liberated, like before the other people were liberated from the dictatorship of Egypt, where they were treated like shit, changed into cheap hand labor.  But the people can't be liberated by others.  They must liberate themselves.  God can show the way to the Promised Land, but the people themselves must begin the journey. 

OSCAR asked:  "Can you take riches from the rich by force?   Christ didn't force the rich young man.  He said to him; "If you wish . . .' " 

I thought for a while before answering.  I said hesitantly:  "You might let him go to another country . . . "

WILLIAM:  " But not let him take his wealth with him."

FELIPE:  "Yes, let him take it."

The last remark was from MARIITA:  "Mary sang here about equality.  A society with no social classes.  Everyone alike."  

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The idea that Alejandro and William had, defining "Israel" in the Magnifcat as "the new people that Jesus formed" and that "we are his people" would certain to be controversial.  If that was what what the author of the song meant instead of, literally,  The "nation" that would be The People of Israel, is more specific than that.  Though you have to look at the whole passage that the phrase occurs in:

He helps the nation of Israel his servant

It defines "Israel" as God's servant, of keeping the role of the Children of Israel as defined in the covenant God made with Abraham the grandfather of Jacob (Israel) the father of the 12 tribes of the "nation Israel".  One of the most significant parts of that covenant was the amendment that God made after Abraham passed the test in Genesis 22 that his descendants were to be those who, on behalf of their faithfulness,  all people would have grace:

All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.  Genesis 22:18,  JPS Bible

I think it's quite a deep insight that William has that peoples' liberation will come through their own choices and actions.*    I don't know if he was thinking about this passage from Genesis which doesn't exactly condition the fulfillment of this codicil of the covenant on obedience to it but notes that's how it has to happen.  That's what would come about in the Exodus narrative and the radical economics of the Mosaic Law which would have certainly led to the least class stratified society in human history if it were enacted. 

The whole thing can be seen as a whole but it isn't laid out in a straight line of discourse.  That's something that surprises me every time I think about things I've heard for more than six decades. 

*As Brueggemann notes, when God frees the Children of Israel he does it through human agency.