(Cleary y Steigenga) Resurgent Voices in Latin America Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change

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Resurgent Voices in

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-
ten permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce
Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. The only exception to this prohibition is
“fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Conte nt s

Acknowledgments vii

1 Resurgent Voices: Indians, Politics, and Religion in


Latin America
Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga 1
2 From Civil Society to Collective Action: The Politics
of Religion in Ecuador
Alison Brysk 25
3 New Voice in Religion and Politics in
Bolivia and Peru
Edward L. Cleary 43
4 Breaking Down Religious Barriers: Indigenous People
and Christian Churches in Paraguay
René Harder Horst 65
5 Interwoven Histories: The Catholic Church
and the Maya, 1940 to the Present
Bruce J. Calder 93
6 “God Was Already Here When Columbus Arrived”:
Inculturation Theology and the Mayan Movement
in Guatemala
Virginia Garrard-Burnett 125
7 “Knowing Where We Enter”: Indigenous Theology and
the Popular Church in Oaxaca, Mexico
Kristin Norget 154
8 Mayan Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico: Practicing Faith
on Their Own Terms
Christine Kovic 187

v
vi Contents

9 The Indigenous Theology Movement in Latin America:


Encounters of Memory, Resistance, and Hope at
the Crossroads
Stephen P. Judd 210
10 Conclusion: Listening to Resurgent Voices
Timothy J. Steigenga 231

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

Indians, Politics, and Re lig ion


in Latin Ame rica

Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga

For the people in my village religion and politics were con-


nected—they were basically the same thing. People became
most animated about issues relating to the festivals and the
church, and naturally political feelings would become in-
volved. After all, we were used to these connections between
religion and politics, because traditional Mayan leaders served
both as religious and political authorities. Of course the na-
ture of religious politics changed with the Pope, John Paul
XXIII, the whole church changed. For example, in Huehuete-
nango, the Maryknolls were the most influential. At first
their ideas were very North American, and they vehemently
opposed anything traditional. But after Vatican II, when the
Church began to change, they had some regrets about their
previous approach, and they became less interested in stop-
ping “pagan” practices. The important thing to understand is
that throughout this process, the people never completely
gave up their traditional beliefs, even if they had to practice
them in hiding.
—Jerónimo Camposeco

Latin America is currently experiencing an indigenous


resurgence. From Mexico to the Andes, indigenous peoples have aggressively
stepped forward to demand their long-denied cultural, political, and economic
rights.The strength and depth of these movements first became publicly evi-
dent in the years leading up to the continent-wide celebration of the Fifth
Centenary of Spanish Conquest (1992). Latin America’s indigenous groups
loudly protested the commemoration for downplaying the harm done to In-
dian peoples during the conquest. In the process, indigenous groups made

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.

An Indian Activist’s Story


Born in the late 1930s in the town of Jacaltenango, in Northwestern Gua-
temala, Jerónimo Camposeco viewed the interactions between religion and
politics in Latin America from a perspective that spans generations, cultures,
and borders. Jerónimo was raised in a Mayan Catholic household; his parents
taught him both to follow Catholic teachings and to respect Mayan traditions.
When he was born, his parents took care to ensure that the Mayan priests
(Alcal Txah) were called to say prayers and burn copal (incense) both in his
home and in the sacred places in the mountains. He was also taught to revere
the Catholic saints and to participate in the many regional celebrations of pa-
tron saints.
When he was fifteen, Jerónimo convinced the Maryknoll priest in Jacal-
tenango to allow him to study at the seminary in Quezaltenango. Influenced
by the teachings during his five years in the seminary and excited by the op-
portunity to work again with his own community, Jerónimo accepted a posi-
tion as a teacher in a Maryknoll school in a village close to Jacaltenango. As
Jerónimo explains, “The school was very strict in terms of Catholic doctrine
and discipline, but we now attempted to instill respect for local traditions as
well.”
Years later, after completing his degree in education, Jerónimo took a po-
sition with the National Indigenous Institute in Guatemala City and began
studies in anthropology at the University of San Carlos. He worked as an ac-
tivist for indigenous causes, linking his work in Guatemala to other Native
Resurgent Voices 3

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?

Latin Ame rica’s Indige nous People s


Debates have flourished in academic and political circles for decades over
the definition of “Indian.” Social scientists in the 1960s and 1970s emphasized
language and dress as major indicators of identity. Present-day social scientists
and census-takers tend to use self-definition. Major exceptions exist, however.
For example, in Peru’s highlands almost all indigenous people are labeled (and
call themselves) campesino (peasant). Thus, in Peru, the term “Indian” is re-
served for the two hundred thousand or so indigenous people who live in the
forest. So, too, the majority of Paraguayans are of Guaraní descent and speak
that language, but only those who live in remote areas are considered indios.
For practical purposes, we adopt a broader definition of indigenous peoples,
one that encompasses elements of self-definition as distinct from dominant so-
ciety, connections to precolonial society, and an interest in preserving ele-
ments and practices of ethnic identity.2 Such a definition allows us to include
4 C leary and Ste i g e nga

a broad range of indigenous groups and transcends the particularities of na-


tional definitions that vary from state to state.
One way to describe the variety of indigenous groups in the Americas is
through their geography and environment. Geography determines the eco-
logical conditions that serve as the economic basis of life and culture for in-
digenous peoples. The ecological conditions of mountain and temperate or
tropical lowland provided differences in natural resources that allowed for or
inhibited vegetative or animal food sources for humans. Food-gathering es-
tablished patterns of settled or nomadic life and served as a basis of culture and
religion. Hence, neither Indian life in the Americas nor Indian religion can be
understood without an understanding of the natural environment.3
In South America, anthropologists have found the greatest differences in
environment and Indian culture between highland and lowland Indians. By far
the larger numbers of Indians live in the mountains and their valleys. Here the
cooler climate and somewhat greater ease in transportation provided the con-
ditions for agricultural surplus and storage and communication between set-
tlements. Economic surplus brought about economic classes, intellectual and
ruling elites, leisure, and the conditions for a more sophisticated culture.
Higher technologies and a measure of scientific achievement, as in astronomy
and mathematics, followed.
The highland Indian groups inhabit the great Andean mountain range in
western South America.The largest and best known groups are the Quechuas
and the Aymaras.The much larger Quechua-language group is considered the
main successor of the Inca people, an empire that extended hundreds of miles
from Ecuador to northern Chile and Argentina. The Aymara can be found
mostly in the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano, with a natural center occurring
at Lake Titicaca. In a rough sense, they extend from Puno to La Paz, sur-
rounded mostly by Quechua people.
The lowland peoples of South America are not as numerous and have
greater language diversity than the highland groups. However, their contem-
porary political influence far exceeds their numbers. The lowlanders of the
Andean countries mostly live in the Amazonian Basin, often on or near the
great and small rivers that feed the Amazon River from the south and west. In-
dian peoples of southeastern Bolivia and Paraguay live in part of the Gran
Chaco, a lowland area different from the Amazon region. Rough population
estimates for these indigenous groups are 135,000 in Bolivia, 83,928 in
Ecuador, 79,000 in Paraguay, and 242,120 in Peru.4
Within Middle America, both Guatemala and the Chiapas state of Mex-
ico are areas where the great Mayan civilization flourished. Mayans were both
highland and lowland peoples, with much greater numbers to be found in the
highlands. The contemporary Mayan people have great language diversity.
Some twenty-two major languages and some minor ones are spoken in Gua-
Resurgent Voices 5

temala. A smaller number of Mayan languages are spoken in Chiapas. Cultural


diversity there has been the cause of both conflict and adjustment as diverse
Mayan refugees from Guatemala’s civil war formed new settlements in the
Chiapan forests.
Also located in Mesoamerica, Oaxaca has a varied terrain of mountains
and flatlands, arid hills and humid seacoast. Oaxaca claims almost 20 percent
of Mexico’s Indian population, and almost 40 percent of the state’s inhabitants
speak an Indian language.The Zapotec, with 342,000 speakers, and the Mix-
tec, with 239,000, are among the largest indigenous groups in Mexico. Both
language groups produced a refined culture that included writing and calen-
dars. In all, some fourteen indigenous groups occupy separate or overlapping
areas within Oaxaca.5
Today, estimates for the total number of indigenous people living in Latin
America and the Caribbean generally fall between 35 and 40 million, making
up from 8 to 10 percent of the total population of the region.6 The cases in-
cluded in this study focus on the Andean countries of Bolivia, Peru, and
Ecuador and on the Guatemala-Mexico region because these areas account
for the vast majority of Latin America’s Indians. In Mexico, the indigenous
number over 12 million, make up more than 14 percent of the population, and
speak more than fifty different indigenous languages. In Guatemala, the pri-
marily Mayan population is approximately 4 million, making up nearly 50
percent of the national population. Bolivia also has 4 million indigenous peo-
ple, mostly Aymara or Quechua, making up more than 56 percent of its pop-
ulation. Peru and Ecuador round out Latin America’s most indigenous
countries, with 9 million (40 percent) and 3 million (29 percent), respectively.7
While indigenous people are increasingly distributed across urban and
rural areas, the majority continue to work and live in areas dominated by rural
agriculture. As such, regions with large indigenous populations tend to suffer
from high poverty rates, low access to health, education, and social services,
and ongoing conflicts relating to labor rights and land resources. Since the late
1960s, a combination of population growth, land consolidation, and civil un-
rest has fueled indigenous migration to urban areas and across national bor-
ders.As they move into major cities of Latin America (and the United States),
indigenous people have become a major part of the labor force working in the
formal and informal economies. From Mexico to Chile, the social and eco-
nomic effects of structural adjustment in the 1980s and neoliberal economic
policies in the 1990s left indigenous populations particularly vulnerable and
less connected to their communities of origin.
Partly in response to these social and economic conditions and facilitated
by political liberalization in the region, Latin America’s indigenous peoples
took part in a new wave of political mobilization and protest beginning in the
1980s. Grassroots indigenous organizations, international organizations, and
6 C leary and Ste i g e nga

religious and secular nongovernmental organizations raised questions of in-


digenous land rights, cultural rights, and social and economic rights.This vol-
ume explores the critical role that religious organizations, networks, beliefs,
and practices played in the new wave of indigenous mobilization in Latin
America. A brief review of the history of religion and politics in Latin Amer-
ica provides the necessary background for understanding the connections be-
tween these religious variables and indigenous mobilization.

R e l i g i on, Pol i t i c s, and th e I nd i g e nou s


From the time of the establishment of the first colony on the Island of
Hispaniola in 1493, Spaniards took over a rich, populous, and largely civilized
empire, including all of the Mesoamerican and Andean cultural areas. Repre-
sentatives of the Spanish crown made deals with existing elites, exploited in-
digenous rivalries, and obtained indigenous collaborators.Through a series of
patronage agreements (known as el patronato real) the Vatican gained the com-
mission to evangelize the inhabitants of the New World in exchange for giv-
ing the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies the rights to collect tithes and to
appoint church officials.
Especially in the first century of colonization, church officials, priests, and
influential laity lobbied colonial administrators and the crown directly over
the treatment of the indigenous. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican mis-
sionary bishop of Chiapas and Guatemala,Antonio de Valdivieso of Nicaragua,
and Juan Zumárraga of Mexico City were all early defenders of the Indians in
the face of colonial abuses.8 These religious advocates eventually played a role
in convincing the crown to enact of a measure of human rights for the Indi-
ans, in Las Leyes de las Indias. But in the end the Spanish system of landed es-
tates, the encomiendas, prevailed and the majority of Indians suffered repressive
labor conditions on the estates and in the mines.The encomiendas entrusted
indigenous workers to a landholder, ostensibly for religious training. The
landholder, in turn, was to provide food and housing for the indigenous
worker. Because the supply of indigenous people appeared limitless, the en-
comienderos had little incentive to hold up their end of the bargain. Indians
were often treated as less than human and left with barely enough basic food-
stuffs and shelter for survival. Ultimately, exposure to European diseases, harsh
conditions, and maltreatment led to a severe decline in the indigenous popu-
lations throughout Latin America. In some places more than 90 percent of the
Indian population was wiped out.
In the end, the majority of the natives that the Spaniards and Portuguese
encountered were converted to Christianity. Baptism, which was generally
presumed by religious authorities to be a free and voluntary act, was the of-
ficial rite of admission to the Catholic Church. However, the first archbishop
of Lima, Jerónimo de Loaysa, noted that some missionaries acted impru-
Resurgent Voices 7

dently and administered baptism without examining whether neophytes re-


ceived it of their own free will.The question of how voluntary and complete
conversion to Christianity was among the indigenous remains a matter of
some debate.
In Europe, a brief doctrinal initiation (catechumenate) generally pre-
ceded reception into the Catholic Church. Neither in the Americas nor
elsewhere outside of Europe was a lengthy period of training demanded. In-
stead the church embarked on doctrinal instruction of the peoples of Latin
America mostly after baptism. Combined with a powerful attachment to na-
tive religious beliefs and practices, this lack of training laid the groundwork
for the creation of a new form of Catholicism in most of Latin America, a
folk or popular Catholicism that pooled elements of indigenous and Chris-
tian religion.

Syncretism and Popular Catholicism


From the time of the early missionaries many Indians practiced a synthe-
sized form of Catholicism, combined with greater or lesser degrees of native
religion.There was, and continues to be, a wide spectrum of religious practice,
reaching from largely orthodox Christian practice in small towns, among
those who read or write Spanish, to those who follow native religion with few
Christian accretions. Approximately 10 percent of Latin America’s indigenous
people are orthodox Catholic in their beliefs and practices, while 10 percent
are orthodox native practitioners.9 The rest fall somewhere in between.
In many Indian communities the costumbre, or local ritual celebrations
and practices (such as home altars and traditional native blessings) became the
center of religious, social, and political life.10 The organizations that grew up
around and controlled worship were active religious brotherhoods. In some
areas these were called cofradías. As Richard Wilson remarks, “Across Meso-
america, the cofradía was the community institution that served for hundreds
of years as a vessel for traditional Mayan beliefs and community values.”11
Cargo religion (religious rituals with sponsorship duties) continued in or as-
cended to a dominant position in Indian religious life in many communities
of Latin America.
Events of the nineteenth century brought on a great scarcity of priests in
Latin America, through wars against the Spanish, the exile of priests, and anti-
clerical governments. The ratio of priests to people greatly declined from
about seven hundred laity per priest to several thousand per priest. In many
remote areas there were no priests at all. Popular religion, nurtured at home
and not in church, became the religion of most indigenous Latin Americans.12
This kind of religion required low maintenance on the part of the organiza-
tional church, without much lay participation, except for participation in fies-
tas and processions.
8 C leary and Ste i g e nga

Missionaries and the Push for Catholic Orthodoxy


During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many Latin
American countries passed legislation for the separation of church and state,
allowing for at least a minimum of religious liberty and opening their coun-
tries to a diversity of religious groups. During this period, Spanish and Italian
missionaries, many of whom had earlier seen their orders evicted from Latin
American countries, began to make their way back into the region. A small
number of Protestant missionaries also entered the region. But the major mis-
sionary push would come with the major changes in the international arena
following World War II.
After World War II seminaries and convents in the United States, Canada,
and Europe filled to overflowing with priests, brothers, and sisters.The Vatican
issued a challenge to send 10 percent of these resources to Latin America.The
target was almost reached, as country after country stocked up with foreign
missionaries.13 More than half of many Latin America countries’ priests were
foreign priests. These priests flowed into city and country parishes, generally
with much greater resources than their national colleagues. Non-Catholic
missionaries similarly fanned out to cities and rural areas. Many Indians expe-
rienced this encounter with foreign missionaries of the twentieth century as a
cultural shock, similar to the first century and a half of interaction with Span-
ish and Portuguese missionaries.
When missionaries from the North Atlantic countries began creating
parishes and missions in Latin America, they were initially appalled at the het-
erodoxy apparent in the indigenous practice of Christianity (which had come
about, in part, due to the longstanding lack of clergy and religious schools).14
To traditional indigenous religion, missionaries counter-posed orthodox
Catholicism. Bishops, priests, and catechists began taking harder stands against
traditional practices that seemed to them to have little to do with essential
Christianity.15 Dioceses began forbidding the celebration of Catholic masses
within certain traditional celebrations. Some missionaries viewed traditional
practices as contrary to a modern understanding of scripture.A few even went
so far as to portray traditional practices as furthering mestizo political and eco-
nomic control and the subordination of Indian peasants.

Changes in the Catholic Church: From Vatican II to Liberation Theology


An understanding of the critical religious changes that swept Latin Amer-
ica in the 1960s and 1970s is necessary in order to grasp the complex and con-
tradictory relationship that subsequently evolved between religion and the
indigenous. Changes within the institutional Catholic Church and the birth
of liberation theology reshaped the Latin American religious and political
landscape. Under the influence of missionaries and of internal reform initiated
by Latin American bishops, the Catholic Church became renewed in a num-
Resurgent Voices 9

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

From Liberation Theology to Indigenous Theology


A second link between liberation theology and indigenous mobilization
relates to the theologians and missionaries themselves. In the 1980s and 1990s,
some theologians within the liberationist tradition began working at indige-
nous think tanks and began to rediscover the value of culture that many mis-
sionaries and liberation theologians had ignored earlier. These theologians
entered into the long process of listening to the indigenous and elaborating
intellectually what they heard.
A number of missionaries in Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America also
began to develop a theological perspective with a greater focus on the value
of local culture. In this view, culture has the central position for description
and explanation. Some early forms of liberation theology were seen as ignor-
ing culture, emphasizing the strictly socioeconomic aspects of Latin America.
Further, culturalists believed that the liberationist perspective may have
brought failure to many indigenous development projects because the projects
were based on socioeconomic analysis that excluded cultural factors. Some
members of this sector saw liberation theology as looking for a socialist world
that never came.34
12 C leary and Ste i g e nga

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.

The Evangelical Challenge


As religious changes were fundamentally altering the Catholic Church in
Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, evangelical Protestantism began expe-
riencing its first period of rapid growth in the region.Although Protestantism
has a long history in Latin America,37 early missionaries met with little success
in their attempts to promote Protestant growth, primarily due to cultural bar-
riers.The loss of China as a mission field brought more missionaries into Latin
America in the 1960s, and, in some cases, local religious leaders broke from
their mother churches and abandoned some of the cultural practices that had
previously limited their success in gaining converts.
While most observers had their eyes on the historical Protestant congre-
gations with a longer history in the region, the real growth among evangeli-
cals came from the Pentecostals.38 Pentecostal churches stressed faith healing,
charismatic acts, and a millennial message focused on the imminent coming of
the “end times.” These churches grew most rapidly among Latin America’s
indigenous groups, as local Pentecostal pastors worked with missionaries to
translate the Bible into indigenous languages and to make their services more
culturally relevant. Many other non-Catholic groups also had success evan-
gelizing to the indigenous, including the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and
Seventh-Day Adventists.
The distribution of evangelical groups among Latin America’s Indians
varies widely between and within countries. In the Andes, some entire in-
digenous communities have become Adventist, while others have joined his-
toric Protestant missions. Still others remain staunchly Catholic. In Central
America and Mexico, it is commonly asserted that Pentecostalism is most
prevalent among the indigenous, though hard numbers are rarely cited. In the
Resurgent Voices 13

countries under consideration in this study, the percentage of indigenous


evangelicals ranges from 10 to 25 percent.
As our case studies make clear, the impact of evangelical groups on in-
digenous societies has also been mixed. Protestant missionaries have been ac-
cused of fomenting local divisions, supporting repressive governments, and
destroying indigenous culture. At the same time, Protestant mission organiza-
tions have played a critical role in promoting literacy, education, and other ser-
vices that have translated into political resources among indigenous peoples.
As is often the case, the interactions between religion and indigenous politics
defy simple characterizations and linear explanations.

Unde r standing Latin Ame rica’s


Indige nous Re surge nce
Indian political movements in Latin America burst into public conscious-
ness with sudden force in the early 1990s. With little warning, Indians in
Ecuador engaged in a week-long uprising that brought the nation to a stand-
still in 1990. Also in 1990, Bolivian Indians began a thirty-four-day march to
La Paz, the capital, with ominous determination. In the first light of 1994 In-
dians in Chiapas rose up fearlessly against an authoritarian Mexican govern-
ment.39 Indigenous groups would no longer accept their customary subaltern
status in these countries. In Guatemala, too, and in Peru, to a lesser extent, In-
dians were making demands for recognition of their rights in new ways. Mex-
ican and Guatemalan Mayas, Ecuadoran Quechuas, Bolivian Aymaras, and
other Indians in the Americas called for a new vision of autonomy in a world
of globalization.40
At the broadest economic level of analysis, the precipitant factors for the
indigenous resurgence included the growing integration of the world econ-
omy, shifts from industrial production to financial capital as the basis for ac-
cumulation, and diminishing resources devoted to subsistence production
throughout the world. In Latin America, the expansion of agribusiness added
to the pressures of population growth on indigenous subsistence farmers,
bringing increased food dependency as well as rapid urbanization. For large
numbers of Latin America’s Indians, the growing informal sector of the econ-
omy became the most likely source of employment.
In the midst of this social and economic dislocation, economic and ide-
ological support shifted away from the modernization paradigm of indige-
nous assimilation into national society.41 As state-funded projects aimed at
indigenous incorporation gave way to policies of structural adjustment, de-
centralization, and privatization, indigenous groups were increasingly cut off
from traditional modes of interest mediation and access to state funding.
Peasant organizations lost political clout, agricultural subsidies were cut, and
markets for land transactions were liberalized. Latin America’s indigenous
14 C leary and Ste i g e nga

peoples found themselves without their traditional forms of political repre-


sentation precisely at the moment that their traditional means of economic
survival were in jeopardy.42
The shift in the 1990s to what Deborah Yashar has called “neoliberal citi-
zenship regimes” in Latin America both exacerbated the negative economic
trends for indigenous people and provided an ideological opening for increased
indigenous mobilization. Adopting elements of the neoliberal discourse,
indigenous groups have recently focused attention on their long-denied indi-
vidual and civil rights.At the same time, the neoliberal emphasis on the decen-
tralization of the state has led to a devolution of power to more local units,
allowing indigenous groups to argue for greater indigenous local autonomy as
well. Indigenous organizations are thus armed with dual logic for mobilization,
calling their governments to task for the failure to guarantee individual rights
while demanding recognition and legal status for their group and ethnic iden-
tities.43
At this critical juncture of economic crisis and ideological opening, in-
digenous activists have found key support for their agenda in the international
realm. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169 com-
mits those states who sign it to ensure the economic, cultural, labor, and land
rights of indigenous people. Along with the United Nations (UN) and Orga-
nization of American States Draft Declarations on Indigenous Rights, the ILO
Convention 169 has spurred a series of constitutional reforms recognizing the
multicultural nature of Latin American societies.44
Faced with threats to their economic livelihood and cultural autonomy,
Latin America’s Indians have responded with a series of new ideological and
international tools. When Subcomandante Marcos and his companions rose
up in Chiapas, emails were streaming from their headquarters to friends, pro-
tectors, and collaborators in Mexico City, Minneapolis, and Boston. When
Ecuadorian Indians took up defense of their cause, they did so in New York
and Geneva conference rooms as well as in the streets of Quito. International
organizations, secular and religious nongovernmental organizations, and
transnational advocacy networks served as resources and conduits for the new
voices of indigenous activism.
The 1994 uprising in Chiapas also confirmed a shift away from the kind
of national-popular revolution that dominated much of twentieth-century
Latin American political ideology (as in the examples of Cuba and of the San-
dinistas in Nicaragua). In Chiapas and elsewhere, Indians are mobilizing
around their distinctively indigenous identity. As Charles Hale notes,“Indige-
nous peoples now increasingly advance their struggles through a discourse
that links Indian identity with rights to territory, autonomy, and people-
hood—rights that run parallel to those of the nation-state itself.”45
As the effects of a globalized economy reached into Latin America’s high
Resurgent Voices 15

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.

Academics Catch up with Events


Veteran anthropologists and other social scientists with thirty or more
years experience in Latin America began to call attention to the new indige-
nous militancy, as the new level of activism in the 1990s seemed to surprise
even them.46 Carol Smith, writing in 1991, described a Maya national move-
ment so young “that it is difficult to know exactly what it is and where it is
going,”47 Richard Adams wrote three years later of the changing political sta-
tus of Mayas, who had a “great deal of organization” and “a potential for being
effective politically.”48 In 1996 Edward Fisher and McKenna Brown wrote that
this Indian movement marked the beginning of a new era of studies.49 By
1998, the outlines of this movement were clearer. Kay B. Warren, a leading
scholar, wrote a full-scale treatment of Guatemala in her Indigenous Movements
and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala.50 What was becoming evi-
dent was that Indians no longer depended largely on outsiders as their inter-
locutors with larger society. Pan-Mayanism, as other Indian movements, had
its own public intellectuals.
As attention to the indigenous resurgence became more widespread, aca-
demics began to explore the growing field of indigenous rights. Alison Brysk
led the way. She had framed in 1994 one of the most careful and acclaimed
analyses of the Argentine human rights situation.51 She then turned to the in-
digenous rights movements.52 Through a series of publications ending in her
masterful From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Re-
lations in Latin America, Brysk showed the impact of Indian rights movements
on world politics.53 Indian movements helped to reform the United Nations
in its policies, to strengthen international law regarding minority rights, and to
control the reach of transnational corporations into Indian domains. She ar-
gued that marginalized Indians have responded to globalization with new,
internationalized forms of identity politics that are reconstructing power rela-
tions. In doing so, Brysk traced a wide dynamics of interstate relations, global
markets, and transnational civil society.
While Brysk outlined the transnational implications of indigenous mobi-
lization, Donna Van Cott and others explored the implications of Indian ac-
tivism for the new democracies of Latin America formed after military rule.
16 C leary and Ste i g e nga

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.

The Understudied Role of Religion


The grand man of research in Indian cultures, Rodolfo Stavenhagen,
stated in 1997 that Indian movements were “questioning and challenging the
basic premises on which the Nation-State has been built in Latin America for
almost two centuries.”58 As Stavenhagen and others have noted, Indians in
Latin America have made these recent challenges with the aid of outside sup-
port. Religious networks and institutions have played a key role in fostering
this process. The acknowledgment by anthropologists and other social scien-
tists of this religious support is a turn-around from the sort of accusations
made at the 1971 Barbados conference.
As the leading authorities on indigenous activism in Latin America high-
lighted the recent upsurge in mobilization, they also alluded to the role of re-
ligion as an antecedent to indigenous movements. However, the field remains
open for investigation, as few observers have probed the links between reli-
gion and indigenous activism. In the pages that follow, the contributors to this
volume argue that Indian insurgency cannot be understood without recourse
to religious variables. Religion forms a major component of indigenous life
and culture, provides resources and motivations for public action, and serves as
Resurgent Voices 17

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

Case s and Theme s


Because the topic of religion and indigenous mobilization has been un-
derstudied, it is particularly well suited to the case study approach. The
strength of this approach lies in the excellent qualitative information that can
be gleaned from seasoned investigators with significant experience in their re-
spective areas of inquiry. Our contributors were free to choose the theoretical
and methodological framework best suited to their case, allowing for a breadth
of disciplinary perspectives and a greater richness of ethnographic detail. It is
out of such detail that informed hypotheses and credible cross-case general-
izations emerge.
The cases included in this volume were chosen both for their representa-
tive character and thematic breadth. For the most part, we included case stud-
ies from the countries representing the greatest number of indigenous people
(Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador). The Paraguayan case is the
exception to this rule, but merits inclusion because most Paraguayans speak
Guarani and profess an Indian cosmology and spirituality.61
We begin with the case of Ecuador, where the 1990 indigenous uprising
first focused attention on Latin America’s indigenous awakening. This mobi-
lization has continued and multiplied, as January 2000 witnessed the indige-
nous uprisings that deposed president Jamil Mahuad.Alison Brysk outlines the
religious antecedents of these indigenous mobilizations, detailing the connec-
tions between religion and civil society in the Ecuadoran case.
Edward Cleary’s comparative treatment of the Bolivian and Peruvian
cases follows, providing important insights for understanding the role of con-
textual factors in conditioning the trajectory of indigenous movements in
Latin America.While a context of political authoritarianism limited the emer-
gence of a coherent indigenous mobilization in Peru, both Bolivia and Peru
have well-established connections between religion and the indigenous, re-
sulting in the emergence of a unique indigenous theology movement. Cleary
pays special attention to the role that church-founded intellectual and cultural
centers and indigenous catechists have played in developing the intellectual
basis for indigenous political activism in the region. René Harder Horst’s
chapter completes our focus on the Andes, highlighting the fluidity of indige-
nous religion in the understudied case of Paraguay.
18 C leary and Ste i g e nga

We include two chapters on the Guatemalan case to highlight both the


historical detail of Catholic-indigenous interactions and the more recent
interactions between Christian theology and Mayan cosmovision. Bruce
Calder’s chapter takes a historical approach, detailing the critical interactions
between the Catholic Church and the Maya from the 1940s through the
1990s. Calder points to the key role that the Catholic Church played in
setting the stage for the Mayan revindication movement. Virginia Garrard-
Burnett’s contribution to this volume expands upon her earlier work, explor-
ing the interactions between Catholic and Protestant religion and Mayan
cosmovision. She argues that indigenous theologians are now fashioning new
theological forms in Guatemala that valorize and provide support for indige-
nous political movements.
In Mexico, we focus on the two states where indigenous activism has
been most pronounced, Chiapas and Oaxaca. Kristin Norget argues that the
efforts of the Oaxacan progressive church to be more open in its discourse and
practice to the traditions of indigenous communities reflect an unprecedented
democratization of Catholic culture. She warns us that in practice, however,
indigenous theology may represent a partial continuation of paternalistic and
authoritarian relations between the church and indigenous Oaxacans.
Christine Kovic takes a different approach, emphasizing the key role that
Bishop Samuel Ruiz played in Chiapas as an interlocutor for indigenous peo-
ples as well as the ideological and practical support that religion has provided
for indigenous mobilization. She details the specific workshops, collective
labor projects, health promotion programs, language programs, educational
opportunities, and peasant cooperatives sponsored by the Catholic Church in
Chiapas.
Stephen Judd’s chapter provides us with the outlines of the emergent in-
digenous theology movement developing in Latin America.Though in its in-
cipient stages, Judd argues that this theological movement has the potential to
fundamentally alter the way indigenous Christians frame their religious prac-
tice and beliefs. As Judd explains, this process is already underway.
Timothy Steigenga concludes the volume, providing some comparative
generalizations and outlining the theoretical implications of the individual
cases. The primary thesis put forward in this volume is that religion has fun-
damentally influenced indigenous culture and politics and that Latin Ameri-
can religion has been altered in the process. Our inquiry focuses on the impact
of religious and cultural mixing, the effects of religious institutions, beliefs, and
practices on indigenous social movements, and the general fluidity of religious
practice and complexity of religious politics in Latin America.
First, each of our authors notes that religious and cultural mixing has
played a role in the recent indigenous resurgence.As this blending of practices
and beliefs occurs, cultures, traditions, and strategic needs shape and refine re-
Resurgent Voices 19

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

8. Justo González,“Voices of Compassion,Yesterday and Today” in The New Face of the


Church in Latin America, ed. Guillermo Cook (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994).
9. Written communication from Luis Joliceour, anthropologist and rector of the Fac-
ultad de Teología, Cochabamba, Bolivia.
10. See John Watanabe, Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1992), 9.
11. Richard Wilson, Maya Resurgence in Guatemala (Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1995), 22, citing various sources.
12. Popular religion has been extensively explored by many social scientists. See espe-
cially Anna L. Peterson, Manuel Vásquez, and Philip J. Williams, Christianity, Social
Change, and Globalization in the Americas (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 2001) and Manuel Marzal, Tierra encantada: Tratado de antropología religiosa en
America Latina (Madrid:Trotta, 2002).
13. The percentage of Catholic missionaries in some countries has been extraordinar-
ily high. By 1970, missionaries formed 60 percent of clergy in Peru and in Bolivia,
75 percent.
14. In the 1950s Latin American delegates at a key meeting in Chimbote, Peru, recog-
nized that most Latin Americans were only nominally Catholic, with only a mini-
mum of religious instruction. See Tercera Semana Interamericana de Acción Católica
(Lima and Chimbote, 1953).
15. This great struggle to wrest Indians away from heterodoxy through Catholic Action
and native catechists was immortalized in Kay B.Warren, The Symbolism of Subordi-
nation: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978)
and in Hans C. Buechler and Judith Maria Buechler, “Combating Feathered Ser-
pents:The Rise of Protestantism and Reformed Catholicism in a Bolivian Highland
Community,” in Amerikanistische studien: Festschrift für Hermann Trimborn, vol. 1 (St.
Augustin: Hans Völker u. Kultern, Anthropos-Inst., 1978).
16. The chief institutional leadership of the Catholic Church lies in the Consejo Epis-
copal Latinoamericano (CELAM). Established in 1955, CELAM only began to
exercise great influence in Latin America after the Second General CELAM Con-
ference at Medellín (1968).
17. Edward L. Cleary, Crisis and Change:The Church in Latin America Today (Maryknoll,
N.Y: Orbis, 1985), 23–33, 78. See “CELAM,” The Encyclopedia of Religion and Poli-
tics, vol. 1 (Washington: Congressional Quarterly, 1998), 113–114.
18. 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). See also Bishop Julio Cabrera Ovalle, El Quiché, “De-
safíos de la pastoral indígena en Guatemala”; and Bishop Gerard Flores Reyes,“Una
experiencia concreta: La Verapaz,” both in Misiones Extranjeras 116 (March–April
1990), 122–129 and 152–156, respectively, and Giulio Girardi, El derecho indígena a
la autodeterminación política y religiosa (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 1997); and Giulio
Girardi, Los excluídos: Constituirán la nueva historia: El movimiento indígena, negro y pop-
ular (Quito: Centro Cultural Afroecuatoriano, 1994).
19. Drawn from Brazil’s Conselho Indigenista Misionario. See Juan Bottasso, ed., Las
misiones salesianas en un continente que se transforma (Quito: Centro Regional Sale-
siano, 1982), 195.
20. International Herald Tribune (May 22, 2001).
21. Among the more than 700 doctoral dissertations written on liberation theology, see,
for example, Guillermo César Hansen,“The Doctrine of the Trinity and Liberation
Theology:A Study of the Trinitarian Doctrine and Its Place in Latin American The-
ology,”Th.D diss., Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, 1995.
22. See appraisals of contemporary liberation theology in Enrique Dussel, Teologia da
22 C leary and Ste i g e nga

Libertaçâo: Um panorama de seu desenvolvimento (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1999 [Span-


ish edition: Mexico, 1995]); and Leonardo Boff, José Ramos Regidor, and Clodovis
Boff, A Teologia da Libertaçâo: Balanço e perspectivas (Sâo Paulo: Editora Atica, 1996).
23. See Series on Faith and Cultures: Contextualizing Gospel and Church, forthcoming
from Orbis and edited by Robert J. Schreiter.
24. For a full description of the core of liberation theologians see Christian Smith, The
Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
25. Among major creators of liberation theology, Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit, was born in
Spain.
26. In Brazil and Chile, in Catholic Churches where reforms were taking place before
Vatican II, many foreign clergy and religious women reinforced progressive ten-
dencies. In countries where native clergy were notably conservative in the 1970s,
as Nicaragua, foreign clergy tended to take the lead in implementing liberation
theology.
27. See Miguel Alberto Bartolomé, Declaration of Barbados (Rooseveltville, N.Y.: Inter-
national Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 1971).
28. The role of the World Council of Churches in the Declaration of Barbados and the
evolution of anthropologists’ views, as those of Guillermo Bonfil, are detailed by
Andrew Walls and Lannin Senneh in their Prospectus for the 11th Yale-Edinburgh
Group on Non-Western Christianity, July 12–14, 2001 meeting at New Haven.
29. What gave the conference added rhetorical force was funding from the World
Council of Churches. The council had been advised by anthropologist Georg
Gruneberg from the University of Berne. This apparently solid front of criticism
began to weaken, however, through the 1970s.
30. The second Barbados Conference of the International Work Group for Indigenous
Affairs took place in 1977 and issued a revised declaration signed by Indian repre-
sentatives as well as anthropologists.
31. Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Rela-
tions in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 194.
32. Brysk, From Tribal Village, 9.
33. Jeffrey Klaiber,“Catholic Church,” in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Cul-
ture (N.Y.: Scribners; Simon and Schuster; Prentice-Hall, 1996), vol. 2, 33.
34. Luis Jolicoeur,“Teología y culturas aymaras,” Teología y Vida 36 (1995): 226.
35. Indigenous theology is taking its place alongside other theologies spawned by
liberation theologians or inspired by liberation methodology, such as feminist-
womenist theology of liberation.
36. Of the second generation of indigenous theologians, Nicanor Sarmiento (from Bo-
livia, but working in Labrador, Canada) was chosen to give the key presentation at
the major Symposium on the Dialogue about Indian Theology at Riobamba,
Ecuador, in October 2002.
37. Perhaps as many as 160,000 missionaries worked in the region at one time. P. G.
Cabra, “Los religiosos y la evangelización de América Latina,” Iglesia, Pueblo y Cul-
turas 32 (January–March 1994): 125.
38. Historical or mainline Protestant denominations include Anglicans, Lutherans,
Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. In Latin America, most proselytizing non-
Catholic groups are referred to as “evangelicals” in common usage.
39. Richard N. Adams, a major authority on Central American Indians, noted in 1991
that “ladino fears of potential indigenous rebellion continues to be strong.” Richard
N. Adams, “Strategies of Ethnic Survival in Central America,” in Nation-States and
Indians in Latin America, ed. Greg Urban and Joel Scherzer (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1991), 202.
Resurgent Voices 23

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

From Civil Society


to Collective Action

Th e Pol i t i c s of R e l i g i on i n E c uador

Alison Brysk

In their long and continuing struggle for rights, Ecuador’s


Indians have mobilized through, with, under, and against religious institutions.
The debate on the role of religion in Ecuador’s indigenous movement par-
takes of a wider conversation concerning the interaction between religious
institutions and civil society in Latin America.1 Are religious beliefs an opiate
of the masses and religious institutions a partner of elite-dominated, ethno-
centric regimes? Or can faith serve as a font of personal empowerment, while
religious networks build civic alternatives to exclusionary or weak states?
What is the political impact of the identity of Latin America’s major religious
actors? Does the history, structure, or beliefs of the Catholic Church or par-
ticular Protestant denominations produce patterned political consequences?
More specifically, how do particular religious forces affect the political con-
sciousness, mobilization, and rights of indigenous communities?
Religious actors and indigenous communities are both part of civil soci-
ety, the terrain of social organization and political contention outside the for-
mal government structure. Political scientists traditionally see civil society as a
source of political attitudes and resources. In addition, it is increasingly recog-
nized that civic institutions may also mediate between individuals and their
governments, or even exercise direct power over citizens in lieu of or in tan-
dem with state institutions. Civil society’s political power will be seen in
authoritative control of the assets, behavior, and identity of individuals; educa-
tion and mobilization for collective action; and direct attempts to influence
the policies of states and international organizations. Civil society thus can be
both a source and a target of political action, as well as an interlocutor be-
tween state and citizen.2

25
26 A l i s on B rysk

Since Ecuador’s religious institutions were politically organized before in-


digenous communities had mobilized for political action, the initial interac-
tion is the influence of religious actors on indigenous society. The most
important general roles of religious institutions in political life are to build po-
litical consciousness, establish social networks, expand notions of rights, and
channel or represent a community’s relationship with state authorities. In ad-
dition, weak states such as Ecuador have historically delegated some of their
functions to religious institutions—such as education or social welfare. Such
religious institutions then become an alternative source of local authority.And
as indigenous communities began to mobilize a formal political movement,
religious authority became a legitimate target for political mobilization by in-
digenous movements.
In order to evaluate the outcome of this interaction, it is helpful to con-
sider broader patterns of the political impact of transnational civil society on
indigenous communities. Comparative research suggests that authority orga-
nized around ideas will have the most beneficial impact on indigenous rights
when the civic force is more structurally autonomous from states, has an
ideology compatible with indigenous self-determination, and exhibits a pat-
tern of learning through interaction with indigenous communities.3 Careful
analysis of these factors should overcome the “opiate versus liberator” di-
chotomy, as well as permit a more neutral analysis of particular religious in-
stitutions. As structural autonomy and religious ideology change over time,
this type of analysis also suggests a dynamic relationship between religious in-
stitutions and indigenous communities and leads one to expect the political
impact of religion to evolve with shifting social relationships and emerging
indigenous agency. This approach stands in contrast to analyses that predict
the political impact of religious groups based on their manifest theology
and/or internal structure.
We can apply this rubric for the impact of civil society to the Catholic
Church and Protestant missionaries in Ecuador. While the Catholic Church
was historically less autonomous than Protestantism, by the 1980s libera-
tionist Catholics faced fewer structural constraints than U.S.-sponsored
Protestant missionaries, since the Catholic Church was no longer directly
dependent on state patronage. Similarly, Catholic notions of human dignity
were quite compatible with indigenous rights, once they were translated into
a multicultural idiom. On the other hand, despite generic Protestant norms
of individualism, Protestant missionaries in Ecuador were originally imbued
with a Eurocentric ethos that gave short shrift to indigenous self-determina-
tion. However, the anthropological experiences and perspectives of certain
groups such as World Vision fostered a learning process with indigenous
communities.
Civil Society to Collective Action 27

Backg round: The Unhappy Marriage


of Church and State in Latin Ame rica
The conquest of America’s indigenous peoples was carried out with cross
and sword, yet the Catholic Church was also the first advocate for Indian
rights in the Americas. It is also the oldest and largest transnational organiza-
tion and the most consequential member of civil society throughout Latin
America. During the period of colonization, patterns of principled resistance
were set by sectors of the church. Dominicans such as Mexico’s Bartolomé de
las Casas challenged Spain’s ideological legitimation of conquest and lobbied
for changes in the legal status of Indian subjects; many consider de las Casas
the first exponent of truly universal human rights. One study concludes,
“There is a close correlation between the demands of the missionaries and
theologians and the laws dictated by the [Spanish] kings.”4
Nevertheless, the mainstream of the Catholic Church supported and ben-
efited from the status quo domination of Indians until the mid-twentieth-
century appearance of liberation theology. New tendencies like a preferential
option for the poor coincided with a renewed transnational opening of the
Latin American Church and the “contact conversion” of clergy who had been
working in indigenous areas to a more multicultural orientation.
Reflecting the historical pattern, as late as the 1970s, indigenous move-
ment representatives at a church-sponsored continental conference complained
that the church had been used by the state to (forcibly)integrate indigenous
peoples, had divided communities through missionary work, and even in its
latter-day outreach had failed to consult thoroughly with Indian constituents.
Sympathetic clerics from eight countries concluded with surprise that the In-
dian leaders seemed to value the church for its social work, not its theological
role. In response, by the 1980s Ecuador’s church had adopted a resolution to
serve as a mediator between indigenous movements and the state and as a
source of information and support on Indian rights.5
The interloper seeking to woo Latin Americans away from the Catholic
Church is Protestantism. Protestantism and associated foreign missionary in-
fluence have been strongest in many of Latin America’s most Indian countries
and zones. For example, Ecuador’s Chimborazo Province in the highlands In-
dian heartland is at least 20 percent Protestant, while the national Protestant
population is less than 5 percent.6 Criticisms of the political influence of
Protestant fundamentalism on indigenous communities focus somewhat on
active manipulation, but more frequently on the encouragement of political
passivity and a “Protestant ethic” of capitalist individualism replacing tradi-
tional patterns of reciprocity and communal identity. There is widespread
evidence that foreign missionaries and ideologies have promoted passivity
and undermined village solidarity, although it is difficult to separate these
28 A l i s on B rysk

influences from the general process of modernization and increasing interna-


tional contact. Aside from several dramatic cases of direct political influence,
the general impact of missionaries seems to operate through shifting social
capital, rights, and roles. One disgruntled Ecuadorian evangelical Indian re-
ported, “They [missionaries] prevented us from going out to protest, saying
you just had to pray, now [anyway] we go out when there are problems, we
have to see the brothers who are hungry or who are maltreated on busses.”
New social patterns introduced by missionaries unwittingly undermined tra-
ditional expressions of communal identity and sources of “social capital.”“The
minga [village communal work party] is done on Sundays.The Mormons don’t
participate because [their religion] prohibits work on that day.”While individ-
ualism may well empower future leaders, there is clearly an inherent conflict
between traditional and modernizing logics. Another Indian convert affirms,
“I appreciate [my] culture, the tradition of the ancestors, but when and if it
doesn’t interfere with the economy.”7
The most egregious case of political manipulation linked to foreign mis-
sionaries was found in Guatemala, where conservative evangelicals gained
power through influence over a president (Ríos Montt) who pursued a geno-
cidal civil war in Indian villages during the 1980s. In several other cases,
politically conservative American fundamentalists have served as patriotic sur-
rogates for U.S. interests in the region. But Latin American nationalist and left-
ist fears of a continent-wide campaign of theological imperialism proved
exaggerated and were superceded by local Latin American takeovers of evan-
gelical congregations and associations.8 True indigenous Protestantism has
played a surprising variety of roles, from quiescence to militancy.

