(Cleary y Steigenga) Resurgent Voices in Latin America Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change
(Cleary y Steigenga) Resurgent Voices in Latin America Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change
(Cleary y Steigenga) Resurgent Voices in Latin America Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change
Latin America
Resurgent Voices in
Latin America
⠭
Indige nous People s,
Pol i t i cal M ob i l i zat i on,
and Re lig ious Change
e d i te d by
Edward L. Cleary
Ti mothy J. Ste i g e nga
Rutg e r s U n ive r s i ty P re s s
New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Resurgent voices in Latin America : indigenous peoples, political mobilization,
and religious change / edited by Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8135-3460-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8135-3461-5 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Religion and sociology—Latin America. 2. Religion and politics—Latin
America. 3. Latin America—Religion. I. Cleary, Edward L. II. Steigenga,
Timothy J., 1965–
BL2540.R47 2004
306.6⬘098—dc22
2004000300
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available
from the British Library
This collection copyright © 2004 by Rutgers,The State University
For copyrights to individual pieces please see first page of each essay.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without writ-
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Manufactured in the United States of America
Conte nt s
Acknowledgments vii
v
vi Contents
Contributors 255
Index 257
Ac k nowle dg m e nt s
Three years of work on this book have engendered a number of debts to edi-
tors, readers, and contributors. Rutgers editors Kristi Long and David Myers
made major contributions to encouraging the project and shaping the manu-
script.We express our special gratitude to the reader of the proposal and man-
uscript, Manuel Vasquez, who provided invaluable insight and direction during
both the initial stages of the project and the final editing of the text.Timothy
Steigenga would also like to thank David Smilde, Jerónimo Camposeco,
Rachel Corr, Dennis Smith, and Johanna Sharp for reading portions of the
manuscript and providing comments to the authors. Edward Cleary was espe-
cially aided by discussions with Xavier Albó, Stephen Judd, Jeffrey Klaiber,An-
drew Orta, and Samuel Escobar.The Wilkes Honor College of Florida Atlantic
University and Providence College furnished essential support at various stages
of research, travel, and manuscript preparation. Colleagues in Providence Col-
lege’s political science department were also generous in their support.
Pioneers, such as June Nash, Donna Van Cott, and Xavier Albó, and new-
comers in scholarly research on indigenous movements assisted the authors in
assessing the relations between indigenous activism and religion.We are espe-
cially indebted to the pastors, priests, indigenous leaders, and other individuals
who have given of their time and efforts both in the struggle for indigenous
rights in Latin American and in our attempts to understand that struggle.
This book is dedicated to Adaeze Norget and Lucy Steigenga, who were
born, along with an initial draft of the manuscript, in December 2002.
vii
Resurgent Voices in
Latin America
Chap te r 1
Resurgent Voices
1
2 C leary and Ste i g e nga
clear their demands for present-day changes in the political and economic
arrangements of their countries.
The next ten years would witness the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, in-
digenous uprisings in Ecuador and Bolivia, and the growth of myriad national
and transnational indigenous social movements and organizations. Indigenous
peoples made an impact on national authorities like never before in the mod-
ern history of Latin America, toppling governments, demanding rights, and
achieving significant positions in national representative assemblies. Although
this resurgence appeared sudden and took most observers by surprise, the
roots of indigenous mobilization are multiple and deep. Among those roots is
the central focus of this study, the role of religion.
The common thread that runs through the contributions to this volume
is that indigenous mobilization cannot be understood without a careful con-
sideration of religious factors.While specific political openings and social and
economic processes facilitated the indigenous resurgence, religious institu-
tions, beliefs, and practices provided many of the resources, motivations, iden-
tities, and networks that nurtured the movement. In turn, indigenous religious
practitioners have reshaped the religious field in Latin America.
American groups in North America and Mexico. His educational pursuit and
his work with the institute were cut short, however, when he received death
threats under Guatemala’s military government in the early 1980s. He was
forced to flee Guatemala with his wife and four children. Jerónimo’s transna-
tional connections with Guatemalan and North American indigenous organi-
zations, forged during his years of work at the National Indigenous Institute,
became a critical resource in his plight as a refugee and in the process of ap-
plying for political asylum in the United States. Now in his sixties, Jerónimo
continues to work as an advocate for the Mayan immigrant community in
South Florida.1
While Jerónimo’s personal history is obviously unique, elements of his ex-
periences reflect many of the larger processes examined in this study. Jerónimo
is part of a generation of indigenous leaders in Latin America who gained ac-
cess to educational and other resources through religious organizations. His
political orientation was shaped, in part, by the changes going on within the
Catholic Church. His experience as a teacher in a religious school, in turn,
helped to shape the way a new generation of Mayans would practice their
Catholicism. His work as an activist and an advocate for indigenous rights
spans generations and national borders. As we examine the precipitant factors
relating to indigenous mobilization in Latin America, Jerónimo’s experience
serves as a reference for the critical role of religion.
Before turning to the specific links between religion and indigenous ac-
tivism in Latin America we should answer some prior questions.Who are the
indigenous peoples of Latin America? Where they are located physically,
socially, and economically? What is their present situation, and what are the
demands they have brought to the attention of the governments of Latin
America and the world?
ber of sectors. Millions of lay persons became active in the church and its so-
cial justice mission. Thousands of prayer and neighborhood improvement
groups kept parishes busy. By the end of the millennium more than a million
lay persons became catechists, providing a religious presence in almost every
indigenous community. Seminary walls could not contain the number of stu-
dents studying for the priesthood. Overall, the percentage of students studying
for the priesthood increased 388 percent from 1972 to 2001, including a num-
ber from indigenous backgrounds.
These events were spurred and supported by major changes within the in-
stitutional Catholic Church. The general thrust of Vatican Council II (1962–
1965) included two key factors that would affect Latin America: adaptation of a
universal church to national and local cultures and awareness of the presence of
God in other religions (as that of Latin America’s indigenous). The Medellín
Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) in1968 reinforced these
trends,16 emphasizing the “Latinamericanization” of the church.17 Changes in at-
titude toward the indigenous became inevitable. Inculturation, the process of
discerning where God is at work in a culture and articulating a theology sensi-
tive to the local context, became the aim of church leaders and theologians.To
summarize, CELAM changed its policy toward the indigenous from indigenista
to indígena, from paternalistic to accompaniment, in the 1970s and 1980s.18 In its
most specific form, guidelines for this indigenism included (1) defending the
land, (2) learning the indigenous languages, (3) motivating self-determination,
(4) equipping the community for contact with outsiders, (5) recovering cultural
memory, (6) providing hope, and (7) stimulating alliances.19
Liberation theology also emerged in Latin America in the 1960s as a way
of proposing that the church, as a people and an institution, exert an active
role in society.This way of thinking contrasted to the Latin American Catholic
Church’s previous role as an otherworldly, fiesta-bound institution. Liberation
theology centered its concerns in a preferential option for the poor, weak, and
vulnerable. Its theologians advocated social change, action to promote justice,
and emphasized communities with lay and clerical leadership as the basis of
action.
To describe Latin American religious thought, especially the theology of
liberation, to those with little knowledge of Latin America is a daunting en-
terprise. Alessandra Stanley, based in Rome and writing in 2001 for the New
York Times Service, reported that John Paul II had crushed liberation theol-
ogy.20 Such statements come as a shock to many Latin Americans, particularly
those theologians who carry on with the task of refining liberation theology.
They are aided by more than seven hundred dissertations and countless pub-
lications that have contributed to its elaboration.21 Liberation theologians
continue to write statements about a maturing theology, not knowing that
it is dead.22 Liberation theology can claim two important contributions to
10 C leary and Ste i g e nga
present-day theologizing throughout the world: method and context. Both are
salient here. Liberation theologians emphasize an inductive method: begin with
a description of the world and the church within it, reflect on the situation
from a biblical perspective, and act to bring the world and the church more in
harmony with this biblical vision. Liberation theology also took the lead in
what is today called contextual theology, a theology of utmost importance to
many missiologists.23 Contextual theology attempts to express Christian faith in
distinct languages, thought patterns, and other cultural expressions.
The creators of liberation theology were Latin American religious think-
ers, many of whom had been trained in Europe and the United States in the
1950s and 1960s.They included two commonly recognized progenitors, Gus-
tavo Gutiérrez in Peru and Juan Luis Segundo in Uruguay.They joined a core
group of about one hundred theologians in a joint venture to formulate this
new theology, especially in the 1970s.24 An Argentine Methodist trained at
Union Theological Seminary in New York, José Míguez Bonino, became the
most prominent among Protestant theologians in the group. Latin Americans
quickly bonded with theologians from other regions of the world to form the
Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians in the 1970s. By and
large, the missionaries working in Latin America were not the creators of lib-
eration theology.25 However, Catholic, and some Protestant, missionaries were
among liberation theology’s main consumers.26
Just as liberation theology was beginning to hit its stride in Latin Amer-
ica, missionaries of all denominations came under severe criticism from aca-
demics and activists in the region. The Barbados 1971 Conference of the
International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs served as a lightning rod,
bringing the subject of religion and the indigenous to the attention of the
world.27 Delegates to the conference charged that governments, international
agencies, and missionaries were participating in programs of ethnocide in
Latin America.28 While the charges were leveled specifically about non-
Andean Indians, the implications reached to include relations generally with
missionaries, churches, and indigenous peoples.The Barbados Conference re-
peated a position that some anthropologists had long held: missions were in-
struments of cultural imperialism.29
The Barbados conference not only served as a wake up call for the
churches, it also helped to launch the international indigenous rights move-
ment.30 Anthropologists and indigenous activists at that meeting established
themselves as catalysts for a transnational movement. Their activities opened
up an era of globalized actions in relation to the nation-state and Indian rights
movements. In part as a response to Barbados, religious institutions played a
critical role in this process. In the last third of the twentieth century some re-
ligious bodies responded extensively to the perceived need to aid tribal lead-
ers in organizing to pressure governments for their rights and privileges as full
Resurgent Voices 11
citizens. The World Council of Churches throughout the 1970s flew Indian
leaders to regional meetings. Between 1970 and 1981 the Brazilian Catholic
bishops sponsored fifteen meetings, bringing together hundreds of indigenous
leaders from about two hundred groups. From these international conferences
to local assets provided through religious organizations, the critical networks,
resources, and ideological frameworks for Latin America’s indigenous resur-
gence were formed.
The corps of Latin American liberation theologians has diminished in
energy and creative formulations due both to aging, and to the strong and
effective opposition of more conservative elements within the Catholic
Church. However, the impact of liberation theology continues to be felt in
Latin America. Liberation theology has been established both in church doc-
uments and in a generalizing trend of the Latin American church to promote
justice. Alison Brysk, in the best account of Indian movements as a transna-
tional enterprise, found that liberation theology “played a critical role in es-
tablishing indigenous movements and remains a key referent in areas.”31
According to Brysk, “concerned clergy were the most frequent (and period-
ically successful) interlocutors for Indian interests” in Latin America.32 In
other words, liberation theology radiated out from its academic setting to fa-
cilitate the empowerment of Latin American Indians. Spurred by many of the
tenets of liberation theology, thousands of missionaries have served the in-
digenous poor in Latin America and maintained their loyalties to their
churches through selfless service.33
In the end, both liberationists and culturalists helped to foster the growth
of indigenous theologians, who would eventually bring about a fuller elabo-
ration of teología india. Indigenous theology became a major derivative of the
liberationist movement.35 Some indigenous theologians also began to appear
in print, not so much as liberationists, but as part of a small wave of theolo-
gians of inculturation. The Zapotec theologian Eleazar López and others
helped to make the Fourth Latin American Bishops Conference in Santo
Domingo (1992) a new stage in the church’s awareness of the indigenous.
Since then, Domingo Llanque in Peru, Enrique Jordá in Bolivia, a small group
of indigenous theologians from the Catholic University, Cochabamba, and
others have joined in the effort to create indigenous theology based on An-
dean, Mayan, Zapotec, or other indigenous cosmologies.36 Stephen Judd traces
the evolution of this nascent theological movement in his chapter on indige-
nous theology.
plateaus and lowland jungles during the 1990s, indigenous groups responded
with remarkable vigor. Across the Americas, shifting economic and political
forces sparked indigenous mobilization. Once mobilized, Latin America’s In-
dians have utilized a new set of resources to promote their cause, demanding
cultural and individual rights framed through the politics of identity, while in-
creasing their transnational ties to nongovernmental and international orga-
nizations. This potent confluence of processes, tools, and tactics continues to
buttress Latin America’s indigenous resurgence.
Societies where Indians had large numbers could not simply go back to the
same power relations that existed before military government. Indians would
not and will not allow this to occur. Looking at Guatemala and the Central
Andes in 1998, John Peeler concluded that “the last generation has seen an
unprecedented emergence of indigenous people as mainstream actors.”54
Xavier Albó, Deborah Yashar, Christian Gros, Donna Van Cott, Rachel Sieder,
David Maybury-Lewis, Kay Warren and Jean Jackson, Ronald Niezen, Frank
Salomon, Stuart Schwartz, and their colleagues have demonstrated an evolu-
tion of contemporary state politics and new policy outcomes forged in con-
flict by Indian activists.55
This struggle led to new constitutional provisions for Indian rights in
Colombia and Bolivia. As Donna Van Cott has argued, Indian activism has led
to constitutional reforms that espouse a more local, participatory, and cultur-
ally diverse society in Latin America.56 Colombia and Bolivia have created
multicultural constitutional frameworks that recognize customary law, collec-
tive property rights, and bilingual education. Other countries with strong in-
digenous movements have also won important concessions that redefine the
relationship between the state and Indian groups.57 But the fight is far from
over, as statutes mean little in practice without further political pressure. Fur-
ther, substantial legislation with enforcement policies has yet to be created in
Mexico and Guatemala, the two countries with almost half the Indians of
Latin America. Only a noteworthy start in a long and painful conflict has
begun in those countries.
a transnational link to state and non-state actors who can advocate for indige-
nous causes. Religious ideas, networks, and organizations form a critical part
of ethnic identities.59 Religious ideologies provide a groundwork for the
framing of movement issues. Religious institutions enhance the acceptance of
movement positions, provide social legitimacy, and help to ward off repression.
Religion furnishes narratives for movements, providing a rationale for action
and a foundation for collective identities and group solidarity.60
ligious practices. Mayas of Guatemala, Aymaras of Bolivia and Peru, and other
indigenous groups have selectively appropriated aspects of outside religions to
meet their spiritual, physical, and emotional needs. They have forged their
own expressions not only of Catholicism, but also of Pentecostalism and his-
torical Protestantism.
This creation of una iglesia indígena (an indigenous church) was both
sought and unanticipated. The Catholic Church abandoned its policy of
assimilation of Indians into a Eurocentric church in the wake of Vatican
Council II. The church allocated considerable resources into a policy of in-
culturation, providing Christianity with an Aymara or Maya face. Released
from centuries of (not always successful) control, Indian religion has acquired
much greater identity under a enlarged Catholic canopy.To a large degree, the
Catholic Church has succeeded in a spectacular fashion in its efforts of form-
ing una iglesia indígena. Whether its bishops and authorities in Rome are
ready for the new expression of assertiveness in religious culture is another
matter.
The birth of an indigenous church among Latin America’s growing
evangelical population has been more complicated. While some historical
Protestant churches have been positively engaged in their own version of in-
culturation theology (as Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s chapter demonstrates),
Pentecostalism continues to generate significant conflict within some indige-
nous communities (as evidenced in contributions from Alison Brysk and
Kristin Norget).
Second, the chapters of this volume point to the resources and roles that
religion has provided for indigenous mobilization. From education and lan-
guage translation to advocacy and strategic protection, religious institutions
have facilitated identity-based social movements for indigenous rights. The
skills, networks, resources, and spaces of religious institutions combined with
powerful religious messages of equality and dignity to form the foundation for
political mobilization. As indigenous groups faced repression while making
their new demands, religious workers and missionaries who stood with them
became potent symbols of their cause.When religious actors became the tar-
get of government repression, local and international actors became involved
in promoting the cause of indigenous rights.
Finally, the chapters contained in this volume demonstrate the remark-
able fluidity of the religious marketplace in Latin America as well as the com-
plexity of religious politics. Opening a wider window on this flexibility
reveals a world seldom analyzed by previous descriptions of Latin American
religion. A wider ecumenism is being forced on Catholic and Protestant
pastoral workers. As René Harder Horst explains, some Paraguayan Cath-
olic leaders now recognize Protestant theology as a valid expression of the di-
vine. Interaction of indigenous peoples has broadened interdenominational
20 C leary and Ste i g e nga
practices because native peoples do not recognize what they consider arbi-
trary “white” divisions.
From the level of national politics to neighborhood to micro (family)
based relationships, understanding relations of religion and politics requires
the careful attention to context, beliefs, organizational structures, religious
practices, on one hand, and power relations, advocacy, and political gains and
losses, on the other. The authors in this volume have taken great care not to
broadly generalize from religious to political variables. Rather, they trace the
interactions of beliefs, actions, organizations, and outcomes in each case,
demonstrating the roles and resources that religious groups have provided for
indigenous movements seeking autonomy and a voice in their respective po-
litical systems.
In sum, the new voice that is being heard in Latin American politics and
religion comes from indigenous movements. Participants in these movements
have become important political actors, have forced demands for Indian rights
on governments, and have changed constitutions to open national societies to
ethnic demands of some 40 million Indians. Religion is a central part of this
insurgency. Religion is a fuel that helped to ignite these demands, and in the
process the nature of religious practice in Latin America has been fundamen-
tally altered. The impact of these changes will be felt well into the present
century.
N ote s
1. A more complete version of Jerónimo’s story in his own words may be found in the
introduction to Allan F. Burns, The Maya in Exile: Guatemalans in South Florida
(Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1993).
2. Such a definition is in line with United Nations policies on defining the indige-
nous. See Donna Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past:The Politics of Diversity
in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 208.
3. Exceptions can be found frequently for groups or individuals who made their way
to other regions.Thus, the Quechua established their culture in mountainous areas
but many have migrated, especially through contemporary, government-sponsored
colonization projects, to tropical regions.
4. For sources and range of estimates, see David Maybury-Lewis,“Lowland Peoples of
the Twentieth Century,” in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of Latin Amer-
ica, vol. 3, part 2, ed. Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 875.
5. María de los Angeles Romero Frizzi, “The Indigenous Population of Oaxaca from
the Sixteenth Century to the Present,” in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples
of the Americas, vol. 2, part 2, ed. Richard E.W. Adams and Murdo J. MacLeod (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 302–345.
6. Estimates vary due to questionable census data and varying definitions across coun-
tries. See Rachel Sieder, ed., Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Di-
versity, and Democracy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). Also see Van Cott, The
Friendly Liquidation.
7. Sieder, Multiculturalism in Latin America, 1. Also see statistics from the World Bank
(www.worldbank.org).
Resurgent Voices 21
40. June C. Nash, Mayan Visions:The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization (New
York: Routledge, 2001).
41. Rodolfo Stavenhagan,“Indigenous Peoples and the State in Latin America:An On-
going Debate,” in Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and
Democracy, ed. Rachel Sieder (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2002), 24–44.
42. See Deborah J. Yashar “Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal
Challenge in Latin America,” World Politics 52 (1999): 76–104.
43. See Yashar,“Democracy.”
44. Rachel Sieder, introduction to Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights,
Diversity, and Democracy, ed.Rachel Sieder (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2002),
3–6. Also see Donna Lee Van Cott, ed., Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin
America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 17, 262.
45. Charles R. Hale, “Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America,” Annual Review of
Anthropology 26 (1997): 567–590. See also Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper,
“Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001):
283–305; and Judith A. Howard,“Social Psychology of Identities,” Annual Review of
Sociology 26 (2000): 367–393.
46. Richard N. Adams and others tended to stress cultural survival. See, for example,
Adams,“Strategies of Ethnic Survival in Central America,” 181–206.
47. Carol A. Smith,“ ‘Culture Is More Than Folklore’: Maya Leaders Insist on Self De-
termination,” mimeograph.
48. Richard N. Adams, “A Report on the Political Status of the Guatemalan Maya,” in
Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Donna Lee Van Cott (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 155 for quotation, 155–186 for chapter.
49. Edward F. Fisher and R. McKenna Brown, eds., Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), 1.
50. Kay B. Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guate-
mala (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998).
51. Alison Brysk, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democra-
tization (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).
52. She and her husband took a trip to Bolivia as a diversion from research in Ar-
gentina. See Brysk, From Tribal Village, ix.
53. Brysk, From Tribal Village, ix. Brysk’s earlier chapter was considered a seminal work
on Indian rights as a transnational movement: “Acting Globally: Indian Rights and
Information Politics in the Americas,” in Van Cott, ed., Indigenous Peoples, 29–51.
54. John Peeler,“Social Justice and the New Indigenous Politics: An Analysis of Guate-
mala and the Central Andes,” paper for Latin American Studies Association Interna-
tional Congress, 1998, 14.
55. In addition to references in other endnotes, see Xavier Albó, Pueblos indios en la
política (La Paz: Plural Editores, 2002); Deborah Yashar, “Indigenous Protest and
Democracy,” in Constructing Democratic Governance, Latin America and Caribbean, ed.
Jorge Domínguez and Abraham Lowenthal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), 87–105;“Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democ-
racy,” Comparative Politics 31, no. 1 (October 1998): 23–42; Christian Gros, Políticas
de la etnicidad: Identidad, estado y modernidad (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de
Antropología e Historia, 2000);Van Cott, ed., Indigenous Peoples; Rachel Sieder, ed.,
Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); David Maybury-Lewis, ed., The Politics of Ethnic-
ity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2002); Kay Warren and Jean Jackson, eds., Indigenous Movements, Self-Represen-
tation, and the State in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Ronald
Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity (Berkley:
24 C leary and Ste i g e nga
University of California Press, 2003); and Frank Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz,
eds., The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol. 3, South America,
part 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Ediciones Abya-Yala in
Quito has published a number of volumes on the indigenous and their movements.
56. Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation.
57. See Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation, table 4, 266–268.
58. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, CEPAL Review 62 (August 1997): 63.
59. Darren E. Sherkat and Christopher B. Ellison,“Recent Developments and Current
Controversies in the Sociology of Religion,” Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999):
369.
60. This has been a consistent theme in Daniel Levine’s influential work. See esp. his
Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1992). Anna Peterson, Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion: Progressive Catholi-
cism in El Salvador’s Civil War (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press,
1997).
61. Bartomeu Melia,“The Guarani Religious Experience,” in The Indian Face of God in
Latin America, ed. Manuel Marzal et al. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), 170–216.
Chap te r 2
Th e Pol i t i c s of R e l i g i on i n E c uador
Alison Brysk
25
26 A l i s on B rysk
C iv i l S oc i ety: R e l i g i on as Bu i l de r
of Indige nous Community
Religious institutions helped build the indigenous movements which
later led the protests and campaigns as well as the establishment of programs
for local self-determination. The Italian-based Salesians were strong support-
ers of self-determination in the Shuar region and founders of the Shuar Fed-
eration. During the nineteenth century, Latin American governments often
requested the presence of Italian Salesians, since the order was new, empha-
sized technical training and other modernizing activities, and was dedicated to
working with the emerging urban working classes—there are more than four
thousand Salesians in Latin America.12
The Salesians were drawn into this special relationship with the Shuar by
two factors.The Salesians’ original mandate from the state, to serve urban mi-
grants to the Amazon, stimulated colonization and attendant cultural pressure
on the Indians. This inadvertent displacement of vulnerable Indians by the
Salesians’ laboring flock dismayed the progressive clerics. So, the Salesians es-
tablished Indian boarding schools to integrate the Shuar—but these were later
criticized for their culturally destructive effects. The Salesians also started
around fifty conventional and over two hundred radio schools. Father Juan
Botasso, an Italian Salesian who had served among the Shuar, went on to
found the Abya Yala Press, a bookstore, archives, and the Dom Bosco media
center in Quito. Another Italian Salesian, Adriano Barale, founded an Ama-
zonian aviation service for the order; it provides the Shuar Federation with air
ambulance service, meat marketing from Shuar ranches, and over forty-seven
thousand flights in the isolated region. The inspiration for the service came
from competing oil company and Protestant transport systems which often
excluded both Catholic missionaries and Shuar; the planes were paid for by
congregations in Italy, Germany, and the United States.13 Yet another Salesian
initiative was the establishment of a hostel for migrant Indian workers in
Quito, echoing the founder of the order’s work in nineteenth-century Italy.
Juan Botasso helped found the program in 1974; it is currently run by another
Italian Salesian.The project, which has housed over 13,500 Indians, is heavily
funded by the Inter-American Foundation and emphasizes the provision of
legal services to migrants.14
Some elements within the national structure of the Catholic Church also
raised consciousness and nurtured the burgeoning Indian rights movement. In
the Ecuadorian highlands, Monseñor Leonidas Proaño became known as “the
Bishop of the Indians.” In an unprecedented opening to this ignored con-
stituency, Proaño held regular grassroots assemblies, organized radio literacy
campaigns, returned church lands to Indians, and constructed an Indian com-
munity meetinghouse (with French funds). The bishop founded an agricul-
Civil Society to Collective Action 33
protests and blockades resulted in food shortages, looting, several deaths, and a
government declaration of a state of siege.The mediating commission which
sought to restore order and acknowledge indigenous grievances was com-
posed of the Catholic Church, human rights organizations, the United Na-
tions mission in Quito, and the Association of Municipalities.23 While the
Latin American branch of the mainline Protestant World Council of Churches
has occasionally worked with the Catholic Church on local inter-religious
conflicts, Protestantism’s weak historic role in Ecuador and the decentraliza-
tion of the newer evangelical churches active in indigenous communities have
diminished the possibilities for meaningful Protestant mediation of national-
level indigenous protest.
the missionaries themselves educated Indians about their legal rights and
sometimes helped them to secure independent territories.
The Protestant evangelical development organization World Vision had a
similar experience of delegated local authority in Ecuador, with a very differ-
ent long-term outcome. Between 1979 and 1985,World Vision provided more
than $4.7 million in aid to Ecuador.31 But the experience of World Vision in
Ecuador also illustrates the reconstruction of an acculturating agenda by mo-
bilized indigenous communities.World Vision, globally active since the 1950s,
appeared in Ecuador shortly after the expulsion of the Summer Institute—
producing persistent rumors that the development organization was a secret
surrogate for the missionary linguists.The organization’s campaigns were sup-
ported by influential Americans such as board member Senator Mark Hatfield
(Republican from Oregon). Although World Vision was based in a sector of
the North American evangelical community similar to that of the SIL, it was
populated by distinct personalities, did not engage in direct proselytization,
and operated initially through child sponsorship programs and associated U.S.
television campaigns. World Vision also concentrated on Indian areas,
but while the Summer Institute sought out the “unreached peoples” of the
Amazon, World Vision concentrated on the highlands poverty of syncretistic
Chimborazo.
Like the Summer Institute, World Vision insisted that its humanitarian
mission was a form of witness separable from its theological agenda. World
Vision also was granted Ecuadorian government contracts during the 1980s
for reforestation, water, rural electrification, and small production projects in
Ecuador’s Indian highlands.These contracts followed a period of competition
between state development agencies and the better-funded North Americans,
usually to the detriment of the bureaucratic and struggling state programs.
State officials complained that World Vision outbid their programs, condi-
tioned community aid on a monopoly of presence, and even induced villagers
to destroy competing projects. One villager explained, “By necessity, we
would ask the Devil himself for help, because the State hasn’t given [us] any-
thing.We don’t look at the religion but at the community’s needs.”32
The biggest difference between World Vision and the Summer Institute as
transnational agents, and that which ironically produced the most community
conflict, was World Vision’s channeling of resources through local members of
Indian villages.World Vision’s work was influenced by newer anthropologically
influenced norms among missionaries, norms which stressed respect for local
cultural values and the proselytizing efficacy of reliance on local authorities.
By 1982,World Vision had moved beyond the particularistic allocation of
funds to sponsored families and begun to fund community-wide development
programs. Funds were generally given to Indian evangelical congregations or
emerging Protestant political associations to distribute. In several cases,World
Civil Society to Collective Action 39
political crisis has exacerbated the Ecuadorian state’s withdrawal from a range
of localities and social service functions.Thus, delegation of local authority to
nongovernmental forces will continue, and some of those civic powers may
well be religious forces.
A final trend is the physical withdrawal of large numbers of indigenous
Ecuadorans via migration. Continuing intense internal and international mi-
gration has attenuated many indigenous Ecuadorians’ ties to all community-
based institutions, including churches. At the same time, as some immigrants’
resources and networks recirculate through local communities, diasporas have
become in some cases—like Otavalo—a third alternative to church and state
organizations and identities. As indigenous communities become transna-
tional, relationships with religious institutions of all kinds are more selective
and self-determined, yet religious affiliation may persist or even grow as a
source of bonding across borders.35
C onc lu s i on s
The Ecuadorian indigenous experience with religion shows that civil so-
ciety matters—politics are forged by civic identities, challenges are supported
by civic networks, policies are mediated by civic interlocutors, and authority
is exercised by civic administrators. But it also suggests that religious structure
matters as much as religious content. It has been the role as much as the beliefs
of religious forces that made the difference between oppression and liberation.
This suggests that indigenous peoples, advocates, and scholars may want to
focus less on theology and more on religious actors’ relationship to state
power.
But the political impact of religious forces on Ecuador’s indigenous com-
munity has also changed over time, with a general evolution in social context
mirrored by the internal trajectory of both major religious forces.At the broad
historical level, religion has moved from opiate to liberator to increasing po-
litical independence. Both Catholicism and Protestantism have followed this
pathway, despite very different theologies and structures, over distinctive time
periods corresponding to their historical scale of active presence in indigenous
communities. In the current period, as the Indian rights movement has
emerged as an independent and influential national political force, religious
preferences, programs, and networks have a much less predictable relationship
to political behavior.
The current scenario in Ecuador suggests an intensification of both of
these trends: evolving religious independence, but ongoing relationships
between states and their churches—with potentially contradictory conse-
quences. On the one hand, the indigenous movement that has come of age
and entered national power does not reference or reflect religious institutions
or affiliations. In this sense, we should expect a trend of growing religious in-
Civil Society to Collective Action 41
N ote s
1. Please see the introduction to this volume; Timothy Steigenga, The Politics of
the Spirit:The Political Implications of Pentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guate-
mala (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001); Edward Cleary and Hannah Stewart-
Gambino, eds., Conflict and Competition: The Latin American Church in a Changing
Environment (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992); and Edward Cleary and Hannah
Stewart-Gambino, eds., Power, Politics, and Pentecostals (Boulder: Westview Press,
1997).
2. On civil society, see Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992); Thomas Carothers, “Civil Society,” Foreign Policy
(winter 1999–2000): 19–29; Alison Brysk, “Democratizing Civil Society in Latin
America,” Journal of Democracy 11, no. 3 (July 2000).
3. Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Rela-
tions in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
4. A. Calderón, “El papel de los misioneros y los antropólogos,” in Antropólogos y mi-
sioneros. ?Posiciones incompatibles? ed. Juan Botasso (Quito: Editorial Abya-Yala, 1986),
113.
5. Juan Botasso, Las misiónes Salesianas en un continente que se transforma (Quito: Centro
Regional Salesiano, 1982), 201–203; Arquidiócesis de Quito, Plan Pastoral de la
42 A l i s on B rysk
Edward L. Cleary
43
44 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y
increasingly raised about whether Indian communities (and many other Latin
Americans) had ever been properly instructed in fundamental aspects of
Catholicism.8 Out of this discussion came the conviction of need of a New
Evangelization.This became the policy emphasis of John Paul II and the Latin
American bishops at their Santo Domingo General Conference (1992).9
Long before the Santo Domingo meeting, those interested in establishing
an indigenous church had focused on training native teachers, catechists, to
begin this epic task.Thousands of catechists were educated in myriad centers.
To extend geographically the efforts of the catechists, to reinforce their teach-
ing, and to increase survival skills (as improved farming methods and health
precautions), Catholic and Protestants alike employed citizens’ media, espe-
cially low-range radio stations and radio schools, described below.10
At root, the policy shift to an indigenous church meant, first of all, regard
for promoting native languages for worship and instruction. It also meant sup-
porting political self-determination, equipping communities for contact with
outsiders, recovering cultural memory, and stimulating alliances. All these ob-
jectives had implications for political involvement.
Pivotal Centers
Seven remarkable centers grew from missionary efforts in the region and
revitalized Catholic universities in Peru and Bolivia, where missionary an-
thropologists and religious studies experts focused their activities.These well-
placed centers anchored a theological and pastoral indigenous revitalization.
Five began as free-standing centers near Puno, Cuzco, and Sicuani, in Peru,
and La Paz and Oruro, in Bolivia.16 Two other places were not so much cen-
ters as well-defined emphases at the Catholic University in Lima, headed by
Manuel Marzal, and at the Bolivian Catholic University’s theological campus
in Cochabamba, with Hans van den Berg, Luis Jolicoeur, Francisco McGourn,
and Juan Gorski.
The major figures staffing these centers were principally missionaries.
Many had advanced graduate training in anthropology or religious studies. A
large part of their own and the centers’ financial support came from their
overseas congregations or foreign-mission collections. All made strenuous ef-
forts to include indigenous members as part of their teams, looking for the day
when the centers would be fully conducted by native talent.17 In their found-
ing, one center was from U.S. Maryknoll Missioners (Puno), one French Do-
New Voice in Religion and Politics 49
minican (Cuzco), two Spanish Jesuit (Lima and La Paz), one French Canadian
Oblate (Oruro), and two alliances of mostly religious orders (Cuzco and
Cochabamba).
Several centers have significant collections of research materials on in-
digenous religions. The Catholic University of Bolivia’s campus at Cocha-
bamba may have the best collection of ethnographic materials in the Andean
region. Members of these centers have been extraordinarily productive.18 The
academic nature of their work and their influence on a wider world can be
seen in the long lists of their works that are routinely collected at Harvard and
University of California, Berkeley, libraries and the Library of Congress.
The members of these centers conducted anthropological and historical
research and engaged in theological reflection. To a greater or lesser extent
members of centers other than Cochabamba absorbed the method of libera-
tion theology.They took seriously the first step of liberation theology: to de-
scribe the universe in which Indians lived.To do this, center members had to
listen to indigenous people describe religion as they experienced it.The sec-
ond step of liberation theology is biblical reflection.Thousands of hours were
spent by researchers and indigenous peoples discussing the Andean or biblical
understanding of native religious practices.Ten to twenty-five years have been
spent by individual researchers in this process.The director of the Andean Pas-
toral Center, María José Caram, O.P., described the effort of the noted South-
ern Andean Church as cultivating “a spirit of contemplation and listening and
trying to put aside paternalistic and materialistic attitudes.”19
The major figures differ considerably in how they came into this enter-
prise. Diego Irarrázaval experienced firsthand and early in his life (he was a
deacon and not yet ordained a priest when he left Chile) how leftist Catholics
had committed serious failures. He recognized, for example, that the movement
of Christians for Socialism did not give sufficient attention to the divisions it
caused within the church. In Peru, where he was working as a missionary, Irar-
rázaval emphasized listening rather than organizing. He built up an impressive
body of work on indigenous religion based on what he observed.20
Irarrázaval never lost his enthusiasm for liberation theology; indeed, it was
the driving force that led him to the poorest of Latin America.“Here [among
the indigenous] liberation theology has borne its fruit: believing communities
and men and women missionaries who are fully committed to the cause of the
continent’s poor.”21 By the 1980s he began seeing Indian religion as incultur-
ated liberation: communities finding salvation from evil and sin and con-
fronting local customs that cause self-destruction.
