NO MORE TEARS FOREVER: THE DYNAMICS OF CONVERSION TO EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY BY BOLIVIAN AYMARA (1941-2002)
By
IAN GRANVILLE
A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
2005 Copyright 2005
by
Ian Granville ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When Samuel Hopkins finished writing his Life and Character of the Late
it Reverend Jonathon Edwards in 1 761 , he remarked that "Imperfect as is, it has cost me
much time and labor; much more than I thought when I undertook it." I could echo him.
Yet had my project been of shorter duration, I would have missed the personal enrichment of associating with a number of fine people who worked with me in bringing
it to completion. It is with pleasure that I acknowledge them here.
My thanks go first of all to Doris Wan-en, Samuel Joshua Smith, Fran MacNeill, and Marion Heaslip for responding to my e-mailed questionnaires with autobiographical material and accounts of their work in Bolivia. Samuel, Fran, and Marion answered me with long and detailed hand-written letters. Dons went the second mile and sent me more than 100 pages of clippings and articles and wrote many lengthy e-mails in response to my questions concerning the work of the Seminary Mission during its existence from
1941 to 1975. 1 am profoundly grateful to the four of them.
Marcelino Huanca, president of the Seminario Biblico denomination for the years
2001-2002, became a close friend in the course of many (often arduous) trips to rural churches. He took an active interest in this project and granted me time during the
1 denomination's quarterly pastors meetings, so that people who were interested in my
project could fill out questionnaires.
My proficient and longsuffering language teachers (Maria Eugenia Urefia de
Flores, Susana Zurita de Quiroga, Jaime Mejia, Wilma Rocha, Kitty Schmidt, Teresita
iii Leserna, Guadalupe Griancom, and Gabriela Fernandez, the last six of whom are
Catholics) brought me into a working knowledge of their beloved native language and helped me, in the course of our language lessons, to understand something of the cultures of highland Bolivia and the often painful events in the turbulent history of their country.
David Walker, a minister from England who lived in Oruro for much of 2003, provided some data on the Oruro Carnival.
I owe a great deal to Dr Freddy Mendez Estrada, professor of philosophy and theology at the Universidad Catolica Boliviana in Cochabamba, for his extraordinary patience and care when working with me through interminable lists of questions concerning Aymara worldview and fiestas.
My wife, Annette, and I had the extreme good fortune to board with Alberto and
Maria-Elena de Moscoso for 8 months while we attended language school in
Cochabamba. Alberto and Maria-Elena took it upon themselves to introduce us to many
aspects of Bolivian life and graciously included us in many social occasions with their extended family. From them we learned a great deal and with them we had a lot of fun.
More is said of the Moscoso family in Chapter 3.
I am very thankful indeed to my supervisor Dr Tony Oliver-Smith, and to
Dr Manuel Vasquez, Dr Paul Magnarella, and Dr John Moore of the University of
Florida, and Dr Deidre Crumbley of North Carolina State University for their encouragement and expert guidance in the course of my program of studies.
Foreigners need friendship as much as anything and it is a pleasure to acknowledge
the many American people whom my wife and I have befriended. The support of our friends in England and Bolivia, and our friends and family members in New Zealand and
IV Australia was appreciated very much also. Those who have themselves negotiated the doctoral study rite of passage helped with practical advice and all were warmly encouraging.
Gil Prost, a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators who spent 25 years with the
Chacobo tribe in northern Bolivia, made helpful comments on Chapter 4.
I am most fortunate among fieldworkers in having my wife share with me the joys, soitows, and sometimes dangers, of a very eventful sojourn in South America. TABLE OF CONTENTS
page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii
LIST OF TABLES x
LIST OF FIGURES xi
ABSTRACT xiii
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION 1
2 THEORY 16
Religious Conversion 16 Conversion and Evangelicalism 19 Theories Concerning Protestantism in Latin America 27 Structural Change 27 Conspiracy 34 More of David Stoll 36 Alleviating Poverty 38 Escaping Financial and Ceremonial Obligations 40 Rebecca Bomann's Tripartite Approach 41 The Thesis Underpinning This Project 43
3 METHODS 46
Survey in 1996 46 Methods 47 Language School and Culture Shock in Cochabamba 48 Culture Shock Again 50 Missionary Informants 5) Participant Observation 52 Data from Converts 53 Obtaining Data on Folk Religion 60 How Informants Affected Me 62 Objectivity 63 Howl Affected Informants 66
VI 1
4 THE RELIGIOUS CONTEXT 68
Introduction 68 The Religious Milieu in the Years 1941-2002 70 The Syncretized Nature of Aymara Folk Religion 76 Non-fiesta Folk Religion 83 Three Fiestas 86 Informant Attitudes to Folk Religion 98 Potentially Attractive Doctrinal and Praxical Elements of Evangelicalism 107 Power-oriented Worldviews: The Spiritual. Natural, and Human Worlds are Integrated and Influence Each Other 107 The Spatial Dimension of the Two Worldviews: A World Divided 11 A Cosmos in Conflict 112 The Maintenance of Balance and Harmony in the Cosmos 114 Fear of Capricious Spirits Versus the Peace-giving Constancy of God 117 Three Praxical Differences: Idol Worship, Magic, and Witchcraft 118 Obligatory Reciprocity Versus Voluntary Service out of Gratitude and Love .1 19 A World Governed by the Stars Versus a World Governed by God 122 A Stratified Religion Versus the Priesthood of all Believers 123 Life Hereafter 123 Summary 125
5 PEOPLE WITH POWER IN THE YEARS 1825-1952: HACENDADOS, PRIESTS. POLITICIANS, WAR VETERANS. CAMPESINOS, AND EVANGELISTS 128
Introduction 128 The First Evangelists, 1825-1902 131 The Road to Religious Freedom in the Years 1890-1906 133 The Chaco War, 1932-35 135 The Murder of Norman Dabbs, 1949 138 The National Revolution, 1952 139 Conclusions 143
6 DOCTRINAL AND EXPERIENTIAL MOTIVATIONS ENERGIZING THE EVANGELICAL MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 145
Introduction 145 The Motivating Power of Belief and Experience 147 The Inerrancy and Authority of the Scriptures 147 The Gospel: The Heart of Evangelicalism 148 God 152 Eternity 153 The Temporal Plight of People 154 The Exclusivity of the Gospel 155 The Universality' of the Gospel 156
The Motivation of Being Indispensable 1 56
vn The Motivation of Being on the Winning Side 158 The Call of God 159 A divine summons 159 A personal summons 159 A serious summons 160 A specific summons 160 A summons demanding obedience and promising blessing 160 The Desire to Glorify God 161 Conclusion 162
7 THE EVANGELISTS: PEOPLE MOTIVATED TO SEEK CHANGE IN OTHERS 164
Introduction 164 The Lives and Work of the Missionaries and Aymara Evangelists 165 Samuel E. Smith (1904-84) and Gladys Smith (d.1987) 165
Samuel J. Smith and Mary Ellen Smith 171 Doris Warren 171 Marion Heaslip and Fran MacNeill 177 Jessie Hickey 180 RuthHaan 181 Betty Brown, Charlotte Bates, the Tolans, Trussells, and Skinners 182 The Aymara Evangelists 184 Analysis 185 Goal and Strategies 187 Geographic Strategy 187 Sufficient Commitment 188 Literacy Training and Publishing Literature 189 Prayer 189 Preaching 190 Training Leaders 191 Self-propagating Native Churches 192 Self-funding Native Churches 193 Self-governing Native Churches 194 Service of People in the United States and Canada 196 Conclusions 197
8 THE CONVERTS: PEOPLE MOTIVATED TO SEEK CHANGE IN THEMSELVES 199
Introduction 199 The Lives of Six Converts 200 Francisco Mamani 200 Ezequiel Arcani Patty 202 Marcelino Valeriano 206 Samuel Corteza Quispe 208 Esperanza Rios Mamani 209
vm Andres Quisbert Sullco 210 Analysis 211 Analysis of Causation and Consequences 212 Causes: People Converting in Crisis 213 Causes: Miracles and Crises 216 Causes: Converting in Peaceful Circumstances 219 Consequences: Conversion as Revitalization 220 Conclusions 223
9 SOCIAL AND ANTISOCIAL DIMENSIONS: DIRECTING, SECURING, AND TESTING CONVERSION 225
Introduction 225 The Direction of Conversion 225 Through Families 225 Through an Ethnic and Socio-economic Channel 228 A People Movement? 235 Securing Conversion: The Securing Effects of Church Life 242 Government 243 Services and Church Anniversaries 244 The Communal and Personal Nature of Church Life 251 Testing Conversion: Opposition 254 The Sources and Nature of Opposition 255 The Effects of Opposition 259
10 CONCLUSIONS 262
APPENDIX
A QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING CONVERSION 270
B QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING THE FOUNDING AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCHES 273
LIST OF REFERENCES 274
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 299
IX LIST OF TABLES
Table mm
2-1 Tippett's Schema for Group Conversion 24
4-1 The Catholic Church Calendar for Highland Bolivia in 2003 74
4-2 Major Aymara Folk Festivities in the Bolivian Andes in 2003 88
5-1 Time-line of Events in the Years 1825-1952 142
7-1 Time-line of Missionary Involvement with Seminario Biblico 183
7-2 Length of Service for Missionaries Associated with Seminario Biblico 189
8-1 Incidence and Nature of Personal Crises at Time of Conversion 214
8-2. Incidence and Nature of Miracles 217
9-1 Calendar of Special Events for an El Alto Church in 2002 251 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure E^fi^
0-1 Localities in the Study Area xv
1-1 The Hope of Many Bolivians (Mural in Cochabamba) 2
1-2 Bolivian Altiplano in Winter 4
1-3 Shoreline, Southern Lake Titicaca 6
1-4 An Aymara Pastor and his Wife 9
1-5 Araca Church 10
3-1 Aptaphi (Potluck Lunch) at Araca Church 54
4-1 Ekeko 90
4-2 Diablada Dancer, Oruro Carnival. Februrary 2003 92
4-3 Copacabana 94
4-4 Yatiri, Fiesta of Copacabana, April 2003 96
4-5 Negritos Dance Fraternity, Fiesta of Gran Poder, La Paz 2003 99
4-6 Caporales Dance Fraternity, Oruro Carnival, February 2003 101
4-7 Morenada Dancer, Oruro Carnival, Februrary 2003 103
9-1 Hamlet, Ilavi District 227
9-2 Bloqueo on Carretera Oruro, El Alto, October 2003 231
9-3 Bloqueo, El Alto, October 2003 232
9-4. Ensemble Playing Traditional Instruments, Santiago de Llallagua Church 246
9-5 Aptaphi (Potluck Lunch), Ankara Church 249
9-6 Aniversario, Villa Bolivar Church, El Alto, 2002 250
XI 9-7 Wedding, Ilavi District 252
9-8 Quechua Musicians at Patacamaya Church Conferencia 254
xn Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
NO MORE TEARS FOREVER: THE DYNAMICS OF CONVERSION TO EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY BY BOLIVIAN AYMARA (1941-2002)
By
Ian Granville
December 2005
Chair: Anthony Oliver-Smith Department of Anthropology
Proclaiming Evangelical faith was very risky during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in highland Bolivia; some evangelists and converts suffered significant material loss and others were martyred. The Evangelical movement was firmly established nevertheless and today might be fairly described as flourishing. This dissertation describes and explains the historical, social, cultural, theological, and psychological dynamics of conversion that resulted in the establishment of the Seminario Biblico denomination. Data on the conversion experience were drawn from 102 converts.
My thesis is that Evangelicalism is spreading among the Aymara of highland
Bolivia because of the momentum synergistically generated by the movement's own
doctrinal and praxical dynamics though its growth at individual, family, and community
level can be curbed or terminated by powerful individuals or groups. The movement is being propagated by people excited about their conversion and subsequent experiences of the revitalizing power of God, communicating their faith to others, some of whom
xm become believers themselves. Causal dynamics include doctrine, evangelistic motivation
and strategy, the power to palpably revitalize lives, ongoing spiritual experience, church
life, and the cultural adaptability of Evangelicalism.
After initial chapters on theory and field methods are chapters on the religious
milieu from which people were converted; the events transpiring in political and
ecclesiastical realms between 1825 and 1952 that led to religious freedom in Bolivia; the
doctrinal and experiential wellsprings of missionary motivation; the goal and strategies of
the foreign and native evangelists; the factors that motivated Aymara people to convert;
and the social and anti-social dimensions of conversion. Concerning this latter dynamic,
data are presented on the familial, ethnic, and socio-economic directions taken by
conversion, the securing effects of church life for converts, and the positive and negative
effects of the opposition they encountered.
Theories advanced by scholars working in other parts of Latin America to explain
the rise of Protestantism in the region include structural change in society, conspiracy,
political factors, poverty, and the desire to escape financial and ceremonial obligations.
While these factors may explain what transpired in other research localities, none played
primary causal roles in this study (except for one person who specified that he converted
hoping for the alleviation of his poverty).
xiv i CUZCO PERU BOLIVIA
/•N-, / . (5.AVI Q* Yungas ^ » IA PAZ • Ei ALTO C5 TIWANAXU ^Z/Aa / • PATACAMAYA ^?' /<-. ,QU(Lt,ACOUO rj - ORURO COCHABAMBA
CHILE POTOSi
PACIFIC OCEAN
» CSTiES & TOWNS
1 INCH EQUALS 120 MILES
o>
Figure 0-1. Localities in the Study Area.
XV CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
There is a hunger within every human being for the kind of meaningfulness associated with new life, new love, new beginnings. Religious conversion offers that hope and provides that reality to millions of people. The precise contours of conversion will differ from person to person and from group to group, but the innate needs for explanation and renewal are universal, and the appeal of the
possibility for transformation is pervasive. —Lewis Rambo "Understanding Religious Conversion" 1993:4
When I was at language school in Cochabamba, Bolivia, an artist painted a mural on a wall in the inner city showing an upside-down map of the Americas. The words amor, iguahdad, perdon, justicia, fratemidad, and tiempo de construir una nueva comunidad accompanied the mural expressing the artist's hope that one day the social circumstances of his battered and beleagured country would be inverted (Figure 1-1).
Anti-U.S sentiment was being expressed from time to time but most discontent was being directed at the long-continued corruption in the halls of parliament. Bolivians love their
country and yet they are deeply weary of it in some respects. They long for change, radical change, for a loving, egalitarian, just, and brotherly society. The mural artist's hope was inspired perhaps, by Pachakuti, the element of Andean worldview that refers to
"oscillations of time/space in which periodic catastrophes define moments of transition separating different epochs" (Steele 2004:226). The historical realities of the Andes, had
the artist been reflecting on them, would have given him cause for hope, as it has long been the experience of the many peoples who have evolved in this huge mountainous
region that life is periodically subject to profound change. The Andean world is '.,..,..,..
... . .
Figure 1-1. The Hope of Many Bolivians (Mural in Cochabamba) occasionally tipped upside-down by sudden or gradual vicissitudes of nature and by changes wrought through human agency.
This dissertation concerns the kinds of change, some of them longingly expressed in the mural, experienced by several thousand Aymara people in the Bolivian Andes during the twentieth century. The changes in their lives are religious in origin, project ramifications into virtually every aspect of the converts' personal and social lives, and
have occasioned powerful and even deadly opposition. Before proceeding though, I will, with this thought of radical change in mind, sketch the briefest of altiplano histories.
Thirteen thousand feet above sea level is the altiplano, a plateau extending over
20,000 square miles of southern Peru and western Bolivia. It is sometimes called the
"Tibet" of South America because of its climatic and topographical similarities with that part of the world. Like Tibet, the altiplano has been the scene of some dramatic changes
in its long existence. For countless millennia, its sole occupants were wolves; foxes; viscachas; herds of llamas; vicunas; alpacas; and a great variety of bird species. Around
8,000 BC humans began ascending to the altiplano, probably on a seasonal basis, to hunt the camelids. This pattern of usage continued until around 2,000 BC when the first signs of permanent human habitation in the Titicaca basin occur in the archaeological record.
In the centuries which followed, some villages evolved into centers exerting political, economic, and cultural influence over their respective hinterlands (Stanish 2003:1-6,99).
The next noteworthy change was the emergence (around 400 BC) of a sophisticated
civilization, centered on its massive capital at Tiwanaku near the southeastern shores of
Lake Titicaca. Tiwanaku held political dominion over much of highland Bolivia and southern Peru from about 100 BC until around AD 1,000 (Moseley 1994:203), when it was succeeded by a number of Aymara kingdoms that collectively occupied the entire
altiplano. Whether the Aymara descended from the Tiwanaku Empire, or colonized the
altiplano after the empire's collapse is still a controversial subject (Moseley 1994:231).
The Aymara kingdoms, in their turn, succumbed to aggressive Inca territorial expansion
in 1445 and to the Spanish conquistadors in 1534. The Catholic priests who accompanied
the conquistadors, vigorously and often brutally imposed their faith on the subjugated
indigenous peoples. However, their efforts to completely destroy the Andean belief
system were in vain and resulted in the syncretized religion that is widely and commonly
practised on the altiplano to this day. The conquistadors put the indigenous people in
Bolivia under a system of serfdom, which lasted for the next 400 years.
Figure 1-2. Bolivian Altiplano in Winter In the late nineteenth century another great drama began unfolding in highland
Bolivia that, by the time it had run its course a century later, had wrought profound and permanent changes in the political, judicial, economic, social, and religious life of the people in that part of the world. The time frame of that drama encompassed a serious border dispute with Brazil, a long and costly war with Paraguay, and the violent National
Revolution of 1952. It was long and intense, involving mightily determined interest groups in various sectors and strata of society, powerfully engaging each other, sometimes to the point of taking their opponents' lives. The protagonists were Catholic priests wanting to retain their spiritual hegemony; Evangelical missionaries, the first of
their faith; whom arrived in 1 827 (Wagner 1 970: 1 9), wanting the freedom to propagate hacendados who, not wanting serfs on their land to hear messages of any kind of freedom, fought to keep evangelists off huge tracts of highland Bolivia; and liberal politicians wanting reforms battling conservatives striving to maintain the status quo. In
the midst of all this, hope began rising among peasant people for a quality of life better than their forebears would have dared to dream possible.
One significant outcome of this long straggle was parliament's granting of religious freedom in 1906; another was the emancipation of peasant serfs during the revolution of
1952. Multitudes of people were thus freed constitutionally and literally to consider their
options in the various spheres of life, including the religious sphere. Some embraced
Evangelicalism, which was being promulgated by foreign missionaries. Religious
conversion is a form of change that should perhaps not be mentioned in the same breath
as the momentous events of the Inca conquest and the Spanish entrada. Nevertheless, it
involved dramatic changes for the converts. Their lives were in many respects ,
^;i^S-:.'
liSF- . v fjiPSw
; 'V^" - :i :-*- '-V
^:i&Mm
Figure 1-3. Shoreline, Southern Lake Titicaca
permanently turned upside-down. The new faith was radically different in doctrine and practice from the religion that had predominated for 400 years. Some of the missionaries and converts were murdered by people furious with them for challenging the status quo.
Religious change is a common phenomenon in the history of mankind and one that
in numerical terms periodically reaches staggering proportions. One thinks of the
Christianization of the Roman empire; the countless numbers swept into Islam in the years AD 630-750; the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the 1500s; the destruction of Taoism in mainland China after the Communists came to power; and the current growth of conservative Islam and conservative Protestantism, both of which Peter
Berger (in Martin 1990:vii) describes as "truly global movements of enormous vitality." 7
Conservative Protestants, unlike their Liberal counterparts, believe that the human authors of the Bible were divinely inspired when they were writing. God, being infallible, thus inspired the writings of the Bible which are therefore infallible and thus authoritative
for believers in all matters of life and faith. There are two main streams within conservative Protestantism. Pentecostals emphasize what they take to be giftings of the
Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, such as the experience of speaking supematurally in a language that one has not learned (glossolalia). Evangelicals also experience the workings of the Holy Spirit in their church services and daily lives but are much less likely to "speak in tongues." Pentecostal church services are often exuberant,
even noisy, compared with those of Evangelicals. It is erroneous to use the terms
Evangelical and Pentecostal as synonyms.
Conversion to conservative Protestantism became a worldwide phenomenon in the nineteenth century with the onset of what became a huge and determined missionary movement following in the wake of great revivals in eighteenth-century Britain and
America and the exploration and colonization by European powers of foreign lands (Neill
1977; Latourette 1997). Some missionaries such as David Livingstone preceded colonial flags and spearheaded the exploration of lands hitherto unknown to Europeans (Seaver
1957).
Protestantism received a second massive boost in the twentieth century with the explosive growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America, South and East Asia, and sub-
Saharan Africa. The rapid worldwide growth of conservative Protestantism was one of the most remarkable social and religious phenomena of the twentieth century. Nowhere
has growth been more rapid than in Latin America. Berger (Martin 1 990:vii) says, "The 8
growth of Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America, a continent still widely regarded
as solidly Roman Catholic, is the most dramatic case." A debate has ensued from the impulse to understand this rapid expansion in Latin America and Pentecostalism has rightly attracted the lion's share of scholarly attention. In reviewing the literature that has proliferated in the course of this debate, Vasquez (1998:243) notes the need for nuanced, detailed, and non-reductive studies which "take into account the relative weight of various factors in shaping religious practices and choices in a particular situation." My
study is a step in that direction. I enter the arena of debate armed with the results of 40 months of fieldwork on the historical, social, cultural, theological, and psychological dynamics involved in the conversion of 102 Aymara people in highland Bolivia in the years 1941-2002. Seventy informants were male, 32 were female, and all were teenagers or adults. Understanding the origins and expansion of Evangelicalism in highland Bolivia
(and, by extrapolation, the growth of Evangelicalism in Latin America) requires first an investigation of the causal dynamics leading to the conversion of individual people, as the movement locally and region-wide consists of individuals and conversion is the highly personal experience of an individual. Identifying and elucidating the operation of these dynamics in the lives of individual people in the Seminario Biblico denomination
constitutes the research problem, and thus the focus, of this project. Some of the
consequences of conversion, such as possible changes in relations among family members, were not specifically explored.
My informants live in the rural areas of the altiplano, the cities of La Paz and El
Alto, in the jungle-covered hills and valleys of the yungas region north and east of La
Paz, and in the Esmeralda Valley to the south. Conversion in this vast and varied geographical region resulted in the first instance from the endeavors of several mission societies and the subsequent proselytizing efforts of their converts. The societies included
Figure 1-4. An Aymara Pastor and his Wife
Canadian Baptists, the Holiness Movement, the Brethren, Andes Evangelical Mission, and Adventists. My study focused on a mission that operated initially under the auspices of a branch of the Friends Society (Quakers) in Indiana, and later under the direction of
Union Bible Seminary in Westfield, Indiana. The Seminary Mission never amounted to more than a small band of people (a dozen at most), and there were times when half of its
number was incapacitated with illness. The first of them arrived in 1941 . By 1945, a hundred Aymara had been converted (Hamilton 1962:63). When the last missionary left in 1975, the mission had brought 33 churches into existence and organized them into a
self-sustaining denomination. Twenty-six years later, in October 200 1 , there were 54 10
Figure 1-5. Araca Church
churches with a total of 1,578 teenaged and adult attendees, and the churches were running a radio station and two theological schools for training ministers, without the
help of foreigners. 1 sought to discover what happened and to understand why. Without
diminishing this human achievement, it is nevertheless true that this group of
Evangelicals constitutes a miniscule fraction of the conservative Protestant movement in
Latin America. This project, though, has region-wide application as the doctrinal basis of
conversion (given in Chapter 6) is the same for Evangelicals worldwide. Second,
conversion to Evangelicalism is, by definition, always a spiritually revitalizing
experience and one which is often socially, economically, mentally, and emotionally
revitalizing as well. Aymara converts have this in common, then, with the multitudes of
converts in other parts of Latin America. Third, my data show that the conversion of some individuals eventually proved significant for the growth of the Evangelical Church on the altiplano as they were instrumental in founding churches (Chapter 8). The
Evangelical movement m Latin America is established in all sectors of society, both rural and urban, and has representatives among some tribal peoples in lowland jungle regions.