I nd i g e nou s Pol i t i c s : C ol le c t ive Ac t i on


i n E c uador
Ecuador’s 1990 Indian uprising (el levantamiento) was historically and re-
gionally unprecedented. For over one week, indigenous peoples rose up to
shut down the country with occupations, demonstrations, and roadblocks.Ver-
sions of the 1990 uprising were repeated in 1992, 1994, 1997, 1999, and 2000.
The demonstrations were organized by a national Indian rights confederation,
CONAIE, which united indigenous groups from the Andes to the Amazon.9
In June 1990, instead of celebrating the solar equinox with the festival of
Inti Raymi, Ecuador’s Indians occupied Quito’s main cathedral, shut down
roads and markets throughout the nation, took over disputed lands, and even
kidnapped some unpopular local officials. For movement leaders, the mark of
their success was that for the first time in history, Ecuador’s president negoti-
ated directly with indigenous citizens. Some economic measures were taken,
such as the establishment of a government fund for the purchase of contested
lands and some increase of social services in certain communities.
Civil Society to Collective Action 29

In 1992, thousands of Amazonian Indians marched across the Andes to


Quito, demanding territory, reduction of the border security zone, and in-
digenous management of the Yasuní National Park (which overlaps Indian ter-
ritories). The month-long pilgrimage was sponsored by the Indian rights
organization of Pastaza Province (OPIP—Organizacíon de los Pueblos Indí-
genas de Pastaza). While two thousand participants left the Pastaza capital of
Púyó, their numbers had swelled to between five and ten thousand by the time
they arrived in Quito, as highland peoples along the route joined in solidarity.
Ecuadorian police monitored but did not suppress the 1992 march, and when
the contingent arrived in Quito, the mayor offered them permission to camp
in the capital’s Central Park while they negotiated their demands with the
president. The president accepted and extended the persuasive logic of the
protestors, announcing,“These just demands are not against our government,
but rather a reaction to five hundred years of oppression.” The marchers had
labeled their event “500 Kilometers of Resistance”—echoing the continental
anti-quincentenary “500 Years of Resistance.” In the course of the two-week
negotiations, which included the Indian movements CONAIE, OPIP, and
CONFENIAE (Confederacíon Indígena de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana), pro-
testers also occupied the Ministry of Social Welfare and the Land Reform
agency (in both cases, they were peacefully removed but not arrested). In the
end, they received over a million hectares of territory—about 60 percent of
their demand—split between three organizations.The march also secured a re-
duction of the border security zone, which contained about a third of the
local Indian population.10
In 1994, massive civil disobedience protested the new Agrarian Law,
which would roll back land reform—and the law was modified. The 1994
agrarian initiative passed by President Sixto Durán Ballén flouted the attempts
of indigenous and peasant groups to introduce a comprehensive rural devel-
opment package in the legislature. But Ecuador’s Indians once again took to
the streets in massive protest for nine days, blocking roads and cutting off food
supplies to the cities. In the Amazon, they blockaded oil facilities. For the first
time, all of the national-level indigenous organizations mounted a united
front, including the traditionally accomodationist evangelical groups. The
Durán Ballén government’s initial response was to declare a state of emer-
gency and mobilize the armed forces. There were some arrests and confron-
tations, and a mob backed by local elites sacked and burned the regional
headquarters of the Indian movement in the province of Cañar. CONAIE had
direct discussions with the World Bank and Inter-American Development
Bank and brought in both the O.A.S. Human Rights Commission and
Rigoberta Menchú’s Iniciativa Indígena por la Paz—which indigenous lead-
ers credit with making the government more amenable to negotiation.11 In re-
sponse to the uprising, Ecuador’s president established a commission to amend
30 A l i s on B rysk

the law; the commission included landowners’ interest groups, legislators,


church mediators, and both CONAIE president Luis Macas and CONAIE’s
secretary of lands Nina Pacari. As a result of the negotiation, forty articles of
the Agrarian Law were amended and five new articles were introduced, in-
cluding a new treatment of the public status of water rights, regional differen-
tiation of the status of unused land, some remaining land redistribution, and
government funds for rural retraining—including promotion of traditional in-
digenous agricultural techniques.
Recent waves of Indian mobilization in Ecuador have explicitly linked
ethnic mobilization with resistance to adjustment. Indigenous groups mounted
several strikes against government economic measures in 1993 and 1994.
Rural Indian organizations were the major participants in a 1995 general
strike called by a labor-peasant coalition to protest cuts in government social
programs. In 1996, Indians protested for greater resources for the government
bilingual education program.
In 1996, Ecuador’s Movimiento Pachakutic elected a bloc of eight
deputies to Ecuador’s fractured eighty-eight-member legislature—in the same
election that brought the ill-fated Abdalá Bucaram to the presidency. Bu-
caram’s intense corruption, personal instability, and imposition of unpopular
economic adjustment programs quickly alienated large sectors of Ecuador’s
citizenry. It was the Indian movement that spearheaded street protests and co-
ordinated the widespread challenge to Bucaram that winter. By February
1997, the Ecuadorian Congress had voted to impeach Bucaram—by a margin
of ten votes. Seven of those votes came from the Movimiento Pachakutic.
In August 1997, another full-fledged uprising occurred. This time the
issues were renewed crisis in the Rural Social Security program and the gov-
ernment’s delay in convening a promised Assembly for Constitutional Re-
form. Once again, tens of thousands of Ecuadorian Indians demonstrated,
erected roadblocks, and took over public offices throughout the country.This
time, they were part of a wider “Social Movement Coordination” and the
protests were joined by peasants, oil workers, students, and leftist activists.
The activists planned an autumn protest march along the 500-km length of
Ecuador’s oil pipeline, which carries crude from the Amazon over the Andes
to coastal refineries. After forty-eight hours of protest, the president pledged
new resources to the Rural Social Security Fund and the release of funds to
the newly created Indigenous Development Council.The Assembly for Con-
stitutional Reform, a longstanding demand of the indigenous movement, was
brought forward to precede the presidential elections scheduled for 1998.
At the local level, almost a dozen indigenous mayors and scores of coun-
cil members have assumed power in some regions, including Ecuador’s third
largest city (Cuenca).A procession of executive offices have served as channels
and advocates for indigenous voice. In 1994, the Indigenous Office of the
Civil Society to Collective Action 31

Ministry of Social Welfare was upgraded to a Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs,


reporting directly to the president (headed by an indigenous professional not
associated with the movement). Following the 1996 elections, President Bu-
caram changed the new secretariat (SENAIN) to a cabinet-level ministry and
appointed Amazonian indigenous co-directors from CONAIE and COICA
(Coordinadora Indígena de la Cuenca Amazónica). After the demise of his
government, the ministry was replaced by the Council for Indigenous Devel-
opment under the direction of CONAIE officer Pacari. All of these agencies
have been under funded and somewhat isolated from other bureaucracies, but
important in establishing indigenous corporate presence. In 1998, Nina Pacari
was elected to Congress as leader of the indigenous Pachakutic Party and be-
came the second vice president of the Congress.
On January 21, 2000, the rising tide of indigenous protest spilled over into
a direct attempt to take power, through indigenous movement participation in
an abortive coup attempt by populist junior military officers.The indigenous
movement had come to spearhead popular-sector anti-austerity protests and
established relationships with a broad array of opponents of then-President
Jamil Mahuad. After Indian movement protesters occupied the presidential
palace, Congress, and Supreme Court, the military announced a three-man
junta headed by Lt. Col. Lucio Gutiérrez—and including the head of
CONAIE. When Ecuador’s Congress, local business elites, and the interna-
tional community balked, the junta collapsed in favor of replacing Mahuad
with his vice president. Although coup leaders were sanctioned, episodes of
Indian protest continued with widespread support.
After his release from jail, the pro-peasant military officer dismissed for his
role in the coup, Lucio Gutiérrez, ran for president in 2002. With the
endorsement of CONAIE and the Pachakutic Party, Gutiérrez was elected
president on a populist program. As he assumed office, the new president des-
ignated CONAIE co-founder and Pachakutic Party congressional representa-
tive Nina Pacari as Ecuador’s foreign minister. Gutiérrez also named former
CONAIE president Luis Macas as Minister of Agriculture and Ranching, a
key post for Indian’s land rights concerns.This unprecedented influence of in-
digenous leaders in Ecuador’s government is somewhat mitigated by Gutiér-
rez’s simultaneous selection of a U.S.-educated banker as Minister of
Economy and several military officers in other key administrative positions.At
the same time, a December 2002 indigenous kidnapping of oil workers from
contested territories demonstrates the persistence of the structural conflict be-
tween the Ecuadorian state’s international dependence on oil revenues and its
capacity to provide indigenous rights. Nevertheless, the new president’s
pledges of poverty reduction, popular participation, and multiculturalism offer
the potential for Ecuador’s indigenous movement to translate its program into
action—a mere dozen years since it emerged as a national political force.
32 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

tural cooperative and development association which adumbrated the govern-


ment’s land reform program (CEAS); Proaño discussed the problem with
then-President Camilo Ponce Enríquez. Proaño became famous for his substi-
tute priestly garb: the denigrated poncho of the highlands Indian. He started
an indigenous seminary and trained large numbers of Indian pastoral agents—
many also active in community organizations. The bishop also assumed the
liberation theology pedagogy of “see, judge, and act” and was influenced by
the Brazilian Paulo Freire.15 As his longtime assistant recounted, “Bishop
Proaño said that the first thing we must give back to the Indians is their voice
[su palabra].”16
At a 1976 international conference sponsored by Proaño on indigenous
issues, the Ecuadorian police arrested seventeen visiting Latin American arch-
bishops, four North American bishops, and Proaño himself. While this inci-
dent marked the level of domestic opposition to Indian rights and the
probable involvement of Brazilian and Chilean intelligence services, the re-
sultant public and world repudiation limited the state’s repressive capacity.17
One of the imprisoned priests reported: “Later we were visited by the Cardi-
nal, by the Nuncio. . . .Then the Embassies began to come.The German Am-
bassador established himself there to see what was happening because there
were also Germans, a Lutheran and others. So then [the government] was seen
badly, they had ‘blown it’ [metido la pata], and they began to worry about
treating us well.”18 In 1986,“the Bishop of the Indians” was nominated for the
Nobel Peace prize. In 1988, he was awarded a posthumous Human Rights
prize by the United Nations General Assembly, commemorating the fortieth
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The church has continued to “accompany” Ecuador’s Indians in their
long march toward recognition and participation—sometimes literally.
Church congregations, personnel, and community organizations supply blan-
kets for marchers, presses for newsletters, and new messages of dignity and
self-assertion. At the latest demonstrations in 2002, in which thousands of In-
dians from throughout the region occupied Quito to protest plans for hemi-
spheric free trade, priests said mass in a local park before the marchers turned
and entered the Ministerial Summit.19
The emerging Protestant challenge initially undercut indigenous mobi-
lization, but later indigenous Protestants lent their organizational strength to
Indian rights. In some areas of Ecuador, during the 1980s, Protestant mission-
aries promoted the establishment of “apolitical” rival evangelical indigenous
associations which shadowed the emerging Indian rights movement groups
and competed for state recognition at the local and regional levels. However,
some of the indigenous evangelical groups broke from their foreign sponsors
by the 1990s and assumed either a more neutral or supportive stance toward
the Indian rights movement. Simplistic views of fundamentalism as opiate are
34 A l i s on B rysk

challenged by developments such as the leading role played by Indians from


Ecuador’s Chimborazo Province—the most Protestant area of the highlands—
in the 1990 indigenous uprising.20 In 1995 FEINE, Ecuador’s national con-
federation of fourteen provincial evangelical associations began to actively
collaborate with CONAIE under a new leadership. From the late 1990s,
FEINE aligned with a separate national-level confederation (FENOCLE), but
the Protestant organizations continued to join national Indian rights and anti-
adjustment protests and to question government policies. Although evangeli-
cal Indian individuals and congregations are somewhat less likely to mobilize
politically than their Catholic peers, the web site of their national organization
(FEINE) lists political reform as one of its principal goals.

Between Civil Society and State:The Church as Interlocutor


The Catholic Church quickly moved beyond the role of movement mid-
wife to actively broker and mediate between restive indigenous populations
and their political targets. Leonidas Proaño died in 1988, but his followers es-
tablished a foundation (Fundación Pueblo Indio), a study center (CEDIS), a
development agency (FEPP), and a human rights movement (CEDHU). Each
of these organizations has served as an important resource for indigenous
Ecuadorians: CEDHU’s reports have pressured the Ecuadorian government in
human rights cases, while FEPP has presided over an important land reform
program linked to debt relief. Just as important, this network of church-based
advocates has served as intermediary between the Ecuadorian indigenous
movement and the government during periods of conflict. CEDHU’s leader
is a U.S.-educated Ecuadorian Maryknoll sister, Elsie Monge, whom Proaño
brought back to Ecuador following work in Guatemala and Panama. During
CONAIE’s 1990 Indian uprising, the mediating commission was composed of
Elsie Monge; Proaño’s successor, Monsignor Víctor Corral; and a representa-
tive of SERPAJ—a pan–Latin American grassroots human rights movement
based in liberation theology and Ghandian “active non-violence.”21
When Ecuador’s indigenous movement launched the 1990 uprising,
the public space they took over was one of Quito’s main churches, Santo
Domingo. In the national protests that followed in 1992 and 1994, church oc-
cupations became part of the protest repertoire—as did clerical mediation.
When the 1994 protests against agrarian counter-reform broke out, a hard-
line president declared a state of siege. Former CONAIE president Luis Macas
relates that when indigenous leaders meeting in Quito learned that arrest war-
rants had been issued, they sought—and received—sanctuary in the National
Bishops’ Headquarters [Obispado].22 The church then brokered the Agrarian
Reform accord which settled the 1994 protests.
This mediating role has continued in subsequent waves of protest, and
even in resolving the 2000 coup attempt. In a typical example, early 2001 rural
Civil Society to Collective Action 35

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.

Church as State? Religious Institutions as Delegated Authorities


We must also consider the direct political impact on indigenous commu-
nities when religious authorities substitute for weak states, usually by provid-
ing services at the local level. It is important to recognize that the provision of
scarce vital services in isolated underserved areas may grant a civic group sig-
nificant power—unmonitored and unelected.While Catholic missions and or-
ders exercised great influence through the mid-twentieth century, especially
in the Amazon, Catholic temporal power was diminished by the gradual im-
plementation of constitutionally mandated separation of church and state,
waves of land reform, philosophical changes in the church, and Catholic in-
ability to staff remote rural outposts. Thus, in Ecuador the religious force
which has assumed local authority or filled power vacuums has been Protes-
tantism—usually foreign-sponsored evangelical missionaries.
For example, the (Protestant) missionary aviators of Alas de Socorro are
still the main form of transport in the Ecuadorian Amazon—Ecuador’s Min-
istry of Health pays 80 percent of their costs for air ambulance service, and the
missionaries run 650 flights each month. Wings of Mercy has also placed a
network of sixty radio sets in jungle villages, facilitating but also monopoliz-
ing communications in the region. While Indian rights organizations com-
plain that the missionary aviators discriminate against them in the provision of
services, the director claims to follow a strict set of guidelines and rate struc-
ture which favor only missionary work and medical emergencies. Stating that
as foreigners the aviators must avoid politics, he explained that they will not
transport political candidates, but will fly in polling personnel at government
request. Similarly, Wings of Mercy will fly foreign oil company personnel in
for “community development” or out for medical reasons, but they do not
provide transport for routine oil company business operations. The director
did recount that on “a handful” of occasions, communities had requested that
the missionaries not bring in a particular visitor—some of these requests may
have included activists and thus reflected local conflicts.24
36 A l i s on B rysk

The most notorious historic cases of this relationship of delegated au-


thority involve a Protestant group, closely linked to the United States, with a
high level of theological ethnocentrism, targeting vulnerable rainforest Indi-
ans. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) is a fundamentalist Protestant
educational organization affiliated with the Wycliffe Bible Translators, with
more than six thousand members in forty-four countries in 1992. A core ele-
ment of their belief system is the evangelical imperative to translate the Bible
into every known language and to convert maximum numbers of “unreached
peoples.” From their U.S. supporters, the SIL derived ample material resources
for jungle aviation, communication, and well-equipped bases, backing from
Republican politicians and California businessmen, and a professional training
institute at the University of Oklahoma. Initial support was also provided by
expatriate coffee processors in Guatemala’s Indian highlands, and later by the
Rockefellers, Standard Oil, the timber company Weyerhauser, and U.S.AID. In
return, the organization helped quell incipient Indian protest at the 1959
Inter-American Indian Conference with the expertise of missionary linguists,
surveyed Indian areas ripe for “development” in Brazil, and played a support
role for U.S.-backed counter-insurgency efforts in Ecuador, Peru, and Colom-
bia.The entrepreneurial and visionary founder, Cameron Townsend, tirelessly
cultivated Latin American leaders for the cause. Through these connections,
the SIL was given jungle training facilities in Mexico’s Chiapas region, wide-
spread military cooperation, and authorization to administer bilingual edu-
cation programs by Latin American governments throughout the Amazon
basin.25
Townsend gained such widespread acceptance in large part because he
could offer Latin American states something more important even than jungle
aviation: a program for the acculturation of “unreached” citizens. For the
Summer Institute to do its work, it had to gather dispersed tribal groups into
villages where they could attend school. Missionaries translated national an-
thems into native languages and helped states to count and register citizens.26
Contact with transplanted North Americans and their trade goods facilitated
Indians’ integration into a cash economy.The missionaries’ campaigns against
traditional dress, festivals, and marriage customs brought natives closer to their
Hispanic neighbors. And of course, training in Spanish and Christianity made
Indians better workers, soldiers, and citizens.
Nevertheless, by the 1980s, the Summer Institute was expelled from
Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama, and restricted in Colombia and Peru, as
a result of a new nationalist coalition and vision. In Ecuador, a 1980 campaign
linked the Catholic Church, nationalist intellectuals, anthropologists, and an
emerging indigenous movement in opposition to the missionaries’ control of
bilingual education. In a typical 1983 statement, Ecuador’s Bishop of the In-
dians concluded,“Our evangelical brethren are contributing with all their ef-
Civil Society to Collective Action 37

forts, except [a few] honorable exceptions, to the maintenance of North


American imperialism.”27 Accusations of SIL ties to the CIA were so persistent
that the U.S. Embassy issued a denial in 1981.28
A crucial case became the SIL’s “pacification” of the jungle Huaorani from
the late 1950s, when oil was discovered in their area. In the initial attempts to
contact the fierce and threatened hunter-gatherers, five American missionaries
were speared.Their martyrdom captured the world’s imagination through ar-
ticles in Life magazine and a 1957 twenty-seven-city U.S. speaking tour by the
sister of one of the victims—Rachel Saint—who appeared on “This Is Your
Life” and the Billy Graham crusade with successful Huaorani converts.
Through classic techniques of dropping gifts and broadcasting messages from
helicopters, sending converted Huaorani back into unacculturated areas, and
offering selective access to medical care and trade goods, the SIL’s Rachel
Saint established a local suzerainty. In 1969, she persuaded the Ecuadorian
government to establish a Huaorani protectorate, moving many of the Huao-
rani “out of the way” of oil development.There, even missionary anthropolo-
gists reported that the Huaorani suffered a typical syndrome of cultural
collapse, including epidemics, economic dependency, and social breakdown.
The SIL itself removed Saint from her area in 1973, but she later returned to
a neighboring zone, controlling access to radio communications, air traffic,
and medical care in her enclave until her death in 1994.29
The resistance claimed that the SIL’s mission of acculturation actually rep-
resented a form of “ethnocide”—the deliberate destruction of a culture. The
new concept had been developed in a series of UNESCO and NGO (Non-
governmental Organizations) conferences, with influence from anthropolo-
gists at the Barbados meetings (who had directly demanded the exit of the SIL
from Latin America).The main weapon of the Ecuadorian indigenists was an
information campaign, revealing the extent and impact of the SIL’s activities.
This was combined with a legitimacy challenge to the state to assume its re-
sponsibilities in education and promote a national identity.The Summer Insti-
tute of Linguistics was formally expelled from Ecuador in 1980 (although a
token presence remained). Remnants of SIL presence were protested in every
subsequent Indian uprising.The missionaries’ Quito headquarters, which had
been leased from the municipality, were turned over to the national evangeli-
cal Indian rights group FEINE.
The SIL’s ultimate legacy in the tribal village is ambiguous and con-
tested. While SIL “villagization” of Ecuador’s Huaorani contributed greatly
to their physical and political deterioration, the SIL’s anthropologist James
Yost helped train the Huaorani in political skills to confront oil development
pressures. The linguists’ presence, airstrips, and “pacification” clearly facili-
tated subsequent activities of multinational resource extraction,30 with all of
its attendant consequences for indigenous health, welfare, and autonomy. But
38 A l i s on B rysk

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

Vision employees held simultaneous posts in municipal administration. This


led to conflicts between traditional (Catholic) and evangelical sectors of In-
dian communities, including destruction of project property and even vio-
lence, along with widespread maladministration of funds. This generated bad
publicity, notably an extensive study commissioned by the Ecuadorian gov-
ernment Ministry of Social Welfare and conducted by a respected Ecuadorian
think tank. Local Indian organizations such as Imbabura’s FICI [home of the
weaver-merchant Otavalos] mobilized in protest. In response,World Vision ap-
pointed a new director in 1987—for the first time, an Ecuadorian national.
New guidelines for management and distribution were drafted, anthropolo-
gists were hired, and the organization withdrew from several particularly con-
flictual communities.
The ultimate effects on indigenous movements and community activism
were mixed, but displayed a surprisingly positive range of outcomes. In the
highlands community of La Companía, the conflict over World Vision unex-
pectedly promoted a reconciliation of religious divisions: the village elected a
new council with a Catholic president, evangelical vice president, and Mor-
mon treasurer. In Tocagón, a court case brought by World Vision for wrecking
projects strengthened the role of the indigenous movement FICI as a defender
of the community’s rights, although others turned to Compassion Interna-
tional—a more overtly and preferentially evangelical patron. In Palugsha, the
construction of a drinking water system brought together both religious and
territorial factions.The canton of Otavalo sued World Vision for withdrawing
committed resources—and won back a development fund of 13 million sucres
to be administered by local councils. On the other hand, conflicts continued
in some zones and some communities which rejected the entrance of World
Vision on principled grounds were incorporated when the NGO hired for-
mer Indian movement leaders.33
Renewed criticism from the strengthening indigenous movement led
World Vision to again reorganize in 1990, even bringing in some former aca-
demic critics as administrators. About fifty people left the Ecuador office, as
the international headquarters in Monrovia, California, was also decentralized.
World Vision signed agreements with local Catholic Churches and coordi-
nated local provision of services with overlapping NGOs. Perhaps the most
important change is that project plans were submitted for approval by the tar-
get community, and the communities were invited to designate the project ad-
ministrator. Some of the evangelical Indians who had gained experience in
World Vision projects went on to become active in Indian rights movements.
One analyst links the small-project model introduced by the NGO to subse-
quent development strategies of those indigenous community organizations.34
While improvements in communication and transportation have dimin-
ished the physical isolation of indigenous zones, a decade of financial and
40 A l i s on B rysk

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

dependence parallel to the general experience of other ethnic constituencies


around the world, as they modernize and gain broader opportunities for po-
litical participation. Overall, this means that religious institutions may become
active around particular issues or in particular regions, but become less rele-
vant to mobilization and mediation at the national level.
On the other hand, the trend of globalization may increase the influence
of certain religious groups and identities. The decentralization and privatiza-
tion catalyzed by economic crisis and mandated by international lenders
recreate the traditional power vacuum of underdevelopment—which is now
urban as well as rural.Among other things, this means more power for religious
groups as delegated service providers. Globalization also seems to increase the
attractiveness of Protestantism (especially Pentecostalism) as an identity, which
is widely perceived as “more international” despite Catholicism’s historic and
structural transnationalism. In a country that has adopted the U.S. dollar as its
national currency, it makes sense to worship the brand of deity that is refer-
enced on the greenback. However, increased identification with and knowl-
edge of the United States may also encourage more secular attitudes and less
engaged varieties and interpretations of Protestantism.
The interaction of these trends is difficult to predict, and the picture is
further complicated by newer minority religions that have become important
in particular locations or issues—including Mormonism, Baha’i, and resurgent
interest in pre-Christian indigenous religious practices. Religion’s influence
on indigenous politics in Ecuador is likely to be increasingly situational and
less systematic. What is certain is that civil society will continue to matter—
through, with, under, and against politics.

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

Arquidiócesis de Quito, 1995, 101, 115; Conferencia Episcopal Ecuatoriana, Lineas


pastorales, Quito, 1994, 115.
6. Susana Andrade, Visión mundial: Entre el cielo y la tierra (Quito: Editorial Abya-Yala,
1990), 24; Alvin Goffin, The Rise of Protestant Evangelism in Ecuador, 1895–1990
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994).
7. Andrade, Visión mundial, 56, 83, 67.
8. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990).
9. The following section is based on Brysk, From Tribal Village.
10. Norman Whitten, Dorothea Scott Whitten, and Alfonso Chango, “Return of the
Yumbos: The Indigenous Caminata from the Amazon to Andean Quito,” American
Ethnologist 24, no. 2 (1997): 355–391.
11. Interviews, October 26, 1995.
12. Botasso, Las misiónes Salesianas, 15, 17.
13. T.E.A. Arroyo, Diez años servicio Aéreo Misional Misión Salesiana de Oriente 1975–
1985 (Quito: Servicio Aéreo Misional, Procura Misión Salesiana, 1985).
14. Botasso, Las misiónes Salesianas, 71; Patrick Breslin, Development and Dignity (Ross-
lyn,Va.: Inter-American Foundation, 1987), 56.
15. L. Proaño, Luchador de la paz y de la vida (Quito: FEPP-CEDIS, 1989).
16. Interview, July 1995.
17. Goffin, The Rise of Protestant Evangelism, 117.
18. Proaño, Luchador de la paz, 24.
19. EFE News Service, October 30, 2002.
20. Goffin, The Rise of Protestant Evangelism, 131.
21. Ibid., 121, 131.
22. Interview, May 18, 1997.
23. Spanish CRE Satellite Radio web site, Guayaquil, February 5, 2001.
24. Interview, August 31, 1995.
25. F. Barriga López, Las culturas indígenas ecuatorianas y el Instituto Linguístico de Verano
(Quito: Ediciones Amauta, 1992); Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant?; B. Colby
and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done:The Conquest of the Amazon, Nelson Rock-
efeller, and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); P. Aaby and
S. Hvalkof, Is God an American? An Anthropological Perspective on the Missionary Work of
the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Copenhagen: International Working Group on In-
digenous Affairs, 1981).
26. Barriga López, Las culturas indígenas ecuatorianas, 117.
27. Proaño, Luchador de la paz, 78.
28. Barriga López, Las culturas indígenas ecuatorianas,: 287.
29. David Stoll, Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin
America (London: Zed Press with Cultural Survival, 1982).
30. Colby and Dennett, Thy Will Be Done.
31. Goffin, The Rise of Protestant Evangelism, 84.
32. Andrade, Visión mundial, 67–68.
33. Ibid., 57, 59, 68, 90.
34. Ibid., 85–88; interview, June 27, 1995.
35. See David Kyle, Transnational Peasants: Migrations, Networks, and Ethnicity in Andean
Ecuador (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).
Chap te r 3

New Voice in Religion and Politics


in Bolivia and Peru

Edward L. Cleary

Bolivia’s indigenous have made themselves into the


newest political force in the country. They are able to command attention in
ways that rival most groups in the country.They have brought about constitu-
tional changes and threaten more. Peru’s indigenous have yet to form a strong
national movement, but they present a new face to Peru’s political classes. In-
creasingly, they no longer accept the subordinate status imposed on them for
centuries.
In June 2002 indigenous groups again drew national attention with a
march across the main arteries of Bolivia. More than a thousand marchers
made their way across hundreds of kilometers in an effort to wrest concessions
both from the government and from political parties.This was a repetition of
the watershed 1990 March for Land and Dignity. The indigenous chose in
2002 to mount a challenge to government and political parties at a most vul-
nerable time of scheduled national elections. They were making it clear that
the Bolivian nation had to hear them out about unfulfilled promises.
Behind these processes that virtually no politician or social scientist pre-
dicted are Catholic and Protestant churches.Whereas charges were raised at the
1971 Barbados Conference that missionaries were contributing to ethnocide,
missionaries in Peru and Bolivia have provided the needed external boost to
indigenous political activism and to the creation of a native intellectual force.1
The resurgence of Indian populations in Latin America is strongly evident
in Bolivia and Peru.2 Investigation of both countries shows the reasons for the
resurgence: the struggles to revitalize what were considered dying traditional
cultures and the crucial role that religion has played. Churches provided key
resources needed for fostering ethnic identity and for stimulating indigenous
political activism.

43
44 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

In the process, a distinctive Indian theology is being born. Indian theology


grows from grassroots efforts. Seven intellectual and cultural centers, with li-
braries and world-renowned experts, anchor these efforts. Indians have found
the intellectual resources that have been unavailable to them for centuries.
The comparison of Peru and Bolivia, two key indigenous countries,
points to important differences. Despite relative equality in Peru and Bolivia
in terms of resources for cultural and political activism, the achievements in
Bolivia exceed those in Peru. In a word, the relative strength of indigenous
movements depends in strong measure on structural and institutional con-
straints, as well as opportunities encountered, in the religious field and in re-
spective societies.
This chapter is divided into four thematic sections.The first section deals
with conflicts in religious ideology. The second section addresses the emer-
gence of an indigenous church and the individuals who facilitated it in this
part of the Andean region.The next section deals with the emergence of in-
digenous political activism. The chapter ends with a discussion of major
achievements and with a comparison of Bolivia and Peru.3

Clashe s of Re lig ious Ideology


An ideological war—a religious ideological war—has been waged on the
Altiplano and Amazonian region for more than thirty years.The thousands of
square kilometers of upland Peru and Bolivia, the focal point of this study,
contained areas so remote that few signs of modernity (graded roads or clin-
ics) and few tax collectors were present.Yet even before 1970 a great influx of
ideas coming from outside was taking place. Nor were the peoples of the Al-
tiplano, where the majority of Indian peoples live, passive peasants. By the
1960s many rural Indian men and women lived part of their lives in towns and
cities. Many served in the military, traveled to other parts of their countries,
and listened frequently to radio with news of the outside world.
Two types of religious ideology flooded into the Altiplano and clashed, es-
pecially from the early 1970s. First, Mormons, Pentecostals, and a wide range
of churches, sects, and cults brought clashing religious messages to a nominally
Catholic population.They also brought demands of “true faith” and promises
of healing and salvation. One impact on many indigenous persons was confu-
sion and division.4
The second religious conflict took place within Catholicism. The pres-
ence of Catholic clergy in the remote areas of Peru and Bolivia has waxed and
waned over the five hundred years of Catholicism in these countries. When
modern missionaries reached remote Andean areas in the early 1940s, they
found the church in decline, with few priests ministering there. Missionaries
from mostly North Atlantic countries began taking over many parishes and
missions in the region.The church gained organizational strength, multiplying
New Voice in Religion and Politics 45

jurisdictions and responsibilities.To traditional indigenous religion, missionar-


ies counterposed orthodox Catholicism.Where missionaries had a steady and
thick presence, their impact was often strong. Hans and Judith Buechler have
described the changes they affected in the Altiplano as “reform Catholicism,”5
alterations in religiosity brought on by changes in the Catholic Church in the
1960s.

Eme rge nce of Indige nous Church


and New Ethnic Ide ntity
Vatican Council II (1962–1965) and the Latin American Bishops’ Medel-
lín Conference (1968) led to changes, this time toward modernity and away
from traces of traditional practices. Bishops, priests, and catechists began tak-
ing harder stands against traditional practices that seemed to them to have lit-
tle to do with essential Christianity.At least one diocese in the heart of Aymara
country, bordering on Lake Titicaca, forbade the celebration of Catholic
masses within certain traditional celebrations, as carnival. For a period of some
years meetings to plan church strategies were often marked by strong dis-
agreements.6
During this period liberation theology became un paradigma hegemónico, a
hegemonic paradigm, for many missionaries.Theology of liberation, as a mod-
ernizing and rational element in religious thought, was seen not just as con-
demning traditional practices as out of touch with a modern understanding of
Scripture, but also as portraying traditional practices as the continuation of the
dominance of mestizo political and economic control and the subordination
of Indian peasants.
But liberation theology guided only a sector of missionaries and the na-
tive religious. Others were aware of liberation theology but did not follow
closely its principles. Instead, they were driven by another impulse, forming an
indigenous church.This was the overarching policy, shared also by most liber-
ationists, in most, or a large part, of indigenous territory.The church changed
its policy, as noted in the introduction to this volume, from an indigenista to in-
dígena, from paternalist to accompaniment.7 Thus, the main thrust of mission-
aries and other religious workers among the very large Indian populations of
Peru and Bolivia was creating an indigenous church.This represented a major
change: instead of working to incorporate Indians within a unified culture, the
church turned to providing the basis for other than Eurocentric cultural ex-
pressions of Christianity. In attempting this, missionaries and others found the
basis for an Indian theology.
Further, those involved in the monumental task of creating an indigenous
church were deeply concerned about the lack of what was called by them “re-
ligious knowledge.” Left without benefit of clergy for decades, many indigenous
peoples did not have an orthodox understanding of Christianity. Questions were
46 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.

Intellectual Resources for Indigenous Peoples


Indian religion was truly in crisis, in danger of being overwhelmed by the
avalanche of foreign religions and torn by internal divisions among Catholics.
Despite the remoteness of the Altiplano, the Indian peoples had been through
other invasions and internal divisions brought on by outsiders.The invasion of
Inca rulers and then the Spanish were only two of these incursions.What dis-
tinguishes the present period from others in which Indians were assaulted by
outside influences and what anchors the Catholic Church’s presence in in-
digenous areas are catechists and intellectual centers placed throughout or
near the Altiplano in the larger Andean region.
These centers grew from a larger impulse in the Latin American church:
a conviction that each culture has its own integrity that must be known and
respected by missionaries.The centers appeared in the Andean region of South
America and in Guatemala and Mexico. Through these centers, bishops and
missionaries hoped to form native religious leaders for an indigenous church.
Further, some centers helped raised political consciousness in indigenous
communities and encouraged the indigenous to organize to struggle for their
own rights.11 They conceived this as the self-emancipation of the poor.12

Crucial Role of Catechists


More was at stake than finding indigenous persons to act as translators of
liberation theology. Indeed, some missionaries and even more bishops had nei-
ther personal inclination nor time to absorb liberation theology. Rather, vir-
tually all agreed to the formation of an indigenous church. Lacking a native
New Voice in Religion and Politics 47

clergy, the indigenous church could have catechists. Catechetical centers


trained persons especially in understanding the Bible. These centers became
something similar to indigenous seminaries. For at least fifty years the practice
of having a native catechist in each rural settlement area has grown. Under the
impact of missionary presence religious life has changed in many areas of the
Andean region.The hegemonic hold of fiesta sponsorship has diminished to a
considerable degree. In some areas it is gone entirely.
The contemporary history of Bolivia and Peru is being played out in an
entanglement of local and global forces. Indigenous ethnic groups are inter-
acting with national political forces as well as international market penetra-
tion. Fundamentally, the situation touches upon personhood and identity, an
interaction of religion, persons, community, nation, and the parts of the larger
world that affect Bolivian and Peruvian agriculture, commerce, and economic
lives.Viewed from the underside, catechists act as a major factor in affecting
changes in personhood among the indigenous in Peru and Bolivia.
Catechists are lay specialists, mostly volunteer actors in Aymara, Quichua,
and other indigenous communities. Missionaries have been important in in-
digenous revitalization, but catechists are equally or more important. They
recruit and lead. They act as intermediaries between missionaries and com-
munities.They act as a new layer inserted between original layers of a religious
organization, that is, between priest and congregation.They have become in-
creasingly important actors in the wide, intense, and influential discourse of
ethnic identity that has been taking placing in the Peruvian and Bolivian
Altiplano.
Catechists began to see themselves as protagonists of their interpretation
of Christianity, not objects of evangelization. In doing so, they discarded their
role as buffers between larger society and communities to become translocal
intermediaries. Religious actors joined and fostered in the turning outward of
indigenous communities from isolation to the occupation of contentious pub-
lic space.
Basic conceptions of personhood and agency are important in this trans-
formation toward political activism. Catechists are helping Aymaras to define
their personhood proactively as persons capable of interacting with the state
instead of fatalistically hanging back from full political participation or, more
accurately, operating in their own world, more or less apart from a citizen’s
participation in the nation. Equally, the reinterpretation led by catechists of
“community” is important for indigenous who, to a greater or lesser extent,
define themselves through participating in a community. Thus, Aymaras and
other ethnic groups began conceiving themselves as a people on the march to-
ward greater independence or autonomy within the nation.
In sum, catechists help reshape indigenous ethnic groups by leading small
groups to reinterpret their place in society through the Bible and their ethnic
48 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

cosmologies. Further, in some areas of the Altiplano, catechists form networks


within their own circle.These networks help to overcome the antagonism be-
tween indigenous communities built up over centuries of feuds over land and
other issues.They have become meta-Aymaras or meta-Quichuas
Both Catholic progressives and conservatives have promoted access to the
Bible. Reflection on the Bible takes place at Sunday liturgies or more com-
monly in weeknight meetings of small communities. Catechists, presidentes de
la comunidad, or leaders of the Word of God, facilitate the meetings, but those
in attendance are expected to offer their interpretation of the Bible passages.
These communities are by no means all base Christian communities pro-
moted by enthusiastic followers of liberation theology.13 But, for the sake of
example, presume the case of a small community where the catechist and
members have picked up ideas from liberation theology. Exposure to the Bible
and the exposure of liberation-theology-oriented pastoral agents in interpret-
ing the Bible contributed to indigenous Catholics’ political consciousness, es-
pecially in the late 1980s and early 1990s.14
However, whether small community leaders are liberationists or not, in-
digenous readers interpret the Bible in extremely complex ways.Their bibli-
cal reflections are more than folk liberation. The indigenous churches have
cosmologies that guide them to interpretations that look and sound different
from liberation theology. Thus is being born a theology of inculturation that
may lead to teología india,15 as noted by Stephen Judd in his chapter within this
volume.

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

position from a somewhat different path than Irarrázaval. To prepare himself


for establishing or working with an Indian center,Albó, a Catalan Jesuit priest,
obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology and social linguistics at Cornell University.
Albó, for the most part, eschewed working with other professionals, choosing
instead to mentor talented Indian activists and intelligentsia.

An Emerging Theology of Inculturation


Missionaries were strategically placed to have a major hand in shaping a
theology of inculturation.23 They sought out remote areas where the majority
of Indians live. Missionary groups remained there with enduring commitment
to hear and to understand native languages and conceptions of God and Jesus,
death and resurrection. Missionaries had resources, intellectual and economic,
for drawing in teams of experts and organizing activities. Further, as foreign-
ers they were acutely aware of the need of cultural adaptation, whereas na-
tional clergy frequently did not conceive of the indigenous as the “other,” a
central concept in dealing with culture.
Under the hand of missionaries, liberation theology began to take a de-
cided turn. In a sense, missionaries and indigenous spokespersons forced the-
ologians of liberation to reconsider traditional forms of thought as expressing,
in an imperfect but important way, the face of God.24 Or, stated from the other
side, Indians forced changes in prevailing Christian theology. Popular religion
and traditional religion were seen as having strongly positive as well as nega-
tive qualities.25 On the part of the indigenous, liberation theology had to be
extended to include cultural liberation.26 This was a major missing element in
liberation theology,27 as noted in the introduction.
Three larger aspects of liberation thus emerged in missionary-indigenous
discussions of liberation. First, development of all forms of life to their full po-
tential is liberating. Second, liberation would strengthen community solidar-
ity, not weaken it as Christian churches have done by bringing division to
communities.Third, in the case of Aymara people, liberation would mean lib-
eration of the Aymara nation.
A second stream of indigenous religious thought, a culturalist view, devel-
oped vigorously alongside the much better known liberation theology. Both
streams lead to the elaboration of indigenous theology. Instead of beginning
analysis from the world of miners and other workers, many persons carried on
their reflections from what Luis Jolicoeur calls “a cosmovision totally distinct
from the world of work.” For him, people working within the cultural frame-
work found this social struggle not the most fundamental or inclusive. It was
not as if these academics and indigenous leaders rejected the workers’ struggle
or did not recognize its value.They thought something else more important.
However, while Jolicoeur believed the culturalist view could exist peacefully
with a liberationist perspective, Albó made it clear that he strongly disagreed
New Voice in Religion and Politics 51

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.

Eme rge nce of Indige nous


Pol i t i cal Ac t iv i sm
Whereas only a small number of formal indigenous organizations existed
in the 1960s, since then, hundreds of indigenous associations of all types not
only sprung up but also made their impact felt locally, nationally, and interna-
tionally. Indeed, a few prescient political scientists pointed to a transnational
52 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

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.

Beginnings of Political Activism in the Andean Region


None of the indigenous rights movements would have appeared as read-
ily or in the form in which they have appeared without outside help.The im-
pulse to organize and to act in the public sphere in new ways came from
anthropologists and from the churches, especially from missionaries.36 The first
notable indigenous political movements appeared in Ecuador.The political as-
sertiveness of the Shuar peoples, supported by Salesian missionaries, began in
the early 1960s.Their activism refracted into peoples of the neighboring Pe-
ruvian Amazon region. The first notable Peruvian congress of indigenous,
Congreso Amuesha, took place in 1968. This was followed by the formation
of the Council of Aguarana and Huambisa and then the Front for the Defense
of the Native Shipibo Communities. By the beginning of the 1980s the three
groups had pulled together into the Interethnic Association for the Develop-
ment of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP). The united group went on to be-
come the principal voice of eastern Peruvian Indians.
New Voice in Religion and Politics 53

The Bolivian National Revolution (1952) depended upon indigenous


participation and their armed groups to enter and to continue in the presi-
dential palace. Indians were rewarded by being declared campesinos (peasants),
instead of the (then) deprecatory indio (Indian). They were given their own
ministry within the government, the Ministry of Peasant Affairs. The leaders
of the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), the party of the revo-
lution, and Bolivia’s other political leaders of the 1950s through the next
decades pushed a policy of integration, not cultural pluralism. But the revolu-
tion unleashed far greater active lower-class participation in national life than
had been the case in Bolivia. With the opportunities afforded by the revolu-
tion and with foreign aid monies, indigenous built and staffed thousands of
new primary schools.Thereafter Bolivians achieved a pace of improved liter-
acy and student enrollment unmatched even by Brazil.37 The stage was set in
Bolivia for the momentous change back from campesino to indio.
In the 1960s in the Bolivian highlands, after his contacts among Indian
communities where he had done doctoral field research, Xavier Albó began
gathering around him native speakers and investigators to form CIPCA (Cen-
tro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, or Center for Investiga-
tion and Promotion of Peasants). This activist think tank nurtured the
Katarists. In turn, the Katarists spawned a family of parties and movements.
When possible, Albó submerged his talents, hoping that others would take
leadership positions.
The CIPCA group included Víctor Hugo Cárdenas, who became a major
figure in Bolivian politics. Cárdenas translated and familiarized himself with
North American and European anthropologists and historians who wrote
about the Andean region. This gave him the capacity of making a more pro-
found critique of Eurocentric development paradigms, one that foresaw the
disappearance of Indian culture.38
Oblate priests from French Canada established the Institute for Develop-
ment, Investigation, and Popular Peasant Education (INDICEP) in the mining
center of Oruro. INDICEP, along with Albo’s CIPCA, strongly nurtured and
supported a core group of Aymara intellectuals, the Katarists.With the Oblate
priest Gregorio Iriarte as adviser, the Katarists appeared dramatically on the
public stage at Tihuanaco, the premier indigenous site in Bolivia, with a care-
fully crafted statement called the Tihuanaco Manifesto in 1973. Cultural assim-
ilation and exclusive education in the Spanish language were all condemned.
Due to the military dictatorship in power when the manifesto was solemnly
read in the Latin American fashion, the controlled national media paid little at-
tention. However, with the help of the progressive church and some clandes-
tine groups, the manifesto received serious attention at the grassroots.
A few years later, with state authoritarian controls diminishing, Albó
helped young Aymara leaders found the Tupac Katari Center, which fostered
54 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

an enlarged Katarista movement.Within a relatively brief time the movement


took over most of the official government peasant unions and organized its
own union. Aymaras asserted themselves with a degree of political sophistica-
tion and independence not seen since Inca times. They also broadened the
labor movement to bring together urban and mine workers with rural work-
ers.They had a much larger target, though, than labor rights.They took aim at
the state,39 presenting their demands about unequal treatment from the state
for agricultural prices, credit, education, and health.They proposed a series of
revindications about the nature of ethnicity and the basic racial definitions
of national society. The Katarists helped move what had been in Bolivia a
cultural-awareness movement to one with political goals.
By contrast, organizing in the Bolivian lowlands received much less at-
tention of outsiders because of the earlier, stronger, and much better reported
indigenous political activity in the highlands. Both the Katarist organizing and
the experience of Peruvian lowland organizations influenced the Indigenous
Center of Eastern Bolivia (CIDOB). CIDOB started in 1982 and acquired a
misleading name as the Confederation of the Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia,
pretentious in that the group represented relatively small groups in the trop-
ics, while the Unified Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia
(CSUTCB) in the Andean region was, in fact, the principal indigenous or-
ganization in the country. Nonetheless, CIDOB pulled together a coalition of
disparate Indian groups from Bolivia’s tropical regions, including the Assembly
of the Guaraní People.40 Padre Albó and colleagues supplied the assembly with
training in weapons of research and action for Guaraní leaders.

National March and the Media


CIDOB moved the national spotlight toward them in the most dramatic
way possible in Bolivia. In 1990 they marched hundreds of kilometers across
the main highways of Bolivia, moving toward La Paz and demanding “terri-
tory and dignity.” By that time many short-range but often interconnected
radio stations established themselves as primary agents in communication for
Indian peoples.Through decades of gaining an indigenous audience, stations
ingrained in indigenous peoples the habit of following local and national
news through transistor radios. Thus, news of the national march quickly
spread.
Many dozens of these radioemisoras culturales, mostly short-range stations
that spread through the Bolivian and Peruvian Altiplano, were created by
Catholic and Protestant churches.They were fundamental instruments in cul-
tivating indigenous languages and promoting indigenous culture. In a largely
oral culture they were ideally suited to their task.While the seven Indian in-
tellectual centers and many catechetical centers contributed to the formation
of an indigenous intelligentsia, the radio stations carried on a humble, largely
New Voice in Religion and Politics 55

unnoticed task of diffusing indigenous culture and of reinforcing a sense of in-


digenous worth.
Use of citizens’ media, especially the networks of community radio sta-
tions, has been a vital endeavor of the churches. Many of the Catholic stations
were created under the impulse of the progressive church. Clemencia Rod-
ríguez has traced the connection between liberation theology and hundreds of
citizens’ media in Chile but believes these typical of what hundreds of Latin
American Catholic bishops, priests, nuns, and believers made possible else-
where.41 In Rodríguez’s view, hundreds of Catholic collectives created their
own citizens’ media projects from Patagonia to Rio Grande. She summarizes:
“They explored participatory and horizontal communication, concientization
(consciousness raising) and action-research methodologies, all aimed at one
goal: the transformation of passive, voiceless, dominated communities into ac-
tive shapers of their own destiny.”42 These efforts came to play in making the
putatively inert mass of Indians ready to support an indigenous surge to power.
The 1990 march meant walking long distances at extreme altitudes for
peoples from the lowland tropics. Marchers continued on to a crown point
4,700 meters above sea level (above 14,000 feet) outside of La Paz.There they
received a symbolic embrace from the directorate of Bolivia’s major indige-
nous organization, CSUTCB, and together the enlarged column marched to
La Paz. It was a triumphal entrance for a people who thought themselves
overlooked and forgotten in a nation intent on entering a globalized econ-
omy. More than symbolic gains were made.This march brought about passage
of government decrees that for the first time in history recognized indigenous
rights to hold their territorial rights.

Explaining the Emergence of Indigenous Activism


Beyond the intentions of missionaries or indigenous peoples, structural
changes were taking place within Latin American nations in the 1980s. Two
changes can be noted and they appear contradictory. First, more political space
was allowed for political activity by citizens at the grassroots once military and
authoritarian controls lessened. Second, the states that emerged from authori-
tarian governance attempted reforms that fell heavily on the poor and espe-
cially the indigenous peoples. The reforms were stabilization and structural
adjustment programs. New democratic governments advanced neoliberal re-
forms by reducing budgets for agriculture, education, health and other social
services, and programs of protecting peasant lands, access to credit, and agri-
cultural subsidies. In sum the indigenous faced diminishing resources from the
state while real wage income in the agricultural sector from the 1980s de-
creased by 30 percent by 1992.43
In contrast to diminished help from the state and greater poverty, indige-
nous people hoped that in democratization indigenous peoples would take
56 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

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.

Ac h i eve m e nt s and C ont rast s b etwe e n


Bolivia and Pe ru
The most prominent achievement is the new voice that indigenous
groups have gained in national and local politics. Contrary to some expecta-
tions, revolutionaries and leftists were typically not useful in fostering indige-
nous cultural interests. In Bolivia the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario
(MNR), the architect of the 1952 social revolution and frequently the gov-
erning party, fostered assimilation of indigenous groups and undermined their
cultural identity. Another strong party, the Movimiento Izquierdista Revolu-
cionario (MIR), kept cultural themes out of its policy statements until the in-
New Voice in Religion and Politics 57

digenous broke into public consciousness through dramatic long marches, as


the 1990 March for Territory and Dignity.
Within a relatively short time following the election, the first government
of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (1993–1997) with his Indian vice president
Víctor Hugo Cárdenas (one of Albó’s protégés) promoted in 1994 the amend-
ment of the first article of the National Constitution to define Bolivia as a
multiethnic, multicultural state.47 The government also led the successful drive
to recognize as legal native forms of government, such as the allyu or mburu-
vicha. The Law of Popular Participation (1994) created smaller units of gov-
ernment that brought government resources to native units of government. In
an optimistic view, Kevin Healy believes that “Bolivia has begun to re-define
itself.”48
The 1995 Law of Decentralization provided for administrative indepen-
dence at the local and provincial levels. Through these two moves President
Gonzalo Sánchez made bold steps toward taking power away from central
government and placing decisions and financial resources in the hands of local
authorities.49 While the government directed these initiatives toward the
nation as a whole, indigenous were among the most active in seizing on the
opportunities for self-determination offered them. They had to enter into
competition with entrenched local politicians, a difficult political initiation
into rough-and-tumble politics. In places like Concepción, in the heart of
CIDOB country, they battled manipulations, like trucking in voters from
other towns.
Marcela López Levy judges that the two laws (1994 and 1995) constitute
“the most ambitious attempt on the continent to bring power to the people.”
The laws creating stronger municipalities generated a synergy of grassroots in-
digenous organizations and municipal power. In the important elections that
followed decentralization, 464 indigenous leaders were elected to the munic-
ipal council. This represented 29 percent of those elected in the country and
62 percent in the Oruro department, a center of Aymara and Quechua cul-
ture. More than a quarter served as mayor for at least part of their term as
counselors. In the same year 9 of 130 national deputies were elected to Con-
gress. One of their number, Evo Morales, went on to receive the second largest
numbers of votes in the 2002 national presidential election.
Whatever progress Indians made at the local level, their major achieve-
ment has been the constitutional conception of the nation as a multiethnic
state.They also contributed mightily to a widespread multicultural and bilin-
gual educational system, establishment of new government agencies to serve
the indigenous sector, acceptance of indigenous culture as part of the national
patrimony, and the coming from shadows to prominence in national politics.
However successful indigenous have been in Bolivia, Andean indigenous
movements are at the beginning of their challenges to exclusion from full
58 E d wa r d L . C l e a r y

citizenship. In neighboring Peru the ten-year reign of Alberto Fujimori


(1990–2000) continued the suppression of cultural pluralism and indigenous
cultural patrimony. But now even Peru may be headed toward policies that
favor its Indian history and populations. In 2001 Peru elected Alejandro
Toledo, the first indigenous person as president in its history. In general, in-
digenous groups have made what Alison Brysk considers “tremendous gains”
in the struggle for specific goals, such as land rights, recognition of communal
life, and language rights in five Indian nations.50

Peruvian and Bolivian Contrasts


Peru and Bolivia offer contrasts in organizing interests of indigenous pop-
ulations. Whereas Bolivia has one of the most vigorous Indian rights move-
ments in the hemisphere, Peru does not have a national movement and has
little cohesive international presence.51 Nonetheless, Peruvians made three
major advances in law, with hopes that practical implementation might follow.
Peru recognized the multicultural nature of the nation in the Constitution of
1993. In the same year Peru ratified International Labor Convention 169 on
Indigenous and Tribal Peoples. Both instruments granted indigenous peoples
and peasant communities the right to participate in decisions that affect them
and in national decision-making processes. Both instruments recognize a third
legal advance for campesino, rondero, and indigenous communities: the right to
administer customary law. However, to date, lack of a national movement
meant laws were not well implemented.52
Why the difference? The Peruvian Catholic Church, similar to Bolivia’s,
made widespread advances in fashioning persons and communities turned to-
ward obtaining their rights as individuals and as communities. Missionaries,
catechists, and intellectual-cultural centers operated in Peru. Further, despite
the conservative character of the national church leadership, the Peruvian
Bishops Conference through CEAS, the Episcopal Commission for Social Ac-
tion, played an influential role in helping to obtain recognition of customary
law. Local churches organized workshops to try to assure implementation. De-
spite these influences, no national indigenous mobilization arose.
The political authoritarianism of President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000)
and the widespread, prolonged internal war waged by Sendero Luminoso and
other Marxist guerrillas stifled formation of a national movement. Despite the
efforts of Catholic, Adventist, and other religious groups, campesino and in-
digenous organizations lacked the political opportunity that would ignite a
national social movement.53 Authoritarian legacies continued through subor-
dination of rural groups to military control, and lack of independence of the
judiciary blocked the implementation of the favorable legal instruments.
Despite lack of national mobilization, indigenous groups played substan-
tial political roles in Peru.The groups differ markedly depending on whether
New Voice in Religion and Politics 59

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

communities provided the organizational structure, the religious symbols, and


what Lester McGrath-Andino calls the “messiah mechanism” for empowering
the masses.58
Throughout his study of the rondas, Starn was struck by the “impress of
Christianity,” especially through the participation of Catholic catechists and
Protestant pastors.59 In the southern Andean region Catholic leaders, through
the Institute for Andean Pastoral Activity, and Adventists, through their
schools, implemented a policy of empowerment. Their message became this:
Do not remain on the sidelines; we want to hear your voice in building Peru-
vian democracy.
In sum, Peruvian highland indigenous peasant organizations managed to
retake lands that had been taken from them and supplanted local authorities
with their own members.They became, as María Isabel Remy says,“valued in-
terlocutors with the state.”60
Peru’s Amazonian region was affected by guerrilla warfare, globalization
of drug and other trade, and reforms initiated by the military governments
after 1968. In contrast to Andean communities’ emphasis on economic goals,
Amazonian leaders centered their attention on cultural integrity and auton-
omy. Through aid and mentorship from the churches, anthropologists, and
transnational groups, as Cultural Survival, indigenous peoples have organized
well enough to begin to engage the Peruvian state.
Social movement analysts dealing with Peru may have missed something
by concentrating on national and transnational movements and by tending to
abstract from lower-level political actors and activities. By contrast Donna Lee
Van Cott emphasizes grassroots movement, defining the Indian rights move-
ment as “groups working for change in the status and conditions of Indians as
a distinct cultural group.” As John Peeler argues, “It is still largely the case in
Peruvian consciousness that to be peasant is to be indigenous and to be in-
digenous is to be a peasant.”61 In sum, both Andean peasant and Amazonian in-
digenous groups and actors have taken on considerable political roles in Peru.