On the Bolivian side of the Andes, Xavier Albó has become what one
longtime observer has called a “twentieth-century reincarnation of Bartolomé
de Las Casas, a one-man publishing industry, and the country’s most intel-
lectual activist in the area of indigenous issues.”22 Albó came to occupy this
50 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y
with the culturalist perspective, as taking the support away from political
activism.28
Juan Gorski has provided a succinct statement about Indian theology
from a culturalist perspective, one that has been published in several languages
due to widespread interest in the topic.29 Together, Luis Jolicoeur, as rector, and
Hans van den Berg, Frank McGourn, and Gorski, as professors, form the basis
for perhaps the strongest indigenous theology center in Latin America. The
Instituto Superior de Estudios Theológicos (Higher Institute for Theological
Studies) forms part of the Catholic University of Bolivia campuses at Cocha-
bamba. To these are affiliated the Institute of Applied Anthropology, Institute
of Missiological Studies, and Library of Ethnography. Graduates from Cocha-
bamba have published careful studies extensively on indigenous cultures, far
beyond Bolivia.30 In contrast to Guatemala, the Bolivian church includes large
numbers of indigenous seminarians. In the racist context of Bolivia the shame
of being indigenous has given way to cultural pride. The intellectual basis
for an indigenous church is taking place for the first time in five hundred
years.
The Bolivian and Latin American bishops have been key players in this ef-
fort. For some years the bishops were not attuned to indigenous cultural ques-
tions. But, following pressures from priests and catechists of the indigenous
church and responding to the indigenous complaints about the celebration of
Columbus’s “discovery,” the bishops have strongly backed Indian initiatives
since the early 1990s.31
Protestants number about 10 percent of Bolivian and Peruvian popula-
tions, with concentrated groupings in the highlands and Amazonian regions.
While Protestants have not created indigenous intellectual centers similar to
the Catholic ones described, some provided a generalized thrust toward polit-
ical empowerment. Notably, Adventists encircled Lake Titicaca, providing
schools that have had a positive impact on an almost exclusively indigenous
student body. Fernando Stahl, a pioneer Adventist educator, has emerged as a
major figure in designing education for indigenous empowerment.
In a word, Catholic and some Protestant churches provided an intellectual
basis toward empowerment of Indians, furnishing centers, schools, and infor-
mal educational opportunities aimed at creating an indigenous church.This, in
turn, served as a fundamental basis for political activism.
indigenous movement that was making its voice heard at the Organization of
American States and the United Nations.32 The movement improved political
negotiating capacity of Indian groups in their own countries.
During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century the Peruvian and
Bolivian states and political parties made strong efforts to eradicate the “eth-
nic question.” Both countries attempted to turn their indigenous population
into peasants. Campesino (peasant) replaced indio (Indian). Indígena (indige-
nous) was reserved for the people from eastern forest region. Use of “commu-
nity” was dropped in favor of union, cooperatives, or agricultural producers.
Political parties, from the right and the left, wanted to put an end to the idea
of ethnic identities acting in opposition to the state.As Albó mentions, the Pe-
ruvian and Bolivian states wanted to be universal and monopolistic in their
control.33 It has not worked. Indians held onto their identity through commu-
nitarian space, rituals, and local politics. As Víctor Hugo Cárdenas has pointed
out, a close reading of indigenous history shows that indigenous communities
have a quality of being mini-states.34
Peruvian and Bolivian intellectuals largely ignored Indian culture as part
of the national patrimony.Two prominent Andean intellectuals broke with this
tradition. Fausto Reinaga published La revolución india in 1969 to the great dis-
comfort of his Bolivian colleagues. The Peruvian intellectual of world
renown, Anibal Quijano, raised the question of ethnic identity in 1980 in
terms of cholo.35 But in the 1990s, the almost exclusively non-Indian intellec-
tuals no longer had the floor to themselves.To the great surprise of Peru and
Bolivia’s educated classes, Indian intellectuals not only existed but they
stepped forward confidently into the public sphere.The assimilationist model,
in the indigenous view, was dead.
their place as full citizens, with educational and other benefits.A reflective in-
digenous awareness was growing. For the first time in modern history in-
creasing numbers of young indigenous people passed through the formal
educational system and obtained positions as teachers, doctors, and agrono-
mists.The Adventist schools in the Lake Titicaca area were especially adept at
providing education that empowered Indians.44 Their graduates began taking
on local political leadership positions decades ago and have advanced to be-
come national legislators.
The emergent leadership focused on underlying causes of poverty. Pri-
marily, they reacted to two generalized failures. First, they witnessed on their
own terrain the failure of traditional development plans. Second, they be-
came increasingly aware that the modern nation-state was flawed in its foun-
dations.45 As a result of these failures, indigenous persons and groups felt that
they had been treated as second-class persons. They were deprived of their
rights, treated as minors. In some areas they were treated as wards of the state.
Indigenous persons tended to react to this treatment by self-negation, in
essence, agreeing with treatment afforded them by mestizo classes above
them. Some saw themselves as unschooled and largely ignorant of the ways to
prosper economically in their own societies. Many indigenous built walls
around themselves and their communities, fostering or maintaining a culture
of resistance.46
To remedy this situation indigenous leaders proposed the goal of a multi-
cultural and polyethnic state.They also honed arguments about specific issues.
They sought more clearly defined legal status, a new status of indigenous peo-
ples within a democratic society. Many indigenous peoples consider the right
to land essential to their survival.They looked for ways to foster cultural iden-
tity beyond resistance. Hence, in a number of places efforts have been made to
facilitate a cultural rebirth, especially in terms of indigenous languages and lit-
erature. They look for ways to safeguard their community organizational life
and customary laws. Lastly, Indian leaders aim to achieve greater self-determi-
nation and greater voice in national politics.
they are based in the highlands or the Amazon. In the highlands indigenous
groups began gaining their rights under the Augusto Leguía government. In
the 1920s the Leguía government extended legal recognition to indigenous
communities. These communities expanded and consolidated these rights
through court decisions.
Marxist and populist parties in Peru, intent on class-based politics, put
heavy emphasis on calling Peru’s indigenous “peasants.” Indigenous elites and
masses in centers such as Cuzco strove for de-Indianization through the 1920s
to 1990s.54 The leftist military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado intensified
this campaign after 1968 when it took power. Indians accepted the term
“peasant” as a slightly more exulted status than indio, as they did in Bolivia
after the revolution of 1952.The difference between the two countries hinged
on a reversal in Bolivia where campesinos became indios again.55 Orin Starn,
viewing the politics of protest in the Andes, observes that “most Peruvian vil-
lagers would be confused or insulted to be called by the old name [indio].”56
Velasco’s military government sought to achieve stability in the country
by reducing the great disparities in land holdings. Family dynasties held own-
ership of vast territories.To prevent a bottom-up revolt the military broke up
large estates and created peasant cooperatives.While the inefficient economies
of these cooperatives largely failed, the indigenous peasants found the rural
class structure turning more in their favor. As John Peeler has noted, “the re-
sult . . . has been “a rather highly organized but fragmented peasantry.”57
The plagues that descended on all classes in Peru, but especially on its
peasantry, were two brutal guerrilla movements, the Sendero Luminoso (Shin-
ing Path) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA). Peru-
vian peasant activism took shape as a very large movement for self-protection.
Indian communities began in 1976 to form groups for night patrol against
bandits that marauded the countryside.This grassroots initiative responded to
the perceived incapacity of the government to provide essential protection. In
northern Peru the rondas attempted to make up for the absence, inefficiency,
or corruption of authorities who neglected the poor and responded to the
wealthy.
In the northern Andean region some three hundred thousand men joined
the rondas campesinas, peasant patrols, covering an extensive area of the
northern Peruvian Andes.They also created a system of public discipline and
punishment of crime. After the Indians took a measure of power through the
rondas, they were no longer intimidated by local or national authorities.They
stood up to authorities, wresting from them a measure of accountability.They
forced government officials to respond to situations they would have previ-
ously ignored unless bribes or tributes were paid. In the process Indians and
some officials with whom they had to deal saw Indians as persons with full
rights of citizens. Liberation theology had a hand in this. Small Christian
60 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y
C onc lu s i on
Indigenous discourse in Peru and Bolivia stands at a crossroads between
human rights, democracy, and nation-states.62 Indigenous groups, at the top
and bottom of their organizations, now challenge the assumptions that na-
tional elites and national societies have made since nation-states were created
in Latin America almost two hundred years ago.They publicly question state
policies that have maintained Indians in their inferior status in society. Reli-
gious beliefs, commitments, and resources foster ethnic identities, and they
help provide ideological and other resources for pushing indigenous demands
in conflicts toward economic justice and political rights. Latin America’s in-
digenous and their theologians are constructing indigenous theology that acts
New Voice in Religion and Politics 61
N ote s
1. See Miguel Alberto Bartolome, Por la liberación del indigena: Declaración de Barbados
(Cuernavaca: Centro Intercultural de Documentación, 1971).
2. Among surveys of Bolivia and Peru see especially: Xavier Albó, Pueblos indios en la
política (La Paz: Plural Editores, 2002), “Andean People in the Twentieth Century,”
in The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, vol. 2, part 2, ed. Frank
Salomon and Stuart B. Schwartz (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
765–871, with extensive bibliography, and “Bolivia: From Indian and Campesino
Leaders to Councillors and Parliamentary Deputies,” in Multiculturalism in Latin
America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy, ed. Rachel Sieder (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 74–102; David Maybury-Lewis, “Lowland Peoples of
the Twentieth Century,” in The Cambridge History vol.2, part 2, ed. Salomon and
Schwartz, 872–947; Donna Lee Van Cott, various works, esp. “Constitutional Re-
forms in the Andes: Redefining Indigenous-State Relations,” in Multiculturalism, ed.
Sieder, 45–73; Diego Garcí-Sayán, various works, esp., Tomas de la tierra en el Perú
(Lima: Centro de Estudios y Promoción del Desarrollo, 1982); and Raquel Irigoyan
Farjardo, “Peru: Pluralist Constitution, Monist Judiciary—A Post-Reform Assess-
ment” in Multiculturalism, ed. Sieder, 157–183.
3. This chapter is based, in part, on interviews in Bolivia and Peru from 1958 to 2002,
and from a network of scholars established while editor of Estudios Andinos (1970–
1976).
4. Xavier Albó,“The Aymara Religious Experience,” in The Indian Face of God in Latin
America, ed. Manuel Marzal et al. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), 153–155.
5. Hans C. Buechler and Judith Maria Buechler,“Combatting Feathered Serpents:The
Rise of Protestantism and Reformed Catholicism in a Bolivian Highland Commu-
nity,” in Amerikanistische studien: Festschrift für Hermann Trimborn, vol. 1 (St.Augustin:
Hans Völker u. Kultern, Anthropos-Inst., 1978).
6. Susan Rosales Nelson, “Bolivia: Continuity and Conflict in Religious Discourse,”
in Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America, ed. Daniel H. Levine (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 222.
7. See esp. Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano, De una pastoral indigenista a una pastoral
indígena (Bogotá: Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano, 1987); and José Alsina
Franch, compiler, Indianismo e indigenismo en América (Madrid: Alianza Editorial/
Quinto Cententario, 1990).
8. See, for example, Edward L. Cleary, Crisis and Change:The Church in Latin America
Today (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1985), 5.
9. John Paul II, “Opening Address,” 41–60, and “Message to Indigenous People,”
156–160, and Latin American Bishops’ Conference,“Conclusions,” nos. 136–140 in
document, in Alfred T. Hennelly, Santo Domingo and Beyond (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1993).
10. Other expressions of citizens’ media include low-cost mimeographed publications
and instructional videos.
11. For a vividly presented case study see June C. Nash, Mayan Visions:The Quest for Au-
tonomy in an Age of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2001), passim.
12. See, for example, Michael Lowy,“Sources and Resources of Zapatism,” Monthly Re-
view 49, no. 10 (March 1998): 1–5.
13. Younger missionaries tended to promote a culturalist rather than a liberationist
view. Interview with Andrew Orta, February 29, 2003.
14. See, for example, Barry J. Lyons, “Religion, Authority, and Identity: Intergenera-
62 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y
29. Juan Gorski, “La teología india y la inculturación,” the Spanish version is in Yachay
(Cochabamba, Bolivia) 23 (1998): 72–98.
30. Publications available through Editorial Verbo Divino, Cochabamba.
31. See sections 243–251, Conclusions, Fourth General Conference of Latin American Bish-
ops (1992), and Stephen Judd,“From Lamentation to Project:The Emergence of an
Indigenous Theological Movement in Latin America,” both in Santo Domingo and
Beyond, ed. Alfred T. Hennelly (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993).
32. Alison Brysk believes that Protestant churches did not systematically but only
episodically play a mediating role in the Indian transnational movement. She argues
that the Catholic Church is not on equal footing with other social forces and stands
between state and society in Latin America. She also observes that Protestant
churches also lack tight transnational structures needed for systematic mediation.
See Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International
Relations in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 209, nt. 14.
33. Albó, Pueblos indios, 181.
34. Ibid., 182.
35. Anibal Quijano, Dominación y cultura: Lo cholo y el conflicto cultural en el Perú. (Lima:
Mosca Azul, 1980).
36. Among the most important external agencies, missionaries are commonly cited.
See, for example, Brysk From Tribal Village, passim; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, “Indige-
nous Organizations: Rising Actors in Latin America,”CEPAL Review 62 (1997):
63–75; and Rachel Sieder, introduction to Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indige-
nous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy, ed. Sieder (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2002).
37. See the assessment of the gains of the Bolivian Revolution, especially see Herbert
S. Klein “Social Change in Bolivia since 1952,” in Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in
Comparative Perspective, ed. Merilee Grindle and Pilar Domingo (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2003), 232–258.
38. Healy, Llamas, 69.
39. For a view of one the principal indigenous leaders, see Víctor Hugo Cárdenas,
“Cambios en la relación entre los pueblos indígenas y los estados en América
Latina,” in Pueblos indígenas y estado en América Latina, ed.Virginia Alta et al. (Quito:
Editorial Abya-Yala, 1998), 27–38.
40. An account of the history of CIDOB is provided by political leader Vicente Pessoa
in “Procesos indígenas de participación política y ciudana en los espacios de gob-
ierno y desarrollo municipal,” in Pueblos indígenas, ed. Alta et al., 169–203.
41. Clemencia Rodríguez, “The Bishops and His Star: Citizens’ Communication in
Southern Chile,” unpublished manuscript.
42. Ibid.
43. James W.Wilkie, Carlos Alberto Contreras, and Katherine Komisaruk, eds., Statisti-
cal Abstract for Latin America, vol. 31 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center
Publications, 1995), 990, table 3107.
44. For further description see Charles Teel, “Las raíces radicales del Adventismo en el
Altiplano Peruano,” Allpanchis 33 (1989): 209–248.
45. The wider relations of state and culture are too lengthy to pursue here. For a recent
discussion see George Steinmetz, ed., State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural
Turn (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
46. For forms of resistance see James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak:The Everyday Forms
of Resistance (New Haven, Conn.:Yale University Press, 1985).
47. For an assessment of this process see Donna Lee Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation
of the Past:The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University Pittsburgh
Press, 2000).
48. Healy, Llamas, 121.
64 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y
49. See Marilee S. Grindle, Audacious Reforms: Institutional Invention and Democracy in
Latin America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 94–146, for
the mechanisms and politics of reform.
50. Brysk, From Tribal Village, 282 and 246–282, passim.
51. Ibid., 269.
52. Yrigoyen Fajardo,“Pluralist Constitution,” in Multiculturalism, ed. Sieder, 157–183.
53. Xavier Albó explores alternative explanations for lack of a national movement in
Pueblos indios, 216–225.
54. María de la Cadena, “Race, Ethnicity, and the Struggle for Indigenous Self-Repre-
sentation: De-indianization in Cuzco, Peru, 1919–1992,” Ph.D. diss., University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1996.
55. See, for example, Xavier Albó,“El retorno del indio,” Revista Andina 9, no. 2 (1991):
299–345.
56. Orin Starn, Nightwatch:The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham, N.C.: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 1999), 32.
57. John Peeler,“Social Justice and the New Indigenous Politics: An Analysis of Guate-
mala and the Central Andes,” paper for the 1998 Latin American Studies Interna-
tional Congress, 10.
58. Lester McGrath-Andino,“The Social Spirituality of Latin American Base Christian
Communities,”Th.D. diss., Boston University, 1995.
59. Starn, Nightwatch, esp. 90–91; see also Irigoyan,“Peru,” 164 and 176.
60. María Isabel Remy, “The Indigenous Population and the Construction of Democ-
racy in Peru,” in Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Donna Lee
Van Cott (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 117.
61. Peeler,“Social Justice,” 12.
62. See remarks of Stavenhagen,“Indigenous Organizations,” 75.
Chap te r 4
65
66 Re né Harde r Hor st
mission compounds. Anglicans built cattle ranches and created small indus-
tries, such as carpentry and leather shops at the central mission at Makth-
lawaiya, where they employed and also fed as many as one thousand Enlhit
people.17
Events between 1953 and 1959, when a conservative interdenominational
Protestant group from Florida called New Tribes Mission briefly managed
Makthlawaiya, confirm that denominational differences actually mattered lit-
tle to the Enlhit. In this period, nearly the entire indigenous population of the
mission was re-baptized as followers of the New Tribes Mission, regardless of
earlier Anglican membership.The conversions were primarily a pragmatic re-
sponse, as the Enlhit explained that they had joined New Tribes because
American missionaries traveled in two airplanes while their British predeces-
sors had gotten around only by horse and oxcart.The day after Anglicans took
ownership of the mission again, in 1963, the Enlhit asked for the reintroduc-
tion of the Anglican communion service and aligned themselves again with
the new source of provisions.18
The enthusiastic Enlhit response to Protestantism was, in part, economi-
cally motivated. Such wholesale conversion, however, can only be fully under-
stood by recognizing the extent to which the native people continued to
distinguish traditional religious beliefs from their adoption of Christianity.To
secure economic benefits, the Enlhit deliberately hid traditional spirituality
from the missionaries while displaying a façade of orthodox Anglicanism.The
yohoxma, or religious healers, learned to sing quietly and continued healing
ceremonies without missionary knowledge, even at the mission stations.
Whenever the Enlhit wished to drink or dance they left the mission for a
time, following what anthropologist Stephen Kidd has called an “excellent
understanding and parallel rejection of many aspects of the missionary mes-
sage.Their success has been predicated on following a dual strategy of hiding
their traditional culture and mastering an acceptable Anglican discourse.”19
This compartmentalization and juxtaposition of values seems to fly in the face
of dominant theories of practice such as Bourdieu’s concept of the subcon-
scious habitus, but cultural strategies native to the Chaco help explain the
practice. Given their hunter-gathering tradition, the Enlhit viewed the mis-
sions as new sources of economic abundance and their teachings as new ritu-
als necessary to procure the provisions. Still, observers clearly regarded the
concealment of tribal customs and even the portrayal of doctrinal orthodoxy
to have been purposeful and conscious deception of the missionaries and as
necessary to continue access to mission resources. As Kidd and missionaries
discovered, the Enlhit expounded theology to give excellent impressions of
doctrinal orthodoxy and even acted as converts to convince missionaries of
their legitimate beliefs.20 Even if this was a strategy rooted in the cultures na-
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 71
tive to the Chaco, the example highlights the creativity commonly seen in in-
digenous resistance to outside impositions.
The Enlhit adoption of the Anglican message allowed them to secure fi-
nancial assistance from the mission but continue traditional beliefs and rituals in
secret. Not only did indigenous people overlook differences between various
denominations, they found creative ways to accept the beliefs of the new dom-
inant powers into their own faith and worldviews.At the level of consciousness,
then, the example of the Enlhit adoption of Christianity seems to differ from
other examples of indigenous religious change, most notably the age-old layered
and syncretic Mayan adaptation of new beliefs into their own tradition of mul-
tiple cults and supernatural beings with a resulting mixture of codes.21 The dis-
similarity between these cases is cultural: sedentary Mayan strategies of survival
versus the hunting and gathering practices of the Chaco peoples.Without cast-
ing a judgment on the legitimacy of their religious experience, then, at one level
the Enlhit therefore “appropriated” Christianity for their own purposes and still
subverted the missionaries’ original intent by limiting their power to control.
Mennonite missionaries farther west reported similar surges in conver-
sions and cultural change. Starting in the late 1960s, almost all indigenous set-
tlements within the Mennonite Colonies experienced messianic movements
as they joined new Mennonite Church structures. While in part an effort to
improve economic conditions, growing participation of Nivaclé and Enlhit in
native Mennonite churches was also an indigenous attempt to restore har-
mony and well-being to a rapidly changing way of life.22 Anthropologist
Elmer Miller has shown that Toba and Pilagá tribes in the Argentine Chaco
used Pentecostal revivals to reduce communal tensions that resulted from con-
tact with non-Indians.23 In much the same way, indigenous people in the
Mennonite Colonies used massive religious revivals to invoke the spiritual
forces they believed had made the Europeans successful farmers. Indigenous
people understood their relationship with Mennonites within the context of
rituals they had previously employed to control their world, such as spiritual-
izing hunting and gathering.After moving to a sedentary life among the Men-
nonites, indigenous people transferred their traditional worldview to the
relationship with their new overseers and providers and came to believe that
correct fulfillment of the new religious rites would bring them economic
success.24 Baptism into the Mennonite churches, then, had not altered their
traditional religious cosmology.The Enlhit and Nivaclé continued tribal spir-
ituality even as they fulfilled Protestant rituals.
Indigenous people in the Chaco thus greatly increased participation in
Anglican and Mennonite churches by 1965. The regime was delighted with
this turn of events, for, as a result, indigenous people often settled in perma-
nent locations and started to farm.
72 Re né Harde r Hor st
winter of 1971 at the new reservation where the regime was trying to settle
the three Ache groups. The scholar and his wife lived for the better part of a
year at the reservation. There they witnessed the malnutrition, abuse, and
death of the Northern Ache that the overseer Pereira and his armed indige-
nous assistants had brought to the camp by truck and kept as prisoners.29
When Münzel spoke out on behalf of the Ache the dictatorship expelled him
from the country. Convinced by his rude treatment that Stroessner was trying
to cover a sinister plot to exterminate Paraguay’s indigenous peoples, the an-
thropologist denounced the regime in Europe.30 Critics of Stroessner took ad-
vantage of Münzel’s momentum to embarrass the regime. The Catholic
Church especially used the case to position itself firmly behind indigenous
rights and against the dictatorship.
The international community, meanwhile, had begun to focus on indige-
nous situations and rights. In January 1971, anthropologists gathered in Bar-
bados to discuss indigenous conditions in Latin America. In their Declaration
of Barbados, the scholars accused states of genocide and called on churches to
stop missionary activities. The religious response to this admonition took
place in Paraguay in March of 1972, when the World Council of Churches
and the Evangelical Union in Latin America (UNELAM) assembled mission-
aries and anthropologists.The resulting Document of Asunción apologized for
past religious ties to oppressive structures and called on churches to help end
all forms of discrimination. Religious agencies pledged to support indigenous
organizations, study native religious values, and defend indigenous human
rights through the media.31
Indigenous conditions and the growing campaign to defend them focused
the Catholic Church in Paraguay on indigenous rights in a new way. In May
1972, even before Münzel left the country, the Catholic University hosted a
conference on the situation of native peoples, where the anthropologist him-
self called on Paraguayans to help improve deteriorating Ache conditions.32 In
response, Paraguayan scholars and Catholic activists began to use the Ache or-
deal to criticize the integration policy and the dictatorship.The director of an-
thropology at the Catholic University, Miguel Chase Sardi, also a recipient of
a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship in 1971–1972, depicted the integration
policy for the Ache as genocidal.33 Bartomeu Melià denounced settlement ef-
forts as “ethnocidal” and positioned the Catholic University and the church
itself firmly behind the growing criticism of the dictatorship.34 At Melià’s en-
couragement, the bishop’s conference notified the Holy See in Rome about
recent Ache deaths.35
In this atmosphere of repression and resistance the church organized a
National Missions Team (ENM) to channel its work on behalf of indigenous
peoples. The controversies that this new approach generated led the new of-
fice to annually gather bishops, priests, and lay workers to plan the Catholic
74 Re né Harde r Hor st
Enlhit created formal church conferences that by the early 1980s had over
1,000 adherents each. The Enhlit called their religious organization the
United Evangelical Churches and had 2,000 registered members by 1982.63
Not surprisingly, it was Enlhit laborers and extended families from the
Mennonite Colonies, including church members, who in the late 1970s began
a concerted demand for ancestral lands. In December 1981, when two
Guaraní Ñandeva groups recovered 7,500 hectares of tribal land at Laguna
Negra through ASCIM, they organized five agrarian villages and named them
Bethlehem, Canaan, Timothy, Damascus, and Emaus.64 Their use of biblical
names for their settlements shows a connection between their desire to re-
cover land in order to raise crops and their adoption of the Evangelical Protes-
tant faith.65
Indigenous people also employed Protestant missions to further their re-
sistance to state integration pressures by reasserting the use of tribal languages.
In Translating the Message, historian Lamin Sanneh has shown how scriptural
translation into vernacular languages provides a strong sense of importance to
minority ethnicities and was closely linked to cultural revitalization and strug-
gles for ethnic and national independence in Africa and Asia.66 So called
“native-victims,” Sanneh continued in a later article, could thus “turn to their
own account the things to which Europeans introduced them, including
mother tongue literacy.”67 In Paraguay it was precisely during the mid-1970s,
when indigenous people were converting en masse to Protestant churches,
that larger missions translated scriptures into indigenous tongues and empha-
sized their use. Mennonites had translated significant portions of New Testa-
ment scriptures into Nivaclé and Enlhit by the late 1960s, and this literature
provided indigenous people with the pride of having the “word of God” in
their own language. Later, as indigenous evangelists learned to read and speak
publicly to spread their Christian faith to other communities, translated texts
served as an incentive for education.68 Use of indigenous languages grew
throughout the 1970s, immediately prior to the large western indigenous
claims to land.
As Brigit Meyer has argued about Protestantism in nineteenth-century
Kingdom of Krepi (today Ghana) though, at the grassroots Christianity can-
not be reduced to the intentions and actions of missionaries. Rather, in
Paraguay as in Krepi, the indigenous appropriation of Christianity “tran-
scended the opposition they seemed to be trapped in,” and in “the process of
making Christianity their own . . . [they] subverted the missionary ideas.”69
Translated scriptures empowered the Enlhit and encouraged their tribal or-
ganization.The power of church officials to control indigenous Christians was
extremely limited.
In 1976 the Anglican mission reversed its earlier decision to use only
Guaraní language with the Enlhit, a choice they had made to encourage in-
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 79
digenous integration into national society.70 Anglicans began to urge use of the
New Testament in the indigenous vernacular, and soon the Enlhit once again
expressed themselves publicly in their own language.Younger Enlhit promptly
began to “show a confidence and dynamism which help[ed] them compete”
in local job markets, that could “be attributed in part to their . . . literacy in
their own language.”71 As linguist Gabriela Coronado Suzán has shown, lan-
guage can serve as a very important support for indigenous communal orga-
nization and additionally as a means to exclude outsiders from the tribe.72 The
Enlhit benefited from bilingual education, translated scriptures, and the result-
ing ethnic pride that both produced in their society. During the 1980s they
became one of the most militant indigenous peoples to demand ancestral
lands from the government.
tion.”82 Finally, church leaders firmly pledged to uphold indigenous claims for
land and issued a plan for social action that positioned the Catholic Church
firmly behind indigenous, peasant, and labor groups.83 At the same time, the
pledge may also be interpreted as a church attempt to reestablish influence
within indigenous communities, for in conclusion the bishops cited examples
of indigenous groups that had found fulfillment in Catholicism.84
Possible secondary motives aside, the church upheld its commitments to
defend native land claims: during the 1980s, Catholic lawyers were involved in
dozens of legal battles over land between indigenous communities and indi-
vidual ranchers or the regime. One state effort that uprooted dozens of Mbyá
settlements was the Caazapá Development Project, a $54.3 million program to
increase agricultural production, started in 1982.85 Despite church attempts to
defend these communities, the dictatorship and the World Bank developed
forested areas and displaced as many as four hundred sedentary families of
Mbyá horticulturists.86 Catholic lawyers also lobbied on behalf of Avá Guaraní
communities evicted in 1982 by the Itaipú hydroelectric plant, and again
raised the charge of genocide.87 To solve this conflict, the Catholic Church and
other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) purchased land and resettled
two Avá Guaraní communities,Vacaretangué and Kiritó, out of harm’s way.88
The long legal battle between three Mbyá communities located within the
eastern Mennonite Colony of Sommerfeld also occupied much of the Catholic
Church’s energy.To clear Mbyá off of land the Mennonites from Manitoba had
purchased in 1946, the prosperous settlers burned indigenous homes and de-
stroyed their crops with bulldozers throughout the 1980s.The ENM (National
Missions Team) and other NGOs legally defended five Mbyá communities.
After a prolonged judicial battle, the Andres Rodriguez government finally ex-
propriated 1,457 hectares from Sommerfeld for the Mbyá in 1989.89
Legal defense of indigenous communities visibly altered the Catholic
Church. In August 1983, the ENM published a new pastoral program to direct
Catholic interaction with indigenous people. Written by Jesuit Antonio Do-
rado González and Oblate José Seelwiche, the plans decreed indigenous peo-
ple capable of “elaborating their own future, history and salvation.”90 The
priests proclaimed a significant internal change within the church, literally, “a
conversion by the indigenous world.”The church’s urgent mission, insisted the
ENM, was to eliminate dominant national prejudices rather than alter the in-
digenous peoples. To accomplish this task, the Catholic Church promised to
promote interdenominational ecumenism, publicize indigenous conditions,
and continue to defend indigenous lands.91 The document shows concrete ev-
idence that indigenous peoples had profoundly changed the goals of Para-
guay’s Catholic Church.
Meanwhile, increasing indigenous demands for self-determination and
land also changed other denominations. By the mid-1970s, the Enlhit of the
82 Re né Harde r Hor st
Eastern Chaco, completely frustrated with the regime’s refusal to return the
land the state had sold out from under them, turned to churches for help. Be-
cause they were Anglican, the Enlhit pressured their denomination to enable
them to settle again on tribal lands.92 Anglican overseers, who had still hoped
to integrate Enlhit further into national society as small ranchers, decided after
a significant policy reversal to help settle them instead on large communally
owned tracts of land and give them cattle and land titles to help encourage
self-determination.The mission designed a project called La Herencia, mean-
ing inheritance or legacy, which over the next ten years purchased three hun-
dred thousand hectares, in three properties, for three hundred Enlhit families
to settle and farm.93 As administrator Ed Brice recalled, the abrupt change was
a response “to what Indians were requesting at the time” and led the Anglican
church into a “whole process that proved to be quite fruitful for the Enlhit”
since they used communal land ownership as a unifying tool for their people.94
Unlike the indigenous people, peasants did not farm communally. Still,
the lack of land also forced campesinos to organize, and by 1985 they had
formed over ten groups to represent their struggles, including the Paraguayan
Peasant Movement and the National Union of Peasants. Supported by the
Catholic Church, these organizations encouraged peasants to use communal
marketing to further agricultural self-sufficiency.95 In the first ten months
of 1985, peasants invaded thirty-one private properties and forced nearly
300,000 Brazilian settlers from the country by taking their land.96 The notable
absence of indigenous people from these peasant groups, as well as the practi-
cal impossibility of serving both sides when they competed for the same land,
proved a lesson to the church about rifts between peasants and indigenous
people.97
By this time, the Catholic Church had become the outspoken advocate
for a group of Toba Maskoy from Puerto Casado, along the Upper Paraguay
River.The Casado Company had extracted tannin from the Chaco for nearly
a century with a largely indigenous labor force. By the 1980s, though, as the
hardwood quebracho trees dwindled and company work ground to a halt,
workers lived in desperately poor conditions. In 1983, the Maskoy sent their
leaders to the capital on six occasions, where with Catholic legal support they
negotiated for the return of lands from the Casado Company and addressed
high regime authorities through the newspapers.98 The Catholic Church be-
came the strongest defender of the Maskoy land claims, possibly because they
had accepted Catholic proselytism at the Salesian María Auxiliadora mission
along the Upper Paraguay River.
The bishop at Puerto Casado, Alejo Obelar, was a trusted ally of the
Maskoy in their struggle for Riacho Mosquito and placed church legal ser-
vices at their disposal.99 Major newspapers, even those usually pro-regime,
daily supported the Maskoy claim.100 In 1984, two hundred citizens, the
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 83
Paraguayan Lawyers College, and the Catholic University all lobbied on be-
half of the Maskoy.101 The Maskoy had by 1985 created important alliances
with other NGO’s, but the church was their most active advocate. As support
for the dictatorship crumbled in 1985 with the economic downturn, the
church used the Maskoy claim to criticize the ruling party.102 By January 1987,
as Paraguayos staged anti-regime demonstrations, the Catholic Church
brought the Maskoy struggle to the forefront of public attention.When a large
labor union began to champion the Maskoy claim, the Catholic Church pre-
sented three thousand additional signatures in support of the Maskoy to Con-
gress and launched a “national campaign” on their behalf.103 Labor unions, base
ecclesial communities, and peasant organizations added their support to the
church and ten thousand people signed another petition for the prompt return
of the Maskoy lands. Finally, on July 30, the Senate unanimously expropriated
30,103 hectares at Riacho Mosquito for three hundred Maskoy families, cit-
ing as sufficient cause the “long and painful process of the indígenas.”104 The
return to ancestral homelands restored economic self-sufficiency and encour-
aged the Maskoy to identify again with their indigenous heritage. Chief René
Ramírez considered the campaign a great victory, for the people began to use
their own languages and once again practice dances and tribal religious tradi-
tions that had declined while among non-Indians.105 Catholic support was
critical in this indigenous success.
Such national support on behalf of an indigenous community was im-
pressive. Still, there is no escaping the fact that NGO allies and the Catholic
Church itself also employed indigenous rights to further their own causes.
Catholic leaders used the Maskoy case to publicize their own opposition to
the regime and to position the church as a champion of subaltern requests for
political and economic change.
We have prayed . . . four days and nights.We have dialogued much about
. . . [the] culture . . . our God and our ancestors have left for our own way
of life.We have also seen that we cannot give it up, we the guaraní [sic], as
it is a gift from our God. We also see attempts to introduce another cul-
ture among us, which destroys members of our community, our descen-
dants, because it weakens them.Therefore, after much exchange, we have
84 Re né Harde r Hor st
The indigenous declaration was a strong and united resolve to resist out-
side pressures for change. Such expressions of indigenous identity and tribal re-
ligion stand as testaments to the results of the Catholic Church resolve to
encourage indigenous spirituality rather than force an outside set of beliefs
upon the indigenous peoples.107 Attempts to identify with tribal religious be-
liefs and communal landholding were also therefore unified indigenous rejec-
tions of state development, outside religion influence, and coerced integration.
vite the whites to be civilized and respect us as people, respect our commu-
nities and our leaders, respect our lands and our woods, and that they return
even a small part of what they have taken from us. Indigenous people wish to
be friends with all Paraguayans.We wish for them to let us live in peace and
without inconveniences.”111
Ramírez’s address serves as another example of indigenous attempts to help
shape the church. The chief listed the difficulties indigenous people faced in
daily struggles for food and work and showed that that indigenous people still
did not consider themselves to be members of the national society.The oration
focused on the loss of indigenous land, and Ramírez accused the regime of
working against indigenous land rights.“The white authorities who should de-
fend us instead defend those who purchased our land with us still living there.