In speaking of Evangelical Christianity m Latin America then, one must be careful to bear this geographical, cultural, and societal variation in mind. This project exemplifies conversion among poor rural and urban indigenous Andeans.
The missionaries did not apply a denominational name to their work. They became collectively known among ex-patriates in Bolivia as the Bible Seminary Mission or the
Seminary Mission. The Aymara members called themselves Seminario Biblico. Unlike other Evangelical denominations, the Friends Society observes neither water baptism nor communion (the Lord's Supper). In 2001, Seminario Biblico officials began studying these ordinances and held their first water baptisms during the annual Easter convention.
Seminario Biblico church services have a format and style rather like those of North
American Baptist churches and the denomination is usually referred to as a "church
association."
I undertook fieldwork in the course of successive appointments with two
Evangelical missions. The first (from July 2000 until July 2002) was with South America
taught Mission, a very small agency. I spent many weekends visiting rural churches and
theology in two small seminaries for leaders of the Seminario Biblico denomination.
for International From August 2002 until October 2003, 1 was seconded to the Society
Missions (SIM) to help with the theological education of leaders in another
denomination, Union Cristiana Evangelica (UCE). Both missions are inter- 12
denominational, drawing personnel from a range of Evangelical denominations. I belong to the Evangelical Free Church of America.
My study was conducted not long after a society had been instituted by the
American Anthropological Association to focus on researching at the interface of anthropology and theology. The newly constituted field of the anthropology of theology
is distinct in three respects from the anthropology of religion. It permits and encourages
scholars to investigate the religion of cultural others and their own; focuses on meanings, values, and moral and ethical codes; and examines the dynamic qualities of religions
(Adams 1997:2-3). The anthropology of theology, says Adams (1997:1), should become
"an area of inquiry... as integral to anthropology as studies of ethnicity, culture change,
and cultural institutions are today." A full theological analysis is beyond the scope of this
dissertation but it still comes within reach of contributing to the new field of study.
Chapter 2 delineates how various religious traditions define conversion; evaluates
theories on the rise of Latin American Protestantism; and gives the thesis of this project a
locus in relation to those theories. Chapter 3 indicates how I proceeded with the
collection of data and is written largely in the form of a chronological account of the
fieldwork phase. As 37 of 74 (50%) respondents to one questionnaire converted from folk
religion, material on this belief system is presented in Chapter 4 in an effort to understand
the religious context in which the conversion experiences occurred. The chapter contains
data on the various religious options available to the Aymara in the twentieth century; the
beliefs and practices of Aymara folk religion and its syncretized nature; functional
analyses of privately practised religious observances and the fiesta system; material on
informant attitudes to fiestas; and a statement on folk religion in relation to conversion. 13
Having considered the religious milieu, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 examine the lives and motivations of people in power for whatever determinative role they played in the rise of
Seminario Biblico. Though the Evangelical movement is sustained and propelled by the
operation of its own dynamics, its expansion in any given society is by no means
inevitable as it may encounter overwhelming opposition from one or more quarters and,
even where potential converts are not being opposed and discouraged, its acceptance is
dependent on the free operation of the minds and wills of individuals. Chapter 5
considers the power relations and motivations of hacendados, politicians, Catholic
priests, Chaco War veterans, and campesinos in relation to the efforts of evangelists on
the altiplano in the years 1825-1952. Several dynamics specifically related to conversion
in those days are clearly apparent. One is the struggle of the liberal wing in parliament to
bring about reforms including change in constitutional law to allow freedom of religious
expression. Another is the power wielded by hacendados determined to keep the serfs
under their jurisdiction from exposure to the evangelists' message of spiritual freedom.
There was also powerful opposition from Catholic priests determined to protect their
spiritual hegemony and the material interests they had vested in the hacienda system
which they legitimated. There was the Chaco War which took the lives of male members
in some highland Evangelical churches while other conscripts at the front were converted
after encountering missionaries and national believers. The war also exposed highland
conscripts to ideas of political, social, educational, economic, and religious reform which
contributed to the general state of foment in the nation and culminated in the Revolution
of 1952. 14
Then there is the conversion dynamic of missionary (and Aymara evangelist) motivation and character. We need to consider what motivated people to leave the comfort and security of their homelands and risk their lives toiling amidst the political and social foment of twentieth-century Bolivia all for the purpose of establishing churches among the Aymara. They went in the knowledge that some of their predecessors had been murdered at the instigation of Catholic clergymen. Chapter 6 presents the doctrinal and experiential sources of missionary character and purpose. With the exception of brief mentions by Nash (1960), Muratorio (1981), Turner (1984), and
Vasquez (1998) the theological dimension of conversion in Latin America has received scant attention from theorists, some of whom are sociologists of religion, and none have
this considered it as a major wellspring of missionary motivation. The neglect of
dimension is surprising as it falls squarely within the academic domain of religious
change and goes a long way towards explaining why Evangelicalism is persisting and
even flourishing in this part of the Andes and in Latin America in general.
Chapter 7 presents the biographies, personalities, and strategies of the foreign
missionaries and a few of their Aymara co-workers. It includes their experiences of
conversion, calling, training, material provision, and guidance. Crucial to their success
was strategizing in accordance with what they believed to be scripturally prescribed
principles and praxis. Among studies of conversion, this project is unusual in that 1 had
the opportunity to draw data from those who proselytized (both foreign and national) and
from those who converted. Conversion studies are typically oriented to the analysis of
converts (Rambo 1992:169). 15
volition, to In Chapter 8, 1 ask what motivated my Aymara informants, of their own switch their allegiance from the deities of folk religion knowing very well the risks of ostracism, serious physical punishment confiscation or destruction of their private property, and expulsion from their families and communities. Some converted knowing that others of their kind before them had been martyred. Among 82 respondents to one questionnaire, 61 (74.4%) were suffering the pain and despair of a seemingly insuperable
a personal crisis at the time of conversion. Crisis is commonly reported in the literature as
vital factor in conversion. Thirteen informants (15.85%) aged 12 or under at conversion, were influenced by family or relatives. All were teenagers or adults when interviewed
and had remained in the faith of their childhood, presumably because they thought it was
in their best interests to do so. The remaining 8 (9.75%) said they converted as adults
after seeing what they regarded as attractiveness in the lives of believers and/or what they
learned of Evangelical doctrine.
Chapter 9 considers three factors which had a strong bearing on the direction
history of the Seminario Biblico movement. The first concerns the direction that the
denomination has taken through highland Bolivian society. Relevant here are data on
decision-making, the family, ethnicity, and socio-economic level. The second factor
explains how the dynamics of church life help converts continue in their faith through the
years. This is especially important in view of the third consideration, the opposition
which sixty percent of them encountered from powerful individuals and interest groups. CHAPTER 2 THEORY
"Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance." —Samuel Johnson
Religious Conversion
Conversion, says Walter Conn (1986:7), is a "highly confusing and controversial issue today largely because the term 'conversion' refers not to one reality but to an enormously wide range of very different human realities." In its broadest sense it is
"change from one belief, view, course, party, or principle to another" ( Webster's
International Dictionary , 1976). In the realm of religion, conversion typically connotes change from one tradition to another and necessarily involves changing one's belief
system with its associated conduct, values, and attitudes, and shifting allegiance from one deity to another. Conversion may also refer to change from or to a secular worldview.
Religious conversion is typically thought of in relation to the great religious traditions of the world. Converts to Hinduism and Buddhism join a religious community by a process that often includes group conversion. Conversion to Hinduism involves adopting not one set of doctrines but the Hindu worldview of a "meta-theological view of doctrines themselves" (Hiebert 1992:10). In this view, the practice of religion is part of one's personal spiritual pilgrimage the goal of which is enlightenment or self-realization
(moksha). Conversion involves setting out on this pilgrimage and an evolutionary progression of one's beliefs, not dramatically changing them. There are many roads to moksha (Hiebert 1992:10-11).
16 17
Buddhists also view conversion as a process of gradual change in belief and practice, as one pursues personal holiness, perfection, and purity. The road one takes depends on which of the three divisions of Buddhism one belongs to (Hiebert 1992:16-
21).
Conversion to Islam involves ritually washing one's body (ghusl) and formally confessing before two witnesses the creedal statement that "There is no god but God, and
Muhammad is the Apostle of God." Disciples are then taught to abide by the Five Pillars of Islam—the confession of faith, the ritual prayer, the prescribed alms, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca (Woodberry 1992:22-23).
The different streams within Christendom differ in their understanding of conversion. The Catholic tradition has evolved to the present-day belief that water baptism "represents the turning point of conversion (and) confers the grace of justification in the remission of sin" (Hudson 1992:1 18). The baptism of children is considered valid as the faith of adults may substitute if the child lacks faith. Protestants, on the other hand, hold to the biblical tenet that baptism is merely the outward public sign of a conversion that has already, taken place and that personal (not substitutionary) faith is necessary.
Cargo cults and nativistic movements are often treated in works on the anthropology of religion as their members commonly invoke the assistance of deities, use religious symbols, perform rituals, and are led by a charismatic prophet as in the John
Frum cargo cult in Vanuatu (Tippett 1987:276), the Ringatu sect of Maoris in colonial era
New Zealand, and the more recent Ratana movement (King 2003:21 8,222, 334-335).
Joining these movements, however, did not involve switching allegiance to another deity. 18
One simply joined hoping to benefit personally if the group's stated aspirations were realized.
Several scholars have proposed sequential stage models for the conversion process which usefully inform this project. Lofland and Stark (1965) propose a model of the
conditions for conversion by individuals to the Divine Precepts cult and Lewis Rambo
(1993:5,6,17) presents a generalized scheme for conversion to Evangelicalism. A schema
describing the conversion of whole groups of people to Evangelical Christianity in the
Pacific Islands has been proposed by the anthropologist Alan Tippett (1977, 1987:76)
events (Table 1). Though the three models differ in details they agree that the sequence of
typically involves a period of rising tension which may amount to a crisis, a quest for
resolution, encountering an advocate for a religion with whom bonds are formed, and a
decision to convert followed by a time of instruction during which the person is
incorporated into the body of believers. Tippett (1967:212-266; 1992:205-206) observed
that some people, following the period of incorporation, turned away from the new faith
because they had not been adequately taught. He added, therefore, a "period of maturity"
in the faith. to his schema (Table 1 ) during which converts are established
The schemas for the conversion of individuals and Tippett's model of group
conversion agree in their overall sequence of events with a model proposed by Wallace
(1956:264-281) to explain how societies experiencing stress recover their equilibrium.
Wallace uses the term "revitalization movements" for nativistic movements, cargo cults,
religious revivals, messianic movements, Utopian communities, sects, social movements,
revolutions, and the origins, of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism, as they
constitute "a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct 7 ' steady state a more satisfying culture. The model consists of five overlapping stages: a
to the in which any stress which occurs is tolerable; a period in which stress increases point where alternatives must be considered; a period of cultural distortion when individuals seek to reduce stress in very different ways; a period in which the society is noticeably revitalized; and the new steady state stage when the cultural innovation has
taken root and is proving viable. Insights regarding societal-level implications of
conversion on the Bolivian altiplano might be profitably gleaned using Wallace's model, but my project focused largely on conversion dynamics at the personal level.
Conversion and Evangelicalism
The Evangelical movement takes its name from "evangel" (Greek, euaggelion)
meaning "good news" in reference to the belief that God sent his Son, Jesus, to save those
people who believe that he paid the price for the forgiveness of sin so that one can be
reconciled to God, know him in an ongoing personal relationship in this life, and live on
eternally with him in heaven in the next. "Evangel" has been replaced by "gospel" from
the old English "godspel" meaning good news. The terms "gospel" and "Evangelicalism"
are elaborated on in Chapter 6 in relation to the doctrinal and praxical motivations fueling
the missionary enterprise, the primary purpose of which is the conversion of interested
people worldwide. People convert by trusting in the veracity of the Christian gospel
(McKim 1992:123) and typically experience sooner or later the radical changes in their
daily lives which follow on from adopting the worldview and lifestyle taught by the Bible
(Gillespie 1991:27-28). Conversion can refer to what one has turned from and/or to
seldom whom or what one has converted (Bock 2000: 1 1 8). The word "conversion"
occurs in the Bible. The synonyms "repentance," "regeneration," and "being bom again"
are used much more often. 20
Conversion, then, is radical personal change. James (1990:201), drawing on symbolism in the writings of the New England Puritan Joseph Alleine, says of conversion
that it is not
putting in a patch of holiness; but with the true convert holiness is woven into all his powers, principles, and practice. The sincere Christian is quite a new fabric, from the foundation to the top-stone. He is a new man, a new creature.
Rambo (1993:6) speaks of conversion as a "dynamic, multi-faceted process of
transformation." Barbara Jones (in Gillespie 1991:65-66) sees the transformation as an
integration of the personality and a finding of one's true self and a state of completeness.
Gillespie (1991 :23,62) sees it involving a vision of the truth, conviction of sin, the joy of
being forgiven, the consciousness of a new vision or personal mission in life and the re-
moulding of one's values, attitudes, behavior, ideology, worldview, and lifestyle. James
(1990:177) defines conversion as "the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self
hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and
consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious
realities." He argues that the primary consequence of conversion for a person is that
"religious ideas, previously peripheral in his consciousness, now take a central place, and
that religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy" (James 1990:183).
Evangelicals hold to the Bible's teaching that conversion occurs the moment that
the Holy Spirit takes up residence in a person's soul. The Spirit then dwells there
permanently. While conversion thus has mystical components it is, nevertheless,
something of which a person is very conscious. The converts in this study had nothing
like the experiences reported by former Hare Krishnas, Moonies, Scientologists, and
devotees of transcendental meditation whom Conway and Siegelman (1978:13)
interviewed. During this survey these people repeatedly and independently of each other 21
described their conversion "in one graphic, almost visible term. "Something snapped inside me," they reported, or, "1 just snapped—as if their awareness were a piece of
brittle plastic or a drawn-out rubber band" (Authors' italics). Beyond this experience these people
were not simply incapable of carrying on a genuine conversation, they were completely mired in their unthinking, unfeeling, uncomprehending states. Whether cloistered in cults or passing blindly through the world, they were impervious to the pain of parents, spouses, friends, and lovers (Conway and Siegelman 1978:62).
My informants, by contrast, clearly articulated the events involved in their experience and were quite conscious of the effects of their conversion on those close to
them (biographies, Chapter 8).
Scholars, no less than people in other walks of life, are vulnerable to the limiting propensity for thinking in either/or terms when confronting social or natural phenomena.
Some religionists are no exception to this in presenting conversion as an essentially individual phenomenon (James 1990) while others insist that it must be understood in its wider historical context (Horton 1971, 1975; MacMullen 1984; Gallagher 1990:135-139).
the insights I subscribe to the view that individual experiences need to be plumbed for they might yield regarding the conversion process itself and that one must seek also to
understand them in the widest relevant historical context. Western scholars, with their
strongly individualistic worldview, emphasize the personal element and they are right to
do so because a person is not an Evangelical merely because a parent or grandparent is a
believer. Each person must experience conversion for themselves. Hence the aphorism
"God has no grandchildren." However, while conversion is a multi-faceted transaction
within the mind and emotions of an individual there is also a vital social (and sometimes
antisocial) dimension. In the first instance, people are not converted in a social vacuum. 22
One is helped to convert by learning about salvation from an evangelist, family member, minister, or friend and converts or those considering conversion may be opposed by people. Second, while conversion "basically connotes a change in our relationship with
God, it indicates at the same time an alteration in our attitudes toward our fellow human
beings. Conversion is a spiritual event with far-reaching social implications" (Bloesch
1999:273) as the gospel powerfully addresses what one's beliefs and attitudes should be
toward people in all sectors of society. Third, the Evangelical conception of conversion
as a personal and private transaction with God (Gillespie 1991 : 62) does not preclude groups of individuals deciding to convert more or less simultaneously.
The research of two Evangelical scholars on phenomena occurring in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when countless thousands of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America converted in family or tribal groups to Evangelical Christianity has contributed significantly to the literature on societal-level conversion. One is the anthropologist Alan
Tippett who worked in the Pacific Islands from 1941-1961. The other is the missiologist
Donald McGavran, long-term missionary to India and founder of the School of World
Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. McGavran coined the term "people movements" for conversion resulting from:
The joint decision of a number of individuals, whether five or five hundred—all from the same people—which enables them to become Christians without social dislocation, while remaining in full contact with their non-Christian relatives, thus enabling other groups of that people, across the years, after suitable instruction, to come to similar decisions and form Christian churches made up exclusively of members of that people (McGavran 1980:335).
Lest scholars without firsthand experience of people movements disdain them as mass hysteria or the like, McGavran' s reference to individuals must be noted. The
decision whether or not to convert is taken only when the opinions and feelings of all the 23
adults concerned have been considered (Kraft 1992:273). Tippett (1965:58-59) thus speaks of multi-individual decision-making. Not surprisingly, therefore, people movements have been described mostly for tribal and peasant societies where decision- making at family and community level is normative (Kraft 1992:263-264). Some people movements, though, start with the conversion of one person as in the case of the Tahitian chief Pomare (Tippett 1971:16-18) described later in this chapter. People movements are reported for India (Pickett 1933), the Dani of Irian Jaya (Hitt 1962), the Tzotzil in
Mexico (Cowan 1962), the Wallamo and Kambatta of Ethiopia (Davis 1966), the
Solomon Islands (Tippett 1967), Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, and New Zealand (Tippett 1971), the Kachin of Burma (Tegenfeldt 1974), the Punjab (Stock and Stock 1975), the Lisu of
southwest China (Taylor 1976), Uganda (Van Rheenen 1976), Burundi (Hohensee 1977),
the Tzeltal in Mexico (Turner 1979), the Kate in New Guinea (Keysser 1980), the
Quechua (Maust 1992), and the Bajju of Nigeria (McKinney 1994). Taylor's work on the
Lisu is biographical in nature and was published in 1944 before McGavran popularized
the term "people movement" but it is clear from her account that this is what took place.
Lancaster (1988:108) says that "conversion of the entire family seems to be the general
rule" among poor Nicaraguans. There is evidence that conversion among the Aymara
corresponds to the people movement pattern (Chapter 9).
Tippett (1992:192-205) presents a model for this more or less simultaneous
conversion of whole groups of individuals. Though the model was not intended for
application to individual experience, it would be a valid application as group conversion
results from multi-individual decision-making. 24
Table 2-1. Tippett's Schema for Group Conversion
Old Context (Pagan) New Context (Christian )
Period of Period of Period of Period of awareness R decision- E incorporation C maturity making
In contexts of conversion to Evangelical Christianity, the period of awareness
refers to that time when a group of people is hearing the gospel and becoming aware of
another way of life. The "point of realization" (R) is reached when people realize that
moving from the Old Context is a definite possibility, an option that is particularly
relevant for them. During the period of decision-making, individual differences of
opinion are aired and the decision is made whether to convert or not. E, the "point of
encounter," terminates the period of decision-making with clear-cut and often public
demonstrations that the group has decided to repudiate the traditional gods and to trust
Christ for salvation. There follows the period of incorporation which includes the
membership rite of baptism. C is the "point of consummation (or confirmation)" when
converts embark on the process of deepening their understanding of the faith and so enter
the lifelong period of maturity.
Tippett helped pioneer another major aspect of conversion in tribal and folk
societies, the concept of the "power encounter." In his works Solomon Islands
Christianity (1967:5.100-1 18) and People Movements in Southern Polynesia (1971:81),
he uses the term "power encounter" for demonstrable contests of power between God and
traditional deities which expedite or hinder the conversion of people depending on the
outcome of the contest. They are most commonly reported for tribal and folk societies the
members of which, having spiritual power as a vitally important element of their 25
worldview, typically ignore the claims of outside religions unless superior spiritual power
is demonstrated. A small sample of these reports include the Lisu in southwest China
(Taylor 1967:67-68; Grossman 1982:35), the Kenyan of Kalimantan (Conley
6- 1976:222,326-328,350), Solomon Islanders (Tippett 1967:5), Tahitians (Tippettl 971 : 1
18), and Fijians (Tippett 1977b:45,47). Two examples will suffice.
In 1812, a Christian chief in Tahiti named Pomare, desiring the conversion of his people and a public demonstration before the missionaries of the sincerity of his
profession of faith, cooked and ate the meat of a turtle which was considered to be a
sacred animal. He declared beforehand that God, in whom he now believed, had more
power than the Tahitian deities and would protect him from them. The Tahitians of that
day believed the gods would take the life of anyone who so treated turtles and were very
alarmed at their chiefs actions but time passed and to their amazement he did not suffer
the expected retribution. The people were most impressed and converted shortly
thereafter (Tippett 1971:16-18).
A power encounter which did not result in conversion is reported from New
Zealand by the Maori anthropologist Sir Peter Buck before the power encounter concept
had been formulated.
When the Reverend Chapman endeavoured to convert the last authentic priest of the Arawa tribe, the old tohunga demonstrated the power of his own god by turning a diy leaf green. The medium of the new god having failed to produce some similar or stronger manifestation of mana, the old priest remained unconvinced and died in the faith of his fathers (Buck 1950:521).
The testimony of my Aymara informants is that they encountered the power of God
in the course of their conversion experience (Chapter 8). Their encounter may not have
been in the structured Pomare-style format of a contest between deities but their
experience of divine power was just as real and convincing to them personally because 26
aspects of their lives were transformed and revitalized by a power which they well knew exceeded their own powers of self-transformation.
1 take forward into this project the following understanding of conversion to
Evangelicalism. It is an event in the course of a multifaceted and dynamic process which involves hearing of an alternative worldview and lifestyle, forging bonds with believers, deciding to trust in Christ alone for salvation, repenting of one's sin, dissociating from influences antithetical to the new faith, and receiving ongoing maturational instruction.
Involved is a milieu of complexly interacting historical, cultural, societal, ideological,
cognitive, affective, and psychological forces. It is itself a tangible revitalizing experience which leads to further revitalizing experiences all of them interwoven with a mysteriously
operating spiritual dimension and, though intensely personal, it is experienced within a social context and with social consequences. People convert as individuals or in groups often at a time of personal crisis. As a definable event of duration which sooner or later transforms and integrates the convert's worldview, personality, lifestyle, and actions, it is itself a dynamic in human history.