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

as an ideological asset for defending their rights. They wish to be treated as


men and women with full rights to education, employment, and public voice.

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

tional Politics, Ethnic Resurgence, and Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador,” Latin


American Research Review 36, no. 1 (2001): 7–48.
15. 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), 171–188.
16. Instituto de Estudios Aymaras, Chucuito, near Puno, Peru, was founded by Frank
McGourn, M.M., as part of the Prelature of Juli, under the care of Maryknoll Mis-
sioners; Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos Bartolomé de Las Casas, Cuzco,
was founded by Dominicans, the Province of Toulouse, and has been extended to
include Escuela Andina de Postgrado; Instituto Pastoral Andino, Sicuani, originally
was situated in Cuzco and was created largely by missionary bishops of the South-
ern Andes; Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, was
founded by Jesuit Xavier Albó and maintained ties to Centro de Teología Popular;
and Instituto de Desarrollo, Investigación, y Educación Popular Campesino, Oruro,
was founded by Canadian Oblates.
17. For indigenous views see Nicanor Sarmiento Tupayupanque’s Los caminos de la
teología india (Cochabmba: Editorial Verbo Divino, 1999); Enrique Jorda, “La cos-
movisión amara en el diálogo de la fe:Teología desde el Titicaca,” doctoral diss., Fac-
ulty of Theology, Pontifical Catholic University, Lima; Domingo Llanque Chana, La
cultura aymara: Desestructuración o afirmación de identitad? (Lima: Idea/Tarea, 1990); and
Calixto Quispe et al.,“Religión aymara liberadora,” Fe y Pueblo 4, no. 18 (1987). For
a summary view of indigenous theology from Mexico, see interview with Mario
Pérez in Latinamerica Press 33, no. 25 (July 9, 2001): 3–4.
18. See, for example, the works of Manuel Marzal, Xavier Albó, Diego Irarrázaval, Es-
teban Judd, Miguel Briggs, Hans van den Berg, Luis Jolicoeur, and others. See
equally Pastoral Andina, Allpanchis, Aymar Yatiyawi, Abya Yala News, Revista Andina, Fe
y Pueblo, Búsqueda Pastoral, and publications of CIPCA (Centro de Investigación y
Promoción del Campesinado). Some publications extend beyond the Peruvian-
Bolivian subregion.
19. María José Caram,“The Shape of Catholic Identity among the Aymara of Pilcuyo,”
in Popular Catholicism in a World Church: Seven Case Studies in Inculturation, ed.
Thomas Bamat and Jean-Paul Wiest (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999), 79.
20. See, for example, Diego Irarrázaval, Inculturation: New Dawn of the Church in Latin
America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2000); and other books by him: Teología en la fe del
pueblo (1999); Cultura y fe latinoamericanas (1994); Rito y pensar cristiano (1993); and
Tradición y provenir andino (1992).
21. Irarrázaval, Inculturation, 61.
22. Kevin Healy, Llamas,Weavings, and Organic Chocolate: Multicultural Grassroots Develop-
ment in the Andes and Amazon of Bolivia (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2001), 70.
23. Inculturation as an ideal implies the embodiment of the Christian message within a
specific culture. Inculturation is a neologism, resisted in its early use and now com-
monly accepted in theological circles. The closest equivalent in anthropological
usage may be acculturation.
24. Albó repeats St. Augustine’s description of religion outside of Christianity as “seeds
of revelation,” in Albó,“The Aymara,” 122.
25. See Irarrázaval, Inculturation, on programmatic advances, 50–52.
26. Jorda,“La cosmovisión aymara.”
27. Andrew Orta treats this aspect at length in several publications. See, for example, his
“From Theologies of Liberation to Theologies of Inculturation,” in Organized Reli-
gion in the Transformation of Latin America, ed. Satya R. Pattnayak (Lanham, Md., Uni-
versity Press of America, 1995), 97–124.
28. Interview,Washington, D.C., September 8, 2001.
New Voice in Religion and Politics 63

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

Breaking Down Religious Barriers

Indige nous People and Christian


Churche s in Paraguay

René Harder Horst

Interaction with indigenous people has altered both


Catholic and Protestant religious organizations in Paraguay. Although mis-
sionaries have worked in this area since the seventeenth century, only recently
have the Christian denominations begun to learn from and change as a result
of their contacts with indigenous people.This chapter will show five ways in
which indigenous peoples in Paraguay have interacted with and altered Chris-
tian denominations during the last thirty years. By opposing the complicity of
Christian churches with state attempts to control indigenous means of pro-
duction and ways of life, as well as by refusing to relinquish their land, tradi-
tions, and worldviews, indigenous peoples have changed the practice of
Christianity in Paraguay.
First, the most significant lesson indigenous people have contributed to
churches is that they consider themselves to be different from other subaltern
peoples and refuse to be viewed as campesinos, or peasants. Indigenous protes-
tors have stressed time and again that their people do not “melt down” as part
of the national lower class.
Second, regardless of well-intentioned work by liberation theologians on
behalf of lower classes in Latin America, the Catholic Church has often mis-
takenly neglected to differentiate between the various “oppressed” peoples
among which they minister. Indigenous peoples have not only distinguished
themselves, they have also forced the church to recognize the validity of mi-
nority theologies and different cultural practices as honest expressions of
Christian faith.
Third, if religious leaders take seriously the implications of indigenous
examples, they will no longer be able to maintain traditional separations
between religious denominations. Some Catholic workers in Paraguay now

65
66 Re né Harde r Hor st

recognize Protestant theology as a valid understanding of the divine. Interac-


tion with indigenous people has broadened interdenominational parameters
because many native people consider these traditional boundaries to be arbi-
trary and “white” divisions.
Fourth, rising participation of indigenous people and languages in the
Catholic mass has encouraged the inclusion of the vernacular in popular wor-
ship and in translated scriptures.The resulting rise in religious acceptance and
the broader religious outreach have contributed to ethnic pride movements
among several indigenous peoples in Paraguay.
Finally, large denominations that militantly stood up for indigenous land
rights and opposed regime abuses and development schemes have broadened
traditional spheres of religious influence from proselytism to political defense
and from economic dependency to independent self-determination. This
chapter will follow these five themes as they developed chronologically
throughout the Alfredo Stroessner regime (1954–1989) and will argue that in-
digenous peoples have altered religious organizations.

Paraguay and Its Indige nous People s


By 1960, there were only between sixty and seventy thousand indigenous
people in Paraguay who considered themselves distinct from the majority
population. Seventeen different indigenous ethnicities, from five language
families, were divided geographically by the Paraguay River. East of the river,
indigenous people belonged to the Tupí-Guaraní language family and spoke
some form of Guaraní. In the northern Amambay region the Paï Tavyterã still
practiced subsistence horticulture, though they no longer lived in large tradi-
tional communities. The Avá Guaraní, culturally closest to Paraguayan peas-
ants, lived in the eastern region. Both had contact with peasants and even
worked as peons on ranches or sold yerba mate to outsiders. In the central east
lived the Mbyá, who still fled from the national society and resided in small
isolated agricultural communities.The Ache, who used a form of Guaraní lan-
guage but hunted and gathered in small nomadic bands, lived in a few forested
outposts in the central eastern regions. Some Tupí-Guaraní had also migrated
west of the river in pre-Columbian times, and the Western Guaraní and the
Guaraní Ñandeva, both Guaraní speakers, still lived along the border with
Bolivia.
In the dry western Chaco region lived a variety of non-Guaraní ethnici-
ties from four different linguistic families. The Ayoreode and Ïshïro were
members of the Zamuco language group and traditionally inhabited the
northern Chaco, the first closer to Bolivia and the Ïshïro nearer the Paraguay
River. The larger Enlhit, Angaité, Sanapaná, Guan’a, and Enenlhit ethnicities
belonged to the Lengua-Maskoy linguistic group and lived in central and east-
ern areas of the Chaco between the Mennonite Colonies and the Paraguay
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 67

River. The Yofuaxa, Nivaklé, and Mak’a shared Mataco-Mataguayo linguistic


ties and traditionally lived in central and southern areas of the Chaco. Finally,
the Toba-Qom, of Guaicurú linguistic ancestry, had resided in the southeast-
ern Chaco.1 The western tribes shared ties with natives elsewhere in the Gran
Chaco, an area covering parts of western Paraguay, northern Argentina, south-
eastern Bolivia, and southwestern Brazil.
The indigenous ethnicities had distinct histories of interaction with na-
tional society and with other native peoples, but all shared the legacy of dis-
crimination and inadequate access to legal protection. Some tribes actively
avoided interaction with Paraguayos, but in the eastern region, especially, a few
ethnicities shared close linguistic and cultural traits with nationals. By mid-
century, every indigenous tribe had increased contacts with the national pop-
ulation and had also lost most of their territory as settlers and ranchers
extended crops, cattle, and cut lumber near indigenous settlements. Acceler-
ated economic development caused significant changes within indigenous
communities as they maneuvered transitions of cultural, political, and religious
adaptation and changes.
When Alfredo Stroessner took power in a coup in 1954, he had no inter-
est in these indigenous peoples. The agreement he forged between the Col-
orado Party and the Paraguayan military became the basis for his political
longevity.2 Over the years the dictator remained in control through adept ad-
ministration, periodic waves of repression, and by tolerating corrupt business
opportunities for the upper class.3 The principal goal of the dictatorship be-
came the development of the nation’s economic potential, primarily through
the sale of hydroelectric energy to neighboring Brazil and Argentina, as well
as an active black market in cheap industrial goods and cars. Stroessner paid at-
tention to indigenous peoples and the Catholic Church in Paraguay only
when they came in the way of his economic goals or challenged his authority.

Cath ol i c s, P rote stant s, and I nd i g e nou s


Pe op le i n th e 19 6 0 s
Until the 1960s, Christian denominations in Paraguay held a fairly tradi-
tional view of indigenous people and cultures.When Jesuit proselytism began
in the early seventeenth century, Catholic missionaries depicted the indige-
nous people as savages and children in need of conversion.4 Protestants shared
these demeaning attitudes; when the Anglican South American Mission Soci-
ety began to proselytize in the eastern Chaco in 1888, workers designated the
first indigenous people they contacted as barbarous, weird, and savage.5 The
state also held this view. When Stroessner’s regime created an indigenista
agency (the Department of Indigenous Affairs or DAI) to integrate indigenous
people in 1958, it was patterned after the Mexican model and depicted the In-
dians as defenseless, helpless, miserable, and unorganized.6 It would be years
68 Re né Harde r Hor st

before international contact gradually improved pejorative attitudes toward


indigenous peoples in Paraguay.
The dictator had not been in power very long, however, when changes
became obvious in the Catholic Church, both internationally and in Paraguay.
At the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Pope John XXIII called his con-
gregation to defend human rights as a new way to evangelize the modern
world.7 When Latin American bishops met at Medellín in 1968, they agreed to
emphasize social justice to defend subaltern rights. The shifts in the wider
church soon changed the Catholic approach to proselytism in Paraguay. Be-
fore Medellín bishops had encouraged missions to evangelize indigenous peo-
ples quickly and teach them how to farm, ignoring that Guaraní subsistence
already traditionally depended on raising crops.8 Following the Episcopal con-
ference, bishops canceled plans for proselytism and instead began to stress eco-
nomic assistance to indigenous people.9
The new approaches to mission strategy also reflected a sense of past fail-
ure. Career Catholic missionary José Seelwische recognized that previous
church efforts to proselytize had not succeeded among indigenous people:
“The Catholic attempt to convert the pagan indígenas, civilizing and educat-
ing them towards a Christian way of life [had] not succeed[ed] in any way, and
many missionaries felt their work was impossible.” In his view, Catholics had
failed to “convince the indígenas to abandon their superstitions, pagan rituals,
and primitive customs.” To correct these mistakes, Father Seelwische argued,
after Vatican II missionaries learned to respect indigenous cultures, tolerate re-
ligious freedom, and instead preached universal salvation for all people.10

Indigenous Responses to Protestant Proselytism in Western Paraguay


While the Catholic Church took stock of its success and failures in the re-
gion, a growing Protestant influence was making itself visible in Paraguay. By
1960, Mennonites directed the largest evangelistic effort among indigenous
people. German Mennonite settlers had first arrived in Paraguay from Canada
in 1926, followed by others from the USSR in 1930 and 1947. Thirty years
later the hardworking settlers enjoyed prosperous enclaves.
The Mennonites employed Enlhit from the eastern Chaco, many of
whom converted and settled among them by 1935.11 On the other hand, the
Mennonites refused to settle the Nivaclé, a group of semi-nomadic gatherers
from southwestern Chaco. The Nivaclé, who also arrived in search of work,
were turned away because the Mennonites saw them as culturally unprepared
for agriculture.12
When the worst drought in thirty-three years hit Western Paraguay in
1962 and completely damaged crops, Mennonite farmers laid off their labor-
ers and conditions deteriorated until indigenous people grew desperate. The
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 69

drought brought to a climax the Nivaclé discontent at being consistently de-


nied land. In September 1962, nearly seven hundred desperate Nivaclé rose up
in arms against the Mennonite settlers, marched to colony headquarters, and
demanded equipment and land. Native women, who made economic choices
in matriarchal Nivaclé society, led the uprising because the rebel chief had
promised women that once they left the colonies they would regain their au-
thority. Mennonite administrators calmed the Nivaclé but gave them no land,
so the indigenous people “stomped out of the colonies in anger.”13
The Nivaclé who left the Mennonite Colonies then approached Catholic
missionaries for relief.The Catholic Church resettled five hundred Nivaclé at
the Santa Teresita mission near Mariscal Estigarribia, west of the Mennonites.
Unlike the Mennonites, Catholic priests encouraged the Nivaclé to farm and
made land and tools available to them. The Nivaclé were willing to turn to
whichever mission could provide them with drought relief, regardless of the
particular denominational teaching they received in the process. For people in
difficult conditions, it appears as though doctrinal differences are less impor-
tant than food.
Once they were through the worst of the drought, Mennonites created
new native settlements that included some of the Nivaclé people. By 1963, the
immigrants built four agricultural communities composed of thirty-six in-
digenous villages. Mennonites offered work programs, built health centers and
schools, and granted credit to encourage indigenous people to farm. Concur-
rently, Mennonite evangelism resulted in the creation of one dozen indige-
nous churches by the early 1960s. Religious proselytism and proximity to the
colonists significantly altered indigenous ways of life, especially as it shifted
power from the women to men.14 In effect, as the regime had hoped when it
first encouraged religious proselytism, life near the Mennonites helped inte-
grate the indigenous people into wider markets and labor pools as it intro-
duced non-indigenous worldviews and ways of life.
The Anglican Church also saw widespread indigenous adherence in
Paraguay. Between 1964 and 1970 most of the Enlhit tribe joined the Angli-
can Church.15 Earlier waves of conversion had occurred between 1899 to
1910 and 1926 to 1936, when western Enlhit moved from the central mission
compound of Makthlawaiya to a new mission station.The indigenous Angli-
can component continued to grow, and by 1985 several thousand indígenas
came to form 90 percent of the Paraguayan Anglican Church.16
Still, within their Chaco cultural context as traditional immediate-return
hunter-gatherers, the indigenous people largely viewed missionaries as
sources of provisions and did not clearly differentiate between Christian de-
nominations.This perception grew as indigenous conditions deteriorated and
missionaries provided for all indigenous needs during religious training at
70 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

Indigenous Spirituality Alters Catholic Proselytism


Even as Protestant missionaries reported a rise in indigenous conversions,
the Catholic Church radically changed its mission approach as a result of in-
creasing contact with indigenous people. In the 1960s, growing anthropolog-
ical awareness began to make the Paraguayan Catholic Church more tolerant
of indigenous cultures. Central in this transition was a Jesuit named Bartomeu
Melià, who had earned a Ph.D. in anthropology in Strasbourg. Melià’s field-
work among the Avá and Mbyá Guaraní of Eastern Paraguay in 1969 com-
pletely changed his view of proselytism, for his encounter with Guaraní
spirituality showed that indigenous people already led profoundly spiritual
lives without professing Christianity. Prayer, justice, contemplation, and mysti-
cism were foundations of the Guaraní historical consciousness, Melià argued,
and had permeated indigenous society with so-called “Christian” principles
such as mutual respect and relative economic and political equality to such a
degree that it was unnecessary to catechize them because they already led pro-
foundly religious ways of life. Instead, he urged priests to learn from the
Guaraní experience with respect and humility.25
As general secretary of the Catholic Missions Team between 1972 and
1976, Melià tried to bring Catholic proselytism in line with Vatican II and
Medellín.26 The Jesuit instructed missionaries to foment traditional indigenous
religious expressions rather than conversion to Christianity. Religious work-
ers began to encourage the Guaraní to once again practice their tribal rituals.
After missionaries of the Divine Word Order applied Melià’s advice at the
eastern mission of Akaraymí, for instance, the Avá Guaraní recommenced the
visible practice of their long-supressed jeroky ñembo’é, or prayer dances.
Greater tolerance at Akaraymí encouraged a wave of tribal ethnic identifica-
tion that eventually spread to other Avá Guaraní communities.27 By the mid-
1980s, Guaraní communities again expressed their commitment to traditional
religious values and customs. Similar church-sponsored encouragement of ex-
pression of ethnic identity was also evident elsewhere, as in Chiapas, Mexico,
where Bishop Samuel Ruíz and the workers of Catholic Action created
women’s groups and encouraged tribal fiestas and music.28 In Paraguay, Melià’s
anthropological awareness encouraged missionaries to support indigenous
cultural distinctiveness, and greater toleration slowly led to a rise in ethnic
identification and pride within Guaraní indigenous communities of eastern
Paraguay.

Indige nous Rights, Political Activism,


and Re lig ious De nominations in the 1970s
While the church slowly began to foment indigenous religious expres-
sions, the international community focused on human rights in Paraguay. Ger-
man anthropologist Mark Münzel began to study the Ache people in the
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 73

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

mission action among indigenous populations. Beginning in 1972, the new


agency emphasized support for land claims and improved living conditions, as
well as respect for indigenous identities and cultures.36 The work of the ENM
reflected a clear departure from the previous pattern of church support for the
regime in Paraguay.
The Stroessner regime now faced a predicament: while it had intended to
use missions to help integrate the indigenous people, its traditional ally, the
Catholic Church, had begun to defend indigenous rights and use them to
criticize state policies. The dictatorship instead turned to the Protestant de-
nominations, which still cooperated with plans to make indigenous people
join the peasantry as small farmers and wage earners. Both Anglicans and
Mennonites had long tried to make indigenous people in western Paraguay
into good workers and participants in the market economy.Thus the regime’s
integration program at this early stage coincided closely with their mission
goals. Late in 1973, when Ayoreode peoples began leaving the New Tribes
mission complex at El Faro Moro to beg for work and food in the nearby
Mennonite colonies, the regime used Mennonite and military guards to re-
turn and confine the indigenous people once more to the mission site.37
Meanwhile, Miguel Chase Sardi and Bartomeu Melià designed a program
to assist indigenous leaders in defending their rights, taking charge of their
own future, and constructing new economic infrastructures.38 Chase Sardi
presented the project, named Marandú, the Guaraní term for information, at
the 1972 United Nations Conference on Human Environments. His promises
to inform indigenous people and national society about each other won en-
dorsement from the International Work Group for Indian Affairs.39 The
Catholic University launched Marandú in April 1974, and workers presented
programs in ten indigenous communities throughout the country.40
As the foreign investigation into Ache conditions escalated and the
church began its advocacy work, the regime turned to its most common
method of handling dissent, the use of what in Guaraní is known as mbareté,
or direct force. In April and May 1974, Minister of Defense General Marcial
Samaniego summoned state cabinets, religious agencies, educational institu-
tions, and even the U.S. embassy to a series of meetings and forced them to
sign a statement denying that genocide had taken place.41 “There was great
manipulation,” recalled Melià, in relation to how the minister used threats to
coerce their compliance.42 Immediately, Catholic workers declared to the press
that they had signed this disavowal against their free will and bishops called for
an “exhaustive investigation of this matter with particular regard to the situa-
tion of several Indian groups in Paraguay, whose survival is seriously imper-
iled.” In a statement signed by Melià, the ENM announced, “based on
concrete evidence, properly investigated, the existence of cases of genocide
against the Ache Indians” has been documented.43
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 75

Pan-Indigenous Organization and the Catholic Church


Sponsored by the church, Marandú responded to and assisted with in-
digenous attempts to organize. In October 1974, the project hosted thirty in-
digenous leaders from different countries at the Parlamento Indioamericano
del Cono Sur. For three days leaders met at the Catholic University in Asun-
ción to discuss socioeconomic conditions and finally issued a strong call for
improved attention to the indigenous question by national governments.
Leaders in Paraguay formed a pan-Indian council, by far the most enduring
effect of the conference.44 Participants accused missionaries and states of per-
petrating five centuries of abuse and demanded health care and legal protec-
tion as a minimal reparation. The collective proclamation was a pointed
demand that non-Indians respect indigenous languages and cultures, grant in-
digenous people equality in education and labor, and allow them to own
property communally.45
Following the conference, chiefs began to refer to themselves as victims of
national colonization and abuse when approaching the regime and missionar-
ies. Toba Indians at the Cerrito Catholic mission for the first time accused
missionaries of being “criminals who had and continue to destroy indigenous
people.”46 Over the next years the Toba at Cerrito began to organize them-
selves and pressured authorities in Asunción to return their ancestral lands.
In February 1975, Marandú sent the leaders of the indigenous council
to the Twenty-fifth Annual Latin American Congress at the University of
Florida.47 Later that year, three council delegates attended another encoun-
ter for indigenous leaders in Canada.48 Professor of social ethics Lois Ann
Lorentzen has shown that such transnational alliances enable subaltern com-
munities to fight for their own social and human rights.49 As a result of con-
tact with indigenous people within other nations, back in Paraguay leaders
called on the church to be more inclusive, supportive, ecumenical, and toler-
ant of different cultural expressions.

Indigenous People Influence Protestant Denominations


By 1976, meanwhile, Mennonites in the Western Chaco still managed the
largest evangelism effort to indigenous people in Paraguay. The indigenous
population in the colonies had grown rapidly to 9,500 people and actually
outnumbered the Mennonites themselves. Nearly one-half of these indige-
nous people, however, continued to live at work camps with poor conditions
and no access to land.While missionaries continued proselytism and ranchers
hired them for fieldwork, indigenous people pressured colony administrators
for farm land. In 1976, the Mennonites created the Indigenous-Mennonite
Association for Cooperation Services (ASCIM), an agency to create stable
agricultural settlements for indigenous laborers and “prepare the natives how
to survive in a modernizing world, and become citizens of Paraguay.”50 The
76 Re né Harde r Hor st

new NGO (non-governmental organization) gave landless indigenous house-


holds a few head of livestock, a plow and cultivator, a wheelbarrow, seeds, and
wire to fence their field. By August 1976, indigenous people were settled in
forty-one villages within five “agricultural districts,” farmed a total of 695
five-hectare fields, and marketed crops in cooperatives. Every village built a
school, and fifty-eight indigenous teachers instructed nearly 1,700 students.51
Genuine interest in the welfare of the indigenous laborers motivated the set-
tlement project, but the prospect of cheap labor and the desire to proselytize
must have also influenced Mennonite efforts.
Mennonite administrators may have hoped that farming and Western
tools would change indigenous cultures and religious practices. Rather than
becoming capitalists overnight, indigenous people took advantage of settler
assistance to secure land, jobs, and thus reclaim some economic independence.
Rising mechanization did not increase crop yields because the total area that
indigenous people farmed actually decreased in direct proportion to the use
of new farming implements.52 When indigenous people had land they raised
crops for immediate consumption rather than outside markets and were slow
to embrace values of accumulation.53
While the indigenous people initially rejected certain forms of capitalist
production, they enthusiastically responded to further Mennonite proselytism.
During the 1970s, religious fervor within indigenous settlements grew so in-
tense that it produced veritable messianic movements. Often entire settle-
ments joined the Mennonite Church at once.Anthropologists have made clear
that religious faith grows dramatically especially when it provides means of
satisfaction for those with needs amidst a rapidly changing world.54 Through
their religious revivals, indigenous groups in the Mennonite Colonies may
also have sought access to the spiritual forces they believed had given eco-
nomic success to the Mennonites, in an attempt to additionally improve their
own socioeconomic situation.55
The literature on Protestantism in late twentieth-century Latin America
sheds some light on the mass indigenous conversion to Protestantism in west-
ern Paraguay. Jean Pierre Bastian has shown that rural Mexican peasants em-
ployed new Protestant sects to express both political and social dissent.
Peasants used the new religious expression to create the vision of a world that
contrasted sharply with the surrounding dominant society.The search for re-
ligious autonomy also contributed to conflicts over land occupation.56
Joanne Rappaport has argued similarly that the Páez and Guambiano
communities of southern Colombia successfully discarded unhelpful elements
in outside religious expressions.Additionally, studies in religion change among
Mayas in Central America show that contrary to common criticism along We-
berian lines, Protestantism served not as a “broker between [them and] en-
croaching modernization,” but in some cases as a means for new communities
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 77

of indigenous believers to “intentionally reconstruct and reinforce ethnic


identity.”57 Rather than stifle their militancy, these indigenous people found
that participation in Evangelical sects strengthened movements to reclaim
tribal territories.58
In Ecuador, Quichua peasants used the Protestant Gospel Missionary
Union to improve their social status while revalidating a distinct indigenous
ethnic identity.According to anthropologist Blanca Muratorio,“Protestantism
has been of fundamental importance in reviving the Quichuas’ interest in their
own language . . . and they talk about it with a renewed sense of pride.”59 Re-
ceiving biblical literature in their own language revived the peoples’ interest in
identifying themselves as Quichua. For the Quichua, Protestant affiliation be-
came an “alternate ideology,” a form of resistance to integration that legiti-
mated continued national oppression.60

Evangelical Denominations and Indigenous Ethnic Identity


As had peasants in Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador, indigenous people in
Paraguay also found that participation in Evangelical denominations offered
advantages. Widespread adoption of Evangelical practices helped them resist
regime pressures for integration. Because surrounding Paraguayos were Cath-
olic, Protestantism provided indigenous people in the Chaco clear religious
and cultural barriers with which to distinguish themselves from other peas-
ants. Indigenous communities used Protestant rituals to reorganize their rap-
idly changing societies. Participation in Mennonite churches offered converts
new communal ties and encouraged wider tribal organization. An Enlhit
leader named Selhejic argued that Christianity had brought positive changes
to his community: “Then many of my countrymen were converted, so that
soon the dances and drunkenness in our town were silenced. Instead of that
we sang Christian hymns and we entertained ourselves with games taught by
the missionary.We accepted these games with great satisfaction, because they
served to promote unity and better understanding of community members.”61
Testimonies suggest that indigenous people felt participation in what they
called cultos evangélicos strengthened their unity as a people. Baptisms, harvest
rituals, and weddings replaced former tribal rituals and provided social in-
teraction, bonding between relatives, and younger leadership in their new
setting. Indigenous people therefore employed the cultos, over time, to
strengthen their indigenous political and communal fabric.
From the Mennonite Colonies, indigenous evangelists spread their new
faith to communities on ranches throughout the Chaco. Soon, 80 percent of
adults near the Mennonite Colonies had joined the native Mennonite
Church.62 Indigenous leaders used evangelism to unite tribal members in an
unprecedented manner. By 1980, there were seventeen native Mennonite
congregations with a baptized adult membership of 3,500. Both Nivaclé and
78 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.

Indigenous Land Rights and Christian Advocacy


Meanwhile, land tenure disparities in Paraguay had reached severe pro-
portions. Landless peasants and indigenous peoples alike were desperate. The
rising market for cash crops led to large regime projects to extend cotton, soy-
bean, mint, and rice production in the Eastern Border Region, often onto
indigenous lands. At the same time, a spontaneous surge in peasant land
takeovers overwhelmed the area. By 1976, the regime had issued ninety thou-
sand land titles to peasants from the Central Zone for four million hectares in
eastern Paraguay.73 Many new arrivals saw indigenous territories as theirs for
the taking. Additionally, in the late 1970s, three hundred thousand colonists
from Brazil with agricultural experience and credit moved into the area. Col-
onization soon overwhelmed the regime program and spilled onto indigenous
lands.74
The regime continued development efforts, such as the Caaguazú and
Caazapá Projects, that completely altered the eastern countryside and further
pushed indigenous peoples off their territories. To complicate matters, peas-
ants organized themselves into leagues to reclaim their properties. As the
church extended legal defense to both peasants and indigenous people, it often
found itself hard pressed to divide loyalty between groups struggling to farm
on the same land.75
Growing tensions between peasants and indigenous people provided the
church with another important lesson: indigenous people do not melt down
into the national peasant underclass.This had not always been the case. By the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, historian Thomas Whigham has
shown, indigenous people from the former Jesuit missions lived in twenty-one
pueblos de indios under Franciscan or secular rule and gradually entered main-
stream society and became peasants. This was especially the case after 1848,
when in the name of a new liberal order President Carlos Antonio López di-
vided their communal lands and disestablished the indigenous villages.76 Some
80 Re né Harde r Hor st

isolated communities remained outside official control, however, and in these


settlements indigenous people resisted integration and instead continued
tribal religious practices and communal farming. Since the peasantry used the
Guaraní language, it was these religious beliefs and shared agriculture, in fact,
that provided the clearest cultural differences between indigenous people and
Paraguayan campesinos.
In the late 1970s, as their living conditions and access to land grew even
more difficult, indigenous peoples began to pressure religious organizations to
help them recover land. Indigenous people initiated these contacts, and the
weight of their lobbies was critical in encouraging religious groups to repre-
sent their demands to the state. This was especially the case of the Catholic
Church, which had adopted a somewhat less confrontational approach to the
Paraguayan regime following the 1979 Puebla Episcopal Conference.77 In the
case of Paraguay, the church focus on peasants and indigenous rights attracted
less regime censorship than outright calls for regime change. In this sense, the
Catholic Church could portray itself as socially active without risking direct
reprisals from the Stroessner regime.
Beginning in 1977, three indigenous communities, from the Chaco, that
had lost their lands in the previous decade began to press the regime to return
the territory they claimed as ancestral.Two groups of Toba Maskoy, one squat-
ting at the Mennonite Colonies and another from the upper Paraguay River
town of Puerto Casado, sought to recover territory at Casanillo and Riacho
Mosquito.Their conditions were so difficult that women from the first group
had even aborted their fetuses to show their despair.78 At nearly the same time
a Toba Qom community, nearer to the capital at Cerrito, began to lobby for
the return of the land from which the DAI itself had forcefully evicted them
in September 1969.79 The three groups found ready allies in their struggle in
the Catholic Church, which pressured the regime to solve the land problems
or face responsibility for genocide.80 However, none of these communities
won their battles for land.After the regime had expropriated Casanillo for the
Maskoy, the powerful Casado Company used its influence to ask the army to
remove the Enenlhit at gunpoint to a barren plot further west.81 In another
upset, the Toba Qom also lost their struggle for homelands despite support
from the Catholic Church and the regime’s National Indigenous Institute
(INDI).

De fe nse of Indige nous People s Inf lue nce s


De nominations in the 198 0s
The loss of Casanillo in January 1981 proved a wake-up call for the
Catholic Church. It was at this point that bishops reaffirmed the important
contributions of indigenous cultures to national society and promised again to
support indigenous religious expressions as “adequate sacraments of salva-
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 81

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.

Indigenous Spirituality amidst Cultural Change


Meanwhile, indigenous people continued to identify with their indige-
nous worldviews and religious practices in the midst of the growing threats to
their resources and lands. At the end of August 1987, religious and political
leaders from eighteen Avá Guaraní communities met at Fortuna after having
expelled a regime attack on their timber.Together the chiefs formulated a re-
sponse to outside threats:

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

decided these points: In all Guaraní-Chiripá communities we must


strengthen our Guaraní culture; we need to revitalize our dances.We the
Guaraní need to live like Guaraní if we wish to be authentic.106

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.

Rising Indigenous Support for the Catholic Church


As Catholic Church leaders may have hoped, the prolonged Catholic
legal advocacy increased indigenous support for the Catholic Church in
Paraguay. In December 1987, eight different native ethnicities participated for
the first time in the annual pilgrimage to the Virgin of Caacupé, where they
read scriptures in their own languages to the entire assembly.An Enenlhit man
from Puerto Casado declared his devotion to Catholicism to reporters:“I be-
lieve in God, the Virgin, we are Catholics.We pray much and have faith.We al-
ways pray the rosary and ask to receive our lands, we tried for so many years
and for so long that finally we received them.”108 Lucio Alfert, vicar of the
Chaco, decried the theft of indigenous lands and promised that despite former
exclusion, indigenous people were now finally to be considered full members
of both the church and state.109
In August 1987, the Catholic Church announced that Pope John Paul II
would visit the following year and would meet indigenous groups at the Santa
Teresita Mission in the Chaco.110 With the promise of a papal visit, demonstra-
tions against the dictator reached an unprecedented level. Throughout the
year, frustration in both popular and Colorado Party spheres escalated as peo-
ple responded to the worsening economy and politicians tried to decide who
would succeed the dictator. Protestors demanded an end to state repression,
corruption, and the growing economic crisis. Amidst growing conflict within
his official Colorado Party, the dictator tried to diminish negative publicity
and cancel the papal encounter with native peoples, but the pope insisted on
meeting with Paraguay’s indigenous people.
In the afternoon of May 17, 1988, seven hundred indigenous people
from Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina welcomed Pope John Paul II to the
Chaco at the Santa Teresita Mission. Enenlhit leader René Ramírez, experi-
enced from his people’s long struggle for land, presented their message to the
pontiff. The chief proudly concluded what the indigenous people had asked
him to convey to the pope: “Whites say we should become civilized.We in-
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 85

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

improve their conditions. Due to the deteriorating economic situation in Latin


America as a whole, however, it will take much more than religious inclusion to
better the situation of Paraguay’s indigenous peoples.
This chapter has shown five ways in which indigenous peoples have
changed Christian denominations in Paraguay over the past thirty years. The
most significant point indigenous people have emphasized is that they are dif-
ferent from the peasants, that their beliefs, cultures, and worldviews set them
apart from the national lower classes. While state and churches alike in
Paraguay have traditionally glorified the race mixture process that created a
unique national population, indigenous peoples that managed to continue a
semi-independent existence throughout the twentieth century obviously have
no intention of following the earlier example of accommodation and identity
change.
Second, indigenous people have forced churches to recognize the validity
of minority theologies and different cultural practices as honest expressions of
Christian faith. In a manner similar to the African Independent Churches and
syncretic expressions elsewhere in Brazil and Central America, indigenous
people in Paraguay have shown that they already knew God’s message in their
own cultural expressions and tribal religious rituals prior to the arrival of the
missionaries. The more that denominations can learn to recognize spiritual
truth already incarnated within indigenous religious expressions, the more
they will be able to connect with and learn from indigenous spirituality in an
experience potentially meaningful to all of the peoples involved.
Third, indigenous examples have encouraged churches to lay aside the
traditional separations among the denominations and the minority peoples
themselves and in the process discard what indigenous people have seen as ar-
bitrary and often even “white” divisions. For indigenous people caught within
rapid social change and divorced from a means of independent subsistence,
doctrinal differences between denominations mattered far less than the eco-
nomic benefits they might secure from these new sources of provisions and
labor. Additionally, as indigenous people discovered ways in which the new
church structures served to unite and restore cohesion to their people, they
appropriated outside religious identities to organize their own people into
new and meaningful associations.While these indigenous church structures fit
initially into traditional denominational boundaries, there is a good possibility
that in the future, as with the African Independent Churches, they will form
the foundation for more authentic indigenous denominations that reflect their
own cultural needs and desires.
Fourth, increased indigenous participation in the mass and church events
has encouraged the inclusion of the vernacular in popular worship and trans-
lated scriptures. Religious acceptance and growing ecumenical outreach has
contributed to ethnic pride movements in several large tribes in Paraguay.
Breaking Down Religious Barriers 87

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

Nickson, “Brazilian Colonization of the Eastern Border Region of Paraguay,” Jour-


nal of Latin American Studies 13, no. 1 (May 1981): 111.
75. Serafina de Álvarez, director of CONAPI, Asunción, interview in Asunción, May
24, 2001.
76. Thomas Whigham, “Paraguay’s Pueblos de Indios, Echoes of a Missionary Past,” in
The New Latin American Mission History, ed. Erick Langer and Robert Jackson (Lin-
coln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 179.
77. Miguel Carter, El Papel de la Iglesia en la Caida de Stroessner (Asunción, Paraguay: Im-
prenta Salesiana, 1991), 110.
78. Father José Seelwische, interview, Asunción, June 29, 1995. Historian Barbara Bush
has documented this extreme tactic of resistance in colonial Caribbean society,
where slaves employed herbal abortifacient techniques from Africa to end pregnan-
cies when living conditions became too adverse. Barbara Bush, Slave Women in
Caribbean Society, 1650–1838 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 141–
149.
79. Francisco Cáceres,Toba Qom chief, interview, Cerrito, July 6, 1995.
80. P.W. Stunnenberg, Entitled to Land (Saarbrücken and Fort Lauderdale:Verlag Breit-
enback Publishers, 1993), 105.
81. “INDI impidió ocupación de las tierras de Casanillo, En el Kilómetro 220, la tierra
es inhóspita,” ABC, January 6, 1981, 13; “Traslado es forma de genocidio,” ABC,
January 9, 1981, 13.
82. José Seelwische, O.M.I.,“Una interpretación del indígena desde las categorías de la
Iglesia,” Acción 13, no. 51 (August 1981): 23–25. See also, “El indígena como per-
sona,” Última Hora, August 8, 1981, 7; “El indígena es una persona adulta, madura y
educada,” Hoy, August 7, 1981, 15.
83. R. Andrew Nickson, “Tyranny and Longevity: Stroessner’s Paraguay, Third World
Quarterly, 10, no. 1 (January 1988): 246.
84. “Carta de los Misioneros Católicos a todos los Pueblos Indígenas del Paraguay,”
Asunción, December 1, 1981, Archives of the Catholic National Missions Team,
AENM, 2–3, 7.
85.“Se prepara un proyecto de desarrollo rural de Caazapá,” ABC, August 7, 1980, 16.
86. Ramón Fogel, El Proceso de Modernización y el deterioro de las Comunidades Indígenas
(Asunción: Centro Paraguayo de Estudios Sociológicos, 1989, 62–64.
87. “Reasentamiento debe ser una prioridad,” Hoy, March 11, 1982, 15.
88. “Indígenas pedirán indemnización en tierras a Itaipú Binacional,” ABC, February
26, 1982.
89. See, on the Mbyá-Sommerfeld conflict, René Harder Horst, “Las comunidades in-
dígenas y la democracia en el Paraguay, 1988–1992,” Suplemento Antropológico 36, no.
2 (December 2001): 126.
90. Fathers Antonio Dorado González and José Seelwische,“Plan de Pastoral de la Igle-
sia Católica para los Indígenas del Paraguay,” manuscript, August 1983, 12, Para-
guayan Episcopal Conference, Asunción, Paraguay.
91. Ibid., 36–37.
92. Wallis,“Cuatro Proyectos Indígenas,” 28.
93. Ibid.
94. Ed Brice, interview, Asunción, Paraguay, March 23, 1995.
95. Paraguay: Repression in the Countryside, Americas Watch Report (Washington: Amer-
icas Watch Committee, 1988), 38–39.
96. Ibid., 27.
97. Serafina de Álvarez, Director of CONAPI, interview, Asunción, May 24, 2001.
98. Enenlhit chief René Ramírez, interview,Asunción, Paraguay, May 21, 2001. See also
“Nuestro pueblo no puede seguir así,” Última Hora, January 5, 1984, 10.
92 Re né Harde r Hor st

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

The Catholic Church and the


Maya, 1940 to the Pre se nt

Bruce J. Calder

Scholars familiar with the contemporary life of the


Guatemalan Maya have noted a marked shift in Mayan identity in recent
decades.The results of this shift became particularly visible by the mid-1970s,
as the Maya involved themselves in a movement for socioeconomic and polit-
ical change which swept Guatemala; they engaged the outside world in a va-
riety of new ways, including participation in a guerrilla war. Despite severe
government repression of both the movement for change and the Maya gen-
erally in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Maya seemed to reemerge stronger
than ever. By the early 1990s there was clearly a dynamic “movimiento Maya”
(Mayan movement, also called the Pan-Mayan movement), an effort to pre-
serve and strengthen the Mayan people and their culture and to reshape the
Mayan relationship to the surrounding world on a basis of equality. Explana-
tions of how these changes came about cover a full range of social, economic,
and political factors. But they inevitably include the role which the Catholic
Church played in Indian communities in recent decades.1
This chapter examines the Catholic-Mayan relationship from the 1940s
to the 1990s. It begins with a sketch of the church among the Maya in about
1940 and then details the forces which gradually modified the situation in the
1950s and 1960s, particularly Catholic Action and the arrival of large numbers
of foreign missionaries.The developments of this period were of great impor-
tance to what followed in the 1970s and later. Social and political change,
much of it encouraged by Catholic activity (in such forms as education, com-
munity organizing, and leadership training), provided a solid base for the
innovations of the 1970s.While the ideas of liberation theology and its associ-
ated pastoral activities influenced and partly transformed that base, it remained
an essential influence during the radicalization and mobilization which

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.