The whites have created a law in our favor.The law is good; they do not apply
it in our favor,” Ramírez concluded.112 The speech was a powerful repudiation
of the regime’s attempt to clear indigenous peoples off their lands and integrate
them into the national society. Even more importantly, the address to the pope
made public the long indigenous struggle to reclaim land and the significant
support churches had given to the indigenous communities.
In his accustomed sympathetic tone, Pope John Paul II responded to the
indigenous people with a strong message of comfort and support: “Your de-
sires for improved social conditions are just.Above all you wish to be respected
as persons and that your civil and human rights be recognized and honored. I
know the great problems you face; in particular your need for land and prop-
erty titles. For these I appeal to a sense of justice and humanity by all those re-
sponsible to favor the most deprived.”113 The indigenous encounter with the
pope not only buttressed the indigenous cause because of the recognition they
received in the media; the event also showed evidence that indigenous re-
quests for legal support had altered the Catholic Church, which had become
the strongest advocate for justice to indigenous communities and land claims.
Clearly, indigenous people had influenced Christian denominations in Para-
guay.
C onc lu s i on
In the years that followed the collapse of the Stroessner regime in January
1989, indigenous people in Paraguay continued to struggle to protect their lands
and resources.They achieved a notable legal success in 1992 with the inclusion
of an entire chapter on indigenous rights in the new Constitution.A strong in-
digenous lobby supported by the Catholic Church was responsible for this im-
provement in Paraguayan legislation. Still, the new law has remained largely
un-enforced and indigenous conditions have continued to deteriorate.The loss
of land has figured most prominently in their worsening situation. Mennonites,
Anglicans, and the Catholic Church have supported the indigenous efforts to
86 Re né Harde r Hor st
Similar to what occurred in Africa and in Central America, it has by and large
not been missionaries and denominations that have encouraged these move-
ments to restore vitality to ethnic differences and identities. Rather, indige-
nous people themselves took advantage of the religious organizations they had
at their disposal and used them to build new tribal structures that could create
unity and cohesion for their own people, as well as a greater sense of religious
satisfaction in a new cultural context.
It is in this way that indigenous people themselves must be the acknowl-
edged as the initiators and the strength behind attempts to recover and defend
tribal lands from state development.Those denominations that militantly de-
fended indigenous land rights against state development schemes widened the
scope of religious influence to include legal protection and support for inde-
pendent indigenous self-determination. Religious organizations may have had
their own interests as well as those of the indigenous peoples in mind when
they lobbied for indigenous land rights. Nevertheless, the desire to increase re-
ligious influence within indigenous communities will never completely ex-
plain the risks that the Catholic Church took in the face of considerable
regime opposition in its defense of the Mbyá, the Toba Maskoy, and dozens of
other land claims in recent Paraguayan history. Clearly, the voices of indige-
nous people in Paraguay have encouraged religious denominations to adopt a
new position and to include indigenous people as equals within their midst.
Echoes of these resurgent voices and experiences may ultimately encourage
people everywhere toward greater inclusiveness, toleration, and a broader un-
derstanding of divine grace.
N ote s
1. One of the most recent studies of indigenous peoples in the Chaco is by John Ren-
shaw, Los indígenas del Chaco paraguayo, Economía y Sociedad (Asunción, Paraguay: In-
tercontinental Editora, 1996), 46–56. I am indebted to outside readers Ed Cleary
and Tim Steigenga for helpful suggestions, as well as to my father,Willis Horst, and
mother, Byrdalene Horst, for their insight and experience with missions and in-
digenous peoples in Paraguay.
2. R. Andrew Nickson, “Tyranny and Longevity: Stroessner’s Paraguay,” Third World
Quarterly 10, no. 1 (January 1988): 239.
3. On Stroessner’s rise to power see Paul Lewis, Paraguay under Stroessner (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 63–72. See also Hugh M. Hamill, intro-
duction to Caudillos, Dictators in Spanish America, ed. Hugh M. Hamill (Norman and
London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 18.
4. José Sanchez Labrador, Paraguay Católico: Harmonioso entable de las Misiones de los In-
dios Guaranis, 1772, vol. 1, 331, La. Mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloo-
mington, Indiana.
5. W. Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land (London: Seeley, Ser-
vice and Co. Limited, 1913), 20–21 and ff.
6. Decreto #1,343, Por el cual se crea el Departamento de Asuntos Indígenas, Asunción,
1958, 1; DAI documents, 20, National Indigenous Institute (hereafter cited as
INDI), Asunción, Paraguay. See also appendix to Decreto #1,343, DAI documents,
88 Re né Harde r Hor st
n.p., INDI. On indigenism, see Hector Díaz Polanco, Indigenous Peoples in Latin
America:The Quest for Self-Determination (Boulder:Westview Press, 1997); and Alcida
Ramos, Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1998).
7. Scott Mainwaring and Alexander Wilde, eds., The Progressive Church in Latin America
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 10.
8. Paraguayan Episcopal Conference (CEP) to archbishop, March 25, 1965; Dr. Gómez
Fleitas to Dr. Fracchia, October 14, 1967, ENM (Equipo Nacional de Misiones)
(currently CONAPI) Archive, Paraguayan Episcopal Conference, Asunción,
Paraguay (hereafter cited as ENM Archive).
9. Meeting between Catholic administrators and Alfonso Borgognon, December 14,
1967, ENM Archive.
10. José Seelwische, O.M.I., “Los Misioneros y la Autogestión de los Pueblos Indíge-
nas,” manuscript, 1991, ENM Archive.
11. Wilmar Stahl, Escenario Indígena Chaqueño, Pasado y Presente (Filadelfia, Paraguay:
A.S.C.I.M., 1982), 91.
12. Jacob Loewen, “From Nomadism to Sedentary Agriculture,” América Indígena 26,
no. 1 ( January 1966): 27.
13. Ibid., 28.
14. Ibid., 36.
15. Stephen Kidd, “Religious Change: a Case-Study Amongst the Enxet of the
Paraguayan Chaco,” MA thesis, University of Durham, 1992, 111.
16. Ibid., 111.
17. Ibid., 112.
18. Ibid., 116–117.
19. Ibid., 118.
20. Ibid., 119, 121.
21. On the Maya, see, for instance, Gary Gossen, Telling Maya Tales:Tzotzil Identities in
Modern Mexico (New York: Routledge, 1999), 184.
22. Cristóbal Wallis, “Cuatros Proyectos Indígenas del Chaco,” manuscript, Salta,
Comisión Intereclesiástica de Coordinación para Projectos de Desarrollo (ICCO),
1985, 41, Anglican Church Archive, Asunción, Paraguay.
23. Elmer Miller, Los Tobas Argentinos, Armonía y Disonancia en una Sociedad (Buenos
Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Argentina Editores, 1979), 131.
24. Walter Regehr, “Mennonite Economic Life and the Paraguayan Experience,” 37,
Archive of Walter Regeher, Neuland, Paraguay.
25. Alejandro E. Kowalski,“Aceptar al otro como Constituyente de uno mismo,” in De-
spues de la Piel, 500 Años de Confusión Entre Desigualdad y Diferencia, ed.Alejandro E.
Kowalski (Posadas: Departamento de Antropología Social, Universidad de Misiones,
1993), 37–39.
26. Bartomeu Melià, El Guaraní: Experiencia Religiosa (Asunción, Paraguay: Universidad
Católica, 1991), 9.
27. Miguel Chase Sardi, Situación Sociocultural, Económica, Juridico-Política Actual de las Co-
munidades Indígenas en el Paraguay (Asunción: Universidad Católica, 1990), 278.
28. Lois Ann Lorentzen, “Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas,” in
Religions/Globalizations, Theories, and Cases, ed. Hopkins, Lorentzen, Mendieta, and
Batstone (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 94.
29. Mark Münzel, The Aché Indians: Genocide in Paraguay (Copenhagen: International
World Group on Indigenous Affairs, 1973), 52. See also Mark Münzel, “Manhunt,”
in Genocide in Paraguay, ed. Richard Arens (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1976), 29.
30. Mark Münzel, The Ache: Genocide Continues in Paraguay (Copenhagen: IWGIA, 1974).
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 89
31. Adolfo Colómbres, ed., Por la Liberación del Indígena (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del
Sol, 1975), 31–36.
32. “Persigue Hoy Conferencias sobre Indigenismo en la Universidad Católica,” ABC,
May 31, 1972, n.p.
33. Miguel Chase Sardi,“Apéndice, 1972, para la situación reciente de los Guajakí,” Su-
plemento Antropológico 6 (1971): 37. Chase Sardi visited the United States between
September 1, 1971 and August 31, 1972. Gordon Ray, Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation, to Garret Sweany, Consul, U.S. Embassy in Asunción, New York, Au-
gust 25, 1971, INDI, File 122.2, CEE, 1959–1973.
34. Chase Sardi published his report on recent Aché conditions in the Suplemento
Antropológico 6 (1971): 37; Miraglia in the ABC (July 23, 1972) 1; Melià did so in an
interview with La Tribuna entitled “Melià: Los Indios Están en Estado de Cautive-
rio,” February 7, 1972, 13. See Münzel, The Aché Indians, 61.
35. “La CEP Estudia Informe Sobre Masacre de Indios,” La Tribuna, June 30, 1972, 6.
36. Serafina de Álvarez, Director of CONAPI, formerly ENM, correspondence, Asun-
ción, July 26, 2002.
37. Ejercicio del Año 1973, Asunción, January 8, 1974, DAI note #3, INDI, Carpeta
Memorias, 4.
38. John Renshaw, “Paraguay, the Marandú Project,” Survival International Review 1, no.
15 (spring 1976): 15.
39. Miguel Chase Sardi and Branislava Susnik, Indios del Paraguay, manuscript,Asunción,
1992, 312, later published in Madrid by MAPFRE América, 1995.
40. “Proyecto ‘Marandú: Se Busca Informar a Líderes Indígenas de Todo el País,” ABC,
April 23, 1974, 9.
41. Infanzón to Bartomeu Melià,Asunción,April 17, 1974, INDI, File 110, CEE, 1974;
“No hay genocidio en el Paraguay porque no hay intención de destruir grupos in-
dígenas,” ABC, March 9, 1974, 7.
42. Bartomeu Melià, interview, Asunción, April 19, 1995; “Declaración sobre Geno-
cidio en la República del Paraguay,” INDI, File 110. CEE, 1974. See also Infanzon
to Professor Jaime María de Mahieu, Buenos Aires, Asunción, May 11, INDI, ibid.
43. CEP statement, May 8, 1974, cited by Arens, Genocide in Paraguay, 142.
44. “Se inició ayer en San Bernadino reunión de líderes indígenas de la selva tropical,”
ABC, October 9, 1974, 14. The World Council of Churches Program to Combat
Racism and the Inter-American Foundation funded this event. Adolfo Colombres,
Por la Liberación del Indígena (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Sol), 248.
45. “Parlamento Indio pidió se devuelva tierras a tribus con títulos de propiedad de las
mismas,” ABC, October 15, 1974, 9.
46. Angel Llorente and Antonio Carmona, “Parte Crónica de el Proyecto Marandú,
Proyecto de la Interamericana Fundation [sic],” monograph, Asunción, Chase Sardi
Personal Archive, 24.
47. “Dos aborígenes paraguayos participarán por primera vez en un congreso en
EE.UU.,” ABC, February 11, 1975, 6.
48. “Retornaron Indígenas que participaron en congreso mundial,” ABC, November 8,
1975, 11.
49. Lorentzen,“Who Is an Indian?” 88.
50. Wilmar Stahl, “Chaco Native Economies and Mennonite Development Coopera-
tion,” manuscript, Filadelfia,ASCIM, 1994, 13;Wallis,“Cuatro Proyectos Indígenas,”
39.
51. “Los Indígenas del Chaco Central trabajarán sus propias chacras,” ABC, August 2,
1976, n.p.; “Las Comunidades Indígenas cuentan con 41 escuelas,” ABC, August 4,
1976, 15.
52. Wallis,“Cuatro Proyectos Indígenas,” 45.
90 Re né Harde r Hor st
53. Walter Regehr, “Mennonite Economic Life and the Paraguayan Experience,”
monograph, Archive of Walter Regehr, Neuland, Paraguay, 1990, 38–39.
54. Sidney Greenfield, “Population Growth, Industrialization, and the Proliferation of
Syncretized Religions in Brazil,” in Reinventing Religions, Syncretism and Transforma-
tion in Africa and the Americas, ed. Greenfield and Droogers (Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 66.
55. Wallis,“Cuatro Proyectos Indígenas,” 41.
56. Jean Pierre Bastian, Protestantismo y Sociedad en México (Mexico City: Casa Unida de
Publicaciones, 1983).
57. Virginia Garrard-Burnett,“Identity, Community, and Religious Change among the
Mayas in Chiapas and Guatemala,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 6, no. 1 (1998):
73.
58. Joanne Rappaport,“Las Misiones Protestantes y la Resistencia Indígena en el Sur de
Colombia,” América Indígena 44, no. 1 (January–March 1984): 124.
59. Blanca Muratorio, “Protestantism, Ethnicity, and Class in Chimborazo,” in Sacha
Runa: Ethnicity and Adaptation of Ecuadorian Jungle Quichua, ed. Norman Whitten
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), 520.
60. Muratorio,“Protestantism, Ethnicity, and Class in Chimborazo,” 522.
61. Wilmar Stahl, Escenario Indígena Chaqueño (Filadelfia: A.S.C.I.M., 1982), 78.
62. Wilmar Stahl, interview, Filadelfia, May 11, 1995.
63. Stahl, Escenario Indígena Chaqueño, 102.
64. “Proyecto Guaraní-Ñandeva, Informe de Actividades para el período Septiembre
1981–Febrero 1982,” Filadelfia, February 1982, AIP and Servicio Profecional An-
thropológicos EPSAJ Archives, Asunción.
65. Miguel Chase Sardi et al., Situación Sociocultural, Económica, Jurídico-Política Actual de
las Comunidades Indigenas en el Paraguay (Asunción, Paraguay: CIDSEP, Universidad
Católica, 1990), 188–193. See also,Wallis,“Cuatro Proyectos Indígenas.”
66. Lamin Sanneh, Professor of World Christianity at Yale Divinity School, Translating
the Message:The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989), 124.
67. Lamin Sanneh, “The African Transformation of Christianity: Comparative Reflec-
tions on Ethnicity and Religious Mobilization in Africa,” in Religions/Globalizations,
Theories, and Cases, ed. Hopkins et al., 108.
68. Stahl, Escenario Indígena Chaqueño, 99.
69. Brigit Meyer, “Beyond Syncretism,Translation, and Diabolization in the Appropri-
ation of Protestantism in Africa,” in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Reli-
gious Synthesis, ed. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw (London and New York:
Routledge, 1994), 48, 63.
70. While most nationals in Paraguay used Guaraní for their intimate language of
choice, the indigenous tongue was native to Eastern Paraguay and not to the Chaco
west of the Paraguay River. Fostering the Enxet use of Guaraní had therefore been
an Anglican tool for further integration rather than the support of an indigenous
language.
71. Ed Brice, former director of Anglican Project La Herencia, personal correspon-
dence, December 31, 1996.
72. Gabriela Coronado Suzán, “Políticas y Prácticas Lingüísticas como mecanismo de
dominación y liberación en America Latina,” in Democracia y Estado multiétnico en
América Latina, ed. Casanova and Rosenmann (Mexico City: Jornada Ediciones
Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades/UNAM,
1996), 63–91.
73. Werner Baer and Melissa Birch, “Expansion of the Economic Frontier: Paraguayan
Growth in the 1970s,” World Development 12, no. 8 (August 1984): 786.
74. Baer and Birch, “Expansion of the Economic Frontier,” 787. See also R. Andrew
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 91
99. Enenlhit chief René Ramírez, interview, Asunción, Paraguay, May 21, 2001. See
also Diálogo Indígena Misionero, 35, no. 11 (April 1990): 3.
100. “Maskoy: No ejecutaron hasta ahora la mensura,” Noticias, April 27, 1985, 13.
101. Two-hundred Public Citizens to General Martínez, INDI, Asunción, October 4,
1984, Archive of the Catholic Church National Missions Team, CONAPI.
102. John Hoyt Williams, “Paraguay’s Stroessner: Losing Control?” Current History 86,
no. 516 (January 1987): 26. See also René Harder Horst, “The Catholic Church,
Human Rights Advocacy, and Indigenous Resístance in Paraguay, 1969–1989,”
Catholic Historical Review 88, no. 4 (October 2002): 738.
103. “Nuevas muestras de solidaridad para con Maskoy,” Hoy, July 22, 1987, 21; “Otras
3,000 firmas dan su apoyo a los maskoy [sic],” Última Hora, August 21, 1987, 16.
104. “Senado aprobó expropiación,” El Diario, July 31, 1987, 11.
105. Enenlhit chief René Ramírez, interview, Asunción, Paraguay, May 21, 2001.
106. “Debemos vivir como Guaraní,” Diálogo Indígena Misionera 8, no. 27 (December
1987): 12.
107. On indigenous spirituality see Pablo Richard,“La Palabra de Diós en las Pequeñas
Comunidades de Base,Vida y Pensamiento,” Revista Teológica de la Uinversidad Bib-
lica Latinamericana 21, no. 1 (first semester 2001): 182.
108. “Emotiva Presencia de Indígenas hubo en Caacupé,” El Diario, December 7, 1987,
8–9.
109. “Harán misa en idioma de indígenas,” El Diario, November 26, 1987, 20. See Horst,
“Las comunidades indígenas y la democracia,” 90–91.
110. “El Papa estará con los indios,” El Diario, August 31, 1987, 18.
111. René Ramírez, “Discurso de bienvenida dirigida a su santidad Juán Pablo Se-
gundo,”mimeograph, Mariscal Estigarribia, May 17, 1988, AENM, Asunción.
112. Ibid.
113. “Juan Pablo II se pronuncio a los indígenas,” Diálogo Indígena Misionero 9, no. 29
(July 1988): 15.
Chap te r 5
Interwoven Histories
Bruce J. Calder
93
94 Bruce J. Calde r
marked Mayan society (and Guatemalan society generally) in the 1970s and
during the severe repression which followed. Since then it has continued as a
foundation for the creation of new structures and movements, of which the
movimiento Maya is one.
The contemporary relationship between the Catholic Church and the
Indian communities of Guatemala has roots deep in the colonial and post-
independence periods, particularly in the anticlerical policies of the Liberal
regimes of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The sixteenth-
century church, a central institution in the process of conquest, set the tone of
the future relationship by working to replace Mayan religion with Spanish
Christianity and to Hispanicize Mayan culture in general, an effort which was
as much about political sovereignty as it was religion. Under both Spanish and
Guatemalan rule the basic characteristic of the relationship was domination,
sometimes exploitative, sometimes paternal and protective. In the society
which emerged, religion was an integral part of a race-based socioeconomic
and political system, one in which European whites and later Guatemalan
ladinos (the non-Maya) were nearly always in charge.
What allowed Mayan cultural survival was their will to resist and the
long-term ineffectiveness of the Spanish and Guatemalan states—the Spanish-
speaking authorities, both civil and clerical, gradually withdrew from many
isolated rural and Indian areas and tried to exploit them from a distance, leav-
ing the Indians to lead many aspects of their lives as they wished.While eco-
nomic pressures on Mayan communities increased in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, Liberal anticlerical reforms greatly debilitated the Cath-
olic Church and created an enlarged space for Mayan religious practices.
the Archdiocese of Guatemala, Rafael González Estrada. Its central feature was
its stress on the formation of lay catechists, who worked as priests’ helpers and,
in Mayan areas, served a critical role as translators.They taught elementary as-
pects of Christian doctrine and practice to widely scattered rural communities.
The obvious purpose of this project was to revitalize and modernize
Catholicism in rural areas. In Indian communities, where the related phenom-
ena of ecclesiastical neglect and syncretism had created a Catholicism which in
many cases was little influenced by priests, it would work to reassert the
church’s control and to replace what church leaders saw as a paganized Cathol-
icism with an orthodox European version.8 For this reason the lay catechists
were supposed to be under the strict control of priests and bishops, although
there is evidence that some of the early catechists were very zealous and oper-
ated nearly on their own, taking the initiative in proselytizing in towns and vil-
lages where Acción Católica was unknown, much like the Protestants of later
years.9 This owed to the great scarcity of clergy; later, as there were more priests,
the catechists’ independence seems to have diminished, only to increase once
again in the 1970s under the influence of the Second Vatican Council.
Soon after its founding, in the mid to late 1940s, a second goal of Acción
Católica Rural emerged; it was to provide a counter-influence to the growing
involvement of the secular state in rural areas. More particularly, it was meant
to create some organizational and philosophical basis for resistance on the
local level to what Archbishop Rossell and many in the Guatemalan elite saw
as a drift toward communism within the Guatemalan government and its eco-
nomic and social projects.10
One should note that Rossell’s anticommunism, whatever its political re-
sult, was not intended by him as a cover to preserve the privileges of the rich.
It was Rossell’s sincere though paternal belief that a responsible society had to
make efforts on behalf of the poor and exploited. In this he reflected twentieth-
century Catholic social doctrine, going back to the 1891 encyclical, Rerum
Novarum, which was critical of both socialism and unbridled capitalism. The
archbishop identified (and publicly condemned) exploitation and poverty as
reasons for the alleged receptivity to radical ideas in Indian communities.11
But most of his elite allies had little interest in heeding his calls for social and
economic change, which generally depended on the implementation of pa-
ternalistic schemes by landowners and employers themselves.
One area of social change in which Archbishop Rossell himself took
some initiative was in the area of education. In an environment which gener-
ally depreciated the need for schooling the country’s indigenous population
(and, indeed, questioned the aptitude of Indians for formal learning), Rossell
set out to provide one of the first opportunities for Indian education. In the
1940s he created the Instituto Indígena Santiago, soliciting the support of
wealthy Catholic laymen to support his effort.12 The purpose was to train
Interwoven Histories 97
young Indian men as teachers who would then return to their home villages.
Some years later, in 1965, the archdiocese opened a companion school for
young Indian women, the Instituto de Nuestra Senora del Socorro.13
became the dominant paradigm in the rapidly growing missionary sector of the
Catholic Church in the later 1950s. Interest in developmentalism was greatly
increased in the 1960s with the advent of the Cuban Revolution. This event
caused a redoubling of the missionary efforts in Latin America by the Vatican,
which poured in personnel and money from the wealthy Catholic communi-
ties of Europe and North America. It also frightened U.S. policy makers into
creating the Alliance for Progress, which provided considerable additional re-
sources, many of which were channeled through Catholic institutions.18
One important aspect of the Catholic development projects financed by
the U.S. government was leadership training. A large number of individuals
from rural areas, many selected by Catholic priests from among their cate-
chists, participated in leadership development programs in Guatemala (such as
the Center for Rural Leadership Training (CAPS) at the Jesuit’s Universidad
Rafael Landívar) and in the United States (such as at Loyola University in
New Orleans). These programs were designed to create grassroots leaders
trained to promote health care, education, cooperatives, modern agriculture,
and other development projects on the local level.19
Dovetailing with Catholic development efforts was the work of the
Catholic-related Christian Democratic Party.20 The party, like the revolution-
ary governments of the 1944–1954 period, sought to involve the indigenous
population in national politics, thus to build a political base for itself in the
heavily Mayan western highlands. Though the party was institutionally sepa-
rate from the Catholic Church by the early 1960s, its historical and philo-
sophical connections created a continuing spirit of alliance. Catechists and
other active Catholics were frequently involved as party activists; although
priests, especially foreigners, generally avoided open involvement in politics,
they gave tacit and occasionally direct support to these activities.21
Since one of the Christian Democrats’ primary goals was the training of
rural leaders, there was a natural connection between Christian Democratic
organizers and catechists, who were often articulate men who were willing to
question the status quo.The party provided its training both in Guatemala and
in Germany, supported by funds from the West German government.22 One
important result of this political organizing (as well as Catholic development
projects) was that many Maya communities rapidly developed a group of ed-
ucated and trained local leaders who came from outside the traditional lead-
ership structure of Indian society.23
the ladino minority or the Mayan majority (and not infrequently with elements
of both). In many cases foreign priests developed considerable prejudice against
the ladinos and in favor of the Mayan population. This prejudice was partly
based on an innate sympathy for the underdog and partly on perceptions (and
misperceptions!) about the cultures of the two groups. Comparing the ladinos
to the Maya, foreign religious workers often stereotyped the ladinos as only su-
perficially religious, without the strong spiritual orientation of the Indians; they
especially objected to the attitudes of male ladinos, whom they saw as generally
indifferent to religion (or worse, anticlerical) and often immoral and unethical
in their personal lives. One missionary reported in 1952 from a village in Hue-
huetenango, “Fortunately a very small percentage of the people are ladinos. If
this were not the case, the work here would be very discouraging.”24
Foreigners, though they carried ideas of racial and cultural superiority
from their own societies, sometimes reacted against the racist distinctions
which governed ladino-Mayan social relations and upon which the ladino mi-
nority depended to help maintain their political and economic dominance of
village life. In church activities, for example, many priests wanted Indians to
participate in religious activities with ladinos on an integrated and equal basis,
but the ladinos usually preferred to maintain their separate groups.Worse, the
ladino minority rejected the concepts of democracy and majority rule, caus-
ing intense Indian-ladino struggles over matters of local prestige, money, and
power, such as control of the committees for the maintenance of the church.25
Another cause of conflict with the ladinos was the missionaries’ work in
community and human development projects.These efforts had obvious racial
and political implications in Indian communities because Guatemala’s deep
inequalities of wealth and power often translated into a stark division between
the ladino minority and the Indian majority. It seemed obvious to most
foreign religious workers that the group which most desperately needed as-
sistance with development was the Indian population. Moreover, some mis-
sionaries began to conclude that the general poverty of the Maya was no
accident, that it had come about during centuries of systematic exploitation.
It was also clear that a variety of institutions and structures remained in place,
perpetuating this exploitation in the twentieth century, and that ladinos, either
locals or outsiders, were usually the ones who benefited.26
In this socioeconomic context, a parish school which tried to educate
Mayan and ladino children equally or a credit union which sought to offer an
alternative to the local money lender was a menace to ladino interests. Thus
missionary development projects often led to local tensions, to confrontations,
and sometimes to the intervention of civil governors or the military on behalf
of ladino landowners or merchants who saw their profits or power threatened.
On several occasions beginning in the 1960s local elites managed to have
priests expelled from their parishes or even from the country.27
100 Bruce J. Calde r
had put into motion in Mayan communities were augmented by new phenom-
ena, particularly liberation theology and the church’s “preferential option for the
poor.” In this period a significant minority of those in the church and many in
Mayan communities developed a new outlook and a new approach to both re-
ligious and secular affairs. Parts of the Catholic Church and many of its existing
programs in Mayan areas were transformed and, to some degree, radicalized.
Many Catholic Maya were motivated to become participants in a widespread
mobilization of the poor and disenfranchised which swept Guatemala after
1975. Even though this led the ruling coalition of the elite and military to un-
leash a brutal campaign of violence which devastated both Mayan communities
and many programs of the Catholic Church, both survived. By the mid-1980s
both were again participating in an equally vital, if more cautious, movement for
change. Central to this is the movement for Mayan revindication.
In regard to the Catholic-Mayan relationship itself, the experience of the
violence of the late 1970s and early 1980s led a variety of groups and individ-
uals to reexamine the earlier practices of the Catholic Church. Critics from
both the church and the Mayan community found value but also grave short-
comings in the past policies of the Catholic Church in both its developmen-
talist and subsequent liberationist phases. In particular they condemned the
church’s long campaign to devalue and undermine traditional Mayan culture,
particularly its many religious aspects. Numerous modifications to church pol-
icy based on an effort to show greater respect for indigenous culture, includ-
ing a tentative exploration of the possible “Mayanization” of Catholicism, have
resulted. At the same time there have been Mayan initiatives, such as an effort
to revitalize the traditional Mayan priesthood, which are independent of the
Catholic Church.34
The primary cause of these developments within the Catholic Church
was the program of change initiated by the Second Vatican Council (1962–
1965) and by the 1968 Latin American bishops’ conference in Medellín,
Colombia. New elements began to take their place alongside of (and fre-
quently mixed with) the old. The innovations involved both theological and
practical aspects, having to do with liberation theology, the “preferential op-
tion for the poor,” and a reorientation of pastoral work. A second major cause
of the events which unfolded in this period had nothing to do with religion.
Rather, it was the failure of Guatemalan governments after 1954 to solve any
of the basic social and economic problems which affected Guatemala’s im-
poverished majority, combined with the use of fraud and repression to block
the political path to change.
promote new religious perceptions and to bring broad social change by ap-
plying religious values to the everyday struggles of life.The new focus was on
concientización (roughly, consciousness raising) and local empowerment, on lib-
eration of self and community from the un-Christian political and economic
structures which led to oppression and poverty.
The message of liberation theology, adopted by some of the church’s most
active and articulate members, both Guatemalan and foreign, became a major
force and certainly affected the church’s work. But it remained a minority po-
sition.While there was great enthusiasm for liberation theology by some bish-
ops, priests, and nuns, there was resistance or disinterest by others.37 There was
a similar reaction among the Maya.Though some embraced the new theology
or its practices enthusiastically, its sociological and intellectual approach ap-
parently left others feeling that it lacked a meaningful spiritual dimension.
Thus some ignored it, continuing with old forms of Catholicism as best they
could, and others became alienated, sometimes turning to the Catholic charis-
matics or to the new Protestant Pentecostal churches which began to appear
in increasing numbers in the 1970s.38
Liberation theology could nevertheless have dramatic implications in
Mayan areas. Concientización and empowerment, plus the socio-political na-
ture of the message, served to encourage a process of change which had begun
in previous decades under the revolutionary governments of 1944–1954 and
then under Catholic foreign missionaries.This process was also encouraged in
Mayan communities by the continuing activities of the Christian Democratic
Party, which had strong ties to the Catholic Church. The Christian Demo-
cratic emphasis on political education and mobilization among the Indian
masses since 1960 had not only produced local branches of the party but new
Mayan leaders and affiliated groups such as cooperatives and the Christian
Democratic peasant leagues, the Ligas Campesinas.39
Gradually, as other parties imitated the Christian Democratic effort,
Mayan towns and villages saw the formation of modern, competing political
parties and the election of Indian officials at the local (and later the national)
levels.With competing political parties, patterns of allegiance began to emerge
which were sometimes related to religious criteria.The Christian Democrats
were often associated with the Acción Católica faction and, by association, the
local Catholic priest. In addition, some evidence shows that other parties, such
as the Partido Revolucionario or the ultra-conservative Movimiento de Lib-
eración Nacional, were more likely to be close to religious traditionalists. But
since local factionalism, rather than national ideological or political issues, was
frequently the basis of these religious-political connections, the general pat-
terns were likely of great complexity.40
Thanks to the extension of formal politics into rural areas, the Maya were
becoming politically mobilized, broadening and deepening a process which
Interwoven Histories 105
as Catholic nuns in a way which would not alienate them from their home
culture (which had been her own painful experience). Finally, working in the
later 1970s, she organized a traveling team to promote Mayan consciousness
throughout the western highlands. The team was based in the K’iche’ village
of Zunil, Quezaltenango, where the Catholic priest, a German missionary,
provided moral and financial support to the project.44
Father Curtin and the Comisión de Pastoral Indígena also created a cul-
tural center to serve the needs of Maya working and living in Guatemala City.
The center became a vital institution, promoting Mayan culture and serving as
a focus for a variety of educational and service activities to a clientele which
ranged from market women to university students. But all of this activity was
brought to an end, literally destroyed, by the violence of the late 1970s and
early 1980s, with its promoters all forced to flee the country.45
Another major shift in the 1970s, intimately related to the Mayan move-
ment, was the increasing participation of the Maya in popular organizations
which operated on both the local and national levels. The Maya most often
became involved because they were active Catholics, members of Acción
Católica and of base communities, or because of church and/or Christian
Democratic ties to cooperatives and peasant unions.
Certainly the most important of these, both in terms of Mayan participa-
tion and of its impact on national events, was a new peasant organization, the
Comité de Unidad Campesino (CUC, the Committee for Campesino Unity),
which originated among the K’iche’, both in their home Department of El
Quiché and in Escuintla (a coastal department to which many Quicheans
migrated seasonally to work on the sugar plantations). Heavily represented
among the leaders and followers of the CUC were Mayan catechists and ac-
tivists from other Catholic organizations. In addition there is evidence that
members of several Catholic religious orders were also involved behind the
scenes in the formation of the CUC. Phillip Berryman, one of the best in-
formed observers of these events, has observed that CUC “emerged mainly
from the work of church groups and continued to maintain strong church
ties.”46
In one sense the importance of the CUC lay in the fact that it was an or-
ganization which could mobilize a large number of individuals in support of
social and economic change, as it proved in a massive and successful 1980
strike against south coast sugar plantations. Its importance in another sense
was that Maya participation and leadership signified direct engagement in na-
tional events and the transcendence of a variety of economic, social, and eth-
nic differences, including the usually vast divide which separated Indian and
ladino. This was also true of Mayan involvement in the expanding guerrilla
movement around 1980.47
The mobilization and partial radicalization which occurred in the Catho-
Interwoven Histories 107
lic Church and in Mayan communities in the 1970s did not occur in isolation.
Despite periodic waves of repression, a significant number of para-political
popular organizations emerged which represented the views of labor, urban
slum dwellers, reformist intellectuals, Catholic and Protestant religious activists,
and others.This activity multiplied greatly after the great earthquake of 1976,
which brought immense devastation and socioeconomic dislocation, particu-
larly to poorer communities and to the Mayan towns of the western highlands,
laying bare the deep social and economic inequities of the country. Meanwhile,
on the political front there was also increased vitality, both among reformist
parties such as the Christian Democrats and the United Front of the Revolu-
tion (FUR) and parties of the left, whose activities remained clandestine.48
In the mid-1970s Guatemala’s ruling coalition of elite and military inter-
ests decided that the gathering forces of change were becoming a serious
threat to the status quo. Not only was the organization and mobilization of
Guatemala’s rural and urban masses proceeding apace, but there were various
indications of the revitalization of Guatemala’s long moribund guerrilla
movement, this time in the heavily Indian western highlands.The ruling mil-
itary responded to these perceived threats in the traditional way, with violence.
Two of the principal targets were the Catholic Church and the Maya.