The theologian David Read says Evangelical Christians typically value preaching, have a personal devotional life, speak of their relationship with God, help in evangelistic campaigns, speak of conversion and being bom again, pray about their concerns, and seek answers for issues in the Scriptures. "An evangelical can be young or old, conservative or liberal, Catholic or Protestant, simple or sophisticated, black or white, emotional or down-to-earth, exuberant or reserved. All that matters is that we put our trust in the God who meets us in Jesus Christ and live daily by his grace alone" (Read
1992:139) 27
Theories Concerning Protestantism in Latin America
The growth of conservative Protestantism in Latin America during the last thirty years has been nothing short of dramatic. The movement has exploded in that region. To his consternation perhaps, one Catholic bishop in Brazil concluded from his calculations
that Latin America is turning Protestant more rapidly than central Europe did during the
Reformation of the sixteenth century (Stoll (1990:xiv). The literature theorizing on the causes of this phenomenon is discussed here in relation to its helpfulness for my study.
Structural Change
The late twentieth century saw tremendous urbanization in Latin America. Millions of people flooded into the cities and took up a permanent and almost invariably miserable residence in shanty towns. Some theorists attribute the rise of Protestantism to this structural change in the region. One of the earliest empirical studies was conducted on
Pentecostals in Brazil and Chile by Emilio Willems who published his findings in
Followers of the New Faith (1 967) and augmented them briefly in Latin American
Culture (1975). Observing a higher proportion of Pentecostal churches in urban and
industrial regions, he concluded that the rapid and massive urbanization during the latter half of the twentieth century created conditions conducive for conversion to that movement. Willems (1975:368) links the two phenomena causally by postulating that
"the uprooted individual finds it difficult to orient himself in an improvised urban society.
Emotional isolation and economic insecurity are intensified by social problems of staggering proportions." Having exchanged the emotional security and predictability of their communities for the uncertainty and strangeness of life in the city, migrants become anxious, socially isolated, and disoriented. In this anomic state they are vulnerable to evangelistic endeavor. Equally susceptible are people in agricultural frontier regions and 28
residents of rural areas not incorporated into haciendas (Willems 1967:247-248). I have discussed this aspect of structural theory in Chapter 9 in relation to the people movement pattern of conversion. Suffice to say here that fourteen of my 102 informants were migrants from the rural altiplano to El Alto or La Paz and none reported anomie-related difficulties as factors in their decision to convert.
Willems argues next that conversion to Pentecostalism with its more egalitarian
organizational pattern is "a protest against the Catholic church and its ally, the ruling class... (A) symbolic subversion of the traditional order" (Willems 1967:249). In view
here is the Protestant doctrine of the "priesthood of believers" by which all believers, not just the ecclesiastical hierarchy, may have direct communion with God through prayer.
Protest may have been a factor in Brazil and Chile in the 1960s but my data (given later) do not sustain this point.
Another conversion dynamic is the personality transformation which converts experience "by substituting disreputable "vices" for conventional forms of behavior"
(Willems 1967:249). It is right to emphasize the importance of personal transformation as
this is always at the heart of a person's public testimony in church concerning their
conversion and something which the convert is invariably excited about. However, he
surprisingly missed the fact that what excites converts most is not their own efforts at personal reformation (which do play a part) but what they perceive as the supernatural and thus mysterious, though nevertheless quite tangible, transforming work of God in areas of their lives which had been causing them, and often those close to them, to
despair. It is the divinely wrought realization of this often desperately sought personal change which ignites excitement about God and fuels the motivation to speak of their 29
faith to others. Willems overlooks this religious dynamic in what for these people is an
eminently religious phenomenon.
Another factor, says Willems (1967:249), is that folk Catholicism, with its
localized pantheons of saint helpers oriented to the hopes and exigencies of rural peasant
life, was rendered redundant as Brazilian and Chilean society became predominantly
urban during the twentieth century. Movement to urban and frontier regions alienated
people from the local pantheons of their rural birthplace and caused them to seek more
appropriate spiritual assistance. This was not so for Aymara migrants to El Alto and La
Paz as I will show in Chapter 4. While they may abandon obeisance to their former place
spirits, it is clear during fiestas and other important calendrical observances that faith in
Pachamama has migrated with many of them and is being applied in the new urban
circumstances.
Also important, says Willems (1967:251), is that once the Protestant ethics of thriftiness, sobriety, industry, dependability, and honesty are established in a convert's
life, that person stands a better chance of being materially rewarded in the developing
industrial civilizations of Chile and Brazil. 1 have no doubt that he is right. However,
Protestant virtues are materially beneficial for both urban and rural Aymara folk. When the material benefits of conversion become apparent to an Aymara convert's family
members, friends, and neighbors it may cause them to consider conversion. This is
commonly reported elsewhere in Latin America and is treated further in Chapter 8.
In a later publication, Latin American Culture (1975), Willems also acknowledges
in the space of a few sentences the spiritual dimension of conversion in relation to its appropriateness for the underprivileged classes. Pentecostals hold to the doctrine that the 30
Holy Spirit indwells all believers, imparts certain giftings, heals their bodies and minds, and may speak through them in ministry contexts. These are euphoric experiences, says
u Willems (1975:369), which generate a feeling of power, in sharp contrast to the miseries of daily life and the political and economic impotence of the lower classes." Pentecostals
thus offer "relief from the tribulations of life ... (and) ... address the frustrations and aspirations of the underprivileged" through their ideology, instruction, ritual, and organization (Willems 1975:368). While these spiritual dynamics are vitally important
for conversion to conservative Protestantism, so too is the dynamic of personal crisis
(Ullman 1989:xvii; Gill 1990:712; Rambo 1993:44; Oksanen 1994:77). Willems overlooks this dynamic despite clear statements in his biographical case studies that his informants converted in the midst of crippling personal crises.
A second structural theory is that of the French sociologist Christian Lalive d'Epinay who conducted research in the late 1960s on the rise of Pentecostalism in Chile and published his findings in Haven of the Masses (1969). He argues that the Evangelical
movement is popular with airal migrants in urban areas because it reconstitutes in the new urban context a secure community structured like the hacienda of the old agrarian order. Pentecostalism has arisen at a time of great change in Latin America and in urban
areas it reconstitutes
the great family represented by the hacienda; it validates personal relationships by
giving them a brotherly dimension and an elating finality—the service of God; it reaffirms the principle of mutual aid and support; and for the deteriorated image of the hacendado whose tyranny was no longer counterbalanced by the protection he
gave, it substitutes the image of the pastor, the protective father, who dispenses salvation (Lalive d'Epinay 1969:83).
Structural change in Chile has left vacant the role of strong fatherly leader "to the
great peril of the masses;" there is "nostalgia for the father who has been lost or rejected" 31
(Lalive d'Epinay 1969:83). Pastors have stepped into this vacuum to help their respective flocks of migrants in the uncertainty and confusion of the urban environment. Modelling themselves as patriarchs and masters according to biblical images of leadership, they substitute for society's lost father leaders (Lalive d'Epinay 1969:78-81). The New
Testament, however, does not teach these models of leadership but rather exhorts leaders to be gentle and loving shepherds, judiciously exercising discipline where necessary to
maintain the unity of the congregation, but lording it over no one.
The hacendado model does not explain conversion in those parts of Latin America
unaffected by the hacienda system and I saw no indication that it applies to highland
Bolivia. Through four long centuries, the hacienda system cruelly and relentlessly exploited the helpless Aymara people. They hated their lives as serfs and when the
hacienda system passed into history there was no nostalgia for it. Having gained their freedom the last thing that Evangelical converts would have wanted was replication of the old paternalistic order which they overthrew in the violent Revolution of 1952. The governmental system they organized for their denomination in the post-Revolution era
arose from the commonsense need for the proper leadership and administration typical of
any human organization. To refer to Seminario Biblico pastors as analogues of
hacendados would be to offend them deeply and every believer who heard about it. The
only pastor whom I saw conducting himself in a high-handed manner was eventually
removed from office by his congregation.
Lalive d'Epinay (1969:204) also briefly notes several dynamics internal to the
Pentecostal movement in connection with its growth. Very important is divine power to
heal physical illness and the effects of sin. Of 61 pastors, 98% reported having been the 32
channel of faith-healing and "countless conversions were preceded by a cure." Other
growth dynamics include access to the pastorate by people with little or no formal
theological education (p. 71 ), the great encouragement given to all members to seek the conversion of other people and to freely and personally participate in worship services
(p. 50-57), the warm welcome given to visitors and the curious (p. 49), and the active integration of new members into the life of the church as welcome and needed brothers
(hermanos) or sisters (hermanas) in the faith (p. 49, 56-57). These internal dynamics were of prime importance in my study.
The sociologist of religion David Martin also upholds the structural theory.
Generalizing at the continental level, he presents his findings in Tongues of Fire (1990).
He argues that the British and Spanish patterns of secularization, once distinct and separate, have fused into a religious confluence in Latin America as "dramatic and
revolutionary as it is unexpected" (Martin 1990:279). What remained of the old
paternalistic and monolithic social order still surviving from the colonial era in Latin
America began rapidly breaking down in the mid-twentieth century. "As the sacred
canopy in Latin America is rent and the all-encompassing system cracks, evangelical
Christianity pours in and by its own autonomous native power creates free social space"(M.artm 1990:280, his italics). He draws a parallel with Methodism at the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain saying that what is transpiring in Latin
America is
simply that temporary efflorescence of voluntary religiosity which accompanies a stage in industrialization and/or urbanization. As Methodism flourished during just such a period m Britain so Pentecostalism flourishes today in Latin America... (They are) parallel moments in a story which will end as they shrivel at the cold touch of rationalization and the omnicompetent state (Martin 1990:294-295). 33
People are entering Pentecostalism through a number of conduits, by far the largest
of which is the "massive movement of people from countryside or hacienda to the mega-
city... Evangelical Christianity is a dramatic migration of the spirit matching and
accompanying a dramatic migration of bodies" (Martin 1990:284).
Martin characterizes Pentecostalism as a voluntary, lay, fissile, participatory,
egalitarian, and enthusiastic faith (p. 274). As it is disarticulated from political, economic,
and heavily authoritarian denominational structures, it is also locally autonomous (p. 280).
In these respects it is a refreshingly and radically different form of religious life for
converts from Catholicism. Regarding the movement's sociocultural adaptability, Martin
speaks of the "Latin Americanization of Protestantism," the adaptation of the new religion by LatinAmericans to their own sociocultural contexts. Latin Americans find
appealing the Pentecostal use of gesture and oratory in the pulpit and the technique of
storytelling to illustrate biblical truth (p. 282-283).
Another aspect of this sociocultural plasticity is its power to revitalize the lives of migrants to urban areas. Converts join with other believers to become part of a mutual
support network (p. 283) the local church functioning like
a new cell taking over from scarred and broken tissue. Above all it renews the innermost cell of the family, and protects the woman from the ravages of male
desertion and violence. A new faith is able to implant new disciplines, re-order
priorities, (and) counter corruption and destructive machismo. . . (p. 284).
Martin thus reduces conservative Protestantism to a mere social phenomenon. It has, of course, a social dimension and the vast numbers which the movement has
attracted means that it may properly be regarded as a social movement but one in which the expression of religious life must always be emphasized. People become Evangelicals
or Pentecostal through the vehicle of religious conversion. Martin disregards possible 34
causal influences of the movement's religious specificity even though a major theological
and praxical element of Pentecostalism is expressed directly in the title of his book and is
crucial to understanding the movement.
Conversion following major structural changes in society is also reported for the
Quichua in Ecuador (Kanagy 1990). When the hacendado system began disintegrating,
peasants suffered greater economic hardship than they had known under the hacienda
system and some became amenable to considering the hope-giving message of Protestant
missionaries. Converts formally instituted an organization to help themselves adapt
socially and economically to their newly and radically changed society.
My data do not support a structural explanation for the growth of the Seminario
Biblico denomination. The subject is discussed in relation to data for the Aymara given in
Chapter 9. Especially in view will be the structural theorists! assertion that the uprooting
effects of rural-urban migration generate anomie in migrants thus leaving them vulnerable to evangelists.
Conspiracy
It seems that no set of theories relating to human behavior would be complete unless someone postulates conspiracy and this debate does not disappoint. One such was
proposed by Catholic leaders in the 1950s and is still upheld by some (Escobar
1994a: 117).
So far, the typical reaction of the Catholic hierarchy to losing its flock has been to
advance the ''conspiracy theory." According to its most extreme version, Protestant sects bankrolled by the CIA are sent to Latin America to destroy liberation theology and further U.S. imperialism (McCoy 1989:2).
During the years of the Cold War, some proponents of the theory argued that
Protestantism in Latin America was allied with Communism (Escobar 1994a:l 17). 35
Conspiracy theorists were thus divided among themselves whether Protestantism was being promulgated in Latin America by the Communists or by Washington.
The theory has no support outside the Catholic hierarchy and is contested openly by
some within. In addition to division among its champions, conspiracy theory suffers from
three other weaknesses. The Belgian Catholic scholar Franz Damen debunks it on the basis that no connection has yet been conclusively demonstrated between North
American expansionist policy and the rise of Protestantism in Latin America (Escobar
1994a: 1 19). Its proponents argue in generalities and not on the basis of specific evidence.
Second, the pioneer missionary workforce in the region was multinational in composition. In Bolivia the pioneers were from Ireland (1895), Canada (1898), Chile
(1901), and New Zealand (1903) (Wagner 1970:27,33,52-56,73). Contingents of missionaries from those countries continue working in Bolivia alongside colleagues from
England, Switzerland, Sweden, Peru, Australia, Norway, Korea, the United States, and
Brazil. The non-Americans have no interest in facilitating North American expansionist
policy and I saw nothing to indicate that my American colleagues did either. Third, the
magnitude of the Protestant movement in Latin America, even in its incipient stages, is a phenomenon way beyond the capacity of Washington's resources to engineer.
David Stoll formulated region-wide generalizations concerning the involvement of foreign and Latin American Protestants in politics on the basis of a four-month tour of
Ecuador, Pern, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Mexico in 1985. His results are published in Is
Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (1990). Observing
United States foreign policy interests turning in the direction of Latin America during the
Reagan years and what he concluded were right-wing political activists joining Protestant 36
missionary societies with the dual intentions of evangelizing and expanding North
American hegemony, he writes to warn Protestant missions and Latin American
Protestants concerning the danger of being yoked by elements of the religious right to
U.S. militarism. Not wanting "to create the impression that churches are a plaything for political forces" he seeks, nevertheless, "to emphasize the clear and present danger (of mission societies) being manipulated by the U.S. government" (Stoll 1990:xv).
I saw no indications that the missionary society which began the Seminario Biblico
movement or North American personnel in three other mission societies with whom I collaborated were doing anything which could be construed as instrumental in effecting
North American foreign policy interests. I would have learned of any such involvement past or present as the missionaries worked in close contact with one another and
socialized together. The policy of these missions is to strictly avoid involvement in
politics at local and national levels. This is not to deny that some Protestant missionaries
have not had political involvements in other parts of Latin America but to say that Stoll is in danger of making too much of the politics of religion. He has rightly debunked one conspiracy theory only to present another.
More of David Stoll
Though he is widely quoted, the specific reasons for the growth of Latin American
Protestantism constitute a minor theme in his work. He notes that it is rising at a time
when its competitor in the religious marketplace, Catholicism, is declining. The growth of Evangelicalism in the 1970s and 1980s greatly alarmed some Catholic leaders. When
Pope John Paul II toured Central America in 1983 he declared that the growth of
Protestantism was his main concern for that region. The Catholic Church was losing a
noticeable proportion of its committed members and lay leaders, not just those who only 37
attend church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals (p. 33). Furthermore, Protestantism, which always has an attraction for the poor, began appealing to people higher up the
social ladder in those decades (p. 33).
Stoll proposes a number of reasons for the crumbling of Catholicism, the growing shortage of clergy being particularly important. In one decade, 40% of the priests in Latin
America left their respective Orders. He offered no explanation for their departure.
Enrollments at seminaries are down and many seminarians do not complete the lengthy training. Protestant pastors and evangelists (and Pentecostals in particular), by contrast,
may take up their calling with little or no formal training (Stoll 1990:28-29). Willems
(1975:385) also concludes that decline in the clergy is a major reason why the Catholic
Church is losing its membership to other persuasions. Lalive d'Epinay (1969:35) likewise reports the Catholic Church in Chile suffering from a decline in the priesthood.
The decline of Catholicism has left a spiritual vacuum which, Stoll argues, is being exploited by Protestants. Using the explosion of the Assemblies of God (AOG), a major
Pentecostal denomination in Brazil, as his example, he postulates a structural explanation.
Many AOG members, he says, were converted in the country and subsequently migrated to coastal cities. As early as 1910, the Assemblies "learned to fish in the streams of rural- urban migration across Brazil" (Stoll 1990:108). His analysis of dynamics internal to the
Pentecostal movement amounts only to passing mention of some factors interspersed
through his discourse. They are distilled here into a list of eight. All of them proved
7- crucial in my study (Chapters 8,9). They include emphasis on spiritual power (p. 3 1
318); making proselytism rather than social and political action the missionary strategy
(p. 35); the practical mutual helpfulness of fellow church members (p. 108-109); the social 38
appropriateness of the movement for the poor (p. 108- 109); lay leadership (p. 109); leadership is in national rather than foreign hands and financed by the nationals
themselves (p. 109, 126); the stabilizing effect of conversion on households when
husbands relinquish habits of drunkenness and adultery (p. 13); and the strong
encouragement, arising from the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, for
every church member to be actively and directly involved in proselytism (p. 109). Stoll
acknowledges that religious experience has a dynamic all of its own (1990:xv) yet views
Protestantism in Latin America as little more than a "generator of social change" (p.xvi).
Had he explored the internal dynamics of the movement, he would have discovered what
is driving it forward.
Alleviating Poverty
In her book Coping with Poverty (1994), Cecilia Mariz explores the rising popularity of Brazilian Pentecostalism, and to a lesser extent Spiritism, in relation to a movement initiated by a progressive wing of the Catholic Church throughout Latin
America in the 1960s involving Comunidades Eclesiales de Base (CEBs). CEBs are small groups of poor laity organized by pastoral agents (seminarians, nuns, or lay people) for prayer, meditation, and education to encourage people, through the medium of their religious convictions, to engage in social and political action (Mariz 1994:17). The CEB initiative was an effort to reach the poor whom the Brazilian Catholic Church had been
unable to integrate (p. 153). This effort to bring the masses back to the fold has largely failed as the poor formulate strategies from among the practical and spiritual dynamics of the Pentecostal movement which they consider to be more effective than CEB initiatives
in helping survival on a daily basis (p. 2). 39
R. Andrew Chesnut's work Bom Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Pathogens of
Poverty (1997) supports the argument that Pentecostalism is flourishing in Brazil because the poor often find practical assistance in what they believe to be divine healing from the
illnesses spawned by poverty (p. 167). As converts leam to engage "the spiritual and ideological force of their new faith" and "the instruments of spiritual ecstasy, mutual aid, ideological dualism, and moral asceticism," in particular, they further recuperate from and fortify themselves against diseases which run rife among the rural and urban poor
(p. 169- 170). Chesnut accords chapter-length treatment to the social, moral, theological, spiritual, and ecclesiastical instrumentation available to believers.
He is right in so doing as Pentecostalism is first of all a religion whose adherents
readily testify to an initial life-changing conversion experience during which they encounter God in some way and thereafter have an ongoing relationship with him. Mariz, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on the movement's organizational and praxical benefits, omitting altogether a consideration of the doctrinal dimension out of conviction
that it is unimportant in the daily lives of poor Brazilians (p. 8-9). Yet later she asserts that
"as a source of meaning, religion is fundamental in an individual's struggle to survive"
(p. 155). The meaningfulness of any religion resides in the understanding and practical
application of its doctrine, symbolism, and praxis. Mariz asserts the primacy of focusing on "people's actual behavior rather than on their theological work, the ideas of their
leaders, and their opinions and values" (p. 122-123). Had she explored the theological
dimension, Mariz would have discovered, as Chesnut did, that Pentecostalism 's hope- giving, self-esteem-raising, morality-imparting, and thus personally meaningful theology 40
is a major dynamic in helping poor believers cope with their lot in life and a major reason, therefore, why people are converting and adhering to this belief system.
These findings resonate favorably with Peter Worsley's (1970:xlii) conclusion that millenarian movements (religions and cargo cults) flourish among the disinherited. The coping theory of Mariz and Chesnut, though, needs to be widened to encompass the
wealthy stratum of society as it may also help explain in part the recent ascent of a non-
Pentecostal stripe of Protestantism to the upper echelons of Bolivian society, as in the case of La Comunidad and other churches in the wealthiest quarters of La Paz. Personal crisis and a sense of neediness are most certainly not the private preserve of the poor.
Escaping Financial and Ceremonial Obligations
Some scholars maintain that a strong desire to escape the financial obligations of
their community's fiesta system is the main motivation for conversion. Nash (1960:52-
53) concludes this for Mayas in the town of Cantel in highland Guatemala; O'Connor
(1979:261) for Mayo Amerindians in Sonora, Mexico; Annis (1987) for Mayans in
Guatemala; and Dow (1 997: 1 1 7) for three Otomi villages in Mexico. In Guatemala, Nida
(1961:12) heard participants in the fiesta system complaining that the "disproportionate
costs" of the system far outweighed its benefits. Some converts freely admitted that their decision to convert had been influenced by seeing that Protestants were able to afford education, better food, and adequate housing. These conclusions raise a few questions.
Literature on the civil-religious system gives the impression that it is incumbent on
all members of a community to participate yet of 74 informants who responded to questions on my questionnaire regarding their pre-conversion religious affiliation (or lack thereof), 23 (31%) did not participate in the fiesta system before conversion. Some opted not to participate even when they were children. For a third of my informants on this 41
subject, then, conversion can not be causally connected to the fiesta system at all. Nine informants said their drunkenness during fiestas caused personal and family problems which left them dissatisfied with themselves and predisposed them to consider conversion (Figure 7) but conversion was not a necessary intermediate step to emancipation from cargo obligations for any informant. None so much as mentioned cargo obligations when recounting their conversion experiences. A second problem with
the emancipation theory is that it does not explain conversion in urban contexts where
there is no obligatory civil-religious system.
Rebecca Bomann's Tripartite Approach
Guiding the research of Rebecca Bomann (1999) on Pentecostals in a barrio of
Bogota, Colombia, is a theoretical approach comprised of three elements. The first is her conviction that
social scientists have explored every issue pertinent to the causes and effects of
. Pentecostalism in Latin America, without actually studying the faith itself. . (A)
void of knowledge still remains that begs for information about the elements and exercise of the religion in question... Simply stated, to study a religion, we must study the religion itself. If we understand the motives and passions of believers'
hearts ... we then can draw valuable conclusions about the religion's influence in greater society. Furthermore, the faith must be examined from within, through the believers' perspective, instead of from without, which is the secular perspective, to
truly depict the strength of the faith in believers' lives (Bomann 1999:41 . Her
italics).
Following through on her convictions, Bomann's fieldwork focused, therefore, on understanding how the faith of her informants, while sustaining them with the hope of a blissful eternity, helped them in the meantime to survive the deprivations and dangers of their earthly existence as residents of a Colombian barrio.