Cath ol i c - M ayan R e lat i on s,


19 4 0 to th e 19 6 0 s
The weakness of Catholic institutions under the Liberals deeply affected
the religious status quo in the rural, indigenous areas of Guatemala between
the 1870s and the 1940s. Following the reforms of the 1870s, which disestab-
lished the church, seized nearly all of its assets, and sent a large portion of its
personnel into exile or retirement, there were just a handful of priests and no
nuns in rural areas.2 With priests in just a few of the largest towns, the influ-
ence of formal Catholicism in Indian communities was limited.These priests,
moreover, labored against nearly impossible odds. Parishes were huge, with
many thousands of parishioners spread out over wide expanses of territory,
often in tiny villages which were extremely difficult to reach. Most commu-
nities saw priests very infrequently, perhaps once or twice a year.3 This re-
mained the typical situation in most of Indian Guatemala well into the 1950s
and 1960s.
Anticlerical critics of Catholicism would have said that the church,
Interwoven Histories 95

though weak, was an institution which continued to exploit the Indians. In a


certain sense, even from the Catholic point of view, this was true, since rural
Catholicism was on a fee-for-services basis; the priests’ survival depended on
their charging for masses, baptisms, marriages, processions, and virtually all
other ritual functions.This enabled rural priests, though poor by the standards
of the wealthy, to maintain a standard of living which was far above most of
their parishioners.
In 1943 a priest newly arrived in Huehuetenango from the United States
portrayed the old system with little sympathy: “A greedy clergy of none too
reputable origin, taking advantage of the dire scarcity of priests, imposed a
price for every priestly function and even went to the limit of inventing min-
istrations for profit.”4 Anthropologist Ruth Bunzel noted of a much beloved
priest in Chichicastenango that, except for one local landowner, the priest
“lives better and more lavishly and has greater economic security than any
other person in town.”5 A priest’s income also enabled him to maintain his sta-
tus within the ladino minorities which had formed a dominant sector in many
Indian communities since the nineteenth century. The priests, along with
ladino officials, landowners, and merchants, played a central role in the ladino
power structure; they were outsiders, ladinos themselves, or foreigners (usually
Spanish though occasionally from other countries).6

The Redevelopment of Rural Catholicism, 1940s–1960s


In the 1940s there were two principal developments affecting the rela-
tionship of the Catholic Church and Mayan communities. The first was the
gradual arrival of foreign missionaries in the clerically underserved rural areas
of the country, a process which began with a trickle of new personnel in the
late 1930s, increased somewhat after 1944, and became a veritable flood after
1954.The second was the formation in the 1940s of Acción Católica Rural, a
movement within the church to revitalize Catholicism in rural areas. Both
these developments are partly associated with the slight softening of the long
hostile relationship between the Catholic Church and the state under the dic-
tator Jorge Ubico in the 1930s.This trend continued in the period 1944–1954
after the collapse of Liberalism led to change-oriented, “revolutionary” gov-
ernments under Presidents Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz, who seemed
less concerned with anticlericalism and generally favored increased openness
and democracy. The Guatemalan church benefited from this changing situa-
tion under the leadership of an energetic new archbishop, Mariano Rossell
Arellano, appointed in 1939.7

Acción Católica Rural


Acción Católica Rural developed in the early 1940s under the patronage
of the new archbishop and under the direct leadership of an auxiliary bishop of
96 Bruce J. Calde r

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

The New Foreign Presence


A second impetus to change the relationship between the Catholic
Church and the indigenous population of Guatemala resulted from the activ-
ities of new groups of foreign priests (and later nuns) who began working in
Mayan communities in the 1940s. By 1966 foreign religious workers had
come to constitute 85 percent of the clerical population of Guatemala, with
the percentage even greater in many rural Mayan areas than elsewhere.14 Be-
cause of the innovative religious and social orientation of many of these new
arrivals, plus their outside financial support, they had a major impact on the
Catholic Church and on the communities in which they served.The increas-
ing clerical population was paralleled by institutional growth, with the num-
ber of dioceses (or dioceses in formation) expanding from three in 1950 to
twelve in 1969. Since nearly half of these new jurisdictions were in the west-
ern highlands (and a number of others had significant indigenous popula-
tions), the Maya and their localities received ever greater amounts of attention.
Among the first of the newly arriving missionaries were the U.S.-based
Maryknolls, who in 1943 began to work in the Department of Huehuete-
nango, a heavily Mayan area on the northwestern Guatemalan border next to
the Mexican state of Chiapas.15 The Maryknolls initiated their work with or-
dinary pastoral activities, including Acción Católica, but soon branched out
into social endeavors. The rural primary schools and clinics which they cre-
ated in Mayan communities became a model for other missionary groups op-
erating in places outside of Huehuetenango. In the late 1950s the Maryknolls
invited the Christian Brothers to open a high school, thus opening the way for
a limited number of indigenous students to go on to university education.16
The system of education created by the Maryknolls was part of a larger
project. They came to believe that modernization and development were es-
sential to their work, both practical and religious, in Indian communities.They
believed that the creation of schools, clinics, cooperatives, credit unions, im-
proved transportation, and agricultural innovation would enable the Maya to
better their lives economically and in the long run to integrate more advan-
tageously into national structures which had previously served to exploit
them.17 In religious terms, schools and literacy offered a way to facilitate
Catholic religious life in Mayan communities; education offered the prospect
of better-prepared catechists and, in the future, groups of Indian priests and
nuns who could replace the missionary structure.
Developmentalism, the name which was later attached to the Maryknoll’s
habit of promoting social and economic goals along with religious ones,
98 Bruce J. Calde r

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

Conflicting Visions, Community Factions


The fact that foreign personnel brought their own ideas about religious
work and about the proper functioning of society caused friction and conflict
both within clerical circles and with various elements of the laity. In Mayan
communities, depending on the situation, problems could develop with either
Interwoven Histories 99

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

Priest-parishioner conflict was not, however, limited to ladinos. It often


arose between foreign missionaries and their Indian parishioners as well, most
frequently over the key elements of Mayan religiosity, the lay brotherhoods
(cofradías), and the traditional religious beliefs and practices (costumbre). The
cofradías, originally organized by Catholic priests in the colonial period, had
moved far from Catholic orthodoxy and control. During the long absence of
priests, they had become the guardians of the syncretistic Mayan-Catholic tra-
dition; they also came to control the church, the church’s property, and com-
munity ceremonial life. Frictions which arose from this state of affairs had long
been an element in Catholic-indigenous relations but they were minimized
by the fact that before the 1940s priests were few, overworked, and largely de-
pendent upon community cooperation and financial support. Probably most
important, they seldom spent time in most communities.28
The arrival, beginning in the 1950s, of large numbers of foreign mission-
aries, many of whom came from North America and northern Europe, appre-
ciably changed the relationship between the church and Mayan religious
traditionalists. Many of the new priests had an activist agenda, were indepen-
dent of local financial support, and were determined to control religious life
in the areas where they lived and worked. This, plus their ignorance, misun-
derstanding, and lack of sympathy for the religious aspects of Mayan culture,
eventually led to attacks on the traditional religious practices known as cos-
tumbre, which they saw as paganism or, at best, unorthodox beliefs and prac-
tices. They also worked actively to undermine Mayan priest practitioners. In
the process they frequently alienated the cofradías and other followers of the
Mayan religious tradition.29
Among the Maya, foreign clerics found both allies and opponents. The
priest’s usual base of support and the organizational basis of his struggle for or-
thodoxy and control was Acción Católica. He used this new group to separate
his followers from the traditional religious life of the community, while he at-
tempted to provide them with a new understanding of Catholic doctrine and
ceremonial life.At the core of the organization were the catechists, who served
as his chief agents of proselytization. In opposition were the members of the
cofradías and other followers of traditional ways.30 In some instances a deep
hostility grew up between the two factions and on more than a few occasions
the cofradías and their supporters ran priests out of town with threats or vio-
lence. In these situations, the priest could count on the backing of his bishop
and, on some occasions after 1954, of the state in the form of the governor or
even the military.31
In many or perhaps most Mayan towns and villages, the contest between
these two forces was very gradually won by the priest as he gained converts to
Catholic Action. His victory debilitated and sometimes destroyed the tradi-
tional religious system, driving costumbre underground and contributing
Interwoven Histories 101

(often with other forces) to the gradual weakening of cofradías. Nonetheless


these struggles left lasting divisions in many communities, divisions which
would have important implications in later years.
Aside from the divisive results of the church’s program in Mayan areas,
there were other problems. One of the most obvious was that there were vir-
tually no Catholic priests of Mayan descent, neither among the Guatemalans,
nor (obviously) among the foreigners. In the 1940s and 1950s there was only
one identifiable Indian priest in Guatemala.32 A second problem was that both
Guatemalan and foreign priests were often extremely insensitive to indige-
nous ways. Because there was little or no seminary preparation relative to
Mayan language and culture, new priests, whether Guatemalan ladinos or for-
eigners, arrived ignorant of both.33 Except in a few individual cases of ethno-
logically or linguistically oriented priests, there was little conscious effort to
learn more.This is hardly surprising. Aside from the racism which influenced
many clerics, their training emphasized the Eurocentric, hierarchical, clerical,
paternal notions which dominated the Catholic Church before the Second
Vatican Council.There was scarcely a thought of learning from the laity, Maya
or otherwise.
By the 1970s a modern, European-style Catholicism appeared to be as-
cendant institutionally, although there was wide variation from community to
community. The word institutionally is important here. While the Catholic
Church and its priests had recaptured control of the churches and probably
had the formal allegiance of the majority of the Indian population, it has be-
come very clear over the years that traditional Mayan beliefs and practices
continued to exist beneath the surface of Catholic orthodoxy, remaining an
integral part of the lives of many if not most Mayan Catholics.Apart from this
dual structure, a variety of Protestant denominations and churches began to
develop, slowly at first and with great rapidity after 1970.Thus there came to
exist a variety of religious practices in Mayan areas.
Major developments in the religious life of Guatemala occurred in the
decades beginning with the 1940s. It is likely that among the most important
of these in the long run were the changing Catholic-Mayan relationship and
the creation of new religious structures in rural areas; they are not only im-
portant elements in the history of mid-twentieth-century Guatemala but are
also critical to understanding the better known and more dramatic develop-
ments of later decades.

Mobilization and Radicalization in Church


and Society: 196 0s to the Late-1970s
During the mid-1960s to the late-1970s a second phase of the post-1940
relationship between the Catholic Church and the Maya unfolded.The forces of
change which Acción Católica, developmentalism, and Christian Democracy
102 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.

The New Paradigm: Liberation Theology


In rural Guatemala the growing influence of liberation theology brought
change to the two dominant movements of earlier decades, Acción Católica
Interwoven Histories 103

and the developmentalist model of missionary work. When this transforma-


tion occurred, it brought organizational changes, an increased emphasis on the
role of the laity, and a shift in the content of the church’s message. In some
cases Christian base communities (comunidades de base) emerged; these small
local Catholic lay groups were responsible for conducting the religious life of
the community during the frequent periods when no priest was available.The
new groups expanded the role of the catechists, who moved from being mere
assistants to being intermediaries between the priest and the base communi-
ties and sometimes acting in his stead (directing religious services in distant
communities and distributing communion, for example). For the first time
some women began to serve as catechists and, more commonly, as leaders of
base communities. In terms of the message there was also a shift.The former
focus on orthodox Catholic practice and individual moral and spiritual mat-
ters increasingly transformed into a concern with broader issues, particularly
those of social, economic, and political justice.What remained unchanged was
the traditional three-step methodology (see-judge-act) of Acción Católica.35
The reader should note that, except in some clerical circles, the actual term
“liberation theology” was used infrequently in Guatemala and least of all in
public.This probably resulted from the extremely polarized and dangerous po-
litical environment, as well as from the fact that Accíon Católica was very well
established, especially in Maya areas.Yet the liberationist concepts and practices
were very definitely present and led to widespread changes in Guatemalan re-
ligious life. Similarly, other terminology associated with liberation theology was
not widely used. There were Christian base communities in Guatemala, but
they were not usually referred to as base communities, especially in rural areas
where Catholic Action had been strong. Luis Samandú and Oscar Sierra note
that often in Guatemala the “new pastoral model” of liberationist clergy “was
supported on the base of Acción Católica,” that, in other words, the structures
of Catholic Action were modified to accommodate new ways of thinking and
acting. Similarly, the leaders of what were in essence base communities were
most often referred to as catequistas and less often as delegados de la palabra (del-
egates of the word). Liberationist institutions were collectively identified as as-
sociated with la Iglesia de los pobres (the church of the poor).36
While the rise of liberation theology is associated with the decline of the
dominance of the developmentalist model of missionary work, development
projects continued (and some continue even today). But other factors were at
work. The decline occurred, at least in part, because some of the main advo-
cates of developmentalism themselves began to question whether their efforts
would ever make a substantial difference to the lives of most poor Guate-
malans as long as the politics and economy of the nation continued to be con-
trolled by an elite which seemed indifferent to the general welfare. This
realization opened them to new approaches.The liberationist idea was both to
104 Bruce J. Calde r

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

had begun under the revolutionary governments of 1944–1954. While this


was important in itself, Indian political involvement was one of several factors,
including the activities of modernized Catholicism, which fostered communi-
cation between Mayan villages and linguistic groups, as well as with ladinos
and other non-Maya. Political workers, catechists, cooperative leaders, rural
union organizers, and health workers began to participate together in meet-
ings, workshops, and training at the diocesan, regional, national, and even in-
ternational level.

Mayan Cultural and Political Mobilization


The breaking down of old barriers helped to produce several new phe-
nomena in the later 1970s. One of these was the many-faceted movimiento Maya
(Maya movement), which had a primarily cultural focus (though there were
clear political implications as well). Another, more obviously political, was
Mayan involvement in the general mobilization of Guatemala’s “popular sec-
tors,” particularly their key role in the new peasants’ organization, the Comité
de Unidad Campesino (CUC, the Committee for Campesino Unity). Also
critical was increasing Mayan support for and participation in the guerrilla or-
ganizations which began to operate in the western highlands in the 1970s.41
A nascent Mayan movement began to emerge in the mid-1970s, the re-
sult of the gradual process of the redefinition of Mayan identity in the 1960s
and 1970s. It had various roots, some within Mayan culture itself and some,
like the changes wrought by foreign missionaries, external.This shift was not
only important for how Maya viewed themselves and their possibilities, but
for the way they dealt with the ladino and outside world.
Several early manifestations of the Mayan movement emerged in the
1970s in connection with the efforts of various individuals in some of the dio-
ceses to create a pastoral indígena, a sensitive and coherent pastoral policy for
working in Mayan communities. One of the leaders of this work was Jim
Curtin, a Maryknoll priest who organized what he called the Comisión de
Pastoral Indígena. Curtin viewed education as essential; he organized seminars
in order to educate church personnel about indigenous culture and the vari-
ous forms of oppression—economic, social and political—which affected the
Maya.42 Among the participants in one of the seminars was one of the few
indigenous Catholic nuns, a young K’iche’ (Quiché) Mayan woman who
worked as a primary schoolteacher.43 What she learned in the seminar, she
says, caused a conversion, completely changing her perception of herself and
her people.Wanting to spread this message, she began to speak at meetings and
workshops and on local Catholic radio stations with Mayan audiences. In ad-
dition she became a teacher in Father Curtin’s seminars, becoming a visible
leader in the Indian consciousness field.Then she worked, not without oppo-
sition, to create a center within her religious congregation to train Mayan girls
106 Bruce J. Calde r

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 Violence, 1978–1984


The savage repression of the late 1970s and early 1980s has become
known generally by a matter-of-fact but brutally correct name, la violencia. In
Mayan towns and villages this involved the murder and disappearance of many
individuals; some of them were activists of one sort or another but many were
uninvolved in the processes of change. In some areas entire towns suffered
near extermination as they became the targets of a scorched-earth policy car-
ried out by the military, a policy which involved the killing of many thousands
and the eradication of some four hundred Mayan villages. Hundreds of thou-
sands fled, seeking refuge in mountain hideaways, in the cities, and in foreign
countries.49
The violence was not narrowly targeted, yet there was a certain logic to
it. For the Catholic Church the weight of the repression tended to fall on ac-
tivist clergy and laity, particularly those who were associated with liberationist
views and outreach to the poor. Fifteen priests were murdered between 1978
and 1985, as well as thousands of catechists and other lay workers; at the same
time threats and the general climate of terror forced thousands more into
flight or inactivity. But as in society generally, the repression was not narrowly
targeted. Virtually all programs and institutions, religious and secular, which
the ultra-conservative right associated with change or with assistance to Gua-
temala’s impoverished majority, particularly the flourishing cooperatives, were
seen as subversive and their leaders and participants targeted.
108 Bruce J. Calde r

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

In the Afte rmath of the Viole nce,


19 85 – 19 9 0 s
The violence had a great impact on both the Catholic Church and the
Maya. Both parties were changed, the situation had changed and, as a result,
their relationship changed. The last section of this chapter will examine this
from two perspectives. The first will treat the church’s introspective analysis
of past pastoral policies and how, in light of the disasters brought on by the
110 Bruce J. Calde r

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.

Reevaluating Catholic Policies


In the mid-1980s a partial decline in the level of repression allowed reli-
gious workers to begin to work more freely in Guatemalan villages.Their re-
turn to scenes of suffering and devastation caused Catholic pastoral workers
and the hierarchy to begin a gradual reexamination of the relationship of the
church and the Maya in light of the violence. Bishops, priests, nuns, and the
laity, among them ladinos, Mayas, and foreigners, participated in this informal
but serious process of reflection.The resulting analysis posited that fundamen-
tal errors underlay some of the pastoral policies of the Catholic Church in the
period of the 1940s to the 1970s.
The ladinos and foreigners who had been working in indigenous com-
munities (many of them progressives) were motivated both by guilt at what
had happened to those with whom they had been working and by their desire
to understand how disaster had overtaken the church’s seemingly successful
work in rural areas. On the indigenous side a major motivating factor was a
growing Mayan self-consciousness and self-confidence. This in turn was part
of an expanding movement for Mayan revindication in Guatemala, particu-
larly a desire to preserve their culture and to have some control over the insti-
tutions which affected their lives.
Out of the process of reevaluation came not only a critique of past church
policies but also an effort to formulate new ones. The past did seem to hold
some possible models for the future—Maryknoll Father Curtin’s pre-violence
work with Mayan culture is one pertinent example. Many dioceses created
new offices for designing and implementing a pastoral indígena, a policy fo-
cused specifically on Mayan issues. In 1990 the Episcopal Conference created
an official Comisión Nacional de Pastoral Indígena.
The post-violence reconsideration of pastoral policy convinced many that
Interwoven Histories 111

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.

Into the 1990s: Resolving Problems of War and Peace


The second major development in Catholic-Mayan relations in the post-
violence period was a dramatic shift in the agenda of the Catholic Church as
it attempted to deal with the results of the violence of the preceding years, vi-
olence which had destroyed the lives of many thousands of its members and
much of what its pastoral workers had created in previous decades. I have
written elsewhere that the agenda of the Catholic Church in Guatemala
changed significantly in the 1980s, that the issues which had been the focus of
a progressive minority in the 1970s became the agenda of the hierarchy and
thus the church’s official policy in the late 1980s. I have also argued that an es-
sential reason for this shift was the experience of the extreme violence of the
114 Bruce J. Calde r

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

rights of individuals and communities and a hard-fought campaign against im-


punity and for the rule of law. In 1994 it also created the Proyecto Interdioce-
sano de Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, usually called REMHI (the
Interdiocesan Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory), a very suc-
cessful effort to document the tens of thousands of human rights crimes com-
mitted during the thirty-six-year civil war which ended in 1996, and helped
sponsor the original exhumations of mass graves, nearly all of them of Mayan
villagers. The murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi in April 1998, who directed
these programs, stands as a backward testimony to their importance, both to
those who want justice and change and to those who oppose them.71

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

aftermath; see also Ricardo Bendaña Perdomo, La iglesia en Guatemala: Síntesis


histórica del Catolicismo (Guatemala: Librerías Artemis-Edinter, 1996). Other books
on the twentieth-century Guatemalan church include José Luis Chea, Guatemala:
La cruz fragmentada (San José, Costa Rica: DEI, 1988); and Bruce J. Calder, Crec-
imiento y cambio de la Iglesia Católica Guatemalteca, 1944–1966 (Guatemala: Semi-
nario de Integración Social Guatemalteco, 1970).
3. A firsthand account of the difficult task facing Salesian priests in rural Alta Verapaz
in the 1930s and 1940s appears in Luis Z. de León V., Carchá, una misión en Guate-
mala (San Salvador, El Salvador: Instituto Técnico Ricaldone, 1985), 67–93.Various
anthropologists have noted the situation of the church in the rural areas before
1950. Among them, see Maud Oakes, The Two Crosses of Todos Santos, Bollingen Se-
ries XXVII (New York: Pantheon, 1951), 53; Oliver LaFarge, Santa Eulalia:The Re-
ligion of a Cuchumatán Indian Town (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947),
79–82; Charles Wagley, “The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village,”
American Anthropologist 51, no. 4, part 2 (October 1949): 50, for various towns in
Huehuetenango in the 1930s; Charles Wisdom, The Chorti Indians of Guatemala
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), 373; and John Gillin, The Culture of
Security in San Carlos, Middle American Research Institute, No. 16 (New Orleans:
Tulane University, 1951) 78, on San Luis Jilotepeque in the 1940s. See also Hol-
leran, Church and State, 235–236.
4. Clarence J.Witte,“Thoughts and Jottings for October in Soloma,” October 17–31,
1943, Maryknoll Archive, Maryknoll, N.Y.
5. Ruth Bunzel, Chichicastenango: A Guatemalan Village, Publications of the American
Ethnological Association XXII (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J. J. Augustin, 1952), 88.Wagley,
“The Social and Religious Life,” 50 and 121, notes the fee-for-services system in
Santiago Chimaltenango. In an appendix to Wagley’s book, Juan de Dios Rosado,
“Excerpts from a Diary of a Visit to Santiago Chimaltenango,” 132–133, indicates
that a priest visiting San Juan Atitán for a three-day fiesta took in $150 for two
masses and numerous baptisms. Benjamin N. Colby and Pierre L. van den Berghe,
Ixil Country (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 121 and 134–135, re-
port that during fiestas the priest performed “baptism in an assembly line system” at
one dollar per head, twice or more the average local daily wage in 1967.
6. On the relationship of rural priests to their parishioners, see LaFarge, Santa Eulalia,
80–81 and Holleran, Church and State, 237. At least a few priests identified with
their Indian parishioners, cooperating with cofradías and other elements of popular
Catholicism. Bunzel, Chichicastenango, x, notes the famous case of Father Ildefonso
Rossbach, a German-American priest who worked in Momostenango and Chichi-
castenango.
7. The irony of this situation is obvious since Rossell became one of the leading ac-
tors in the destruction of the revolutionary government in 1954. For more on
Rossell Arellano and the development of the church during his twenty-five-year
period as archbishop, see Chea, Guatemala, 67–98; and Bendaña Perdomo, La iglesia,
115–138.
8. Acción Católica Rural was originally known as the Apostolado Seglar de Edu-
cación.Agustín Estrada Monroy, Datos para la historia de la iglesia en Guatemala, vol. 3
(Guatemala: Tipografía Nacional, 1979), 545–546 and 556. Mariano Rossell Arel-
lano, “Carta Pastoral sobre la Acción Católica,” March 12, 1946. The various cartas
pastorales (pastoral letters) were and are published by the individual dioceses at more
or less the same time the letters are read in all Catholic Churches.The collective car-
tas pastorales, signed by some or all of the bishops, have been issued by the Confer-
encia Episcopal (CEG, the Episcopal Conference) since the early 1960s. These
printed letters were widely circulated and most diocesan archives and research li-
braries hold some or all of them.The bishops’ collective letters and comunicados (press
120 Bruce J. Calde r

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

24. H. Gerberman, “Guatemala-Ixtahuacán Diary for January 1952,” Maryknoll


Archive. Many missionaries recalled the existence of this bias in interviews. Colby
and van den Berghe, Ixil Country, 138, report a similar attitude among Spanish
priests working in the Ixil area in the 1960s. Some anthropologists have judged
ladino religious culture to be weak in comparison to that of the Maya; for example,
see Bunzel, Chichicastenango, 13, LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, 5, and Wisdom, The Chorti
Indians, 372.
25. Interview with Father Joe Nerino, M. M., March 14–15, 1989.
26. Thomas Melville and Marjorie Melville describe the process of coming to this re-
alization in Whose Heaven,Whose Earth? (New York: Knopf, 1971). Interview with
Father Joe Nerino, M.M., March 14–15, 1989, regarding Aguacatán.
27. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 69–70; Stoll, Between Two Armies, 172.
28. LaFarge, Santa Eulalia, 80–81, describes this situation in Huehuetenango. Flavio
Rojas Lima, La cofradía: Reducto cultural indígena (Guatemala: Seminario de Inte-
gración Social, 1988), provides material on the history of cofradías in San Pedro Jo-
copilas, El Quiché, and Guatemala generally.Women were also active in cofradías.
29. For example, Falla, Quiché Rebelde, 443–445, and Colby and van den Berghe, Ixil
Country, 138. A Maryknoll priest describes his intolerant and even belligerent en-
counter with Mayan customs in Melville and Melville, Whose Heaven, chapters 6
and 7. One should note that the few Guatemalan priests were no more sensitive to
Mayan culture, but they were less apt than foreigners to confront it directly.
30. Interview with Father Joe Nerino, M. M., March 14, 1989, regarding Aguacatán.
Stoll, Between Two Armies, 47–53, describes the same in the Ixil area.There are vari-
ous reports of over-zealous catechists causing friction; see Warren, Symbolism,
97–103; Colby and van den Berghe, Ixil Country, 138–139; Jim Handy, Revolution in
the Countryside (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 143; and
John M.Watanabe, Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1992), 198–199 and 204.
31. Calder, Crecimiento y cambio, 99–100; Colby and van den Berghe, Ixil Country, 138;
Roland H. Ebel,“Political Modernization in Three Guatemalan Indian Communi-
ites” in Community Culture and National Change, ed. Richard N. Adams et al., Mid-
dle American Research Institute No. 24 (New Orleans: Tulane University, 1972);
Falla, Quiché Rebelde, 444–445; E. Michael Mendelsohn, Los escándolos de Maximón
(Guatemala: Seminario de Integración Social, 1965). Interviews with Evelio López,
March 14, 1989, concerning Chiantla, and Father James Flaherty, M. M., May 1989,
regarding Olintepeque. John Watanabe, “Enduring yet Ineffable Community in the
Western Periphery,” in Guatemalan Indians, ed. Smith, 195–299; and Watanabe, Maya
Saints, 194–199. Watanabe found that in Santiago Chimaltenango there had been
relatively little opposition to Acción Católica and that the catechists wielded con-
siderable power as mediators between the priest and laity.
32. This priest, Celso Narciso Teletor, openly identified with his Indian origins, pub-
lishing various studies on Mayan language and culture. In the mid-1950s a second
Indian priest, from a prosperous and educated Quiché family in Quezaltenango, was
ordained. Interview with Marco de Paz, September 6, 1989.
33. Salesian missionaries in Alta Verapaz were part of a general pattern; they worked
among the Q’eqchi’ (Kekchí) Maya for more than thirty years before one of the
priests learned their language. See de León V., Carchá, 129.
34. Both the Mayan and the Catholic innovations can be traced back to trial initiatives
begun in the 1970s.
35. An analysis of three instances of changing pastoral policies is the main focus of
Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala. Berryman, Stubborn Hope, 11–13, gives an ex-
ample from Izabal; and Watanabe, Maya Saints, 198, an example from Huehuetenango.
36. Samandú, Seibers, and Sierra, Guatemala, 77–81 and 107–108.
122 Bruce J. Calde r

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

See Richard Wilson, Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q’eqchi’ Experiences (Norman:


University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 266.
61. Interview with Antonio Gallo, S.J. (Guatemala City), June 1, 1989. For a much fuller
discussion of inculturation, see Virginia Garrard-Burnett, “‘God Was Already Here
When Columbus Arrived,’” in this volume.Also see the chapters by Cleary and oth-
ers in Crosscurrents in Indigenous Spirituality, ed. Cook.
62. I have discussed this new agenda and its roots in several essays: See Bruce J. Calder,
“The Role of the Catholic Church and Other Religious Institutions in the
Guatemalan Peace Process, 1980–1996,” Journal of Church and State 43 (fall 2001):
773–797. The others were presented at conferences of the Latin American Studies
Association; these include “The Origins of the Human Rights Programs in the
Guatemalan Catholic Church,” (Miami, Florida, March 2000); “The Catholic
Church and Democratization in Guatemala, 1960s–1990s,” (Washington, D.C., Sep-
tember 2001);“The Catholic Church and Guatemala’s Refugees, 1975–1996,” Dal-
las,Texas, March 2003).
63. “Unidos en la esperanza,” July 25, 1976, in Conferencia Episcopal Al servicio, 126–
159. Archbishop Mario Casariego did not sign this letter.
64. “Para construir la paz,” June 10, 1984, in CEG, Al servicio, 349–378.The reader must
remember that this was not the agenda of all Catholics, of clerics or the laity, in the
mid-1980s, nor would it be in the future.
65. The Protestant individuals and denominations were generally from the “historical”
Protestant churches, as opposed to the Pentecostals, who participated only slightly.
66. Calder, “The Role of the Catholic Church . . . in the Guatemalan Peace Process,”
783–797;Warren, Indigenous Movements, chapter 2.
67. “Accompaniment” (acompañamiento) refers to the pastoral practice of being with
those who are suffering from adversity, thus demonstrating concern and solidarity
and providing human support.
68. These activities became quite difficult during the height of the violence, when
Catholic pastoral workers (clerical and lay) and their projects, as well as others
working for social and economic change, came under the same murderous attack as
the Maya themselves. Some Protestant denominations were also involved in relief
efforts. In the 1990s; the United Nations carried on large-scale projects with
refugees and human rights monitoring.
69. Interviews with Alfonso Huet (Cobán), March 1, 1989; Bishop Gerardo Flores
(Cobán), September 27, 1989; Bishop Julio Cabrera (El Quiché), May 20, 1999.
70. “Mobilidad Humana” (human mobility) refers to the movements of refugees.
71. Calder, “The Origins of the Human Rights Programs,” 20–21; Arzobispado de
Guatemala, Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala, pamphlet
(Guatemala: ODHAG, 1998).
72. It is important to note that Protestant churches, working on a smaller scale, also
contributed greatly to the process of change in Mayan communities all during this
period.
Chap te r 6

“God Was Already Here


When Columbus Arrived”

Inculturation Theology and the


Mayan Moveme nt in Guatemala

Virginia Garrard-Burnett

This chapter will explore theological innovation and issues


of identity and resurgence among the indigenous Mayan population of Gua-
temala. Specifically, this work will examine the efforts of Catholic and Protes-
tant clergy to “inculturate” Christian theology; that is, to decontextualize
Christian narratives from their Western cultural references and reposition
them within a Mayan telos, or cosmovision. Inculturation theology, which has
its roots in Vatican II, has a powerful presence in Africa and other postcolonial
regions.1 Yet in the case of Guatemala, inculturated, or, as in this case,
Mayanized, theology represents a unique and self-conscious response to the
historic repression of Guatemala’s native indigenous population. As such, in-
culturated, Mayanized theology may be understood within the context of the
efforts of Mayan intellectuals to create a coherent political movement through
which to represent pan-Mayan political, social, and economic interests. But it
also represents an effort to fully universalize Christianity by consciously fram-
ing Christian beliefs within the conceptual structures—embodied in humans’
relations with one another, with the earth and cosmos, and with the Divine—
of Mayan cosmovision.
Within Guatemala, teología Maya—sometimes also known as “incarna-
tion” theology—is a direct project of a history of political subordination,
genocide, and cultural resurgence. By some measures, Mayanized theology is
as much a political gesture as it is a meaningful theology, for the authors of
the theology are fully aware of the ways in which Mayan people have, over
time, been able to appropriate a powerful means of domination and subordi-
nation (Christianity) and invert both the means and the message for their
own strategies.

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

H i stori cal C onte xt


Because of the theology’s overtly political genesis, some historical and
ethnographic background is necessary to understand the context for its devel-
opment. Guatemala is, along with Bolivia, one of the only nations in Latin
America with an Indian majority (upwards of 60 percent of Guatemalans are
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 127

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

Both Catholic and mainline Protestant (although no Pentecostal) institutions


served as intermediaries between the government, and guerrillas, and the mil-
itary, representing involvement from a wide range of church agencies, from
the archbishop’s Office on Human Rights, to the Guatemalan bishops’ con-
ference, to the Lutheran World Federation (which sponsored and facilitated
the Oslo peace talks), to pastors of ecumenically oriented grassroots mainline
Protestant churches who acted as liaisons between indigenous interests and
the negotiating parties.23
It is in part because of the high degree of involvement of the religious
sector in the crafting of the accords that religion came to be folded into the
larger context of Mayan cultural integrity.24 The issue of religion is addressed
specifically in the 1996 Peace Accords in the Acuerdo sobre identidad y derechos
de los pueblos, which offers protection of indigenous religious practices as a
specific cultural right.25 As a political strategy, the primary purpose of the new
theology was to encourage a religious system or systems that support indige-
nous cultural rights within the larger context of Mayan resurgence.
For some Mayan activists, the conflation of cultural rights and religion de-
manded an outright repudiation of Christianity altogether.While Mayan spir-
ituality has long coexisted fairly comfortably alongside Catholicism, most
practitioners of costumbre26—highly localized festivals honoring the saints,
healing practices, divination, and such overtly Mayan practices as rituals asso-
ciated with the Mayan calendar—had either considered themselves to be
Catholics or brujos, practitioners of old religion, or witchcraft.The Peace Ac-
cords, however, opened a social space for Mayan spiritual leaders to break off
their tie to Christianity and return to an autochthonous spirituality they be-
lieve has retained its pre-Christian essence. In an interview published in De-
cember 1991, Demetrio Cojtí, a prominent Mayan intellectual, called upon
activists to abandon Christianity as a gesture of Mayan cultural revindication.
“The process of decolonization,” explained Cojtí, “[is part of] the search for
authenticity, the search for one’s own ethnic identity in the purest form pos-
sible, [which] demands a return to one’s own religion.”27
Rising to this challenge, at least two organizations—the Grand Confeder-
ation of Native Councils of Daykeeper Principals of the Guatemalan Mayan
People and Oxlajuj Ajpop: The National Conference of Mayan Spiritual
Guides of Guatemala (established in 1993)—formed in the early 1990s with
the shared objective to “recover, develop, promote, and diffuse the practice
of [Mayan] spirituality in all its manifestations.”28 The formalized revival of
Mayan spirituality thus falls clearly within the context of larger Mayan cultural
and political mobilization and, as such, plays an important symbolic role.29 As
Mayan activist and binational scholar Victor Montejo has remarked,“The role
of spiritual leaders has become a symbol for the revival and unification of
Mayan culture nationally.”30
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 131

For some activists, the formal affirmation of Mayan religion serves as a


metaphor for Mayan cultural resilience. “You don’t revive something that has
never been dead,” explained one adherent: “We have practiced our religion
and observed our calendar without interruption since the time of the Con-
quest. But we have kept it to ourselves, hidden from outsiders. Now, after the
destruction of many of our communities and the scattering of thousands of
our people across the face of the earth, the time for secrecy has passed.”31
Nevertheless, the position of a politically based Maya-Mayan religion re-
mains somewhat ambivalent. Some have criticized it as the embodiment of
the type of “invented tradition” described by Eric Hobsbawm, in which “an-
cient materials [are used] to construct invented traditions of a novel type for
quite novel purposes.”32 On the other hand, there is little debate that Mayan
spirituality is central to what Hobsbawn also describes as the “fund of knowl-
edge,” that which is carefully preserved in popular memory and has never
been completely co-opted by any dominating discourse, namely Christianity
or nationalism.
Given these complexities, it is difficult to assess the number of people
who have abandoned Christianity for de-Christianized Mayan religion. The
latter carries powerful political implications in its associations with the Mayan
movement, but is also deeply resonant with familiar Mayan worldviews and
with the often-covert everyday spiritual practices that many Maya had long
quietly practiced at home.
Kay Warren, in her study of Pan-Mayanism, has suggested that “many”
Maya are choosing to abandon Christianity for Maya-Mayan religion, where
they can experience a spiritual life that is fully consistent with their heritage
and worldview and which carries with it no colonialist baggage.33 On the
other hand, other observers assert that Maya-Mayan religion is primarily an
elite phenomenon. As such, revitalized Mayan religion, at least in its “official”
venues, at this point seems to be more popular with Mayan intellectuals asso-
ciated with the Pan-Mayan movement than with everyday Mayan people. It is
likely that for the latter, after such long association, they either no longer nec-
essarily regard Christianity as a colonial imposition or are so accustomed to
conflating, layering, and intermingling beliefs that they can no longer feel the
need to separate one from the other. It is also possible that many people, long
accustomed to making accommodations between Christianity and Mayan
spirituality, may participate fully in the old-new rituals of Maya-Mayan reli-
gion without relinquishing their identities as Christians.34
Although the situation could change in the future, most Maya, then, still
subscribe to a discursive identity as Christians (Catholic or evangélico).35 This is
true even if they adhere to a predominantly Mayan worldview, and, signifi-
cantly, even if they regularly tap into what Montejo calls “the fund of knowl-
edge preserved in the Mayan memory”—the rituals that have no Christian
132 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t

context, such as divination, fertility rituals, calendar-related day-keeping, rev-


erence of sacred geographic sites, and the like.36 As one observer notes,“[There
are] today indigenous intellectuals who adhere to the religion of their ances-
tors not only as a force of [cultural] affirmation, but also as a protest against the
Catholic religion of the invaders and of the more recent evangelists. Over all,
the force of Catholicism and evangelicalism among the Maya people is still
very rooted (arraigadas).”37

The Catholic Roots of Inculturation Theology


It is nearly impossible to separate the development of inculturation theol-
ogy in Guatemala from the Mayan movement, although the roots of incultur-
ation reach back long to the 1960s, before the Mayan holocaust. Its origins
are found in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), specifically in the doc-
ument Ad Gentes, which calls on those who work among people of non-
Christian cultures to “recognize, enjoy, and respect the seed of the Word” that
those cultures contain. Lumen Gentium reiterates this sentiment, in inviting the
faithful to “recognize and value all the good that is planted in the heart and
mind of human beings and in the rights and cultures of all people.”38 At the
pivotal Latin American bishops’ conference held in Medellín, Colombia, in
1968, the prelates, led by Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, affirmed the pres-
ence of “seeds of the Word of God” in non-Western cultures and called for the
recognition of God’s presence in civilizations before the arrival of Christian-
ity. Yet despite the staggering implications of such a radical departure from tra-
ditional notions of orthodoxy, the message of inculturation was largely lost
within the broader mandate for the preferential option for the poor—a class,
not race-based, reinterpretation of the Gospel—and the political momentum
of liberation theology.
However, it was precisely this momentum in the late 1960s and 1970s that
eventually thrust inculturation theology to center stage, as clergy and Catholic
activists, galvanized by their participation in liberationist Christian base com-
munities, began to suffer heavy recriminations for their political involvement.
The serious oppression of Catholic (and non-Catholic) activists in the politi-
cal struggles in Central and South America—the core of what many consid-
ered to be the “Catholic heart” of Latin America—compelled the church to
place new moral emphasis on human rights in general and indigenous rights
in particular.
This new focus of concern was evident at the highest level. Upon assum-
ing the papacy in 1979 John Paul II reasserted the church’s concern for non-
European cultures within the church in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, in
which he offered the first specific definition of inculturation theology.“Incul-
turation signifies the intimate transformation of the authentic cultural values
through the means of their integration into Christianity,” the pope wrote,“and
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 133

to Christianity’s taking root (radicación) into diverse cultures.39 In a somewhat


belated response, the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) in 1987
formed the Indigenous Pastoral Commission in 1987.40 The culmination of
these efforts came at the Fourth General Conference CELAM, Santo Do-
mingo, 1995, which, thanks to strong leadership on the part of Guatemalan
and Bolivian bishops, generated a series of final documents that, in the words
of Edward Cleary, “creat[ed] a sense of anticipation for a fully developed in-
digenous theology.”41
Although the appeal of inculturation theology was obvious for a place
such as Guatemala, where ancient Mayan beliefs continue to coexist tena-
ciously alongside Christianity, it did not take root there immediately, despite
these larger church initiatives.This was due in part to the ascension of a polit-
ical and theological ultra-conservative, Mario Casariego, to archbishop of
Guatemala in 1964; he served until his death in 1983. Despite the archbishop’s
long, conservative shadow, a group of bishops established the Episcopal Con-
ference of Guatemala (CEG) in 1969, a liberal body which was created in part
to temper Archbishop Casariego’s repudiation of Catholic social justice con-
cerns and liberation theology.42 In September 1968, the bishops returned from
Medellín and convened a national-level pastoral de conjunto to broach the idea
of a pastoral indígena. In 1970, several key Guatemalan-based priests began to
meet with Mexican clergy in a series of workshops and discussions on how
best to reveal an “Indian face” in the church.43
In the early 1970s, a group of (primarily foreign) Dominican clergy in Alta
Vera Paz began to apply the study of anthropology to increase their sensitivity to
Western cultural biases in their pastoral work,44 but this work “did not have de-
fined criteria [for a new type] of Christian formation” such as would eventually
be found for inculturation theology.45 In 1973, clergy sponsored a pastoral week
(semana de pastoral) to examine the possibilities inherent in a “pastoral indí-
gena”—at that time, conceptualized primarily as conducting the liturgy, preach-
ing, and translating of hymns into indigenous languages. Within a few years,
however, these concerns would be seared away by the hot winds of destruction—
first, the 1976 earthquake, followed by the horror of la violencia—and clerical at-
tention diverted from inculturation to the very survival of their people.46

Toward a Theology for Survivors


Unlike the political violence that occurred during earlier periods of the
thirty-six-year-long civil war, the war of counterinsurgency that took place in
the early 1980s struck disproportionately hard in the predominantly indige-
nous areas of the country, particularly affecting the departments of El Quiché,
Alta Vera Paz, and Huehuetenango, as well as San Marcos and Chimaltenango,
to the west and south. Here, the military believed the URNG enjoyed sub-
stantial support, particularly among the Mayan population.
134 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

by the energy of quincentenary, inculturation theology gained ground quickly


in Guatemala, particularly since its challenges so closely complemented the
emerging Mayan movement. On the actual anniversary of the Columbian
“discovery,” October 12, 1992, Pope John Paul II offered an address in which
he lamented the human rights violations committed in the name of Chris-
tianity five hundred years earlier and offered his concern for the “pitiable”
conditions of indigenous people today.54 That same year, a group of Swiss Do-
minicans, working closely with Spanish and Mexican hermanos and some sec-
ular anthropologists, established the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Center
Ak’Kután (new dawn, in Q’eqchi’ Maya) to work with Q’eqchi’ cofradias (tra-
ditional religious brotherhoods), catechists, and other Q’eqchi’ lay people in
Alta Verapaz. In 2000, Guatemalan Jesuits began an additional inculturation
project among the K’iche’.55
In general terms, such projects were less linked to the Mayan movement
than they were tied to the church’s desire to mend the large rents in its “spir-
itual canopy” made by the serious disruptions to church, community, and fam-
ily caused by the war, the incursions made by Protestant conversion, and the
rifts within the church between traditionalists, catechists, and charismatic
Catholics. In effect, inculturation theology was thought to be able to provide
a multi-radiant bridge to link not only Mayan worldview(s) and Christian or-
thodoxy, but also divergent cultures. Thus, the theology was believed to have
the potential not only to bridge the ladino-indigenous social chasm, but also
to cross the fissures that divided conservative Mayan costumbristas from pro-
gressive catechists within the church.56 In 1995, CEG codified the challenges
into the formal Plan Nacional de Pastoral Indígena.57
Yet the Roman Catholic Church was not the only entity energized by the
new pastoral plan.Among the bridges built were ecumenical ones, an impulse fed
by a series of diocesan, regional, and international conferences and workshops that
permitted Protestant participation, but also fed by the fact the ecumenical Protes-
tants, particularly from Presbyterian churches, had worked alongside Catholics
in the CNR (National Reconciliation Commission) and had served as vocal
spokespersons for Mayan cultural rights during the peace talks. Perhaps character-
istically, Protestant involvement has been more on an individual than a denomina-
tional basis, although the mainline denominations have participated, particularly
the Iglesia Evangélica Nacional Presbiteriana de Guatemala (IENPG), which has
long had a powerful minority current of ecumenical involvement, concern with
social justice issues, and, in recent years, direct ties to the Mayan movement.58 In
1992—the year of the quincentenary—Mayan Presbyterians began to question
historic racism in the church,59 and Mayan Presbyterian leaders, most notably
indigenous pastors, began to publish in journals and organize seminars, and work-
shops (following the Catholic model and often involving ecumenical participa-
tion) to bring a Mayan theology to their own churches.60
136 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t

The leadership by Mayan pastors—almost unheard of in the Catholic


Church, where very few priests are actually Mayan themselves—lent an im-
mediate sense of authenticity. From a perspective of self-representation (a cen-
tral goal of the Mayan movement), this gives Mayan Protestants, particularly
some prominent Kakchikel Presbyterian pastors, a high visibility and influence
in the inculturation theology movement. In some respects, the influence of
these pastors exceeds that of their own denomination, or even the influence
of mainline Protestantism, as opposed to Pentecostalism, altogether.
For Presbyterian inculturationists, theological innovation is being pro-
duced largely by the Conferencia de Iglesias Evangélicas de Guatemala
(CIEDEG), a liberal Protestant organization that is dominated by Mayan Pres-
byterians.Vitalino Similox, a Kakchikel Mayan Presbyterian pastor who served
as an intermediary for ecumenical church people associated with the URNG
and was a negotiator during the Oslo peace talks, helped to found CIEDEG
in the mid-1980s. CIEDEG was conceived to provide both ecclesial and po-
litical space for church people involved in the political struggle; but under
Similox’s leadership, CIEDEG shifted its focus primarily toward political con-
cerns. Similox has been involved as an activist in the Mayan movement, and he
ran for vice president of the republic for the Alianza Nueva Nación (ANN), a
leftist party, during the 1999 presidential elections.61
As a Mayan activist, a leftist, and a Presbyterian pastor, Similox can be seen
as the embodiment of the convergence between the Mayan movement and
Mayanized theology. On the other hand, Similox and the other Presbyterian
activists are by no means representative of all Mayan Protestants, especially
Pentecostals, who, more engaged with politics than they were a decade ago,
nonetheless tend to consider themselves to be “apolitical.”Although CIEDEG
does include a small Pentecostal membership, in general Mayan Pentecostals
also tend to be dubious of inculturation theology, which they consider to be a
dangerous revival of atavistic cultural practices that were abandoned when
they were “born again.”62
While CIEDEG is dominated by the Presbyterians, its membership also
includes congregations from many other denominations, including a handful
of Pentecostals (who make up the vast majority of Guatemala’s Protestants,
both Mayan and non-Mayan), non-Pentecostal fundamentalists, and indepen-
dent Protestant denominations.As with the Catholic dioceses where incultur-
ation theology has taken root, the common denominators of membership in
CIEDEG are ethnicity and a shared geography of terror, in that nearly all the
participating congregations are located near or in areas where military re-
prisals and massacres of civilians during the civil violence of the early 1980s
took place and therefore loom large on the landscape of local memory.63 While
the founding mandate of CIEDEG was to help in the implementation of
peace and reconciliation in the region (camino de Shalom, or Shalom road), its
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 137

leaders, following the lead of Catholic churchmen, recognized a need to con-


front the implications of Guatemala’s real history in theological terms.

Th e M aya Th e olog y of I nc ulturat i on


In the beginning, the movement toward indigenous theology in Guate-
mala grew from the top down, nurtured by clergy, both Catholic and, to a
lesser extent, Protestant, who generated workshops, study groups, literature for
use by church groups, political documents, and other means to engender a
Mayan-based Christology in which to contextualize basic Christian beliefs
within a larger system of Mayan cosmology, cultural values, and worldview.64
The object of such directed thinking—guided by questioning, listening to,
and recording local religious specialists and everyday believers who described
their grassroots beliefs and worldview—is to help recognize the distinctness of
the indigenous worldview, which differs in fundamental ways from the struc-
ture and cosmology of Western religious ideas.
As such, inculturation theology is not interested in promoting “syn-
cretism” (essentially, the co-mixing of two religious forms, often at the cost of
orthodoxy and authenticity for both religions), but, rather, it tries to grasp
what Curt Cadorette has called the “gestalt”—the totality of material, patterns
of thought and systems of organization, symbolic configurations, and religious
feeling that make the Mayan worldview unique.65 As such, the Mayan world-
view is clearly influenced by half a millennium of contact with European
culture and religion, but it is not fully subsumed by either. Frank Saloman
(writing from an Andean context) has described this as “cultural doubleness,”
wherein two parallel systems confronted one another and could not be inte-
grated as long as both modes of discourse retained their essential integrity.”66
What inculturation theology seeks to do, then, is to identify points of poten-
tial conjuncture between the two systems.

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

plets.”76 This is the pairing of either related or contradictory objects to consti-


tute balance and harmony: hot and cold, wet and dry, upper and lower, male
and female, red and brown, temporal earth and cosmos. The importance of
metaphorical couplets is found spatially—the human body, for example, is di-
vided into the upper and lower half, as well as left and right halves, while
Mayan spatial relations in the home or as related to local geography are
thought of in terms of pairs or multiples of two.77 The correct balance of com-
plementary pairs is thought to bring about harmony and wellness, but the
pairings do not equate in Mayan thinking with morally weighted dualistic
concepts such as “good” and “evil.”78

From Cosmovision to Inculturation


Inculturated theology attempts to incorporate these spiritual values as
much as possible into a Christian scheme, but it also demands a reexamination
of fundamental Christian images, symbols, and archetypes through the lens of
traditional Mayan cosmovision(s).This means, at the most basic level, that the-
ology should be expressed in a language that can be easily understood—liter-
ally, in the most widely spoken Mayan languages (Kakchikel, Mam, and
K’iche’, Q’eqchi’), but also figuratively, through the utilization of symbols,
myths, and iconography that are locally understood, valued, and interpreted.
The reasons for embedding Christian theology within Mayan culture are
partially strategic:“How can a Maya accept the Good News of the Gospel,” a
Mayan theologian asks rhetorically, “if the person who is evangelizing practi-
cally requires him to give up what is essential to the profundity of his life, and
annul the spiritual and cultural heritage of his ancestors?” But this question
also suggests a postmodern reinterpretation of Christianity’s claims to unique
revelation through the triune God and the person of Jesus Christ. Instead of a
salvation narrative based on traditional Christian notions of sin and redemp-
tion, Mayanized theology insists upon recognition of the “persistent historic
presence of God in our cultures: in the myths, the rituals, the customs, in the
community, the services, organizations, in the families, in the humanistic con-
ception of the human being, and in the Earth, as a point of reference in the
Universe.”79
Yet Mayanized theology is by no means universalistic. It embraces a tradi-
tional Christology which affirms Jesus Christ as “the Savior; without Him
there is not hope . . . without him there is no eternal salvation, there is no
human face of God outside of Christ.” However, within this understanding is
that caveat that “the event of Jesus, the Christ,” is not the exclusive possession
or the private property of any culture . . . the Gospel transcends whatever
[human] forces attempt to contain it in . . . whether they be cultural or reli-
gious.”80 Nevertheless, inculturationists are equally quick to add that indige-
nous theology is not merely Western Christianity that has been retrofitted
140 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t

with politically correct Mesoamerican elements.81 Instead, it is an effort to


recognize the presence of God inherent in Mayan culture throughout history
and to valorize the ways in which Mayan cosmovision has honored and con-
tinues to honor God’s presence. In specific terms, one Mayan theologian,
Ernestina López Bac, has explained the following four points as the “heart” (a
theological reference, not simply a semantic choice) of indigenous theology:
These include, according to López, the notions that (1) God is here with us,
(2) God values us and does not seek to destroy our culture (emphasis mine), (3) God
is our comrade, friend, and brother, (3) we can feel God’s pulse of love (latidos
de amor) in all places, and (4) God is that for which we live: the heart of the
people (corazón del pueblo), heart of the sky (corazón del cielo), heart of the earth
(corazón de tierra), and our Mother and Father.82
In a pamphlet published in Prensa Libre, Guatemala’s most widely read
daily newspaper, shortly before his entry into the presidential race, CIEDEG’s
Similox argued that Christianity not only transcends, but actually valorizes in-
digenous cultures:“God loves all cultures and his salvation does not signify the
denigration or renunciation of cultural and historic identity.” Evangelization
does not signify the announcement of the “absence of God” in a culture, but
[rather] it is an announcement of the good news of ‘his presence.’ ”83 An evan-
gelical pastor framed the equation more succinctly “God was already here,” he
observed simply,“when Columbus arrived.”84

“Decoding” Christianity from Mayan Sources


In his 1998 treatise entitled Religion Maya: Fuente de resisténcia milenaria,85
Vitalino Similox outlined areas for cultural recovery within Mayan Christian-
ity, so that, in his words,“the Maya may drink from his own well.”86 Specifically,
the theology demands a fundamental reassessment of theology within the
framework of five Mayan cultural paradigms.These include the following:

1. The recovery of Mayan cultural values, particularly the emphasis on


the community over the individual.
2. The reintegration of religion into everyday life, not just relegated to
the Sabbath.Traditional Mayan spirituality is not so much a system of
dogma, but more a systemic spirituality that touches every aspect of
life; more a “way of being” than a religion per se; therefore, indige-
nous theology calls for a fuller integration of faith into the quotidian
details of life.87
3. The abandonment of the most obviously foreign cultural elements in
worship. “Evangelization has been [tantamount to] acculturation,”
writes Similox.“We received hymns, not only in a different language,
but also in another mentality.”88
4. The creation of a “Mayan hermeneutics,” which includes the utiliza-
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 141

tion of symbols, rites, and myths of ancient Mayan culture, whenever


possible, to convey Christian allegory.