The reason that the protagonists of the violence focused on the Maya and
the Catholic Church are relatively clear. Parts of both groups participated, di-
rectly and indirectly, in the process of social and political mobilization which
culminated in the mid to late 1970s.The church was the main outside actor in
many Indian communities and had been responsible for the organization of
schools, clinics, and cooperatives, as well as for the training of non-traditional
leaders, the organization of liberationist lay religious groups, and the promo-
tion of egalitarian social and economic ideas. Mayan Catholic activists were
also frequently associated with the Christian Democratic Party, another tar-
geted institution.50
Similarly, church members and organizations, as well as the members of
Mayan communities, were centrally involved in the growing political and eco-
nomic protests of the 1970s. A series of strikes and demonstrations shook the
confidence of Guatemala’s rulers and reinforced their inclination to see all op-
position as subversion. Among the offending activities were the widespread
demonstrations of solidarity surrounding the strike of Indian and ladino min-
ers at Ixtahuacán; a series of street protests which condemned economic and
living conditions (both before and after the earthquake of 1976); the marches
which protested mass murders, individual killings, and other abuses of human
rights; and the massive strike organized by CUC on the sugar plantations of
the south coast in 1980. In addition there were local protests, such as the
demonstration over land seizures which led to the army massacre in Panzós,
Alta Verapaz, in 1978.51
Even more provocative in the eyes of Guatemala’s rulers, there were
sometimes direct connections between organizations which had ties to Mayan
communities and the Catholic Church (such as the CUC) and the expanding
guerrilla war of the later 1970s. Both Indian activists and even a few Catholic
priests were directly or indirectly implicated and it soon became clear that
many communities supported or at least tolerated the guerrillas’ activities.52
Each of these associations gave the repressive forces of the Guatemalan gov-
ernment additional excuses for their broad attack on Catholic institutions and
Mayan communities in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Both suffered tremen-
dous losses.
The violence quickly and deeply affected the relationship between the
Catholic Church and the Maya. There were three principal results. One was
that the church withdrew from large areas of the Indian western highlands. In
one case this withdrawal involved an entire diocese and department, that of El
Quiché; more typically the withdrawal was partial. Nearly everywhere the
more progressive, more activist clergy felt compelled to flee the rural areas, ei-
ther to Guatemala City or to other countries. Those who remained main-
tained a tense existence in provincial capitals or in other larger towns, greatly
restricting their activities and abandoning work in isolated villages altogether.
Interwoven Histories 109
The countryside became the realm of the army, the death squads, and the
guerrillas. The church’s projects, whether developmental or liberationist,
crumbled because it was precisely these projects and their leaders which the
forces of repression targeted for elimination. Cooperatives, seen as some form
of socialism by ultra conservatives, and lay religious groups identified with the
theology of liberation suffered especially. But all independent institutions,
even schools and clinics, were under suspicion; and those associated with
them, teachers, community health workers, and various others, were regularly
kidnapped and murdered. Beyond this targeted violence, there was a general-
ized violence, an atmosphere of terror which prevented the normal operation
of even the most innocent institutions.53
A second major result of the violence was that religious institutions in all
but the larger towns reverted to the de facto control of the local populations.
This meant that the local representatives of Catholic Action or of the base
communities became responsible for the maintenance of local Catholic life
with little or no guidance from priests or nuns. But because the repressive
forces had often marked these more progressive lay religious leaders, many had
to flee or were forced into virtual inaction.The result was that there was an in-
creased space for a resurgence of the cofradías and the traditional practices of
costumbre.
A third result was a marked expansion of Protestantism, especially of the
Pentecostal churches, which begun a rapid growth in the aftermath of the
1976 earthquake. There has been considerable controversy over the factors
which facilitated the expansion.While this is a very important question, it will
not be explored in detail here, both for reasons of space and because there is
now a sizeable literature exploring the issue. Suffice to say that some analysts,
including many within the Catholic Church, have posited a simple and direct
relationship between the growth of Pentecostalism and the repression of the
Catholic Church and progressive Catholics (as well as the arrival of large
numbers of well-financed foreign Pentecostal missionaries) during the vio-
lence. But many subsequent studies, with which this author generally agrees,
have argued that in most cases the reasons for these conversions are much
more complex and that, at best, the violence is one factor among many (most
of which are religious and social rather than political).54
violence, these policies and the projects which with they were connected col-
lapsed so entirely and with such great loss of life. The second will examine
how the church responded to the new situation with a new agenda designed
to help end the violence and to encourage the construction of a new society
in which violence would be much less likely.
In the late 1980s and 1990s there were still strong links between the
Catholic Church and the Maya. But an important change was taking place.
New Mayan leaders, many of them produced by the church’s earlier activities,
were emerging, often in response to the situation caused by the violence.They
were increasingly independent actors, creating new structures and organiza-
tions, focused on issues both cultural and political (e.g., human rights), which
were national in scope. As a result, the Catholic Church and the Maya were
becoming more equal entities, with the Maya increasingly standing on their
own on the national stage rather than being represented by others.
a major error had occurred when Catholic pastoral workers had created Acción
Católica (and later, liberationist lay communities) in opposition to traditional
Mayan religious life.This had caused ongoing conflict and resulted in deep di-
visions in many communities. In some places these divisions led to deadly con-
frontations during the violence and opened the community to the penetration
of destructive outside forces, especially the army and its civilian allies.55
A second major problem was that a variety of Catholic policies had weak-
ened or even destroyed important aspects of indigenous culture and of the
Maya’s belief in themselves. Obviously, this problem had its roots in the con-
quest, but it had continued in less dramatic ways in the second half of the
twentieth century. Catholic contributions to the erosion of Mayan culture
(which were just some of a number of modernizing, sometimes global, erosive
forces) resulted especially from the active opposition of many priests and
Catholic Action to the cofradías and costumbre. But similar results came from
other common elements of Catholic pastoral policies and attitudes. For exam-
ple, Catholic religious workers, particularly priests, were often paternal or elit-
ist. They seldom acquired the language of the people among whom they
worked, expecting the Maya to learn Spanish (and Mayan children in Catholic
schools to study in Spanish).When in later years there began to be Indian can-
didates for the priesthood or for the male and female religious orders, their
training either ignored or even depreciated Mayan culture.This frequently had
one of two negative effects: It either discouraged Indian candidates from reli-
gious vocations or, even worse, alienated successful Indian candidates from
their own culture and community. Many are the personal stories of Mayan
students who felt disoriented, marginalized, and depressed during their train-
ing. Still worse, upon graduation and their entrance into pastoral life as a priest
or a nun, some felt superior to and out of place among their own people, even
their families.This type of preparation also had the effect of producing ladino
priests largely unacquainted with and insensitive to indigenous culture.56
Increasing sensitivity to the Maya also involved changing pastoral activi-
ties so that they would serve the Maya and their communities in terms of their
own cultures.The new approach committed the Catholic Church to respect-
ing and even accommodating popular religiosity, including costumbre and the
cofradías, as a means of more effective evangelization and a way of recuperat-
ing social cohesion within the community and Mayan culture. In the 1990s
this spirit of accommodation sometimes included even the Catholic charis-
matics, who had been treated intolerantly by many progressive priests. But, not
surprisingly, it did not normally extend to the growing number of Pentecostal
Protestants, who continued to be seen by Catholic clerics as interlopers and a
major threat.
Another change was to insist that all pastoral workers learn the language
of the people with whom they worked and that they use it in church-related
112 Bruce J. Calde r
institutions such as schools and clinics. Beyond this, religious personnel were
urged to adopt the practice of inserción (insertion).The idea of insertion, which
the Conferencia de Religiosos de Guatemala (the Conference of Religions in
Guatemala, usually called CONFREGUA) began to push in 1985, was that
the religious would live within rather than outside of the communities which
they served and they would work to become part of community life.The idea
was to make them more sensitive to Mayan culture and to help transform
them from outsiders to insiders in indigenous communities; this was to make
them more committed to the people and more effective in their work.57
A further shift in Catholic practice, which represented an attempt to ad-
dress the perennial shortage of priests as well as the Protestant advantage of
having locally born ministers, was the redoubling of efforts to encourage reli-
gious vocations in Mayan communities.To ensure that these vocations led to
the eventual return of effective pastoral workers to the community, the train-
ing of priests and nuns began a dramatic shift in the 1980s (though not always
smoothly). For the first time, there were classes on indigenous cultures and
languages for both Indian and ladino students. Seminary leaders also took
measures to help Indian students adjust successfully to their new environment,
which had often been alienating because many students were unaccustomed
to living in a dominantly ladino (or if the student went abroad, foreign) envi-
ronment, because they encountered the insensitive or even racist attitudes of
faculty and students, and because many were inadequately prepared for a rig-
orous academic program by their previous schooling. To discourage an over-
adaptation to ladino culture, seminaries attempted to keep Mayan students in
close contact with their home communities, both socially and in terms of
sending them back on work assignments. Similar experiences for ladino stu-
dents sensitized them to Indian culture and values. In addition to the modifi-
cation of existing training programs, religious leaders also created several new
programs which focused entirely on Indian students.58
The process of accommodating Catholic practice to Mayan culture has
varied greatly, ranging from the superficial to the radical. The use of indige-
nous textiles for liturgical vestments and decoration of the church, an easy first
step, has long been common. Another project promoted the composition of
liturgical music in Mayan languages and for Mayan musical instruments (pri-
marily the marimba), a step which at first provoked a surprising amount of
clerical resistance because of the marimba’s connection to Mayan ceremonial
life before Acción Católica.59 Later measures, especially significant because
they reversed long-standing policy, promoted the increasing involvement of
traditional religious organizations, especially the cofradías, in official Catholic
ceremonial life. Similarly, some priests have tried to incorporate Mayan cere-
monies, such as those having to do with planting, harvesting, and the chang-
ing of the seasons, into church services.While much of this was long underway
Interwoven Histories 113
in some of the dioceses, it became official church policy in 1992 when the
bishops issued their pastoral letter,“Quinientos años sembrando el evangelio”
(five hundred years of spreading the gospel) in 1992. This long document,
which ranged from cataloging the many injustices suffered by the Maya over
the centuries (some at the hands of the church, for which the bishops apolo-
gized) to making progressive proposals for the future, included the creation of
“una Iglesia auténtica Madre-Maya, . . . una Iglesia autóctona” (an authentic
Mother-Maya church, an indigenous church) within Mayan culture and under
greater Mayan control.60
The language of the pastoral letter was meant to include, to some degree,
the most radical form of accommodation, the movement to create a Mayan
theology within Catholicism or a Mayan Catholicism. These projects fall
under the rubric of inculturación (inculturation).This small movement is made
up of a few Catholic intellectuals (one of them, for example, a European Jesuit
who teaches at the Universidad Rafael Landívar, another a Dominican priest
with long experience among the Q’eqchi’ [Kekchí] of Verapaz) and a small
number of other Catholic priests, many of them young Maya who work in
Mayan communities.While there is a range of thinking within the movement,
the fundamental thrust involves rethinking and restructuring Catholicism for
the purpose of changing its European elements (intellectual concepts, cultural
referents) to Mayan ones, to move from a Roman Catholicism to a Mayan
Catholicism.The only inviolate principle, say some of its advocates, would be
the divinity of Christ.61
Such thinking has led some of its partisans into difficulties with Catholic
orthodoxy; those few priests who first tried to create some kind of prelimi-
nary amalgam of Catholic and Mayan ideas and practices in their pastoral
work were in and out of trouble with their bishops. For the bishops (and for
some Mayan cultural nationalists) it is a short step from thinking about a
Mayan-Catholic fusion to an attempt to recreate a Mayan religion apart from
Catholicism.This is obviously unacceptable to Catholic authorities.
late 1970s and early 1980s, which continued at a reduced level throughout the
1990s. Facilitating this changing agenda was the continuing influence of Vati-
can II, the bishops’ conferences at Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979), and,
among the religious, the activities of the Conference of Latin American Reli-
gious (CLAR).62
The focus of the new agenda (which did not abandon old goals, but
shifted them to a back burner) was ending the violence, aiding refugees, and
establishing the concepts of human rights and the rule of law. Equally impor-
tant was an emphasis on reforming aspects of politics and society which pro-
moted the use of violence. Thus the Catholic hierarchy began to show
considerable concern for democracy, the cultural rights of the Maya, and more
equitable forms of social and economic development. All of these matters
were eventually included in the peace accords, in no small part because both
the church and the Maya were involved in the peace process.
The shift in the 1980s also had roots in the past, both in the international
Catholic Church (for example, the “social encyclicals,” beginning with Leo
XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891) and the Guatemalan church itself, as with
Archbishop Rossell Arellano’s mixture of anti-communism with calls for so-
cial justice, especially for the Maya, in the 1950s. Also, there was considerable
development almost a decade earlier of what became the social and economic
dimensions of the new agenda, evidenced particularly in the hierarchy’s dra-
matic critique of Guatemala’s underlying problems following the deadly
earthquake of 1976.63
But the new agenda didn’t emerge in its entirety until after the death of
the conservative Archbishop Mario Casariego and his replacement with the
relatively progressive Próspero Penados del Barrio in 1984.At that point, with
the worst of the violence subsiding, the bishops began to speak and write reg-
ularly about the need for a lasting peace based on serious reforms. One of the
first of these letters, “Para construir la paz” (June 1984), is representative of
many which followed. Written in anticipation of the constituent assembly
which would write the new constitution of 1985, the letter spoke quite di-
rectly about the problems of Guatemala.The bishops used a religious frame of
reference as they condemned the country’s “institutionalized violence” and its
manifestation “in the unjust reality of economic and social differences . . . , in
the prostration of our people, in their systematic marginalization from partic-
ipation and making decisions and in the lack of effective civil liberties.”They
also denounced lack of basic freedoms, such as the rights to free expression, to
association, to education, to work, to organize, and to life itself.They spoke of
the urgent need for an end to violence and for democracy, human rights, and
social and economic reforms. Playing no political favorites, they criticized
“marxist materialism” and the “National Security Doctrine,” both of which
put the needs of the state above those of man.64
Interwoven Histories 115
It was some time, however, before the hierarchy translated their verbal en-
dorsement of serious reform into action on the national level. But their sup-
port of change did provide cover for other brave souls, some of them religious
personnel and others unconnected to the church, to work for change.This was
certainly the case with some of the first human rights organizations, particu-
larly the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), an organization of relatives (ladino
and Maya) of the disappeared, which Archbishop Penados and the national of-
fice of religious men and women, CONFREGUA, both openly supported.
The peace process, of which the Catholic Church was an early supporter,
was essential to the church’s relationship to the Maya in the late 1980s and
1990s. Beginning with the Esquipulas talks of 1986–1987, which mandated
procedures for moving toward peace, the Catholic Church, some Protestant
denominations, and a few ecumenical groups were among the most active of
the civil society groups exerting pressure for a peace process in Guatemala.65
In fact, the Catholic Church, writes Suzanne Jonas, was at first the only “ar-
ticulated” institution which favored peace.Thus it was not surprising that the
Catholic bishop of Zacapa, Rodolfo Quezada Toruño, became head of the
National Commission of Reconciliation, the facilitating group mandated by
the Esquipulas agreement in late 1987, and then of the National Dialogue;
later he acted as coordinator for the actual peace negotiations, a position
which he held until 1993. Quezada Toruño and the other organizers of the
peace effort (which was generally opposed by the military and the political
right) believed it was essential to include the Maya and their issues in the
peace process and encouraged it.This was also facilitated by the Maya them-
selves, who created a number of organizations in the 1980s and early 1990s to
advocate for human rights, refugees and other victims of the violence, as well
as to advance Mayan culture, education, and other projects.
Among the most important of these were Mayan groups which today are
well known, such as CONAVIGUA (representing widows), CERJ (human
rights), CUC (rural workers), and CONDEG (the displaced).These and other
Mayan organizations, frequently led by figures with past ties to Acción
Católica or liberationist lay groups, joined with a wide variety of civil society
groups (including Catholic and Protestant religious activists, unions, margin-
alized urban communities, human rights activists, and many others) to form a
pro-peace movement. Using such tactics as grassroots education, demonstra-
tions, and strikes, they had a considerable impact on the peace accords (though
getting the military and the political right to honor them subsequently has
proved an even greater challenge). In any case, the peace process brought the
Catholic Church and the Maya together in a new kind of working relation-
ship at the national level.66
Surviving and recovering from the violence in the early to mid-1980s
also involved considerable practical (as opposed to policy) work in the urban
116 Bruce J. Calde r
barrios and rural communities, many of them largely Maya. Much of this
work, such as providing “accompaniment,”67 supplying food and shelter to
victims, protecting survivors from further violence, publicizing and protesting
atrocities, working with fleeing refugees, providing legal help, aiding widows
and orphans, and creating money-making projects for survivors’ self support,
was carried out by Catholic pastoral workers, when the level of violence per-
mitted it (which it often did not during the early 1980s).68 The earliest insti-
tutional efforts to deal with these problems took place in CONFREGUA,
whose members had long associations with Mayan communities, and in the
individual dioceses, especially those in the predominately Mayan western
highlands, where bishops, priests, nuns, and other pastoral workers also had
deep connections. Members of these institutions, keeping low profiles, gradu-
ally created local responses to the disastrous human situation. Particularly
noteworthy were the efforts of such bishops as Gerardo Flores in the Verapaces
and Julio Cabrera in Quiché, who focused much of their pastoral effort on
refugees and the displaced. Beginning in the mid-1980s, they and their pas-
toral workers provided accompaniment, material support, protection, legal
help, and assistance with the many difficult problems of return and resettle-
ment to local Maya, to those who had fled to other parts of Guatemala (called
the “displaced”), and to those who had fled to Mexico (where individual
Mexican bishops—most notably Samuel Ruiz in Chiapas—plus a host of
NGOs and the United Nations picked up much of the burden). Especially no-
table were the efforts of Bishops Flores and Cabrera to legitimize, aid, and re-
settle those beleaguered refugees groups in the Guatemalan mountains called
Comunidades de Población en Resistencia (the CPRs or Communities of
Population in Resistance), which the army had decided were guerrilla sup-
porters, best exterminated along with anyone who aided them.69
As the violence subsided, these kinds of activities increased and became
the basis for national structures. CONFREGUA began this effort when its
leaders established the Oficina de Servicios Multiples (Office of Multiple Ser-
vices) in 1988–1989, which coordinated work by the religious on human
rights, legal aid, refugees, and the problems of the displaced. Also, because
many of CONFREGUA’s members were foreign, it had access to economic
support from abroad; in this regard it was able to channel funds both to its own
projects and to the assistance projects of other organizations. In 1990 the bish-
ops established what soon amounted to a national human rights office, the
Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (Human
Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala), and eventually the office of
the Pastoral de Mobilidad Humana in 1992 to work on aid to refugees, repa-
triation, and resettlement.70 The human rights office, divided between legal
work and human rights education, has played an increasingly vital role in Gua-
temala since its founding, carrying on heroic work on behalf of the human
Interwoven Histories 117
C onc lu s i on
Since the 1940s there have been dramatic transformations in the Catholic
Church, in Mayan life, and in Guatemalan society generally. The changes to
Catholicism, the dominant religion in Guatemala, and to the Maya, the ma-
jority of the population, are both notable.The church, which at the beginning
of this period was small, weak, and very conservative, is now much larger,
much more influential, and, while diverse, much more progressive in its out-
look. The Maya, generally impoverished, frequently exploited, culturally op-
pressed, and having no direct voice in the major institutions which governed
their lives, are in the midst of a renaissance; while still suffering the effects of
centuries of marginalization and oppression, they are today mobilized and di-
rectly engaged with the larger society in order to obtain a place of equality for
their culture, greater economic justice, and political influence at all levels.
Both the Catholic Church and the Maya have been major actors in their
own transformations, but they have also interacted with each other. The
church and the Maya have also been shaped by a variety of factors in the larger
society, some of them deep in Guatemalan history and some of more recent
vintage, such as the revolution of 1944–1954 and its aftermath of growing so-
cioeconomic inequality, guerrilla insurgency, expanding U.S. involvement, the
build-up of the army, dictatorship and repression, and other phenomena.
The original impetus for changes in the Catholic-Mayan relationship in
this period, from the perspective of the church, was its effort to revitalize its
relationship with Guatemala’s indigenous population, to make more ortho-
dox the Indian version of Catholicism, and to offer an alternative to what
many church leaders saw as the Marxist materialist agenda of the revolution-
ary governments of 1944 to 1954. This activity was possible, ironically, be-
cause the revolutionaries of 1944 had allowed the Catholic Church to begin
to recover, especially in terms of permitting the entry of a growing number
of missionaries, from the massive blow it had suffered from the nineteenth-
century Liberals. While the church was successful in these activities, greatly
impacting many Indian communities, the long-term results of these changes
118 Bruce J. Calde r
were even more impressive (and sometimes, as in all human enterprises, quite
unpredictable).
Perhaps the most impressive of these developments has been the Mayan
movement for revitalization. While this movement has multiple causes, there
can be no doubt that the church was one of the principal facilitating factors.
Catholic education, leadership training, and political organizing in the period
from 1950 to 1980, provided by the church itself and the church-related
Christian Democrats, helped to create a class of Indian professionals, thousands
of teachers, doctors, lawyers, priests and nuns, activists and organizers, as well
as businessmen and women and a better-educated, more conscious, and more
mobilized Indian peasantry. It also resulted in the capture of local and some-
times regional political power by Indian-based political groups.72
Although this enterprise was very badly shaken by the brutal violence of
the period 1978–1984, both the Maya and the Catholic Church gradually re-
covered their vitality and their determination to work for change. In fact, as
this essay has shown, the violence gradually drew the Maya and the church
closer together. Preoccupied with many of the same major issues, basically the
creation of a just society and lasting peace, they increasingly worked together
in the 1980s and 1990s and continue to do so. In the process the Catholic
Church has been as changed, in myriad ways, by its relationship to the Maya
as the Maya have been changed by the church.
It must be emphasized that the Catholic-Mayan relationship is a work in
progress. For all the recent Catholic support of reform, much remains at the
level of good intentions.Where this relationship will lead in the future is hard
to predict, not only because of the serendipity of human history, but because
the Maya are now capable of creating their own agenda and of operating on
their own. Empowered by the strength of their culture and by the experiences
of the past fifty years, they increasingly have a voice in a society in which they
have been marginalized for almost five hundred years.
N ote s
The author would like to thank Virginia Garrard-Burnett,William Malone, and Dennis
Smith for their perceptive comments on the manuscript and the editors, Father Edward
Cleary and Tim Steigenga, for their helpful advice and patience.
1. Ricardo Falla, Quiché rebelde (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala,
1980); Kay B.Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan
Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989); Carol A. Smith, ed., Guatemalan Indi-
ans and the State: 1540 to 1988 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); Luis
Samandú, Hans Siebers, and Oscar Sierra, Guatemala: Retos de la Iglesia Católica en
una sociedad en crisis (San José, Costa Rica: DEI, 1990). See also Phillip Berryman’s
two books, The Religious Roots of Rebellion: Christians in Central American Revolutions
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984) and Stubborn Hope: Religion, Politics and Revo-
lution in Central America (New York:The New Press/Orbis, 1994).
2. Mary P. Holleran, Church and State in Guatemala (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1949), describes the Liberal anticlerical reforms and their twentieth-century
Interwoven Histories 119
releases) through mid-1997 are also published in book form: Conferencia Episcopal
de Guatemala (CEG), Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz (Guatemala: Ediciones
San Pablo, 1997).
9. Falla, Quiché Rebelde, 433–434;Warren, Symbolism, 95–97. Colby and van den Berghe,
Ixil Country, 138–139, note the conflicts caused by Acción Católica militants.
10. Rossell, “Conferencia del . . . Monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano . . . en el Tercer
Congreso Católico de la Vida Rural, el 21 de Abril de 1955, en la Ciudad de
Panama”;Warren, Symbolism, 88–89.
11. One example of Rossell’s views is found in his pastoral letter of November 15,
1948,“La justicia social, fundamento del bienestar social.” See also Estrada Monroy,
Datos, vol. 3, 634–635, and Warren, Symbolism, 90–92.
12. Estrada Monroy, Datos, vol. 3, 634–635. Rossell Arellano,“Superación del indígena:
Discurso del Arzobispo de Guatemala con motivo de la benedición del nuevo local
del Instituto Indígena,” January 22, 1949 (pastoral letter, see note 8).
13. Personal communication,Venancio Olcot, September 17, 1994.
14. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 59.
15. Spanish Jesuits had arrived earlier, in the late 1930s, but confined their work to
Guatemala City.The Salesians, also present in the capital, began a tiny rural mission
among the Q’eqchi’s (Kekchí is the traditional spelling of Q’eqchi’) of Alta Verapaz
when they took over the parish of San Pedro Carchá in 1935; see de León V., Carchá,
67–78. Holleran, Church and State, 236, notes that by 1946 there were five male re-
ligious orders in Guatemala; most of their members worked in the capital city.
16. David C. Kelly, “Maryknoll in Central America, 1943–1978,” 2–16 (mimeograph,
personal copy). A few communities had government primary schools before the
Maryknolls’ arrival. H. Gerberman,“Guatemala-Ixtahuacán Diary for January 1952,”
(Maryknoll Archive), reported from Huehuetenango that it was necessary to create a
new school because in the old one “the teachers were all ladinos and have no desire
whatever of teaching Indians anything.”An interview with Padre Joe Nerino, M. M.,
March 14, 1989, yielded a similar view of ladino-controlled schools in Aguacatán.
17. A Maryknoll brother, Felix Fournier, organized some of the first producer cooper-
atives and credit unions in Huehuetenango; see “Diary from Huehuetenango,”
December 1954, Maryknoll Archive. See also Kelly, “Maryknoll in Central Amer-
ica,” 8.
18. State Department policy strictly forbade the use of the Catholic Church or other
religious institutions as conduits for U.S. aid before the Kennedy administration; the
policy changed dramatically in the early 1960s. Interview with Ed Marasciulo, May
28, 1993.
19. The Loyola program was directed at young leaders, both urban and rural, in such
fields as politics, education, and labor. Interviews with Dennis Barnes, May 27,
1993, and Ed Marasciulo, May 28, 1993.
20. The Christian Democratic Party was itself the product of Catholic organizing in the
1950s; its chief promoter was Archbishop Rossell Arellano.
21. Interviews with Father Carroll Quinn, M.M., April 27, 1989, and Father Jim Scan-
lon, M.M., May 1, 1989. See also David Stoll, Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of
Guatemala (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 57.
22. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 59. Interviews with Father Joe Nerino, M.M., March
14, 1989; Marco de Paz, September 6, 1989; Carlos Gelhert Mata, January 30, 1992.
23. The established leaders of Mayan villages were part of a political-religious hierarchy
which was generally conservative in its orientation, avoiding ties to the world out-
side the village and acting to preserve traditional practices. It was this group which
was under attack by modernizing priests and their Acción Católica followers. Its
partisans often fought valiantly, and sometimes violently, to preserve the traditional
system. See Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 90–104.
Interwoven Histories 121
37. Ibid., 171, notes that the continued presence of the conservative Archbishop of
Guatemala, Mario Casariego, prevented concerted support for liberation theology
and its associated practices at the national level, though some bishops were more
supportive in their own dioceses. One of the main sources of support for liberation
theology was among the leadership and members of CONFREGUA.
38. The Catholic charismatics, a movement dating from the late 1960s, maintained tradi-
tional Catholic doctrine but adopted certain practices from the early Christian
church, such as healing by the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues.This move-
ment has been popular in some Mayan communities, though it has often been re-
jected and even harassed by liberationist Catholics for its separatism and other-worldly
emphasis; for these views see Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala, 122–125. In
some circumstances, Mayan charismatics have switched their allegiance to Protestant
Pentecostalism; Stoll, Between Two Armies, examines this process in the Ixil area.
39. Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala, 32–33; Arturo Arias, “Changing Indian
Identity: Guatemala’s Violent Transition to Modernity,” in Guatemalan Indians and the
State, ed. Smith, 234. The number and importance of the Ligas Campesinas is un-
clear, though Arias and other writers suggest that their existence was brief.
40. For some evidence suggesting these patterns, see Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Gua-
temala, 30; Falla, Quiché rebelde, 448–449 and 462ff.; Stoll, Between Two Armies, 57; and
Ebel,“Political Modernization,” 170–173 and 182–183.
41. Kay B.Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Mayan Activism in Guate-
mala (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 1–32 and chapter 1; Edward F.
Fischer, “Induced Culture Change as a Strategy for Socioeconomic Development:
The Pan-Maya Movement in Guatemala,” in Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala,
ed. Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1996), 56–68; Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 231–235. For the general political
and economic context, see Suzanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1991), chapters 7–9.
42. Interview with Father James Curtin, M. M. (Los Altos, California), September 10,
1991. Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 236–242, places great emphasis on the in-
fluence of Acción Católica and literacy projects in these developments.
43. The first spelling, K’iche’, follows the modern orthography; the second is the
traditional.
44. Interviews with name withheld, Mexico City, December 12, 1989, and Curtin, Sep-
tember 10, 1991. Father Curtin is a good example of a fairly typical pattern among
missionaries; his attitude toward Mayan culture and religion, having been rather
closed and paternal at first, shifted dramatically over the years.
45. Interviews with Father Tomás García (Retalhuleu), January 10, 1991, and Curtin,
September 10, 1991. Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 239. Some members of the
Comisión Pastoral reconstituted the group in the late 1980s.
46. Interview with Curtin, September 10, 1991. Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guate-
mala, 84; Berryman, Religious Roots, 337; Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 248–
255; Rigoberta Menchú, et al., “Weaving Our Future: Campesino Struggles for
Land,” 50–61, and Minor Sinclair, “Faith, Community and Resistance in the
Guatemalan Highlands,” 86–87, both in The New Politics of Survival, ed. Minor Sin-
clair (New York: Monthly Review Press/EPICA, 1995).
47. Susanne Jonas, Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s Peace Process (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 2000), 21–24; Stoll, Between Two Armies, 87–88; Rachel A. May, Ter-
ror in the Countryside: Campesino Responses to Political Violence in Guatemala, 1954–
1985 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), chapter 6.
48. Jonas, Battle for Guatemala, 123–125; Miguel Angel Albizures, “Struggles and Expe-
riences of the Guatemalan Trade-Union Movement, 1976–June 1978,” Latin Amer-
ican Perspectives 7, no. 2–3 (spring–summer 1980): 146–149.
Interwoven Histories 123
49. Two excellent sources (of the many available) on the violence are Ricardo Falla,
Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1994); and Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, Guate-
mala: Never Again! (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999), which is an abridged ver-
sion of the four-volume REMHI report, Guatemala: Nunca Mas!
50. Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala, 56–62; Jonas, Battle for Guatemala, 148–149
and 163. The Catholic Church and organizations to which it had ties were also
often involved in the organizations which formed the popular movement in urban
areas.
51. Jonas, Battle for Guatemala, 123–129; Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 243 and
248–250; Berryman, Religious Roots, 185–200.
52. Arias, “Changing Indian Identity,” 254–255, states that a “vast majority of CUC
militants” joined guerrilla groups, so many that CUC basically vanished for several
years. Rigoberta Menchú et al., “Weaving Our Future,” 63–64, also says that CUC
was almost inoperative during 1982–1986, though she blames it on extreme repres-
sion. Both versions make sense.
53. Berryman, Religious Roots, 200–215.The atmosphere of paralyzing terror is a com-
mon theme in many interviews I conducted during 1989 and 1991–1992. Several
recent works focus on the violence and its effects among the Maya: Linda Green,
Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1993);Victoria Sanford, Buried Secrets:Truth and Human Rights in Gua-
temala (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), chapters 5 and 6; Clark Taylor, Return
of Guatemala’s Refugees: Reweaving the Torn (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1998), chapter 1 and passim.Warren, Indigenous Movements, chapter 4.
54. Edward L. Cleary, “Evangelicals and Competition in Guatemala,” in Conflict and
Competition: The Latin American Church in a Changing Environment, ed. Cleary and
Hannah Stewart-Gambino (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 167–195; Berry-
man, Stubborn Hope, chapter 5;Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 117–124, 131–132, 154–161, 164–166;
Green, Fear as a Way of Life, chapter 7; Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala,
62–65.
55. Interview with Padre Max Alvarado (Huehuetenango), March 14, 1989.
56. Interviews with Father Patrick Greene (Sololá), December 26, 1988; Father Jacobo
Lucas (Quezaltenango), April 18, 1989; Bishop Gerardo Flores (Cobán), September
27, 1989; Father Tomás García (Retalhuleu), January 10, 1991.
57. Raquel Saravia and Santiago Otero, Memoria y profecía: Historia de CONFREGUA,
1961–1996 (Guatemala: Ediciones San Pablo, 1997), 152–155. The authors note,
however, that only 10 percent of the religious had opted for inserción as of 1995, ten
years after the policy’s inception.
58. Interviews with Brother Ramón Schuster (Cobán), March 2, 1989; Father Patrick
Greene (Sololá), December 26, 1988. A Dominican priest with long experience
among the Q’eqchi’ (Kekchí) near Cobán, Carlos Berganza, seems to offer a bleak
assessment of efforts to keep young Mayan priests connected to their culture; see
Edward L. Cleary, “Birth of Latin American Indigenous Theology,” in Crosscurrents
in Indigenous Spirituality: Interface of Maya, Catholic and Protestant Worldviews, ed.
Guillermo Cook (New York: E. J. Brill, 1997), 180–181.
59. Interview with Father Tomás García (Retalhuleu), January 10, 1991.
60. CEG, “Quinientos años sembrando el evangelio,” August 15, 1992, in Conferencia
Episcopal de Guatemala Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y la paz (Guatemala: Edi-
ciones San Pablo, 1997), 572–630, especially 621. However, one researcher among
the Q’eqchi’ (Kekchí) in Verapaz about 1990 writes that “the attitude of most clergy
suggests that the indigenizing of the liturgy is undertaken with the intention of
making Q’eqchi’s more Catholic rather than making Catholicism more Q’eqchi’.”
124 Bruce J. Calde r
Virginia Garrard-Burnett
125
126 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
In this sense the decolonialized theology is much like other types of “lib-
erating” religious discourses such as liberation theology or other theologies
tied directly to the political and cultural agendas of subordinate groups. Ex-
amples include the black theology promoted by James H. Cone in the United
States during the 1960s or feminist theologians within the Catholic Church
today.This convergence brings to mind David Batstone’s suggestion that “po-
litical discourse [naturally] has its theological counterpart.The coincidence of
the political and the theological should come as no surprise; after all, theolog-
ical discourse is responding to the same material culture that finds expression
in political discourse.”2
Of central significance to this project is an examination of the ways that
local innovators adapt and reorganize imported religious systems for their own
ends.3 It begs the obvious to state that Christian missionary enterprises in
Latin America have been, from the first colonial contacts, grounded in asym-
metrical power relations and in the desire to reconstruct not only people’s
identities, but also their very consciousness. In their work on colonial Chris-
tianity in South Africa, John and Jean Comaroff describe religious cultural en-
counters as “a complex dialectic of invasion and riposte, of challenge and
resistance . . . a politics of consciousness in which the very nature of con-
sciousness [is] itself the object of struggle.”4 Given these high stakes and deep
asymmetries, religion has remained a contested venue in Guatemala. But the
struggle has never been completely one-sided.The object of Mayan theology
is to invert and reinterpret the power relations and identity issues implicit in
the Christian project for their own purposes.