A second element in Bomann's theoretical frame of reference is rational choice theory, a construct based on the assumption that people "approach all actions in the same 42
way, evaluating costs and benefits and acting so as to maximize their net benefits"
(lannaccone 1995:77). Religious affiliation is decided in this way. Some scholars attribute conversion in Latin America to the influence of powerful and impersonal societal forces, but rational choice theory, emphasizes the
personal decisions of individuals as the agent of religious affiliation. A look at the existing literature reveals a tendency of scholars to explain individual religious faith by pointing to structural forces of an entire continent (decline of the Catholic Church, urbanization, modernization, and economic crises). Although these forces
play a crucial part in influencing the religious options available ... in the end, it is the individual who chooses to believe or not (Bomann 1999:46-47).
At first sight, my project poses some specific challenges for a theory assuming the
essentially rational nature of human beings. It must be determined why some informants abandoned the ways by which Andeans have related to the spiritual world for millennia,
an aspect of life at the very heart of their culture, to take up what seems like the religion of foreigners. There must be compelling reasons why people deliberately abandon such a
deeply ingrained aspect of their culture (Chapter 8). One must explain also why some
converted, knowing full well the risk to life and limb from enraged community members and the risk of being disinherited by angry and embarrassed parents. Some informants
were the first converts in their communities and therefore without the support of other believers yet persevered in this new and apparently foreign faith when threats of persecution against them began to materialize. (Sixty percent of my informants suffered
some form of opposition). Data in Chapters 4, 6, and 8 show that they were not, as it
might seem at first glance, recklessly acting in defiance of reason. Then, too, it must be explained why people who were free to chart their own course in life left their families in
North America and the comfort and security of living in their predictable and familiar culture to live in the dirty, difficult, uncomfortable, and sometimes dangerous world of 43
highland Bolivia all for the sake of changing the religion of other people. Some left established careers in the worlds of business and the professions and went to Bolivia where they lived for years on the charitable donations of friends and family back in the
United States (Chapters 6,7). In the pages ahead we will explore the rational basis for all these instances of what could be interpreted as irrational behavior.
The third element in Bomann's approach is worldview. The worldview of her
informants had been formed in the poverty-stricken context of barrio life.
Through religious conversion, an individual's worldview necessarily changes. The
transformation experienced by converts is not otherworldly, as though they become
unattached to family, community, daily life, and reality, living in a strange spiritual
euphoria. Rather, it is otherworldly in that converts begin to view every aspect of their lives through the lens of the spiritual realm. The struggles continue, but believers interpret their purpose and resolution through the all-encompassing evangelico worldview (Bomann 1999:44).
This change in worldview, the "most fundamental element of one's being" (p. 45),
in turn, radically transforms the convert's identity, conduct, and puipose in life.
"Personality and lifestyle can be altered rather temporally and even superficially, but
once the mind has been imbued with profound convictions of eternity and life, the change
that follows is serious and often permanent" (p.45).
The Thesis Underpinning This Project
Some scholars maintain that the internal specificity of conservative Protestantism,
its doctrinal, practical, social, ecclesiastical, and spiritual dynamics, constitute a
dimension of primary importance for understanding the rise of this movement in Latin
America (Vasquez 1998:243; Bomannl999:41,47). None have treated the subject
comprehensively and, with the exception of Chesnut's (1 997) outline of Pentecostal
distinctives, the doctrinal element has been almost entirely overlooked. The Evangelical 44
branch of the Protestant movement in Latin America, of which Seminario Biblico is a part, has received even less attention than its more numerous Pentecostal cousins.
In 1979, Paul Turner insisted that Protestantism in Latin America be treated as a
religious phenomenon but little notice was taken until Vasquez (1998:243) and Bomann
(1999) took up the refrain in connection with Pentecostalism twenty years later. The only
authors to expressly explore Pentecostal internal dynamics are Wilson (1994), who wrote
a brief article outlining various means by which converts are established in their faith and book-length treatments of work in Brazil (Chesnut 1997) and Colombia (Bomann 1999).
Other workers only give it the briefest mention. Blanca Muratorio (1981) contrasts
several Protestant doctrinal and organizational distinctives with their Catholic
counterparts and notes that having the Bible translated into Quichua enhanced the
believers' ethnic pride. Juan Sepulveda (1994), a Chilean Pentecostal pastor, argues that
Pentecostalism has gained widespread appeal because it offers direct and intense
encounters with God experienced within an accepting community of believers which
promulgates its message in vernacular language. J. Samuel Escobar (1994a) rightly
emphasizes the religious nature of Pentecostalism, the popular nature of the movement,
its power to mobilize members for mission, and its creation of communities of people.
We have noted in the course of this chapter that conversion to conservative
Protestantism, whether on an individual, family, or tribal basis, is a complex and multi-
faceted phenomenon with historical, societal, cultural, religious/spiritual, and
psychological dimensions. It is a process of "change that takes place in a dynamic set of
force fields involving people, institutions, events, ideas, and experiences" (Rambo 45
1992:160). The essential consequence of conversion, whether on an individual, family, or
tribal basis, is that it is a revitalizing religious experience.
My thesis is that Evangelicalism is spreading among the Aymara of highland
Bolivia through the impetus generated by the operation of its own dynamics, though its growth at individual, family, and community level can be curbed or terminated by
powerful individuals or groups. The movement is being propagated by people excited about their conversion and subsequent experiences of the ongoing revitalizing power of
God, communicating their faith to others, some of whom become believers themselves.
Causal dynamics include doctrine, evangelistic motivation and strategy, the power to palpably revitalize lives, ongoing spiritual experience, church life, and cultural adaptability. Other dynamics influencing conversion include family members, decision- making procedures, ethnicity, socio-economic level, and opposition. Understanding the individual and interrelated operation of these various dynamics and their relative importance constitutes the research problem of this study.
Conversion, whether at individual or family level, is a spiritually (and often economically, socially, mentally, and emotionally) revitalizing experience (biographies,
Chapter 8). The results of this study may be extrapolated to the growth of Protestantism in Latin America and elsewhere as the revitalizing experience of Aymara converts has been, and continues to be, the experience of people in countless thousands of localities throughout Latin America. Observing this profound and permanent revitalization of people's lives in the region, Stoll remarks that "the appropriate question seems, not why
many convert, but why more do not" (Stoll 1 990: 1 3). CHAPTER 3 METHODS
"They were the best of times; they were the worst of times." —Charles Dickens "A Tale of Two Cities"
Survey in 1996
In July 1996, my wife and I went to Bolivia for a week to investigate the possibility of a term of service as Evangelical missionaries and to explore the feasibility of researching the sociocultural dynamics of the conversion to Evangelicalism which
occurred among many hundreds of Aymara on the Bolivian altiplano during the twentieth
century and particularly in the latter half of that century. We were met at El Alto airport
by a missionary, Brian Prillaman, who introduced us to the president of an Aymara
Evangelical denomination called Seminario Biblico. In his enthusiasm, the denomination
president, Marcelino Valeriano, could not tell us enough about his association or show us
enough of the El Alto churches. I appreciated his guided tour in a taxi rented for the
occasion but was so exhausted after a day's travel from Gainesville to Miami and then an
all-night flight to La Paz that I kept falling asleep in the taxi, waking only when it lurched
into one of the bigger potholes in the city's streets. The tracks around my father-in-law's
farm are better than many of El Alto's streets which have potholes big enough to break a
car's axle. The next day a former president of the denomination, Primitivo Alanoca, took
us to see Lake Titicaca and three rural churches. At the end of our stay he formally
invited me to return to teach in the denomination's Bible schools and to conduct research.
46 47
Methods
Though ethnographers use the same methods and work more or less methodically, fieldwork occurs as the variable elements of different personalities engage one another within a milieu of not uncommonly changing political, social, economic, and religious
contexts. There is much that is outside the ethnographer's control, much that can upset or delay one's plans on a daily basis and which may even threaten the project altogether.
One's powers of patience and flexibility may be exercised so often with people and circumstances that fieldwork becomes more a test of one's character than the intellectual exercise one envisaged before arriving in one's host culture. In such field situations,
where the inflow of data is both constant and inconstant, there is a premium on opportunism. One must be quick to recognize and seize serendipitous data-collecting opportunities, remain sensitive to informant fatigue or reluctance to discuss something,
and all the while quietly continue with something amounting to grim determination to see
the project through. Progress was erratic and I was even stymied at times, yet I always
knew where 1 was with the project.
The methods I used are those usual in cultural anthropology—participant observation, journal keeping, field notebook work, photography, corresponding with overseas informants, informal conversations, formal interviews to discuss specific topics,
archival research, and administering questionnaires. In this chapter I have set forth in
chronological fashion the way in which I went about this project and have tried to capture and convey something of the joys and frustrations experienced in the course of my quest for enough of the right sort of data for a worthwhile dissertation in cultural anthropology.
I was in Bolivia for the 40 months of July 2000 to October 2003 inclusive. Having that length of time in the field gave me time to refine questionnaires, mull over my data, 48
draw on resources in the library of the Universidad Catolica Boliviana in Cochabamba which were unavailable in Florida, and read the works of Andeanists while living in the
Andes. I spent much of the last three months in Bolivia writing the dissertation. Being in situ with my informants available to answer questions as they occurred while I wrote,
helped me fill in a few gaps which would have remained as such had I left all my writing
until 1 returned to Florida. I can say, too, that for the most part I enjoyed writing in the
field because 1 was continuing to live what I was writing about.
Language School and Culture Shock in Cochabamba
When my wife and 1 returned to Bolivia in July 2000, the first problem to be
tackled was acquiring sufficient Spanish. We opted to study at Maryknoll Instituto de
Idiomas in Cochabamba, a city of 600,000 people set in a mountain valley 8,000 feet
above sea level in the eastern Cordillera. There were fifty students in the school and
virtually all of us had to deal with the effects of high altitude on arriving in Cochabamba.
Another thing which most of us had to contend with was a fiendish assortment of
persistent and very unpleasant gastric illnesses.
The language school arranges accommodation for its students and it was our great
fortune to be boarded with a charming Bolivian family, the Moscosos. Alberto and
Maria-Elena were splendid hosts and we learned a great deal about Bolivia from them.
They warmly took us in and from the outset treated us more as family members than
boarders. In all, we stayed eight months with the Moscosos, saw most of the events in a
Bolivian family's year, and learned a great deal from them. Seeing our interest in their
country, they took it upon themselves to show us as much of it as they could. Some
weekends they took us to festivals, some as far away as the tropical lowlands of the
Chapare region east of Cochabamba. We were included in family birthday celebrations, 49
enjoyed dinners with members of the extended family, engaged in many long
conversations about Bolivia, and on Sundays we ate at a restaurant or took a long drive
into the surrounding countryside to visit Inca ruins and places of natural beauty. We lived with the family through a rather unsettling time when campesinos protested against the
government's coca eradication policy by blockading the roads in and out of Cochabamba.
Stocks of all kinds of foods quickly dwindled in the city and Cochabambinos steeled
themselves for yet another lean time in the history of their troubled countiy. One
Saturday morning, after the family had been shopping, Alberto staggered into the house
with a 60-pound sack and said he hoped that we liked rice. That particular national crisis
lasted three weeks, cost 40 lives, and only ended when the government mobilized 12,000
troops to clear the blockaded roads in the Chapare.
Another important source of data was the staff and students of the language school.
Maryknoll Instituto de Idiomas is a superb language school. I cannot speak highly enough
of the administrators and teachers. The students were mostly foreign, middle-aged, and
engaged in some form of ministry or social work. As part of its orientation program for
newcomers in Bolivia, the school organized trips to fiestas and places of historical and
cultural importance and invited university professors to lecture on Friday afternoons on
language acquisition, the Bolivian legal system, and various aspects of Bolivian history
and culture. Living with a Bolivian family, the Friday lectures, and innumerable informal
discussions during language classes on Bolivian history, society, and culture gave us a
very helpful introduction to that countiy. However, it was up to us as individuals to find
ways of coping with life on a daily basis in a country so different from our own it is
virtually another world. 50
In the first four months, as though Spanish and debilitating illness were not enough
to cope with, I went through culture shock. It is a miserable time in the life of any person taking up residence in a foreign country. After the initial excitement of the tourist phase,
in which lasted about a week, I found myself so frequently disgusted at many things
Bolivia that it was poisoning my soul with bitterness. I kicked myself for not having opted to do fieldwork in my native Polynesia. Depressing also was the knowledge that
there was no escaping it. I had a project to finish and knew it would take a long time.
Culture shock lasted four months. The turning point was a ten-day mid-term break
from language school during which we went to Machu Picchu. I saw so much that was
fascinating, charming, and beautiful in the course of our stay in Cuzco and the long bus
trips through southern Peru and western Bolivia that I returned to Cochabamba refreshed
and with a positive attitude to life in the Andes. The change in my mental-emotional state
was noticeable, to me at least, and though things often bothered me about Bolivia after
in that I did not succumb again to harboring a generally negative attitude while we lived
Cochabamba.
Culture Shock Again
After language school we moved to the city of El Alto adjacent to La Paz and lived
there from January 2001 to October 2003 except for a three-month spell in Cochabamba.
According to the 2002 national census, El Alto is inhabited by 603,000 people, mostly
poverty-stricken Aymara migrants from the country seeking better economic prospects
for themselves and an education for their children. Life in the urban pigsty of El Alto was
very different from the Cochabamba valley and I went through another phase of culture
shock with all of its concomitant stress. The filthy streets (in places ankle-deep in rubbish
or full of mud and sewage when it rained), the suffering of the people which was 51
everywhere evident, the dangers of living in a society with a fifth-rate healthcare system, the could-not-care-less attitude of the police when we reported being robbed at gunpoint while out hiking in the country one day, the absence in the whole city of a nice restaurant or anywhere to go walking, the gridlock of the Ceja (central business district), and travelling on ricketty and dangerously overcrowded smoky old buses, exacted a
psychological toll on us during our first year in El Alto. We pined for clean and prosperous New Zealand but learned to countermeasure the stress in several ways and in
time this phase of culture shock also passed.
Missionary Informants
It took about a week to organize our home in El Alto and then I started seeking
informants from among the missionaries who had pioneered the Seminario Biblico
denomination by e-mailing Fran MacNeill, a retired missionary living in Pennsylvania
whom I had met briefly in Gainesville, Florida, asking for help in writing the history of
the denomination. She had worked among the Aymara for 27 years teaching literacy.
Fran wrote to some of her former colleagues asking for their assistance on my behalf and
shortly afterwards I had the names and addresses of several people. Three were especially
helpful. Marion Heaslip, Fran's partner in the literacy work, sent a lengthy letter outlining
the history of the denomination and said something of her 36 years of involvement with
it. Another correspondent was Samuel Smith, the son of the missionary who started the
denomination. The third was Doris Wan-en from Michigan who was in Bolivia from 1952
until 1975 as an evangelist and seminary teacher. Doris was especially helpful. In
response to the initial questionnaire concerning her work, she e-mailed me long and
detailed answers and contacted potential informants for me. Then she searched through
the attic of her home in Michigan and put together a bundle of about 100 articles which 52
she and her colleagues had written in the course of their work in Bolivia for The Gospel
Messenger , a publication of Union Seminary in Indiana. In the next two years, while
piecing together the denomination's history, I e-mailed many questions to Doris and she always sent me a very full answer.
Participant Observation
While this was in progress I began making the acquaintance of pastors, other church officials, and congregation members in the Seminario Biblico denomination.
Some we had met five years earlier when we visited Bolivia for a week and had corresponded with in the interim. My work with the denomination involved teaching pre- bachelor's degree level theology courses in two small seminaries. One is in La Paz, the
other at Patacamaya, a rural town fifty miles south of La Paz. The Patacamaya school is part of a church-primary school-seminary complex. The seven theology students had attended a rural high school and were literate but the physical appearance of their schools and the lack of teaching resources in the classrooms (there were no books at all in one
school that 1 visited) left me dubious about the quality of their education. They rostered themselves to prepare meals and keep the dormitory tidy and were very cheerful and responsible in fulfilling their duties. They were all training for ministry and without
exception were quiet, attentive, diligent, respectful, earnest, and fun-loving. I also taught a class of seven theology students in a Bible school in La Paz.
Another aspect of my work involved accompanying denomination officials (mesa directiva) on their scheduled visits to the far-flung churches on the altiplano and adjacent mountain valleys in the weekends. Church people warmly welcome visitors from other
churches and the mesa and missionaries in particular. Their isolation, I learned, leaves them vulnerable to feeling abandoned by their denomination. Visits by officials are 53
therefore a very important aspect of church life and are looked forward to with much anticipation. Visits by the mesa were often scheduled to coincide with the anniversaries of church inaugurations. As none of the mesa members had a driver's licence, I volunteered to maintain the denomination's truck and to drive the mesa to rural churches.
Very often the anniversary celebrations encompassed a whole weekend and sometimes
extended to a third or fourth day. I did this from January to July 2002 and gathered a lot of data in that time. The weekend-long church anniversaries were invariably exhausting
and I often wrote field notes to keep myself awake as much as anything else during the
services. Sometimes gospel films were screened until 2am which was tough on me as I am an early riser.
Very enjoyable always was the hospitality of the church people. At some churches we were received on arrival by an enthusiastic brass band so we had to endure the welcome time before we could enjoy the peace of the countryside. We slept on the church floor in our sleeping bags, ate the meals which the church members prepared, and sat through and sometimes participated in their services.
Data from Converts
As with any research project I needed enough of the right sort of data and that
depended on finding enough reliable informants. For them to be reliable, they had to be
personally willing to cooperate. This did not prove as straightforward as I had
anticipated, as conversion studies require life history data that may immediately and
unavoidably touch on personal issues in people's lives that evoke painful memories.
Should informants withhold, and they can easily do so, one can not undertake a project of
this nature. How then did I find acceptance with enough reliable informants to investigate
the rather sensitive subject of religious conversion? David Gow (1976:70), who -
54
researched religion and social change in the Andes, said "... I am convinced that in the final essence the acceptability of any research depends more on the character and personality of the investigator than on the importance, relevance, or feasibility of any
specific research proposal." I wholeheartedly concur with him.
..'..' . ,.
HHHH
.....'. ...'.
:.;:::::.::.:?:.:: :; : : : : : '; : ^--- - : : : : : M : Hsgrn
Figure 3-1. Aptaphi (Potluck Lunch) at Araca Church —
55
for making I went to Bolivia hopeful of completing this project, having the capacity friends of substantial people, and gaining their cooperation. Such had been my experience on the Chetimacha reservation in Louisiana and doing wildlife research in New Zealand.
I am a sympathetic listener, well mannered, and value my informants' feelings and reputations more than any data they might yield. Finding reliable informants took no time as my work necessarily involved associating with church leaders who are elected for two- year terms. Knowing they were men respected by their congregations gave me
confidence in the data they gave me. As it turned out, the veracity of conversion stories
did not pose a problem as the details of informants' lives are well known to their families
and other people in their churches and communities. There is not much privacy in small
communities so conversions quickly become public knowledge. I made a good start
interviewing some of the leaders but needed a wider sample of informants than pastors.
How 1 overcame the challenge of finding enough willing informants is the subject of the
next few pages.
In the first instance the all-importance of informant willingness dictated
scrupulously avoiding anything interpretable as pressure tactics, craftiness, or
manipulation on my part lest 1 forfeit their trust. The last thing I wanted was to risk being
thought of as yet another gringo coming to exploit the Aymara. A second factor
contributed greatly to informant willingness. In the edited volume Marginal Natives ,
Morris Freilich (1978:3) notes "the belief that the anthropologist is some kind of spy
that he is not what he pretends to be and that he is gathering information for some
purpose harmful to the community—is quite common." 1 did not encounter this difficulty 56
denomination's as I joined the Serninario Biblico work at the official invitation of the leaders as someone with recognized qualifications for teaching theology. Far from being
churches received with suspicious reserve I was immediately welcomed publicly by the
as a brother and badly needed fellow worker as the denomination was having trouble
staffing its Bible schools. As an invited colleague, my relationship with the Aymara was
therefore very different from that of anthropologists who decide who and where they
want to study and then invite themselves. Being invited co-workers, Annette and I were
often welcomed into the homes of church members for meals and we reciprocated. Very
helpful in those times of relaxed socializing was a scrapbook of pictures from New
Zealand calendars which we had put together. Bolivia and New Zealand have in common
snowy mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, potatoes, and sheep. The scrapbook was a source
of interesting and meaningful conversations at a time when we were still grappling with
Spanish.
Most important in getting to know people was Annette's medical work. Her years
of nursing experience in a number of fields proved invaluable on a good many occasions.
The people whom she treated, advised, or referred were most grateful as the government
has utterly neglected the health care of the altiplano Aymara.
in connection with the There are three things which 1 need to mention at this point
relationships with fact that I started with a high level of acceptance and maintained good
the Bolivians during our time with them. The first is that though I had nothing
approximating open conflict with the Aymara people, I quickly learned to avoid some
one of individuals. Second, while 1 like the Aymara as a people, I did not try to become
faith and went native to them. With my informants I had in common our humanity and 57
the extent that I lived among them in shimmy El Alto, did not buy a vehicle of my own, and endured the hardships of travelling with them to churches in the mountains and valleys. Being their travelling companion meant a great deal to them because they had experienced the hurtfulness of foreigners refusing to eat their food and stay overnight with them in their poor homes when visiting the rural areas. On the subject of identifying with the host culture, Evans-Pritchard (1976:243) says
One enters into another culture and withdraws from it at the same time. One cannot really become a Zande or a Nuer or a Bedouin Arab, and the best compliment one
can pay them is to remain apart from them in essentials. In any case one always remains oneself, inwardly a member of one*s own society and a sojourner in a
strange land. Perhaps it would be better to say that one lives in two different worlds of thought at the same time, in categories and concepts and values which often cannot easily be reconciled. One becomes, at least temporarily, a sort of double marginal native, alienated from both worlds.
The third thing I want to say in connection with the great head start that I had in my
fieldwork in having a high level of acceptance and trust from the outset is that I could not
launch immediately into my interviewing as I was still struggling with language
difficulties after the 5'/2 month term at Maryknoll. My informants were often willing to
speak about themselves and their culture and 1 could usually make myself understood but
I could not always understand their answers to my questions. I had been trained by
linguists in the mountain valley of Cochabamba who spoke Spanish perfectly but Spanish
was for many of the older Aymara a second language and they used idioms, grammatical
constructions, and pronunciations peculiar to the altiplano. I also had to cope with a few
people who, like some individuals in societies the world over, mumble when they speak.
Then there were others whom I found unintelligible because they spoke rapidly out of
great enthusiasm and others were unintelligible as they had few or no teeth. Progress with the project was not halted altogether though as I engaged in participant observation when teaching in the Bible schools from manuals which I wrote,
preaching in churches when called upon, and driving the denomination's truck on many long and grueling trips of one to four day's duration to various churches in the yungas jungle east of La Paz, the altiplano, and the mountains which border the altiplano. 1
travelled nearly every weekend from January to August 2002 and drove on many other
occasions. In that time my language ability improved, I made the acquaintance of many
people in the churches, engaged in a great deal of participant observation, became
familiar with the entire geographical region, and earned the gratitude of the church
officials for transporting them around.
With the passage of time in the first eighteen months I came to know some people
very well and, pressured by the need for data, I summoned the courage to ask a few of
them if they would fill out my questionnaires. Thrilled with the changes in their lives
following their conversion, they were delighted to tell me their story. I collected several
more stories from people who spontaneously talked about their conversion experience, in
some cases in great detail. Apart from the data they yielded, these first efforts at
interviewing gave me the opportunity to think about and modify the questionnaire forms
in view of the kind of data that I needed. Having had a conversion experience myself
greatly helped in writing the questionnaire. With an informed perspective, I knew what
questions to ask and this saved much time and effort.