This last challenge, in particular, exposes a double hermeneutic puzzle because


ancient Mayan religious symbols and imagery are buried so deeply beneath
the symbols and myths of the dominant culture.The task, then, is to “decode
from Mayan sources, such as the ancient chronicles to decipher the true mean-
ings of the ancient messages.”89
The heuristic tool for this task is the Popol Vuh:The Book of Council,90 the
holy text of Mayan sacred narratives, handed down orally and codified into
holy writ in the K’iche’ language after the arrival of the Spaniards, between
1554 and 1558.91 The Popol Vuh, which, like many sacred texts, freely mixes al-
legory, myths, heroic epics, history, and revelation, begins with the Mayan cre-
ation story and ends with the arrival of the Spaniards. Although it is not the
only Mayan text to survive the conquest—the Annals of the Kakchikels and the
Books of the Chilam Balam form two other important references92—the Popol
Vuh is, arguably, the most enduring, comprehensive, and influential Mayan
narrative. As a sacred text, it continues to be used not only by the K’iche’, but
also by non-literate and non-K’iche’-speaking people, who have used dance
and ritual to preserve and transmit its messages to the present day.93
One of the central concerns for inculturationists, whether Catholic or
Protestant, is the position that the Popol Vuh holds as a sacred text for Mayan
Christians.This is not a matter to be taken lightly, as the answer has to do with
the very nature of Mayan spirituality within a Christian context. Within the
Catholic context, the Popol Vuh is considered by many to be ojer tzij, literally,
the “prior word” (as compared to the Bible, the “Word of God”), and is some-
times read during the mass—a practice that in Chiapas earned an investigation
from the Vatican’s Congregation of the Faith.94 Despite Rome’s concerns, the
practice effectively reconciles some of the basic tensions implicit within in-
culturation theology, namely, if the seeds of faith were present before the ar-
rival of Christianity, then where is Christianity’s uniqueness? And secondly, if
Christianity does indeed offer the “way, the truth, and the light,” how does
one reconcile the salvation of the elders and the ancestors—so vital to the
Mayan worldview—those who nurtured the seeds of the faith before the ar-
rival of the Word?
For inculturated Mayan Protestants—whose theological gaze tends to be
sharply focused on the Bible as the literal and immutable Word of God—the
issue of the reconciliation with the Popol Vuh becomes even more acute. From
a theological binary perspective, the Popol Vuh is either sacred (of God) or
idolatrous (demonic); it cannot be both. Thus, the Popol Vuh must be recon-
ciled with Christianity as part of the canon of sacred texts, a unique revelation
of the divine to the Mayan people.
142 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t

Of particular concern to Mayan inculturated Christians (and the topic of


several workshops and journal articles) has been the nature of God as por-
trayed within the Popol Vuh. In an effort to place the traditional Mayan sa-
credness within an acceptable Christian narrative framework, Mayan exegetes
argue that the Popol Vuh clearly portrays one monotheistic Being, though
described by many names to convey God’s many diverse attributes.95 Early
explanations of multiple deities, in the inculturationists’ view, stem from colo-
nialist, Eurocentric, “Christocentric, and ecclesiocentric” misunderstandings
of the nature of the divine.
The centrality of the Popol Vuh as a source of not just revelation but
specifically Christian revelation is illustrated in the discourse of a rural Mayan
evangelical pastor; his discourse underscores not only his concern with the
reconciliation of holy texts, but also the reconciliation of worldviews—a deep
concern for the ancestors (Mayan) and their eternal salvation (Christian).
I found that in the Bible, it says you have to have respect, right? In the
Bible, it also says to honor the father and the mother, no? And there is one
God, God the father, etc. In Mam [the pastor’s Mayan language group],
that is “elder,” right? But the concept is the same. . . . So I think that it is
possible to see that the people before [pre-Christian Mayans] had the
concept; it’s much clearer that there was religion and there was faith in
God [in the New World] maybe in the time of Abraham—we don’t know,
right? Because unfortunately, we don’t have the dates. Our ancestors had
a great book (the Popol Vuh), but our enemies [the Spanish friars] burned
[it], right? . . . [W]hat I want to say is that in reading the Bible, I arrived at
the conclusion that they [the ancient Mayan ancestors] had it, when they
were here on the earth, carrying a faith in the kingdom of God.96
Beyond the exegesis of the Popol Vuh, the theology also prescribes the in-
corporation other integral material elements of Mayan culture as utensils of
worship; these might include the pine-resin incense, colored votive candles,
the use of three as a symbolic number, pine branches as liturgical decorations,
the cross as representative of an ideogram of the cardinal points of the earth
rather than as Jesus’ execution instrument, and the libation of holy spaces with
grain alcohol as occurs during syncretic rituals or in the ancient healing prac-
tices. Because such Mayan sacred elements serve such a similar function as the
symbology used in traditional Catholic ritual (candles, incense, images), it has
been relatively easy for the church to reintegrate them into the mass, albeit
with some concern for movement down the slippery slope of inculturation
back to old-time syncretism, in which Mayan and Christian elements were
fused without common doctrinal reference. Even so, Mayan Catholic incul-
turationists have identified this as one area in which “the Church’s respect to-
ward these symbols has been one of the successes of recent years.”97
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 143

“Double Paganization”: Pentecostal Perspective


The issue of material elements in worship is one that is much more easily
accommodated by Catholics than by Protestants. Indeed, it is the specifically
the reappropriation of the material aspects of Mayan religious culture that
proves a serious sticking point for many Mayan Protestants regarding incul-
turated theology. Typically, Mayan Protestants, particularly Pentecostals, assid-
uously avoid the use of somatic features such as incense, candles, and alcohol.
They shun these elements as “idolatrous” practices associated with syncretism,
demons, and, worse still—in their way of thinking—Catholicism, which many
Mayan converts, justifiably or not, negatively associate with spiritual domina-
tion and a repudiated pagan past. As Mayan theologian Antonio Otzoy ex-
plained,“It was not long ago when Protestantism came; we were all Catholics
then, and they would tell us,‘you are all pagans because you are Catholics.’ ”98
Otzoy has suggested that the longstanding sublimation of Mayan religious
forms within Catholicism has produced a fierce Protestant bias against what
he calls the “double paganization” (doble paganización) of Mayan spiritual im-
agery.99 Thus, the central challenge for Protestant Mayanized theology is to re-
claim the patrimony of Mayan religious language, rituals, and symbolism not
so much from the pre-Christian past, but from its strong association with
Catholicism. The explicit inclusion of Mayan material elements is a point
which definitely separates “inculturated” Mayan Protestants from their “non-
inculturated” counterparts, but it is also a starting point for ecumenical dia-
logue between Mayan Protestants and Mayan Catholics, who may determine
that cultural concerns transcend denominational differences.100 In the mean-
time, the issue of double paganization looms large for Mayan evangélicos,
especially Pentecostals, who find it difficult to extricate precisely which
elements of “Mayaness” are not inconsistent with their paradigmatic “new
life.”
This issue illustrates as well as any the disconnect that exists between the
discourse of Mayanized theology, articulated as it is by well-educated Catholic
clergy, Mayan pastors, and intellectuals, and everyday Mayan Protestants, who
as yet remain somewhat reticent in their acceptance of inculturated Christian
theology.This is most apparent among the Pentecostals, who recoil at any for-
mal reconciliation between a type of spirituality that they now consider idol-
atrous and the “Christian way” (camino cristiano). By in large, at the moment,
inculturation theology remains primarily a Catholic and mainline (that is,
non-Pentecostal) Protestant phenomenon, which means that the majority of
Mayan Protestants who are Pentecostals still lie, for the most part, outside the
theology’s parameters.There is some evidence, however—such as the handful
of Pentecostal churches in El Quiché that have joined CIEDEG and the in-
creasing number of Pentecostal contributors to the religious journal Voces del
144 Vi r g i n i a G a r ra r d - B u r n e t t

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

(propuesto de consenso, 13 junio 1994),” in Construyendo un Futuro para Nuestro


Pasado: Derechos del Pueblo Maya y el Proceso de Paz (Guatemala: Editorial Cholsamaj,
1995).
21. For a comprehensive account of the role of the church in the accords, see Bruce J.
Calder,“The Role of the Catholic Church and Other Religious Institutions in the
Guatemalan Peace Process, 1980–1996,” Journal of Church and State 43 (autumn
2001): 773–797.
22. Paul Jeffery notes that according to the Guatemalan daily Prensa Libre, “It was the
Catholic church . . . that led the call for a national dialogue and created an environ-
ment in which citizens could state their interests and put forward proposals for
peace. In effect, the participation of the Catholic church contributed to the social-
ization of the topic of peace,” Prensa Libre, January 7, 1988. See Paul Jeffery, Re-
covering Memory: Guatemalan Churches and the Challenge of Peacemaking (Uppsala,
Sweden: Life and Peace Institute, 1998), 13–14.
23. Jeffery’s study, Recovering Memory, provides an excellent account of the role of the
religious sector in the Oslo accords.
24. See Consejo de Organizaciones Mayas de Guatemala (COMG), “Qasaqalaj Tziij,
Qakemoon Tziij, Qapach’uum Tziij, Identidad y derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas
(propuesto de consenso, 13 junio 1994),” in Construyendo un Futuro para Nuestro
Pasado: Derechos del Pueblo Maya y el Proceso de Paz (Guatemala: Editorial Cholsamaj,
1995).This document states that one of the fundamental elements of Mayan iden-
tity is “a cosmovision that is based on one’s relation with the universe, mother na-
ture, the earth as a source of life and maize as a marker (eje) of one’s culture that has
been transmitted from generation to generation through its material production;
and thorough the means of oral tradition, in which the woman has played a deter-
mining role” (60).
25. Mayan journalist Estuardo Zapeta notes that “some Mayan elders have protested the
recognition of Mayan spirituality in the reforms by arguing that Mayan religion is
not negotiable.” Zapeta, as quoted in Kay B. Warren, “Voting against Indigenous
Rights,” in Indigenous Movements, ed.Warren and Jackson, 172.
26. Liberally, “custom.”The word costumbre was first used widely by foreign anthropol-
ogists working in Guatemala during the early decades of the twentieth century to
describe the body of locally prescribed religious belief, ritual, dress, language, and
life ways (including daily activities such as weaving, cooking, etc.) that formed what
John Watanabe has called “the way of being” in Mayan communities. Robert S.
Carlsen and Martin Prechtel have defined costumbre more recently as “old reli-
gion,” in “The Flowering of the Dead: An Interpretation of Highland Maya Cul-
ture,” Man 26 (March 1991): 25. As Garry Sparks notes, “Costumbre is considered
by many to be the remnant of a pre-Hispanic belief system. . . . Its treatment by
Ladinos . . . ranged from viewing costumbre as nothing more than quaint practices
to perceiving it as equivalent to ignorant superstition to condemning it as paganism
and witchcraft. Garry Sparks, “A Proposed Framework for Inter-religious Interac-
tion by Christians toward Native American Spiritualities,” paper, University of
Chicago School of Theology, 2002, 2.
27. “Entrevista a Demetrio Cojtí,” Voces del Tiempo 1 (1992): 59.
28. Jesus Gómez, “Cuando el cañaveral retoña: el movimiento de las organizaciones
mayas,” Voces del Tiempo 22 (1997):15.
29. I am deeply indebted here to the work and insights of Garry Sparks, “A Proposed
Framework for Inter-religious Interaction.” See also Gómez, “Cuando el cañaveral
retoña,” 15.
30. Victor Montejo,“The Multiplicity of Mayan Voices,” in Warren and Jackson, Indige-
nous Movements, 145.
“God Was Here When Columbus Arrived” 149

31. Victor Perera, Unfinished Conquest:The Guatemalan Tragedy (Berkeley: University of


California Press, 1993), 323.
32. Eric Hobsbawm, as cited by Victor Montejo in “The Multiplicity of Mayan Voices,”
in Indigenous Movements, ed.Warren and Jackson, 129.
33. Kay B.Warren, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Mayan Activism in Guate-
mala (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
34. See, for example, a scene in the forthcoming documentary, Perilous Peace: God and
Government in Guatemala, in which Maya-Mayan “spiritual guides” conduct a fire
ceremony, which has no Christian analog, at the ancient Kakchikel city of Iximché,
which in recent years has become a restored sacred site for Mayan rituals. In the film
at least four of the participants in the ceremony—three Protestant and one
Catholic—are ordained Christian clergy.
35. I am using the word evangélico here in the sense it is used in Guatemalan Spanish, to
refer to all non-Catholic Christians, regardless of denomination or sect.
36. Montejo,“The Multiplicity of Mayan Voices,” 129.
37. Juan Hernández Pico, S.J.,“Iglesia en cambio y cambios en la Iglesia: análisis,” Voces
del Tiempo 40 (October–December 2001): 21.
38. Ad Gentes 11 and Lumen Gentium 17, cited in Teodoro Nieto, “Biblia, palabra de
Dios y espiritualidad maya,” Voces del Tiempo 27 (1998): 34.
39. Redemptoris Missio, cited in Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, Al servicio de la
vida, la justicia y la paz: documentos de la Conferencia Episcopal de Guatemala, 1956–
1997 (Guatemala: CEG, 1997), 602. See also Luis Miguel Otero, La inculturación de
los documentos de la Iglesia (Cobán:Textos Ak’Kutan, 1996).
40. Between Medellín and Santo Domingo, inculturation theology received some at-
tention at a series of “Encuentros Misioneros Indigenistas de America Latina.”These
convened in Melgar, Colombia (1968), Asunción, Paraguay (1972), Goiania, Brazil
(1975), Manaus, Brazil (1977), Puebla, Mexico (prior to the III CELAM meeting,
1977–1978), Manaus (1980), Brasilia, Brazil (1983), and Quito, Ecuador (1986). See
Jesus de la Torre Arranz, Evangelización inculturada y liberadora: la praxis misionera a par-
tir de los encuentros latinoamericanos del postconcilio (Quito: Abya-Yala, 1993), 12.
41. Edward L. Cleary,“Birth of Indigenous Theology,” in Crosscurrents in Indigenous Spir-
ituality: Interface of Maya, Catholic, and Protestant Worldviews, ed. Guillermo Cook
(New York: E. J. Brill, 1997), 119.This chapter provides a much more nuanced ex-
planation of the role that the bishops of largely indigenous churches (Bolivia, Gua-
temala, Mexico, and Ecuador) played in the reemphasis of indigenous theology in
the universal church before, during, and after the Santo Domingo conference. See
Cleary,“Birth of Indigenous Theology,” 171–188.
42. Casariego’s negative view may account at least in part for why, unlike in neighbor-
ing El Salvador and Nicaragua, the phrase “liberation theology” was never used
widely in Guatemala, despite the fact that clergy and lay people were involved in so-
cial justice issues, particularly in the indigenous rural areas. Anthropologist Matt
Samson has noted,“By the time I began regular field work in Guatemala in the mid
1990s, the term liberation theology was rarely, if ever used in public by Guate-
malans. Even one Mayan evangelical told me on several occasions, ‘They accuse us
of liberation theology, but we didn’t even know what it was.’ ” C. Matthew Samson,
“The Martyrdom of Manuel Saquic,” 9, fn. 12.
43. “II Encuentro Regional de Pastoral Indígena, Quetzaltenango, 1–3 September
1997,” 3–4, photocopy, Centro Ak’Kutan, Cobán, Alta Verapaz.
44. In Guatemala, Fr. Jaime Curtin spearheaded efforts to promote inculturation theol-
ogy by setting up a series of meetings and workshops between religious, clergy, and
indigenous lay leaders. When the Guatemalan church became preoccupied by the
exigencies of la violencia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the center of gravity for
150 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

“Knowing Where We Enter”

Indige nous Theology and the Popular


Church in Oaxaca, Mexico

Kristin Norget

The reality has changed hugely in Oaxaca in the area of indige-


nous peoples; that fact implies giving a new face to the pastoral
indígena. This resurgence of consciousness, of indigenous iden-
tity, of all the indigenous movements, including that of Chia-
pas, from the religious perspective of the teología india, also
implies knowing how, where we enter. This is a challenge that
has yet to be confronted.
—Padre Francisco Reyes, Coordinator of CEDIPIO
(Ecclesial Diocesanal Center of the
Indigenous Pastoral of Oaxaca)1

In the above quote, Father Reyes, a young priest working


in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca reflected on the role of the
Catholic Church in a politically effervescent setting of indigenous mobiliza-
tion and organizing. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Oaxacan Catholic
Church, with CEDIPIO, the Diocesanal Center of the Indigenous Pastoral,
as its driving force, was a hotbed of liberation theological teachings and
practice. Then, two well-known bishops, Bartolomé Carrasco in the Oaxa-
can Archdiocese of Antequera and Arturo Lona in the neighboring Diocese
of Tehuantepec, were strong supporters of the teachings of Vatican II and
the creation of a Popular Church rallying for social justice and for clergy’s
direct insertion in the realities of the poor. Along with Bishop Samuel Ruiz
in the neighboring southern state of Chiapas, the bishops adopted a mode of
pastoral praxis known as the pastoral indígena, or indigenous pastoral. This
pastoral program was the unique stamp of Oaxacan and some Chiapan dio-
ceses in particular, and a practical orientation directed explicitly at the spe-
cial needs of working with the most marginalized social sectors, the

154
“Knowing Where We Enter” 155

indigenous communities, which in this region made up roughly a fifth of


the country’s total indigenous population.2
While liberation theology was alive and well in Oaxaca for almost a cou-
ple of decades, since then its influence has become strongly diluted in tandem
with a neo-liberalization of the Mexican political and social landscape and
concomitant reforms which have seen an end to the separation of church and
state existing since the revolution.3
Nevertheless, wherever priests are working in rural areas throughout Oax-
aca’s ethnically diverse and rugged terrain, they are dealing with indigenous
communities.And many of them trained in Latin American liberation theology
continue their practices, fanning the flames of the original spirit of the pastoral
indígena. Despite a backlash within the Catholic Church to liberationist theol-
ogy which emerged in the late 1980s, and sharpened through the 1990s, the
indigenous pastoral remains a thematic centerpiece of pastoral planning in Oax-
aca. This fact says much about the engagement the ecclesial hierarchy is cur-
rently trying to renegotiate with indigenous peoples, who are among the most
faithful of their flock, and, more indirectly, with the Mexican government.
This chapter examines the development of the indigenous pastoral in
Oaxaca in relation to that region’s religious field,4 and in relation to the
broader, significant changes that have taken place in Mexican and Oaxacan so-
ciety and political life. I have borrowed this concept from Bourdieu’s (1971)
concept of the champ réligieux, referring to all the representatives of organized
or institutional religion interacting in a given setting. Such a perspective draws
attention to the changing and conflictual nature of the religious field, where
religious agents are engaged with each other and with practitioners in a con-
tinuous dialogue and struggle over the dominance of certain practices and
meanings.As we will see, in the broad picture, the momentous change of con-
sciousness introduced within the church institution by Vatican II reforms and
liberation theology represented a challenge to the doxa, in Bourdieu’s (1977)
terms, of church doctrine and practice—in other words, the tacit, taken-
for-granted, undisputed aspects of Roman Catholic identity.5 Liberationists
have contested the Catholic Church’s role and raison d’etre in the modern
world and have called the institutional church to redefine its relationship with
the people whose interests it purports to serve. Nevertheless, this “progressive”
theology in Oaxaca is limited by the verticalism of this very religious field, a
hierarchical order that moves very efficiently to muffle any dissent within its
ranks and impede the entrenchment of alternative pastoral praxes.
The context I discuss in Oaxaca has included a blossoming of grassroots
and indigenous organizing which has shaken up the existing political order
and has necessarily led to a revision of the character of relations between offi-
cial institutions and civil society more broadly. It is difficult to generalize
about the role of church representatives in this context, for they are hardly a
156 Kristin Norget

homogenous body: differences in age, experience, personal backgrounds, and


kinds of theological training mean that a wide diversity of viewpoints and pas-
toral styles are found within their ranks.Yet from at least the 1960s, it was es-
pecially to Oaxaca and other dioceses in southern Mexico that clergy of a
more progressive current gravitated, or else here found an ideological home.
Much scholarship on Latin American indigenous theology discerns in the
fusion of progressive Catholicism and indigenous belief systems and practices
a powerful transformative catalyst for a profound political conscienticization
and empowerment of indigenous peoples.6 Often written from the perspec-
tive of theologians sympathetic to liberation theology, these accounts are in-
clined to assume a fairly transparent relationship between theology and
practice, seeing the church and its representatives as largely autonomous, with
the capacity to act as free agents in interpreting and actualizing the will of
God.
This chapter advocates the need for a more nuanced approach, underlin-
ing the reality of the church as a global institution, with an internal organiza-
tional structure that is still strongly hierarchical and authoritarian. In the spirit
of post-structural emphasis on the inextricable intertwining of power and
knowledge, I examine the discursive logic of the popular church’s indigenist
pastoral agenda as a program for action that, despite certain efforts and
achievements toward bettering the lives of the poorest of the poor, remains
mired in problems given by the historical position of the Mexican church as
agent of official knowledge vis-à-vis indigenous peoples—a situation that has
existed since colonization.This is especially so today, given the emergence of
an even tighter rapprochement between the Mexican church and state at the
national level, in which the ecclesial hierarchy’s cooperation in an intransigent
stance toward indigenous peoples represents a neo-colonial turn.
My examination of the Catholic Church is based on several periods of re-
search over the past seven years in both rural and urban areas of Oaxaca State,
including participant observation in several different kinds of church-directed
settings and activities and extensive interviews with clergy and laypersons on
their views of transformations within the church.With ample opportunity to
observe the articulation of official and popular religiosities in various con-
texts, I have become particularly interested in the ways that religion has come
to inform peoples’ identities and shape their political affiliations. Important
questions remain to be answered with regard to the direction of popular reli-
gious movements in contemporary Mexico in terms of whether they can pose
a real challenge to the social order, and how religion may be informing peo-
ple’s senses of themselves and even attaching onto other kinds of social differ-
entiation. Rather than investigating the ideological substance of indigenous
theology, my aim is to elucidate the dynamics of a particular context wherein
a Roman Catholic liberation theological version of indigenous theology was
“Knowing Where We Enter” 157

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.

The Indige nous Moveme nt in Oaxaca


The current social field in Mexico in which the church is struggling to
(re)affirm its social and moral role and status is a complex one. It has been pro-
duced in part by the crisis of the Mexican nation-state concurrent with a bur-
geoning civil society. In Oaxaca and other areas with a high indigenous
population, since the 1970s several organizations have appeared that explicitly
use their indigenous ethnicity to identify themselves according to historic, lin-
guistic, and other cultural commonalities, as a means of legitimating their
mobilization. Especially since the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Libera-
tion)uprising in Chiapas in January 1994, this is the platform these groups are
using to forward their demands for incorporation into Mexican society on re-
vised terms.7 While attempting to forge a place within the national political
culture, indigenous peoples are transforming the nature of their identity from
fragmented, ethnically distinct communities to multicultural coexistence in
regional and national political arenas.Through this process, notions of ethnic-
ity and identity are being reconfigured within broader parameters.
The wide array of organizations that exist in Oaxaca illustrates the
dynamic and plural character of the indigenous movement. The Coalición
Obrero-Campesino-Estudiantil del Istmo de Tehuantepec (Worker-Peasant-
Student Coalition of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec or COCEI), the Movimi-
ento Unido para la Lucha Trique (Trique Unified Movement for Struggle or
MULT), the Asamblea de Autoridades Mixes (Assembly of Authorities from
the Mixe Region or ASAM), and the Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de
la Zona Norte del Istmo (Union of Indigenous Communities of the North
Zone of the Isthmus or UCIZONI) are among the best known of several
groups to have emerged over the last thirty years, heralding their ethnic iden-
tity to lobby for improved rights for Oaxaca’s indigenous peoples and, now,
for political autonomy.8 The specific agendas and modes of working of these
groups are varied. Yet the overall demands of the indigenous movement
involve the recognition and respect for indigenous culture, including tra-
ditional modes of self-government and subsistence and an end to state re-
pression.
Together, such regional grassroots groups represent an ethnic movement
as they rally for material goals characterized as being specific to “traditional”
indigenous culture: communal territory, communal government, traditional
technologies, traditional medicine, traditional economic systems of distribu-
tion and exchange, traditional value systems and language, and so on.9 The
158 Kristin Norget

multi-faceted character and far-reaching implications of this movement can-


not be over-emphasized. Organizations in the movement have in common a
struggle for democratization not just of the political system, but of many eco-
nomic, social, and cultural practices. The struggle has been fertile ground for
the blossoming of new conceptions of democratic citizenship, rights, nation,
and community, conceptions that challenge rigid hierarchies and the custom-
ary authoritarian culture of paternalist and clientelist politics.
The many decades of indigenous mobilization especially in Mexico’s
southern states encouraged the formation of the pastoral indígena. Because
many priests had necessarily become involved with local struggles within their
communities, and due to the natural role of clergy as interlocutors, who (like
teachers) often function as a prominent link between the community and the
external world, in Oaxaca several priests had become conscienticized and po-
litically engaged.The indigenous pastoral was a byproduct of this process, but
also of an opening of the Mexican Catholic Church more generally.
I now turn to look at the concrete development of the indigenous pas-
toral in Oaxaca. This will provide a clearer picture of the dialogue between
Catholic doctrine and political context, underlining the church’s status as an
institution whose actions cannot be understood apart from global political
changes, and the interests of the church to retain its relative monopoly over
the religious marketplace.

Libe ration Theology and the Pastoral


Indíge na in Oaxaca
Since it emerged into popular (and academic) consciousness in the 1970s,
liberation theology has been an over-generalized concept of limited value un-
less it is recognized as a discourse whose enunciation in a given context re-
flects the particularities of that setting.There are significant differences in the
individual visions and modus operandi of so-called liberationist priests and in
the pastoral programs they are able to implement in their communities. Re-
sistance from powerful members of the local population, the relative strength
of other churches or religions in the community, personal qualities of priests,
ideological coherence of their pastoral team, and the extent of the material re-
sources available to them in their work are all significant factors shaping the
outcome of local pastoral plans.
In other words, we cannot take liberation theology at face value, or as
meaning the same pastoral agenda wherever it is implemented as general
praxis. But in addition, one tends to forget the broader interests of those who
direct the institutional church, which has the capacity to control clergy’s prac-
tice and discipline them if they engage in activities of which members of the
hierarchy do not approve. Indigenous theology and the indigenous pastoral
“Knowing Where We Enter” 159

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

in rural communities as the sites of collective governance.25 Others obtained


legal training or took special courses in human rights training. A number of
Oaxacan priests thus became prominent mobilizers in Oaxacan indigenous
communities, often attracting the resentment of caciques.
Thus it was at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, coincid-
ing with the emerging dynamism of the indigenous movement in Oaxaca,
that the practical application of liberation theology in the form of the indige-
nous pastoral was well underway. If all members of the Conference of Mexi-
can Bishops (CEM) did not approve of all aspects of their work, at least
protagonists of the pastoral plan in Oaxaca enjoyed the blessing of their leader
at the time, Archbishop Bartolomé Carrasco.

Moving into the Indigenous Campaign


By 1990, CEDIPIO had divided its work into four principal areas: first,
“culture” (the promotion of indigenous languages and “popular religiosity”);
second, Communal Organized Work (Trabajo Común Organizado or TCO),
involving various initiatives for the coordination of collective labor projects;
third, commercialization (oriented mostly toward small-scale peasant coffee
producers); and, finally, what was referred to as formación (training), which in-
cluded initiatives aimed at improving health services, agricultural practices,
and community organization.26
The 1992 proposals to reform Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution
gave an edge of urgency to indigenous meetings all over the state, and church
agents involved in the indigenous pastoral began to study other aspects of the
Mexican Constitution. CENAMI aided the Oaxacan diocese with its training
workshops, paying for the hiring of lawyers, health practitioners, and special-
ists in indigenous rights to direct them. But it was after the 1994 Zapatista up-
rising especially, when I first began concentrated research on the church in
Oaxaca’s two dioceses, that church agents intensified their efforts in promot-
ing a more multifaceted conscienticization by holding workshops throughout
the state on such topics as human rights, the economy, the Mexican Constitu-
tion, Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization, the study of
electoral and other constitutional reforms, indigenous rights, women’s rights,
and civic participation.
By this time, then, the needs of the (mostly indigenous) inhabitants of their
parishes and the indigenous pastoral had motivated liberationist clergy to estab-
lish a wide variety of organizations and other social spaces from which to defend
people’s rights within the larger political and social sphere. Significantly, all of
these projects, whether in urban or rural locales, referred to traditional indige-
nous social structure and attendant customs of communal labor as their models
for organization and as identity referents for the purposes of mobilization.
164 Kristin Norget

Culture and Mobilization


The Oaxacan liberationist campaign has been guided by an inclusive dis-
course of democratic ideals, but also by one of an implicit class self-identifica-
tion: in this, the highly resonant term popular has connotations of both
class-based and indigenous identity. The equation of class and ethnicity mir-
rors the reality that most Indians are peasants and poor, but it has also allowed
the campaign to articulate the needs of a broad base of social sectors. This
mode of identification has been critical to the mobilizing dynamic of the
work of liberationist clergy. It has shaped the character of the movement in
both rural and urban settings by producing a discourse that presents social, po-
litical, and economic demands as part of an integrated campaign for cultural
survival. In conflating Catholic identity with traditional, rural-derived culture,
and by pressing forth an agenda of social justice wherein the church’s “new so-
cial project” and the aims of the indigenous cause closely resemble one an-
other, church agents inserted themselves in the wider popular and indigenous
struggle. The implications of this cultural slant to the campaign will be ad-
dressed more directly later.
Thus, progressivist Oaxacan clergy declared themselves to be working to-
ward the same basic goals as indigenous leaders: improving civil rights and liv-
ing conditions for indigenous peoples, creating a better “new society” from
the grassroots, engendering recognition and respect for indigenous identity
and culture, and, ultimately, attaining formally recognized political autonomy.
All over Oaxaca, this multifaceted, integral, popular conscienticization has
been fostered, especially through Bible reflection groups and regular regional
workshops on themes related to human rights and civic education. Priests also
helped to establish officially registered human rights groups, production co-
operatives, education programs, community-run savings programs (or cajas
populares), and forums for the promotion of traditional health care.
Oaxaca’s sister Diocese of Tehuantepec, led from 1971 until 2000 by
Bishop Arturo Lona, offers further examples of the holistic pastoral scheme of
the Pacific South Pastoral Region. Many of these initiatives are still in opera-
tion: A health clinic located just outside of the town of Tehuantepec services
the area with basic hospital facilities and with programs for the promotion of
natural medicine, the dissemination of information on nutrition, and the
training of local healers or curanderos. An ecological center on the same site de-
velops projects of recycling and the creation of organic fertilizer for distribu-
tion in the area. These projects demonstrate the alternative content of the
Oaxacan liberationist campaign, which has its sources in indigenous as well as
in wider grassroots culture.
The internationally known peasant-indigenous coffee cooperative
UCIRI (Union de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región del Istmo) is another
“Knowing Where We Enter” 165

creation within the Isthmus Diocese impelled by clergy; it is a carefully con-


structed attempt to uphold and protect the indigenous way of life. Formed in
the early 1980s, UCIRI is today still one of the strongest and best-known in-
digenous organizations in southeastern Mexico. Besides running an indepen-
dent transportation service, a community savings programs, a life insurance
program, and a hardware store, in its day-to-day operations UCIRI makes use
of indigenous communitarian modes of administration and consensual deci-
sion-making and depends on traditional assemblies as the main forums for the
conveying of information to members and discussion of policy changes.27
In addition to the alternative character of health care, and environmental
and subsistence programs, all facets of the pastoral projects in both Oaxacan
dioceses are directed by cooperative principles; various kinds of church-
organized peasant production cooperatives (e.g., coffee cooperatives, artisan
cooperatives, or sheep- or chicken-raising farms), whether large or small, are
structured around ancestral customs of labor based on communalism, mutual
aid, and reciprocity (embodied by the custom of tequio, or community labor,
often associated with the local Catholic Church).28 This is part of a concerted
effort to revive indigenous communal practices, a theme of particular interest
in the campaign toward autonomy within the national political system.29
The special pastoral initiatives of Oaxaca’s Popular Church all share a
common mandate or agenda of implicit protest of the Mexican state: the aim
of the diverse programs is the creation of a social and cultural model that
stands in direct contrast with the market-based and individualistic neo-liberal
culture of today’s Mexico, in both structural and ideological terms. The in-
digenous thrust of this pastoral campaign has meant that culture itself is seen
as at stake in a larger struggle for a new social order. In the indigenous pastoral
agenda, however, culture is both the raison d’etre of the movement and the
banner behind which lurk some complex issues particularly troublesome for
the church.

Th e P ri e st as A nth rop olog i st ?


Inculturation and the
“Autochthonous Church”
My first experience was with the Icots brothers, in a culture different from our
own Zapotec culture—it was with the Huaves, close to the sea. I was there with
other priest friends a year and a half. And with them we had an experience of
initiation that definitely told us that the path is through here. That is, I learned
also to follow a slower rhythm, not to throw out all the knowledge that they
have and to go grounding oneself in existence in the daily contact with the
people. With them I learned the work of fishing, because they are fishermen. But
not large-scale fishing—just for daily needs. It’s a hard life, with a lot of suffering
. . . that of living day-to-day, with what is necessary for that day. And I learned
that one can’t say let’s come together to pray, instead you have to go to where
166 Kristin Norget

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

In general theological terms, the indigenous pastoral represents an at-


tempt by the church to address cultural specificity and relativism in its prac-
tice. This was part of the Oaxacan church’s efforts at democratization, a
transformation of its top-down modus operandi and paternalistic stance to-
ward its flock. One of the concerns of SERESURE, for example, was to pre-
pare clergy precisely for dealing with indigenous communities in a manner
that would enhance the relationship between priest and community. The
words above of a priest of Zapotec background from the Tehuantepec diocese
reflect the possibility for a special kind of mutually enriching exchange im-
plied by the indigenous pastoral. The testimonies of him and other Oaxacan
priests and nuns with whom I spoke, especially those of indigenous back-
ground, expressed clearly the profound change of consciousness wrought
through their long-term work within indigenous communities. The pastoral
indígena advocates the possibility for the same kind of existential transforma-
tion for indigenous persons, a critical process of conscienticization that could
lead to a new kind of strengthening of indigenous identity, especially in con-
frontation with the larger national society and the state.
Ideally, this dialogic process between church agents and the indigenous
would be what Johannes Fabian has termed coevalness: a context allowing for
open intercultural communication and exchange, as free as possible of the
taint of asymmetric social relations, especially the resonances of the relation-
ship between church and indigenous people in the colonial period.30 The
ethos of the pastoral indígena rejects the concept of acculturation that under-
lay early Mexican state models for development. Instead, it follows a different
hermeneutic principle, one premised on the equality of priests and indigenous
persons and the accommodation of the institutional church to the social and
historical realities of the pueblos indígenas.
The idea of inculturation is fundamental to this process. This concept,
derived from Vatican II, has been a crucial tenet of the progressivist church
philosophy in Oaxaca since its beginnings.31 Documents of Vatican II speak of
the doctrine of seminae Verbi (seeds of the Word), which explains that non-
Christian religions were seen as “historical-cultural facts, social and institu-
tional expressions of people’s religious consciousness that have in them seeds
which can germinate when exposed to the christian message.”32 The concept
involves a shaking off of the negative resonances of the term syncretism and,
along with the notion of indigenization (couching the Christian message
in indigenous cultural forms), is part of a contextualization of the Christian
message.
“Knowing Where We Enter” 167

In theological terms, inculturation denotes a process wherein the priest or


church agent evangelizes through the norms of the local community, using
them as a sieve of interpretation, producing a kind of hybrid indigenous the-
ology (teología indígena). Padre Chano, a young priest working in the Zapotec
southern sierra of Oaxaca State, provided this explanation:“Indigenous theol-
ogy involves trying to syncretize popular indigenous religion with Christian-
ity. . . . Now it’s really neither purely indigenous religion as it was, nor is it
purely Christian religion. Instead it becomes a religious syncretism manifest in
a very particular reflection of faith.”33
As conceived by the church, the concept of inculturation hence refers to
encounters wherein, theoretically, syncretism (regarded as the benign interac-
tion of two cultural systems) does not involve a usurping of either of the cul-
tures from which it arose. Anthropologist Michael Angrosino offers a critical
view of the church perception:“Both parties to the interculturative exchange
undergo internal transformation, but neither loses its autonomous identity. . . .
[I]nculturation occurs when a dominant culture attempts to make itself acces-
sible to a subdominant one without losing its own particular character.”34
In keeping with this idealistic paternalism, and underlining the perceived
great coincidences in indigenous and Catholic belief systems, this church-
defined indigenous theology reflects the liberationist ideal of an equal dia-
logue or exchange between indigenous (popular) and official religiosity. In
Latin America in particular, the concept has also come to denote a radical re-
vision of church structure in line with alternative political and economic re-
alities, that is, horizontal relations, including shared space, reciprocal learning,
and exchange, as opposed to the customary vertical, authoritarian dynamic of
imposition.35
Following the logic of inculturation and indigenous theology, Bishop
Lona told me in 1995 that the goal of his diocese was to be an “autochtho-
nous church” (iglesia autóctona). Like other clergy who support the idea of a
distinctly popular church, the bishop believes that communities will appre-
hend the Christian message better if they do so “from their own [sociocultu-
ral] reality [desde su propria realidad]”: “Indigenous theology is a theology very
distinct from Western forms. Among the indigenous peoples there is that
which is called the ‘seed of the word’ [semilla de la palabra] of God, and from
there we try to inculturate the gospel and create a Zapotec theology, a Huave
one, a Zoque one, from their own cultural richness. . . . It’s a theology that can
bring about change. For that reason an indigenous theology is always living,
and demanding that it always begins from the people’s own practical reality.”36
Bishop Lona here implies that indigenous theology, guided by libera-
tionist interpretations of the Gospel (el evangelio), results in the progressivist
prototype of Catholic faith—an enlightened Christianity that is organic to
people’s way of life and that empowers them to work for social justice for
168 Kristin Norget

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

nous languages; organizing workshops on popular religiosity (led by clergy),


on traditional medicine, and on indigenous social memory; and encouraging
activities like the transcription of local myths, songs, and folktales. In addition,
autonomous intercultural schools (escuelas interculturales) have been established
in a few parishes. In Centers of Peasant Education in the Tehuantepec Dio-
cese, for example, especially those associated with UCIRI, children are in-
structed in agricultural skills and traditional knowledge, stories, and songs. In
similar schools in other Oaxacan parishes, indigenous children and adults are
taught to read and write in their own language (which survives almost exclu-
sively in oral form) as well as in castellano, or Spanish. Such schools form part
of the shared objectives of the progressive church’s and the indigenous move-
ment’s campaign—the “rescue” of customs of collaboration and mutual aid,
regarded as essential elements of rural indigenous (and campesino) life.
In sum, in the view of the liberationist church in Oaxaca, the essence of
the faith is equated to local Catholic rites and customs which may continue to
evolve, but which are also regarded as timelessly natural and autochthonous.
The logic of the discourse of progressivist clergy therefore asserts that part of
authentic indigenous—or popular—identity is being Catholic. Cultural prac-
tices that define or sustain indigenous identities are associated with the festi-
val calendar and other communitarian rites and customs related to the
civil-religious hierarchy or cargo system (traditionally the backbone of rural
community social organization) and other Catholic rituals. Embodying a
complex exchange of religious and political services, the cargo system—
though originally imposed in large part by Spanish colonizers—has always
represented the basis of a certain measure of self-sufficiency and political au-
tonomy of indigenous communities.38
The pastoral indígena implies an important shift in the church view of the
relationship between religiosity and culture: within liberationist practice,
Catholic identity is no longer a part of national, mestizo culture at the center,
but instead is rooted in indigenous culture, customarily relegated by the dom-
inant cultural ideology to the sociopolitical periphery.

The Protestant Challenge


In the Oaxacan Popular Church campaign, a more inclusive, open, liber-
ationist version of the faith, has been reworked to identify itself as part of
local, morally resonant ethnic tradition and identity. Clergy’s affiliation with
the campaign for indigenous rights and autonomy aids the church in combat-
ing one of the banes of its existence, the incursion of Protestant evangelical
sects into, especially, Oaxaca’s rural zones.39
While Protestants have been in Oaxaca since the late nineteenth century,
the two decades from 1950 to 1970 saw a rising tide of neo-evangelical
churches in Oaxacan indigenous communities, including Pentecostal churches,
170 Kristin Norget

Adventists, Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons, many of these of U.S.


origin. Next to Chiapas, Oaxaca has the highest number of non-Catholics in
the country, or approximately 10 percent of the total population.40 Seasonal or
permanent migration to the United States has been an additional factor in the
increase of Protestants. Often conversion becomes just another layer on divi-
sions already existing among families within indigenous communities. The
Protestant presence then can cause significant tensions since many (though
not all) evangelicals refuse to participate in tequio or other aspects of the civil-
religious cargo system—the vida comunitaria that is so fundamental to the dis-
course of the indigenous movement and indigenous identity.
In the ecumenical spirit of liberation theology, Protestants are welcomed
in Catholic church-led organizations such as UCIRI, as long as they demon-
strate commitment to the rules and goals of the overall project. As Padre
Chano emphasized regarding the difficulties faced in his sierra parish, “these
aren’t problems just of Catholics or of Protestants, they are problems we all
share.”
Nevertheless, proselytizers of Protestant denominations are accused by
both indigenous leaders and the Catholic Church of exacerbating the loss of
traditional culture and the ethnic identity of the indigenous population. For
example, I have heard progressive clergy and others frequently speak of Protes-
tants as threatening “natural and authentic” local Catholic rites and customs
surrounding the cargo system and associated with indigenous communitarian
identity. Leaders of many indigenous organizations include, in fact, among their
first demands for autonomy the expulsion of Protestant promoters, or whole
families, from their communities “for not respecting the customs.”41
The Popular Church’s more extreme discourse opposes certain evangeli-
cal fixes on their American origins. Las sectas, priests argue, are foreign, origi-
nating from an imperious, capitalist, and individualist political and economic
system which is part of the social order which is being opposed.A valorization
of indigenous culture, then, is intended as a means to combat the assumedly
malevolent Protestant incursion.
At the same time, conflict between Protestants and Catholics is one of the
most serious social problems faced by Oaxacan indigenous communities, a sit-
uation which the liberal church project is concerned with ameliorating. In
certain parts of the state, for example, Protestants have also seen their homes
and other property destroyed and have been obligated to contribute to
Catholic festivals. Significantly, one of the clergy leaders of the coffee cooper-
ative UCIRI claimed that for many communities, involvement in the organi-
zation has helped to mitigate such confrontations since non-Catholics
(Protestants) now participate in tequio as a result of working with Catholics
for a shared goal and UCIRI’s engendering of common ethnic “conscience
collective.”42
“Knowing Where We Enter” 171

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.