Yet it would be a mistake to think of Mayan theology as nothing more
than political rhetoric. Because Christianity has such a long and contested his-
tory in Guatemala, religion has often been used as a measure and metaphor for
the deeply rooted contradictions and tensions that underlie so much of Gua-
temala’s past and present; and, in fact, religion—and militant Christianity in
particular—sometimes lies at the very heart of these contradictions. Obvi-
ously, the colonial, imperialist origins of Christianity, both Catholic (Spanish)
and Protestant (North American), in a place like Guatemala carry enormous
historical weight that cannot be overlooked. Yet Christianity in Guatemala
long ago lost its foreign accent and acquired what R. S. Sugirtharajah calls a
“vernacular hermeneutics,” a local system of value, understanding, and inter-
pretation.5
indigenous); but its indigenous population has historically been the object of
a virulent racism that has left them with some of the lowest social indicators
in the hemisphere. In terms of religious identity, the majority (more than 60
percent) of Guatemalans are Catholic (both orthodox and practitioners of a
Mayanized “folk Catholicism”), although the influence of U.S. missionaries
and the rapid growth of independent, local Protestant churches has also re-
sulted in a sizeable and expanding Protestant population that accounts for ap-
proximately 35 percent of the population, a figure that is higher in Mayan, as
opposed to ladino (non-Mayan), parts of the country.6
Power in the country is vested in a small elite of primarily European ori-
gin and in the ladinos, a term which applies both to persons of mixed Indian-
European descent and to acculturated indigenous people. Guatemala has
historically been the richest nation in Central America in terms of economic
and natural resources, but decades of political struggle severely retarded its
economic advancement during the second half of the twentieth century.The
nation suffered through an unevenly matched and bloody civil war between
Marxist guerrillas (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, URNG)
and the military-controlled government from 1961 to 1996. Although the
struggle lasted for thirty-six years, the most concentrated period of violence
occurred after a devastating earthquake in 1976 that exacerbated the nation’s
many social and political inequities. State repression and violence accelerated
sharply between 1981 and 1982, corresponding to the scorched-earth cam-
paign inaugurated by General Efraín Ríos Montt. This period is commonly
referred to simply as la violencia (the violence).
Ríos Montt, a retired general noted for his membership in a neo-Pente-
costal church with ties to the United States,7 took power in a coup in March
1982 and was himself overthrown in August 1983. Since the late 1970s, the
guerrillas had a substantial presence in certain parts of the country and were
thought to have significant links to Cuba, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, and El Sal-
vador’s FMLN. The army also believed that the popular resistance enjoyed
support among the indigenous population. The exigencies of this situation
elicited the different governments’ wholesale assault, patterned after the
Maoist axiom to “drain the sea, in which the fish swim,” which devastated the
largely indigenous highlands. By 1983, the army had routed the armed resis-
tance and, by its own count, had eliminated 440 indigenous villages entirely.
Over the course of the thirty-six year war, some two hundred thousand
Guatemalans died violently.
Of this total, some twenty thousand Guatemalans were killed between
1981 and 1983; upward of 80 percent of those were Mayan.8 Many of those
who died in what some have called the “Mayan holocaust” were Catholics
who had been called to political and social activism through their involvement
in liberation theology.9 So invasive was the assault on Mayan lives and culture
128 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
during this period that one elderly Mayan woman referred to it as desencar-
nación, the loss flesh, or loss of being.10
This grim period of genocide of the early 1980s still leaves a strong im-
print of terror in the country, but it also elicited a wide variety of political and
social responses. In 1986, believing the URNG to be all but defeated, the mil-
itary permitted the return of civilian government to Guatemala, a period that
Susanne Jonas has described as less a meaningful transition to democracy as a
“necessary adjustment for trying to deal with Guatemala’s multiple crises and
to reestablish minimal international credibility.”11 Although crime increased
dramatically under civilian rule, the economy gradually improved and the na-
tion moved slowly toward peace. Following the directives of the Esquipulas
Agreements, which resolved the Salvadoran and Nicaraguan conflicts in the
late 1980s, the Guatemalan government and the military began peace talks
with the URNG in 1990 in Oslo, Norway.This process eventually resulted in
the signing of the final Peace Accords, which brought an end to the nation’s
thirty-six-year armed conflict in December 1996.
The Emergence of the Movimiento Maya and the Forging of the Peace Accords
Despite these significant advances, Guatemalans have found that the es-
tablishment of peace and the creation of civil society force reconciliation with
the nation’s history, including the horrific violence of the recent past and a
long tradition of racism, in particular, the period of la violencia, with its dis-
proportionate impact on indigenous lives. From the ashes of the Mayan holo-
caust, indigenous leaders began to reinterpret the recent violence in terms of
racism and genocide, rather than through the lens of the Cold War and anti-
communism. This reinterpretation demanded a wholesale reconsideration of
the Mayan experience vis-à-vis the Guatemalan state and called for a fun-
damental reassessment of the role Mayan people might play in postwar
Guatemalan society and culture. In the mid-1980s, Mayan intellectuals began
to lay down a series of demands for the reconstruction of Mayan society based
upon three principles: (1) the conservation of Mayan culture production, (2)
self-representation and self-determination, and (3) the promotion of govern-
mental reform within the framework of Guatemalan and international law.12
The issue of cultural rights lay at the core of these demands, as a legal (rather
than inchoate, or intuitive) premise, in the call for the legal recognition of in-
digenous culture as distinct from and fully equal to a hypothetical “national
Guatemalan culture.” The expectation was that the full recognition of these
cultural rights would precipitate a mandatory improvement—both legal and
de facto—in the human and political rights of the Mayan people.13
By the early 1990s, this activity known as the movimiento Maya (Mayan or
Pan-Mayan movement) gained additional momentum through the events sur-
rounding the Columbian quincentenary in 1992 and the award of the Nobel
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 129
Peace Prize to an indigenous woman, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, that same year.
By 1993, the Mayan movement had become a full-blown political and social
crusade by and for Mayan people to assert their own cultural and political
rights.14 Within this context, the crucial matter of “Maya culture”—given the
diversity and pluralism found even within the mundo Maya—refers to endur-
ing commonalities and “essences,” defined as “a transcendent spirituality, ties
to place, common descent, physical differences, cultural practices, shared lan-
guages(s) and common histories of suffering.”15
The operative premise of the movement was that the fundamental con-
struction of the nation was built upon ladino domination over indigenous
people, a system that had too long perpetuated oppression and violence
against Guatemala’s native peoples.16 The Mayan movement’s goal was to com-
pletely reconfigure this power asymmetry, and thereby recover the Mayas’
rightful place in the body politic.17 It also sought to redefine Guatemala’s na-
tional culture in pluralistic, rather than monolithic, that is to say, ladino terms.
“A pluralistic Guatemalan culture,” wrote Raxché, a noted Kakchikel intel-
lectual, “would be a space for encounter and dialogue with conditions of
equality between the different peoples that exist in the country.”18
Central to these demands was the concept of cultural rights, which asserts
that “culture” is a measurable asset, the sum of the material and spiritual pro-
duction of a determined group, which distinguishes it from any other group.
As such, a given group has its own “cultural capital.” In the Guatemalan con-
text, then, the political project of Mayan revitalization demanded that Mayan
cultural capital no longer be subordinated to a general or universal “Gua-
temalan” (that is to say, ladino) culture, but that the system of values and sym-
bols of Mayan culture be given at least equal status.19 This, of course, included
the rich symbolism and values embodied in traditional Mayan spirituality and
cosmovision.
In the short term, the Mayan movement sought recognition as an influ-
ential sector in the forging of the Peace Accords. In the long term, its objec-
tive was recognition of the “multiethnic, pluricultural, and multilingual”
nature of Guatemalan society and full political and cultural rights for Mayan
peoples within civil society.20 Without question, the Mayan movement was
successful in this first demand, as evidenced by the 1996 the Peace Accords,
which not only ended the military confrontation, but also conceded and pro-
tected, for the first time in Guatemala’s history, specific cultural and political
rights of the Mayan peoples.
Church people formed a critical sector in the forging of the peace ac-
cords.21 As members of the National Reconciliation Commission (CRN) re-
quired by the Esquipulas II agreements, important actors, such as Bishop
Rodolfo Quezada Toruño, served as the Catholic Church’s representatives and
as “conciliators” in the early years of the talks that lead to the agreements.22
130 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
Although no area of the country was immune from the violence, the de-
partment of El Quiché suffered perhaps most grievously at the hands of the
security forces during this period. In 1980, after the assassination of a third
Catholic priest and the deaths of hundreds of Catholic lay activists, the bishop
of the Diocese of El Quiché, Juan Gerardi, suspended all pastoral work in the
diocese.47 Ecclesiastical services were not fully restored until 1987, when Julio
Cabrera was ordained bishop of El Quiché.48
Horrified by the level of trauma he found among the survivors of what
many called the “church of the catacombs” and troubled by substantial inroads
made by Protestant churches during the 1980s in the region, Cabrera sought
out a different theological paradigm to both bring spiritual consolation to the
suffering and bring them back into the fold of the Catholic Church. In Octo-
ber 1990, Cabrera and other bishops and clergy met in El Quiché to reaffirm
the diocese’s commitment to a pastoral indígena and to demand a pastoral let-
ter from the CEG to address both the issues of the recent violence and the is-
sues raised by the upcoming Columbian anniversary.49 In May 1992, Cabrera
formally introduced inculturation theology to the Diocese of El Quiché in a
sermon preached in Santa Cruz del Quiché, in which he proclaimed, “The
unique Gospel of Jesus has to live in accordance with the manner of being of
every people (pueblo), or every culture. And because of this, the catholicity of
the Church does not mean that everyone think and live in the same manner,
but rather that all express the same faith according to their own manner of
being. . . . The Quiché50 people have . . . enriched the Catholic Church not
only because it has given numerous martyrs . . . but it also gives an example of
how to live the faith, within a Maya culture.”51 This affirmation placed Bishop
Cabrera in the vanguard of inculturation theology within the Catholic
Church in Guatemala. In 1988, a group of priests who had been active in the
1970s established the ad hoc Comisión de Pastoral Indígena de Guatemala
(COPIGUA),52 which the officially sanctioned Comisión Nacional de Pastoral
Indígena de la Conference Episcopal de Guatemala replaced in 1990.
But by far, the most ringing endorsement came in 1992, when the
Guatemalan Episcopal Conference issued a collective pastoral letter entitled
“El nuevo compromiso de la Iglesia: La carta pastoral colectiva:‘500 años sem-
brando el Evangélio.’ ” This remarkable document, released to coincide with
the five-hundred-year anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, first
asked pardon for the errors committed by the church over the course of its
long history with Guatemala’s indigenous people, the “five centuries of plant-
ing watered with the tears, lamentations and the blood of the indigenous mar-
tyrs.” Secondly, it stated that the Guatemalan church “assumed the mundo
indígena” and would support the ways in which Mayan people could express
their faith within an autochthonous church.53
Following the publication of “500 años sembrando el Evangélio” and fed
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 135
Mayan Cosmovision
At the most basic level, Mayanized theology attempts to reconcile Chris-
tianity with the three central elements of Mayan spirituality: peace with the
natural world that sustains life, peace with other people (including the dead),
and peace with the deity/deities.67 Beyond these relatively broad elements are
four key theological concepts that are integral to Mayan spirituality.The first
of these is the belief in one God, but prayer to many saints/gods (in the words
of one theologian, “monotheistic but polypraxis”).68 These sacred beings are
often considered to be present in spatial geography, particularly in mountains,
which provide a sacred landscape visible in nearly every corner of Guatemala.
As Edward Cleary has insightfully noted, it only makes sense that such ancient
sacred entities would retain their pre-Hispanic significance because so many
of the same symbols and realities—mountains, animals, sky—are still there.69
138 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
An example of this is the case of the Tzuultaq’a, the force of the moun-
tains revered by the Q’eqchis’.70 More than animistic spirits and something less
than a deity or set of deities, the Tzuultaq’a is representative of divine energy
and power. For traditional Q’eqchis’, the Tzuultaq’a is an ever-present and
often capricious force, capable of great and fearsome actions. But for incultur-
ationists, the Tzuultaq’a is “the witness of God, reflecting the power and glory
of God. It is created by God, and is precious to him. The Tzuultaq’a is alive,
and is the intermediary between God and men. . . .We can say that the Tzuul-
taq’a is the visible presence of the invisible God, the nearer presence of a dis-
tant God.”71
The second principle central to Mayan spirituality is the concept of “soul
shifting.” This can refer to rebirth, either through the transference of a soul
from an ancestor to a gestating or newborn child, or the return of an element
of the soul from Xibalba (the Otherworld) or even heaven or hell.While there
is no real uniformity in the form soul shifting may take, there is, in all Mayan
cosmovision, a strong underlying concept of continuity and obligation from
one generation to another.72 This sense of integral continuity is also tied to the
individual, who assumes his or her place within the cycle of the ancient
Mayan calendar (tzolkin, in K’iche’), now simplified from Classic times to a
260-day long count and a 20-day short count of day names.Although the spe-
cific combination of days is reflected in rituals and festivals associated with
each day (and which often correspond to the Catholic liturgical calendar), the
larger significance in terms of the soul’s continuity is the day on which a per-
son is born. This helps determine one’s fate and is useful for divination pur-
poses throughout life. Even more important, the date of birth links a person
directly to the ancestors who have been born or died within 260 days (a com-
plete calendar cycle, but also the length of a human pregnancy) of that day.73
Closely related is a third central concept of “centeredness.”This refers to
a person’s metaphysical place in the community, within the extended family
(including the dead), and even in the Mundo (literally, world), defined as both
the physical earth and the cosmos. Mayan notions of center are found in sym-
bolic representations that reach back to the Classic Period: the ceiba tree, the
umbilical cord (or naval), or the Milky Way. It is also visually illustrated in the
ritual performance of the voladores (in the Dance of the Flyers), who slowly
spiral down and out from a tall pole by their feet.74 Q’eqchi’ Maya conceptu-
alize this notion of centeredness as “heart” (’ool, or the core of a tree), a per-
son’s center, which matures and changes as a person moves through the course
of life.The heart forms the “central pivot” of both the body and a person’s so-
cial relations, which extend in the four cardinal directions, and is responsible
for coordinating reciprocity with the temporal world and the cosmos.75
Finally, the fourth theological concept is of “complementary opposites,”
what anthropologist Victoria Reifler Bricker has called “metaphorical cou-
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 139
Tiempo, where many of the debates around inculturationist issues take place—
that this is changing.
Nevertheless, at present, inculturation theology requires a serious stretch
to conventional notions of salvation and orthodoxy, a stretch that many Pen-
tecostals are not yet prepared to make. For Mayan Pentecostals, the hermeneu-
tic problems of inculturation theology are not necessarily linked to the issue
of reconciling cultural and ethnic identity with Christianity—to the contrary,
much of the discourse of Pentecostalism is built around the idea of God’s
unique revelation and distinct blessing to Guatemala. The large-scale Pente-
costal revivals that took place during the 1980s and 1990s, notably the “La
hora de Dios para Guatemala” and “Jesus es Señor de Guatemala” campaigns,
certainly did not purposefully valorize Mayan culture. However, both of these
movements were predicated on the notion that God had a plan to redeem the
nation’s deep, historical suffering by pouring out his specific and unique bless-
ings on Guatemala and its people per se. This message was understood by
many Mayans to have specific reference to their own tragic history as a peo-
ple and may have contributed to Pentecostalism’s rapid spread through Mayan
regions during this period.101
Instead, inculturation theology’s greatest obstacle for Mayan Pentecostals
is that it challenges their conceptual framework of salvation, which is built
around the watershed Pentecostal experience of “baptism in the Holy Spirit,”
an irreversible binary opposition of life before and after salvation by Jesus
Christ.To see the “seeds of the Word” implicit in life prior to this life-altering
event, therefore, is impossible for most Pentecostal converts. As one Mayan
Pentecostal pastor put it,“We don’t even have the language to talk about these
things.”102
Yet the pull of Mayan cultural and spiritual identity remains strong, even
for Pentecostals. This seems particularly true for Mayan evangélicos who are
long established in their conversions or who have been brought up in a
Protestant church.With more distance from the conversion experience, some
Mayan evangélicos are beginning to seek out ways to bridge whatever cogni-
tive dissonance they may feel between their religion and their culture. For
them, the accommodation of the full spectrum of Mayan beliefs—cosmovi-
sion, Catholicism, and Pentecostalism—becomes more a matter of spiritual
discernment than of theological or political debate.
An example of this process is found in the K’iche’ town of Nahualá, a
town of strong religious sentiments, where American Protestant missionaries
were threatened with dismemberment as recently as the 1920s.103 In recent
years, as David Parkyn has observed, evangélicos have become the most skilled
craftsmen of wooden santos, the images central to local religious practice.They
excel in this culturally resonant craft, despite the fact that Protestants believe
the santos to be idolatrous—that is, totems of both Catholicism and Mayan re-
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 145
ligion. Historically, Protestants have shunned the images and have, for decades,
burned them in public displays of conversion. Although santeros evangélicos
claim that the carving of saints is simply a way of making a living, their care-
ful craftsmanship and the fact that they have added images (particularly from
the life of Jesus) to the standard repertoire of carvings suggests a larger recon-
ciliation of beliefs. As one Nahualense carver explained, “We are a people of
faith.” He said,“When I practice the evangélico faith I also remain true to the
Catholic faith and the costumbre. . . . Because we still worship the Mayan God,
the harvest is abundant. And because we worship the católico saints, the basic
needs of life—for health, peace, and sustenance—are provided. But now the
evangélicos have brought us joy.This once was a village with an abundant har-
vest but no joy. Now the evangélicos have taught us to worship with joy.”104
Thus, there is growing evidence that at the grassroots level even Pen-
tecostals are beginning to accommodate their indigenous worldview with
religious beliefs.This is apparent in the daily practice of religion—from Pen-
tecostal acciones de gracias, prayer services held at the planting and harvest of
corn, to the faith healing (sanación) that provides an analog to ancient
shamanic practices associated with fertility, illness, and mental problems. Even
the common phrase used by Maya Pentecostals, camino cristiano, while resonant
with Christian imagery, is also rich with Mayan religious symbolism of jour-
ney, crossroads, and the divine “white path” of the cosmos, the Milky Way.
C onc lu s i on
In conclusion, inculturation theology is clearly tied to the larger project
of Mayan revitalization and the politics of the Pan-Mayan political movement,
but its implications reach much farther than the political moment. In the im-
mediate sense, both revitalized Mayan religion and inculturated theology
work, serve, and share the strategic goals of the movimiento Maya, including
that of self-determination, although in practical terms the utility of religion
in this context seems to be more symbolic than concrete. More importantly,
both Mayan-Maya religion and inculturation theology validate the ultimate of
Mayan cultural capital—cosmovision—by affirming its powerful spiritual in-
tegrity both within and outside the paradigm of Christianity.
While Mayan-Maya adherents cast off Christianity as a colonial artifact,
by contrast, proponents of inculturation theology tend to be enthusiastic
Christians who see themselves in the vanguard of religious change. As a rela-
tively new movement, inculturation theology has not yet fully permeated the
stratum of everyday believers; at present, its main proponents are Catholics
(both clergy and some laypeople), prominent mainline Protestants, and a lim-
ited number of Pentecostals. Nevertheless, the larger object of “decolonializ-
ing” and reconciling long-held beliefs with their new religion holds great
promise for Mayan Christians, both Catholic and Protestant alike. For them,
146 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
inculturation theology holds a potential that reaches far beyond political ex-
pediency. It is perhaps in this fashion that Mayanized theology is making the
transition from its genesis, as the theological counterpart to a political dis-
course, to a vernacular hermeneutics in which is embedded a culturally mean-
ingful narrative of salvation.
N ote s
1. See Sidney M. Greenfield and André Droogers, eds., Reinventing Religions: Syncretism
andTransformation in Africa and the Americas (London: Rowman and Littlefield Pub-
lishers, 2001).
2. David Batstone, “Charting (dis)Courses of Liberation,” in Liberation Theologies, Post-
modernity, and the Americas, ed. David Batstone et al. (London: Routledge, 1997), 159.
3. I use the phrase “religious systems” here with some caution, and with a caveat of-
fered by David Lehmann, who writes that “there are not grounds for taking the
fixed integrity of a religious system for granted or even for believing that religious
ensembles, sub-cultures or institutions can be thought of as systems at all. However,
the self-image of a religious institution or subculture as possessing its own integrity,
or the images it produces of the other as a distinct system, are interesting and im-
portant because religion in the modern world is evidently a marker of identity and
a mechanism for the production of group/identarian boundaries. David Lehmann,
“Charisma and Possession in Africa and Brazil,” paper, Cambridge University, 2000,
2.
4. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colo-
nialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991), 250.
5. Rasiah S. Surgirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial, and Post-
colonial Encounters. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 175.
6. This is a rough estimate, extrapolated from David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning
Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990), 337.Although there are more recent estimates, this figure seems to hold true.
7. “Neo-Pentecostalism” refers to the charismatic movement that swept through the
mainline Protestant and the Roman Catholic churches in the early 1970s, as distinct
from the Pentecostal movement that grew out of the “holiness movement” of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the late 1970s, the neo-Pentecostal
movement had generated the formation of large, charismatic, interdenominational
or nondenominational churches that no longer affiliated with the mainline denom-
inations. Neo-Pentecostal churches typically subscribe to charismatic practices as
encouraging members to experience the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” manifested
by such behaviors as speaking in tongues, faith healing, or ecstatic behavior (such as
dancing,“holy laughter,” falling to the floor when “slain in the Spirit,” and the like)
during church services. With the expansion of media-based ministries (including
not only radio and televangelism, but also media-based worship centered on highly
produced music and Powerpoint presentations), neo-Pentecostal churches have also
embraced what is often called “health and wealth theology,” a theology centered on
the belief that God rewards the faithful with material bounty. (See Samuel Berber-
ian, Dos décadas de Renovación: Un análisis histórico de la renovación carismática en Amer-
ica Latina (1960–1980), (Guatemala: Ediciones Sa-Ber, 2002).
8. There are two official summations of the violence that occurred over the course of
the civil war and its effect on the human population.The first (REHMI) was pro-
vided by the Roman Catholic Church. See Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Ar-
zobispado de Guatemala, Informe Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperación de la Memoria
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 147
Historica (REMHI), vol. 1–4 (Guatemala: Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzo-
bispado de Guatemala [ODHAG], 1998). The second summation (CEH) was pro-
vided by the United Nation–mandated Comisión de Esclaramiento historico. A
useful English summary of this report is found in Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer,
Guatemala: Memory of Silence. (Washington, D.C.:AAAS Science and Human Rights
Program, 1999).
9. The REHMI report, in particular, gives a strong sense to the extent to which mem-
bers of Catholic Action were targeted as “subversives.”
10. The word, desencarnación, comes from the grandmother of Antonio Otzoy (see body
of text), as she reflected upon the implications of the violence on the Mayan peo-
ple. I have borrowed this term from Matt Samson, who notes that Kline Taylor has
reflected at some length on the notion of “defleshment” in a collaboration she did
based with Antonio Otzoy: “Toward a Revolution of the Sun: Protestant Mayan
Resistance in Guatemala,” in Revolution of Spirit: Ecumenical Theology in Global Con-
text, ed. Nantawan Boon Prasat (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1998), as cited in C. Matthew Samson, “The Martyrdom of Manuel
Saquic: Construction Mayan Protestantism in the Face of War in Contemporary
Guatemala” (Le Jait Missionaire, forthcoming, 2003), 17, note 21.
11. Susanne Jonas, Of Centaurs and Doves: Guatemala’s Peace Process (Boulder: Westview
Press, 2000), 7, cited in C. Matthew Samson, “From War to Reconciliation:
Guatemalan Evangelicals and the Transition to Democracy, 1982–2001,” manu-
script, 7.
12. Edward Fisher and R. McKenna Brown, eds., Maya Cultural Activism in Guatemala,
Critical Reflection on Latin America Series (Austin: University of Texas Press, In-
stitute of Latin American Studies, 1996), 13.
13. Rudolfo Stavenhager, Derecho indígena y derechos humanos en América Latina (Mexico:
Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, El Colegio de Mexico, 1988), 295.
14. See Victor Gálvez Borrell and Alberto Esquit Choy, The Mayan Movement Today: Is-
sues of Indigenous Culture and Development in Guatemala (Guatemala City: FLACSO,
1997); Kay B.Warren and Jean E. Jackson, “Introduction: Studying Indigenous Ac-
tivism in Latin America,” in Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in
Latin America, ed.Warren and Jackson (Austin: University of Texas, 2002).
15. Warren and Jackson, Indigenous Movements, 8. Warren offers these words of caution
about essentialism:“Discourses of racial difference and inferiority are another form
of essentialism, and their virulence in Latin America reminds us that essentialism can
be coercively imposed by the state as well as deployed by indigenous groups as a
form of resistance to demanding political imaginaries and policies.”
16. For a concrete statement of Mayan demands, see Rajpop’ri Mayab’ Amaq, Consejo de
Organizaciones Mayas de Guatemala, Rutz’aqik rutikik qamaya’ xeel: Rujunamil ri
Mayab’ Amaq pa rub’inib’al runuk’ik re Saqk’aslemal: Construyendo un futuro para nue-
stro pasado: Derechos del pueblo maya y el Proceso de Paz (Guatemala: Editorial Chol-
samaj, 1995).
17. Waqi’ Q’anil (Demetrio Cojtí), Ub’anik ri una’ooj uchomab’aal ri may’ tinamit: Config-
uración del pensamiento político del pueblo maya, part 2 (Guatemala: Editorial Chol-
samaj, 1995), 125.
18. Raxché (Demetrio Rodríguez Guaján), “Maya Culture and the Politics of Devel-
opment,” in Maya Cultural Activism, ed. Fischer and Brown, 83.
19. Rudolfo Stavenhagen,“Derechos humanos y derechos culturales de los pueblos in-
dígenas,” in Los derechos humanos en tierras maya: política, representaciones y moralidad,
ed. Pedro Pitach and Julian López García (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios
Mayas, 2001), 374.
20. Consejo de Organizaciones Mayas de Guatemala (COMG),“Qasaqalaj Tziij, Qake-
moon Tziij, Qapach’uum Tziij, Identidad y derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas
148 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
inculturation theology moved to Chiapas, where the diocese of San Cristobal de Las
Casas actively encouraged the development of “Indian theology” (teologia india) by
promoting dialogue between Mayan spiritual guides, cofradias, and clergy, and by in-
tegrating “indigenous” aspects into the liturgy and church life, such as moving
Mayan elders into parish offices and including readings from the Popol Vuh during
the celebration of the mass. See Sparks,“A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious
Interaction,” 17; for more detailed information on the Mexican approach, see Sylvia
Marcos, “Teología India: La presencia de Dios en las culturas. Entrevista con Don
Samuel Ruiz,” in Chiapas: El Factor Religioso: Un estudio multidisciplinario de las guer-
ras santas de fin de milenio, ed. Elio Masferrer et al. (Mexico: Revista Académica para
el Estudio de las Religiones, 1998), 33–65.
45. Centro Ak’Kutan, Evangelio y culturas en Verapaz (Cobán: Centro Ak’Kutan, 1994),
47.
46. From the election of the corrupt general Romeo Lucas Garcia in 1978 until the
end of the Ríos Montt administration, the war of counterinsurgency—character-
ized by political assassinations, murder of teachers, church people, and health pro-
moters—and the kidnapping and torture of ordinary campesinos thought to be
allied in some way with the guerrillas ravaged the country. Ríos Montt’s scorched-
earth campaign was known as fusiles y frijoles, roughly,“beans and bullets.”
47. For more information about the state of the Catholic Church in Guatemala during
la violencia, see Phillip Berryman, Stubborn Hope: Religion, Politics, and Revolution in
Central America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Press, 1994); Diocesis del Quiché, El
Quiché: El pueblo y su Iglesia (Santa Cruz del Quiché: privately published, July 1984);
Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la vida, la justicia y las paz (Gua-
temala: CEG, 1997); Ricardo Falla, Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–
1982 (Boulder:Westview Press, 1994); Ricardo Falla, Historia de un gran amor: Recu-
peración autobiográfica de la experiencia con las Comunidades de Población en Resistencia,
Ixcán, Guatemala (privately published, May 1993); Julio Cabrera Ovalle, Consuela a
mi pueblo: Selección de homilías (Guatemala:Voces del Tiempo, 1997); (no single au-
thor), Evangelio y culturas en Verapaz (Cobán: Centro Ak’Kutan, 1994); as well as the
REHMI report.
48. Julio Cabrera Ovalle, Consuela a mi pueblo: Selección de homilías (Guatemala:Voces del
Tiempo, 1997), 11.
49. “Declaración de Pastoral Indígena de Guatemala. Chichicastenango,” October
1990, photocopy, archives of Central Ak”Kutan.
50. The spelling of Mayan nouns corresponds to the orthography developed by the
Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala in the early 1990s, but I have retained
the older spellings when they are written that way in quotations: hence, Quiché for
K’iche’, Cakchiquel for Kakchikel, Kek’chí for Q’eqchi’, etc.
51. Julio Cabrera Ovalle,“Hacia una Iglesia inculturada,” sermon for the 5th Sunday of
Easter, May 17, 1992, Consuela a mi pueblo: selección de homilías, 138.
52. This is an unofficial organization, in that it did not have Episcopal support.
53. “Carta pastoral colectiva de los obispos de Guatemala, 500 Años sembrando el
Evangelio, 15 August 1992,” Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la
vida, la justicia y la paz, 572–630.
54. Cleary,“Birth of Indigenous Theology,” 173.
55. For a more substantial discussion of these groups, see Sparks, “A Proposed Frame-
work for Inter-religious Interaction,” 17.
56. Personal conversation,Ven de la Cruz, October 2000.
57. “II Encuentro Regional de Pastoral Indígena, Quetzaltenango 1–3, September
1997,” photocopy, archives, Centro Ak’ Kutan.
58. For a powerful discussion of the intersection of social justice, theology, and Mayan
political concerns, see C. Matthew Samson,“The Martyrdom of Manuel Saquic.”
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 151
59. It bears note that the Presbyterian Church was the first missionary group to cede
full control of the denomination to local leadership (1961). In the mid-1960s, the
church carved out two Mayan (Kakchikel and Mam) synods (administrative dis-
tricts) to reflect the denomination’s long-standing respect for indigenous cosmo-
vision and theological autonomy, although ladino-indigenous and theological
conflicts seriously preoccupied the Guatemalan Presbyterians during the late 1990s.
See Heinrich Schäfer, Entre dos fuegos: una historia socio-política de la iglesia evangélica
nacional presbiteriana de Guatemala (Guatemala: CEDEPCA, 2002). Although the
Presbyterians are a relatively small group in Guatemala and are greatly outnumbered
by Pentecostal Protestants, they have a political and social presence in the country
that belies their numbers, and the majority of Presbyterians in Guatemala are now
Mayan.
60. See also Antonio Otzoy, “Traditional Values and Christian Ethics: A Mayan Protes-
tant Spirituality,” in Crosscurrents in Indigenous Spirituality, ed.Cook.
61. Sparks notes that in 1999, Similox and a non-Mayan chuchqajaw (Mayan spiritual
specialist, such as healer, day-keeper, astrologer, midwife, etc.) ran as vice president
and presidential running mates for the ANN party, which shared an overlapping
membership with the URNG.This, says Sparks,“further blur[red] conventional dis-
tinctions between Mayan and Ladino culture and with Mayan and Christian reli-
gion.” Sparks, “A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interaction,” 18. Matt
Samson, on the other hand, notes that Similox’s political stance is primarily “in-
formed by his political contacts as an indigenous activist and by his religious in-
volvement with the IENPG. C. Matthew Samson, “From War to Reconciliation:
Guatemalan Evangelicals and the Transition to Democracy, 1982–2001,” draft for
Pew Evangelicals and Democracy in the Third World Project, 20.
62. Having said this, the stereotype of evangelicals as political conservatives is not in the
least borne out by the data. See Timothy J. Steigenga, The Politics of the Spirit:The Po-
litical Implications of Pentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Lantham:
Lexington Books, 2001).
63. See: CIEDEG, La Misión de la Iglesia Evangélica de Guatemala en la Etapa Post-Conflict
(Guatemala City: Ediciones Alternatives, 1998), 5.
64. It is important to note that there is no uniform, monolithic “Mayan comovision” or
absolute agreement as to what constitutes “Mayan beliefs,” which may vary signifi-
cantly from one region to another or even from one person to the next. Neverthe-
less, there is a pervasive Mayan religious discourse that informs Mayan people’s view
of the temporal and metaphysical world; this is the “cosmovision” referred to in this
work. For more on this subject, see Gary Gossens, ed., Symbol and Meaning beyond
the Closed Community: Essays in Mesoamerican Ideas (Albany, N.Y.: Institute for Meso-
american Studies, 1986); Robert S. Carlsen and Martin Prechtel, “Walking on Two
Legs: Shamanism in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala,” in Ancient Traditions: Shamanism in
Central Asia and the Americas, ed. Gary Seaman and Jane Day (Denver: Denver Mu-
seum of Natural History and University Press of Colorado, 1994).
65. Cadorette, as quoted by Cleary,“Indigenous Theology,” 180.
66. Frank Saloman,“Chronicles of the Impossible: Notes on Three Peruvian Indigenous
Historians,” in From Oral to Written Expression: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early
Colonial Period, ed. Rolena Adorno (Syracuse, N.Y.: Maxwell School of Citizenship
and Public Affairs, 1982), 9–39, cited in Cleary,“Indigenous Theology,” 180.
67. See David Scotchmer, “Life in the Heart: A Maya Protestant Spirituality,” in South
and Mesoamerican Native Spirituality, ed. Garry H. Gossens and León Portilla (New
York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1993), 507.
68. Sparks,“A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interaction,” 19.
69. Cleary,“Indigenous Theology,” 178.
70. For a very perceptive insight into the daily function of the Tzuultuq’a, see Abigail
152 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t
Adams, “Making One Our Word: Protestant Q’eqchi’ Mayas in Highland Guate-
mala,” in Holy Saints and Fiery Preachers: The Anthropology of Protestantism in Mexico
and Central America, ed. James Dow and Alan Sandstrom (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,
2001), 205–233.
71. Centro Ak’Kutan, Evangelio y cultura, 66.
72. Duncan Earle has noted that among some K’iche’ Maya there is a belief that the soul
splits in half at the moment of death; half goes to the Christian heaven (or hell, as
the case may be) while the other half resides in Xibalba to await its reentry into the
life force of the family (Earle, personal communication, 1995). By contrast, Sparks
relates that an elderly Mayan chuchqajaw told him that a person was reborn seven
times, “each time living a more moral life until finally becoming a star in the night
sky after his or her seventh life.” Sparks,“A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious
Interaction,” 26, fn. 90.
73. Duncan Earle, “The Metaphor of Quiché,” in Symbolism and Meaning beyond the
Closed Community, ed. Gossens, 161.
74. See Sparks,“A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interaction,” 20.
75. Adams,“Making One Our Word,” 212.
76. See Victoria Reifler Bricker,The Indian Christ, the Indian King:The Historical Substrate
of Mayan Myth and Ritual (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
77. Earle, “The Metaphor of Quiché,” 163. John Watanabe notes that for Mam-speak-
ing Chimaltecos,“space extends conceptually in concentric circles of decreasing fa-
miliarity from the pueblo to the most distant volcanoes.They distinguish four broad
categories of space: jaa,‘the house;’ tnam,‘the town;’ kjo’n,‘corn fields;’ and chk’uul,
‘the wilds,’ or ‘the forest.’ ” See John M.Watanabe, Maya Saints and Souls in a Chang-
ing World (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 62.