It soon became apparent, though, that I would have to exercise considerable
fill initiative if 1 was to get enough data. Yet I did not like asking people to out my
questionnaires; I felt awkward, constrained. I just did not want to ask them. There were 59
three reasons. First, the time and place was often inappropriate. I saw potential
informants at church on Sunday, when we were visiting in each other's homes, or when we were travelling together in the truck for a few days. Second, though I came to know
some people particularly well, I was conscious that they may have converted from
behavior of which they are now ashamed. I did not want to pry. Third, I wanted thoroughly willing informants and loathed the thought that they might think, even
momentarily, that I was taking advantage of our close working relationship and
brotherhood in the faith. I did not want to be thought of as exploiting a pool of captive
informants. 1 wondered what to do about this for the first 18 months, all the while working on my Spanish, travelling to churches, cultivating relationships, and filling
notebooks with observations. Time was on my side as I planned on being in Bolivia for
VA years and could afford to be patient but needed, nevertheless, to obtain a considerable
volume of data and I was conscious from experience in wildlife research that even the
best prepared fieldwork plans can go awry. 1 had to obtain my data but could not afford to even unwittingly trammel people's willingness.
I overcame the problem of finding enough willing informants, and thus obtaining the necessary quantity of good quality data, by obtaining the association president's permission to ask for volunteers at the quarterly pastor's meetings (juntas pastorales) to
fill out a questionnaire for a book that I was writing on the history of their denomination
and, in particular, the conversion of people to Evangelical Christianity. By this time I
knew many people m the denomination by sight and some I knew quite well. I had worked with them and we had been in each other's homes socializing and on business many times and had enough credibility to ask their assistance in my project. Several 60
expressed interest because the denomination did not have a written record of its history and as the older people, among them some founders of the movement, were passing from
the scene, knowledge of the early years would be lost if it was not soon put on record.
During the December 2001, junta pastoral I asked, with the president's permission,
for volunteers to fill out questionnaires regarding the origins of the various churches.
During the July 2002 junta, I asked for volunteers to fill out questionnaires detailing their
personal conversion stories ('testimonies'). In this way I obtained 35 life histories. 1 felt
even more reluctant asking young people to participate in my study even though I needed
data from their age-group. The association's annual young people's camp in 2003 at
Hichuraya Grande village in the central altiplano provided me with the opportunity to
sample this age-group. Again, I asked permission of their leader for some time during
their conference to fill out questionnaires and in one session of form-filling 30 young
people volunteered to write their testimonies. Another 22 adults volunteered to fill out
questionnaires during the anniversary of Callampaya Church in La Paz in September
2003. In all, 102 people completed questionnaires.
Obtaining Data on Folk Religion
I wanted to learn not only the events which led up to the conversion of Aymara
people but the belief system and practices of the folk religion from which they were
converted. I wanted to know what was lacking in folk religion that they had discovered in
Evangelicalism. My informants included the pioneer missionaries mentioned above,
Freddy Mendez Estrada (a professor of philosophy and theology at the Universidad
Catolica Boliviana in Cochabamba), Aymara pastors and congregation members, the
seven members of the Mesa Directiva with whom I travelled to rural churches, the
Moscoso family with whom we boarded in Cochabamba for eight months, and a Catholic 61
priest and a nun who were fellow students at Maryknoll Institute de Idiomas in
Cochabamba. Particularly helpful was a series of videos and films depicting various
language aspects of Bolivian culture and history which I watched with my Catholic teachers at Maryknoll. They gave me a running commentary on events as they unfolded in the videos (and on the very dramatic current events of those days in the year 2000) and bravely volunteered their thoughts and feelings about Bolivia's history and cultures. Two
Evangelical linguists, Susana Zurita de Quiroga and Maria Eugenia de Flores, were also very helpful in this respect.
After we moved to El Alto we continued studying Spanish once a week with a most erudite and gentlemanly language teacher, Jaime Mejia. With Jaime we also made a start on Aymara. He often began his lessons with us by discussing the sociocultural roots of issues featured in newspaper headlines and once he walked us through a "witches' market" in La Paz explaining the significance of the paraphernalia on sale for the purposes of witchcraft rituals. All of these people poured out their hearts and minds to
me, sometimes spontaneously and at other times in response to my questions.
Another great source of data on folk religion was the fiestas for which Bolivia is
saining international recognition. When we lived in Cochabamba, Annette and 1 attended
El the fiestas of Todos Santos, Urkupina, San Andres, and Alasitas. As residents of Alto
Alto we had the opportunity to observe the fiestas of Carnival, San Juan, Alasitas (in El
and La Paz), and Gran Poder (in La Paz). From El Alto we travelled to Oruro to attend
Carnival (arguably the best-known of Bolivian fiestas), to Copacabana for the Fiesta of
Copacabana, to Tiwanaku where some Aymara celebrate the winter solstice on 21 June at 62
the start of the Aymara New Year, and to Potosi for the Fiesta of the Spirit when miners sacrifice llamas to Pachamama.
How Informants Affected Me
Some anthropologists have commented on how they were affected by their informants. Evans-Pritchard (1976:245) says
their I wonder whether anthropologists always realize that in the course of fieldwork they can be, and sometimes are, transformed by the people they are making a study of, that in a subtle kind of way and possibly unknown to themselves they have what used to be called 'gone native'... This is a highly personal matter, they and I will only say that 1 learnt from African 'primitives' much more than
learnt from me, much that 1 was never taught at school, something more of courage, endurance, patience, resignation and forbearance...
and I went to Bolivia when I was 48, having pursued careers in wildlife research school teaching. The years in those vocations had left their indelible stamp on my
to personality yet I was conscious of still being in process. Though a challenge my growth in maturity was neither unexpected nor long delayed in Bolivia, it did come from an unexpected quarter. People do not tell me that I lack patience. Wildlife work
especially absolutely demands it. Yet my continued association with Aymara pastors, and those who wrest a living from their herds and crops year after year in the mountains and jungles of Bolivia, heightened my consciousness of paciencia. I watched my Aymara
colleagues actively exercising patience on innumerable occasions. When faced with
difficult situations in the churches 1 watched them take their time summing up the
situation and heard them at times calmly counsel those concerned to exercise patience.
The word "patience" has virtually disappeared from Western vocabulary; it is a virtue to
be sure but not one that is widely valued by us Westerners, often to our detriment. I also
saw, and hopefully learned from their example, more of forbearance, diplomacy, and
thoughtful, self-controlled speech. 63
The best of times in Bolivia, and I would not have missed them for anything, were trips in the company of believers to distant rural churches. There were days, and sometimes nights, walking along valleys and across the hills chatting as we went with campesinos tending their herds of sheep and llamas and long journeys in the Landcruiser to churches near Titicaca, further out in the altiplano, and in the hills and jungles of the yungas region. Some of these trips were so long and demanding they began to feel like expeditions.
Objectivity
The subject of involvement with one's informants leads into the wider issue of
objectivity. There are several parts to this. The first is addressed by Evans Pritchard
(1976:241-242) and relates to the accusation that
the anthropologist goes into the field with preconceived ideas about the nature of primitive societies and that his observations are directed by theoretical bias, as though this were a vice and not a virtue. Everybody goes to a primitive people with preconceived ideas but, as Malinowski used to point out, whereas the layman's are uninformed, usually prejudiced, the anthropologist's are scientific, at any rate in the sense that they are based on a veiy considerable body of accumulated and sifted knowledge. If he did not go with preconceptions he would not know what and how to observe. And of course the anthropologist's observations are biased by his
theoretical dispositions, which merely means that he is aware of various hypotheses
derived from existing knowledge and deductions from it and, if his field data
permit, he tests these hypotheses. How could it be otherwise? One cannot study
anything without a theory about its nature.
Apart from serendipitous discoveries (usually made by those with prepared minds),
disciplines typically advance their theoretical foundations only when promising
hypotheses at the growing points are explored. Those which prove useful contribute to
the discipline's accumulated fund of knowledge. To advocate that anthropologists take
the field empty-headed is to undermine one of the means by which our discipline
advances and would deny a worker a crucial step in the scientific method. 64
A second source of criticism concerning an anthropologist's objectivity arises from the field procedure of participant-observation which is at the very heart of cultural anthropology. The criticism usually levelled is that by engaging in participant-
observation one is necessarily involved, at least to some extent, in the lives of one's informants thus compromising the objectivity of one's data. Of this dilemna, Conrad
Kottak (1992:18) says that
No matter how objective and scientific they fancy themselves, anthropologists are not mechanical measuring instruments. We are inevitably participant observers, taking part in—and by so doing, modifying, no matter how slightly—the phenomena we are investigating and trying to understand.
In the first instance, I played no part in the conversion experience of my informants. All except nine were converted before I went to Bolivia and those nine 1 met after their conversion so data obtained from them are not compromised. I obtained data
on my informants' conversion experiences by administering questionnaires and by
interviewing them formally and informally. I also gained much insight into the
conversion experiences of some informants by participant-observation in their subsequent
evangelistic endeavors. I did not initiate or try to modify anything of the church
association's organizational machinery. I did help by teaching theology to church leaders
in the Bible schools, driving Aymara colleagues to rural church anniversaries and other
functions, teaching in Sunday church services when called upon, and giving money to
alleviate personal suffering and to help with some church construction projects.
Second, though informants testified to benefitting from conversion, the reader will
see that this study is intended neither as an overt nor a covert apologetic for missionary
endeavor. Neither is it a defense of any particular theological or denominational
standpoint. The missionaries and Aymara informants in this study have a denominational 65
affiliation different from mine and differ in their standpoints concerning the ordinances of baptism and communion.
Third, if the reader detects a measure of authorial warmth and enthusiasm in these
pleased to pages, that is perhaps as it should be, for any compassionate person would be read the biographies of people in Chapter 8 testifying to having been healed of some crippling medical condition, delivered from alcoholism, of having repented of spousal abuse, or having found the resources to overcome emotional problems or family conflicts.
is perceptibly, and in It is only right and human to be pleased for people whose wellbeing some cases dramatically, improved.
should a It is only human, too, to be passionate about one's field of study. Why worker research something of no interest to him? Rubem Alves (1985:xxv) begins his
book thus.
The vicissitudes of my biography have caused me to be deeply interested in Protestantism. A person who is emotionally involved with his or her object, so the argument goes, cannot possess the serenity, impartiality, and objectivity that characterize science. Only someone who never loved or hated Protestantism can Carried to its ultimate write about it with objectivity. . . A very odd conclusion. is implications, it means that we can only be objective about something which devoid of interest insofar as we are concerned.
religion A fourth consideration is whether the findings of a worker in the field of
are necessarily compromised if he has a particular religious affiliation. Having a personal
study of religion. Quite faith has not, so far as I know myself, disadvantaged me in the
a the contrary, I believe, for the reason expressed by Evans-Pritchard. He was Roman
Catholic and argued that scholars possessed of a personal religious persuasion know first-
hand the importance of having and living the emic perspective of a religion. Their
experience of the supernatural also renders them less inclined to propose or promote 66
reductionists theories than professedly atheistic scholars such as Freud, Marx, and
Durkheim. Theories proposed by scholars with no religious affiliation
followed from their assumptions that the souls and spirits and gods of religion have no reality. For if they are regarded as complete illusions, then some biological, psychological, or sociological theory of how everywhere and at all times men have been stupid enough to believe in them seems to be called for. He who accepts the
explanations . . they reality of spiritual beings does not feel the same need for such . are not just an illusion for him (Evans-Pritchard 1965:121).
not This is not to say that anthropologists without a religious persuasion can sensitively and accurately explore religious issues. They most certainly can. It depends on the individual fieldworker.
practical As noted earlier in this chapter, it was greatly to my advantage from the
as a trusted standpoint of obtaining enough data that I was a believer as I was received
"hermano" from the outset and not as an outsider to be suspected. This was also Rebecca
Bomann's (1999:17-18) experience in Colombia. A faith, she insisted, "must be
examined from within, through the believers' perspective, instead of from without, which
believers' lives" is the secular perspective, to truly depict the strength of the faith in
(Bomann 1999:41).
How I Affected Informants
informants in a ministerial I mentioned in the previous section how I helped my
acutely sense. Annette and I also affected some informants materially. We were
conscious from the outset of the need for exercising wisdom in matters of material
concern. Very few Aymara belong in Bolivia's upper class. Not a day goes by in La Paz,
El Alto, and on the rural altiplano when each of those two million Aymara does not feel
class in some way their political, social, and economic oppression by the Bolivian upper
and they know, moreover, that their whole country is being mercilessly exploited by the 67
wealthy nations of the world. There is a high level of resentment on the altiplano which any foreigner can inherit. Though a few of the people with whom we worked had
personally by vehicles, Annette and 1 sought to avoid generating resentment toward us opting to go native and foregoing ownership of a vehicle in favor of suffering along with the great majority of Aymara the discomfort and inconvenience of travelling everywhere by public transport. Some Aymara expressed amazement at our reliance on public transport as missionaries invariably have their own vehicles, usually Toyota
stations Landcruisers. Some have two vehicles. When I saw the time and trouble at police and in courts of law which vehicle ownership cost some of my colleagues who had
transport, though accidents, I think it was good that we went without. Public uncomfortable and inconvenient, was readily available and very inexpensive. Aymara people also expressed surprise at us living among them in the slum city of El Alto when we could have lived more comfortably in La Paz and were pleasantly surprised that we
parents) ate all the food they put on our plates (one legacy of our Depression-era when we were their dinner guests.
When we were farewelled by the Mesa Directiva of Seminario Biblico, the officials
gave Annette a beautiful shawl and presented me with a poncho colored like those worn
by many elected authorities in rural communities. It was not just a gesture of thanks on
their part, an expression of Andean reciprocity, for material, ministerial, and medical
assistance; we had made some good friends among them and it was their gracious way of
thanking us from the heart. CHAPTER 4 THE RELIGIOUS CONTEXT
Skepticism is a state of mind possible only for those who observe and dislike evil,
but are not its direct victims. Those who are direct sufferers are impelled either to change the conditions or to seek to escape from them.
—Robert Gordis "Poets, Prophets, and Sages" 1971 : 177
Introduction
With the exceptions of Paul Turner (1984) and David Scotchmer (1993), scholars of conversion to conservative Protestantism in Latin America have overlooked informants' pre-conversion belief systems. This omission, along with neglect of the doctrinal content and praxis of Evangelicalism which rightly earned the community of conversion scholars a scolding from Rebecca Bomann (1999:71), means that the religious dimensions of conversion, a thoroughly religious phenomenon, have been neglected almost entirely. This chapter and the next treat those dimensions as they pertain to this
study.
We begin with a brief overview of the religious milieu obtaining on the altiplano in
the years 1941-2002 during which all my informants converted. The focus of this chapter
is folk religion as that was the most common affiliation (if 'affiliation' is the right word)
from which 37 of 74 (50%) respondents to one questionnaire converted. Of the remaining
respondents, 23 (31%) were not observing religious practices of any description at
conversion, 13 (17.3%) converted as children under the age of 13 through the influence
of family members, and one person (1.3%) converted from Adventism.
68 69
Following this overview, I sketch an ethnographic outline of Aymara folk religion.
The fiesta system is given more treatment as converts, when they ventured comments and opinions about folk religion, invariably referred to the fiestas. Informants spoke of the fiesta system and Catholicism interchangeably. In exploring reasons for their
abandonment of folk religion, I present a section which rounds up the attitudes of
Catholic and Evangelical informants. By comparing key ideological and praxical elements of folk religion and Evangelicalism, the next section presents potential attractions and advantages for people considering conversion. The chapter concludes with a discussion of folk religion in relation to conversion.
in At the outset, I need to say something about my use of the word "religion"
relation to the altiplano context as it could be misleading for readers from western
societies. The western perspective often considers religion as something optional to be
decided upon as individuals. It is an aspect of life which can be ignored or engaged in as
one wishes. Though 31% of my respondents claimed never to have practised folk
religion, belief in the supernatural is not an optional extra for countless thousands of
other people in the altiplano, as religion is in the West. In the traditional Aymara
worldview, all aspects of life in the cosmos are powerfully, and sometimes dangerously,
pervaded and influenced by supernatural beings (Tschopik 1951; La Barre 1969:172-186;
are Carter and Mamani 1 989:3 1 8; Albo 1989:131-1 32). Traditional Aymara who bom
into this worldview can, therefore, no more opt to be "religious" than they can opt to be
involved in the social and economic life of their communities. The spirits, at least some
of which are the souls of deceased family and community members, must be treated in
the manner which worldview prescribes. 70
The Religious Milieu in the Years 1941-2002
The religious context of Andean Bolivia from the mid-twentieth century to the
present is a milieu of at least six options some of which grade into each other as they have some elements in common. The first observation to make is that while one may safely generalize that Bolivians are a religious people, they are not invariably so. David
Livingstone, writing of his experiences in nineteenth-century Africa and expressing
himself in the scientific language of his day, said very well what 1 observed in highland
Bolivia. "The idea that primitive man is deeply religious is nonsense. All the varieties of
skepticism, materialism, and spiritual fervour are to be found in the range of tribal
societies" (Birkinshaw 1973:151). Some Aymara have religious convictions, others have
none at all. Of 74 respondents, 23 (31%) said they had no spiritual life of any description until the time of their conversion. They neither participated in the fiesta system of their
communities or neighborhoods nor performed religious rituals in their daily life. This
proportion is higher than 1 had expected and may be due to the influence of secular
education actively challenging aspects of the traditional worldview. Aurolyn Luykx
(1999:147-148) observed young Aymara training as rural schoolteachers having Aymara
religion, marriage customs, and land tenure patterns being presented as "anachronisms, of
no use in contemporary society." Homesick student teachers who took the liberty of
leaving school without permission to attend Day of the Dead (Todos Santos) celebrations
with their families were reprimanded by the rector who told them, "We're in a time of
change; when there are responsibilities, one must leave behind . . . the customs of our
grandparents." The students were then punished.
Read ct al. (1969:247-248) found in their survey of Protestantism in Latin America
that secularism is growing at the expense of Catholicism. 71
One of the most significant changes has been the marked increase in the number of religionless persons who profess no religion at all.. . The growing number of persons arises in the secularized elements of society, which no longer look to religion to solve the great questions of the day... Men are rejecting a Christianity
which is merely superstitious, formal, or nominal.
The proportion of populations in their survey professing no religion varied from
0.6% in Mexico in 1962 to 38.8% in rural Uruguay in 1963 (Read et al. 1969:247).
The second category in the religious milieu is foreign non-Protestant religions.
People in this group include Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. None of my informants were converted from this categoiy.
The third category is what I shall refer to as "campesino traditionalism." A number
of altiplano campesinos have openly criticized the Catholic Church in recent years in an
effort, perhaps, to strengthen their ethnic identity. "Traditional" indigenous religion is
centered on a host of deities and the mediatorial ministrations of specialists such as
yatiris, qulhri, layqa, and ch'amakani (Carter and Mamani 1989:294-302). Traditionalists
can be quite overt in their rejection of other religions. An informant residing in Oruro in
2003 told me that the campesinos who parade through the streets of Oruro the day before
Carnival starts to thank Pachamama for another harvest, do so to intentionally and
publicly distance themselves from festivities associated with the Catholic Church on the
days of Carnival. I did not learn why their parade ends near the Catholic Church.
Traditionalists seek the ministration of yatiris and other specialists but I do not know if
the specialists are also strict traditionalists or whether they use Catholic symbols and
invoke the blessings of Catholic deities. One is left wondering how pure "traditional"
religion really is. I had no informants from this category.
The fourth categoiy in the religious milieu consists of those Catholic priests, nuns,
and believers who hold solely to the faith and praxis of Catholicism. There is no room in 72
their lives for Andean deities though they minister at fiestas where these deities are
supplicated by yatiris on behalf of clients in the general populace. Priests and nuns who
tip the hat to Pachamama I classify as adherents of folk religion as their belief system
encompasses elements of Andean and Catholic religion. I hope that they would not be
offended if they knew how I perceive them. None of the converts to Evangelicalism
whom I interviewed for this project had been strictly Catholic.
A brief note on the nature of Bolivian Catholicism is in order. Catholic priests from
South Africa, North America, and an Irish nun with whom I studied at the Catholic
language school in Cochabamaba were quick to point out that they clearly distinguish
between the Catholicism of their home countries and that of Bolivia. The latter strongly
emphasizes Mary and the other saints and is so heavily syncretized with Andean beliefs
and practices that they were reluctant to even regard it as Catholicism. On the other hand,
two North American Catholic priests who had served many years in Bolivia, regarded as
bona fide Catholics those Aymara people who attended fiestas, lit candles to petition
Mary and the other saints in Catholic churches during fiestas, and consulted yatiris
(shamans). The divergence of opinion within Catholic ranks is a caution against
constructing a hard and fast system of classification. Lewellen (1977:122) observed that
for most Peruvian Aymara "the Catholic religion is the fiesta system." This holds for
Bolivian Aymara.
Though elements of Catholicism are clearly observable in Aymara folk religion so
that Catholicism continues to make its presence felt in that way, clergymen and nuns are
concentrated in the cities of La Paz, Oruro, and Cochabamba. I neither met them
personally nor heard of them visiting or living in the rural areas where they lived in years 73
gone by, a reflection, perhaps, of the growing region-wide shortage of Catholic clergy in
Latin America (Stoll 1990a:28-29; Chesnut 2003:9,27). During my time of fieldwork
several Franciscans lived in the small town of Copacabana on the southern shore of Lake
Titicaca, several more lived in El Alto city where the number of churches outnumber the priests, and there may have been a resident priest tending the magnificent church in the town of Calamarca south of La Paz. The current staffing shortage is exacerbated by the
celibacy requirement which renders the priesthood and sisterhood an unpopular choice of
vocation. Celibacy, says Lewellen (1977:1 16), is "utterly meaningless to the Aymara."
During the colonial era, priests held services in chapels on the haciendas and
attendance by the serfs was compulsory. Some of my informants who had been born on
haciendas referred to themselves as having been esclavos (slaves). The demise of the
hacienda system significantly depopulated rural areas of priests as they no longer had
captive audiences and were hated for having sanctioned a system which held countless
thousands of Aymara in virtual slavery during four centuries. It was a system, moreover,
from which the priests had profited materially.
Highland Bolivians can be critical of Catholic clergy. The half-millennial history of
cruelty and insatiable greed of many professing Catholics long ago drowned out the
voices of those genuine Catholic clergymen who were and still are proclaiming their
version of the message of salvation. La Barre (1969:171) observed in 1937-1938 that
"...many of the Aymara ... hate the religion (Catholicism) with the same vehemence that
they hate its representatives." Tschopik (1951:204) also observed this. Both scholars
wrote prior to the 1952 Revolution which put an end to priests receiving agricultural
produce from the campesinos as a form of tax. I heard adherents of folk religion 74
ridiculing Catholic priests who were afflicted with alcoholism, who had broken their vow of celibacy, and who were personally involved in profitable business enterprises. Yet
when it was in their interests to do so, these same critics were not above availing themselves of clerical services for weddings and funerals or having their possessions and persona sprinkled with holy water at fiestas.