Tran s i t i on : Th e I nd i g e nou s Pastoral Today


Liberationist practices and the pastoral indígena agenda in Oaxaca were
dependent upon clergy with human and technical resources and support to
carry these out. While such circumstances certainly existed in the region for
over two decades, gaining momentum under Bishop Bartolomé Carrasco,
they could not last after an eventual realignment of the balance of ideological
power in the ecclesiastic hierarchy.
While the pastoral indigena was gaining momentum in Oaxaca in the
1970s and 1980s, critical changes were afoot in the church hierarchy both na-
tionally, within Mexico, and at an international level. The gradual diminish-
ment of church support for liberation theology coincided with sharpening
divisions among the clergy in the late 1970s. In 1979 Pope John Paul II ex-
pressed his objections to the conception of Christ as a political revolutionary at
the Third CELAM Assembly of Latin American Bishops, held in the Mexican
city of Puebla.Also reversing the trends of Medellín, and CELAM’s progressivist
social doctrine, was the naming of Bishop Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of Colom-
bia, a vociferous opponent of liberation theology, as secretary general in 1972.
The increasingly doctrinaire and authoritarian approach of the Vatican
was directly felt in Mexico beginning in 1978 when Girolamo Prigione, the
Vatican’s envoy (nuncio apostólico) in Mexico, began his eighteen-year tenure as
nuncio. Prigione pursued a very active liaison between the Holy Office and
the Mexican bishopric and made recommendations on new bishops to be
named by the Vatican.45 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the Vatican main-
“Knowing Where We Enter” 173

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

archbishop of Mexico, commenting on the bishops’ report. The bishops had


claimed that the seminary conveyed a teaching “impregnated with a Marxist
cosmovision” that harmonized with the line “of the theology of liberation
that is used in Latin America.”50 It did not take long for the Holy Office to
respond to the bishops’ report, which it did by displacing the bishops direct-
ing the seminary, turning the reins over to Archbishop Rivera. In turn, the
archbishop, renowned for his arch-conservative doctrinal and political posi-
tions, expelled all the professors at SERESURE and radically revised the pro-
grams and methods of study.51 When it re-opened two years later, in 1992, it
was no longer a regional seminary but a diocesan one and now promoted a
clearly conservative pastoral line.With SERESURE’s closure, a serious blow
had been dealt to progressive Catholicism and the original incarnation of the
pastoral indígena in Mexico’s southeast.52
Prigione (or PRI-gione, as he came to be known in the media due to his
bold courting of government officials of the ruling People’s Revolutionary
Party or PRI) was seen as the main figure behind the downfall of
SERESURE. In the case of Oaxaca, Prigione’s efforts had their intended ef-
fect.The closure of SERESURE in 1990, followed by the highly contentious
replacement of Carrasco by González in 1992, had the effect of neutralizing
the liberationist tone prevailing in the Oaxacan diocese.53 In Oaxaca, this
meant that the diocese of Tehuantepec in the Isthmus region of the state, led
since 1971 by the renowned liberationist Bishop Lona, now clashed sharply
with the pastoral orientation of the Oaxacan archdiocese headed by conserva-
tive theologian Bishop González. (In 1998 the CEM sent a staunchly Vatican-
line coadjutor, Felipe Padilla, to Tehuantepec to replace Lona.) The situation
divided the diocese for most of the 1990s as González repeatedly provoked the
ire of Oaxacan clergy due to his actions and public statements, which clearly
harmonized with the dominant conservative line of the CEM. He also closed
the mission houses, run by nuns, that had been so crucial to carrying out the
pastoral indígena program in indigenous communities. Gonzalez also replaced
the coordinator of CEDIPIO and drastically curtailed the expansion of the
center’s working area of culture.
This important milestone marked a return of the diocese’s main focus
from a rural, indigenous orientation to an urban, mestizo one. In the Oaxacan
Archdiocese, for example, González began to back enthusiastically the national
movement of Charismatic Renewal in the Oaxacan diocese.The prelate’s sup-
port of charismatic Catholicism is significant in that this form of Catholicism
bears a strong resemblance to Pentecostalism in its emotional, mystical orien-
tation, its involvement in faith healing, and—most importantly—its apolitical
social outlook.
Thus, the pastoral indígena, the heartbeat of the Oaxacan diocese for over
thirty years, was severely weakened, its survival and growth so reliant on the
“Knowing Where We Enter” 175

coherent ambient support, knowledge, and commitment of the directors of


the Oaxacan Archdiocese. Although the indigenous pastoral remains the ob-
ject of much debate within the church hierarchy generally, and Archbishop
González claims it remains a primary focus of the pastoral plan of his arch-
diocesis, those who continue to promote a pastoral agenda as a legacy of
Bartolomé Carrasco’s original pastoral program, while many in number (ap-
proximately 50 percent of clergy in the Oaxacan Archdiocese)54, are marginal
to the reigning status quo.
Aside from the threat of ostracization from the ecclesial hierarchy, espe-
cially today, fulfilling the goals of the indigenous pastoral represents an omi-
nous challenge, requiring considerable tenacity and patience. In zones of
Oaxaca that are particularly internally conflictive, it also demands courage,
since the priest, in a natural mediatory position, may sometimes find himself
the object of hatred, or even of violence, from more powerful members of the
community.55
Oaxacan clergy (and nuns) have had to deal with threats by local caciques
and government representatives alike. Throughout the 1980s especially, the
Diocese of Tehuantepec (and that of Chiapas) was subject to continual attack
by regional power-holders. During the final years of his tenure as bishop, Lona
suffered two serious assassination attempts, and elsewhere in the Tehuantepec
diocese UCIRI members, including one of the organization’s founders, have
been murdered.Throughout Oaxaca, one priest has also been killed and other
priests have had their lives threatened and their parishes have been more
closely observed through an increasing militarization of rural areas in the con-
text of government suppression of independent rural organizing of a political
nature, in their efforts to nip in the bud any potential formation of au-
tonomous indigenous peasant insurgent groups akin to the Zapatistas.56

Auth e nt i c Pe r f ormanc e s of I nd i g e nou sne s s


The indigenous eruption demands profound changes in the schemes for
understanding this phenomenon and for arriving at a solution. Today it’s no
longer possible to look at indigenous people with the same eyes as before, that
is, as objects of study and integrationist actions, but instead as travelling
companions, as protagonist subjects of our own development and evangelization.
Indigenous cultures can today reformulate and recreate themselves in dialogue
with other cultures in order to sustain themselves not just alive, but even more
dynamic in the future.
—Eleazar López Hernández, Zapotec priest and coordinator of CENAMI57

Since the revolution at the beginning of the century, the relationship of


indigenous groups with the larger Mexican society has been directed by indi-
genist models of development representing varieties of assimilationist and in-
tegrationist ideologies. In the original indigenista ideology, indigenous culture
176 Kristin Norget

and folklore were appropriated and compartmentalized in the larger national


Mexican body as a way of legitimating a distinct and independent post-
revolutionary national society and culture.58
More recently, a “new indigenismo” insists on the need for the mainte-
nance of cultural distinctiveness of Mexico’s indigenous peoples.59 A primary
justification of the movement for indigenous autonomy is for Mexico’s first
peoples to wrest control of the social, economic, and cultural path of the de-
velopment of their communities from the hands of the government and
other external mediators, whose paternalistic, indigenist attitudes and oppres-
sive practices are argued to have had deleterious effects on indigenous soci-
ety and to have impeded the emergence of any pan-community ethnic
identity or political consciousness.
The indigenous struggle for autonomy therefore represents on many lev-
els a quest for true self-determination—liberation from the visions of mod-
ernization advanced by government policies (these influenced by European
liberalist ideology) since before the revolution. This struggle also involves
complex negotiations among leaders and participants of various ideologies
vying for control over the movement of the right to define and shape its path.
Today various social actors, technically from outside traditional indige-
nous society—liberationist clergy, anthropologists, and a new generation of
indigenous intellectuals who have appeared over the last couple of decades—
fight on behalf of the most marginalized sectors of the indigenous masses in
their encounter with the array of forces seen to threaten the viability of their
communities and traditional ways of life.Yet in this specific area of the highly
contested field of today’s Mexican popular movements, the politics of ethnic-
ity in some ways represent again a contest over power not drastically different
from that found in the clientelist and authoritarian culture which indigenous
organizations claim to oppose.
In recognizing the extent of the commitment and sacrifice many church
agents have made, and the compromised conditions in which they often live,
it is sometimes difficult to regard them as implicated in a system of power and
self-interest—or even, sometimes, as representatives of the institutional
church. In fact, some priests, especially those in isolated rural communities,
have distanced themselves considerably from the central ecclesiastic institution
in terms of their contact with other church representatives, especially those
working in the present Oaxacan diocese administration. Many liberationist
clergy with whom I have spoken (especially in the conservative-led archdio-
cese) are frustrated with the perceived backlash to liberation theology begun
at Medellín and especially apparent in both Oaxacan dioceses today.This pro-
gressivist sector campaigns avidly for an opening of the institutional church,
which for many even includes a relaxing of the rules of celibacy and a protec-
tion of clergy’s “human rights” within the hierarchy.60
“Knowing Where We Enter” 177

We must remind ourselves, however, that the ideological cleavage be-


tween conservatives and liberationists within the church is not part of a break
from the institution: clergy still maintain official links with the institutional
church and are to some extent subject to the hierarchy’s control and repri-
mand. Priests know that their assignment to a certain parish is decided by the
archdiocese central administration (which in turn is strongly influenced by the
heads of the conservative Mexican episcopado, now with a renewed relation-
ship with the government).61 If their activities are disliked by the hierarchy,
they may be abruptly moved, often ending or at least seriously damaging a
progressive pastoral program they worked hard to put in place. The Vatican’s
appointment of adjunct bishops (coadjutores) to “aid” renowned progressive
archbishops Carrasco in 1989, Ruiz in Chiapas in 1995, and Lona in 1998, for
example, is a patent exercise of such control. Such measures are part of the
symbolic violence or “conservation strategies” by which the upper echelons of
the church hierarchy construct and underline their authority and the impera-
tive of obedience, in an attempt to quash dissent and silence alternative theo-
logical or pastoral discourses.62
Yet further difficulties stem from the ambivalent and in some ways con-
tradictory status of many clergy. The particularistic ethnic character of the
popular church’s formulation of a language of mobilization within the pastoral
indígena mandate has led a few progressivist clergy to uphold agendas which
are similarly exclusionary and purist in nature and, like some contemporary
conservative clergy, to see their “true Christianity” as part of an enlightened
vanguard in the larger struggle.This fact places them in a difficult position as
being outsiders to indigenous culture yet, in various ways, staunch defenders
of it.63
In this highly charged political climate, the church participates in legiti-
mating a dominant paradigm of culture as a homogenous, bounded, integrated
whole.This paradigm acts as the interpretive lens for any statements about the
ontology of indigenous culture, the way it changes through time, and the re-
lationship that indigenous people have to “their culture.”64 Today this tendency
toward essentializing indigenous culture has not changed from past state-
sponsored indigenist projects, but has taken on a slightly different premise. For
example, in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico, leaders and participants in the
indigenous movement are actively constructing ideologies that make refer-
ence to indigenous society as an egalitarian community embedded in a dis-
tinct moral economy.
Not surprisingly, most representatives of the progressivist church I have
known in Oaxaca share in this tendency. However, for them, this communi-
tarian indigenous society is fundamentally religious (in relation to corporate
civil-religious identity) and collective (in opposition to the individualistic,
alienating, competitive life-way of the wider Mexican society).
178 Kristin Norget

While proclaiming the imperative of the autonomy and independence of


indigenous society, this view tends toward a homogenizing romanticism and
idealism, seeing the indigenous world as an endangered society of primeval
harmony and tradition, whose independent development since the conquest
has been repeatedly violated by foreigners ignorant of its distinct cosmology
and ways of being.
The inclusivist, pluralist theology implied by the liberationist concept of
inculturation presents a potential problem for the popular church in terms of
the coherence of its democratizing, grassroots political stance. First, syncretism
is never a process free of the resonances of political confrontation and control.
Such “indigenizing” projects are often efforts from above to control the ori-
entation of religious synthesis:65 in the case of Oaxaca, indigenous theology
represents an attempt to define the interface of indigenous, folk religion with
official Catholic religiosity, which was previously the territory of a more self-
determined, autonomous popular faith.66
A central goal of the indigenous pastoral is inculturation or evangelization
through indigenous languages. However, while the church promoted the
learning of indigenous languages among clergy as early as the 1970s, this was
one aspect of CEDIPIO’s work that never had much success.The reality is that
if they are not native speakers already, few priests master the language of the
communities of their parishes.This problem alone is a significant impediment
to communication and throws some doubt on the seriousness of the Oaxacan
church’s commitment to follow through with the full agenda of inculturation.
In the Oaxacan liberationist project of integral evangelization, the mate-
rial conditions of social life are contrived to form the basis of the symbolic
construction of a distinct cultural (and religious) identity. Essentialized, rural-
derived values and customs of collective welfare and a moral rootedness are
elaborated and embellished, then held up in contrast to the dominant (mes-
tizo) society and the state. Through this evangelist process, priests may be
viewed by the people, and may view themselves, as natural leaders of the pop-
ular or the indigenous cause.
For David Lehmann, adherents of the “People’s Church” movement
within the Catholic Church, or the practitioners of the indigenous theology
of inculturation, are examples of what he calls basista tendencies, due to their
faith in the faith of the poor or the grassroots: “They develop their theory
about the proper place of indigenous practices at second remove, in order to
set them up as an authentic performance of something ‘other.’ ”67 Along a sim-
ilar vein, Homi Bhabha writes that “colonial discourse is an apparatus of
power that turns on the recognition and disavowal of racial, cultural and his-
torical differences.”68 In the case of the Catholic Church in Oaxaca, the
church constructs these differences in a certain fashion to justify its continued
mediatory role in indigenous communities as beneficent “accompanier.” It
“Knowing Where We Enter” 179

represents Catholicism as being authentically traditional to the history and


identity of indigenous peoples.
Innumerable millenarian and other religious resistance movements in
Oaxaca and in Mexico attest to the fact that it is precisely popular religion’s rel-
atively autonomous social status which allows it to act potentially as an effec-
tive oppositional force.69 We should also not forget that the Catholic Church,
even in its liberationist guise, by virtue of the vast personal, financial, and insti-
tutional resources, retains a significant concentration of political and economic
power, and not just of moral authority. For example, the links priests already
have within the larger society (social, political, economic) are often crucial in
obtaining key benefits for their pastoral projects, such as funding or other forms
of aid from foreign or other outside sources (e.g., philanthropic organizations,
foreign non-governmental organizations), as is the case with the priest/founder
of UCIRI.70 Thus, although the key goal of liberationist praxis is to empower
indigenous people so that they might eventually lead themselves, giving prior-
ity to the enabling of power “from below” is not always the practice.

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

My discussion of the background and evolution of the liberationist in-


digenous pastoral in Oaxaca has highlighted the rift between theology and
practice. For one, what clergy are able to put into practice in their given
parishes is contingent on factors specific to a given local context as well as a
priest’s own personal resources.At the same time, I have pointed to the neces-
sity of not losing sight of the larger institutional church in which priests of any
political stripe must operate, a church that has seen critical changes take place
to its own internal political culture at international and national levels.These
have involved a backlash against liberation theology and attempts to deepen
the church’s political commitment, especially in developing areas of the world
such as Latin America. For many years there existed in Oaxaca a theological
climate supportive of liberationist practices. Yet since the end of the 1970s,
with a strengthening of the church’s constitutional position and its relation to
the Mexican state, the Oaxacan church was gradually no longer a sanctioned
space for protest or for mobilization.
The apparent openness to modern ideas of democracy promoted by pro-
gressives has not been paralleled by an attempt to integrate modern values of
equality into the church’s own internal organization. The church remains
very closed: autocratic leadership styles persist and so-perceived “radical”
activity is constrained by the ultimate decision-making power of the central
hierarchy.
The pastoral indígena provided a praxis for mobilization and an organiza-
tional and ideological basis for a reinvention of ethnic identity. The ethnic
basis of the discourse of the indigenous pastoral allowed the Oaxacan church
to combine an ability to be identified as a rallying cause for diverse social
problems with a capacity to invoke social and cultural particularisms, derived
from a sacred and idealized (transcendental) past, depicted as being opposed to
dominant Mexican society and forces aligned with the state.
Yet I have suggested that this discourse and its key concept of incultura-
tion are also based on a view of indigenous culture that is patronizing and
utopian, wishing to preserve it according to conceptions of indigenous culture
as a homogenous, egalitarian whole, to which (Catholic) religiosity is both
central and authentic.
Precisely due to its insistence on the immanence of the Christian message
in any cultural context and its continued allegiance to the Catholic Church,
liberation theology’s discourse is also underlain by a logic of universalism that
is premised on Catholicism’s supposedly generic, non-culturally specific char-
acter. In this way, the apparently alternative (“heterodox,” in Bourdieu’s terms)
discourse of liberation theology does not represent, in fundamental terms, a
challenge to that aspect of church doxa which defines the church as an inte-
gral and implicitly necessary institution in Mexican society. As Angrosino
points out, “the rhetoric of sensitivity to cultural variation exists in a state of
“Knowing Where We Enter” 181

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

in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 169 (converted to a


Supreme Law, Article 133 of the Constitution, stating that indigenous peoples
should have the right to conserve their own customs and institutions), and changes
to Article 4 and 27 of the Constitution dealing with indigenous rights. In-depth dis-
cussion of the indigenous movement in Mexico and in Oaxaca, which cannot be
provided here, may be found in M. C. Pineros Mejia and Sergio Sarmiento Silva, La
lucha indigena: Un reto a la ortodoxia (Mexico D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1991); Hernández
Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad; and Lynn Stephen, ¡Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural
Politics in Southern Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
8. For example, Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad.
9. J. Rendón Monzón, Rescate de la dignidad indígena (Oaxaca: Cultura para el Tercer
Milenio, 1994).
10. Objetivo provisorio de la pastoral indigenista, as cited in Hernández Diaz, Reclamos de la
identidad, 127
11. Conscienticization or consciousness raising (conscientización) is a term borrowed
from the hallmark pedagogical method of great Brazilian popular educator Paulo
Freire. Conscientización refers to the development of a critical mind through the
use of locally salient and politically charged images of conflict from everyday life.
12. Victor G. Muro González, Iglesia y movimientos sociales en México, 1972–1987: Los
casos de Ciudad Juárez y el Istmo de Tehuantepec (Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán,
1994).
13. Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad, 128. Casas-mision were founded in the in-
digenous towns of Yalalag, Camotlan,Apaola,Tlaxiaco (in the Mixteca), and Panixt-
lahuaca and Zenzontepec in the southern Sierra.
14. See Philip Berryman, Liberation Theology (London: Pantheon, 1987), 94.
15. Interview with Msgr. Arturo Lona,Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, 1995.
16. Other clergy of the Pacific South considered as founders of SERESURE are the
bishops of the dioceses of Oaxaca (Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, Bartolomé Car-
rasco),Tehuantepec (Lona),Tuxtla Gutiérrez,Tapachula, and San Cristobal (Ruiz).
17. In 1989, the number of Mexican Catholics per priest (7,116) was below average for
Latin America (7,348). In 1945, there were only 5,380 Mexican Catholics per
priest. George W. Grayson, The Church in Contemporary Mexico, Significant Issues Se-
ries XIV, no. 5 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic Studies, 1992), 41.
18. Interview with Padre C. B., December 1995.
19. SERESURE, 1989, in Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad, 130.
20. Berryman, Liberation Theology.
21. In 1980, in recognition of his commitment to indigenous peoples, Bartolomé Car-
rasco was named president of the Bishops’ Commission for Indigenous Peoples
(Comision Episcopal para Indígenas or CEI) that formed part of the larger structure
of the Mexican Bishop’s Conference (CEM).
22. Ruiz sponsored the landmark Indigenous Congress of 1974, which marked the be-
ginning of the resurgence of the Mexican indigenous movement.
23. See also Marroquín, El Botín Sagrado; Miguel Concha Malo, La Participación de los
Cristianos en el proceso popular de liberación en México (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI Edi-
tores, 1986);Victor De la Cruz, “Reflexiones acercade los movimientos etnopolíti-
cos contemporáneous en Oaraca,” in Etuicidad y Pluralismo Cultural, ed. Alicia
Barabas and Miguel Bartolome (México, D.F.: Dir. General, 1990), 423–446;
CENAMI, El Magisterio Pastoral de la Región Pacífico Sur (México, D.F.: CENAMI,
1991).
24. “Tehuantepec, 1891–1991: Un Siglo de Fe,” in CENAMI, El Magisterio Pastoral de la
Region Pacifico Sur, 53–94; and see also other collective documents of bishops of the
Pacific South region until the end of the 1980s. The eight bishops were Samuel
Ruiz of San Cristobal de las Casas, Arturo Lona of Tehuantepec, Ernesto Corripio
“Knowing Where We Enter” 183

Ahumada and Bartolomé Carrasco of Oaxaca, Braulio Sanchez Fuentes of the


Prelature of the Mixes, Hermenegildo Ramirez of Huautla, Jesús Castillo Rentería
of Tuxtepec, and Rafael Ayala Ayala of Tehuacán.
25. Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la identidad, 131–132.
26. The organization that undertook the commercialization of coffee was named
MICHIZA. The expectation was that promoters trained in either health or agro-
ecology would then share this information with their communities. In 1991,
MICHIZA became independent of the church. Hernández Díaz, Reclamos de la
identidad.
27. See Jorge Hernández Díaz,“UCIRI:Viejas identidades, nuevos referentes culturales
y politicos,” Cuadernos del Sur 3, no. 8–9 (1995): 125–144.
28. Tequio is an ancient form of collective labor that today is expressed as social service
owed periodically by a community’s members to the community as physical labor
or religious tasks.
29. On August 30, 1995, the Oaxacan State Congress approved the election law by usos
y costumbres (law and customs), applied for the first time on November 12.The law
allowed indigenous communities to elect municipal authorities on the basis of the
civil-religious cargo system and the name of authorities within a general assembly,
without having to register with a political party.
30. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University
Press, 1983).
31. See, for example, Carrasco,“Inculturation del Evangelio,” 11–31.
32. Josué A. Nascimiento Sathler and Amós Sathler,“Black Masks on White Faces: Lib-
eration Theology and the Quest for Syncretism in the Brazilian Context,” in Liber-
ation Theologies, Post-modernity, and the Americas, ed. David Bastone, Eduardo
Mendieta, Lois Ann Lorentzen, and Dwight N. Hopkins (London: Routledge,
1997), 109–110.
33. Interview with Padre W. M., Oaxaca, 1995.
34. Michael V. Angrosino, “The Culture Concept and the Mission of the Catholic
Church,” American Anthropology 96 (1994): 825.
35. Ibid., 826.
36. Interview with Archbishop Arturo Lona,Tehuantepec, 1995.
37. As a document from SERESURE (1989) explains,“the idea of the pastoral indígena
is that the priest no longer assists indigenous people, but instead involves himself
with them in their path [caminar], their anxieties, their hopes and from the inside
[desde dentro], to promote a liberating evangelization in which the same indigenous
may be subjects of their own evangelization, expressed and lived according to their
own mentalities, traditions and histories of the pueblos” (in Hernández Díaz,
Reclamos de la identidad, 130).
38. See, for example, Miguel Bartolome and Alicia Barabas, Etnicidad y pluralismo cul-
tural: La dinamica etnicas en Oaxaca (Mexico: Dir. General, 1990).
39. In Mexico, the category “Protestants” includes the historical Protestant churches
such as the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, but also evangelical sects such as
Pentecostals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints).
40. Daniela Pastrana, “Religión y pueblos indios: De la intolerancia a la convivencia,”
La Jornada, April 8, 2001.
41. See Wim Gisjbers, Usos y Costumbres, Caciquismo e Intolerancia Religiosa (Oaxaca,
Oax.: Centro de Apoyo al Movimiento Popular Oaxaqueño, 1996).
42. Personal interview, Padre C. B.,Tehuantepec Diocese.
43. For example, Aída Hernández Castillo, “Women and the Pastoral Indígena in Chi-
apas,” paper given at the Scientific Society for the Study of Religion, Montreal, No-
vember 1998.
184 Kristin Norget

44. C. Ramos Escandón, “Women’s Movements, Feminism, and Mexican Politics,” in


The Women’s Movement in Latin America, ed. J. Jacquette (San Francisco: Westview,
1994); Lynn Stephen, “Democracy for Whom? Women’s Grassroots Political Ac-
tivism in the 90s, Mexico City and Chiapas,” in Neoliberalism Revisited: Economic Re-
structuring and Mexico’s Political Future, ed. Gerardo Otero (San Francisco:Westview,
1996), 167–186.
45. According to Grayson, several factors explain the influence of the Vatican in Mex-
ico. First, the Mexican church feels a debt to the Holy See for its support during the
revolution, during the period of anticlerical practices following it, and during the
Cristero Movement. Second, Mexico’s political culture emphasizes discipline and
obedience to authority. Bishops are extremely deferent toward the pope.Third, re-
cent CEM presidents have offered relatively weak leadership, and the Vatican has
filled the void. Fourth, since 1978, Pope John Paul II has selected conservative bish-
ops who tow Rome’s theological and political line. Finally, apostolic delegate Giro-
lamo Prigione is a shrewd, manipulative, and influential figure. Over one-third of
the country’s ninety-three active bishops have been appointed with his imprimatur.
Grayson, The Church in Contemporary Mexico, 33, 35.
46. Salinas courted influential bishops during his electoral campaign, invited church
leaders to his inauguration, appointed a personal envoy to the Vatican in 1990
(Agustín Téllez Cruces), and was particularly attentive during Pope John Paul’s vis-
its to Mexico in 1990.Then in 1992, when he gained office, arguing for a need to
“modernize” the relations with the church, he amended five articles of the Consti-
tution that gave the church legal recognition and extended its public role.
47. Rodrigo Vera and Isodoro Yescas, “Con Pretexto de Abandono del celibato, el Vati-
cano reprime a sacerdotes que optan por los pobres,” Proceso, March 12, 1990. Pri-
gione was succeeded in 1997 by Justo Mullor, who in turn was replaced by
Leonardo Sandri, who then was replaced after a couple of months by Guiseppe
Bertello.
48. Quoted in Manuel Esparza, Opción Preferencial (Periodismo Crítico: Carteles Edi-
tores, 2001), 27 (my translation).
49. Marroquín, El Botín Sagrado, 39.
50. The students organized a pilgrimage in protest. Outraged by the march, Rivera ex-
pelled the seminary’s 130 students and closed the doors of SERESURE, later say-
ing they could return only on the condition they accepted the seminary’s “new
order.” Only five students, all from the Tehuacan diocese, did so.The other students
had long gone.Yet with so few students left, the seminary could no longer function,
and so closed its doors for good.
51. All dioceses and regions formally united in SERESURE now have their own sem-
inaries; these now exist in Oaxaca City,Tapachula,Tehuantepec, Huautla de Jiménez
(all in Oaxaca), San Cristobal de las Casas (Chiapas), Acapulco (Guerrero), and
Tehuacán (Puebla).
52. To add insult to injury, on June 29, following the final closure of SERESURE, in
the Vatican Pope John Paul II made Rivera Carrera (“Prigione’s man” as he was
being popularly called) archbishop of Mexico; Berlié Belaunzarán became bishop of
Yucatan; and Suárez Inda, bishop of Morelia.
53. In an ironic turn lamented by many progressivist clergy, González was made presi-
dent of the Commission for Indigenous of the CEM. In the presidential elections of
2000, the archbishop made no secret of his delight at the victory of the opposi-
tional, church-supporting National Action Party (PAN): “Never again a Mexico
without Christ and his Gospel,” he declared at the end of that year. In February of
2003, González was named archbishop of Durango, leaving the Archdiocese of
Oaxaca temporarily without a leader.
54. Pedro Matías,“Celibato y Pederastía en Oaxaca,” ProcesoSur, May 11, 2002, 19
“Knowing Where We Enter” 185

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

Mayan Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico

Practicing Faith on Their Own Te rms

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

children of God. Like thousands of indigenous catechists throughout the diocese,


he is a spiritual leader in his community. He is respected for his knowledge and ex-
perience and is regularly consulted about religious matters, community conflicts,
and personal problems. Catholic residents of his community gather in a chapel
several times a week to read and discuss the Bible.They share their own under-
standings of the word of God, which are formed by their everyday experience.
These indigenous Catholics, like thousands of others in Chiapas, have affiliated
with the pastoral project of the Diocese of San Cristóbal.They refer to themselves
as followers of the “word of God” and differentiate themselves from Protestants
and Traditionalists.
To label indigenous Catholics victims of Westernization is far too simplis-
tic; it denies indigenous people agency. In his study of globalization and reli-
gion among Q’eqchi’ Maya of Guatemala, Hans Siebers notes that Q’eqchis’
do not uncritically accept religious beliefs of Catholic or Protestant churches.
Instead, a religious creolization occurs in which Q’eqchis’ selectively adopt
and adapt their own and external religious traditions to “create their own
blend of religion.”3
In Chiapas,Word of God Catholics understand and practice their faith on
their own terms.They are not “simple victims of a one-sided flow of religious
beliefs and practices from other parts of the world,” but agents who are ac-
tively transforming the church.4 Mayan Catholics made the decision to form
an alliance with the Diocese of San Cristóbal.The diocese became a new in-
terlocutor, albeit a Western one, that approached indigenous people to dia-
logue with them and also supported them in their struggle to affirm their
dignity. In this alliance, indigenous people gained concrete skills (from literacy
to organizing skills), a language that justified their ongoing struggle for liber-
ation, and a base for the development of regional networks.Through an eval-
uation of the development of the diocesan project under the leadership of
Bishop Ruiz (1960–2000), this chapter explores the ways indigenous people
and the Catholic Church in Chiapas have impacted one another and created
a transformed church.5
The church’s commitment to work with and for the indigenous poor
raises a number of questions: If the poor are to be subjects of their own his-
tory, can the church as an institution act to promote indigenous rights? Is the
church speaking for the poor or listening to them? Liberationist terminology
often refers to the church as “the voice of the voiceless.”Yet, people, no mat-
ter how marginalized, already have a voice and certainly do not need someone
to speak for them. Daniel Levine notes that “being a voice for the voiceless is
less difficult and demanding for institutions like the churches than is listening
to what the hitherto voiceless have to say and giving them space and tools
with which to act.”6 The metaphor voice of the voiceless fails to recognize the
agency of indigenous people. A better metaphor for the ideal role of the
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 189

church in its relationship to indigenous people is the ear of the earless.


Throughout history, members of the Catholic Church and the Mexican gov-
ernment have ignored the voices of indigenous peoples. Both are earless while
Mayan Catholics and other groups are speaking and demanding that their
voices be heard.The metaphor ear of the earless allows for the recognition that
indigenous people speak with their own voices. Listening to and walking with
indigenous people is significantly different from the paternalism of pretending
to speak for others. At times, the Church of San Cristóbal listened to and was
transformed by indigenous voices; at times, the church attempted to speak for
the voiceless.7

Encounte r s: Bishop Ruiz García


and Indige nous Catholics of Chiapas
One achievement of the diocesan work is that indigenous and campesino
communities have taken the step to stop being the objects of the decisions of
others to start to be subjects of their own history. It is worth pointing out that
indigenes and campesinos’ awareness of their dignity has grown, fed by the values
of the gospel. They have begun to occupy the space that belongs to them in the
church, and due to this, also in history. Gradually, they feel and live their own
responsibility in the Church to which they belong and which belongs to them.
—Samuel Ruiz8

In January 1960 Samuel Ruiz was consecrated bishop of the Diocese of


San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Mexico’s southeastern state of Chiapas. Ruiz
was an ardent anti-communist who followed the development and modern-
ization theories of his time and planned to modernize and Westernize the
peasant and indigenous inhabitants of Chiapas. Early on Bishop Ruiz elabo-
rated a preliminary pastoral plan with three fundamental goals: first, to teach
the indigenous peoples Spanish; second, to give them shoes since the majority
were barefoot or wore sandals; and third, to teach them catechism. Rather than
evangelize in native indigenous languages, Ruiz thought that indigenous peo-
ples should learn Spanish since they were Mexican. In short, he believed the
situation of indigenous peoples could be improved by making them more like
mestizos. Decades later, after becoming known as one of the most progressive
bishops of Latin American, Ruiz criticized his early goals, joking that perhaps
he had desired to see people wear shoes because he was from the state of Gua-
najuato, a region dedicated to the production of shoes.9
As he spent time in rural communities, witnessing the poverty and hu-
miliation of daily life along with the faith and hope evident in struggles for
survival, Bishop Ruiz’s view began to change, and he saw a need for a differ-
ent type of pastoral work. The reality of political repression, poverty, racism,
land scarcity, and the lack of social services demanded a pastoral line that sup-
ported indigenous people’s struggles for a dignified life.
190 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.

Juan’s Story: A Tzotzil Catechist


i n H i g h land C h i apas
I turn to the story of Juan, a Word of God Catholic born in the highland
township of San Juan Chamula. Juan now lives in a colonia inhabited by in-
digenous peoples on the outskirts of the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.13
His faith and his work as a catechist can only be understood in relation to the
political and economic context of his life. As Robert Orsi asserts, “Religion
comes into being in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the realities of
everyday life.”14 Juan’s faith and affiliation with the San Cristóbal Diocese is
linked at once to his identity as a Tzotzil Maya and to the structural violence
(poverty, racism, and political repression) that he resists in daily life. As noted
in the introduction to this chapter, Juan affirms that the inequality present in
Chiapas goes against God’s will. The seemingly simple statement that all are
equal in the eyes of God has great importance. It challenges the status quo in
Chiapas, where a small group of mestizos have held political and economic
power for decades. In his link to the church as institution, Juan recognizes an
ally in resisting poverty and racism. In his work as a catechist, Juan has gained
numerous skills as well as connections with Catholics throughout the diocese.
As Juan tells the story, a simple event, a literal knock on his door, un-
leashed a series of changes in his life. In the late 1960s Father Leopoldo
Hernández, a diocesan priest, arrived at his home in Chamula to invite him to
attend a catechist course in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Juan, along with his
two brothers, decided to attend the class.They would remain in the internado,
a sort of boarding school for catechists, for four full months, studying day and
night.
Why did Juan decide to leave his home in Chamula to participate in the
class? He was an orphan—his mother had died when he was ten months old
and his father died soon after. Like many other residents of Chamula, Juan did
not own any land and had few prospects for earning a living. Perhaps in his al-
liance with Father Hernández and the Catholic diocese he saw the possibility,
however small, of an alternative to a life that seemed to offer only poverty.
In 1994, Juan told me about his first catechist course some twenty-five
years earlier. It was at the course that he learned to read and write and speak
Spanish. He studied from a book with Tzotzil and Spanish on facing pages
192 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

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.

Forming Catechists: Gathe ring


and S p read i ng th e Word
In the early 1960s the diocese opened a number of schools for catechists,
and in the ten years that followed, seven hundred catechists passed through,
many walking long distances to attend. The Diocese of San Cristóbal covers
more than thirty-six thousand square kilometers and contains hundreds of
rural communities, many of which were accessible only by foot.16 Like many
other Latin American bishops, Ruiz recognized the necessity of training cate-
chists who would assist in carrying out pastoral work. Initially, this was a prag-
matic decision, but in time, indigenous catechists would play a critical role in
transforming the church.
In 1962 two catechist schools were established in San Cristóbal, one by
religious women of the Divine Shepard congregation and another by the
Marist order. The Jesuit order established a third school in Bachajón (north-
eastern Chiapas). Initially, the schools followed a vertical or top-down model
in which pastoral agents and other teachers imparted their knowledge in
Spanish.These schools provided courses in Bible instruction and skills such as
baking, sewing, and agriculture. Students like Juan were selected by pastoral
agents and attended courses for three to six months.
The teachers treated students as if they were passive receptors of evange-
lization and failed to address the socio-cultural context of their peasant and
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 195

indigenous students. Rather than dialogue, the schools followed a “banking


model” of education with the expectation that catechists would receive infor-
mation in class and repeat it in communities. This was the style of class that
Juan attended. In spite of the shortcomings of the method, he was nonetheless
impressed with the class.
It is not surprising that many catechists were frustrated by the top-down
approach. In a 1968 meeting in the Tzeltal zone several indigenous catechists
expressed their discontent: “The Church and the Word of God have said
things to save our souls, but we don’t know how to save our bodies.While we
work for our own and others’ salvation, we suffer hunger, illness, poverty, and
death. Now we know the Bible, its authors, the names of its books, . . . we sing
and pray every Sunday. . . . [T]here are catechists, choirs and leaders, but
hunger and illness and poverty continue without end.”17 The catechists’ con-
cern that the church be relevant to the structural conditions of everyday life
resonated with the conclusions of Vatican II and the Medellín meetings and
the concerns of liberation theology.
In response to the “signs of the times,” Bishop Ruiz and pastoral workers
sought a new model for catechesis in the 1970s. Rather than planning the
meetings themselves, pastoral workers began to consult with indigenous cate-
chists to plan meetings around themes relevant to their lived experiences. In a
1971 catechist meeting in the township of Ocosingo (a primarily Tzeltal re-
gion), participants redefined the function of catechists, naming their method
Tiwanej (Tzeltal for the one who gathers and spreads the word in community)
rather than as nopteswanej (Tzeltal for teacher).18 The new catechism classes
were to be participatory, with community members playing an active role in
selecting themes for group discussion. Recognizing that catechists had to be
responsible to the people they served, communities rather than priests were to
select catechists.
In the early 1970s in Ocosingo, Dominican missionaries along with
Marist brother Javier Vargas recognized the similarity between the peasants’
search for land and the Bible’s second book, “Exodus.” The misery and op-
pression of the Catholics and their search for a “promised land,” dignity, and
liberty was described as an exodus, and the book became a central theme of
catechesis.19 In a process that began in the 1930s but continued throughout
the 1970s, peasants who had worked on plantations near Ocosingo, Altami-
rano, Comitán, Las Margaritas, and other towns colonized the Lancandón rain
forest in order to cultivate their own land.20 Peasants encountered tremendous
hardships—disease and a lack of potable water, social services, and schools—
but also the hope of freedom from the oppressive conditions of working for
others. Inspired to respond to this reality, Javier Vargas and other pastoral agents
worked with Tzeltal Catholics to develop a new catechism that addressed the
peasants’ struggle for a dignified life.
196 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

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

Indige nous Cong re ss of 1974:


U n i ty and E qual i ty
The First Indigenous Congress, held in San Cristóbal de Las Casas in Oc-
tober 1974, marked a watershed in the political mobilization of peasants in
Chiapas as well as in the diocese’s commitment to working with the poor.The
importance of this congress cannot be overemphasized; it was the first oppor-
tunity in five hundred years for the four ethnic groups to unite and speak
about their situation in public spaces that had been dominated by mestizos.
Dr. Manuel Velasco Suárez, then governor of Chiapas, conceived the congress
in order to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Fray
Bartolomé de Las Casas, remembered as “Defender of the Indigenous.”25 Rec-
ognizing the weakness of the government’s networks in indigenous commu-
nities, the governor asked Bishop Ruiz to assist in convening the congress.The
bishop agreed to assist on the condition that it would not be a tourist or folk-
loric event, but rather that the indigenous would be permitted to give their
word in public after living in silence for so many years.
Preparations for the congress began a year prior to the event and lay the
groundwork for much of the organizing that would follow. Between October
of 1973 and September of 1974 local, regional, and municipal meetings were
held in indigenous communities to discuss the upcoming event. Initially, peo-
ple met to “know our reality,” that is, to talk about the situation of indigenous
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 197

communities, and to discuss Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas’s work in relation to


indigenous rights.
Hopes, desires, and future goals were also addressed, and each of the four
major ethnic groups of the diocese—Tzeltales,Tzotziles, Ch’oles, and Tojola-
bales—prepared their presentation on the themes of the congress: land, com-
merce, education, and health. In the course of these meetings, representatives
were democratically selected to attend the congress. The social conditions of
the early 1970s favored the beginning of an organizational process. At this
time, there were no institutional political structures representing the indige-
nous people of the state. Day laborers who worked on plantations were chal-
lenging their oppression and taking over land; and people were calling for an
end to commercial exploitation.26
Over 1,230 indigenous delegates from 327 communities from the state of
Chiapas attended the meetings and reached agreements on each of the four
themes discussed. Land distribution was of special importance given the exis-
tence of large estates and plantations (many of them holding land in a way that
was illegal under the Mexican Constitution) in Chiapas.
The indigenous participants recognized that they shared similar problems
and could unite in their political struggles. For example, this was expressed in
the final agreements on land:“We all want to resolve the problems of land, but
we are divided, each one on his own. Because of this we do not have strength.
We are looking for the organization of each group in order to have strength
because unity gives us strength.”27
The importance of the event in uniting indigenous peoples from various
regions, and in initiating organization beyond local communities, is worth
comment. Juan attended the conference and was most impressed by the pres-
ence of so many indigenous peoples from throughout the diocese. In 1994,
twenty years after the congress, he proudly recalled the large number of
Tzotziles, Tzeltales, Cho’les, and Tojolabales who united to exchange ideas,
reach agreements, and even dance and play traditional music.
But the notion of “unity” described in the Indigenous Congress was, in
1974, a goal to strive for rather than the reality.There was not, and is not, unity
within or between indigenous communities, and different groups within
communities chose distinct political options. Some affiliated with the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI,
Mexico’s ruling party from 1929 to 2000) in order to receive benefits (how-
ever small) in the form of land or credit. Beginning in the 1970s, increasing
numbers of indigenous peoples joined one of several Protestant churches. Ac-
cording to government census data, the state’s Protestant population was less
than 5 percent in 1970 and over 21 percent in 2000.
In writing about the current crisis of the progressive Latin American
Catholic Church, John Burdick urges scholars to listen to a wide range of
198 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

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

sciousness of the pastoral workers of the Diocese of San Cristóbal.They rec-


ognized the Indians’ ability to organize, the values that can come from evan-
gelization, and the evidence of a liberating process supported by the Gospel.
Furthermore, they decided that it was necessary to revise all pastoral work.31
Bishop Ruiz later reflected on the importance of the 1974 congress: “When
the pastoral agents of the Diocese saw and heard what the indigenous people
were saying about their own situation, it was very clear that our Pastoral Plan
had been elaborated without taking into account the aspirations, necessities,
and hopes of the communities. In response to this appeal we made a Plan that
tried to respond in some way from the faith of the necessities described.”32
In a November 1975 meeting (which later became known as the first
Diocesan Assembly) priests, nuns, and lay workers began to plan the new di-
rection of their pastoral work.33 In this historic meeting, two key lines of work
emerged: first, a commitment to “work with and for the poor” and, second,
support for the formation of an autochthonous church.34 Linking their work
to the meetings of Vatican II and Medellín as well as to liberation theology,
the diocese chose at this 1975 meeting “the preferential option for the poor”
as the path of all future work.
The second line was more fully developed in the 1980s and 1990s and
would involve a series of changes in the diocese. A central element of this
process involved an attempt to “inculturate” pastoral practices by recognizing
and respecting the connection between faith and culture and by taking culture
into account in evangelization. In supporting the formation of an autochtho-
nous church, Bishop Ruiz and the pastoral workers began to educate them-
selves about indigenous customs and beliefs. “Traditional” Mayan customs
were incorporated in liturgy; ancient stories, symbols, and myths were re-
examined; and some pastoral workers learned indigenous languages.
Another element of the project of building an autochthonous church was
an attempt to change the very structures of the church to make it more rele-
vant to the indigenous and rural communities. Over time, this led to the ordi-
nation of indigenous deacons who, along with catechists, would be responsible
for religious matters on a local level. Their voices would lead the church in
new and unanticipated directions.

Re pre ssion and Re sistance in the 198 0s


The decade of the 1980s began with soldiers and police killing twelve
peasants in Wolochán in the northern township of Sitalá.This event, referred
to as the massacre of Wolochán, foreshadowed the violence that would come
as well as the difficulties of defining the role of pastoral workers in relation to
indigenous peoples and campesinos. During this decade, campesino organiza-
tions independent of the government began to form in several regions of Chi-
apas at the same time that government repression against them increased.35
200 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

The conflict in Wolochán began decades before 1980 when a group of


campesinos petitioned the government office of agrarian reform to gain legal
rights to the land once occupied by the plantation of Wolochán.36 Following
the Indigenous Congress a peasant organization of the same name developed
in the region. In 1980 pastoral workers realized that they could not offer a vi-
able political solution to the problem and stopped advising the organization.
The Socialist Worker’s Party (PST, a left-of-center organization that was co-
opted to be a satellite group of the PRI) stepped in.The group was pushing for
land invasions at a national level and proposed an invasion at Wolochán.The in-
vasion took place, and soon after, the police arrived accompanied by large
landowners of the area. Father Mardonio Morales—a Jesuit priest of the dio-
cese—met with the state governor on June 2, 1980, and the next day the gov-
ernor went to visit the plantation. Nonetheless, on June 15, 1980, police and
soldiers arrived and began firing at the families who occupied the land.The fir-
ing lasted two and a half hours, leaving at least twelve people dead and count-
less others wounded.The government later offered to purchase the land for the
peasants, but only under the condition that the peasants would pay the govern-
ment back within ten years and affiliate with the PRI.The peasants refused.
The case of Wolochán exemplifies the tensions implicit in the church’s
work to accompany the poor in their struggles for land and liberation. Ideally,
the pastoral workers walk beside the poor, but this position is difficult given the
privilege of pastoral workers in comparison to peasants. The vast majority of
the pastoral workers are mestizos, and, although many live modestly (having
voluntarily renounced some of their economic privilege in order to walk with
the poor), they have the backing of religious orders or other institutions.This
is not to deny that pastoral workers sacrificed a great deal; because of their
political commitments, some received threats and several were jailed in the
1990s. Even in accompanying the poor, a dramatic social and economic dis-
tance divided pastoral workers and those they accompanied; pastoral agents
are aware of and struggle with this distance.Yet increasing government repres-
sion against campesino groups and the diocese strengthened the alliance be-
tween the later two.
Beginning in 1981, thousands of Guatemalan refugees fleeing the repres-
sive regimes of Lucas García, Ríos Mott, and Mejía Víctores began to arrive in
Chiapas. In the township of Ocosingo, which shares a border with Guatemala,
pastoral workers together with the Christian Solidarity Committee attended
to some fifteen thousand Guatemalan refugees in the Lacandón rain forest,
providing material assistance in the form of food, clothing, and housing.When
the Mexican government “relocated” a number of refugee camps (in some
cases violently), the diocese responded by firmly denouncing these human
rights abuses. The government responded in turn by criticizing the diocese’s
work.
Maya Catholics in Chiapas, Mexico 201

In the midst of this oppression, pastoral workers elaborated a 1986 pas-


toral plan that would guide their future work. The doctrinal framework be-
gins, “We believe in God our Father who wills the lives of his children and a
life of abundance,” and contains objectives in the areas of evangelization, con-
cientización, accompaniment, culture, communications, and coordination.The
plan asserts that the church will commit itself “to serve the people, inserting
itself, as Jesus, in the process of the liberation of the oppressed in which they
are the agents of their own history, and together we will build a new society
in anticipation of the Kingdom.”37
Of particular interest is recognition of the importance of culture in the
process of evangelization. Actions related to this area include learning indige-
nous language and history as well as promoting cultural expression. One of the
pastoral goals is “to insert ourselves (as a Church) into the culture of our peo-
ple and to take on the social utopia hidden there, accompanying them on their
historic path and accepting the sacramental signs of the Indians and their min-
istries.”38 In their recognition of its “social utopia,” pastoral workers challenge
development strategies that attempt to modernize and Westernize the suppos-
edly backward peasants.Yet the idea of a social utopia also represents a roman-
tic construction of indigenous and campesino life.

“Let Mexico Speak!” Social Moveme nts


of th e 19 9 0 s
In 1988 Carlos Salinas de Gortari won the presidency in an election
clouded by charges that his party, the PRI, had committed massive electoral
fraud. “Let Mexico Speak!” was Salinas’s campaign slogan. His invitation for
Mexico to speak certainly did not include indigenous Mexico. Salinas fol-
lowed his predecessor Miguel de la Madrid in implementing structural adjust-
ment policies set forth by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
For rural producers, these policies meant dramatic cuts in public spending and
the privatization of the once inalienable ejidal lands. In response to these re-
forms, numerous organizations of indigenous people carried out local, re-
gional, and national protests to draw attention to their demands. Even as the
state and national government repressed these groups the protests intensified.
On January 1, 1994, during the last year of Salinas’s presidency, thousands
of members of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army
of National Liberation, EZLN) took over seven towns in Chiapas and de-
manded basic human rights—land, housing, jobs, food, health care, democracy,
and justice—with much emphasis on the rights of peasants and indigenous
peoples.While several Zapatista leaders had participated in the pastoral process
of the diocese before joining the EZLN, the diocese did not condone armed
violence.Yet, the Mexican government and other sectors attempted to discredit
the Zapatistas and their demands by claiming that outsiders—Bishop Ruiz,
202 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

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

formalized in 1992 with the creation of CODIMUJ, the Diocesan Coordina-


tion of Women.42 Thousands of indigenous and mestiza women (primarily
members of impoverished communities) take part in CODIMUJ. At the local
level, women meet in community discussion groups to read the Bible “with the
eyes, mind, and heart of a woman.” At regional meetings and workshops,
women share their experiences and recognize their common problems. Many
CODIMUJ participants also take part in political organizations such as
Xi’Nich’. They have joined state, national, and international events such as
marches for International Women’s Day and the World March of Women 2000.
Through its evangelization process, human rights courses, and other types
of institutional support, the Diocese of San Cristóbal contributed to the for-
mation of Xi’ Nich’, Las Abejas, and CODIMUJ. Pastoral workers literally ac-
companied campesinos in their struggles, walking with them in marches and
pilgrimages, helping to find legal assistance, and facilitating connections with
regional and international organizations. Clergy provided resources, strategic
support, and even theological validation to the groups.43 This support does not
mean, as the state and federal government have claimed, that the members of
Las Abejas and Xi’Nich’ were controlled or manipulated by pastoral workers.
Such claims erase indigenous agency, assuming that indigenous people cannot
make decisions or engage in political actions on their own. At the same time,
these claims attempt to silence indigenous protesters by discrediting their de-
mands. To the contrary, indigenous people critically assess ideas and forms of
support emanating from diverse “external” actors and decide when and under
what conditions to form alliances with diverse groups. In the religious arena,
some indigenous people identify as Word of God Catholics, while others iden-
tify themselves as Traditionalists or Protestants. In the political arena, some af-
filiate with the PRI, others with the EZLN, and others with independent
organizations of nonviolent resistance.
As indigenous peoples in Chiapas engage in political protest to demand
their rights, they challenge the status quo and the “violent peace,”44 or pseudo-
peace, that Spanish and mestizos have tried to preserve for hundreds of years.
This violent peace failed to address the just demands of the impoverished
peasants and indigenous peoples. In response to attacks by the Mexican media
following the EZLN uprising, Bishop Ruiz repeatedly stated that the Diocese
of San Cristóbal did not condone the use of arms.Yet he added that if a pop-
ular movement for social justice had not arisen in his decades as bishop, then
he would consider his own work a failure.

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

a dialogue of mutual exchange rather than assuming a position of superiority


in disseminating knowledge. Indigenous Catholics found in the church an ally
in their struggles against cultural domination, extreme poverty, and political
repression. These Catholics “indigenized” beliefs and practices, making them
relevant to their lives.45 Two important examples of this are the creation of a
new role for catechists and the critique of alcohol.
The process of listening to the poor, being an ear of the earless, in the
Diocese of San Cristóbal is not without contradictions and tensions. Clergy
denounce injustice in Chiapas and challenge the Mexican state and the
Catholic Church, two groups with a long history of ignoring indigenous
voices.Yet, clergy can lose sight of their own class, race, and gender privilege
and the ways this privilege distances clergy from Mayan Catholics.This privi-
lege can also limit clergy’s ability to understand indigenous people on their
own terms.The diocesan process advanced in spite of these contradictions be-
cause pastoral agents spent time in rural communities listening to Mayan
Catholics. Serving as an ear of the earless, pastoral agents could transcend, at
least partially, the paternalistic role of being voice of the voiceless.
In spite of the many accusations lodged against the diocese by the state
and federal government, Bishop Ruiz was asked to be the official mediator in
the peace talks between the two parties in conflict, the EZLN and the federal
government.The first round of peace talks began on February 21, 1994, in San
Cristóbal’s cathedral. In a country that spent a great part of the nineteenth
century fighting over the separation of church and state, the political role of a
religious figure appeared alarming and difficult for many Mexican politicians
and intellectuals to accept.With the dramatic events of the Zapatista uprising
and Ruiz’s role as mediator, the Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal received
much national and international attention. But the long-term view of the
diocesan process was neglected as the public came to know the diocese out of
context, as if the Zapatistas themselves had brought it into existence. In May
of 1998, Bishop Ruiz renounced his role as official mediator, citing a lack of
commitment on the part of the government.The negotiations have been at a
standstill since then.
The political scenario at the national and state level is changing as a result
of the 2000 elections. President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party
(PAN) breaks the PRI’s seventy-one years of control, and Pablo Salazar
Mendiguchía, of a multi-party coalition, is the first non-PRI governor of Chi-
apas. At the federal level, Fox’s victory opened the possibility that the thou-
sands of federal troops stationed in Chiapas would be removed and that
Congress would approve the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and
Culture.46 At the state level, these changes opened the possibility that the gov-
ernment would punish the intellectual authors of the Acteal massacre and dis-
mantle the paramilitary groups.Yet a few years into their terms, the situation
206 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

seems less hopeful. A strong military presence continues in many regions of


Chiapas. In April 2001 Congress passed a watered-down version of the San
Andrés Accords that fails to support the indigenous demand for autonomy. In
many ways, the state and federal government are managing conflict without
addressing the underlying poverty, historical racism, and political repression
that gave rise to the numerous popular movements in past decades and led to
the Zapatista rebellion.
In this context, the Diocese of San Cristóbal could continue to accom-
pany poor campesinos in their struggles for a dignified life.The reasons behind
the diocesan commitment to work with and for the poor continue to exist.
On March 31, 2000, Felipe Arizmendi, former bishop of Tapachula (Chiapas),
was named Ruiz’s successor.There is much concern that that the new bishop
might try to dismantle Ruiz’s work, as many bishops replacing progressives
have done in Latin America.The new bishop could separate faith and politics,
withdraw to exclusively administering sacraments, and accommodate those in
power to avoid conflict.There is also hope that the new bishop can be trans-
formed by his experience in Chiapas as Bishop Ruiz was.While it is too soon
to assess the work of Bishop Arizmendi, it is clear that the thousands of Mayan
Catholics who are building a new church will play a central role in defining
the direction of the diocese’s work. It is precisely because indigenous Cath-
olics have the power to practice their faith in their communities that their
work continues. What remains to be seen is whether the church hierarchy
(from Bishop Arizmendi to the Vatican) will have the capacity to listen to these
new voices.