78. I am deeply indebted to Sparks for sharing his analysis of this material with me.
See especially, Sparks, “A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interaction,”
18–24.
79. Vitalino Similox Salazar, Religión Maya: Fuente de Resistencia Milenaria (Guatemala:
CIEDEG, 1998), 146–147.
80. Vitalino Similox Salazar, Algunos propuestas de la religiosidad Maya hacia un pluralismo re-
ligioso, en el marco de los Acuerdos de Paz (CIEDEG: Guatemala City, 1997), pamphlet.
81. Cleary,“Indigenous Theology,” 179.
82. Ernestina López Bac, “Principios de teología india,” Voces del Tiempo 22 (1997): 22.
The imagery of “heart” is more than poetic rhetoric in this context, as for many
Maya the heart forms the “central pivot” of both the body and a person’s social re-
lations, which extend in the four cardinal directions, and is responsible for coordi-
nating reciprocity with the temporal world and the cosmos. See Adams, ”Making
One Our Word,” 212–213.
83. Vitalino Similox Salazar, “Evangelismo protestante y espiritualidad Maya en el
Marco de los Acuerdos de Paz,” CIEDEG, originally published in Prensa Libre, May
8, 1997.
84. C. Matthew Samson, “Interpretando la Identidad Religiosa: La Cultura Maya y La
Religion Evangélica Bajo Una Perspectiva Etnográfica,” paper presented at the Se-
gundo Conferencia Sobre El Pop Wuj, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, May30–June 4,
1999, 9.
85. Similox Salazar, Religión Maya.
86. Ibid., 128.
87. Samson,“Interpretando la Identidad Religiosa,” 10.
88. Similox Salazar, Religión Maya, 124–125.
89. Ibid., 139.
90. The orthography of the title, as with many Mayan words, is not always uniform;
hence, it is sometimes written Popol Wuj, Popul Vuh, Popool Wuuj, Pop Wuj, etc.
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 153
91. Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1982), 48. For a more thorough history and synopsis of the Popol
Vuh, see Munro Edmundson, The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh and the Quiché
Maya of Guatemala (New Orleans, Tulane University, MARI, 1971), publication
#35; and Dennis Tedlock, Popol Vuh:The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the
Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1985).
92. The Annals of the Kakchikels was written down in 1524, at the time of the
Guatemalan Mayas’ first contact with the Spaniards. The Books of Chilam Balam
date from the early seventeenth century. See Kay Warren,“Reading History as Re-
sistance: Maya Public Intellectuals in Guatemala,” in Maya Cultural Activism, ed. Fi-
scher and Brown, 89–106.
93. Sparks,“A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interaction,” 5.
94. Ibid., 17.
95. Pedro Us S.,“La idea de Dios en el Pop Wuj, ensayo interpretativo,” Voces del Tiempo
1 (1992): 21–28. Us is affiliated with the Instituto Federico Crowe, a Protestant in-
stitution of higher learning that conducts biblical immersion courses for rural pas-
tors.
96. This is a paraphrase and translation of a much longer text that is printed in full in
Samson,“Interpretando la Identidad Religiosa,” 11–12.
97. Centro Ak’ Kutan, Evangelio y culturas, 84.
98. Antonio Otzoy, “Hermandad de Presbiterios Maya,” in his Primera Consulta, La
Misión de la Iglesia Evangélica de Guatemala en la Etapa Post Conflict (Guatemala: Edi-
ciones Alternativas, 1998), 38–39.
99. Ibid., 38
100. Similox Salazar, Religión Maya, 142–143.
101. See, for example, Harold Caballeros, Victorious Warfare: Discovering Your Rightful Place
in God’s Kingdom (Nashvillle: Thomas Nelson, Publishers, 2001), originally pub-
lished in Guatemala as De victoria en victoria.
102. Email exchange with author, October 2002, anonymous by request.
103. Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 54.
104. David L. Parkyn, “Religious Folk Art of Guatemala: Catholic and Protestant
Voices,” paper presented at LASA meeting, Washington, D.C., September 6–8,
2001, p. 10.
Chap te r 7
Kristin Norget
154
“Knowing Where We Enter” 155
put into practice, with the implicit goal of instilling in people a more critical
consciousness and fortified indigenous identity. By doing so, we can better see
the limitations of indigenous theology and explore their implications for the
church’s progressivist wing.
were born of a particular historical moment in the church in both local, na-
tional, and, indeed, international arenas, and these within a larger social cli-
mate that perhaps favored these ideas. As I explain, the path of its subsequent
evolution has likewise been shaped by institutional and, arguably, sociopoliti-
cal factors.
In Oaxaca, interest in something explicitly named an “indigenous pas-
toral” began in the early 1970s, when the archdiocese was under the direction
of Archbishop Ernesto Corripio Ahumada (1967–1976).The CEI (Comision
Episcopal para Indígenas or Bishops Commission on the Indigenous) had
been created in Mexico in 1965 before the end of Vatican II, in an attempt to
transform the nature of the church’s engagement with indigenous communi-
ties all over the country. While Ahumada was of a conservative theological
background (in fact, he served as president of the Conference of Mexican
Bishops [CEM] in three different periods and was made cardinal in 1979), he
had been an active participant in Vatican II; at this point in his career he was at
least nominally supportive of a more concerted effort to attune the pastoral
plan in the archdiocese more directly to the reality of the state’s poor and in-
digenous majority population.
The 1970s saw spaces opened throughout the Oaxacan diocese for clergy
to meet and discuss the difficulties they confronted in “evangelizing” (which
amounted to sustaining Catholic doctrine) in the indigenous communities
where they worked. Many of these communities had a high number of non-
Spanish speaking inhabitants and high rates of illiteracy. Following exhorta-
tions for self-reflection and self-critique issuing from Vatican II, the priests’
acknowledged that their ignorance of indigenous culture and of the daily re-
ality of their parishioners was perhaps the greatest obstacle to both religious
participation and the maintenance of Catholic affiliation.
Out of these discussions, church representatives began to develop a holis-
tic and integrated pastoral program aimed at, according to one official church
document,“promoting, coordinating, and planning all the pastoral resources of
liberating incarnation that brings with it the Christian integral development
of persons and indigenous communities in the context of intercultural situa-
tions.”10 Such official church rhetoric, heavily flavored by the lexicon of Vati-
can II and the second conference of Latin American bishops at Medellín,
Colombia, in 1968 (e.g., “liberation,” “integral development,” “intercultural
situations”), underlined the reforming character of the Oaxacan church, sig-
naling a milestone transformation in its attitude and vision. Notions of con-
scientization, empowerment, and liberation formed part of a powerful
campaign for integral evangelization,11 a “contextual theology” encouraging
the assimilation of the message of the gospel through the reality of everyday
experience. Throughout Latin America at this time, Catholic liberationists
160 Kristin Norget
called the church to become the “church of the poor” in the sense that its
overall mission was to empower them to become the agents of their own lib-
eration, to create new change “from below” and also the “new society.”
But, in fact, as early as 1959, Mexican bishops had formed the Commis-
sion on Indigenous Affairs and, in 1961, just before the Second Vatican Coun-
cil, an advisory center—the National Center for Aid to Indigenous Missions,
or CENAMI. It was this organization, and another working under the aegis of
the CEM, namely CENAPI (National Center for Aid to the Indigenous Pas-
toral), that provided the Oaxacan diocese with financial and technical support.
With this critical aid, the Oaxacan church prepared itself to promote the inte-
gral development of indigenous peoples through, in ideal terms, the knowl-
edge of their cultures and the active involvement of people themselves.
Avowed liberationist bishop Arturo Lona Reyes joined Tehuantepec, Oax-
aca’s neighboring diocese, in 1971. At this point the renovation efforts in the
church began to take on more momentum. Lona introduced a more radical
critique of the social situation prevailing in the Isthmus region of Oaxaca, a cri-
tique which became integrated into the pastoral philosophy of the diocese.12
By the end of 1972, the Centro Ecclesial Diocesana del Pastoral indígena
de Oaxaca (Indigenous Pastoral Center or CEDIPIO) was established in Oax-
aca City.The center had two principal aims: first, the promotion and coordi-
nation of the pastoral indigenista and, second, the offering of a more rigorous
and holistic training to the priests and nuns charged with carrying out
this pastoral plan. CEDIPIO effectively functioned as the directive organ of
the diocese offices charged with helping missionary teams in rural zones
through financial support and with guidance in coordinating pastoral projects.
CEDIPIO trained priests, nuns, and missionaries, who had as their principal
tasks evangelization, “human promotion” (promoción humana), and the pro-
gramming of what was referred to as a Pastoral de Conjunto; that is, a pastoral
program that was to be both formulated implemented by all pastoral agents—
priests, nuns, and even lay catequists—working together as a team.
As a way of compensating for the chronic shortage of priests especially in
rural areas of Oaxaca, CEDIPIO also adopted the strategy of establishing casas-
misión (mission houses) of nuns in various highly indigenous, widely dispersed
sites in the state, so as to better attend “to the needs of our indigenous broth-
ers.”13 To prepare themselves for this task, clergy, nuns, and lay workers in in-
digenous areas were given courses in pastoral anthropology (antropología
pastoral) and were encouraged to study indigenous myths and traditions.They
began working among Zapotec populations of the Northern Sierra and
among Zapotecs and Mixtecs in the Oaxacan Valley, offering a varied pastoral
program that included directing workshops in natural medicine, Protestantism
and “popular religiosity” (meaning, for the church, indigenous religiosity), and
the Mexican economic crisis in general. The significance of the new con-
“Knowing Where We Enter” 161
certed cultural slant to pastoral programs, a new orientation for the church, will
be addressed later.
Another crucial support for liberationist church agents in their efforts was
the Seminario Regional del Sureste (Regional Seminary of the Southeast, or
SERESURE), which had been founded in the wake of Vatican II, in 1969, in
Tehuacán, Puebla, to forward the liberationist imperative of “integral evan-
gelization” (or “integral development”).14 In the words of Bishop Lona,
SERESURE marked a “critical point in the history of the Region of the
Pacifico Sur.”15 The eight bishops of the Region del Pacifico Sur, led by Mon-
signor Rafael Ayala y Ayala (then bishop of Tehuacán), initiated the creation of
this very unique institution, the students of which originated from nine dio-
ceses in the southeast of the country.16 While other seminaries already existed
elsewhere in Mexico with an orientation expressly committed to the poor
(such as in Tula, Hidalgo, and Papantla,Veracruz), SERESURE was the only
one to offer a coherent alternative program of education: priests-in-training
had the valuable opportunity to combine their more academic theological
preparation with hands-on practical pastoral experience in rural indigenous
communities, allowing them to witness firsthand the hardships faced by those
who lived there.The seminary’s program was especially suited to the needs of
the region, which (as is typically the case in Latin America) had suffered a se-
vere shortage of priests in rural zones since at least the onset of the Reform
movement and drive toward national independence in the early part of the
nineteenth century.17
SERESURE represented a tremendous catalyst and font of inspiration
and a sense of continuity for clergy sympathetic to the tenets of liberation
theology and the teachings of Vatican II and gave a huge impetus to the pas-
toral indígena. According to one former seminarian, “There were intense
months of study and then other months in equal number of intense work with
the people. It was fantastic. Most of the students at SERESURE were from in-
digenous communities: Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, and from other places like
Guerrero.”18
The creation of SERESURE was inspired by the desire to form priests
who could promote “autochthonous churches” which would, ideally, be in-
serted into indigenous communities and function to accompany indigenous
peoples in their process of integral evangelization. Directed by the philosophy
of the pastoral indígena, pastoral agents directed their efforts not only at at-
tending to indigenous peoples in religious terms, but also at involving them-
selves in their struggles, anguishes, and hopes and, from the inside (desde dentro)
at promoting a liberating evangelization “in which the same indigenous peo-
ples are, ideally, active subjects of their own evangelization, expressed and lived
according to the mentalities, traditions and customs of their peoples.”19 This
reflected a typical liberation theological emphasis on praxis: the new society
162 Kristin Norget
should be a participatory one in which people are the “subjects of their own de-
velopment” (a catchphrase from Medellín).20
In 1976, Bartolomé Carrasco, another liberation theology sympathizer,
assumed the helm of Oaxaca’s archdiocese from Corripio Ahumada. The
archbishop implemented a pastoral program which, though not politically
confrontational, was directly oriented to the needs of socially and economi-
cally marginalized indigenous communities. Carrasco was one of the main
proponents of the proposal to develop the indigeous pastoral, and of making
the option for the poor more explicit in the Oaxacan diocese.The archbishop
made attention to indigenous communities the priority of the Oaxacan
church and granted to CEDIPIO better facilities for their work.21
Also facilitating the development of the indigenous pastoral was the offi-
cial creation, in 1977, of the Región del Pacifico Sur. The “Pacifico Sur”
quickly became known as one of the most radical of the eighteen official pas-
toral regions in the country. The bishops of the Pacifico Sur, including Bish-
ops Lona and Ruiz,22 formed a coherent force in support of liberation
theology and an explicit “option for the poor.” The Región del Pacifico Sur
quickly began to develop its distinct voice. With a critical public missive in
1977, Nuestro compromiso cristiano con los indígenas y campesinos, the bishops of
the Pacifico Sur declared themselves in favor of a “structural transformation”
of the lives of indigenous peoples.23 Their position was further elaborated in
several official collective pastoral statements in which the bishops denounced
the destitute material conditions suffered by the region’s indigenous and peas-
ant communities (characterized by, among other problems, environmental
degradation, landlessness, chronic malnutrition and hunger, alcoholism, unem-
ployment, repression and exploitation by the government and local political
strongmen or caciques) and stated their resolve to work to transform this situ-
ation for a “more just, humane, divine, fraternal, and freer society”24
With the aim of identifying the causes that kept indigenous people poor,
following the liberation theological credo (ver, pensar, actuar, or observe, think,
act) so critical to the process of conscienticization, in collaboration with lay
Catholic groups, CEDIPIO representatives encouraged people to critically as-
sess the “diocesanal reality” and social situation in which they were immersed,
in the light of the Gospel. Such a process was to lead people to identify the
causes of poverty and marginalization; in actuality, the entailing discourse
gradually solidified as a stance overtly critical of the government.
CEDIPIO promoters organized meetings, workshops, study groups, and
other forums surrounding practical, yet pressing, issues, including the illegal or
over-exploitation of the forests and disputes over land boundaries, with the
aim of empowering people to defend their rights. Some clergy even began to
involve themselves in the assemblies of authorities (asambleas), which function
“Knowing Where We Enter” 163
they are, so that also our language and what we want to share can be understood.
And for me it was a real wake up.
—G. M., Catholic priest and Zapotec from Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1995
themselves and for others in their community.At the same time as it advocates
a relativist approach to pastoral practice, the underlying idea is that the mes-
sage of the Gospel is a transcendent truth, not bound to a particular cultural
context. From the liberationist perspective, the “seeds of the Word”—an in-
choate Christian spirituality—exist in any cultural setting. In the words of
Padre Chano, “Jesus is at the center of all cultures and from there, from his
own [Jewish] culture, with great respect, he is accompanying their rites, their
ceremonies, their dances, all their religious practices.”
Protagonists of contemporary indigenous theology claim to be deferent
to the independence and autonomy of indigenous peoples. Following the ex-
ample of Jesus, the priest’s role in integral evangelization is to accompany
(acompañar) the community in their own quest for liberation—to act as guide,
but not to intervene or impose a foreign ideology. “We aren’t trying to evan-
gelize Indians,” the director of the ecology center in the Tehuantepec Diocese
explained to me, “but instead, this is an inculturation of the Gospel. The In-
dian has his own rites, his own way of seeing life, of invoking God, of seeing
nature, which isn’t that distinct from the Gospel, in its general form.”The di-
rector’s words reflect liberation theology’s ecumenical tolerance and accep-
tance of religious pluralism: the Word of God, the message of the Gospel,
invoked by the liberationist movement refers not so much to a transcendent
Catholic theology, but to a Christian faith of a more generic or ecumenical
character, harking back to Catholicism in its original definition of a single,
monadic, transcendental, true religion.37 The theological stance of the progres-
sive or Popular Church is that the Gospel should be completely incarnated
in those other cultures while perfecting the human values already present
therein.The ethos of integral evangelization begins with addressing the mate-
rial needs and problems of the people. Religious faith is depicted as an essen-
tial, implicit aspect of everyday existence, and spiritual understanding is
thought to develop in conjunction with, and to enrich, the awakening of so-
cial and political consciousness.Yet it is in relation to culture especially that the
agents of the pastoral indígena have focused much of their efforts at salvaging
indigenous ways of life.
Cultural “Recuperation”
Over the past thirty years, the increasing numbers of indigenous priests,
deacons, and catechists in Oaxaca symbolize the partial realization of the goals
of inculturation. In addition, the Oaxacan church has also undertaken pro-
grams of cultural “recuperation” as part of its pastoral mission. For example, al-
though these activities have been watered down in recent years owing to a
severe reduction of funding from the archdiocese, CEDIPIO still devotes
much of its activities to reinforcing indigenous cultural identity through ac-
tive translations of Catholic rituals, sacraments, and celebrations into indige-
“Knowing Where We Enter” 169
The absolutism of the indigenous movement sits at odds with the new
mood of religious tolerance now constitutionally guaranteed and the growing
demands within indigenous communities for respect for human rights of all
members of the community, not only Catholics. How the Oaxacan church—
or at least the clergy who represent it—will reconcile their defensive posture
vis-à-vis Protestant religions with their avowed goals of intra-community har-
mony and tolerance remains a key question.
Liberated Women?
A likewise tricky area for the pastoral indígena is the situation of indige-
nous women. Recognizing the prominent religious role of women in indige-
nous communities in Chiapas, the diocesan project of former Bishop Samuel
Ruiz made a concerted effort to incorporate women into its organizational
structure in active leadership roles. On this basis, some scholars have argued
that indigenous women in Chiapas have used the space that the liberationist
church provided to formulate a new kind of theology, a new political con-
sciousness heavily inflected with religious overtones.43
However, indigenous women’s experience in Oaxaca has been somewhat
less sanguine. In many liberationist pastoral plans I have observed in Oaxaca,
indigenous women are exalted for their central part in the reproduction of the
community as wives and mothers, the safe-keepers of traditional cultural val-
ues and customs. At the same time, they are also encouraged to participate on
equal terms with men in community projects, from UCIRI to those of human
rights. In some parishes, and in some organizations such as UCIRI, special
women’s projects have been organized, such as literacy programs and artesian
and agricultural production cooperatives.Yet the unique problems and issues
of women (e.g., domestic violence and abuse, the lack of equal access to pub-
lic political space) are rarely dealt with within the larger social program. In ad-
dition, according to the personal testimony of priests and of participants in
such projects, many women experience violent reactions from their husbands
for their non-domestic public involvement outside the home.
The female coordinator of the Centro de Promoción Comunitariá (Cen-
ter for Communitarian Promotion or CEPROCUM) in the Diocese of
Tehuantepec justified the church’s approach in this manner: “In the indige-
nous communities the family is always one entity, the children, the father, the
communitarian form of organization.Yes we have projects for women, but al-
ways looking at women from the indigenous cultural context.We don’t have
specific projects in which we say—these women are going to a meeting of
women in the capital.We don’t want to take them out of their molds, out of
their cultural schemes, but rather we try as far as possible not to affect the cul-
ture... nor the values within it.”The problem is that in this hermetic, egalitar-
ian, corporate indigenous community—their cultural “mold”—women have
172 Kristin Norget
few ensured sources of structural power, and the traditional normative system
places severe constraints on their socially sanctioned public social activity.
Recent work on Mexican women’s involvement in popular movements
has drawn attention to aspects of women’s social and political activism as
sources of renewed concepts of democracy, critical in the long-term constitu-
tion of a democratized political culture in Mexico and Latin America as a
whole.44 Some of the new demands of women are those related to issues crit-
ical especially for indigenous women: demands for control over such things as
their reproduction and whom they marry, but also demands for increased po-
litical participation.
It may be too early to judge the long-term impact of the conscienticiza-
tion efforts of the Oaxacan church on indigenous women. While I saw
women actively participating in forums such as human rights groups, tradi-
tional medicine workshops, and sewing and weaving cooperatives (these often
organized by nuns, in my experience the true “worker bees” of the Catholic
Church), indigenous women are still dealing with dominant ambient patriar-
chal cultural values from which not even the progressivist church has shown
itself to be immune.
tained its opposition to Latin American theology while promoting what the
pope saw as “authentic” liberation (which revolved around individual conver-
sion). Combined with Prigione’s clout (and that of subsequent nuncios) was
the apparent cosying up of church-state relations in Mexico, a trend that
began in the mid-1980s and was formalized with the Salinas-initiated consti-
tutional reforms in 1992.46
An ostracizing of progressive elements in the church was seen in Oaxaca,
where at the beginning of the 1990s (1989–1991) two bishops shared the su-
pervision of the Oaxacan archdiocese. In 1988, Prigione had pressured for a
more conservative bishop, Hector González Martínez, to take up the role as
diocese coadjutor.The official reason given for the need for two bishops was
to aid the aging Carrasco in carrying out his duties in the extensive (47,000
km2) and difficult geography of the Oaxacan diocese. It was rumored that
Carrasco had requested an auxiliary bishop to help him also with the problem
of priests’ violation of the vow of celibacy, a problem for which the archdio-
cese had earned infamy within the church nationally.47
Upon his arrival, González quickly intervened in realms of diocese activ-
ity in a manner many priests saw as inappropriate. More light was cast on the
ulterior motives of Prigione’s selection in November 1989, when it was an-
nounced publicly that Rome had given the coadjutor the ultimate word in
any decisions passed regarding official diocese policy and local clergy. In a let-
ter to a plenary meeting in the archdiocese in August 1990, Carrasco declared
that the granting to González of these special powers was tantamount to the
“deauthorization of the pastoral program that had been shaping the pastoral
orientation [of the diocese]. . . . He [González] had no previous experience of
the indigenous pastoral. He has not assumed it completely. . . . It is a com-
pletely new world for him.”48
The announcement of González’ authority over Carrasco raised the hack-
les of many Oaxacan clergy, who demanded that the nuncio appear in Oaxaca
to defend his actions. He did so the following March, 1990, after public op-
position to the matter had calmed down, and was effectively successful in re-
inforcing the authority of the new coadjutor González.49
Still, the worst was yet to come. SERESURE, the seminary so critical to
the coherence and consistency of the distinct progressivist pastoral agenda of
the pastoral region of the Pacifico Sur for almost twenty years, came to an end.
In December 1989, nuncio Prigione paid a brief visit to the seminary. At the
end of that same year, the Holy Office commissioned a more intense official
review of the seminary and its program of study, sending two bishops to do the
job, Emilio Berlié Belaunzarán of Tijuana and Alberto Suárez Inda of Tacám-
baro. Afterwards, Inda and Berlié sent their evaluations to Rome.
Finally, the following year, August 9, 1990, Pio Laghi, prefect of the Sa-
cred Congregation for Catholic Education, sent a letter to Norberto Rivera,
174 Kristin Norget
C onc lu s i on
Since the Zapatista rebellion, the revindication of indigenousness has
gained ground in Mexico. Nevertheless, in Oaxaca for several years indige-
nous organizations have emerged that are struggling for better participation in
the political and free determination of their communities within a more
democratic national political landscape.
Inspired by the opening of the Catholic Church emerging from Vatican II
and Medellín, and concomitant calls for a greater social commitment with the
poor and oppressed, with its pastoral program of the pastoral indígena, a liber-
ation theological wing of the Catholic Church in Oaxaca also assumed the
mantle of the indigenous cause, defending indigenous culture in the struggle
against various forces seen to threaten it.The efforts of progressivist clergy en-
countered a reinvigorated and more politicized terrain of struggle in the wake
of the emergence of the EZLN and the explosion of popular organizing that
has arisen in its path. Following the ideal of inculturation, a program for in-
carnating the Gospel in the community as well as democratizing relations be-
tween church agents and indigenous peoples, the indigenous pastoral was seen
by progressives to be the source of the emergence of a new, utopian social
order and a strengthening of indigenous communities.
Despite the progressive church’s efforts to valorize indigenous cultural
forms and to defer to indigenous peoples in determining their own path to-
ward liberation, I have suggested that the fundamental implications of the in-
digenous pastoral campaign cannot be understood outside of a consideration
of power relations that have colored the engagement of the church and in-
digenous peoples since colonization.
180 Kristin Norget
some tension with a fundamental belief in the rightness of the beliefs or be-
haviours that are the substance of the program of directed change.”71
This contradictory logic is at the root of what is perhaps the greatest chal-
lenge for the church to retain its relevance in indigenous communities. In
today’s context, where indigenous people in Oaxaca are increasingly aware of
their right to shape and define the terms of their identities and cultures and
are gaining political strength within the national society, where the church en-
ters into this struggle will also be determined by indigenous peoples them-
selves, according to their own ideas regarding what autonomy means.
N ote s
I would like to thank Fonds de Recherche sui la Societé et la Culture (FCAR) and the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for generous fi-
nancial assistance that made this research possible. My sincere gratitude also goes to
Pierre Beaucage, Enrique Marroquín, Nemesio Rodriguez, Jesús Lizama, and Jorge
Hernández Díaz, who over the years have shared generously their knowledge and insight
on the church in Mexico and Oaxaca. Mauricio Delfín, Ezequiel Toledo, Miranda Ortiz,
and Stephanie Pommez provided invaluable research assistance in Oaxaca. This paper
would also not have been possible without the generosity and confianza of members
of the Oaxacan clergy, especially Msgr. Arturo Lona, Padre Juan Ortiz Carreño, Padre
Wilfrido Mayrén Pelaez, and Madre Guadalupe Cortes. Finally, Edward Cleary, Tim
Steigenga, and an anonymous reviewer of an earlier draft of this essay encouraged me to
sharpen some of my central arguments. Some sections of this essay have appeared previ-
ously in Latin American Perspectives 96, no. 5 (September 1997): 96–127.
1. In Jorge Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad: La formación de las organizaciones
indígenas en Oaxaca (México, D.F.:Porrua, 2001), my translation.
2. 18.3 percent of the Oaxaca’s state population is indigenous, from Jonathan Fox,
“Mexico’s Indigenous Population,” Indigenous Rights and Determination in Mex-
ico, Cultural Survival Quarterly 23, no. 1 (spring 1999): 26.
3. Since the end of the twentieth century, the Mexican state had traditionally been Ja-
cobinist, anticlerical, though had not enforced constitutional articles which severely
curtailed the church’s power and influence in Mexican society. In 1992, the church’s
official status changed, ushering in a period of rapprochement between church and
state. President Salinas initiated an amendment to five articles of the Constitution
(Articles 3, 4, 24, 27, and 130): these momentous reforms recognized the church’s
juridical status, allowed it a broader role in education, permitted clergy to vote, le-
galized the presence of foreign priests in their country, and allowed religious enti-
ties to use the mass media to convey their views.
4. As used by Enrique Marroquín, El Botín Sagrado: La dinámica religiosa en Oaxaca
(Oaxaca: IISUABJO-Comunicación Sociál, 1992).
5. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977); Pierre Bourdieu, “Genèse et structure du champ religieux,” Revue
Française de sociologie 12, no, 3 (July–September): 294–334.
6. For example, Eleazar López Hernández, Teología india: antología (Cochabamba, Bo-
livia: Editorial Verbo Divino, 2000); Diego Irarrázaval, Inculturation: New Dawn of the
Church in Latin America (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000); Bartolomé Carrasco, “Incultura-
tion del Evangelio,” Voces 4 (1994):11–31.
7. Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad. Legislative changes achieved by the in-
digenous movement have included the official ratification (on July 11, 1990) of new
international norms for relations between states and indigenous peoples, contained
182 Kristin Norget
55. Such was the case with the murder, in 1997, of Padre Mauro Ortiz Carreno, priest
in the Oaxacan southern sierra town of San Juan Ozololtepec.The killing remains
unsolved, but is believed by members of the church that he was the victim of
caciques who objected to the priest’s vocal denunciations of the illegal burning of
local forests to grow opium.
56. Pedro Matías,“Sacerdotes Amanezados,” ProcesoSur, November 10, 2001, 16–17. See
also Amy Frumin and Kristin Ramírez, The Untold Story of the Low Intensity War in
Loxicha (San Francisco: Global Exchange, 1998).
57. Quoted at the Latin American Meeting of Bishops that took place in April 2002 in
Oaxaca City, “The Indigenous Emergence: A Challenge for the Indigenous Pas-
toral,” presented in the forum Socio-Political and Cultural Realities of Indigenous
Peoples in Mexico (in “Irrupción indígena: Enorme desafío para la Iglesia y para la
sociedad,” Noticias, April 28, 2002).
58. See Alan Knight, “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940,” in
The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: Univer-
sity of Texas, 1990).
59. Judith Friedlander,“The National Indigenist Institute of Mexico Reinvents the In-
dian:The Pame Example,” American Ethnologist 13, no. 2 (1986): 363–367; Hernán-
dez Díaz, “UCIRI”; Carol Nagengast and Michael Kearney, “Mixtec Ethnicity:
Social Identity, Political Consciousness, and Political Activism,” Latin American Re-
search Review 25, no. 2 (1990): 61–91. See also Knight,“Racism, Revolution, and In-
digenismo,” for extensive discussion of these themes.
60. Pedro Matías,“Celibato y Pederastía en Oaxaca,” ProcesoSur, May 11, 2002, 19.
61. A close relationship between church and government leaders in Mexico was for-
mally reinstated by the constitutional reforms approved in 1992 and the reestablish-
ment of diplomatic relations between the Mexican state and the Vatican. The
constitutional amendments involved a reformulation of Article 130, granting the
clergy more guaranteed rights.At the local level, this law signifies a tighter vigilance
of a priest’s activities through legal rights for the government to review his admin-
istrative and financial records.
62. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.
63. This was so even for indigenous clergy who, by virtue of their education and sem-
inary training and affiliation with the church, are still culturally “other” to the com-
munities in which they work.
64. Indeed, Mexican anthropologists have traditionally colluded with the state in in-
forming and perpetuating essentialized conceptions of culture, especially as related
to notions of ethnicity. See Judith Friedlander, Being Indian in Hueyapan:A Study of
Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975); Quetzil
E. Castañeda, In the Museum of Maya Culture (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota, 1996); Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara, Anthropological Perspectives on Rural
Mexico (London: Routledge, 1984). “México Profundo” (deep Mexico), in the
words of well-known Mexican anthropologist Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, was
the Other Mexico, the primordial substratum of indigenous culture upon which
the syncretic modern Mexican society, the fusion of the races into la raza cósmica,
was built.
65. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, “Introduction: Problematizing Syncretism,” in
Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, ed. C. Stewart and R.
Shaw (New York: Routledge, 1994), 1–26.
66. See Kristin Norget, “Popular Religiosity and Progressive Theology in Oaxaca,
Mexico,” Ethnology 19 (1997): 1–17.
67. David Lehmann, “Fundamentalism and Globalism,” Third World Quarterly 12, no. 4
(1998): 613.
68. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 66.
186 Kristin Norget
69. Alicia Barabas, Utopias Indias: Movimientos socio-religiosos en México (Mexico D.F.:
Grijalbo, 1997).
70. UCIRI’s funding comes from diverse sources: official programs of the INI, private
banks, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), the International Foundation of Or-
ganic Agricultural Movements of Germany (IFOAM). Significant donations have
come for the purchase of equipment, infrastructure, and the promotion of the cul-
tivation of organic coffee (Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad, 113).
71. Angrosino,“The Culture Concept and the Mission of the Catholic Church,” 829.
Chap te r 8
Christine Kovic
We are all equal, men and women, rich and poor, indigenous
and mestizo. We are all united because we are children of God.
—Juan, Mayan catechist of highland Chiapas
I was like the fish that sleep with their eyes open. For a long
time, I didn’t see. I passed through communities where people
were being beaten because they didn’t want to work more than
eight hours [a day]. But I saw old churches and a popular reli-
giosity in process, and I said, “what good people.” I didn’t see
the tremendous oppression of which they were victims.
—Bishop Ruiz García1
Juan, the Mayan catechist, and Bishop Samuel Ruiz are two
resurgent voices that have transformed one another; they are two new voices
of the Catholic Church. During his forty years as bishop of the Diocese of San
Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz underwent a radical transforma-
tion. He arrived in Chiapas in 1960 like a sleeping fish that neither saw nor
understood the oppression of residents of rural communities. Instead, Ruiz set
out to Christianize them, without challenging or even acknowledging the ex-
ploitation they experienced. Church leaders and government officials before
him had a five-hundred-year history of failing to listen to the voices of in-
digenous people. Yet Bishop Ruiz did listen to their voices and was trans-
formed by this act. In time he and the pastoral workers of the diocese
committed themselves to working with and for “the poor.”2 They hoped to
walk with the poor in their path to liberation, in the bishop’s words, to en-
courage the poor to become subjects of their own history.
Juan, a Tzotzil Catholic and catechist for over thirty years, speaks of the right-
ful equality of all—men and women, rich and poor, mestizo and indigenous—as
187
188 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c
Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico, and within Chiapas in-
digenous communities are poorest. More than half of the population of the
diocese was indigenous people who belong to a number of ethnic groups, pri-
marily Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Ch’ol, and Tojolabal. Electricity, potable water, sewage
systems, and basic social services were seldom available in indigenous commu-
nities. Malnutrition, tuberculosis, and death from gastrointestinal and respira-
tory infections were (and still are) common.
At the same time that Bishop Ruiz began to witness exploitation in Chi-
apas, he was profoundly influenced by the historic meetings of the Second
Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the Latin American bishops’ meeting in
Medellín, Columbia (1968). Bishop Ruiz was one of the youngest of the bish-
ops from throughout the world to attend the meetings of Vatican II. A critical
theme of these meetings was “the opening of the church to the world,” or the
recognition that the church must be involved in the realities and problems
faced by people, particularly by the oppressed.
Pope John XXIII, who convened the meetings, urged the church to read
the “signs of the times” by examining and responding to the political, eco-
nomic, and social context in which the church worked. For many Latin Amer-
ican participants poverty and political repression were glaring “signs” of
concern. Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Mod-
ern World) denounces poverty as it affirms the right of all people to have what
is necessary to live and the church’s responsibility to take action in support of
the poor.
At the Medellín meetings Latin American bishops considered Vatican II’s
relevance in their own context. The bishops strongly denounced the oppres-
sion and social injustice of Latin America, affirmed the church’s responsibility
to work in solidarity with the poor, and called for the concientización, or the
promotion of political awareness and empowerment, of popular sectors.