Table 4-1. The Catholic Church Calendar for Highland Bolivia in 2003
1 Events in the Life of Jesus Catholic Saints Days
1 Jan. Holy Name - the day Jesus was named 6 Jan Epiphany - the visit of the magi to Jesus; the first gentiles to behold Jesus 25 Jan. Apostle Paul's conversion 2 Feb. Presentation of Jesus to Simeon and Anna in the temple 40 days after his birth 28 Feb- Carnival (The dates are for Oruro) 7 Mar 5 Mar. Ash Wednesday; beginning of the 40-day (Cuaresma) season of Lent 25 Mar Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary 13 Apr Palm Sunday - the triumphal entry and the beginning of Passion Week 18 Apr Good Friday - Christ's death on the cross 20 Apr Easter Sunday - the resurrection of Jesus 29 May Ascension Day - Jesus returns to heaven after promising to return to earth 30 May Corpus Cristi 31 May Mary visits Elizabeth 8 June Pentecost - the birth of the church and the coming of the Holy Spirit 24 June Birth of John the Baptist 29 June St. Peter 25 July St. James 6 Aug. The transfiguration 24 Aug. St. Bartholomew 18 Oct. St. Luke
1 Nov. All Saints' Day 30 Nov. Advent Sunday and preparation for the advent of St. Andrew Jesus 25 Dec Christmas - Birth of Jesus 26 Dec St. Stephen 28 Dec. Holy Innocents - the murder of the children by Herod 75
Protestantism and folk religion constitute the fifth and sixth categories of faith in
the religious milieu of twentieth-century highland Bolivia. Though I have distinguished between Catholics and practitioners of folk religion, Bolivian people, and especially
Protestants, may refer to them collectively, not necessarily in a derogatory manner but matter-of-factly, as paganos. Protestants more commonly speak of adherents to folk religion as Catolicos whether or not they participate in the life of the Catholic Church.
Practitioners of folk religion described themselves to me as Catolicos, for want, perhaps,
of another appellation. It may derive also from the Catholic Church's claim that these people are, in fact, in the Catholic fold. Chesnut (2003:9) notes that "Although Latin
America is considered the world's most Catholic region, historically not more than 15 percent of the population have been active practitioners of the faith, attending mass and other ecclesial activities on a regular basis." Catolicos may refer to Evangelicals as hermanos after the common Evangelical practice in Bolivia of addressing fellow male believers as hermanos and girls and women as hermanas.
Aymara Protestants on the altiplano include Baptists, Mision de Fe, the Holiness
Movement, Adventists, Presbyterians, the Friends Society, Assemblies of God, independent Pentecostal churches, Seminario Biblico, and the Union Cristiana
Evangelica (UCE). The latter is an association of about 900 churches nationwide which is governed and financed by the nationals themselves.
Seminario Biblico (the subject of this study) dates to 1941 with the arrival of
Samuel and Gladys Smith from Indiana. In the ensuing years they were joined by a few
other colleagues. They preached in the open air, set up a print shop, distributed pamphlets explaining the gospel, joined with another mission in establishing a radio station, and 76
established two Bible schools where they taught converts who wanted to enter the
ministry. The denomination that resulted is governed by seven unpaid officials who are elected from among the pastors to serve two-year terms of office. The officials and pastors meet quarterly to conduct business. Pastors, likewise, are unpaid and elected for two-year terms. Most rural people are in the subsistence economy, and, with a few
exceptions, urban people are employed in lowly paid menial work. The high
unemployment rate visits much poverty and hardship on city dwellers and urban
infrastructure is seriously underdeveloped. People live in spartan adobe houses and my
impression is that rural people are generally better fed. Churches are constructed by the
members themselves. They are rectangular, adobe, tin-roofed structures with wood or
earth floors and benches for pews. Services involve an opening prayer, prayers for special
needs, a time for formally welcoming and hearing from visitors, announcements,
enthusiastic singing accompanied by various musical instruments, a sermon, an invitation
to respond to the message, and a closing prayer. There is much good humor and shaking
of hands at church. Rural churches usually enjoy a potluck lunch (aptaphi) of various
kinds of potato and small amounts of salsa, sheep's cheese, fried eggs, fried sheep's liver,
and sheep's stomach lining. Members are enthusiastic about evangelizing family and
friends. Church officials visit all the churches at least once a year, usually on the occasion
of the church's inauguration. Though problems arise from time to time, there is, for the
most part, a warm sense of community, cooperation, and brotherliness within and among
the churches.
The Syncretized Nature of Aymara Folk Religion
Aymara folk religion is a mezcla (mixture), as it is not infrequently described, of
medieval Iberian Catholicism and elements of Andean religion surviving from pre- 77
Columbian times. Lewellen (1977:104) appropriately describes it as a "utilitarian continuum" with Catholicism and indigenous religion at the poles and "from which indigenous gods or earth spirits, saints or saviors, can be called upon according to the specific needs of the moment." La Barre (1969:165) describes folk religion in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca in 1937 and 1938 as "a worship and supplication of strongly localized,
sometimes ancestral and totemic, place-deities." While "there is not much left of a cult to
the god of the local group, there is an endless petty round of family or individual rituals
still surviving" (La Barre 1969: 172). A host of ways by which the Aymara relate to the supernatural has been documented by La Barre (1969:173-186) and Tschopik (1951).
Involved are various means of divination, the inteipretation of dreams, amulets, omens, sacrifices, magic, and fiestas. The Catholic elements of Maiy worship and saint veneration are evident in La Paz, El Alto, and Copacabana during fiestas. In speaking of
Aymara folk religion, I do not mean to imply the existence of a monolithic system of beliefs and calendrically organized observances as local variations abound. So vast and
rich is the subject that the material given in these pages amounts to only the briefest of
treatments. Doing it justice by including mention of local and regional variants of belief
and practice could fill a thousand pages.
I observed folk religion being practised at various stages of the life cycle, when
seeking to acquire all manner of material goods during fiestas, when exorcising spirits from business premises and newly purchased vehicles, in agricultural production, and during mining operations. Informants spoke readily and knowledgeably of "traditional"
Aymara religion but I have no data concerning the extent to which they grasped Catholic
doctrine. My impression is that they knew little due to the scarcity of Catholic churches 78
still functioning on the rural altiplano and the shortage of priests in El Alto and La Paz relative to the burgeoning population. Priests may officiate at urban weddings and bless with sprinkled holy water the symbols of hoped-for possessions bought in the great fiestas but beyond that most Aymara seldom if ever encounter a priest.
I studied folk religion to enrich my understanding of conversion dynamics. During interviews and when informal conversations turned in the direction of folk religion, the negative attitude of informants towards this facet of their culture became immediately
apparent. The typical comment, spoken assuredly and with distaste, is that folk religion is
falsa (false). This is discussed later under the rubric "Informant Attitudes to Folk
Religion." Second, to my surprise only five of the 102 informants specifically mentioned folk religion when recounting their conversion experience. Though disillusioned with folk religion, this was not the reason they gave for their conversion. They converted for the positive reason, they said, that they had encountered God. Troubled with ongoing and seemingly insoluble personal problems, four of the five had consulted yatiris and
Catholic priests but to no avail. They were thus disposed to explore potential sources of spiritual power outside the resources of their own culture.
In my quest for data I was, to say the least, in joumeyings often. Twice I travelled to the Fiesta of Urkupina in the Cochabamba valley with the Moscoso family and went twice more with Maryknoll language students as part of the school's orientation program
for people newly arrived in Bolivia. I attended three other festivals with the Moscoso family, happened to see some folk religious activities in my neighborhood in El Alto and
in the course of 43 ministry trips to churches in rural areas, and I timed annual vacations 79
to coincide with some of the festivals listed in Tables 4-1 and 4-2. Data on non-fiesta religious beliefs and practices are given later in this chapter.
We have noted already the syncretized nature of Aymara folk religion. Syncretism
is the "combination or blending of elements from different religious or cultural traditions" (Seymour-Smith 1986:274). The question arises regarding the form that
syncretism takes. "What kind of mezcla is it?" Is it analogous to many short pieces of
wool thrown together in a heap or is it better thought of as a weaving in which the
threads, while wound together, still retain their individual integrity while combining to form a distinctive pattern? June Nash, who studied miners in the largely Quechua city of
Oruro in the southern altiplano, concluded that the model of acculturation as a homogeneous blend of cultural elements
seems alien to the Bolivian way of thinking. It relates to a mode of thinking that
accepts only a single, hierarchically defined system of ideas. Indigenous thought is capable of entertaining coexistent and apparently contradictory world views. The identifications made between figures and concepts in the two systems are only superficial categories, and as one becomes familiar with the culture, people deny
the fit (Nash 1979:122).
Adherents of folk religion draw on the services of both yatiris and priests. Yatiris, while mentioning members of the Trinity in some of their prayers, primarily invoke the blessing of Pachamama; Catholic priests seek the benevolence of God, Mary, Jesus, and the saints. Yatiris are not Catholic priests and priests do not see themselves as yatiris.
Both are present at major fiestas such as Urkupina, Copacabana, and Carnival but they mostly work in different locations, invoke different deities, and perform different rituals.
While priests who are officiating at fiestas accept or tolerate the presence of yatiris, I only know of one instance where priests invited yatiris into a church building during a service
and even then the priests did all the officiating. To use the weaving metaphor, the threads 80
are the Andean and Catholic deities, the paraphernalia used when invoking those deities, and the various functions and rituals of yatiri and priest. The Andean mind holds these various elements, in tension when necessary, and knows how and when to engage each of
them. Their spiritual life is indeed a mezcla, but to the Andean it is not a confused mess.
It is a weaving which makes sense to them and not a tangled heap of woollen threads. In like manner, Mayas in Guatemala saw Mayan and Catholic belief systems as complementary and integrated them into a single worldview. "The Mayan religion, this- world oriented, emphasized following the traditions of the past to maintain personal, social, and cosmic harmony with gods and shamans. The Catholic religion, other-world oriented, emphasized life after death as being of over-riding importance" (Turner
1979:256). Guatemalan folk religion is thus described by Nida (1961:1-2) as a "two- headed system."
Syncretism arose when native people resorted to subterfuge in the days when
Catholic priests were seeking to expunge indigenous religion from the Andes. One native tactic involved disguising public festivities, rather than abandoning them altogether, by moving the date of a celebration to the nearest fiesta on the Catholic religious calendar
and clandestinely observing it at that time while ostensibly participating in the Catholic observance. The "Payment to Pachamama" ritual in November on the Island of the Sun, which celebrates the potato plants emerging from the ground, was preserved in this
manner by celebrating it under the guise of the Fiesta of San Andres on 30 November
(Villanueva 1976a: 14). The summer solstice, which was formerly held on 21 December,
was likewise preserved by moving it to 25 December to coincide with the Christmas celebrations of the Spaniards (La Barre 1969:187). The Diablada dance may have been 81
preserved in this way. It is said by some to have evolved from an ancient ritual involving dances and solemn songs performed by the Uru people who inhabited the Oruro region in times past. The dances were dedicated to the god Huaricato. The Urus moved the date of
its observance to coincide with Carnival when that was instituted by the Spaniards. In the same way, the altiplano people retained their centuries-old tradition, held at the end of the growing season in early February, of performing rituals of thanksgiving to Pachamama for another harvest. They postponed their rituals a few weeks to coincide with the
Catholic celebration of Carnival and surreptitiously celebrated Pachamama's goodness
during that fiesta. Indigenous people in La Paz did the same thing with rituals concerning
Ekeko, the god of abundance and good luck.
Another reason for the evolution of a syncretized folk religion is the fact that pre-
Columbian Aymara religion was conveyed from one generation to the next by verbal
instruction, observation, and practice. Its various elements were and still are open,
therefore, to the possibility of different interpretations by individual practitioners thus
generating local variants of belief and praxis. A good example is the essential nature of
Pachamama herself or, as June Nash (1979:123) insists, itself. Cole's (1969:38)
informants in the Aymara village of Pumasara identified Pachamama with the Virgin
Mary. Nash's (1979:124) work in the primarily Quechua city of Oruro led her to
conclude that they are separate entities. During fiestas an image of Mary is paraded about
and worshipped as a saint (Albo 1989:131-132). This plurality of meanings concerning
Pachamama, says Albo (1989:132), is a caution against generalizing from one part of the
Andes to another. He draws attention to colonial influences in current conceptions of this
deity. 82
Catholicism is also an "open" belief system receptive to the possibility of adding
elements to its corpus of belief and practice. It has evolved through the centuries as
councils of scholars periodically agreed to elevate church traditions to canonical status,
add various doctrines (Webster 1990:13-84), and assign scriptural status to the
Apocrypha. When Andean religion and Catholicism, with their mutual capacity for
incorporating elements of other belief systems, collided during the colonial era, the eventual result was the folk religion that is practised today. Roman Catholic authorities sought to extirpate all traces of traditional religion from the Andes (Arriaga 1968) but when the impossibility of this endeavor became apparent, they were faced with accepting or rejecting practitioners of the syncretized religion as bona fide Catholics. They chose the former option. In commenting on syncretism in the fiesta system, Hamilton (1962:6) says "the cycle of great feasts was taken over and "baptized" by the Roman Catholic
Church." Perhaps the priests sanctified the fiestas when they realized that in spite of their strenuous efforts to extirpate Andean religion they were simply too few to monitor the vast Andes region. The visible institutional aspects of Andean religion (the organized priesthood, the temples, and the sacrificial system) were destroyed (Arriaga 1968;
MacCormack 1991) but observances at individual and family level survived to the present day.
I neither observed nor heard anything to indicate the presence of syncretism in the
Seminario Biblico denomination (which is not to say that it does not exist). The reason
for this is not that Evangelicalism is unassailable to syncretism as it occurs among some
Quechua converts in Bolivia and fear of the spirits lingers strongly enough in the minds of some Aymara members of the Evangelical denomination Union Cristiana Evangelica 83
to influence their actions. Neither is an explanation to be sought in the intellects of the
converts as the Andean mind is ingeniously adept, as we have seen, at harmonizing
seemingly contradictory worldviews. The reason is that the initial Seminario Biblico
converts were so thoroughly discipled by the missionaries that all vestiges of folk religion were expunged from their lives, Evangelicals being quite intolerant of other religious practices in their midst. The Seminary missionaries, unlike their Catholic counterparts dating from the Conquest, had comparatively few converts and were able, therefore, to teach them more thoroughly in the Bible schools.
Non-fiesta Folk Religion
What 1 present here is only the briefest of glimpses at the beliefs and practices
applied in daily life and in the course of the life cycle. Some of this material is included as it has not been reported hitherto. For a larger sample of Aymara folk beliefs and practices current in the twentieth see century Tschopik (1 95 1 ), La Barre (1969), Cole
(1969), the host of papers published in Spanish in the 1970s by Victor Villanueva (the son of an Aymara yatiri), Buechler (1970; 1980), Buechler and Buechler (1971),
Lewellen (1977), Bastien (1978), Hams (1982), Carter and Mamani (1989), Berg
(1987a,b; 1988; 1990), and Berg and Schiffers (1992).
The first practice of a spiritual nature which we shall consider is the use of various kinds of amulets. These are readily available in "witches' markets" (mercados de brujeria) where shop owners specialize in the sale of paraphernalia used in religious rituals. They are two inches in size and made of rock, clay, or wood. The owl amulet imparts intelligence and wisdom; the snake protects one from evil spirits; the lizard
brings happiness; the puma protects one's house; the turtle gives long life; the condor ensures safe travel; a man and woman amulet brings luck in love; the toad brings 84
financial prosperity; a monolith like those at Tiwanaku and the llama ensure luck in one's
work; the sun gives energy and clear guidance for the pilgrimage through life; and a
species of freshwater fish (the karachi) gives good health so that life can be enjoyed. Fish
meat is considered particularly salubrious. Crosses on houses also bring good luck.
Fanners hang tassels of red, yellow, and green wool around the necks of their llamas and
alpacas and secure red or red and white tassels to ears of these animals to bring luck and ward off evil spirits.
People wanting to be more proactive in their desire for good fortune can offer various forms of sacrifice to the spirit world and Pachamama in particular. A dried llama
foetus (sulu) ranging in price from US$3- 13 depending on its size, is buried in the foundations of a new house to bring good luck to the owners. People in need of money, a vehicle, or health for themselves or their family members or friends, for example, may sacrifice a mesa or sahumerio, a small plateful of herbs which produce incense when
burned that is pleasing to Pachamama. Amulets symbolically representing what is desired are included with the mesa in the expectation that the spirit world will reciprocate.
Sacrifices are also made when a couple wants more children and at important junctures in the agricultural cycle such as seed-sowing in hopeful anticipation of a good crop.
A common form of sacrifice is the offering of a libation called a ch'alla. This involves spilling a small amount of drink on the ground as an offering to Pachamama
before drinking the rest. One is giving Pachamama something to drink and in keeping with reciprocal thinking, a fundamental element of Andean worldview, one may
justifiably expect to receive something in return. The ch'alla is performed any time of the year—when a house under construction is roofed, at the outset of a new work project, 85
when a new vehicle is bought, and when a business is begun. One offers a ch'alla out of
gratitude for what one has received and in expectation of what one wants. I once saw an old woman ch'alla inside a building with a wooden floor. She was eating lunch and when
some fruit juice was served she symbolically motioned as if to spill some on the floor, drank the juice, then carefully poured the last few drops through a crack in the floorboards.
Many beliefs and local variants of them attend each stage of the life cycle. If a child
is suddenly frightened when, for example, it is barked at or bitten by a dog, the soul leaves the body of the frightened (asustado) child and a yatiri must be consulted to
retrieve the soul and return it to the child's body. This is a very common belief and practice in Cochabamba and may be more prevalent there than on the altiplano.
A plethora of beliefs pertain to death. Hearing a dog bark is a harbinger of death as
the dog is alarmed at the frightening sight of the soul (alma) of a person who is about to die. If a child looks at a corpse, a curse will be visited upon the child. A particularly
feared curse is that the child will develop a darker skin. Aymara avoid walking on
moonlit nights as they believe one's shadow is the soul (alma) of a dead person out to kill someone. Primitivo Alanoca, former president of Seminario Biblico, told me that in his
village of Araca a rope is tightly wound around the corpse's neck as soon as possible
after death to prevent the dead person's soul from escaping. During a funeral a corpse is earned quickly to the cemetery in a blanket in relays by a number of men. If the body
gets heavier while it is being earned another person will die. A wooden coffin on the treeless altiplano can be prohibitively expensive so some bereaved families use a blanket.
A woman may die if she eats pork too soon after giving birth. This was the reason for the 86
death in 2002 of a Seminario Biblico woman whom we knew. Accidents are believed by some to be due to malevolent magic rituals such as burning a person's photograph.
The soul of a person is believed to return to the place he or she died. If the person
dies in the outdoors, relatives sometimes build a little shrine where the person died. One sees them frequently at the sites of fatal road accidents. The structure has three walls and
a roof. Flowers may be placed in it periodically. The visiting soul may dwell in the shrine
for a while. When hiking in the hills near Cochabamba, 1 chanced upon one built by one of my language teachers whose teenage son had committed suicide. The boy's father was
tending it at the time.
Following funerals, the clothes of the dead person are washed and then burned. In
the Esmeralda Valley east of the altiplano I watched a yatiri officiating, pouring alcohol on the bonfire and the ground before taking a swig himself.
Three Fiestas
Fiestas are virtually universal in occurrence beyond the band level of social organization and have long attracted the attention of anthropologists. The literature from
the Andes alone is considerable and includes works on the Otuzco festival in Peru (Smith
1975); the Callawaya Feast with the Dead (Bastien 1978); a semiotic analysis of Aymara fiestas (Buechler 1980); a long series of bulletin publications in the 1970s by Victor
Villanueva; chapters in books on the Aymara around Lake Titicaca (La Barre 1969), the
Aymara of Compi near Lake Titicaca (Buechler and Buechler 1971), the miners of Oruro
(Nash 1979), and the altiplano community of Irpa Chico (Carter and Mamani 1989); an analysis of a festival in K'ulta in relation to Aymara cosmology (Abercrombie 1986); the
Alasitas fiesta in La Paz (Untiveros 1990); the Morenada dance fraternity in Bolivia 87
(Ramos 2002); and works on the Oruro Carnival by Montan (1995), Murillo and Revollo
(1999), Vargas (1999), and Santillan (2002).
Highland Bolivia is a land of festivals. They are numerous, rich in symbolism, and mark and give meaning to events in the life of the individual, the family, the mining industry, and the annual cycles of agricultural production and community social life.
There are family-level fiestas for baptisms, and community-wide fiestas celebrating a patron saint, a local expression of the Virgin Mary, or an Andean deity such as Ekeko or
Pachamama. They are greatly looked forward to by participant and onlooker alike. In all
of these fiestas there is reference to and interaction with spiritual beings in the worlds above ground and below who powerfully influence one's material wellbeing. The abundance of food and drink at fiestas and the invitations and exchanges are important
expressions of generosity in a cultural context which often values reciprocity. (I say
'often' because Andean societies have their criminal element). They are also times of sensory plenitude with coca and cigarettes, food and drink, music, exuberant dances and colorful costumes, candles and incense, fireworks and sometimes dynamite. Fiestas, then, are vibrant social occasions and opportunities of time and place for interacting with the spiritual realm.
Speaking of the Aymara fiesta system, La Barre (1 969: 1 72) says that
the many cults of local gods, celebrated at specific calendric periods, have in modem times degenerated into what could best be called "fiestas," bearing a heavy burden of reinterpretation according to the calendar of feast-days of the (Catholic)
Church. There is nothing remaining, unless it be the alasita fair, which bears any resemblance to an uncontaminated cult to a native god, this having disappeared
centuries ago. This statement is true even though a goodly bulk of the content of
the fiestas is indisputably native in origin. It is even probable that in Bolivia there is a larger admixture of the native than anywhere else in Latin America, certainly more than in the familiar examples afforded by Mexico or Peru. Tables 4-1 and 4-2 list the main fiestas on the Aymara social-religious calendar in
2003. 1 attended several of the Catholic celebrations and all the "traditional" fiestas with the exception of the Summer Solstice. The biggest fiestas are held at a different time and place so that dance fraternities can travel from one to the other to participate if they are invited by the organizers. Even in the heart of Aymara country at the fiestas of Alasitas and Copacabana, Quechua people, mestizos, and foreign tourists are also present as onlookers and participants. Aymara attend the largely Quechua and mestizo fiestas of
Urkupina and Alasitas in Cochabamba. People living in rural communities are free to attend the fiestas listed in Tables 4-1 and 4-2 in addition to the calendar of events for their own rural communities or city neighborhood.
Table 4-2. Major Aymara Folk Festivities in the Bolivian Andes in 2003 Date Festivity 2 Feb Rituals of Candelaria 24Jan-9Feb. Fiesta of Alasitas (La Paz, El Alto) 28Feb-7Mar. Carnival (The dates are for Oruro) 14-21 April Holy Week - The Fiesta of Copacabana 25-26 May Fiesta of Gran Poder (La Paz) 5 June Fiesta of the Harvest (Pentecost) 24 June Observance of the Winter Solstice (Tiwanaku, Cochabamba, Samaipata) 25 June Fiesta of San Juan 14-16 Aug. Fiesta of Urkupina (Cochabamba) Oct-Nov (3 weeks) Fiesta of Alasitas (Cochabamba)
1 Nov. Fiesta of All Saints (Day of the Dead) 30 Nov. Fiesta of San Andres (Yumani - a community on Island of the Sun) 25 Dec. Observance of the Summer Solstice
Next we will catch a glimpse of three fiestas and then consider their functional importance as a backdrop to considering informants' attitudes to folk religion. The first
great fiesta on the (western world's) calendar in highland Bolivia is the fiesta of Alasitas.