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

6. Daniel Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton: Princeton


University Press, 1992), 6.
7. Data for this paper is drawn from interviews, participant observation, and archival
research conducted in San Cristóbal from 1993 to 2002.
8. Samuel Ruiz García, “En Esta Hora de Gracia,” Pastoral Letter (Mexico City: Dabar,
1993), 33.
9. José Álvarez Icaza,“Don Samuel Ruiz García: Un acercamiento,” in Chiapas: El Fac-
tor Religioso. Revista Académica para el estudio de las Religiones, vol. 2 (Bosques de
Echegaray: Estudio Científico de las Religiones, 1998).
10. Bishop Ruiz has publicly distanced himself from liberation theology, most likely to
avoid his work being de-legitimized in the context of Vatican accusations of it being
Marxist. Ruiz has referred to the work of his diocese as teología india (indigenous
theology), or indigenous reflection on their faith. He argues that all theology is lib-
eration: “If some think that there is or was a theology of slavery, then they do not
understand what theology is. . . . All theology has to express the mystery of Christ
who came to save humanity and not to defend slavery.” Sylvia Marcos, “Si no hay
opción por el pobre no hay Iglesia de Cristo” (Interview with Samuel Ruiz), Memo-
ria 115 (July 1999): 11.
11. For a discussion of the role of accompaniment in liberation theology, especially in
Latin America, see Phillip Berryman, Stubborn Hope: Religion, Politics, and Revolution
in Central America (New York and Maryknoll:The New Press—Orbis Books, 1994).
12. Daniel Levine, “On Premature Reports of the Death of Liberation Theology,” The
Review of Politics 57 (winter 1995): 105–131.
13. Juan is one of many Catholic converts who have been violently exiled from their
native homes in the highland township of San Juan Chamula.When a family is ex-
iled (or expelled), they may be jailed, beaten, or threatened; their home may be
robbed or burned; and their crops may be destroyed. Then they are told that they
must leave the community or suffer further violence. Those responsible for expul-
sion are caciques, or locally entrenched indigenous leaders, yet state and federal gov-
ernment officials play a critical role in expulsion by their failure to address the issue
in spite of hundreds of complaints over decades. Complex political, economic, and
religious factors underlie expulsion. For a detailed analysis of expelled Catholics see
Christine Kovic, “Walking with One Heart: Human Rights and the Catholic
among the Maya of Highland Chiapas” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York,
1997).
14. Robert Orsi,“Everyday Miracles:The Study of Lived Religion,” in Lived Religion in
America:Toward a History of Practice, ed. David Hall (Princeton: Princeton University
Press 1997), 7.
15. On the movement against alcohol in indigenous communities, see Christine Eber,
“ ‘Take My Water’: Liberation through Prohibition in San Pedro Chenalhó, Chia-
pas,” Social Science and Medicine 53 (2001): 251–262; and Christine Eber and Chris-
tine Kovic, Women in Chiapas: Making History in Times of Struggle and Hope (New
York: Routledge, 2003).
16. The entire state of Chiapas comprised a single diocese until 1964, when the church
at Bishop Ruiz’s suggestion divided it into three separate dioceses. He decided to
work in eastern Chiapas, the area with the highest concentration of peasants and in-
digenous peoples.This diocese was named San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
17. Quoted in Reyna Matilde Coello Castro,“Proceso Catequistico en la Zona Tzeltal
y Desarrollo Social” (thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Tlaxcala, 1991), 61.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid. On Tzeltal catechists, see also Xóchitl Leyva Solano, “Catequistas, Misioneros
y Tradiciones en las Cañadas,” in Chiapas: Los Rumbos de otra historia, ed. Juan Pedro
Viqueira and Mario Humberto Ruz (Mexico City: UNAM, CIESAS, CEMCA,
208 C h r i s t i n e Kov i c

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

37. Quoted in Reyna Matilde Coello Castro,“Proceso Catequístico en la Zona Tzeltal


y Desarrollo Social” (thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Tlaxcala, 1991), 95.
38. Quoted in Pablo Iribarren, Los Dominicos en la pastoral indígena (Mexico City: Im-
prentei, 1991), 32.
39. Xi’ Nich’ and Las Abejas are two of many organizations in Chiapas which have been
influenced by the Catholic Church. Quiptic Ta Lecubtesel (Tzeltal for Our Strength
Is Our Unity for Progress), a productive cooperative run by catechists and pre-
deacons in the region of Ocosingo, was established in the aftermath of the Indige-
nous Congress of 1974. In the 1980s in the township Amatán, a number of local
groups such as the Flor de Amatán and Frente Cívico grew out of a struggle to get
rid of a corrupt municipal president. Catholic identity played an important role in
these groups. In time, these organizations became involved in the struggle for land,
and, in 1988, with women at the front of the struggle, one group took over the
town’s government building. Pueblo Creyente (People of Faith) is a diocesan-wide
group formed in 1991. It is composed of Word of God Catholics who work though
their faith to build unity and resist poverty and political repression.
40. Among the detained was Gerónimo Hernández, a Jesuit priest working in Palenque
and judicial advisor to one of the groups that had organized the march.
41. For an analysis of the formation of Las Abejas, see Christine Kovic, “The Struggle
for Liberation and Reconciliation in Chiapas, Mexico: Las Abejas and the Path of
Nonviolent Resistance,” Latin American Perspectives 30 (2003): 58–79. See also Heidi
Moksnes, “Mayan Suffering, Mayan Rights: Faith and Citizenship among Catholic
Tzotziles in Highland Chiapas, Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., Goteborg University, 2003).
42. On CODIMUJ, see Christine Kovic, “Demanding Their Dignity as Daughters of
God: Catholic Women and Human Rights,” in Women in Chiapas, ed. Eber and
Kovic, 131–146. For a life history of one CODIMUJ participant, see Pilar Gil Tébar,
“Irene, A Catholic Woman in Oxchuc,” in Women in Chiapas, ed. Eber and Kovic,
149–154.
43. For discussion of the role of he Catholic Church in other regions of Latin America,
see Daniel Levine, Popular Voices in Latin American Catholicism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992); and Susan Eckstein, introduction to Power and Popular
Protest: Latin American Social Movements, ed. Susan Eckstein (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989).
44. Rosa Rojas, Chiapas: La paz violenta (Mexico City: La Jornada Ediciones, 1995).
45. 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), 272.
46. The San Andrés Accords support the demand for autonomy by expanding specific
cultural, territorial, and political rights for indigenous peoples.The EZLN and gov-
ernment representatives signed the San Andrés Accords during the 1996 peace talks.
Chap te r 9

The Indigenous Theology Movement


in Latin America

E ncounte r s of M e mory, Re s i stanc e,


and Hope at the Cro ssroads

Stephen P. Judd

Over the past several years there has been a revival of an


old Andean myth that periodically undergoes revision and lends itself to new
interpretations in changing social and cultural contexts. The myth “Two
Brothers” tells a timeless story of reciprocity in human relationships and has
enduring and defining value for the peoples of the Andes.1 In the retelling of
the myth the younger brother of an Indian family is forced by conditions of
poverty to leave his ancestral home to go in search of sustenance for his fam-
ily in a far off place. For the journey all he takes is a handful of green vegeta-
bles. Along the way he reaches a well-known crossroads called an apacheta.
There he meets up with a stranger who is obviously much better off eco-
nomically.The ensuing conversation goes like this:
“Friend, where are you headed,” says the stranger.
“Sir, I am very poor so I am traveling to find work to help my family
“Don’t go my son, because in those places there is no work.”
“Then, sir, let’s stop to rest awhile.”
They both sit down to rest a bit and the poor Indian lays out his poncho
so that they can sit down. And after resting awhile, the Indian takes out the
only thing he has to eat, which is the bundle of greens.
“Help yourself, sir!” he says.
The man serves himself and then says,“Don’t go my son; you will not find
anything. It’s better for you to return.”
“Yes, sir, then I am going to return home.”
“I am going to give you this flower.”
And so he gives him a bouquet of carnations with a single native flower.
“Take it, bring it back home with you, and don’t look back!”

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.

A n I nte rc ultural E ncounte r


at a Latin Ame rican Cro ssroads
In the context of several recent theological gatherings of indigenous peo-
ple in Latin America, this story takes on enhanced meaning. In what has come
to be known as the movement to elaborate a new theological expression
among Latin America’s indigenous peoples, called teología india, the story rep-
resents the point where two distinct worlds meet. For many, it signifies one of
the emerging paradigms for intercultural dialogue, where different cultures
share the richness and wisdom of their respective ancestral heritage, the gift
they are to each other above and beyond whatever material wealth might or-
dinarily separate them.2
It might be said that apachetas mark the turning points in the journeys of
a people to greater self-understanding and awareness of their place in history
according to cyclical patterns. Unlike the people in the West, who continue to
be dominated by a linear vision of history, indigenous peoples follow a differ-
ent pattern.Yet at this real or imaginary crossroads they enter into relationships
with the “other” who is different.Today, whenever indigenous people meet to
reflect on their identity and role in the world, stories like “Two Brothers” stand
out as examples of intercultural communication. In the religious world of Latin
America the telling of this story marks another turning point in the search for
inter-religious dialogue whereby indigenous people both reclaim their native
identity and affirm a place of respect in the worldwide Christian movement.

Witne ss People, Insurge ncie s,


and New Encounte r s
The revival of this myth represents merely one among many manifesta-
tions of a resurgence of indigenous identity throughout the Americas during
the past decade. Latin America’s formerly invisible people have suddenly be-
come visible actors on the world stage. Alongside and with deep respect for
the indigenous worldview, an emerging social movement took shape. From a
church standpoint this grew out of the process of renewal brought about by
the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Later the Conference of Latin
American Catholic Bishops that took place in Medellín, Colombia, in 1968
marked the first definitive shift in the church’s relationship with indigenous
people with its celebrated option for the poor and a distancing of its long
identification with powerful elites.
Visionary bishops and high-profile leaders—like the charismatic, now re-
tired bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz, and the late bishop of Riobamba,
212 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

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.

Re lig ious Variable s with Transforming


S oc i al I m p l i cat i on s
In underscoring this social development we can point to several variables
and trace their convergence in leading to the emergence of a new and unique
theological movement in the Catholic Church, and to a lesser extent in other
Christian churches in Latin America, called teología india.4 We trace the inte-
gral role of a religious dimension to indigenous identity that has grown into a
full-fledged theological movement, one that is ecumenical and pluralistic and
whose leaders have received education in pastoral programs organized by
Catholic communities and religious orders in the last half of the twentieth
century.
First of all, events and developments leading up to the five-hundred-year
commemoration of the European arrival in the Americas in 1992 played a key
role in raising awareness of the role of religion and the religious worldview of
indigenous peoples within broader social movements. Language that spoke of
the continent’s indigenous peoples as endowed with “memory, resistance, and
hope” was used by progressive church sectors and elites committed to recov-
ering the tradition of figures like the sixteenth-century Dominican friar and
missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566). The recovery of the Las
Casas style of prophetic and peaceful evangelization based on the encounter
with the “other” had inspired others like the Jesuits in their utopian social
projects and experiments of the Reductions that prospered in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries in the areas of what are now eastern Bolivia, Para-
guay, Brazil, and Argentina. Over against the Inquisition and the campaigns to
extirpate indigenous religious symbols and practices, this prophetic current
gained advocates and continues to guide and inspire many who see the latest
flowering of the Las Casas vision in the theological movement of indigenous
theology.5
214 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

In an interesting historical twist, it was the abandonment of the evange-


lization process, due in no small part to the expulsion of the Jesuits in the
eighteenth century and a waning of the first missionary fervor of the other
orders, that helped many indigenous people become freer to preserve their re-
ligious worldview and practices.When left to their own devices, and with the
mechanisms used to punish idolatrous practices no longer in place, there was
a certain revival among indigenous peoples whereby they began the practice
of a creative syncretism or what Eleazar López calls “popular indigenous reli-
giosity.”6 In many areas of Indian Latin America this continues but with sev-
eral variations and a plurality of ritual expressions.
The importance of the revival of interest in the Las Casas legacy cannot
be underestimated as an antidote to official campaigns to glorify the Spanish
Conquest and its spiritual dimensions that surfaced around the commemora-
tive events and celebrations of 1992. Nothing demonstrates the two opposing
views of Spain’s five hundred years than the scene in the harbor of Santo
Domingo. At one end visitors are overwhelmed by the outsized triumphalis-
tic monument to Christopher Columbus. On the other side stands the pro-
foundly moving statue dedicated to the Dominican Friar Montesino, who
preached the sermon of the “voice crying in the desert” that led to Las Casas’s
conversion in 1511.
Las Casas continues to fascinate and baffle scholars and provoke contrast-
ing and sometimes erroneous images in the popular imagination. As such, he
remains a controversial, enigmatic figure, both praised and maligned. For
some, especially in Spain, he is still identified as the cause of the infamous
Black Legend.To others, he represents an unwitting advocate for black slavery,
despite his avowed and passionate defense of the Indian peoples. Still, for many
in the progressive sector of the Latin America church, he is the precursor of
liberation theology and a forerunner of the indigenous social and theological
movements.
Along with the development of liberation theology in the post–Vatican II
and Medellín eras, the first appearance of a new contextual theology move-
ment began to be felt.The Peruvian theologian considered as the father of lib-
eration theology, Gustavo Gutiérrez, pays tribute to Las Casas as one of the
inspirations behind his own original theological production that takes as its
starting point the option for the poor. One of his best-known works based on
the Las Casas perspective is entitled Bartolomé de Las Casas: In Search of the Poor
of Jesus Christ.7
Although born of an indigenous family and heritage, Gutiérrez was
schooled in European Christian movements like Catholic Action and deeply
influenced by social scientific theories in vogue in urban Latin American in-
tellectual circles and social movements. While the Las Casas influence is un-
mistakable, his theology takes its lead from his presence and experience among
Indigenous Theology Movement 215

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

1960s, whereby many like-minded missionaries were assigned to remote areas


with high indigenous populations. Most of these groups introduced modern
training and education programs, mostly for indigenous lay leaders, that awak-
ened a newly discovered identity. Some courses began with a catechetical pur-
pose or for biblical instruction but later evolved into workshops of a more
political nature and orientation and led directly or indirectly to the creation of
popular autonomous campesino organizations that pressed claims for human
rights and a recovery of lands that were expropriated by haciendas and gov-
ernment officials.
Advocacy for indigenous rights and organizations was compatible with
the affirmation of indigenous identity, or, in more theological language, the
merger between inculturation and liberation. Inculturation is the process
whereby the Gospel takes root in a determined cultural context without
doing violence to that culture and its symbols, myths, and rituals. Many mis-
sionaries became imbued with the values of the indigenous cultural world-
view. This led to labeling them as culturalistas, as opposed to those inside and
outside the church who adopted a more class-based analysis of social conflicts.
In the midst of land struggles and the environment of political violence,
the Church of the South Andes in 1986 issued a pastoral reflection, entitled
“La tierra: Don de Dios, derecho del pueblo,” that recognizes the symbolic
value of land within the Andean worldview as much as its value as an eco-
nomic commodity.11 The giftedness of land is captured in the title of Hans Van
den Berg’s provocative book, La tierra no da así no más: Los ritos agrícolas en la re-
ligión de los aymara-cristianos (that is, the repetitious cycle is marked by ritual
and prayer along with the tasks of planting, cultivating, and harvesting).12
These themes run through documents and pastoral letters from bishops and
church leaders from Guatemala to Brazil.13
Likewise, experiences under the leadership of charismatic and pastorally
oriented bishops like Leonidas Proaño, Samuel Ruiz, and lesser known figures
spurred the formation of regional organizations in the Pacífico Sur area of
Mexico, around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Riobamba, in Ecuador, and the
Sur Andino, in Peru. Pastoral research and education centers like the Instituto
de Pastoral Andina (IPA) in Cusco, Peru, the Centro Nacional de Ayuda a Mi-
siones Indígenas (CENAMI) in southern Mexico, and many others supplied
the theological and anthropological reflection to guide the experience of a
new encounter.These were first created out of the post–Vatican II renewal and
the Medellín Conference of Latin American bishops in 1968. But in places
like Guatemala, the relationship was solidified during the thirty-year civil war
and in the historical memory process that the Catholic Church helped to mo-
bilize and organize, the “Recovery of Historical Memory Project Report”
(REMHI), after the adoption of the Peace Accords.14 Two days after its publi-
Indigenous Theology Movement 217

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.

Out of the Cave and into the Lime light


However, this theology was given fuller shape at the four international
conferences that started in 1990. A number of diverse regional and ecumeni-
cal gatherings and conferences have consolidated the movement, generated
218 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

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

church establishment. The memory of past condemnations, persecution, and


campaigns to extirpate idols was, and is, a very present danger and suspicion
among some.
The two most recent ecumenical encounters outside Cochabamba, Bo-
livia, in August 1997 and near Asunción, Paraguay, in May 2002 were signifi-
cant for advancing and consolidating the development of the movement as
well as for broaching themes of larger global significance.18 At Cochabamba,
for example, one could see the passage from a posture of clandestine practices
and lament to one of a full-fledged movement in its final message that, besides
the perfunctory recapitulation of the ever-present wounds of the past, calls for
change in the prevalent global economic model with its disregard for the sa-
credness of the Earth.19
Moreover, the final message points to signs of hope in the growing reaf-
firmation of indigenous identity, recognition by church authorities, and the
contributions of teología india to the humanization process by its contempla-
tive appreciation of the unity of all creation. It takes note of the acceptance of
this theology found in indigenous organizations as an integral part of the
structure and functioning within civil society. In other words, this theology
begins to view itself and its empowering role as an integral part of a wider
network of organizations working in solidarity to create a different kind of
global social movement.
The concluding statements and reflections of the most recent encounter
in Paraguay offer an even more nuanced understanding of this theological
movement’s expanded role within and beyond the borders of Latin America.
Certainly there are continuities with the previous reflections, but new ground
was broken at the Fourth International Encounter, judging by recently pub-
lished commentaries. But unlike past occasions, this time the participants went
to greater lengths to distinguish the indigenous worldview from that of the
dominant modern and neo-liberal capitalistic societies.
Using a metaphor from the creation myth of the Guaraní people of
Paraguay and Brazil of an idyllic tierra sin mal, one of the participants, Paulo
Suess, set the grounds for a dialogue between the emergent teología india and
Western Christian models.20 In his interpretation, only a Western theology
that is ready to make a critique of Western societies is capable of entering
equally into a dialogue with the theologians who author works in indigenous
societies. Only then, as fellow pilgrims on the road, can the two dialogue part-
ners ever approximate the search for meaning and truth, knowing beforehand
that neither one possesses all of human wisdom. Underneath every theology
lie the deep reservoirs of vulnerability and hope, the points of semiotic den-
sity, which characterize each culture in the human family.
In the utopian tierra sin mal, something akin to the Christian notion of
the Kingdom of God, the conditions exist for societies based on inclusiveness
220 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

and pluralism, societies that admit of a diversity of approaches to absolute


truth. This myth does not promise an earthly paradise without pain and suf-
fering but marks a return to reciprocal human relationships and a radical ac-
ceptance of alterity. Unlike the false, alluring, and all-encompassing promises
that underpin Western-style capitalism, this myth paints a more humble por-
trait of the quest for truth and meaning.
According to Suess, the myth explains the constant movement of the
Guaraní people in migratory patterns, always in search of the abundance of the
fiesta where reciprocal and complementary relationships are discovered and cel-
ebrated. Under the power of this myth, borders and boundaries become
blurred.When there were attempts to usurp Guaraní lands throughout this past
century and to restrict the people to reservations, the culture entered into a de-
cline. Consequently, a large number of young people committed suicide.
Although the myth of the tierra sin mal and the Kingdom of God are not
so easily accessible in the present reality, their persistence leads people to cre-
ate notions of time and space in which equality and peace among peoples, re-
ciprocal relationships, cultural diversity, religious pluralism, and harmony in
the environment reign. Such compatible notions make possible an authentic
dialogue founded on these values and an ethic of life.They allow people like
the Guaraní to be protagonists in the formation of a historical project based
on self-determination. Moreover, within the scope of this cosmovision there
is room to create the common ground to build new forms and networks of
solidarity with other peoples and cultures.
At the Asunción encounter the link between this theological reflection
and the larger indigenous struggle was made explicit. Myths, rituals, and the
wisdom of the elders are not something extraneous to the claims for recogni-
tion of each people’s fundamental human dignity. Throughout the entire en-
counter the refrain was sounded that it is in the witness of the continent’s
indigenous people that the destiny of the these people lies.Together with this
realization comes the commitment to the ideal that indigenous peoples have
been placed on the Earth for a purpose and are called to contribute to the
Earth’s process of healing. From their own brokenness and pain they argue
convincingly for the new vision for humanity of greater planetary unity.
One of the strong features of teología india is that it has been able to grow
and develop irrespective of national borders and has brought people together
on the basis of natural affinities, people who otherwise would not have the
opportunity to be so closely connected. Herein lies its chief challenge, to
move from the unfinished and incomplete project of inculturation to inter-
cultural communication in a more globalized world.The indigenous theolog-
ical movement is one of the elements in a growing awareness of the need to
dialogue with diverse cultural and social movements. It does not merely con-
stitute a “restoration of the ancient rituals and beliefs of Indian America” but
Indigenous Theology Movement 221

makes a bridge to greater communication across borders and hemispheres for


mutual enrichment. One of the signs of its maturity is its potential to gener-
ate these people-to-people networks of solidarity across national borders.

Artisans of the Creation


of the Vital Synthe sis
Initially, many of the key figures in the creation of a vital synthesis were
clerics and missionaries from outside Latin America who acted as interlocu-
tors in articulating the various dimensions of the movement. Church elites
with academic credentials and a long-standing presence as missionaries, like
Suess in Brazil, the Spanish Jesuit Xavier Albó in Bolivia, and Diego Irar-
rázaval, a Chilean Holy Cross priest with a long history in the altiplano of
Peru, served as important links between liberation theology and the move-
ment of teología india, facilitating contacts in a wide international network.
Even while they cease to be its chief protagonists, their contributions are quite
extensive and significant in paving the way for a new generation of indigenous
theologians who maintain close ties to their communities of origin but have
academic preparation and specialized studies. In the best of cases, Albó and
Irarrázaval serve as interpreters of the phenomenon for those outside Latin
America, while they act as the mentors for the chief exponents and protago-
nists of the movement.
Albó co-authored a book with four other Jesuits who have played key
roles in promoting this movement entitled Los rostros indios de Dios on the oc-
casion of the 1992 commemoration.21 For all of its considerable merits in
bringing together experiences in Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, and Bolivia, the
book lacks the voice of the indigenous theologians themselves. However, any-
one with knowledge of the history of popular indigenous social movements
in Bolivia since the 1952 revolution recognizes the committed scholarship and
leadership of Xavier Albó, whose knowledge of these movements is encyclo-
pedic and highly credible.
Irarrazával, whose writings and research originate in his commitments
among the Aymara people in the Peruvian altiplano at the Instituto de Estu-
dios Aymaras (IDEA), provides a link between liberation theology and the nas-
cent movement and other currents of theology around the world. He views
their development as growing out of the original breakthroughs made by lib-
eration theology over forty years ago. As such, the new theology is “poli-
faceted and multidimensional,” highlighting features of the ongoing process of
God’s revelation in ever newer contexts.22 For Irarrázaval it is a question not of
indigenous theology supplanting liberation theology, but of it continuing its
original insights in a changing global context.
One of the first authentic indigenous voices in the movement and a
forerunner of a younger generation is the Aymara Catholic priest Domingo
222 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

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

representative of humanity’s search for meaning, harmonious human relation-


ships, and a sense of unity and place in a world that is so badly fragmented and
divided. Belief in the Pachamama allows Andean peoples to appreciate their
role as co-creators with God and their responsibility to care for and nurture
the earth. Like Sarmiento’s experience,Valencia’s experience outside his own
culture during his years of study in Brazil allows him the opportunity to place
his heritage in dialogue with other traditions.
The Bolivian Efraín Lazo develops new understandings of the role of rit-
ual practitioners and specialists, those who are often described as shamans,
within the Andean world of the Aymara and Quechua peoples. A Christian
interpretation of ministerial roles helps him to shed more light on the multi-
faceted roles of the yatiri (literally, in Aymara, one who knows) as healers, reli-
gious intermediaries, and people of wisdom who carry on and transmit the
oral and ritual traditions of the people. In Lazo’s view they represent more
than religious functionaries. Rather, they are examples of the blossoming of
“seeds of the Word” so prevalent in the theological language of Vatican II.
They interpret and define the religious worldview of Andean peoples, and
their role is not in competition with the priestly functions of ordained Chris-
tian ministers. For him they play a complementary role to the Catholic priest
in Andean communities, although to this day their role has not been fully un-
derstood or appreciated.
An important Protestant figure of the same generation who has played
a role in the international indigenous theological conferences is a young
Aymara Methodist theologian, Vicenta Mamani Bernabé. In one of her first
works, Ritos espirituales y practices comunitarias del aymara, Mamani brings, in ad-
dition to her immersion in the indigenous worldview, a feminist perspective
and critique.28 She also stands out as one who moves quite comfortably be-
tween the rural and urban realities of the Bolivian altiplano. As such, she is a
representative figure of the indigenous theological movement and straddles
both worlds to play a bridge-building role.
This younger generation of Catholic and Protestant indigenous theolo-
gians with roots in native communities, complemented by an exposure to
classical European and North American styles of theological education, go to
great lengths to emphasize the ecclesial character of the movement. At the
same time, they are highly critical of church leaders and structures that may
impede or try to co-opt this new theological movement. In both official and
unofficial circles they continue to press claims for a place for theological re-
flection inside the church and a pastoral practice and church structures more
attuned to the indigenous perspective and worldview.
López, Lazo, Sarmiento, Mamani, and Valencia are people of a “second
naiveté experience,” to borrow from the interpretation theory espoused by
the French philosopher Paul Ricouer.29 In their journeys they have taken that
Indigenous Theology Movement 225

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.

A N ew H ori zon of H ope


The teología indía movement has found mixed receptivity within and
outside the churches.Through the interventions of church leaders with expe-
rience in Indian areas of the continent, it merited a place and a somewhat
elevated status alongside other theological currents in the conclusions of
the Santo Domingo Conference in 1992. Those sections that call for inter-
religious dialogue with the indigenous religious worldview represent an im-
portant innovation in the ongoing process first initiated at Medellín in 1968
and continued at the following conference in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. In the
different visits and discourses of Pope John Paul II, down to the recent can-
onization of the humble Indian Juan Diego, who witnessed the Guadalupe ap-
paritions, we have evidence that this movement is more than a quaintly
interesting localized feature on the broader theological landscape for the uni-
versal church.
Notwithstanding signs of recognition, these encounters have often been
part of the five-hundred-year history of desencuentros, or missed opportunities.
The emergence of teología india has been met by Vatican officials with
guarded and cautious openness; at times they prefer to call it a source of in-
digenous wisdom and not give it its due as a new theological expression wor-
thy of systematic study and inclusion in the theological academy. Often
church authorities place it over against liberation theology as a more benign
expression of theological thought.At times it rates only a description as Indian
wisdom, and not as theology in its own right. More open and consistent en-
couragement has come through the continent-wide Latin American Bishops’
Conference (CELAM) in Bogóta, Colombia, and its Department of Missions
(DEMIS). In the past few years DEMIS has actively convened several gather-
ings of theologians and bishops in a fruitful dialogue about issues of doctrinal
import, most recently in Quito, Ecuador, in 2002. As a result of these formal
226 S t e p h e n P. J u d d

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

more standard and traditional methods in theology based on European and


classical models. New currents of theological thought, often described as
examples of contextual theologies, attempt to underscore the ways that indige-
nous peoples throughout the Americas have resisted the imposition of a dom-
inant religious worldview from outside.They do this by stubbornly holding on
to their symbolic and mythic-ritual worldviews, popular devotions, stories, and
wisdom traditions, where they find a sense of the meaning of life in the midst
of their daily struggles to achieve dignity and recognition of their “otherness.”
At the same time, representatives of this movement go to great lengths to
show their adherence to Catholic and Christian identities in an ever-changing
global context. Teología india points to the fact that there has been an inter-
religious dialogue taking place for five hundred years, albeit often in an asym-
metrical and disjointed fashion, and often undetected. What has emerged,
however, is a creative integration of Christian and indigenous belief systems in
which we witness a distinct way of being Christian.This theology is a reflec-
tion of how indigenous peoples express their relationship to God and each
other in varying historical circumstances.
By and large, indigenous peoples throughout the hemisphere attempt to
profess their Christian identity without dispossessing themselves of their cul-
tural roots and traditions.Teología india in its reflections enhances our under-
standing of such important Christian traditions as the Communion of Saints,
Marian devotion, community life, ministerial roles, and the Paschal Mystery as
it is lived out in the suffering and resurrection of a people that Las Casas and
Gutiérrez proclaim “die before their time of an early and unjust death.”
On purely theological grounds, teología india transcends the customary
categories for introducing new content and language through its symbols, rit-
uals, and alternative worldview. David Tracy, a prominent North American
theologian, sees in peoples of “memory, resistance, and hope” the convergence
of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern currents of thought which,
through the witness of their survival and the flourishing of their cultures, sur-
pass each of these currents.35 In Tracy’s view, new theological expressions that
have surfaced from the margins constitute one of the forms of a mystical-
prophetic expression that can enrich theologies from the Western world. Else-
where, Tracy speaks of what constitutes a classic text, the work of art as “a
journey of intensification into particularity.”36 Only by an immersion into
particularity can we possibly have a disclosure of the deeper meanings of the
universal. In what has been traced here we have the making of new classic
texts in which original dimensions and interpretations of the universal
emerge. Certainly this new movement has stretched the imagination and lim-
its of theological discourse in the Christian world, showing that no single ex-
pression of the Christian message exhausts its full meaning.
Eleazar López sums up the place of indigenous theology within this new
configuration:“Our emerging theologies are more difficult to pursue than lib-
Indigenous Theology Movement 229

eration theologies. Nevertheless we believe we are witnessing an important


historic moment, a kairos of grace, indicating God’s passage through our
midst.”37 Every meeting at one of the apachetas that dot the landscape of the
indigenous world in Latin America bears the potential of a mutually fruitful
and enriching encounter between peoples of “memory, resistance, and hope”
and the rest of the human family.

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

Liste ning to Re surge nt Voice s

Timothy J. Steigenga

Forty years ago modernization theorists predicted that the


salience of religion and ethnicity would fade as culture, ideas, and economic
practices were transported from “modern” to “traditional” societies.1 In 1992,
as the Americas prepared for the Columbian quincentenary, even the most ca-
sual observer was aware that these predictions could not have been more
wrong. From Ecuador to Mexico, indigenous political movements made their
presence known through marches, uprisings, and political statements. Reli-
gion played a critical role in laying the groundwork for this indigenous resur-
gence. While ideas and practices were transported between societies, the
effects were precisely the opposite of that predicted by the modernization the-
orists. New religious ideas and movements supported and celebrated indige-
nous rights and culture, while shifts to liberal political and economic doctrines
provided the political openings for indigenous mobilization.
The contributions to this volume highlight the complex and sometimes
contradictory relationships between religion and indigenous mobilization in
Latin America. As always, the intersection between religion and politics raises
issues of agency and constraints, hierarchy and liberation, community and
conflict.2 The role of religion is shaped by the various political, economic, and
social contexts in which the interactions take place.While the contexts of Bo-
livia, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, and Paraguay differ significantly, the
case studies presented in this book yield important thematic generalizations
and raise further research questions about the connections between religion,
identity, and indigenous social movements in Latin America. We have con-
sciously approached these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective,
combining insights and methods from historians, political scientists, anthro-
pologists, and sociologists.
Four primary themes emerged in the preceding chapters.The first theme

231
232 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

involves the controversial topic of syncretism, including questions of “creole”


or “hybrid” identity, as well as inculturation theology. How has indigenous ac-
tivism and participation changed the practice and institutions of religion? How
can religious institutions balance the desire for universal truth claims in the face
of cultural relativity? As inculturation theology gives way to what Stephen Judd
describes as teología india in Latin America, what does it mean for relationships
of power and identity among religious participants and social activists?
The second theme relates to the connections between religion and social
movements. What resources, motivations, and ideological legitimacy has reli-
gion provided indigenous social movements? How do religious differences
impact identity and collective action? Can religious actors claim to speak on
behalf of the indigenous and what issues does this raise in terms of potential
conflict and cooptation?
A third set of questions has to do with evaluating outcomes. How effec-
tive are religiously based or identity-based social movements in achieving
their goals? What are the obstacles to and achievements of indigenous move-
ments in Latin America?
Finally, the chapters in this volume provide ample evidence of the com-
plexity and fluidity of both the religious marketplace and religious politics in
Latin America. As we evaluate the outcomes of indigenous social movements
in the region, we must pay attention to critical changes at the level of personal
empowerment and collective identity. These changes often defy simple labels
and run counter to conventional wisdom. The flexibility within religious
practice and politics should not come as a great surprise, yet we seem to re-
discover it each time we hear the testimony of a charismatic Catholic who still
practices some elements of costumbre,3 or read the liberationist statements of a
Mayan evangelical pastor. The fact is that these religious practices and beliefs
are not mutually exclusive in the minds of those who take part in them, even
if they remain so in the minds of those who study them. If religious practices
and beliefs are malleable across time and context, we should expect the social
and political trajectories of religious mobilization to be as well.

Re lig ious and Cultural Mixing:


Syncretism, Creolization,
and H y b ri d i zat i on
Any analysis of indigenous movements and religion must be prefaced
with a discussion of terminology and definitions. An entire literature has
emerged around the project of defining and redefining syncretism, hybridism,
and creolization.4 This book does not replicate these debates or the potentially
confusing language through which they often take place. Rather, we asked the
authors in this volume to begin by adopting the most general definitions of
these terms for purposes of clarity and foundation-building.
Conclusion 233

Creolization and hybridization both refer to the process of cultural mix-


ing. As used by cultural and literary theorists, these terms generally refer to a
positive process that allows colonized societies to both critique and appropri-
ate elements of more dominant cultures.5 Similarly, syncretism may be under-
stood as, “the combination of elements from two or more different religious
traditions within a specific time frame.”6 Such an elemental definition pur-
posely allows for an exploration of the ambiguity and power relations inher-
ent in defining and interpreting orthodoxy. Syncretism may be used by the
powerful to define and impose orthodoxy or by the powerless to subvert such
definitions.7 We have focused, therefore, on the process rather than the defini-
tion of syncretism, exploring the practices and beliefs that affect and are af-
fected by religious exchanges.8
This is not to negate or diminish the ongoing debate within anthropol-
ogy and cultural studies over historical, pejorative, and evolving understand-
ings of cultural syncretism and hybridization.Three critical insights arise from
this debate and inform our analysis. First, the use of each of these terms (syn-
cretism, creolization, and hybridism) comes with significant historical bag-
gage. In Reinventing Religions: Syncretism and Transformation in Africa and the
Americas Sidney Greenfield and André Droogers carefully outline the differing
trends in European and American anthropological approaches to syncretism,
noting the evolution of the concept from a pejorative theological term, to an
assumed stage in the process of acculturation, to a platform for power strug-
gles over the most “pure” or “authentic” form of cultural identity.9 The evolu-
tion of the terms “creolization” and “hybridism” are no less contentious. As
Charles Stewart explains, “Creole draws attention to the inequities of power
that allowed European colonizers to discursively legislate the importance of
‘race,’ culture, and environment in determining where one fit along a chain of
being that placed the Old World homeland and its subjects at the pinnacle.”10
Hybridism, a potential synonym for creolization, suffers from equally prob-
lematic connections with nineteenth-century biological racism.11
Second, as these definitional issues make clear, the process of religious and
cultural mixing always entails questions of power. Who defines what is au-
thentic, pure, or orthodox? While the answer in the Latin American case most
often has been the Catholic Church, we should note that essentialism (used
here as the notion that identities or beliefs have certain a priori core elements
that define them) is not the sole property of powerful religious institutions.
Questions about who represents the “true” or “authentic” indigenous per-
spective are equally contentious.As Lois Ann Lorentzen eloquently points out
in the case of Chiapas, to ask “who is an Indian” is to elicit a broad set of con-
flicting replies.12 In some cases, academics, activists, and religious actors appear
to be so engrossed in the debate over quién es más Maya that they lose sight of
their own role in cultural and religious mixing.13
234 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

Kristin Norget’s chapter on Oaxaca is particularly revealing in this re-


spect. According to Norget, the notion that Catholic priests in Oaxaca serve
as Gramcian “organic intellectuals” for the indigenous community is prob-
lematic because the majority of the priests are not from the community, and
serve the community most effectively precisely because of that fact. In other
words, the very individuals who serve as leaders of the indigenous community
and who promote a powerful, identity-based critique of the existing social
structure are best able to serve their adopted community due to their strong
connections to powerful actors within the social structure (through the insti-
tutional church, philanthropic organizations, and non-governmental organiza-
tions). Norget cautions us about accepting religiously based intermediaries for
indigenous communities with an uncritical eye.
Norget’s warning raises one of the basic challenges involved in the study
of identity politics in Latin America: the problematic question of who speaks
for whom?14 She also raises the question of whether or not the larger strategic
purpose of challenging powerful structures justifies some “essentialization” of
the indigenous community by actors who seek to represent that community.
While we can imagine that most individuals would choose essentialization
over subjugation, the question remains as to whether or not this is simply trad-
ing one form of social control for another, perhaps more subtle, form.15 Either
way, researchers and activists should carefully reflect on whether or not their
arguments tend to deny agency to the very groups and individuals they seek
to study or support.16
Even though syncretism is often characterized by asymmetrical power re-
lationships, it can also be used by subaltern groups to subvert existing power
structures.The interpretations, symbols, rituals, and practices of the more dom-
inant or orthodox religion may be used in ways that go well beyond the intent
of those who originally framed or defined orthodoxy. René Harder Horst
makes this argument in the case of Paraguay, noting that the choices of indige-
nous groups to adopt different religious elements may have to do with social or
economic advantage or simply with the resources necessary for survival. In ei-
ther case, the meaning of religious symbols and practices holds the potential to
be transformed into a subversive act or protest against more powerful actors
(government authorities, Protestant missionaries, or the Catholic Church).17
Virginia Garrard-Burnett’s chapter explicitly takes this approach, arguing
that the authors of Mayanized theology in Guatemala appropriate and invert
the powerful messages and symbols of Christianity for their own purposes.
This is not to say that their project is a singularly political one, but rather to
note that religious syncretism provides a milieu for multiple political, social,
and theological agendas. Indigenous activists and the Catholic Church may
each have a stake in the elaboration of a teología maya, but the process and re-
sults of creating such a theology are unlikely to match perfectly with either
party’s agenda.
Conclusion 235

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.

From Inculturation Theology


to I nd i g e nou s Th e olog y
The teología maya in Guatemala, pastoral indígena in Oaxaca and Chiapas,
and teología india in the Andes all have their roots in Catholic inculturation
theology. Inculturation theology emerged out of Vatican II documents, in-
cluding Gaudium et spes, which specified an openness of the church and the-
ology to the world, and Ad Gentes, which pointed to the “seeds of the Word”
said to be contained in the world’s variant cultures. These messages were re-
affirmed in 1968 at Medellín, again with Redemptoris Missio in 1979, and
expanded in the 1992 CELAM (Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano) confer-
ence in Santo Domingo.19
As several of our contributors note, those involved in doing inculturation
theology would not choose to label their work as a form of syncretism.
236 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

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

mulation of the utopian concept of tierra sin mal, characterized by inclusive-


ness, reciprocal and complementary relationships, pluralism, and harmony
with the environment. Judd argues that indigenous theology is more than a
restorationist movement, because it generates solidarity across religious and
national borders. As with liberation theology, indigenous theology takes mul-
tiple forms and emphasizes the critical role of praxis for generating and un-
derstanding theological reflection.

Re lig ion and Indige nous


S oc i al M ove m e nt s
Though not explicitly, all of the chapters in this volume adopt some version
of what Christian Smith has called the “insurgent consciousness” role of religion
in “framing” ideological or motivational resources to social movements.21 Ac-
tivists (in this case religious workers and indigenous leaders) “frame” their iden-
tity (often in opposition to other identities, Indian versus ladino, peasant versus
patron) through certain religious resources, beliefs, practices, rituals, and cultures
that make adherents more prone to be engaged and mobilized for collective ac-
tion.22 Inculturation theology, liberation theology, and indigenous theology play
this role in the cases we have examined in this volume.
In his discussion of the indigenous-missionary dialogues in Peru and Bo-
livia, Edward Cleary notes that a theological basis for community solidarity
and national liberation for the Amyara nation emerged.As missionaries trained
catechists and catechists spread this theological message, the groundwork for
an insurgent consciousness was laid.
Kovic also points to the role of religious beliefs in justifying certain ideo-
logical stances in the case of Chiapas. As she recounts the story of the indige-
nous catechist Juan, Kovic returns to a critical biblical theme that crosses
denominational lines in Latin America: the notion that all people are equal in
the eyes of God. This powerful notion of equality within both liberationist
Catholic and Pentecostal Protestant discourses has important implications for
inequalities relating to gender as well as class.23 For Juan, this religious concept
framed his struggle for social and economic equality in Chiapas.
In the case of Oaxaca, Kristin Norget describes an indigenous develop-
ment model, with emphasis on collectives and ecological goals, that contains
an inherent critique of neo-liberalism. Alison Brysk notes that many of the
recent waves of Indian mobilization in Ecuador have also been aimed at
government economic programs. In these cases, the insurgent consciousness
behind the movements appears to have emerged from a convergence of tradi-
tional forms of indigenous practice and belief and liberationist elements of
Catholicism. Stephen Judd echoes this finding, arguing that indigenous theol-
ogy represents both a protest against globalization from above and a support
network for globalization from below.
238 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

Simply put, the interactions between Christianity and indigenous religion


in the past forty years gave rise to the basis for an insurgent consciousness
framed within an identity as both Christian and Indian. Indigenous peoples
and the religious workers who interacted with them became more receptive
to the potential for mobilization as they developed religiously based critiques
of existing structures of power and authority.

Explaining the Rise of Indigenous Identity Politics: Levels of Analysis


While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a comprehensive
review of the literature on social movements and identity politics in Latin
America, our cases do provide insights into some of the pivotal questions aris-
ing in that literature.24 Charles Hale’s definition of identity politics as “collec-
tive sensibilities and actions that come from a particular location within
society, in direct defiance of universal categories that tend to subsume, erase,
or suppress this particularity,” provides a useful starting point for analyzing
these questions.25 Most observers are in agreement that social movements in
Latin America have taken a turn toward the sort of identity politics Hale de-
fines, but the causes for, attractions to, and results of such politics remain con-
tentious issues.
At the individual level of analysis, we have already addressed the precipi-
tating factor of insurgent consciousness in the formation of social movements.
Born in liberation theology, contextualized through inculturation theology,
and reinforced through indigenous theology, this insurgent consciousness
formed the ideological basis for an indigenous agenda of self-determination,
political reform, and cultural, land, and citizenship rights. Activists in the in-
digenous rights movements in Latin America have consistently framed their
identities either as indigenous or as religiously motivated advocates who ac-
company the indigenous in their struggle.
Moving beyond the individual level of analysis, we must also examine the
contextual and institutional causes for the growth of social movements. As we
have already noted, a particular moment in the history of the institutional
Catholic Church (Vatican II) provided the context for the growth of libera-
tion theology and inculturation theology. How this played out on the ground
was determined by national and local structures and individuals.
In the case of Mexico, Kristin Norget explains both the growth of Oax-
aca’s pastoral indígena and its eventual retreat in terms of changes in the di-
rection of the institutional Catholic Church over time. She argues that
ideological shifts in the Vatican combined with altered church-state relations
in Mexico have effectively undermined the religious support for indigenous
movements in Oaxaca through the appointment of more conservative local
bishops and the closing of key seminaries.
Local leadership also played a key role in Guatemala and Chiapas. The
conservative Guatemalan archbishop Mario Casariego (1968–1983) severely
Conclusion 239

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

In the case of indigenous movements we have examined, the transnational


network includes the United Nations and the Organization of American States
(through the declaration of 1993 to be the year of indigenous peoples, the In-
ternational Labor Organization’s Convention 169, and the United Nations and
Organization of American States draft Declarations on Indigenous Rights), the
Catholic Church (through regularly held bishops meetings, Catholic universi-
ties and seminaries, and the training of catechists), and scholarly networks (as
evidenced in the role of the Barbados I and Barbados II meetings).As Keck and
Sikkink point out, social movements that involve a vulnerable population and
raise issues of legal equality and opportunity have been most successful in or-
ganizing effective transnational networks.31 The movement for indigenous
rights in Latin America meets both of these criteria.
An analysis of our cases suggests that the international “leverage politics”
that transnational advocacy networks employ are most effective when regimes
base their legitimacy in appeals to liberal ideals.32 This schema allows us to un-
derstand why Peru’s indigenous movement remained relatively underdevel-
oped under the Alberto Fujimori regime, despite the strong presence of the
same precipitating factors that led to larger and more effective indigenous mo-
bilization in other cases.33
One final catalyzing factor for indigenous mobilization is repression of re-
ligious leaders or church representatives. As John Booth has argued, religious
organizations play a key role in rebellions because they generate grievances
both through their ideology and through the victimization of their mem-
bers.34 In the cases of Guatemala, Paraguay, Chiapas, Peru, and Bolivia, we have
seen this process repeated over time. As church leaders become the target of
government repression and intimidation, local and transnational movements
become energized to take up their cause.

Religion, Resource Mobilization, and Mediation


Across the cases covered in this volume, the common factors linking reli-
gion and indigenous mobilization are community building, resource mobi-
lization, and a role for religious institutions and leaders as interlocutors in
indigenous-state relationships.These are familiar themes for social movement
theory and echo earlier findings from studies of the role of religion in the civil
rights movement in the United States.35 Our case studies provide ample evi-
dence that many insights arising from this literature still ring true.
In numerous social movement studies, religious organizations have been
found to provide the networks, skills, discretionary resources (time and effort of
members), free spaces (free from the physical or ideological control of other pow-
erful actors), and collective identity (shared sense of community) necessary to
begin and maintain social movements.36 We found evidence of each of these fac-
tors in the relations between religious actors and indigenous social movements.
Conclusion 241

In Ecuador,Alison Brysk notes that the Italy-based Salesian order worked


closely with the Shuar, while Monseñor Leonidas Proaño (the “Bishop of the
Indians”) developed agricultural cooperatives in the highlands, began an In-
dian seminary, and lobbied to return church lands to indigenous groups.
Kristin Norget and Christine Kovic point to similar processes in Mexico, with
the promotion of mission houses, seminaries, workshops, as well as collective
labor projects, health promotion programs, language programs, educational
opportunities, peasant cooperatives, and community saving programs. In the
case of Mexico, these church-based programs were often organized around in-
digenous customs of communalism.The Worker-Peasant-Student Coalition of
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (COCEI), the Truique Unified Movement for
Struggle (MULT), and the Union for Indigenous Communities of the North
Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI) in Oaxaca all owe some debt to the train-
ing and resources that came to the region through the pastoral indígena.37 In
Chiapas, Kovic outlines the religious ties in the emergence of indigenous or-
ganizations such as Xi’ Nich’ (The Ant) and Las Abejas (The Bees).
Edward Cleary’s chapter on Bolivia and Peru illustrates the role that reli-
gious intellectual and cultural centers and indigenous catechists have played in
developing the intellectual basis for indigenous political activism in those
countries. As Cleary explains, indigenous catechists have become community
leaders, in many cases nudging traditionally reticent indigenous communities
into the more contentious public sphere. At the same time, a number of
Catholic religious studies centers conducted field work in the region, produc-
ing high-quality research and a network of religious scholars and practitioners
who began to weave calls for cultural liberation into their perspectives on lib-
eration theology. Out of this movement for consciousness-raising emerged
such social movements and organizations as the Katarists and the Confedera-
tion of Peasant Workers.
Key to all of the cases presented in this volume is the role of religious ed-
ucation. Cleary notes the role of the Adventist schools around Lake Titicaca in
producing graduates who would go on to fill local and national leadership
roles. In Ecuador, Mexico, Bolivia, and Peru, Catholic seminaries trained in-
digenous and non-indigenous priests who, in turn, trained catechists who
would later go on to become community leaders and key organizers in in-
digenous social movements. In Guatemala the individuals trained under
Catholic Action came to represent a new generation of leadership in indige-
nous communities. Some Protestant pastors (particularly Mayan Presbyterians)
have also emerged as local and national indigenous leaders of the Mayan
movement. Religious leaders also played a key role in the National Reconcil-
iation Commission (CRN) and 1996 peace agreements in Guatemala.
One of the most controversial roles played by religious institutions in social
movements is the role of mediator or interlocutor. In the Diocese of San
242 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.