Bishop Ruiz attended both of the meetings and in their wake was eager
to make changes in his pastoral work. He was also influenced by liberation
theology, one of several pastoral lines that emerged from the meetings of Vat-
ican II and Medellín. First developed in Latin America, liberation theology
emphasizes that the church should work in solidarity with the poor, who are
the preferred subjects for the revelation of the word of God. It involves a re-
reading of the Bible from the perspective of the oppressed and offers hope for
change. The Kingdom of God is defined as liberation from all forms of op-
pression, and humans should work with God to build this kingdom on earth.10
At its best, the diocesan work under Ruiz’s leadership was based on the
liberationist concept of acompañamiento (accompaniment) of the poor, that is,
the pastoral workers walked with the poor, not in front of them, learned from
the poor, and joined their struggle for justice.11 Yet, as Daniel Levine writes,
“even with the best intentions, liberationist activists have had problems shed-
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 191
ding directive and paternalistic roles.”12 The bishop’s conversion to the poor
and the diocesan commitment to walk with the poor were not without con-
tradictions. Although Bishop Ruiz and pastoral workers emphasized the im-
portance of indigenous peoples being the “subjects of their own history,” at
times it seemed that diocesan workers saw themselves in the directive role of
making indigenous subjects or in the paternalistic role of making people
aware of their own dignity.
and, “with the help of God,” learned to read. He was among thousands of
campesinos who learned to read and write in these schools. Literacy was
taught not only because it was a necessary skill for catechists (who had to be
able to read the Bible and religious lessons), but also because it was a practical
skill that would help the catechists in their negotiations with merchants and
government officials. In addition to literacy, geography, biology, and other sub-
jects, vocational skills were taught at these schools. Juan recalls studying long
hours, “even when [they] were tired.” In these months he received the sacra-
ments of first communion and confirmation. Upon completion of the course,
he received a credential formally recognizing his role as a catechist. He has
saved his credential for over thirty years, guarding it among his most-valued
documents.
A memorable aspect of the catechism class was meeting indigenous peo-
ples of a variety of ethnic groups including Tzeltales,Tzotziles, Cho’les,Tojo-
labales, Mames, and Zoques. Juan recalls that there were more than sixty
students in his group, and he made contacts and friendships with people from
many regions of the diocese. In spite of the many differences among the eth-
nic groups—language among the most important—Juan told me that they
helped one another in lessons and recognized their shared poverty and expe-
riences of racism and political repression at the hands of the state.
Due to political conflict in Chamula in the 1980s, Juan and his family
were forced to leave. They moved to the highland township of San Pedro
Chenalhó, and then to the colonia in San Cristóbal, where they now reside.
Juan works as a peon, or day laborer, in the city, constructing homes, roads, and
buildings. The work is difficult and wages are low. Employment is intermit-
tent, so he has no regular income.
He views his work as a catechist as a cargo, a duty or responsibility that he
carries out for the benefit of his community. He receives no monetary com-
pensation for his work. Juan carries out the traditional tasks of catechists: help-
ing people prepare for the sacraments of weddings, first communions, and the
baptisms of their children. He is one of several catechists in his community, but
as the oldest, he is highly respected. In the community’s local chapel, Juan
reads from the Bible at religious celebrations held several times a week. A
priest arrives to celebrate mass every few months, so responsibility for worship
and daily spiritual concerns remains in the hands of indigenous lay Catholics.
This is similar to other indigenous communities in Chiapas, although in more
isolated rural communities, priests visit less frequently.
Juan considers one of his most important tasks as a catechist to be the
building a community in which people share their faith, spiritual support, ma-
terial goods, and, in many cases, create political alliances to resist poverty and
oppression. One song that Juan learned in his 1969 catechist course begins
like this:
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 193
Community, Community,
How much joy I find in you . . .
So I want to commit myself to the creation
Of a great community,
Full of faith, full of love,
To reach happiness.
Within the colonia where he lives, Juan works to build community by visiting
the ill, mediating in local disputes, and sharing his scarce resources with those
in need, among other tasks.Yet his work to build community extends to the
highland townships of Teopisca and Chenalhó, where Juan travels to preach
and visit with indigenous Catholics. For example, one week in the winter of
1995 Juan and another man from his colonia spent four full days fasting along
with twenty-five men and women to give moral support to the lone catechist
of a community in Teopisca.The Teopisca catechist was recently widowed, left
with six young children. Afraid that the catechist would loose his faith during
the crisis, community members organized a fast to show him their support and
to pray for strength.The presence of two men from another community served
as a visible reminder of the network of Catholics, who were willing to give
their time (of course, Juan and others gave up four days’ pay as well) to make a
physical sacrifice by participating in the fast and to offer material support.
In addition to these visits, Juan meets monthly with Tzotzil catechists of
his region to share information, discuss biblical readings, and make decisions
about pastoral work and participation in regional or diocesan-wide events. At
an annual catechist course, participants share news of community achieve-
ments, attempt to work through difficulties, and discuss changes or innova-
tions in liturgy. In all of these events, the Tzotzil catechists recognize their
commonalities and strengthen the networks they can count on for support. In
other events, such as Juan’s 1969 catechist course and the 1974 Indigenous
Congress described below, campesinos from a number of ethnic groups rec-
ognize their shared oppression and shared struggles for liberation.
Within his community, Juan and other Catholics reject the use of alcohol,
asserting that it goes against the will of God.This is not a strict moralism, but
a rejection of the suffering caused by drinking. Juan’s father drank excessively,
which eventually led to his death. Drinking is criticized because for those liv-
ing in extreme poverty, purchasing alcohol consumes precious cash. Drinking
is also criticized because it is linked to domestic violence. In rejecting alcohol,
Catholics reassert some control over their own lives and demand self-respect.
They contrast drinking to thinking and emphasize the importance of keeping
one’s thoughts with God.
This rejection of alcohol is one of the many ways that indigenous peoples
appropriate Catholicism and make it relevant to their own lives. Catholic
194 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c
doctrine does not prohibit the use of alcohol, although some priests in the
diocese criticized excessive drinking, especially that associated with festivals.
Yet, the priests’ criticism of drinking was based on a moral critique, one often
associated with an attempt to “civilize” indigenous peoples. In contrast, in-
digenous Catholics have organized themselves in recent years to limit problem
drinking in their communities as a way of liberating themselves from eco-
nomic and social control.They note that mestizo merchants profit from alco-
hol sales. (Many Zapatista supporters similarly reject the use of alcohol and
have set up checkpoints to block its entrance into their communities.) In
many cases it is women who have led this temperance movement, citing the
link between alcohol abuse and domestic violence and criticizing the “waste”
of money that should support the household.15
In his alliance with the Catholic Church, Juan has gained a number of
skills, from literacy to organizing skills. In practicing his faith, Juan shares spir-
itual support with others and on a local level fights for a dignified life in his
rejection of alcohol. He is part of an extensive network of indigenous
Catholics who are united in their common vision of working toward the es-
tablishment of the Kingdom of God, a world with justice and equality for all.
From this story of one catechist’s work, I turn to a number of important trans-
formations in the diocesan process.
One lesson was based on Exodus 3:7–12, in which God promises to lib-
erate the sufferings of the Israelites in Egypt and to lead them to a land “flow-
ing with milk and honey.” To facilitate group discussion, the lesson gives an
example of catechists’ reflection on this reading:“God wants us to stop every-
thing that crushes us.The Word of God tells us that as a community we must
get out to look for freedom. God says that if we are looking to make our lives
better and for freedom, He will be accompanying us.We have already said that
we are crushed because there is no accord among us, because we are di-
vided.”21 In another lesson, catechists reflect on cultural oppression:“The Sec-
ond Commandment of God’s Law says this: Love your brother as you love
yourself. . . . We Indians are made by God and therefore we are of value and
have a force of growth in our heart. Brothers, let us not crush ourselves. Let us
recognize the force that there is in our Indian heart and let us make it grow.”22
In the new model of catechesis, community members met in local chapels
once or more a week to reflect on and analyze biblical readings in the context
of their everyday lives.23 In this process indigenous Catholics became the
agents of inculturation as they appropriated and interpreted texts that were
meaningful to their way of life.The new methodology for catechism took se-
riously “the notion that ordinary Catholics are protagonists of their own evan-
gelization rather than mere recipients.”24
voices. Burdick warns that listening to only clergy, pastoral agents, and a small
group of the most enthusiastic Catholics will not reveal contradictions in and
discontent with the progressive church.28 Pastoral agents in Chiapas certainly
would have benefited from carefully listening to diverse voices, including
those of PRI-supporters, Protestants, among others. Understanding the rea-
sons for dissent would have allowed the diocese to critically assess its project.
Nonetheless, in the context of political repression and the polarization be-
tween the Mexican state and the Diocese of San Cristóbal, possibilities for di-
alogue between these two actors and between the diocese and other actors
were limited.
Father Pablo Iribarren, a Dominican priest who carefully recorded much
of the diocese’s history in published and unpublished manuscripts, remarked
on the importance of the congress, noting that one of its key achievements for
the poor was “the discovery that the plan of God was not their actual situation
of misery and marginalization. God had other more just and kind projects for
them. But in their action, the projects were impeded by the ambition of the
powerful and the lack of adequate channels for their voices to be heard.”29
Here it is worth pointing out that the poor did not suddenly wake up to
“discover” their oppression, it was obvious enough. Perhaps they realized that
their suffering contradicted the will of God, perhaps they were already aware
of this.What I would argue was the most important outcome of the congress
is that the indigenous peoples recognized the Catholic Church as a new in-
terlocutor (albeit a mestizo institution) that was willing to engage in a dia-
logue with them and support their struggle for dignity. In this sense, rather
than a “voice of the voiceless,” the church served as an “ear,” listening to the
voices of the marginalized. It is not that the church spoke for the poor; they
could already speak for themselves.The church listened to them and, as Pablo
Iribarren stated, provided a channel for their voices to be heard.
The congress was also important in establishing logistic and symbolic ties
between the four ethnic groups. Indigenous representatives—hombres de buena
palabra (men of good word) or those who were consistent in what they said
and what they did—were elected to take the proposals of the congress to their
communities. It provided the space for the formation of independent peasant
organizations. In fact, an organization named after Fray Bartolomé de Las
Casas was formed to continue the congress’s work. A Marist brother from the
Tojolabal zone was named president and other pastoral agents served as its ad-
visors. In 1977, one of the advisors to this group asked,“Who will be the new
Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas?” The Indians answered, “We will. We are Bar-
tolomé. We needed one before because everything was decided in Spain,
where we couldn’t go and where we didn’t have a voice; then they spoke for
us. Now we are beginning to speak for ourselves.”30
At the same time, the congress also had an important impact on the con-
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 199
priests and nuns of the diocese, and the mestizo Subcomandante Marcos—had
manipulated them.Attributing the struggles in Chiapas to “outside” actors fails
to grant any agency to the indigenous and peasant poor; it assumes that in-
digenous Catholics are passive victims of the church and other institutions.
Within the much publicized polemic on whether Bishop Ruiz con-
tributed to the formation of the EZLN, the many nonviolent movements
supported by the diocese, movements which preceded the public appearance
of the Zapatistas, are rarely mentioned, let alone examined with any serious-
ness.Yet, in the early 1990s, several indigenous organizations whose members
were motivated by their faith and supported by the diocese engaged in acts of
nonviolent resistance to demand that their voices be heard. Two such groups
are Xi’ Nich’ (The Ant) and Las Abejas (The Bees)—their names reflecting the
collective base of their organizations.39 These groups grew out of local con-
cern about injustices; in a sense, this same repression and resistance began with
the arrival of the Spanish and has persisted for hundreds of years.The historic
context of the 1980s—the work of the economic crisis, the growing campe-
sino mobilization throughout the state, and government repression that ac-
companied this mobilization—created the conditions for the formation of
these groups. Specific human rights violations or community crises pushed
people to establish formal organizations of resistance.A third group, CODIMUJ,
or the Diocesan Coordination of Women, brings together Catholic women
from throughout the diocese to participate in local discussion groups, regional
workshops, cooperatives, and other activities.
The foundation for Xi’Nich’ was built in December of 1991 when mem-
bers of three indigenous organizations began a peaceful demonstration in the
central plaza of the city of Palenque. Some two hundred campesinos partici-
pated in the protest, demanding public works and services for their commu-
nities (potable water, roads), the regularization of land and a solution to
agrarian conflicts, support for agricultural production, interpreters in govern-
ment offices, the democratic election of municipal officials, and participation
in local radio, among other things. Once the campesinos began their protest in
the central plaza, they stayed there for days, insisting that the government see
them and hear them and that it respond to their demands. In the context of
racism in Mexico, their demand to be heard was a powerful statement.
On the third day of the protest a large group of police stormed the plaza,
hitting and handcuffing the protesters, pushing them into trucks, and arresting
103 people.40 After being held in the state attorney general’s office for two
days, 93 of the prisoners were released. (The remaining protesters were re-
leased a month later.) Since the state government had refused to respond to
their demands, the protesters decided to go to the federal authorities to try to
make them listen. On March 7, 1992, 700 Indians from over one hundred
communities began the Xi’Nich’ March for Peace and Human Rights of the
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 203
Indigenous Peoples. (The name Xi’Nich’ signifies “ant” in the Ch’ol lan-
guage.) Ch’ol, Tzeltal, and Zoque Indians marched for fifty days from
Palenque to Mexico City.
The march was a strategic attempt to broaden support for their demands.
As the Ants passed through villages on their way to Mexico City, people pro-
vided food, clothing, and lodging to the marchers, and the campesinos saw
that their struggle had much in common with that of campesinos in other re-
gions. Representatives of the federal government met with Xi’Nich’ marchers
just outside Mexico City, in a sort of “damage control,” wanting to keep the
indigenous invisible, to prevent them from entering the city. The officials
agreed to comply with their demands, although, in many cases, these were
empty promises.Then the marchers convened at the Basilica in Mexico City
to give thanks to the Virgin of Guadalupe. In an attempt to discredit the
march, the newspaper El Excelsior wrote on April 20, 1992, that the marchers
were “recruited” by the pastoral workers for political motives and did not even
know why they had gone to Mexico City.
In the highland Tzotzil township of Chenalhó, Las Abejas came together
during a violent agrarian conflict in 1992.41 As members of one community
were urged to join one of two opposing factions and to take up arms to de-
fend themselves, a group of Catholics decided to take a third path.This group,
which became the civil organization Las Abejas, opted for nonviolence and
insisted on the necessity of dialogue to resolve the crisis. Following arrests and
assassinations in their communities, members of Las Abejas joined together in
fasting and prayer in a chapel to decide what to actions to take.They marched
forty-one kilometers from Chenalhó to San Cristóbal and held a sit-in in
front of the cathedral. After a second march and additional protests, the pris-
oners were released. Las Abejas’s struggle expanded beyond the immediate
conflict to include the defense of a broad range of political and economic
rights. Members fought for the right to work the land, formed cooperatives
for the production of coffee and honey, and protested electoral fraud, im-
punity, and corruption.At the same time, Las Abejas members struggle for rec-
onciliation, that is, they work to restore their own dignity while rejecting
violence, vengeance, and hatred.
In December of 1997 Las Abejas attracted international attention when
forty-five of its members were killed while praying in a local chapel in Acteal,
Chenalhó. Dozens of men belonging to the paramilitary group La Mascara
Roja (The Red Mask) carried out the massacre. Although Mexico’s attorney
general declared that the massacre was caused by a family feud, investigations
revealed that high-ranking military officers were complicit in the massacre.
The Diocese of San Cristóbal also played an important role in the forma-
tion of women’s groups. Women religious (nuns) have supported local
women’s groups since the 1970s. The commitment to women’s rights was
204 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c
C onc lu s i on
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, listening to and taking seriously
the voices of indigenous peoples transformed the Diocese of San Cristóbal.At
their best, pastoral agents served as an ear of an earless church and engaged in
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 205
N ote s
Some sections of this paper will appear in Walking with One Heart:The Catholic Church
and Human Rights in Highland Chiapas, (Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming).
1. Quoted in Carlos Fazio, Samuel Ruiz, El Caminante (Mexico City: Espasa Calpe,
1994), 106.
2. In numerous diocesan documents and meetings of the 1970s, the term “the poor”
(los pobres in Spanish) was used to describe an undifferentiated group of people suf-
fering similarly from structures of inequality. This designation reifies a heteroge-
neous group of people. In time, the pastoral workers recognized the specific role of
ethnicity in structuring the marginality and poverty of indigenous peoples of Chi-
apas. That is, they recognized the necessity of seeing the intersection of class and
ethnicity. Nonetheless, the labeling of all oppressed peoples in the diocese as the
poor (or at times los hermanos, the brothers) would continue.
3. Hans Siebers, “Globalization and Religious Creolization among the Q’eqchi’es of
Guatemala,” in Latin American Religion in Motion, ed. Christian Smith and Joshua
Prokopy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 267–268.
4. Ibid., 272.
5. Samuel Ruiz formally retired as bishop at age seventy-five in 1999 in accordance
with canonical law. On March 31, 2000, the Vatican named Felipe Arzimendi
as his successor. Enrique Díaz Díaz was consecrated auxiliary bishop in July of
2003.
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 207
UG, 1995), 375–405; and Jan De Vos, Una tierra para sembrar sueños: Historia reciente de
la Selva Lacandona, 1950–2000 (Mexico City: CIESAS, 2002), 215–243. For a de-
tailed account of catechists of the Diocese of San Cristóbal and democratization, see
J. Charlene Floyd, “The Government Shall Be upon Their Shoulders:The Catholic
Church and Democratization in Chiapas, Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., City University of
New York, 1997).
20. For a detailed discussion of this process, see Ascencio Franco, Gabriel Solano, and
Xóchitl Leyva Solano, “Los municipios de la Selva Chiapaneca. Colonización y
dinámica agropecuaria,” in Anuario 1991 del Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura (Tuxtla
Gutiérrez: Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura, 1992).
21. Misión de Ocosingo-Altamirano, 1972–1974, quoted in John Womack Jr., Rebellion
in Chiapas: An Historical Reader (New York:The New Press, 1999), 140.
22. Ibid., 137.
23. Local meetings in rural chapels are similar to meetings of members of Christian
Base Communities (CEB’s). In these chapels Catholics meet regularly to read the
Bible and have established broad social networks based on connections through the
church.Yet these are not CEBs in the formal sense. In the 1980s members of the
Diocese of San Cristóbal attempted to establish Christian Base Communities in
rural and urban areas following the model of other Latin American countries. Al-
though the base communities grew in urban areas, particularly among mestizos, pas-
toral workers realized that rural indigenous communities were in many ways de
facto base communities.
24. Thomas Bamat and Jean-Paul Wiest, “The Many Faces of Popular Catholicism,” in
Popular Catholicism in a World Church: Seven Case Studies in Inculturation, ed.Thomas
Bamat and Jean-Paul Wiest (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), 15.
25. Las Casas played a critical role in securing the passage of two laws to protect in-
digenous people from exploitation at the hands of colonizers. Although Las Casas
criticized the Spaniards’ brutal treatment of indigenous people, he did not criticize
the enslavement of Africans in the New World.
26. Jesús Morales Bermúdez, “El Congreso Indígena de Chiapas: Un Testimonio,” in
Anuario 1991 del Instituto Chiapaneco de Cultura (Tuxtla Gutiérrez: Instituto Chia-
paneco de Cultura, 1992), 248.
27. Ibid., 349.
28. John Burdick,“The Progressive Catholic Church in Latin America: Giving Voice or
Listening to Voices,” Latin American Research Review 29 no. 1 (1994): 184–197.
29. Pablo Iribarren,“Experiencia: Proceso de la Diocesis de San Cristóbal de Las Casas,
Mexico,” mimeo, 1985.
30. Cited in Samuel Ruiz García, En Búsqueda de la libertad (San Cristóbal de Las Casas:
Editorial Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, 1999).
31. Iribarren, “Experiencia: Proceso de la Diocesis de San Cristóbal de Las Casas,
México.”
32. Samuel Ruiz García, “En Esta Hora de Gracia,” Pastoral Letter (Mexico City: Dabar,
1993), 26.
33. After this important meeting of all pastoral workers, a Diocesan Assembly was called
each year in order to examine and revise the pastoral work. Occasionally, Extraor-
dinary Assemblies are called for special events.
34. Iribarren,“Experiencia: Proceso de la Diocesis de San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Mex-
ico,” 7.
35. On independent campesino organizations, see Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion:
The Struggle for Land and Democracy (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
36. El Caminante, Internal Bolletin of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas,
June/July 1985; and Iribarren,“Experiencia: Proceso de la Diocesis de San Cristóbal
de Las Casas, Mexico.”
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 209
Stephen P. Judd
210
Indigenous Theology Movement 211
After this experience the young Indian man returned to his cultural home
newly aware and appreciative of the wealth and beauty of his ancestral home-
land and cultural heritage.
Ecuador, Leonidas Proaño—in the 1970s and 1980s prepared the ground for
the formation of indigenous leaders for roles in civil society. They began by
opening up spaces for lay participation in ministries within the church long
before their entrance into public life. Long-condemned rituals of pre-
Columbian origin, many practiced clandestinely, were reintroduced into offi-
cial ceremonies of the institutional church and celebrated in the indigenous
languages. Long-condemned indigenous ministries suddenly became recog-
nized and officially sanctioned. The influence of the emerging theology of
liberation that spread throughout the Latin American continent played an
equally important role in raising awareness of indigenous identity and the
peoples’ right to self-determination.Throughout the hemisphere and region,
emboldened indigenous peoples are reinventing democracy according to a
worldview that does not make distinctions between the realms of the sacred
and the social.
Unbeknownst to world leaders and the Western world at large has been a
slow process of building an identity that is not simply based on a clarion call to
return to an idyllic past before the European discovery of America, but reflects
an ability to confront modernity and post-modernity with an alternative world-
view based on indigenous values of respect for the earth and bio-diversity,
human relationships that are inclusive and reciprocal, and a sense of sacred time
and place.
The worldwide protest against globalization, as it touches on land and
natural resources, notions of sacred territory, and communal organizations,
resonates with developments in the religious worldview of indigenous peo-
ples. According to the Chilean sociologist of religion Christian Parker, “reli-
gion is a part of the process of recovery of ethnic identity, even though it is
under threat from globalization.”3 Similarly, this movement finds common
cause with those who propose a different kind of globalization “from below”
that builds international networks of solidarity and self-determination. It is
not just the religious expression of the lament of a downtrodden remnant liv-
ing clandestinely, but a vital force for historical transformation in Latin Amer-
ican countries with high percentages of indigenous populations, countries like
Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile. The awakening of the
nearly sixty million indigenous peoples of the Americas—the ones that the
Brazilian historian Darcy Ribeiro calls “witness peoples”—represents a new
social force to be reckoned with now more than ever, when disenchantment
with the false promises of the globalization project appear. However, it re-
mains to be seen whether these social developments will translate into a
sweeping redesign of the apparatus of the national government structures in
places like Bolivia and Ecuador.
The explanations for this global shift are complex and diverse, but devel-
opments in the contemporary Latin American Catholic Church over the past
Indigenous Theology Movement 213
forty years warrant greater attention and treatment as one of the variables and
interpretative keys for understanding a unique historical and cultural phe-
nomenon at the beginning of the third millennium. Interestingly, all of these
developments transpired during the decade designated by the United Nations
as the Decade of Indigenous Peoples (1993–2003).
During the build up to 1992 many indigenous peoples began to give
voice to a phrase that has helped in their own self-understanding: they are
peoples of “memory, resistance, and hope.” The various forms of protest are
part of this resistance that has its counterpart in the religious recovery of
memory and the promise of raising hope for wide-sweeping transformations
on every level within and beyond the borders of Latin America. At certain
moments we have heard echoes of the dialogue between the young brother
and the rich stranger at the crossroads, apacheta.
the urban poor migrants newly arrived in Peru’s coastal cities. But Gutiérrez
went to great lengths to differentiate his new theology from the first writings
of indigenous theology in the early 1990s. While sympathetic to this new
current of theological reflection and thought, the Peruvian offered some cau-
tionary notes in a little-known lecture given at one of the first theological
conferences that treated this new current of theological reflection, organized
in 1990 in Puno, Peru.8
For Gutiérrez and others of his school of thought, the main focus remains
physical poverty and the current exclusion of millions of people as a result of
the implementation of neo-liberal economic policies. His European social-
scientific outlook did not initially give much priority to factors like cultural
identity or creation-based worldviews. Scandalous levels of oppression were
and are for him the primary starting point for theological reflection captured
most recently in the question in the subtitle of his latest and forthcoming
work, “Where will the poor sleep tonight?” For Gutiérrez and others identi-
fied with liberation theology, Las Casas’s words—the poor of Latin America
are a “people who die before their time of an unjust death”—still ring true in
the present context.
At the same time, religious communities and orders that were identified
more directly with the legacy of Bartolomé de Las Casas began to organize in-
ternational meetings to critically re-examine their own past perspectives and
styles of evangelization vis-à-vis their relationship with indigenous peoples.
Aware of experiences in places like Chiapas, Mexico, Las Casas’s own Do-
minican Order was one of the first to organize a symposium along these lines
in 1988 in Cobán, Guatemala, for the purpose of re-ordering its pastoral pri-
orities to reflect advocacy for incipient indigenous social movements.9
A missionary society of North American origins, Maryknoll, soon fol-
lowed suit by organizing its own conferences and workshops around the topic
of its evangelizing role. Maryknoll’s long experience in preparing indigenous
leaders since the early 1940s in the Mapuche lands of southern Chile, in Bo-
livia and Peru among the highland Quechua and Aymara people, as well as in
Mexico and Guatemala began to receive a more systematic treatment.A com-
mitment to listen to and live more closely with the people, as well as efforts to
change and adapt church structures, set the stage for a later emergence of this
new theological current. Through a periodic series of workshops since 1989
and a dialogue with indigenous peoples and leaders, this particular religious
community has promoted and facilitated its ongoing development. Signifi-
cantly, indigenous leaders and representatives participate in these workshops
alongside Maryknollers.10
Maryknoll’s social location on the periphery of the Latin American coun-
tryside contributed to changes within these groups that were the forerunners
of a large-scale missionary movement from North America and Europe in the
216 S t e p h e n P. J u d d
cation in 1998, one of its prominent leaders and an outspoken advocate for in-
digenous rights, Bishop Julio Gerardi, was assassinated in Guatemala City.
There has been an organic growth process and evolution in showing the
theological uniqueness and content of the movement. Slowly but surely the
indigenous religious worldview has worked itself into diverse church docu-
ments and pronouncements, culminating in 1992 when the Latin American
bishops met in Santo Domingo. During that conference one of the most stir-
ring moments occurred with the announcement that Rigoberta Menchú,
herself a product of formation in church movements, was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. But by 1992 the movement had already achieved recognition and
a status as part of the process for inter-religious dialogue within Latin Amer-
ica, signaled by the bishops assembled in Santo Domingo who stated, “We
want to draw closer to the indigenous and Afro-American peoples so that
Gospel already incarnated in their cultures [will] manifest all of its vitality and
that they enter into a dialogue of communion with the rest of Christian com-
munities for the mutual enrichment of everyone.”15
Increasingly, legitimacy was given to indigenous theology on Pope John
Paul II’s several visits and dialogues with indigenous peoples over the course
of his pontificate. What started out as rather timid overtures blossomed into
sincere and warm ceremonies. In 1985 in Cusco, Peru, an indigenous religious
leader boldly thrust a Bible into the pope’s hands as a sign of returning the
Bible, saying that indigenous peoples were never consulted whether they
wanted the Bible in the first place. From that awkward moment subsequent
visits showed a deeper appreciation, as in a large meeting with the pope in
Xoclán, Mexico, in 1993. On the occasion of the canonization of Juan Diego,
the fifteenth-century Indian leader who witnessed the Marian apparitions in
December 2002 at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, indigenous men
and women performed a ritual dance with incense to purify the Holy Father
prior to the canonization ceremony.
Public manifestations of pardon by church officials have gone a long way
toward repairing the breach between the official church and indigenous peo-
ples. Symbolic actions like this indicate the progress made by the indigenous
theological movement in gaining acceptance within the official Catholic
Church. While actions not always enthusiastic, great strides have been made.
The grounds for further dialogue have been established at different apachetas
and in international theological dialogues.
momentum, and created networks for continuous interchange across the con-
tinent. Frequent pronouncements and church documents are likewise a guide
to its development. One collection in particular, prepared by Samuel Ruiz,
Carta Pastoral: En esta hora de gracia (1993), stands out for its non-apologetic ap-
proach.16 Several issues and articles of the thirty-plus-year-old journal Allpan-
chis, published by the Instituto de Pastoral Andina (IPA) in Peru, document
well the various stages in this development.17 The results of anthropological re-
search, complemented by grassroots experience of church pastoral workers,
are found in journals of this nature throughout Latin America.
These international gatherings held in Mexico (1990), Ecuador (1993),
Bolivia (1997), and Paraguay (2002) highlight the main developments and or-
ganic growth of the movement and give shape to its content. While the sur-
vival of what were often clandestinely celebrated rituals was central to the
early reflections, this emphasis on ritual does not spell a nostalgic return to the
past but a reinterpretation of beliefs, rituals, and symbolic systems in light of
the confrontation with modernity and post-modernity and its manifestations
in a more globalized context. Participants at these conferences came from a
range of religious backgrounds.While the majority was Catholic, a significant
number were drawn from mainline Protestant denominations.There have al-
ways been religious practitioners, roughly akin to local shamans, at nearly
every conference, whether local or international.
Indigenous theology, for the most part, taps into the mythical and ritual
worlds of the people, whether they reside in urban or rural areas. It does not
lend itself to dogma or conceptual academic notions in the discipline, but
rather takes shape in narrative forms or through proverbs, ritual actions, and
native sources of the culture’s wisdom traditions. Despite efforts made to doc-
ument the richness of its content, much remains to be done to collect and
make a compendium of what is a diverse array of local practices.The use of a
methodology and a commonly accepted working vocabulary by the partici-
pants at these gatherings will help to discover the universality of themes
whose richness can be enhanced by local experiences. Eventually, this will
help in giving this theology more of a standing in international and interfaith
dialogues.
The first international encounters were largely characterized by a recov-
ery of the memory of the existent practices, many of which were the fruits of
the silent process of inculturation or syncretism of the past five centuries, es-
pecially ritual actions associated with the agricultural cycle and the surviving
oral traditions. Even at these early meetings and conferences there was an ur-
gency to identify the historically liberating elements in the fragments of lo-
calized rites and celebrations. Still, there was a sense of the need to preserve
the clandestine nature of many of the rites for lingering fears of being con-
demned, especially by those theologians who were and are part of the official
Indigenous Theology Movement 219
Lllanque from Puno, Peru, who began to document the religious manifesta-
tions and symbolic universe of his people in the 1970s. Coming out of the
rural areas of Puno, where there is a history of a strong Seventh-Day Adven-
tist presence that stressed indigenous rights through a vast educational system,
Llanque approaches his world as one familiar with the mythical-ritual world
of his people. He is particularly adept at applying the tools of the social sci-
ences to his research and writing.23 Llanque plays a critical role as a bridge fig-
ure and interpreter between the younger generation and those from outside
Andean culture.
One individual in particular stands out as a voice for the movement.The
Zapotec Indian theologian and Catholic priest from Mexico, Eleazar López, is
the most articulate spokesperson, leader, and advocate for indigenous theol-
ogy. His long association with the Centro Nacional de Ayuda a Misiones
Indígenas (CENAMI) and close collaboration and advisory role with the bish-
ops and leaders of the regional organization of dioceses in southern Mexico
have given him a great deal of experience and credibility. Among those lead-
ers are Samuel Ruíz and the late archbishop of Oaxaca, Bartolomé Carrasco.
López epitomizes the internal struggle to arrive at a synthesis between his self-
discovery of indigenous identity and his official status as an ordained priest
cleric within the official church structure.24 Others of his generation who
passed through the Roman Catholic priestly education process long ago have
rejected the values and ways of their people in favor of social and economic
ascendancy that comes with insertion into the ecclesiastical power structure.
López and his cohorts who span the geography of Indian Latin America have
begun to do the slow, patient work of systematizing the theological expres-
sions lived out in daily life throughout the continent.
In his writings López comes to a fuller understanding of the historical
roots of the movement, its present situation, and its future prospects; he shows
an appreciation for a more systematic theological approach to arrive at this
vital synthesis. Indigenous social movements within the larger civil society, ac-
cording to López, have served to provide a more favorable context for “com-
ing out of the caves without fear of being labeled heretics, diabolical or
idolatrous.” He quotes a statement from one of the many meetings and en-
counters that have taken place prior to and after 1992.This time, from a pub-
lic forum in Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, representatives from all over the continent
stated, “We are not romantics nor much less filled with nostalgia and neither
are we motivated by revenge and trying to make our spirituality and cultures
relevant, because we deeply believe that the wisdom of our nations is the pre-
ponderant factor for the salvation of the entire planet and for all humanity.
Our original spirituality is founded on balance, complementarity, identity and
consensus.”25
Throughout his work, López insists on the newness of teología india that
Indigenous Theology Movement 223
builds on both indigenous identity and the richness of the Catholic Christian
tradition, taking heart from reflections since Vatican II on the notion of “seeds
of the Word,” a notion that points to God’s action and Christ’s saving word al-
ready present in cultures before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and the
first evangelizers. Others would say that there are fully grown sprouts and not
just seeds.At the same time, López recognizes the difficulty of such a new vital
synthesis because of the wounds of the past and the persistence of doubts and
suspicions on both sides. Still, he has an unwavering commitment to his role
to facilitate the reconciliation, building on what his precursors have already
achieved under less favorable conditions. Out of what was once a religious
battleground, he believes, new expressions of both Christian witness and com-
munity and indigenous self-understanding and wisdom will blossom.
The younger generation is typified by the Peruvian Aymara priest Narciso
Valencia and the Peruvian Oblate missionary Nicanor Sarmiento, who have
participated in important shifts and ongoing developments.26 So, too, is the pi-
oneering work of the Bolivian Efraín Lazo worthy of closer examination.27
They bridge the distance between the everyday experiences of the people and
church officials who are open to dialogue with the indigenous experience and
reality. But as all these high-profile exponents insist, the originality of this the-
ology is found in the daily practices, devotions, and rituals outside of and often
parallel to official ceremonies. In fact, the place of lo cotidiano, or the quotid-
ian factor, more accurately defines the movement, and not any great system-
atic theological treatise that has yet to be produced.Valencia traces in his work
the role played by the Pachamama in the daily life of the people, not as some
overlay on the cult to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but as one of the embodiments
of the divinity in the Aymara religiously charged worldview.
Sarmiento attempts to trace the contours of one of the first systematic
treatments of this nascent theology from the missiological perspective in
which he was trained as a member of the Catholic Oblates of Mary Order,
a group with a long history of evangelization among indigenous peoples in
Bolivia and Canada. Presently, Sarmiento belongs to a missionary team in
Labrador that gives him a cross-cultural experience in which he can recover
the deeper meanings of his own religious and cultural roots. His starting point
is that teología india is a reflection that “gives the reason for the hope of in-
digenous peoples.” Moreover, a theologian like Sarmiento tries to point out
how such a theology has a missionary dimension inasmuch as it opens up a di-
alogue with other theologies from the particular to the universal.
From an immersion into the mythic-ritual world of his Aymara people,
Valencia probes new meanings of the concept of the Pachamama, not, as so
often is believed, as a manifestation of the Mother Earth, but as the central
point of his people’s understanding of their revelation of the Creator God.