In 2003, the La Paz and El Alto celebrations were held from 24 January to 9 February. 89
The festival centers on the god Ekeko (Figure 4-1). Variant spellings of his name include
Iqiqu (Van den Berg 1985:16) and Eq'eqo (La Barre 1969:195). Ekeko is the ancient god
of abundance and good luck whom Berg (1985:16) says may have been associated with
the productivity of the earth since ancient times. Effigies varying in size from several
inches to five feet represent him as a smiling and open-handed European male dwarf
loaded down with all kinds of goods in miniature called "alasitas." Victor Villanueva
(1976c: 1-6) says the Ekeko cult originates with a legendary Aymara religious leader who
itinerated among the pueblos performing miracles, exhorting his people to ethical living,
and being kind and generous to those in need.
During the fiesta several hundred temporary booths are set up in marketplaces to
sell alasitas as symbols of things that buyers want to acquire or do in the forthcoming
year. One can buy miniature money, cars, musical instruments, commercial trucks,
pickup trucks, minibuses, professional qualifications, workmen's tools, houses, small
outdoor booths, ovens, crates of beer, livestock, computers, and cigarettes. For those
hoping to travel, there are miniature passports and suitcases. Yatiris, brass bells in hand
and wreathed in clouds of smoke from their hand-held censers, wait for clients seeking
Pachamama's blessing on their newly bought alasitas. If Catholic priests are present, they
also pronounce a blessing on the miniatures; otherwise people take them to a Catholic
church. The faith of believers is not solely passive. To see one's material aspirations 90
;:.
h
, ;:;:\ :-::!:,:;:,.,:::v^:;;.;:: ::-;;:::, : :
Figure 4-1. Ekeko
realized, one must believe strongly in the power and beneficence of both God and Ekeko and work hard for the rest of the year. The atmosphere of a fair prevails with music playing, plenty of beer to drink, the smell and smoke of food being barbecued, and 8
91
children having fun at entertainment stalls and riding on merry-go-rounds. People from every stratum of society participate. In 2001, the president of Bolivia and ambassadors from foreign legations presided at the opening ceremony. The mayor of El Alto city, Jose
Luis Paredes, publicly petitioned Ekeko for US$1,000,000 to pay for the construction of a storm water reticulation system in the city.
In late February and early March, Bolivians celebrate Carnival. There are local variations but the fiesta typically involves parades of dance troupes accompanied by groups of autochthonous musicians and brass bands, the enjoyment of much beer, water fights in the city streets, paying homage to and seeking the blessing of Pachamama and the local manifestation of the Virgin Mary, parties in private homes, and much larger parties sponsored and organized by the various dance fraternities. Carnival in the major
cities is a remarkable cultural achievement drawing together in the space of several days
celebratory re-enactmemts depicting through the symbolic media of dance, music, and
costume diverse threads of race relations, politics, human exploitation, warfare, rebellion,
legend, economics, religion, mankind's dependence on nature, and some of the more
notable events in the previous six centuries of Andean history. In 2003, 1 made a special
point of attending this festival in Oruro as the city is famous for its expression of
Carnival. Oruro is predominantly Quechua but Aymara do reside there and Aymara
fraternities travel there to participate. Along with nineteen other cultural events in
different parts of the world, the Oruro Carnival gained international recognition on 1
March 2001 with its declaration by UNESCO as "A Masterpiece of the Oral and
Intangible Heritage of Humanity." The strikingly colorful and ornate costumes of the 92
; ; HI v V::: vr::7"^-;v^ "-.\^-v-:
aB'.' . lllllk~*
Figure 4-2. Diablada Dancer, Oruro Carnival, Februrary 2003 93
dancers and musicians and the superbly choreographed dances and dramatic performances by 30,000 dancers and 10,000 musicians from 48 fraternities make a truly impressive and exciting spectacle. The initial entrada lasted 12 hours in 2003. The
cultural accomplishment is paralleled by an equally impressive feat of civic organization as a huge number of people, estimated by one newspaper at 400,000, descend on Oruro requiring the last-minute marshalling of participants and the construction of parade route barricades and grandstands.
The 40-day period from the Wednesday of Carnival to the celebrations of Easter
(Semana Santa) in the third week of April constitutes the season of Lent (Cuaresma).
During this time devout Catholic people venerate the death of Christ by fasting, undertaking pilgrimages, and refraining from partying and other forms of carousing. In
the highlands of Bolivia, Semana Santa, while celebrated everywhere, is particularly
associated with a fiesta centered on the little town of Copacabana on the southern shores
of Lake Titicaca. It is a fiesta with a fascinating history and this account of it is compiled from three sources (Ruiz 1996; Bascones 1998; and Sanchez 2002). The town was founded by the tenth Inca, Tupac Yupanqui, and served as an important stopover for pilgrims from all parts of the empire who were journeying to the Island of the Sun in the lake to participate in rituals in the Temple of the Sun.
Following the arrival of the Spaniards, a direct descendant of the Incas called
Francisco Tito Yupanqui (born c.1540) was converted to Catholicism and became an enthusiastic convert. On one occasion he had a vision of the Virgin Mary and sought to capture the subject of the apparition in a sculpture using clay as his medium. He
displayed his work in the church but it was treated with disdain by the priests who 94
considered an image of Mary fashioned from this medium beneath her dignity and the sculpture was eventually rejected. Francisco went to Potosi to learn the art of sculpting and after much trial and error he finished on 4 June 1582 a sculpture that pleased him. He
brought it to Copacabana on 2 February 1583 amidst scenes of much devotion and
jubilation by the local populace. It was designated the Imagen de la Virgen de Candelaria and was set up on an altar in the church. In subsequent years the performance of miracles
was attributed to the statue and its fame grew. On 6 August 1925, the Virgin was crowned the Queen of Bolivia by Pope Pius XI and is known today as the Virgen de
Copacabana. In 1954, she was adopted by the Bolivian police force as their Generala de
la Policia.
jj 'w£4^»g&&3£wk^ , Figure 4-3. Copacabana 95
In the days immediately preceding the Semana Santa celebrations, about a thousand people, many of them foreign tourists, set out on foot or bicycle from El Alto to undertake a grueling 95-mile pilgrimage to Copacabana. The purpose for the pilgrimage
is to express sincere penitence for sins and/or to seek a blessing from the Virgen. In the town, people set up stalls along the streets to sell food, drink, sunhats, and souvenirs to
the hundreds of visitors and beggars also take advantage of the situation to line the
entranceway to the cathedral. During the day hundreds of people climb a nearby hill
(calvario) on which twelve "stations of the cross" are set at intervals, each
commemorating an aspect of Christ's crucifixion or a legend which has grown up in
connection with it. Yatiris, some wearing bright red ponchos and large crucifixes hanging
around their necks, wait at intervals along the ascent either to perform a ritual over miniatures like those bought during Alasitas by people hopeful of material blessing
(Figure 4-4) or to divine people's fortunes using coca leaves, tarot-like cards, or the
configurations produced by molten lead rapidly cooled in cold water. During the evening
of Good Friday people pack the cathedral to watch, in the course of a very moving
service, Franciscan priests re-enact the removal of Christ's body from the cross. The day
after Good Friday, hundreds of cars, pickup trucks, buses, and commercial trucks decked
out by their proud owners with flowers and paper streamers are brought in front of the
cathedral to be blessed by the priests and yatiris and doused with beer by the owners as
an oblation to Pachamama. 96 ^ IMFS
^IPllii^ftS SV-^v. BsnBBHHBRE' 11
HMH
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Figure 4-4. Yatiri, Fiesta of Copacabana, April 2003
Going by spectator attendance figures and the high level of participation, fiestas are
important in one or more ways for a huge number of Aymara people and, indeed, all the
ethnic groups in highland Bolivia. They are a lot of fun and provide badly needed times
of recreation for people from all walks of life. Lewellen (1977:126) says that 'if we must
look for a function for the fiesta system, we need not look very far beyond the patently
obvious: fiestas offer momentary release from a dreary existence." He also says that
urban-dwelling owners of rural land sponsor fiestas to reassert their land rights (Lewellen
1977:127-128). For costume makers they provide a year-round livelihood and for street
vendors, yatiris, and local businesses they are a short-term bonanza not to be missed.
Mystic elements belonging to the realms of Aymara myth and legend such as Ekeko 97
generate hope for the material improvement of one's lot in life. The Catholic faith is reaffirmed with priests officiating at pivotal times and places, churches being focal points. Devout Catolicos have a special occasion to venerate and petition a saint, Mary, or Jesus and people petition Pachamama with sacrifices or thank her for meeting some need. The dances and costumes of participants in fiestas are vivid reminders of events in their nation's history which Nash (1979:146-147) says may inspire hope in some that just
as the social order has been overturned in the past, so it can be again. (One recalls the mural in Cochabamba, Figure 1-1). While satirizing the Spanish overlords with symbolism in their dances and costumes may have been the only way that peasants could stage a protest in colonial days, today they simply engage in open rebellion. As their
protests are invariably ignored or brutally suppressed, I think it highly unlikely that they have much faith in the efficacy of symbolism as a medium of protest. Fiestas are also, of course, highly social occasions when rural communities enjoy receiving visitors hospitably; people who have left their natal communities return to renew old friendships and spend time with relatives; when newly acquired statuses are formalized (Buechler
1971:68-75; 1980:8) and old ones renewed as Catholic priests, governmental dignitaries, and the organizers and sponsors of the event, stamp their importance on proceedings by parading through city streets at the front of processions. In some rural Aymara
communities, the sponsorship of fiestas is still the means of ascending the socio-political
ladder (Buechler 1971 :69-73). Status of various sorts is still to be gained from involvement in the fiestas of Alasitas, Carnival, and Copacabana, but these events have so grown and diversified in popularity and content from their humble beginnings of 98
centuries ago that status-gaining is now only one of many functions and probably only
operates within dance fraternities.
Festivals, no matter what their meaning(s) when they were inaugurated in antiquity,
today mean different things to different people. That they are important in highland
Bolivia is undeniable. Events attracting up to 40.000 participants and 400,000 onlookers
are significant indeed. When people convert to Evangelicalism though, they typically
desist from participation soon after their conversion. We consider next why some
converts so readily abandoned something which has been a crucial and integral aspect of
Andean life for centuries.
Informant Attitudes to Folk Religion
We noted earlier that converts invariably spoke of folk religion in general as falsa
(false) but it was the fiesta system that excited most criticism from my informants, some
of whom spoke heatedly about it. 1 became suddenly aware of these strong feelings
during a visit to Bolivia in July 1996. My wife and I were in a car being driven through
El Alto city by a past-president of the Seminario Biblico denomination. Driving along an
empty street we could see a procession crossing through an intersection half a block
ahead of us. 1 asked our host if he would stop so I could photograph the event and he
obliged immediately, stopping a long way short of the intersection. He wanted, he said,
his two children who were in the car with us to remain well clear of the fiesta and stayed
in the car with them for the thirty minutes that I took photographs. In the course of
subsequent fieldwork in the years 2000-2003 I heard other Evangelical (and to my
surprise some Catholic) informants express negative feelings about the beliefs and
practices of folk religion. At the same time 1 undertook fieldwork on folk religion to gain 99
an etic perspective of that belief system. It soon emerged that disenchantment with folk religion predisposed some informants to seriously consider conversion.
Figure 4-5. Negritos Dance Fraternity, Fiesta of Gran Poder, La Paz 2003
In the first instance, the fiesta system embodies much that Evangelicals, in their striving to live in accordance with the teachings of the Bible, seek to avoid. The life- changing experience of conversion leads converts to abandon the worship of Andean
deities, Mary, and Catholic saints in favor of trusting God for all things temporal and 100
eternal. Experiencing the ongoing revitalization in their lives which began at conversion, they subsequently viewed folk religion as a system founded on beliefs and rituals devoid of the power to help with the demands of everyday life and their specific personal crises.
Folk religion was for them falsa and if that was not bad enough they despised it as idolatry. Their faith was now in a living God and not in Maiy and the other Catholic saints whose images of wood and plaster are paraded around during fiestas, a practice which informants were quick to point out violates the commandment in Exodus 20 that,
"You shall not make idols for yourselves. . . You shall not bow down to them or worship them..."
Second, the fiesta system is seen by converts as dissipation of hard-earned and, for most people, badly needed, money. The Bible, by contrast, teaches the value of enjoying
life and exercising prudence with one's income. One particularly expensive fiesta in
August involves the sacrifice of llamas to Pachamama at a sacrificial site ten miles south of El Alto. Though the meat is eaten, the ritual is costly as the animals are themselves valuable and those offering the sacrifice also have the expenses of trucking the animals to
the site and the yatiri fees. The same is true of llama sacrifices by mostly Quechua miners
in Potosi during the month of July and on the Day of the Spirit in August. The miners of
Potosi are poor even by Bolivian standards and can ill-afford the expense of such
sacrifices. 101
-.: .:::
:', ":.::: .'- ''. :':? :': . . .--^S . .. ..' .y
.: •.'"-.-"'
Figure 4-6. Caporales Dance Fraternity, Oruro Carnival, February 2003
William Carter (1965b:42) observed that by the time a man in the Aymara altiplano community oflrpa Chico had fulfilled all of his social and religious obligations to the community "he was usually mined financially." He gives the example of one man whose expenses for the fiesta of San Salvador ran to US$570. His annual income amounted to
$400; the gifts which guests contributed to reciprocate his generosity came to a total value of $25. Nida (1961:12) also observed that many of those who sponsor fiestas in
. . little Guatemala receive from their "enormous investment . very in return, except a
. . complain sense of prestige for having been the benefactors." They "not infrequently .
severely of the disproportionate costs." Paul Turner (1984:120) observed that Chontal
Evangelicals in Oaxaca, Mexico, had "neither the constant financial drain of paying for private rituals nor the sudden and substantial indebtedness of serving as mayordomo for a .
102
village fiesta." Mark Thumer (1993:73-74), writing of the fiesta system on Ecuadorian haciendas, quoted an informant as saying that
The fiesta cargos had been a great burden. ... 1 worked a full year on a coastal sugar
plantation just to pay for my priostazgo at the Fiesta de Los Reyes. . . . Then I had to
go door to door and offer the mestizo townsfolk a drink at every door, and 1 got
very drunk and passed out. And then I would come home to beat my wife. . . . The priests and the patrons kept us on the hacienda, in ignorance. We couldn't go to school. They kept us going from fiesta to fiesta, spending all our money, drunk all
the time. All in all, it was a sad life . . . everything was destined for the fiestas. .
[P]oor Ecuador ... they spent everything on beer and cane liquor, that's all.
During the hacienda era in Bolivia, serfs also commonly "lived from fiesta to
fiesta" (Wagner 1970:122). Some people in highland Bolivia still do, and, going by reports of the estimated attendance figures published in newspapers, the major fiestas are gaining in popularity. Forty thousand dancers and musicians paraded through Oruro in
the first twelve hours on the opening day of Carnival in 2003. The members of some dance fraternities spend considerable time and money on involvement in fiestas, travelling to various places to participate as a troupe. The material improvement evident
in the lives of people following their conversion is discussed further in Chapter 8.
A third reason converts disapproved of folk religion is that though, as we noted
earlier, folk religion fulfills important functions, is rich in meaning for Bolivians (and
endlessly fascinating for the anthropologist), none of my Evangelical informants reported
finding help in their native belief system for the personality disorders, family problems,
illnesses, or addictions which afflicted them before conversion (Chapter 8). Had they
done so, there would have been no reason to convert. Rather, engaging in folk religion,
and the fiesta system in particular, with its bouts of drunkenness, expenditure on alcohol
and costumes, and the wages lost from time off work to travel and participate in fiestas,
worsened their physical, emotional, economic, and social plight. By contrast, the 103
testimony of my informants is that the gospel delivered on its promise of instruction for wholesome and satisfying living and the provision of divine power to live that life.
Figure 4-7. Morenada Dancer, Oruro Carnival, Februrary 2003 104
Converts were glad to be out of the fiesta system in particular and kept their children well
away from it. I never heard them speak well of it in any respect or even hold conversations recounting interesting and amusing things which happened during fiestas
they had attended before conversion. Some informants spoke vehemently about it. As a
topic of conversation among the converts it was not taboo, just one that was seldom
engaged in. They clearly regard folk religion as antithetical to their ongoing personal interests and to the purposes and functioning of their newly adopted faith. So strongly does the Seminario Biblico denomination feel about fiestas that pastors preach against it, schedule some church anniversary celebrations to coincide with and substitute for local fiestas, and censure members who participate in them. A pastor at Chua Cocani lost his ministry when his congregation learned that he had danced while serving his term of office.
Encountering fiestas in the streets evokes painful memories for some converts of the trouble and shame that they brought on themselves and their families for having once engaged in what they now see as foolishness. The harm that drunkenness with its associated quarrelling, violence, and licentiousness does to one's family life, reputation,
physical health, sense of wellbeing, and finances is there for all to see. Carter (1972:141) observed that drinking serves the social purpose of dissolving "hostility, distrust, and social reticence" but my informants spoke negatively of drinking in social and private contexts. The drunkenness which attends fiestas is not without its dangers. Every year the newspapers run stories of people who die, usually as a result of alcohol-related violence 105
and traffic accidents, during the fiestas in La Paz, Oruro, and Urkupina. In a newsletter to her friends in the United States in 1956, the missionary Gladys Smith wrote
Some very sad things have happened near our church. Some months ago during a feast, many were drunk and were dancing just behind the church. There is a river near. These poor people were so drunk they did not see the river so they danced
right into it... Thirty lost their lives and many were badly wounded.
What did Catholic informants say about the fiesta system? Alberto and Maria-Elena
Moscoso, our hosts during language school, told me that the Virgin of Urkupina had blessed them with a Mitsubishi truck after they attended the Fiesta of Urkupina. A
teacher at Maryknoll language school in Cochabamba, Guadalupe Griancom, makes a point of attending mass during the Fiesta of Urkupina each year but regards the dancing of the hundreds of young women in their revealing costumes as nothing more than
Catholic Church-sanctioned displays of vanity which border on exhibitionism.
Another language teacher, Jaime Mejia, is an Aymara and a devout Catholic. He was 62 in 2003. For many years he taught at Maryknoll Language Institute in
Cochabamba and has co-authored an Aymara grammar and an extensive Aymara-Spanish dictionary. Jaime firmly believes in Jesus Christ as his savior from sin in this life and from hell in the next, has no intention of leaving the Catholic faith, and is openly scornful of the magic and fiestas of folk religion which he sees as institutionalized foolishness. A kindly and mild-mannered man, he spoke heatedly about the fiesta system as some
participants in parades are poor people who can ill afford to spend money on the hire or
purchase of expensive costumes merely for the sake, as he sees it, of a brief display of
ostentation in the streets. He knew of some fiesta dancers who were not feeding their
children at all well. The pretense of wealth displayed in their dazzling fiesta costumes is,
he insists, just another expression of the "lying and deceitfulness which characterizes 106
Bolivian society." They are, Jaime says, "fooling no one but themselves." Ramos
(2002:45) says the ostentation of fiestas is no secret and Murillo and Revollo (1999:89)
speak of it as "incomparable ostentation." Wealthy people can probably afford to participate in fiestas but not the poor, some of whom take out hefty bank loans to meet the expenses.
Robert Edgerton begins his book Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive
Harmony (1992:74) with the provocative statement that "All societies are sick, but some are sicker than others" and proceeds to argue for the universal existence of maladaptive beliefs and practices which "significantly endanger people's health (and) leave them discontented."
(In as) much as humans in various societies, whether urban or folk, are capable of empathy, kindness, even love, and as much as they can sometimes achieve astounding mastery of the challenges posed by their environments, they are also capable of maintaining beliefs, values, and social institutions that result in senseless cruelty, needless suffering, and monumental folly in their relations among themselves and with other societies and the physical environment in which they
live. People are not always wise, and the societies and cultures they create are not ideal adaptive mechanisms, perfectly designed to provide for human needs. It is mistaken to maintain, as many scholars do, that if a population has held a
traditional belief or practice for many years, then it must play a useful role in their
lives. Traditional beliefs and practices may be useful, may even serve as important adaptive mechanisms, but they may also be inefficient, harmful, and even deadly (Edgerton 1992:15).
Instances of harmful and cruel sociocultural maladaptation including infibulation in
Muslim societies (p. 139). suttee (p. 136-8), the killing of twins by the Ijaw of Nigeria
(p. 58), Aztec and Pawnee human sacrifice (p. 153), the now extinct practice of Chinese
girl foot-binding (p. 134), and the burial of wives and servants in their dead master's tomb — (p. 135-6). Edgerton is right "people are not always wise." Some traditional practices are harmful. My informants who dislike the fiesta system might not equate its potential for harm with some of the cultural practices in Edgerton's list but they see it nevertheless 107
as behavior which harmed them and their families and harms the lives of those who still participate.
Potentially Attractive Doctrinal and Praxical Elements of Evangelicalism
In this section we continue asking why nearly half of my informants exchanged one belief system for another. We have considered reasons why people, when they are free to
do so, might abandon the religion of their ancestors, something which is at the very core of their Aymara identity, worldview, and ethnicity. These reasons, though, are insufficient to explain why people would switch their spiritual allegiance when knowingly faced with incurring the possibly fatal wrath of fellow community members and the likelihood of being disinherited by parents frightened of retribution from the
spiritual realm for their child's defection. Being dissatisfied with folk religion is not a
reason in itself for embracing another religion. It might even produce disenchantment
with religion altogether. There must be positive reasons for converting. In this section 1 compare key ideological principles of the two belief systems, noting what people might
find attractive in Evangelicalism. This is not to say that all people had these advantages in mind when contemplating conversion but they are advantages nevertheless and would have become apparent to converts as they learned the precepts of the Bible in the churches that they attended.
Power-oriented Worldviews: The Spiritual, Natural, and Human Worlds are Integrated and Influence Each Other
The world of traditional Aymara religion is surrounded and invaded by gods, goddesses, and spirits all of which wield power in the realms of man and nature. These spirits dwell on mountains (achachila) and hills, in the earth (Pachamama), the 108
underworld (Tio, Supay), houses (kunturmamani), Lake Titicaca, and rivers. Harry
Tschopik (1951:188-189) observed that the district of Chucuito in Peru
... is so densely populated with supernatural beings that it is literally impossible to enumerate all of them. They inhabit every mountain peak, every lake, every stream. They live under houses, churches, and fields, and lurk in caves, ruins, and in
irregularly shaped rock formations... In addition to the place spirits that exist almost eveiywhere in nature, there are the ghosts and souls of the dead, a variety of
demons, and, finally, the many whose images stand in the churches for all to see.