Problems of Conflict and Co-optation


Any time significant resources are at stake in social movements or one
group seeks to speak for another, the potential for both conflict and co-opta-
tion becomes greater.38 As several of our chapters demonstrate, religiously
based resources do not always translate into community building. Bruce
Calder’s evaluation of Catholic Action, the Christian Democratic Party, and
the Maryknolls in Guatemala suggests that these actors were critical in pro-
viding the necessary resources to develop a new set of indigenous leaders in
Guatemala. However, this process also bred conflict within the community, as
it both challenged the traditional cofradia system and threatened local ladino
interests.
The influx of evangelical missionaries into indigenous areas and the
growth of Pentecostal Protestantism among indigenous peoples has also led to
conflicts, many times over the very traditional religious practices that incul-
turation theology has reinvigorated.39 Alison Brysk describes how Protestant
missionaries in Ecuador have undermined indigenous “social capital” due to
the fact that converts refuse to participate in the minga because the communal
work is done on Sundays. Kristin Norget outlines similar lines of confronta-
tion in Oaxaca, Mexico.The issues that arise from these conflicts present seri-
ous challenges for state and local authorities in terms of defining and
protecting communal and individual citizenship rights.40
However, even this apparently clear line of conflict does not hold across
all of our cases. René Harder Horst argues that in Paraguay, the Nivaklé and
Ehlhit were able to maintain their traditional religious cosmologies after join-
ing the Mennonite Colonies in the Chaco. The Mennonite and Anglican
focus on translating the scriptures into native languages served as an impetus
for later movements based in indigenous identity. In Guatemala, Garrard-
Burnett documents the key role of Mayan Presbyterian leaders in the wider
Pan-Mayan movement. Even in the case of Mexico, Norget confirms Chris-
tine Eber’s findings that some evangelicals and traditionalists have negotiated
mutually acceptable solutions to the issue of community service demanded by
costumbre.41
Conclusion 243

While the conflicts initiated by outside religious involvement in indige-


nous communities can be potentially mediated, the question of co-optation is
a much thornier issue. One perspective on the identity-based social move-
ments that have proliferated in Latin America is that states encourage them
because they are easily co-opted and represent a much less powerful challenge
than class-based or popular movements.42 Our contributions suggest that such
broad characterizations may be overstated. State actors who actively seek al-
liances with religious organizations should be careful what they wish for.
The Paraguayan and Ecuadorian cases demonstrate the dilemmas faced by
state actors who wish to use religious organizations to pursue their own agen-
das. In Paraguay, the Stroessner regime was frustrated as its traditional ally, the
Catholic Church, began to turn against the regime and advocate indigenous
rights. In the final analysis, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 meeting with indigenous
leaders at the Santa Teresita Mission in the Chaco played a key role in galva-
nizing international and internal opposition to Stroessner’s regime. The
Paraguayan case is not an exception.
In Ecuador, Alison Brysk raises the issue of Evangelical missionaries act-
ing as delegated authorities of the state (a parallel with the case of Guate-
mala).43 Brysk outlines the roles of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)
and World Vision and concludes that the effect of these organizations is firmly
ambiguous. On one hand, SIL’s missions clearly aided the state in resource ex-
traction and acculturation of indigenous groups. On the other hand, the mis-
sionaries provided their converts with social services and many of the basic
skills that would later be used to promote their cause. World Vision, through
contracts related to its humanitarian missions, initially fomented a series divi-
sions and conflicts within some indigenous communities. However, the even-
tual results of the World Vision projects included greater indigenous input and
representation in the development programs and greater cooperation with the
Catholic Church and other NGOs. Some indigenous evangelicals involved in
World Vision went on to become activists in Ecuador’s indigenous rights
movement.
Cleary’s analysis of Peru and Bolivia confirms the image of religious mis-
sions as a double-edged sword for states seeking social control over their in-
digenous populations. In these countries, the short-range radio stations used
in missionary work came to serve as key elements in the movement for the
revindication of indigenous culture and the eventual political mobilization of
Amayra and Guaraní people. Again, religious actors may relieve the state of
costs by providing infrastructure (this time in terms of communications), but
that infrastructure is used by indigenous groups to spread the news of their
own rebellion against the state.
While it may be that governmental and elite actors in Latin America
continue to perceive religious movements and identity-based indigenous
244 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

movements as less threatening than traditional class alliances, an analysis of our


cases suggests that they may wish to revise their opinions. As Amalia Pallares
has recently argued in the context of Ecuador, the shift toward identity poli-
tics has strengthened indigenous movements, allowing them to effectively in-
corporate rather than reject many of the material concerns of earlier
class-based movements.44 Indigenous groups have made major strides in gain-
ing official recognition and in increasing their political capacity. Religious ac-
tors, for their part, frequently act on their own agendas and impact the process
of indigenous mobilization in unexpected ways.

M i le stone s and C hal le ng e s


to the Indige nous Re surge nce
What are the goals of the indigenous movements we have examined in this
volume? The primary goals that cross cases include conservation and respect for
indigenous cultures and value systems, self-determination, and political reform
(generally defined in terms of land rights, communal labor, and traditional
modes of government and law).The obstacles that stand between Latin Amer-
ica’s indigenous movements and these goals are formidable. Despite legal and
institutional support from international organizations and nongovernmental
organizations, indigenous demands for the recognition of communal rights re-
main at odds with the dominant neo-liberal agenda in Latin America. As
Rodolfo Stavenhagen and Rachel Sieder have pointed out, the primary de-
mands of indigenous movements in Latin America regarding cultural auton-
omy, customary law, land rights, and alternative development policies cut to the
core of long-standing assimilationist development projects, widely held notions
of national identity, and neo-liberal policy prescriptions.45 What Sieder calls the
indigenous “politics of difference” demands nothing less than a redefinition of
citizenship in the region, an extremely ambitious agenda given the complexi-
ties of legal pluralism, the potential for inter-ethnic conflict, and the long-
standing challenges to equitable development in Latin America.46
The indigenous agenda represents a double threat to traditional notions of
state sovereignty in Latin America because it challenges both the norm of
non-intervention (through claims to universal human and cultural rights) and
the notion of the existing nation-state (through claims to national sovereignty
for Indian peoples). This may be one of the most serious and understudied
dilemmas facing all nation-states with significant indigenous populations.47
The fact that the “indigenous question” is on the national agenda at all in
many Latin American countries can be interpreted as a victory in itself.
Given the clear challenges to the status quo involved in Latin America’s
indigenous movements, the degree to which they have recently succeeding in
meeting some goals is extraordinary. Significant advances have been made in
terms of gaining international recognition and constitutional protection of in-
Conclusion 245

digenous rights through the International Labor Organization’s Convention


169, the United Nations and Organization of American States draft Declara-
tions on Indigenous Rights, and changes during the 1990s in the constitu-
tional language of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay,
Peru, and Venezuela to recognize indigenous rights.48 For the local and
transnational indigenous groups working to pursue autonomy, cultural rights,
and reform, translating legal recognition into effective legislation and policy is
the challenge that lies ahead.
As we noted earlier, the process of globalization and some of the policy
prescriptions of neo-liberalism have opened certain opportunities for indige-
nous movements in Latin America. First, as Kristin Norget has demonstrated,
administrative decentralization and devolution of power to the departmental
or municipal level has created the possibility for greater ethnic and territorial
autonomy for indigenous groups in Latin America.49 In particular, the cases of
Bolivia, Columbia, and Ecuador suggest that a political opportunity structure
that combines a severe governmental legitimacy crisis with elite-driven move-
ments for reform may provide an opening for indigenous groups to effectively
insert their agenda into national and constitutional dialogue.50 In the compar-
ative section of his chapter, Cleary uses a similar argument based on opportu-
nity structure to explain the strength and achievements of Bolivia’s indigenous
rights movement relative to Peru. While the church played a key role in aid-
ing indigenous rights movements in both countries, the context of civil war
and authoritarian politics under the Fujimori regime in Peru limited openings
for effective national organizing. Cleary is quick to note, however, that local
indigenous organizing has also taken place in Peru in the form of the rondas
campesinas in the northern Andes and through other groups in the Amazon.
Second, as state programs such as Mexico’s National Indigenista Institute
(INI) lose funding due to government downsizing and budget shortfalls, in-
ternational and local NGOs play a larger role in providing resources in in-
digenous areas.51 In many cases, the NGOs have years of experience working
with indigenous communities and have ideological positions that coincide
with indigenous agendas (or at least are less overtly assimilationist than state-
directed projects).52
Finally, the process of globalization has opened opportunities for NGOs
and indigenous organizations to expand their networks and ties across bor-
ders.53 Alison Brysk, Kay Warren, and others have documented the transna-
tional networks that increasingly link national and local movements for
indigenous rights.54 This is a fertile ground for further research, as it crosses the
traditional boundaries separating comparative and international politics and
raises questions that can breathe new life into international relations theory.
Despite these openings, the concrete effects of neo-liberalism on indige-
nous communities in Latin America has been far from positive, as states have
246 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

cut social services, eliminated agricultural subsidies, privatized land markets,


and ended support for the peasant federations that had previously connected
indigenous groups to the state.55 These changes have challenged traditional in-
digenous survival strategies and brought widespread suffering and discontent.
From an extremely pessimistic perspective, we could conclude that the shift
toward identity politics represents an “atomization” of society, making it more
individualized and amenable to market initiatives.56 Our findings suggest,
however, that to draw such a determinist conclusion would seriously underes-
timate the fluidity and adaptability of religious and indigenous identity-based
social movements in Latin America.

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.

Learning to Listen to Multiple Resurgent Voices


This brings us full circle to our discussion of syncretism and hybridism,
now in the context of religious pluralism in Latin America.The fluidity of the
Latin American religious market means that “being Indian” can have multiple
religious meanings. René Harder Horst’s chapter on Paraguay provides a use-
ful illustration of this fluidity.As Horst explains, the Nivaklé people were more
than willing to move between Mennonite and Catholic missions, depending
on the resources available to them. The Enlhit, too, converted en masse from
Anglicanism to the New Tribes Mission, only to return to the Anglican
Church when access to resources changed.Throughout the process, Horst ar-
gues, the Enlhit quietly maintained elements of their traditional spirituality.
The scenario Horst describes has played out at the individual and group
level throughout Latin America. It is partly for this reason that Manuel Vasquez
warns us not to fall into a reductive understanding of religious movements in
Latin America, attempting to boil them down into their class or ethnic ele-
ments so that we can produce broad generalizations about their political
effects.62 The cross-fertilization between religions and the increasing Pente-
costalization of religious practice in Latin America render such generalizations
increasingly useless. Rather, as David Smilde has recently argued, we must ac-
cept that “there is no single Latin American Evangelicalism or Catholicism
when it comes to politics (or any other issue for that matter).There are only
Evangelicalisms and Catholicisms. Different Evangelical and Catholic actors
pursue different, even contradictory political (as well as religious) goals.”63 We
could add that there is no single “Indian” in Latin America either. Rather,
there are many “Indians,” who are, as Lois Ann Lorentzen explains, “again
transforming religious traditions and indigenous beliefs, making them their
own.”64
248 Ti m o t h y J . S t e i g e n g a

As we listen to the “resurgent voices” of indigenous peoples in the Amer-


icas, we must also avoid the temptation to romanticize their struggle or to
imbue it with our own goals and aspirations. While indigenous worldviews
may promote communitarian values and more sustainable agricultural prac-
tices, to charge them with the task of using these views to alter the national
political landscape is far too heavy a burden. Like all forms of political orga-
nization and authority, indigenous communities and indigenous movements
struggle with their own issues of power.A number of investigators have noted
that increasing local autonomy in indigenous communities may also reinforce
existing clientalist networks, increase discrimination against perceived out-
groups, and hinder progress in terms of gender equality.65 As Jeffrey Rubin ar-
gues, ambiguous and contradictory positions on these issues may even be a
prime source of the strength of some indigenous social movements.66
Acknowledging the complexity of the subject in no way implies that we
cannot apply the methods of social science to understand the relationships be-
tween religion and social movements or that there are not important compar-
isons to be drawn and generalizations to be made. From the level of family,
gender, and local politics to the level of transnational networks, understanding
the connections between religion and indigenous politics requires careful at-
tention to the details of contexts, networks, time frames, beliefs, religious or-
ganizations, religious practices, and political and social relationships. In the
words of Daniel Levine,“The key point for analysis is to avoid reifying a par-
ticular unit or orientation, freezing it in time and treating it as once and for-
ever the same.”67
In sum, understanding the impetus for the resurgent voice of indigenous
mobilization requires a multi-layered analysis that accounts for ideological
framing, resource mobilization, variance in institutional and other religious
factors over time, and local, national, and international opportunity structure.
Indigenous movements are now among the most important new political ac-
tors in Latin America.They have achieved this status by taking advantage of a
unique convergence of political openings, economic and social changes, and
ideological and material resources available through religious organizations.
This process unfolded over nearly forty years, and the effects will continue to
shape the face of Latin American politics for many years to come.
We conclude on a cautionary, yet hopeful note. Latin America’s forty mil-
lion Indians have recently made major strides in gaining official recognition
and rights. Religious institutions, resources, and communities have played a
major role and have been changed, themselves, by the process. But the story
does not end here. Severe inequality, grinding poverty, and institutionalized
racism continue to characterize Latin America’s political and social landscape.
As indigenous peoples struggle to translate their gains into concrete political
and economic changes, religion will continue to play a critical role. The in-
Conclusion 249

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.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett received her history doctorate at Tulane Univer-


sity and is lecturer in Latin American studies at the University of Texas,Austin.
She authored Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem and nu-
merous other works, especially dealing with Protestantism in Latin America.

Bruce J. Calder is professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago.


His first research in Guatemala was conducted with Richard Adams and re-
sulted in Crecimiento y cambio de la Iglesia guatemalteca, 1944–1966. He then
published a highly acclaimed history of the effects of U.S. intervention in the
Dominican Republic. He is currently working on a comprehensive history of
the Catholic Church in Guatemala.

Edward L. Cleary, O.P., is professor of political science and director of Latin


American Studies at Providence College. He was president of the Bolivian In-
stitute of Social Study and Action and edited Estudios Andinos. He is author of
The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America, Crisis and Change, and other
works.

René Harder Horst teaches history at Appalachian State University. He re-


ceived his Ph.D. at Indiana University, writing his dissertation on religion in
Paraguay. In 2003 he published “Consciousness and Contradiction: Indige-
nous Peoples and Paraguay’s Transition to Democracy” in Contemporary Indige-
nous Movements in Latin America, edited by Erick Langer and Elena Muñoz.

Stephen P. Judd, M.M., directs the Instituto de Idiomas, Cochabamba, Bo-


livia. He worked with indigenous peoples in Peru and Bolivia for a number of

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.

Christine Kovic, associate professor of anthropology at the University of


Houston, Clear Lake, obtained her doctorate at the City University of New
York. She has conducted extensive research in Chiapas, Mexico. She is co-
editor and co-author of a forthcoming work on women and religion in Chi-
apas and other publications.

Kristin Norget, associate professor of anthropology at McGill University,


Montreal, has focused her work for several years on the Oaxacan region of
Mexico. She has published on the impact of liberation theology in Oaxaca.

Timothy J. Steigenga is an associate professor of political science and Latin


American studies at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
He is author of The Politics of the Spirit:The Political Implications of Pentecostal-
ized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala and numerous other works on reli-
gion and politics in Latin America.
I nde x

Abejas Las, 202–204, 241 Angrosino, Michael, 167, 180


Abya Yala Press, 8, 32 Annals of the Kakchikels, 141
Aché, 66, 72–74 anticlerical, 94, 99, 181
acompañamiento, 190 anticommunism, 96
Acteal, 203, 205 Arbenz, Jacobo, 95
Acuerdo sobre Identidad y Derechos del Arévalo, Juan José, 95
Pueblo, 130 Archdiocesan Office of Human Rights,
Ad gentes, 132, 235 Guatemala City, 130
Adams, Richard, 15 Argentina, 4, 84, 213
Adventists, 12, 51, 56, 58, 60, 170, 221, Arizmendi, Felipe, 206
222, 241 ASCIM, 75, 78
Africa, 78, 87, 125–126, 233 Asamblea de Autoridades Mixes
African Independent Churches, 86 (ASAM), 157
agrarian law, Ecuador, 29–30 Assembly for Constitutional Reform, 30
Agrarian Reform Accord, Ecuador, 34 Assembly of the Guaraní People, Bolivia,
Akaraymi, 72 54
Alas de Socorro (Wings of Mercy), 35 Association of Municipalities, 35
Albó, Xavier, 16, 49–51, 53, 221 Asunción, Paraguay, 75, 219, 220–221
alcohol: rejection, 193–194 Avá Guaraní, 66, 72, 81, 83–84
Alfert, Lucio, 84 Ayala y Ayala, Rafael, 161
Allpanchis, 218 ayllú, 57
Alliance for Progress, 98 Aymaras, 4, 13, 19, 47–48, 54
Alianza Nueva Nación (ANN), 136 Ayoreode, 66, 74
Alta Verapaz, 133–145
Altamirano, 195 Baha’i, 41
Altiplano, 4, 44–46, 54, 221, 224 Baptists, 170
Amazon, 4, 28–30, 33, 35–36, 38, 52, 245 Barbados Conference I, 10, 16, 30, 37,
Andes, 1, 12, 16–17, 28–30, 49, 210, 216, 43, 73, 240
235, 245 Barbados Conference II, 240
Angaite, 66 Barale, Adriano, 32
Anglican, 69–71, 74, 78–79, 82, 85, 242, Bastian, Jean Pierre, 76
247 Bastone, David, 126
Anglican South American Mission Soci- Berlié Belaunzarán, Emilio, 173
ety, 67 Berryman, Phillip, 100

257
258 Index

Bethlehem, 78 Cárdenas,Víctor Hugo, 53, 57


Bhadha, Homi, 178 cargo religion, 7, 169–170
Bible, 12, 36, 47–48, 141, 142, 164, 188, Carrasco, Bartolomé, 154, 162–163, 172–
190, 194, 195, 204 174, 177
biblical reflection, 49 CAS, Ecuador’s Land Reform Program,
Billy Graham Crusade, 37 33
Black Legend, 214 Casado Company, 80, 82
Bolivia and Peru contrasted, 56–60 Casanillo, 80
Bolivia, 4–5, 11, 12, 16, 17–19, 43–64, Casariego, Mario, 114, 133, 238
66, 126, 212, 213, 218, 221–223, 237, Casas, Bartolomé de las, 6, 27, 49,
240–246 196–197, 213, 214, 228
Bolivian bishops, 51, 133 catechists, 8, 45–48, 51, 58, 60, 96, 98,
Bolivian Indian March 1990, 13 103, 134
Bolivian National Revolution, 53 catechumenate, 6
Book of Council, 141 Catholic Action (Acción Católica), 72,
Books of the Chilam Balam, 141 93, 95–97, 100, 101–103, 109, 111,
Booth, John, 240 112, 214, 239, 241–242
Bosco, Dom, 32 Catholic mass, Catholic liturgy, 66
Boston, 14 Catholic Missions Team, Paraguay, 72
Botasso, Juan, 32 Catholic policies, 110–113
Bourdieu, Pierre, 155, 180 Catholic University, Bolivia, 12, 48–49,
Brazilian colonists, Paraguay, 79, 82 51; Paraguay, 73–75, 83; Peru,48
Brazilian Catholic Bishops, 11 Catholicisms, 247
Brice, Ed, 82 Catholicism, folk, 127
Brickler,Victoria Reifler, 138 Catholic-Mayan relations, 94–118
brujos, 130 CEAS, Ecuador’s Land Reform Program,
Brown, McKenna, 15 33
Brysk, Alison, 11, 15–16, 19, 25–42, 58, CEDHU, 34
237, 241–242, 245, 255 CEDIS, 34
Bucaram, Abdalá, 30–31 CELAM. See Conference of Latin Amer-
Buechler, Hans, 45 ican Bishops
Buechler, Judith, 45 CENAMI, 160, 163, 216, 222
Bunzel, Ruth, 95 Centers of Peasant Education, 168
Burdick, John, 197–198 Center for Rural Leadership Training
(CAPS), 98
Caaguazú Project, 79 centeredness, 138
Caazapá Project, 79, 81 Centro de Investigación y Promoción del
Cabrera, Julio, 116, 134 Campesinado (CIPCA), 53
Cadorette, Curt, 137 Centro de Promoción Comunitaria
Calder, Bruce, 17, 93–124, 239, 254 (CEPROCUM), 171
Camposeco, Jerónimo, 1–3 CERJ, 115
Canada, 8, 75, 223 Cerrito, 75, 80
Cañar Province, 29 Cerrito Catholic mission, 75
capitalism: unbridled, 96 Chaco, 66, 68–69, 70–71, 75, 77, 80, 82,
Caram, María José, 49 84
Index 259

Champ réligieux, 155 collective property rights, 16


Chano, Padre, 167, 168, 170 Colombia, 76
charismatic Catholicism, 12, 104, 135, Colorado Party, Paraguay, 67, 84
174, 211, 232 Columbus, Christopher, 51
Chase Sardi, Miguel, 73–74 Columbian quincentenary, 128, 134–135
Chenalhó, 193, 203 Comaroff, Jean, 126
Chiapas, 2, 4, 5, 13, 14, 18, 36, 72, 97, Comaroff, John, 126
116, 132, 141, 154, 157, 170, 171, 175, Comisión Episcopal para Indígenas,
177, 187–209, 211, 215, 233, 235–242 Mexico (CEI), 159
Chichicastenango, 95 Comisión de Pastoral Indígena de Gua-
Chile, 4, 5, 49, 55, 212, 215 temala, 105–106
Chimborazo Province, 27, 34 Comisión Nacional de Pastoral Indígena,
Chimaltenango, 133 Guatemala (COPIGUA), 110, 134
Ch’ol, 190, 203 Comitán, 195
Christian base communities (comu- Committee for Campesino Unity
nidades eclesiales de base), 103, 109, (CUC), 105–106
132 Committees of Population and Resis-
Christian Brothers Congregation, 97 tance (CPR), 116
Christian Democratic Party, 98, 101, 104, communism, 96
107, 108, 118, 242 Compassion International, 39
Christians for Socialism, 49 CONAIE, 28, 29, 30–32, 34
Christian Solidarity Committee, 200 CONAVIGUA, 115
Christology, 137, 139 concientización, 104, 190
church and state: separation, 8, 35, 155, CONDEG, 15
156, 205 Cone, James H., 126
Church of South Andes, 216 Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of
Church of the Poor, 103, 160, Bolivia, 54
CIA, 37 Conference of Latin American Bishops
citizenship, 58, 158, 238, 242, 244, 246 (CELAM), 9, 133, 172, 225, 235
citizens’ media, 55 Conference of Latin American Religious
civil rights movement, 240 (CLAR), 114
civil society, 15, 17, 25–41, 115, 128–129, Conference of Mexican Bishops (CEM),
155, 157, 212, 219, 222 160, 163, 174
Cleary, Edward, 1–24, 43–64, 133, 137, Conferencia de Iglesias Evangélicas de
237, 241–242, 255 Guatemala, 136
Coalición Obrero-Campesino- Conferencia de Religiosos de Guatemala
Estudiantil del Itmo de Tehuantepec (CONFREGUA), 112, 115, 116
(COCEI), 241 Congreso Amuesha, 52
Cobán, 215 Constitution: Bolivia, 57–58; Guatemala,
Cochabamba, Bolivia, 12, 48–49, 219 114; Mexico, 163, 173; Paraguay, 85
CODIMUJ, 202, 204 constitutional language, 245
coevalness, 166 contextual theology, 10, 214
cofradías, 7, 100–101, 134, 242 cooperatives, Guatemala, 107, 109
COICA, 31 Cornell University, 50
Cojtí, Demetrio, 130 Coronado Suzán, Gabriela, 79
260 Index

Corral,Víctor, 34 Ecuador, 4–5, 13, 16–17, 25–42, 52, 212,


Corripio Ahumada, Ernesto, 159, 162 216, 218, 225,231, 237, 241–246
costumbre, 7, 100, 130, 145, 242 Ecuadorian Congress, 30, 31
Council of Aguarana and Huambisa, 52 Ecumenical Association of Third World
creolization, 188, 232–235 Theologians, 10
CSUTSB, 55 ecumenism, 19, 81
Cuba, 9, 127 El Faro Moro, 74
CUC, 105–107, 115 El Quiché, 133–134, 239
Cuenca, Ecuador, 30 empowerment, 11, 25, 51,60, 104, 156,
Cultural Survival, 60 190
culturalists, 50–51, 216 encomiendas, 6
curanderos, 164 Enenlhit, 66, 80, 84
Curtin, Jim, 105–106, 110 Enlhit, 66, 68, 70–71, 77–79, 81–82, 242,
customary law, 16, 58, 244 247
Cuzco, Peru (Cusco), 48–49, 58, 217 ENM (National Missions Team), 81
Episcopal Commission for Social Action
(CEAS), Peru, 58
dances, 77
Episcopal Conference of Guatemala
Dance of the Flyers, 138
(CEG), 110, 130, 133–135
Decade of Indigenous Peoples, 213
Episcopal Conference of Paraguay, 68
de-Indianization, Peru, 59
Esquipulas Agreement I, 115
delegates of the word, 103
Esquipulas Agreement II, 115, 129
Department of Indigenous Affairs (DAI),
“ethnic question,” 52
67, 80
eurocentric church, 19, 101
Department of Missions (DEMIS), 225–
eurocentric development paradigms, 53
226
Evangelical, 12–13, 18, 28, 30, 33–36,
developmentalism, 97–98, 101
38–39, 73, 77–78, 140, 142, 169, 227;
developmentalist versus liberationist,
Evangelical challenge, 12–13; Evangeli-
103–104
calisms, 247. See also Protestant
Divine Shepherd congregation, 194
Divine Word Order, 72
Fabian, Johannes, 166
Document of Asunción, 73
Franciscan, 79
Dominicans, 6, 27, 48–49, 113, 133–134,
FEINE, 34
194–195, 198, 213, 214
FENOCLE, 34
Dorado González, Antonio, 81
FEPP, 34
Droogers, Andrés, 233
festivals, 1
drunkenness, 77
FICI, 39
Durán Ballén, Sixto, 29
Fifth Centenary of Spanish Conquest, 1
Fisher, Edward, 15
Eber, Christine, 242 Flores, Gerardo, 116
Ecclesial Diocesan Center of the Indige- FMLN, 127
nous Pastoral of Oaxaca (CEDIPIO), Fortuna, 83
154, 160, 162–163, 174, 178 Fox,Vicente, 205
ecological conditions: determining cul- Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Center
ture, 4 Ak’Kutan, 134
Index 261

Freire, Paulo, 33 Horst, René Harder, 19, 65–92, 242, 255


Front for Defense of Native Shipibo Huaorani, 37
Communities, 52 Huave, 165, 167
Fujimori, Alberto, 58, 240 Huehuetenango, 1, 95, 97, 99, 133
Fundación Pueblo Indio, 34 human rights, 110
Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese
GAM (Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo), 115 of Guatemala, 116
Garrard-Burnett,Virginia, 18, 19, 125– hybrid identity, 232, 235
153, 234, 236, 242, 255 hybridization, 232–233, 247–249
Gaudium et Spes, 90, 190, 235
Gerardi, Juan, 117, 134 identity based social movements, 19
Gerardi, Julio, 217 identity: communal, 27–28; politics of, 15
globalization, 3–15, 41, 60, 188, 212, 227, iglesia autóctona, 112
237, 245 Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de Guate-
González Estrada, Rafael, 96 mala, 135
González Martínez, Héctor, 174–175 inculturation theology, 50, 51, 61, 113,
Gorski, Juan, 48, 51, 226 125–146, 167–169, 210–230 232,
Grand Federation of Daykeeper Princi- 235–238
pals, 130 Indian: definition, 3–4; highland and
Greenfield, Sidney, 233 lowland discussed, 4; marches, 43,
Gros, Christian, 16 55–57; population estimate of, 5; rights
Guaicuru, 67 in constitutional provisions, 16;
Guan’a, 66 transnational movements, 11
Guaraní, 219 indigenous: cosmovision, 18, 80, 125,
Guaraní language, 66 129, 136, 140, 145, 174, 220, 223; dis-
Guaraní-Chiripá, 83 course, 14, 18, 47, 60, 70, 126, 131,
Guaraní-Ñandeva, 66 137, 142–143, 180; education, 26, 30,
Guatemala, 3–6, 13, 15–19, 26, 34, 46, 36–37, 51, 53–57, 93, 96–98, 100, 106,
51, 93–124, 125–153, 188, 200, 212, 115–117, 161, 164, 169, 173, 195, 197,
215 213, 216, 222, 241, 246; Evangelicals,
Guatemalan National Revolutionary 13; identity, 77–79; identity politics,
Unity (URNG), 127–128, 133, 136 summary, 238–240; intellectual and
Gutiérrez, Gustavo, 10, 214–215, 225, cultural centers, 44, 46, 48–50, 52, 54;
226, 228 intelligentsia, 54; not peasants nor
Gutiérrez, Lucio, 31 campesinos, 65; policy, Catholic
Church, 9, 45; resurgence, 13–20;
Hale, Charles, 14, 238 revindication, 18, 102, 110, 130, 179,
Harvard University, 49 236, 243; spirituality, 72, 83–84; theol-
Hatfield, Mark, 38 ogy, 11–12, 44, 48, 154–181, 210–230,
Herencia La, 82 232, 235–237 (see also Mayan theol-
Hernández, Leopoldo, 191 ogy); uprisings, 2, 17, 28–29, 34
Hidalgo, 161 Indigenous Center of Eastern Bolivia
Hobsbawn, Eric, 131 (CIDOB), 54
Holy Office, 172–174 Indigenous Confederation of Amazonian
Holy Cross Congregation, 221 Ecuador (CONFENIAE), 29
262 Index

Indigenous Congress (1974), 196, Jehovah’s Witnesses, 12, 170


199–200 Jesuit, 49–50, 67, 72, 79, 81, 113, 134,
Indigenous Development Council, 30 194, 200, 221
Indigenous-Mennonite Association for Jesús es El Señor de Guatemala, 144
Cooperation (ASCIM), 75 John Paul II, 9, 46, 84–85, 132, 135, 172,
Indigenous Office of the Ministry of 217, 225, 243
Social Welfare, 30–31; John XXIII, 1, 68, 190
Indigenous Pastoral Commission, 133 Jolicoeur, Luis, 48, 50–51
indio to campesino, 53 Jonas, Suzanne, 115
Iniciativa Indígena por la Paz, 29 Jordá, Enrique, 12
Institute for Andean Pastoral Activity Judd, Stephen, 12, 18, 48, 210–230, 232,
(IPA), 60, 216, 218 236–237, 255–256
Institute for Development, Investigation,
and Popular Peasant Education K’iché, 105–106, 139, 141, 144
(INDICEP), 53 Kaqchikel, 126, 136, 139, 141
Institute of Applied Anthropology, 51 Katarists 53–54, 241
Institute of Missiological Studies, 51 Keck, Margaret, 239–240
Instituto de Estudios Aymaras (IDEA), 221 Kidd, Stephen, 70
Instituto de Nuestra Señora del Socorro, Kingdom of Krepi (Ghana), 78
97 Kiritó, 81
Instituto Indígena de Santiago, 96 Kovic, Christine, 18, 187–209, 236–237,
Instituto Superior de Estudios Teológi- 241, 256
cos, 51
Inter-American Development Bank, 29 Labrador, 223
Inter-American Foundation, 32 Laghi, Pio, 173
Inter-American Indian Conference La Paz, Bolivia, 4, 13, 48–49, 54–55
(1959), 36 ladinos, 127
Interethnic Association for the Develop- ladino-Mayan relations, 99–101
ment of the Peruvian Jungle Laguna Negra, 78
(AIDESEP), 52 Lake Titicaca, 4, 45, 51, 55
International Labor Organization (ILO), Latin American Bishops Conference
163, 240; Convention, 14, 58, 169, 245 (CELAM), 9, 133, 172, 225, 235
International Monetary Fund, 201 Latin American Congress,Twenty-fifth
International Women’s Day, 204 Annual, 75
International Work Group for Indian Lavinas, Emmanuel, 224
Affairs, 10–11, 74 Law of Decentralization, 57
Inti Raymi, 28 Law of Popular Participation, 57
Irarrázavel, Diego, 49, 221 lay persons, 9
Iriarte, Gregorio, 53 Lazo, Efraín, 223, 224
Iribarren, Pablo, 198 Leguía, Augusto, 59
Ishiro, 66 Lehmann, David, 178
Itaipú, 81 Lengua Maskay, 66
Leo XIII, 114
Jacaltenango, 2 leverage politics, 240
Jackson, Jean, 16 Levine, Daniel, 188, 190, 247–248
Index 263

Las Leyes de las Indias, 6 Maya national movement (also called


liberation theology, 8–12, 45, 48–51, 59, movimiento maya or Pan Maya Move-
93, 101–105, 126, 127, 154–156, 158– ment), 15, 93, 105, 125–146
159, 161–162, 170, 172–174, 176, 179– Mayan: cosmovision, 136–139; cultural
180, 187, 189–190, 193, 195, 199–201, and political mobilization, 105–107;
212, 214–216, 221, 225, 232, 237–238, cultural survival, 94; Mayan Holocaust,
241 127–128, 131; immigrant community,
liberals, Guatemala, 94, 117 3; priests, 2; religion, 94, 125–146;
Library of Congress, 49 revindication, 18, 102, 110, 130,
Library of Ethnography, Bolivia, 51 236–243; students and seminary, 112;
Llanque, Domingo, 12, 221 theology, 139–140. See also indigenous:
Loaysa, Jerónimo de, 6 theology
Lona Reyes, Arturo 154, 160–162, 164, Mayanization, 102
167, 174–175, 177 Mburuvicha, 57
López Bac, Ernestina, 140 Mbyá, 66, 72, 81, 87
López Hernández, Eleazar, 12, 175, 214, McGourn, Francis, 48, 51
222–223, 227, 228 McGrath-Andino, Lester, 60
López, Carlos Antonio, 79 Medellín Conference, 9, 68, 72, 102, 114,
López Levy, Marcelo, 57 132–133, 159, 199, 211, 216, 225
López Trujillo, Alfonso, 172 mediation, religious, 240–242
Lorentzen, Lois Ann, 75, 233, 247 Mejía Víctores, 200
Loyola University, 98 Meliá, Bartomeu, 72–74
Lumen Gentium, 132 Menchú Tum, Rigoberta, 29, 129, 217
Mennonite, 66, 68–71, 74–78, 81, 85,
Macas, Luis, 30, 31 242
Madrid, Miguel de la, 201 Messiah mechanism, 60
Mahuad, Jamil, 17 mestizo, 8
Mainwairing, Scott, 247 Methodist, 224
Mak’a, 67 Mexican Constitution: Article 27, 163
Mam, 139, 142 Mexican model for indigenous, 67
Mamani Barnabé,Vicenta, 224, 227 Mexican peasants, 76
Mames, 192 Meyer, Brigit, 78
Mapuche, 215 Míguez Bonino, José, 10
Marandú Project, 74–75 military coup, Ecuador, 31, 34
Marbury-Lewis, David, 16 Miller, Elmer, 71
Margaritas Las, 195 Milky Way, 138, 145
María Auxiliadora Mission, 82 Ministry of Peasant Affairs, Bolivia, 53
Marist Congregation, 194–195 Ministry of Social Welfare and Land
Marxist guerrillas, 58 Reform, Ecuador, 29
Maryknoll Society, 1, 2, 48, 97, 105, 215– missionaries: Catholic and Protestant,
216, 226, 242 twentieth century, 8, 10, 44–45, 47, 50,
Marzal, Manuel, 48 97–101
Mascara Roja La, 203 Mixtec, 5
Maskoy. See Toba-Maskoy mobilization: Mayan, 101–109
Mataco-Mataguayo, 67 modernization theorists, 231
264 Index

Monge, Elsie, 34 Nobel Peace Prize, 33, 128–129, 217


Monrovia, California, 39 Norget, Kristen, 18, 19, 154–186, 234,
Montejo,Víctor, 130–131 236–238, 241–242, 245, 256
Montesino, Antón, 214 North American Indian groups, 2–3
Morales, Evo, 57 nuns, 172, 203
Morales, Mardonio, 200
Mormons, 12, 28, 41, 44, 170 Oaxaca, Mexico, 5, 18, 154–186
Movimiento de Revolución Nacional, Oaxacan Church, 154–186
104 Obelar, Alejo, 82
Movimiento Izquierdista Revolucionario Oblates of Mary Congregation, 49, 53,
(MIR), 56 81, 223
Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario Ocosingo, 195–196
(MNR), 53, 56 Organization of American States, 52,
Movimiento Pachakatic, 30 240, 245
Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Organization of Indigenous Peoples of
Amaru (MRTA), 59 Pastaza (OPIP), 29
Movimiento Unido para la Lucha Trique Orsi, Robert, 191
(MULT), 157 orthodoxy-heterodoxy, 8
Münzel, Mark, 72 Oruro, 48
Muratorio, Blanca, 77 Oslo Peace Accords, 128, 130, 136
Otavalo, 39–40
Nahualenses carvers, 144–145 Otzoy, Antonio, 143
National Action Party (PAN), 205 Oxlajuj Ajpop (National Conference of
National Center for the Aid to the In- Mayan Spiritual Guides of Guatemala),
digenous Missions. See CENAMI 130
National Center for the Aid to the In-
digenous Pastoral (CENAPI), 160 Pacakutic Party, 31
National Constitution: Bolivia, 57; Peru, Pacifico Sur, bishops of, 161–162, 164,
58 216
National Dialogue, Guatemala, 115 Pachamama, 223
National Indigenous Institute: Paraguay Padilla, Felipe, 174
(INDI), 2, 80; Mexico, 245 paganization, 143–144
National Missions Team, Paraguay, 73–74 Pai Tavytera, 66
National Reconciliation Commission Palenque, 202–203
(CRN), 115, 129, 134, 241 Palugsha, 39
National Security Doctrine, 114 pan indigenous organization, Paraguay, 75
National Union of Peasants, Paraguay, pan-Indian council, Paraguay, 75
82 Pan-Mayanism, 15
Neizen, Ronald, 16 Papantla, 161
neoliberal citizenship regimes, 14 Paraguay, 17, 65–92, 232, 240, 242–243,
neo-Pentecostal, 127 245
New Evangelization, 46 Paraguayan Lawyers College, 83
New Tribes Mission, 70, 74, 247 Paraguayan Peasant Movement, 82
Nicaragua, 6, 14, 127, 245 Parker, Cristián, 212
Nivaklé, 67–69, 71, 77, 242 Parkyn, David, 144–145
Index 265

Parlamento Indioamericano de Cono 109, 112, 115, 125–146, 169–171, 197,


Sur, 75 204, 224, 237, 241–242; Gospel Mis-
Partido Revolucionario, Guatemala, 104 sionary Union, Ecuador, 77; missionar-
Partido Revolucionario Institucional, ies, 12, 13, 33; theologians, 66. See also
197–198, 200–201 Protestantism
Pastoral de Movilidad Humana, 116 Protestantism, 12, 19, 26–28, 35, 40–41,
Pastoral Indígena, 105, 133, 154–181 70, 77–78, 109, 136, 143, 160, 226
Patronato real (patronage agreements), 6 Puebla Conference (1979), 80, 114, 172,
Peace Accords, Guatemala, 129, 216. See 225
also Oslo Peace Accords Pueblos de indios, 79
Peeler, John, 16, 59–60 Puerto Casado, 80, 82, 84
Penados del Barrios, Próspero, 114, Puno, 48, 215, 221
239
Pentecostal, 44, 71, 104, 109, 130, 136, Q’eqchis, 138–139, 188
143–145, 169, 227, 235–237, 242 Quechuas (Quichuas), 13, 77
Pentecostal Churches, 12, 13 Quezada Toruno, Rodolfo, 115, 129
People’s Church, 178 Quezaltenango, 106
Peru, 3, 5, 10, 12–13, 17, 43–64 Quiché, 116. See also K’iché
Peruvian Bishops Conference, 58 Quijano, Aníbal, 52
Peterson, Anna, 246 Quito, 14, 29, 32–35, 37
Picari, Nina, 30, 31
Pilaga tribe, 71 racism, 99–101
Plan Nacional de Pastoral Indígena, Gua- radicalization, Mayan, 101–109
temala, 135 radio stations, 54–55
Ponce Enríquez, Camilo, 33 Redemptoris Missio, 132, 235
Popol Vuh, 141–142 radioemisoras culturales, 54–55
popular Catholicism, 7. See also popular Ramírez, René, 83–85
church; popular religion Rappaport, Joanne, 76
popular church, 154, 156, 165–166, 168, Raxché, 129
170, 177–178 Recovery of Historical Memory Project
popular religion, 7, 50, 154, 179, 216 (REMHI), 117, 216, 226
preferential option for the poor, 10, 27, reform Catholicism, 45, 239
102, 122 Reinaga, Fausto, 52
Presbyterian, 135–136, 242 religion: and politics, 1, 6–13; and social
presidentes de la communidad, 48 movements, summary, 237–244
priests: murdered in Guatemala, 107; religious tolerance, 72, 171
ratio of priests to people, 7 Remy, Maria Isabel, 60
Prigione, Jiralomo, 172–174 Rerum Novarum, 96, 114
Presbyterian, 241 resource mobilization, 240–242
Proaño, Monseñor Leonidas, 32–33, 34, revindication: cultural, 102. See also in-
212, 216, 241 digenous: revindication
proselytizers, 170 Reyes, Francisco, 154
Protestant, 8, 10,12,–13, 18–19, 25,–28, Riacho Mosquito, 80, 82
32–33, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 43, 46, 51, Ribeiro, Darcy, 212
60, 65, 68, 72, 74, 76–79, 96, 104, 107, Ricouer, Paul, 224
266 Index

Riobamba, 211, 212, 216 Seminario Regional del Sureste


Ríos Montt, President Efraín, 28, 127, (SERESURE), 161, 166, 173–174
200 seminae Verbi, 166
Rivera, Norberto, 173–17 seminarians, increase, 9
Rodríguez, Clemencia, 55 SENAIN, 31
Rodríquez, Andrès, 81 Sendero Luminoso, 58–59
rondas, 59, 245 Senneh, Lamin, 78
rondero, 58 SERPAJ, 34
Rossell Arellano, Mariano, 96, 114 Seventh-Day Adventists. See Adventists
Rubin, Jeffery, 248 Shuar Federation, 32
Ruiz, Samuel, 18, 72, 116, 132, 154, 172, Shuar, 52
177, 187–190, 194–197, 199, 201–206, Sicuani, 48
216, 242 Siebers, Hans, 188
rural Catholicism, 95–101 Sieder, Rachel, 16
Rural Social Security Fund, 30 Sierra, Oscar, 103
Rural Social Security Program, 30 signs of the times, 190
Sikkink, Kathryn, 239–240
Saint, Rachel, 37 Similox,Vitalino, 136, 140
Salesians, 32, 52, 82, 241 small Christian communities, 59–60. See
Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 201 also Christian base communities
Salomon, Frank, 16, 136 Smile, David, 247
Samandú, Luis, 103 Smith, Carol, 15
Samaniego, Marcial, 74 Smith, Christian, 237
San Andrès Accords of Indigenous social encyclicals, 114
Rights and Culture, 205 social teaching, Catholic, 96
San Cristóbal de las Casas, 187–209 Socialist Worker’s Party, 200
San Juan Chamula, 191–192 Sommerfeld, 81
San Marcos, 133 soul-shifting, 138
Sanapana, 66 Southern Andean church, 49, 216
Sánchez de Losada, Gonzalo, 57 Spanish Christianity, 94
Sandinistas, 127 Spanish Conquest, 6–7
Santa Teresita Misión, 69, 84, 243 Stahl, Fernando, 51
Santa Cruz del Quiché, 134 Stanley, Alessandra, 9
santeros evangélicos, 145 Starn, Orin, 59–60
Santo Domingo Conference, 34, 46, 133, Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, 16, 244
217, 225, 235 Steigenga,Timothy, 1–24, 231–253, 256
Sarmiento, Nicanor, 222–223 Stewart, Charles, 233
Schwartz, Stuart, 16 Stroessner, Alfredo, 66–67, 73–74, 80, 85,
Secretariat of Indigenous Affairs, 31 243
sectas, 170 Suárez Inda, Alberto, 173
Seelwische, Jose, 68, 81 Subcomandante Marcos, 14
“seeds of the Word (seminae Verbi),” 166, Suess, Paulo, 219, 221
168 Sugirtharajah, R.S, 126
Segundo, Juan Luis, 10 Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL),
Selhejic, 77 36–38, 243
Index 267

syncretism, 7, 18–19, 96, 144–145, ers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), 54


166–167, 178, 214, 218, 232, 234–236, Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la
247–249 Región del Istmo (UCIRI), 164–165,
169–171
Tacambaro, 173 Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la
Tapachula, 206 Zona Norte del Istmo (UCIZONI),
Tehuacán, 161 157, 241
Tehuantepec, 154 157, 160 164, 166, Union Theological Seminary, 10
168–169, 171, 174–175, 216, 241 United Evangelical Churches, Paraguay,
teología india, 210–230. See also indige- 78
nous: theology United Front of the Revolution (FUR),
Teopisca, 193 107
Tequio, 165, 170 United Nations, 14, 33, 35, 52, 74, 116,
theology of inculturation. See incultura- 213, 240, 243
tion theology United Nations Conference on Human
Tiahuanaco Manifesto, 53 Environments (1972), 74
Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, 53, 222 United Nations Declaration on Indige-
tierra La, don de Dios, 216 nous Rights, 14
tierra sin mal, 219 United Nations General Assembly, 33
Tijuana, 173 United Nations Mission, Ecuador, 35
Toba tribe, 71, 75 United States and Guatemala, 117
Toba-Maskoy, 80, 82–83, 87 Universidad de San Carlos, 2
Toba-Qom, 67, 80 Universidad Rafael Landívar, 113
Tocagón, 39 University of California–Berkeley, 49
Tojolabal, 190, 198 USAID, 36
Toledo, Alejandro, 58 U.S. embassy and Paraguayan genocide,
Townsend, Cameron, 36 74
Tracy, David, 228 USSR, 88
Trabajo Común Organizado (TCO),
163 Vacaretangué, 81
traditional religion, 50 Valencio, Narciso, 223
transnational advocacy networks, 239 Valdivieso, Antonio de, 6
Tula, 161 Van Cott, Donna, 16, 60
Tupac Katari Center, 53 Van den Berg, Hans, 216
Tupi-Guarani language family, 66 Vargas, Javier, 195
Tzeltales, 190, 197, 203 Vásquez, Manuel, 246–247
Tzolkin, 138 Vatican, 1, 6, 8, 19, 73, 98, 141, 172, 174,
Tzotzil, 187, 190–191, 193, 203 177, 206, 225, 227
Tzuultaq, 138 Vatican Council II, 1, 9, 19, 45, 68, 96,
101–102, 112, 114, 125, 131, 154–155,
Ubico, Jorge, 93 159, 161,190, 199, 211
UNELAM (Evangelical Union in Latin Velasco Alvarado, Juan, 59
America), 73 Velasco Suárez, Manuel, 196
UNESCO, 37 Veracruz, 161
Unified Confederation of Peasant Work- Verapaces, 116
268 Index

vernacular hermeneutics, 126 World War II, 8


violence, Guatemala, 107–117, 127–128 Wycliffe Bible Translators, 36
Virgin of Caacupé, 84
Virgin of Guadalupe, 203 Xibalba, 138
Voces del Tiempo, 143–144 Xi’ Nich’ (The Ant), 202–204
Xi’ Nich’ March for Peace and Human
Warren, Kay B., 15, 16, 131, 239, Rights, 202, 241
245–246 Xoclán, 217
weak states, 35
West German Government, 98 Yashar, Deborah, 14, 16
Western Guaraní, 66 Yasuní National Park, 29
Whigham,Thomas, 79 yerba mate, 66
Williams, Philip, 246 Yofuaxa, 67
Wilson, Richard, 7 yohoxma (religious healers), 70
Wolochán, 199–200
women, 44, 50, 61, 69, 72, 97, 100, 115, Zacapa, 115
118, 163, 171–172, 187, 193–194, Zamuco, 66
202–204 Zapatistas (ELZN), 2, 157, 163, 179, 194,
Word of God Catholics, 188, 204 201, 205–206
World Bank, 29, 81, 201 Zapotec, 5, 12, 160, 165–167, 175
World Council of Churches, 11, 35, 73 Zoques, 192, 203
World March for Women 2000, 204 Zumarraga, Juan, 6
World Vision, 26, 38–39, 243 Zunil, 106

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