All of the Aymara cosmovision and the ritual offerings surrounding it are
224 S t e p h e n P. J u d d
road of critical distancing from their native cultures only to return and reclaim
the richness and wisdom of their traditions, as if to discover them for the first
time.While they claim a privileged place for the religious experience of their
people, they often borrow from the wisdom of the Western philosophical tra-
dition but not from the traditional sources. Rather, they find resonance and
commonality with the Lithuanian philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and his no-
tions of alterity, or the ethical demands of the “other,” that loom very large as
an influence in their thought and writings.30 In the words of Gustavo Gutiér-
rez, they drink freely from the “wellsprings” of their own culture. Clearly, they
are scholars with their ears to the ground, but with gifts to articulate and in-
terpret the worldviews of their people.They have sojourned to the apachetas
of Indo-America and have lingered there long enough to produce other the-
ological works of a more universal appeal.
and informal gatherings, several Latin American bishops and missiologists have
taken a more favorable and activist stance toward promoting a spirit of inter-
religious dialogue with indigenous theologians, a stance that was called for by
the Santo Domingo conference in 1992. In this way, the institutional church
legitimizes what began as a grassroots movement.
The scholarly research, writings, and lectures of Maryknoll missionary
priest and missiologist John Gorski have attempted to bridge differences and
open the door to more dialogue. Interpreters like Gorski are no mere apolo-
gists for either the guardians of dogmatism or the indigenous theological
movement. In their brokering role they make possible the expansion of un-
derstanding that there are many different ways of being a church of the peo-
ple of God and that God’s revelation in history is an ongoing development.31
They afford a privileged place for the indigenous theological movement in
theological discussions in contemporary Latin America.32
Outsiders without an in-depth understanding of the complexity of teo-
logía india or links to social movements can embrace indigenous theology
rather superficially because of their postmodern sensibilities and enchantment
with its more exotic and folkloric features.This may block them from grasp-
ing the close relationship that this movement has with the social movements
for transformation. Within liberationist circles, teología india enjoys a newly
earned status despite some early misgivings expressed by Gutiérrez back in
1990. There is a close connection with feminist and ecologically based the-
ologies that see themselves as sympathetic dialogue partners and voices from
the margins often excluded from official circles.
The dramatic growth of Protestantism in Latin America, especially Pente-
costalism, can make for an uneasy relationship and mutual suspicions, despite
the ecumenical and pluralistic nature so characteristic of the movement. For
example, in one of the most highly indigenous countries of all, Guatemala,
there has been a phenomenal growth of highly diverse Protestant churches
of a more evangelical and Pentecostal bent, alongside a consistent accom-
paniment of the people by Catholic Church leaders and workers during
the thirty-year civil war. The Pentecostal tradition of resistance to world-
transforming language can be detrimental to expressions such as teología
india, and poses a threat of confusing it with a return to idolatry and a rejec-
tion of modernity, social mobility, and progress.
The REMHI historical memory process was an initiative organized by
Guatemalan church leaders and human rights groups that did not, for the most
part, engage members of the more fundamentalist Protestant churches, despite
the fact that members of these churches were not always immune from the
genocide of the thirty-year civil war.Yet, in stressing its ecumenical, religiously
pluralistic identity, teología india gives witness to yet another way of being
openly inclusive and all-embracing of religious diversity. Protestant theolo-
Indigenous Theology Movement 227
gians like Vicenta Mamani are not exceptions to the rule. Once their writings
become better known, Protestant voices, whether conciliar, evangelical, or
Pentecostal, will take their places alongside their Catholic counterparts.
Within the Catholic tradition, practitioners of teología india go to great
lengths to stress their ecclesial identities, even while they pursue and promote
new currents of thought and break new ground in creating this vital synthe-
sis. The resurgent neo-conservative climate in the church today can militate
against such new expressions that fall outside the scope of those who insist
with renewed energy on sanctions for theologians, whether from Europe,
North America, or, increasingly, from Asia. Recent Vatican documents like
Iesus Dominus (2000) send off mixed messages to those who seek greater inter-
religious dialogue, casting a cloud of suspicion over initiatives like this one.
Worse yet, this can lead to self-censorship that can stifle the necessary creativ-
ity needed to stretch the limits of theological understanding that goes beyond
Western academic theology as the norm.The cautious legitimacy afforded to
teología india by influential church authorities can always be taken away with
little or no forewarning.
We can view the emergence of teología india as a contribution from the
indigenous religious world to the calls for greater intercultural dialogue and
communication.The perspective and thought of a pioneer thinker in this area,
Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, is especially illuminating in that he sees in the “dia-
logue of cultures a challenge of an alternative horizon of hope.”33 In the face
of the cultural bombardment of the message of uniformity behind globaliza-
tion, it is only through a dialogue of cultures that true universality can be
achieved. Each dialogue partner goes beyond the specificity and particularity
of his or her own cultural to enter another level of communication.
Through the process of interculturalidad, one sees the limitless possibilities
for a culture to not only reproduce its cultural forms and patterns but to expand
those horizons to embrace new symbolic universes. In a world wracked by new
manifestations of religious fundamentalism, teología india comes as a welcome
insight and hopeful development for the ongoing conversation. In Fornet-
Betancourt’s view, the intercultural dialogue is one where the values of recep-
tion, reciprocity, and hospitality take root as in the myth “Two Brothers,” men-
tioned earlier.34 Increasingly, the Latin American teología india movement has
brought indigenous peoples together to find common ground and to build new
networks of communication on all the continents through international forums.
To summarize the main features of the indigenous theological movement,
we need go no further than the words of Eleazar López, quoted earlier. This
theology from the underside of history looks at “balance, complementarity,
identity, and consensus” as alternative ways of understanding peoples’ relation-
ship with the transcendent and with each other respecting the quality of
difference. The originality in this movement derives from its departure from
228 S t e p h e n P. J u d d
N ote s
1. In the Aymara language, spoken in the highlands of Bolivia and Peru near Lake Tit-
icaca, it is called “Iskay Hermanontinmanta.”
2. The mythical tale “Two Brothers” was presented by a group of indigenous theolo-
gians from Peru at the Fourth Latin American Ecumenical Workshop for Indige-
nous Theology that took place in Asunción, Paraguay, May 5–11, 2002.
3. Christian Parker, “Religión and the Awakening of Indigenous People in Latin
America,” Social Compass 49, no. 1 (2002): 67–81.
4. Eleazar López Hernández,“Indigenous Theologies,” in Dictionary of Third World The-
ologies, ed. Virginia Fabella and R. S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis
Books, 2000), 108–109.
5. Brian Pierce,“Seeing with the Eyes of God: Bartolomé de Las Casas,” Spirituality 9,
no. 46 (January–February 2003).The revival in Las Casas studies was spurred by the
research and writings of Helen Rand Parish. See the work by Parish and Harold E.
Weidman, Las Casas en México: Historia y obra desconocidas (Mexico: Fondo de Cul-
tura Económica, 1992).
6. Eleazar López,“Insurgencia teológica de los pueblos indios,” CHRISTUS, Septem-
ber 1993.
7. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Bartolomé de Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesús Christ (Mary-
knoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1996).
8. Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Nueva evangelización con rostro andino quechua y aymara,”
lecture, August 1990, Chucuito (Puno), Peru.
9. Latin American Dominican meeting, October 1988, in Cobán, Guatemala, orga-
nized by the Latin American Center of the Dominican Order, CIDAL.
10. There are several documented accounts, called “memorias,” of the seven workshops
sponsored by the Maryknoll Missioners from 1989 through 2003; they can be found
in the library of the Maryknoll Instituto de Idiomas in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
11. Church of the South Andes, “La tierra: Don de Dios, derecho del pueblo,” in La
señal de cada momento: Documentos de los obispos del Sur Andino, 1969–1994, ed. An-
drés Gallego (Lima, Peru: Centro de Estudios y Publicaciones [CEP], 1994).
12. Hans Van den Berg, La tierra no da así no más: Los ritos agrícolas en la religión de los ay-
mara-cristianos (Amsterdam: Centre for Latin American Research and Documenta-
tion [CEDLA], 1989).
13. 500 años sembrando el Evangelio (Guatemala City: Carta pastoral colectiva de los
obispos de Guatemala, 1992).
14. Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala, Guatemala, Never Again! REMHI
Recovery of Historical Memory Project (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1999).
15. Alfred T. Hennelly, S.J., ed., Santo Domingo and Beyond: Documents and Commentaries
of the Fourth General Conference of Latin American Bishops (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1993), 153. In the same volume see Stephen P. Judd, M.M., “From Lamen-
tation to Project:The Emergence of an Indigenous Theological Movement in Latin
America,” 226–235.
16. Samuel Ruiz García, Carta Pastoral: En esta hora de gracia (Mexico: Ediciones Dabar,
1993).
17. Allpanchis is a scholarly journal published by the Instituto de Pastoral Andina (IPA)
230 S t e p h e n P. J u d d
located in Cusco, Peru. From 1969 until the present there have been fifty-nine is-
sues of this journal that treat of many themes of the sociocultural and religious re-
ality of Southern Peru.
18. Paulo Suess,“Encuentros y desencuentros en la búsqueda de ‘la tierra sin mal,’ ” Cu-
atro Encuentro Ecuménico Latinoamericano de Teología India, Ykua Sati, Asun-
ción, Paraguay, May 10, 2002.
19. III Encuentro-Taller Latinoamericano, Sabiduría indígena: Fuente de esperanza,
Teología india, memoria (Cusco, Peru: Instituto de Pastoral Andina, 1997).
20. Suess,“Encuentros y desencuentros.”
21. Xavier Albó, Rostros indios de Dios (La Paz, Bolivia: CIPCA, HISBOL, UCB, 1992).
For the English translation see Xavier Albo, Manuel Marzal, Eugenio Maurer, and
Bartomeu Melià, The Indian Face of God in Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1996).
22. Diego Irarrázaval, “¿A dónde va la teología latinoamericana?” Pastoral Popular 4
(2002):19 –22. Irarrázaval has published extensively on the religious and theologi-
cal worldview of the Aymara people of southern Peru. See his work translated into
English: Inculturation: New Dawn of the Church in Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.:
Orbis Books, 2000).
23. Domingo Llanque, La cultura aymara: Desestructuración o afirmación de identidad (Lima,
Peru:Tarea e IDEA, 1990).
24. López,“Insurgencia teológica,” 12.
25. Ibid., 11.
26. Nicanor Sarmiento, Caminos de la teología india (Cochabamba, Bolivia: UCB, Edito-
rial Guadalupe, Verbo Divino, 2000); Narciso Valencia Parisaca, Revelación del Dios
Creador (Quito, Ecuador: ABYA-YALA, 1998).
27. Efraín Lazo, El yatiri: ¿ministro del tercer milenio? (Cochabamba, Bolivia:Verbo Divino,
1999).
28. Vicenta Mamani, Ritos espirituales y prácticas comunitarias del aymara (La Paz, Bolivia:
Creatart Impresiores, 2002).
29. This notion first appeared in Paul Ricouer’s seminal work The Symbolism of Evil
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
30. Jhonny Montero, “Las culturas indígenas desde una perspectiva multidisciplinaria”
(Master’s thesis, Universidad Católica Boliviana, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2003), cites
the influence of Emmanuel Levinas as a reference point for teología india. For a good
summary of Levinas’s philosophical thought, see The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand
(Oxford, Great Britain: Blackwell, 1992).
31. John Gorski,“El contenido y las grandes líneas de la así llamada ‘teología india,’ po-
nencia en el Encuentro sobre la Emergencia Indígena en América Latina,” Oaxaca,
Mexico,April 24, 2002. In addition to this latest presentation, Gorski for many years
has collected and chronicled all of the major documents and commentaries pro-
duced by the indigenous theological movement.
32. See the issue of the Spanish journal Misiones extranjeras, “La mission de los pueblos
indígenas” vol. 165 (May–June 1998), with articles by Diego Irarrázaval, Simón
Pedro Arnold, and Esteban Judd Zanon.
33. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt,“Aprender a filosofar desde el contexto del diálogo de las
culturas,” Revista de Filosofía (México) 90 (1997): 365–382.
34. Raúl Fornet-Betancourt, “Interculturalidad e immigración,” in 10 palabras claves
sobre globalización, ed. J. J. Tamayo Acosta (Navarra, España: Editorial Verbo Divino,
2002), 220.
35. David Tracy,“On Naming the Present,” Concilium 1 (1990): 80–82.
36. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culturé of Pluralism
(New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1986), 105.
37. López,“Indigenous Theologies,” 109.
Chap te r 1 0
Conclusion
Timothy J. Steigenga
231
232 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a
A final insight arising from this debate pits one hybrid identity against an-
other. The identity categories of both evangelical Indians and secular indige-
nous movements can act as challenges to the “established” hybrid form of
social organization that has buttressed the assimilationist projects of most Latin
American states. In other words, indigenous and evangelical identities, though
perhaps themselves hybrid forms, make claims to cultural and religious truths
that allow them to break out of the system of racial hierarchy that has domi-
nated Latin American society.18 New claims of identity as “indigenous” or as
“Pentecostal” can serve as strategic weapons in the battle for collective recog-
nition or individual survival and mobility.Though very different in their tac-
tics and political agendas, these two movements are both indigenous responses
to the same objective conditions and opportunity structure.
To review, the debate over religious and cultural mixing provides us with
three important insights for the study of religion and indigenous social move-
ments in Latin America. First, the terms used to describe religious mixing have
evolved across time and academic disciplines (particularly in the fields of reli-
gious studies and cultural studies) and raise normative questions about power
dynamics. To avoid choosing a definition of syncretism that answers these
questions a priori, we adopt an elemental approach that allows us to explore
the multiplicity of power relations and agendas involved in cultural and reli-
gious mixing. Our second insight results from this approach, as we discover
that syncretism can be utilized by groups with less power to subvert the agen-
das of more powerful groups or by the powerful to define and impose ortho-
doxy, often at the same time. Finally, the identities that indigenous people
adopt (evangelical, Catholic, or Indian activist) can be utilized to undermine
or transcend hierarchical social structures in Latin America or to reinforce ex-
isting ethnic and religious divisions. Each of these themes is illustrated, in part,
through the movement in Latin America from Catholic inculturation theol-
ogy to a new and evolving teología india.
Rather, they view their endeavor as an attempt to recognize and valorize pre-
existing expressions of the divine within indigenous practices and beliefs, and
to contextualize Christian theology so that it can be made more relevant to
people of various cultures. As the evangelical pastor interviewed by Virginia
Garrard-Burnett explained, they seek to prove that “God was already here
when Columbus arrived.”
Despite this careful distinction, most of the examples of inculturation the-
ology included in this volume meet the minimal standard of the elemental and
procedural definition of syncretism outlined above.This is significant not be-
cause it allows us to define certain results of inculturation theology as syn-
cretism, but because it allows us to acknowledge and explore the fact that all
parties involved in the process have agency and strategic agendas.
For Kristin Norget, the construction of an authentic indigenous identity
politics allows the church to both justify an intermediary role and control the
process of religious synthesis, a process that has previously been out of its reach
in the realm of “popular religion.” Norget argues that, in crude terms, some
liberationists adopt indigenous identity politics because it promotes their lib-
erationist social and political agenda. The institutional church is tolerant of
this process only insofar as it allows a blurring of the lines between indigenous
culture and Catholic culture and thus provides a strategy for competing with
religious challengers such as Pentecostalism.20
Christine Kovic takes a different approach, arguing for a more positive in-
terpretation of the church’s role as interlocutor in Chiapas.While recognizing
the privileged position of mestizo pastoral workers relative to indigenous
peasants in Chiapas, Kovic emphasizes the unity and solidarity that bridged
these differences in the face of shared repression.While Norget warns us that
the institutional church and different tendencies within it have their own
agendas, Kovic reminds us that attributing outcomes purely to those motives
denies agency to indigenous groups themselves.
Garrard-Burnett, too, points to the fact that indigenous practitioners of
inculturation theology have their own strategic agendas. In the tradition of
opportunistic social movements, Mayan theologians can make use of religious
resources and protection to explore, valorize, and interpret their own culture.
It should come as no surprise that some Mayan activists sought to abandon
Christianity all together as part of the revindication of Mayan culture. The
popularity of this movement, however, remains unclear. Garrard-Burnett sug-
gests that it may be more popular among Mayan elites and intellectuals than it
is among the general Mayan population.
Stephen Judd’s chapter provides us with an outline of the emerging in-
digenous theology that has grown out of and alongside inculturation theology.
Judd traces the evolution of a teología india from early encounters calling for
the simple recovery of existent indigenous practices to the more recent for-
Conclusion 237
limited the impact of inculturation theology during his tenure, while his
successor, Próspero Penados del Barrio, encouraged it. Bishop Julio Cabrera
accelerated the impact of inculturation theology after he was ordained as
bishop of El Quiché in 1987. In Chiapas, Kovic points to the evolution of
Bishop Samuel Ruiz’s career as a critical leader in promoting indigenous
theology.
The differing role of social Catholicism across time and national contexts
also illustrates the need to condition generalizations about the impact of reli-
gious actors across cases. Bruce Calder notes that in Guatemala in the 1940s
and 1950s, Catholic Action represented an attempt by the church to revitalize
and restore orthodoxy to rural Catholicism while also combating the spread
of socialist ideas. Edward Cleary notes that “reform Catholicism” was preva-
lent in Peru and Bolivia as well. According to Cleary, some liberationist mis-
sionaries went so far as to portray traditional indigenous practices as part of
the ongoing mestizo dominance of Indians in the region.
In Chiapas, by contrast, the local church representatives were more open
to, and in many cases encouraged, traditional indigenous expressions.26 Ac-
cording to Kay Warren, even in the Guatemalan case, catechists trained
through Catholic Action in the 1950s and 1960s have more recently at-
tempted to revitalize elements of traditionalism, primarily as an attempt to
reach a younger generation of indigenous practitioners.27
At another level of analysis, transnational and national economic struc-
tures and policies provide both the incentives for indigenous mobilization and
a context that permits it. In many of our cases, state actors attempted to in-
corporate indigenous groups into national society through corporatist and
populist forms of interest mediation. However, these projects lost economic,
institutional, and ideological support with the onset of the debt crisis, eventual
structural adjustment, privatization, decentralization, and other neo-liberal re-
forms.28 Left without traditional sources of access to the state, indigenous
groups made use of the resources available to them: religious institutions and
resources, the increasing role of NGO’s in previously state-led development
projects, and a devolution of state power to local and municipal levels. Not
surprisingly, they framed their demands in terms of the very language of po-
litical liberalization that had recently come into vogue in the region, complete
with reference to constitutional rights and inclusiveness.
Out of these transnational connections, a transnational advocacy network
developed around indigenous movements in Latin America.29 Transnational
advocacy networks include NGOs, scholarly networks, local social move-
ments, and some international and national governmental organization and
actors. According to Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, such networks
tend to arise when local social movements find their access to the state or pol-
icy makers blocked. Local actors may then turn to the international realm to
create and maintain pressure on their governments.30
240 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a
Cristóbal in Chiapas, Bishop Samuel Ruiz served as negotiator, mediator, and ad-
vocate for indigenous people. In Ecuador, church human rights and development
agencies have pursued indigenous causes and served as intermediaries with the
government in times of crisis. During the national protests of 1994, the church
provided sanctuary to indigenous leaders and ultimately brokered the agreement
that settled the protests. In Bolivia and Peru, Cleary argues that catechists formed
critical networks and served as buffers between indigenous communities and
state authorities. In each of these cases, the role of religious individuals and insti-
tutions as mediators also raises issues of conflict and co-optation.
Th e O utcom e I s i n th e I de nt i ty:
Flexible Ide ntitie s and Fluid Markets
As social scientists, our biases in evaluating the outcomes of social move-
ments tend toward measurable and comparable structural and macro-social ef-
fects. Both the structural accomplishments of and the structural impediments
to indigenous movements in Latin America are formidable. However, if we are
to heed Kay Warren’s call to drop the “unified social movement paradigm,” we
must also reconsider the tools we use to evaluate the outcomes of social move-
ments.As Warren explains,“There will be no demonstrations to count because
this is not a mass movement that generates protest. But there will be new gen-
erations of students, leaders, teachers, development workers, and community
elders who have been touched in one way or another by the Pan-Mayan
movement and its cultural production.”57 The existence of this “cultural pro-
duction” may be considered one of the most important outcomes of the in-
terface between religion and indigenous groups in Latin America.
While many of Latin America’s indigenous movements have generated ef-
fective demonstrations as part of their political strategy (Ecuador, Bolivia, and
Mexico are prime examples), Warren’s point about education is the deeper
issue. All of our cases provide evidence to support the notion that indigenous
“cultural production” has been facilitated through the proliferation of pastoral
training, catechists, research centers, and other forms of religious education
among the indigenous population. The indigenous may choose to take their
training out into the streets in protest or into their churches, jobs, and homes.
And this is where we must expand our level of analysis when we evaluate
the role of religion in identity-based social movements to include the realm of
personal and individual empowerment. As Anna Peterson, Manual Vasquez,
and Philip Williams explain, “Everyday forms of citizenship fostered by re-
ligion, such as local, national, and transnational social movements, respond cre-
atively to larger processes, helping individuals and their families and
neighborhoods resist or accommodate.”58 Religion infuses social movements
with symbols, narratives, and other shared meanings that form a basis for com-
Conclusion 247
mon identity.To gain a sense of common identity and the empowerment that
accompanies it may be considered an achievement in itself, given the social,
political, and economic forces at work fracturing traditional ways of life in
Latin America.59
Daniel Levine and Scott Mainwaring have also emphasized this point, ar-
guing, “People learn about politics and religion, not only through explicit
messages, but also through the implicit models of good societies and proper
behavior that they encounter in the contexts of daily routine. As these con-
texts change, legitimations of power and authority are reworked.”60 Critical
values such as social trust and community solidarity emerge out of such activ-
ities on a day-to-day basis.61 In other words, shared identity has something to
do with a shared way of living and acting in the world. Religion, in all of its
plural forms in Latin America, offers the resources necessary to maintain such
identities.
creasingly fluid forms of practice and beliefs that make up Latin America’s re-
ligious geography will have their greatest impact where they always have, at
the level of lived reality of Latin America’s poor and indigenous populations.
N ote s
1. See Walt Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth:A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); and N. J. Smelser, Social Change in the In-
dustrial Revolution (London: Routledge, 1958).
2. See Daniel Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992).
3. As Virginia Garrard-Burnett explains in this volume, costumbre describes “the body
of locally prescribed religious belief, ritual, dress, language, and lifeways” of being
Mayan.
4. See Charles Stewart, “Syncretism and Its Synonyms: Reflections on Cultural Mix-
ture,” Diacritics 29 (fall 1999): 40–62; Nederveen Pieterse, “Globalization as Hy-
bridization,” International Sociology 9 (1994): 161–184; Ulf Hannerz, “The World in
Creolization,” Africa 57 (1987); Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation
(New York: Maryknoll, 1988); André Droogers, “Recovering and Reconstructing
Syncretism,” in Reinventing Religions: Syncretism and Transformation in Africa and the
Americas, ed. Sidney M. Greenfield and André Droogers (Maryland: Lanham, Row-
man and Littlefield Publishers, 2001); Stephen L. Selka Jr.,“Religious Synthesis and
Change in the New World: Syncretism, Revitalization, and Conversion” (Florida
Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Masters thesis, 1997).
5. Stewart,“Syncretism,” 41.
6. Ibid., 58.
7. See Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, eds., Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism:The Politics
of Religious Synthesis (London: Routledge, 1994), 7–21. Also see Selka, “Religious
Synthesis,” 14.
8. André Droogers, “Syncretism: The Problem of Definition, the Definition of the
Problem,” in Dialogue and Syncretism: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. J. Gort, H.
Vroom, R. Fernhout, and A.Vessels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989) 13–14. For ex-
amples of practical treatments of this issue, see Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of
Resistance :The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985).Also see Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes:Vision and
Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
9. André Droogers and Sidney M. Greenfield, “Recovering and Reconstructing Syn-
cretism,” in Reinventing Religions, ed. Greenfield and Droogers, 21–42.
10. Stewart,“Syncretism,” 44.
11. Underlying these concepts is a separate problematic assumption that there exists
some prior cultural or religious form that was not hybrid or Creole. Since most an-
alysts accept the notion that all religious and cultural forms engage in some degree
of cross-cultural borrowing, this debate can, at times, appear impossibly self-refer-
ential and self-defeating. See Stewart, “Syncretism,” 45. Also see Ulf Hannarz,
“American Culture: Creolized, Creolizing,” in American Culture: Creolized, Creoliz-
ing, ed. Erik Asared (Uppsala: Swedish Institute of North American Studies, Univer-
sity of Uppsala, 1988), 7–30.
12. Lois Ann Lorentzen, “Who Is an Indian? Religion, Globalization, and Chiapas,” in
Religions/Globalizations: Theories and Cases, ed. Dwight N. Hopkins, Lois Ann
Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta, and David Batstone (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2001) 84–102. Also see Kay B. Warren and Jeanne E. Jackson, In-
digenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America (Austin: Univer-
sity of Texas Press, 2003).
250 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a
13. See David Lehmann, “Fundamentalism and Globalism,” Third World Quarterly 12,
no. 4 (1998): 611–613 for a critique of this kind of essentialism. Also see Nina Lau-
rie, Robert Andolina, and Sarah Radcliffe,“The Excluded ‘Indigenous’? The Impli-
cations of Multi-Ethnic Policies for Water Reform in Bolivia,” in Multiculturalism in
Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy, ed. Rachel Sieder (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 252–276.
14. This is one of the key questions informing the David Stoll and Rigoberta Mechú
controversy. See David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans
(New York:Westview, 2001). It was also a key issue at the Barbados II conference in
1979, when indigenous leaders criticized anthropologists for presuming to speak for
them. See Charles Hale,“Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America,” Annual Re-
view of Anthropology 26, no. 6 (1997): 567–590.
15. Bruce Calder’s chapter reminds us that this dilemma is far from new, as foreign mis-
sionaries in Guatemala in the 1950s allowed anti-ladino prejudice to impact their
work among the Maya.
16. For an example of the more critical approach, see Hans Siebers,“Globalization and
Religious Creolization among the Q’eqchi’es of Guatemala,” in Latin American Re-
ligion in Motion, ed. Christian Smith and Joshua Prokopy (New York: Routledge,
1999).
17. See Selka,“Religious Synthesis,” 14.
18. See Andrew Canessa, “Contesting Hybridity: Evangelistas and Kataristas in High-
land Bolivia,” Journal of Latin American Studies 32, no. 1 (2000): 115.
19. See David Batstone, Eduardo Mendieta, Lous Ann Lorentzen, and Dwight N.
Hopins, eds., Liberation Theologies, Post-modernity, and the Americas (London and New
York: Routledge, 1997).
20. This argument has been articulated most completely by Anthony Gill. See Anthony
Gill, Rendering unto Caesar: The Catholic Church and the State in Latin America
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
21. Christian Smith, The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social
Movement Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Smith borrows the
concept of insurgent consciousness from earlier work on social movements con-
ducted by Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,
1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Also see Charles Tilly,
From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978).
22. See David A. Snow, “Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Move-
ment Participation,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 464–481; and David A.
Snow and Robert D. Benford,“Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobi-
lization,” in International Social Movements Research, vol. 1 (Greenwich: JAI Press,
1988), 197–217.Also see Christian Smith, Disruptive Religion:The Force of Faith in So-
cial Movement Activism (New York: Routledge, 1996). For an example of frame the-
ory applied to evangelicals in Latin America, see David Smilde, “El Clamor por
Venezuela: Latin American Evangelicalism as a Collective Action Frame,” in Latin
American Religion in Motion:Tracking Innovation, Unexpected Change, and Complexity,
ed. Christian Smith and Joshua Prokopy (New York and London: Routledge Press,
1999), 125–145.
23. See Timothy J. Steigenga and David Smilde, “Wrapped in the Holy Shawl: The
Strange Case of Conservative Christians and Gender Equality in Latin America,” in
Latin American Religion in Motion: Tracking Innovation, Unexpected Change, and Com-
plexity, ed. Christian Smith and Joshua Prokopy (New York and London: Routledge
Press, 1999), 173–186.
24. For an example of such an overview, see Charles Hale,“Cultural Politics of Identity
in Latin America,” Annual Review of Anthropology 26, no. 6 (1997): 567–590.
25. Ibid., 567.
Conclusion 251
26. Christine Eber, Women and Alcohol in a Highland Maya Town:Water of Hope,Water of
Sorrow (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 223.
27. Kay B. Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guate-
mala (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 180–191.
28. Deborah J.Yashar,“Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy
in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 31 (October 1998): 23–42. Also see Deborah
J. Yashar, “Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge in
Latin America,” World Politics 52 (1999): 76–104; and Deborah J.Yashar,“Indigenous
Protest and Democracy in Latin America,” in Constructing Democratic Governance:
Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s, ed. Jorge Dominguez and Abraham
Lowenthal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 87–122.
29. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998).
30. Ibid., 9–12.
31. Ibid., 27.
32. Ibid., 23, 205.
33. See Edward Cleary’s comparison of Peru and Bolivia, contained in this volume.
34. John A. Booth,“Theories of Religion and Rebellion:The Central American Expe-
rience,” paper presented at the Midwestern Political Science Association Meeting,
Chicago, 1991, 5.
35. McAdam, Political Process. Also see Mayer N. Zald, “Theological Crucibles: Social
Movements in and of Religion,” Review of Religious Research 23, no. 4 (1982), for a
review of some of this literature.
36. On resource mobilization see John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resources
Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology
82 (May 1977): 1212–1239;Anthony Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements
(New York: Prentice Hall, 1973); Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution
(Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1978). For arguments relating to “social capital”
see Andrew Greely, “The Other Civic America: Religion and Social Capital,” The
American Prospect 32 (1997): 68–73. For comprehensive reviews of identity-based so-
cial movements, see Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper,“Collective Identity and
Social Movements,” American Review of Sociology 27 (August 2001): 283. Also see
Darren E. Sherkat and Christopher G. Ellison,“Recent Developments and Current
Controversies in the Sociology of Religion,” Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999):
363–394.
37. For an overview of COCEI, see Jeffrey Rubin, “Ambiguity and Contradiction in a
Radical Popular Movement,” in Cultures of Politics/Politics of Cultures, ed. Sonia E.
Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar (Boulder:Westview, 1997), 141–163.
38. Gary H. Gossen’s self-reflective study of the Maya in Mexico suggests that the role
of non-indigenous interlocutors may actually be a part of indigenous culture.
Gossens distills three themes that he sees as characterizing the deep roots of Mayan
ways of thinking and acting. First, the Mayan view of the world is fundamentally
opaque, and thus there is a constant need for individuals who can interpret it. Sec-
ond, the Mayan conception of co-essences or co-spirits that are apart from the in-
dividual but to which one’s destiny is linked invokes a degree of fatalism in the
Mayan worldview. Third, the concept of the non-Mayan “other” playing a role in
the community may be a central element of Mayan identity. Extrapolating from
these themes, Gossens argues that Mayan social movements (such as the Zapatistas)
may seek non-Mayans as public representatives precisely because of their identity as
Mayans. See Gary H. Gossen, Telling Maya Tales: Tzotzíl Identities in Modern Mexico
(New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 253–263.
39. Manuel A.Vasquez,“Toward a New Agenda for the Study of Religion in the Amer-
icas,” Journal of Interamerica Studies and World Affairs 41, no. 4 (winter 1999): 1–20.
252 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a
40. See Raquel Yrigoyen, Pautas de coordinación entre el derecho indígena y el derecho estatal
(Guatemala: Fucanción Myrna Mack, 1999). Also see Guillermo de la Peña,“Social
Citizenship, Ethnic Minority Demands, Human Rights, and Neoliberal Paradoxes:
A Case Study in Western Mexico,” in Multiculturalism in Latin America, ed. Rachel
Sieder, 131–133, for a fascinating case study surrounding these issues in Jalisco,
Mexico.
41. Christine Eber, “Buscando una nueva vida: Liberation through Autonomy in San
Pedro Chenalhó, 1970–1998,” Latin American Perspectives 28, no. 2 (2001): 45–72.
42. N. Larson,“Postmodernism and Imperialism:Theory and Politics in Latin America,”
in The Postmodern Debate in Latin America, ed. John Beverly, José Oviedo, and
Michael Aronna (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 110–134.
43. See David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth
(Berkely: University of California Press, 1990).
44. Amalia Pallares, From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance:The Ecuadorian Andes in the
Late Twentieth Century (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 2002).
45. See Sieder, ed., Multiculturalism in Latin America.
46. Ibid., 4–13.
47. The Quebec issue in Canada and the role of indigenous actors in the sovereignty
debate illustrate the complicated dilemmas associated with this question. See Kent
R. Weaver, ed., The Collapse of Canada? (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
1992).
48. See Donna Lee Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past:The Politics of Diversity
in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), for an analysis of
this process.
49. Donna Lee Van Cott, “Constitutional Reform in the Andes: Redefining Indige-
nous-State Relations,” in Multiculturalism in Latin America, ed. Sieder, 45–73.Also see
Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past, chapter 4.
50. Van Cott,“Constitutional Reform in the Andes,” 45–46.
51. Guillermo de la Peña, “Social Citizenship, Ethnic Minority Demands, Human
Rights, and Neoliberal Paradoxes: A Case Study in Western Mexico,” in Multicultur-
alism in Latin America, ed. Sieder, 131–133.
52. Of course religious NGOs may have their own agendas, some of which correspond
conveniently with the general state retreat from responsibility for social and eco-
nomic welfare in the region.
53. Walter Mignolo,“Globalizations, Civilization Processes, and the Relocation of Lan-
guages and Cultures,” in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and
Masao Miyoshi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 44–51.
54. See Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics. Also see Alison Brysk, From Tribal
Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
55. Yashar,“Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge,” 85.
56. Sonia E. Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar,“Introduction:The Cultural
and the Political in Latin American Social Movements,” in Cultures of Politics, Politics
of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements, ed. Sonia E.Alvarez, Evelina
Dagnino, Arturo Escobar (Boulder:Westview Press, 1998), 1–32.
57. Kay B.Warren,“Indigenous Movements as a Challenge to the Unified Social Move-
ment Paradigm for Guatemala,” in Cultures of Politics, ed. Alvarez, Dagnino, and Es-
cobar, 165–195.
58. Anna Peterson, Manual Vasquez, Philip Williams, “The Global and the Local,” in
Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization in the Americas, ed. Anna L. Peterson,
Manuel A.Vasquez, Philip J. Williams (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2001), 219.
59. See Daniel H. Levine and David Stoll, “Bridging the Gap between Empowerment
Conclusion 253
and Power,” in Transnational Religion: Fading States, ed. Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
and James Piscatori (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 63–103, for a more
complete statement of this argument.
60. Daniel H. Levine and Scott Mainwaring, “Religion and Popular Protest,” in Power
and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements, ed. Susan Eckstein (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000), 203–240.
61. Robert Putnam terms these values as “social capital.” See Robert Putnam, Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
62. Vasquez,“Toward a New Agenda.”
63. David Smilde, “Evangelicals and Politics in Latin America: Moving beyond Mono-
lithic Portraits,” History of Religions 42, no. 3 (2003): 245.
64. Lorentzen,“Who Is an Indian?” 99.
65. See Yashar “Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Postliberal Challenge,” 96.
Also see Rubin,“Ambiguity and Contradiction,” 141–163.
66. Rubin,“Ambiguity and Contradiction,” 160.
67. Levine, Popular Voices, 373.
Cont ri butor s
Alison Brysk revised her Stanford doctoral dissertation into The Politics of
Human Rights in Argentina, a widely acclaimed book. Later she published From
Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin
America and an edited volume, Globalization and Human Rights. She is an asso-
ciate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.
255
256 Contributors
years, served on the General Council, Maryknoll, and obtained a Ph.D. at the
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, writing on southern Peru.
257
258 Index