Spiritual beings are involved in virtually every aspect of Aymara daily life,
influencing the material and human worlds for good and evil. They bring health and
illness to people, their families, crops and animals, and are responsible for rain, hail,
floods, and lightning. People in towns and cities may seek the blessing of spirits on their
families and businesses. When offended by the breaking of a taboo or failure to
reciprocate, spirits can be dangerously vindictive. They are unpredictable and capricious
and must be placated by various rituals. Andean religion, therefore, is highly power-
oriented. Carter and Mamani (1989:318) say that "the Aymara is not only surrounded by
his supernatural world; he is dominated by it. His destiny is predestined by these
powers." Other predestining influences include the manner in which babies are bom and
the first haircutting ceremony for infants.
In the midst of all this external controlling power the Aymara do not have a helpless victim mentality. They can resort to wearing and sacrificing amulets, performing
ch'alla libations, sacrificing animal foetuses, and burning mesas. If their own ministrations fail them, there are religious specialists who know how to manipulate the
spiritual realm for personal ends. In the times of the Inca, Tiwanaku, and other great
Andean civilizations, religion was organized institutionally but today resides in the hands of local specialists who are only granted recognition by fellow community members if 109
the hallmarks of shamanic calling are evident by publicly proven results. Aymara specialists include yatiris, callawayas, qulliris, layqas, and ch'amakani (Carter and
Mamani 1989:294-302).
The deity whom rural and urban Aymara mention most frequently is Pachamama.
Albo (1989:131) characterizes Pachamama as the "principal spirit" of "this world" and
Nash (1979:123) speaks of Pachamama not as a living spiritual being but a "time-space concept," a "female force of continuity in subsistence production. Offering to her ensures
continuity in the returns from crops and flocks." Pachamama, says Albo (1989:131), is
closely associated with agricultural productivity and is related to productive spirits of
plants (ispalla), animals (ilia), and minerals (mama). While Pachamama is omnipresent in
aka pacha, each community, cultivated field, and concrete house has its own protector. At the same time, Pachamama has characteristics of the devil. She gets hungry, can be
harmful, and is wife of the achachila in the mountains and of Tio in the mines.
The worldview of Evangelical Christianity also holds to the belief that the cosmos
is inhabited and affected by powerful spiritual beings and that the natural, social, and
spiritual worlds influence each other. It, too, is a power-oriented religion. The third
person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, is an entirely spiritual being who is omnipotent and omnipresent in the earthly and spiritual realms (Berkhof 1949:95-99). The Bible also
teaches the existence in the cosmos of a host of powerful angels all of which were created by God. There are two kinds. Those which are wholly good in nature (angels) serve God by worshipping him in heaven and carrying out his purposes on earth; those which are wholly and irremediably evil (demons or devils), are agents of Satan (also known as the 110
Devil). They do what they can to harm believers and keep unbelievers from learning the truth about salvation through Christ (Berkhof 1949:148-149; O'Donovan 1996:176-195).
The supreme examples for Evangelicals of interaction between the spiritual, human, and natural realms are the creation of the cosmos, including human beings, by
God and the salvific intervention of God in human history through the death and resurrection of Christ. God created the natural realm and continues to maintain its existence through the operation of laws and processes which he set in motion at that time.
In the spiritual realm he created angels which intervene in the natural world and in the affairs of man as he directs (Berkhof 1949:126-138, 510-540; Strong 1979:371-410). At conversion my informants had a personal experience of God's power which left them in no doubt that God was more powerful than the deity or philosophy to which they had
been adhering (Chapters 6 and 8).
Man's dynamic interaction with the natural realm is readily apparent in that it
provides all our physical sustenance. The natural realm is also a major source of aesthetic inspiration for artists and musicians, the means of recreation for millions, and, for
Evangelicals, a major source of praise and thanksgiving to God. Nature, though,
occasionally wreaks havoc on human populations. As I write millions of people in South
Asia are suffering dreadfully in the aftermath of a devastating tsunami. The timing, nature, and extent of these cataclysms are believed by Evangelicals to be under God's sovereign control (Bridges 1988:97-99). The literature regarding divinely ordained or
allowed suffering is vast. Suffice it is to say here that suffering believers are exhorted to
trust in the goodness of God no matter what befalls them in this life, that God intends to Ill
bring good out of their suffering, and that believers, once in heaven, will live forever
secure from the prospect of suffering.
The Spatial Dimension of the Two Worldviews: A World Divided
The Aymara world consists of three spatial regions (pachas), the middle one of
which has boundaries contiguous with the other two. Alajj pacha is the world above; the
world of the sun, moon, stars, God the Father, Christ, the Virgin Mary, Saint James
(Santiago), and the souls of dead people. As the sun, moon, and stars order the day, the
night, and the march of the seasons, this realm has more to do with the maintenance of
order in the cosmos than the other two pachas. As it is the realm of the Catholic deity and
saints, it is also associated with the conquistadors and thus the institution and
maintenance of a new social order in the Andes.
Aka pacha is the surface of the earth; the realm of human beings, plants, animals,
and Pachamama. Manqha pacha, the world below, is inhabited by saxra, supay, phiru
(fierce), Tio (owner of mineral veins in the mines), and wak'a. Though these various
deities were equated with the devil of the Bible by Catholic priests in the colonial era, they have retained their sacred character in the minds of many Andean people (Albo
1989:126-133). Eighty-seven spiritual beings are listed by Berg (1985:258-260). The
supernatural beings of manqha pacha inhabit wild and dangerous places, springs, cumbres, and crossroads, and they generate both dangerous and life-giving meteorological conditions. The souls of venerable ancestors, the achachila, also inhabit manqha pacha. They live on certain mountains, serve to protect communities, and some exercise special power over clouds, wind, rain, ice, and hail. They are, therefore, important agriculturally as agents of plant growth or destruction and must be respected and propitiated with appropriate sacrifices. 112
The three pachas have symbolic zoological associations. Not surprisingly, the
condor is associated with alajj pacha, the puma with aka pacha, and the snake symbolizes manqha pacha. As ants make their colonies in the ground and frogs sometimes bury themselves in moist earth, these animals are also associated with manqha pacha.
Excavations at Tiwanaku indicate that these associations date at least from the time of that civilization (Freddy Mendez Estrada pers. comm.). Tiwanaku lasted from around 100
BC until 1000 AD (Moseley 1994:203). Raptors, wild cats, and snakes also feature prominently in the iconography of the Chavin de Huantar complex in Peru (Moseley
1994:19-20).
Evangelicals divide the cosmos into four spatial realms (earth, outer space, heaven,
and hell) but there is no correspondence in purpose, operation, or inhabitant of these regions with those of the pachas. The four realms are created by God for specific
purposes. Earth is inhabited by vast and varied assemblages of mutually interdependent plants, animals, and microorganisms which sustain life on earth and which are objects of great beauty and intellectual inquiry. The sun and moon in our solar system govern the seasonal cycles of nature on earth and, along with the constellations in our galaxy, are
crucial for navigation. Heaven is the abode of God the Father, God the Son, angels which
serve God in various capacities, and the souls of believers. Hell is the eternal destination
of evil spirits (demons), of whom Satan is foremost, and unbelievers (Berkhof 1949:735-
738; O'Donovan 1996:177-185,194-195). In heaven, believers will be finally and forever
free from the presence of all sources of evil and the suffering which it causes.
A Cosmos in Conflict
Aymara worldview, in common with tribal and peasant worldviews the world over,
explains much, if not all, of the misery which is visited upon the earth in terms of the 113
activity of evil spirits. These spirits are believed to be capricious in nature and possessed of power over the forces of nature. This belief, coupled with the occasional spirit-inspired ravages of nature contingent upon life at high altitudes, reinforces the tenet of Andean
worldview that the cosmos is, at least from time to time, the scene of intentionally undertaken conflict. Aggression directed at human beings takes various forms. On the individual level, for example, parents warn their children that on dark nights the khari khari (literally, "he that cuts the flesh") roams the countryside seeking people who are travelling alone. The khari khari induces drowsiness in his victims and then cuts the fat off their bodies to make the candles and wafers used in Catholic communion services.
Some yatiris say that the khari khari are Catholic priests or monks and that their victims invariably die. With the advent of vehicular transport in highland Bolivia, the belief has arisen among some people that khari khari rides on buses and uses an instrument of some kind to steal the body fat of people who are sleeping. Spirits may also direct their malice at entire communities by sending savage hailstorms to sweep across the altiplano at a time of the year when potato plants are most vulnerable. In a matter of minutes whole crops are destroyed.
Belief that the cosmos is in conflict is also a central tenet of Evangelicalism. The
Bible repeatedly reminds its readers that
There is a spiritual war in progress, an all-out battle. There is evil and cruelty,
unhappiness and illness. There is superstition and ignorance, brutality and pain.
God is in continuous and energetic battle against all of it. God is for life and against
death. God is for love and against hate. God is for hope and against despair. God is
for heaven and against hell. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every
square foot of space is contested (Peterson, in Hiebert 2000:3-4).
The reason for this conflict is that Satan and his minions are persistently scheming to thwart the salvific purposes of God for human beings. Their tactics operate at several 114
levels. They oppose individual believers by seeking to induce a predominantly pessimistic outlook, victimizing them by criminals, instigating slander and rumors and other schemes of personal attack, inflicting them with emotional problems, sickness,
discouragement, suicide, and tempting them to disobey God. This is not to say that spirits are entirely responsible for these woes as other causal factors may be entirely responsible.
Evangelicals believe, nevertheless, that a major tactic of evil spirits is to exploit existing weaknesses in people as a prelude to wreaking destruction on their wellbeing, health, reputation, faith, and service for God. Opposition may be perpetrated also at family level through squabbles and divisions and can be orchestrated at national level by afflicting whole nations with political, social, and economic troubles, corruption, civil unrest, and war (Berkhof 1949:148-149; O'Donovan 1996:182-202).
The Evangelical combats what he perceives as the activity of evil spirits by
asserting his confidence in God's sovereignty, goodness, and power in all the circumstances of life; living prudently so as not to invite personal trouble; promulgating his faith when opportunity permits; combatting difficult circumstances by unwaveringly asserting what the Bible has to say concerning them; taking comfort in his eternal salvation; and praying about all that concerns him. Prayer includes asserting the authority and power of God over evil spirits and the consequences of their activity (O'Donovan
1996:212-215). Believers, then, have at their disposal the means of victory over the activity of evil spirits which held them in fear before their conversion.
The Maintenance of Balance and Harmony in the Cosmos
Folk and Evangelical belief systems agree on the integrated nature of the cosmos but disagree on the means by which its equilibrium and harmony are maintained. Aymara
belief in the desirability of balance and harmony in the cosmos is reflected in their 115
understanding of the personalities of spirits which are believed to resemble human personalities in being neither wholly good nor wholly bad but capable of goodness and
evil. Thus balanced within themselves, they tend, nevertheless, to one end of the benevolent-malevolent spectrum or the other. This belief in the 'balanced personality' of
spirits is understandable in view of the belief that many spirits are the souls of deceased
persons. Berg (1985:258-259) lists 55 essentially benevolent supernatural beings and 32 which are principally malevolent. The Bible teaches Evangelicals that spirits are either
entirely good (angels) or wholly evil (demons, devils) (Berkhof 1949:148-149).
The living things of aka pacha are permanently exposed to the forces and beings of
the other two pachas. They are occasionally in conflict and always complementary in
accordance with Andean belief in the checks and balances dynamically maintaining the
equilibrium of the cosmos. The beings from these two worlds demand the collaboration
of human beings, and, in exchange, offer material prosperity and power. These beings are
hungry and powerful. Treated with deference and generous offerings they can bring
people good health and productivity on farmland and in the mines; treated badly they can
and do bring disaster. Should humans fail to fulfill their obligations, the beings of the
other worlds do not hesitate to threaten and punish. "The offering of chicha, or in some
more elaborate ceremonies, the fetus of a llama, guarantees equilibrium in the productive
and reproductive forces" (Nash 1979:123-124). With the advent of Catholicism, the
spatial realms of alajj pacha and manqha pacha were interpreted by the priests as heaven
and hell. Andeans rejected this transmogrification, however, as the priests taught that the
spiritual forces which inhabit these two places are in permanent and bitter opposition and
that equilibrium in the cosmos is not maintained by the complementary actions of 116
spiritual beings. The priests extrapolated further and equated alajj pacha and manqha pacha with hard and fast ethical concepts of good and evil, and theological formulations of salvation and condemnation. For the Andean mind, assigning absolute qualities to the
pachas and the various living things therein, whether human or spiritual, is an
oversimplification and a misrepresentation of reality. Rather, all inhabitants of the worlds above and below are capable of good and evil depending on human treatment of them.
One must, therefore, be careful to maintain a relationship of reciprocity with them as this
alone can guarantee equilibrium between the two worlds. The world above is also associated with Catholicism and the colonial era and the realm below with the ancestral
world. This could imply a certain subordination of the world below to its aerial counterpart but Andean concern with equilibrium dictates the necessity of not elevating
the significance of one pacha at the expense of another but rather being on good terms with both (Albo 1989:126-130).
In accordance with the Andean view of complementarity and cosmic equilibrium, the services and spatial realms of influence of Catholic priests and Andean people (not exclusively yatiris) are seen to complement one another. The masses and other services performed by Catholic priests relate to alajj pacha, the Catholic realm of influence, while
Andean rituals such as burning mesas and offering ch' alias relate to aka pacha and manqha pacha.
Evangelicals believe that God maintains the universe both through the forces of nature which he set in motion initially and by his direct intervention. They point to
biblical passages such as Job 37 and 38 where he is said to determine the precipitation of rain and snow, atmospheric temperature, the direction of the wind, the boundaries of the 117
sea, and the times of dawn and sunset. Psalm 104 speaks of God directing springs of
water which quench the thirst of animals, bringing forth vegetation from the earth to provide food and wine, setting the phases of the moon and the daily trajectory of the sun,
and having created the patterns of instinctive behavior of wild animals. The exploration
of these facets of nature with sophisticated scientific equipment and exact means of
measurement does not detract at all from their divine origin and maintenance as integral
components of the cosmos.
God, say Evangelicals (Bridges 1988:97-99), is not always concerned with maintaining equilibrium on earth or in the lives of individual people, families, local communities, or nations. They point to such verses as Isaiah 45:6 "1 bring prosperity and create disaster" to show that he authors disasters also. Judah's deportation to Babylon
after being repeatedly warned by the prophets not to forsake the ways of God is a well- known example of divinely wrought disaster. Believers, though, whatever they are
experiencing, can know the peace of mind that God is in control of their circumstances
and is working for their ultimate good.
Fear of Capricious Spirits Versus the Peace-giving Constancy of God
In accordance with Andean belief in and desire for equilibrium, the spirits of
Andean religion, like human beings are individually capable of goodness and evil. They are often described as capricious, being unpredictable and sometimes vicious. When offended, perhaps through a person's breaking a taboo or through a lack of reciprocation, they can become dangerously vindictive. Carter and Mamani (1989:290) give the example of a woman who brought the wrath of the spiritual world down on her community when she secretly aborted her baby. In that case vengeance took the form of maturing crops being destroyed by unseasonal hail. Not surprisingly, the Aymara 118
frequently live in fear of the power and willingness of spiritual beings to wreak havoc in their lives. One mother in our neighborhood instilled fear of the spirits in her children to keep them from wandering outside at night.
Evangelicals, on the other hand, have a dichotomous perspective of the spiritual
realm. For them God is constant in all his perfections. His angels are immutable and
always do the bidding of God who is always good and loving toward believers even when
bringing disciplinary measures to bear on their lives. There is no need, therefore, for believers to be afraid of God, though the Bible enjoins them to be respectful and reverential. Neither do believers need to fear evil spirits as the Bible teaches that God has them under his sovereign control and that their attacks may be overcome through prayer.
Nida ( 1 96 1 : 1 3) puts it this way
The spirits of the mountains and the valleys may be powerful, but they are nothing
in comparison with the Spirit of God, whom all of us may have as our protector and helper, if only we are willing to receive God's way of life.
Three Praxical Differences: Idol Worship, Magic, and Witchcraft
In spite of vigorous efforts by the Catholic Church in colonial times to extirpate
Aymara religion, there survived a remarkably rich assemblage of beliefs and practices classifiable as idol worship, magic, and witchcraft. Idol worship in the Andes extends at least as far back to the veneration of mummified ancestral remains (wakas) and was transferred to the worship of Mary and other Catholic saints whose life-size images are paraded around during fiestas. Witchcraft or black magic, the use of spiritual means to
cause others harm, may not be very common. I know of only one person who practised it.
Forbes (1 870:236) reports suspected witches occasionally being "put to death with terrible tortures by the Indians of the remote districts." The practise of magic is much 119
more common. Yatiris and laity alike, as we noted earlier, deploy it in a wide range of circumstances.
Evangelicals know that the Bible strictly forbids them from practising magic, witchcraft, and idol worship. Instead of relying on magic, the Bible teaches believers to
work hard at their occupation, to be loving and king in all their relationships, to be wise with their money, to be generous, and to trust God for whatever they need. The emphasis
is "need." God does not promise to provide more than that. Witchcraft, being malicious,
is obviously forbidden. So, too, is idol worship which the New Testament equates with
anything that takes the rightful place of God in a believer's life.
Obligatory Reciprocity Versus Voluntary Service out of Gratitude and Love
The human, spiritual, and natural worlds of the Aymara are bound together in a
complex web of reciprocal relationships. Within the sphere of human relationships,
reciprocity is seen, for example, in the expectation that adult children will care for the
aging parents who raised them and it is an element in relationships between siblings,
extended family, Active kin, friends, and community members. In the markets, vendors
seek to maintain a stable clientele by giving them better quality products and yapa (a little
more) in return for customer loyalty. Within the three Aymara pachas, reciprocity is
superbly illustrated by the phases of the annual agricultural cycle being coordinated to
coincide with events in the spiritual realm and marked by the performance of specific
rituals and the cooperation of people helping to plant, weed, and harvest each others
crops. In the month of August, when the agricultural new year begins, the earth is resting,
and the weather is dry. This is the "month of Pachamama" or the "month of the earth."
During August the earth rouses from its time of rest and opens thus releasing the souls of
dead people who have been resting there since Carnival in late February. Their release 120
into the air causes the winds which occur in this month. The earth and the gods dwelling
in it are hungry at this season so people prepare special food (k'oa) and present it in a
ritual called the "table of Pachamama" (la mesa de la Pachamama). Farmers then petition the earth and the spirits to yield bountiful crops in the forthcoming harvest season and pray that their animals will bear healthy offspring. In a splendid example of Andean reciprocity with the natural and spiritual worlds, the earth and Pachamama eat the mesas before crops are sown or planted and reciprocate by yielding yet another harvest.
Urban people activate the principle of reciprocity in the month of Pachamama differently. Hundreds of people from every stratum of society in La Paz and El Alto travel up to the Cumbre, the highest point on the road between La Paz and the Yungas jungle region north and east of La Paz. Here on a level area where there stands a cross and an imposing statue of Jesus, people sacrifice and pray. Supplicants wanting to sacrifice by fire bring a small stack of pre-cut wood which they carefully arrange and then bum items which symbolize whatever they are seeking. Some people burn a mesa, a small collection of items bought at one of the witches' markets in La Paz or El Alto which are specifically intended for sacrifice by burning. If the mesa is on a piece of white paper, the person may be hoping to purify his or her life in some respect. People seeking domestic harmony bum apples, caramel, and honey; those wanting success in business, stack bunches of flowers (mostly gladioli) against the foot of the cross. Wine and beer are offered as libations to Pachamama and the achachila (ancestral spirits who inhabit the mountains), and considerable quantities of beer are libated near the statue of Christ
(presumably as an offering to him). In other parts of the altiplano at this season, llamas
are sacrificed. There is a large sacrificial site about twenty miles south of La Paz to which 121
the animals are taken by truck. Many of the supplicants at the Cumbre are truckers and
minibus owners. In 2001 a taxi company took fifty of its vehicles to the Cumbre where
the Callawaya yatiri Luis Adolfo Nayhua petitioned Pachamama by burning a big mesa
on its behalf. When libations are being made and sacrifices burned, people stand or kneel
and pray. Some pray very earnestly indeed, some with tears.
In late February and early March, Carnival is celebrated to mark the onset of
another (hopefully good) harvest season. February is the "month of water." The Tuesday
of Carnival is designated El Martes de Ch'alla. (The word ch'alla means libation).
Streamers and balloons are draped over houses, businesses, and vehicles and bunches of
flowers are tied on privately owned and commercial vehicles. People liberally and joyfully ch'alla their properties and vehicles out of thankfulness to Pachamama and the
souls of the dead (almas) in the hope that they will reciprocate in the forthcoming year.
As Pachamama and the souls are capricious one must ch'alla or risk their wrath.
Vigorous water fights in the streets derive from an ancient custom celebrating
Pachamama's sending sufficient rainfall during the growing season of the past few
months.
Reciprocity with Andean deities has counterparts in the form of Catholicism
practised in Latin America. Nida (1961 :4) says Catholics expressed the relationship in the
old Latin formula 'do ut des,' (I give in order for you to give). To receive divine favor or
favors from the saints, people give of themselves by sacrificing, making vows, giving
gifts, and doing penance. They may bum candles in church during fiestas, vow to dance
for a specified number of years in fiestas, or undertake pilgrimages. Lest I give the
impression that Andean people all think and act reciprocally, it must be said that Bolivia 122
has jails bulging with all kinds of criminals and thousands more freely walking city streets and rural spaces. There is nothing reciprocal about them.
Evangelicals, unlike practitioners of folk religion, do not relate to their God on the basis of obligatory reciprocity. Rather, salvation is a gift from God, something a person
alone can only receive. It can not be earned as the price has already been paid and Christ
spirits rituals and could pay it. Whereas the Aymara seek to appease the wrath of by
sacrifices, Christ appeased the wrath of God, which he unleashes against unbelievers in
varying measure, by sacrificing himself. Once converts are assured of their salvation,
they are admonished by the Bible to thankfully receive what has been done on their
behalf and to live righteously. Any sacrificial service of time, talent, energy, or substance
which believers render to meet the needs of others should be motivated by gratitude to
God and love for mankind and a response to the guidance of God. Converts leam to
imitate God by giving selflessly, without thought of reciprocation. Believers present their
own needs, whether personal, familial, or church, to God in prayer and also see what they
can do to help themselves and others.
A World Governed by the Stars Versus a World Governed by God
In the Aymara world the movements and phases of the sun, moon, individual stars,
and the constellations directly influence the details of daily life. The heavens have power
over financial affairs, the measure of harmony existing at any one time in the various
spheres of life, one's emotional state, and the prevalence of good or evil in the world
(Villanueva 1978a,b,c; Cadorette 1978:8). Evangelicals, on the other hand, are expressly
forbidden by the Scriptures from participating in astrology or other occultic practices
related to the stars. Their involvement in the stars is not to extend beyond informing
themselves on the effects of the heavens on the cycles and seasons m the natural realm, 123
research if they are astronomers, and aesthetic appreciation. A religious or mystical
interest in the stars is prohibited as it could lead a believer into trusting inanimate natural forces and matter for guidance and blessing and away from trusting the living God to meet those needs.
A Stratified Religion Versus the Priesthood of all Believers
While folk religion is stratified with an upper echelon of religious specialists
(Catholic priests and yatiris) performing indispensable mediatory service in the spiritual
realm on behalf of the lower stratum, Evangelicals hold to the New Testament teaching
that all believers have the privileges and responsibilities of being priests. Having direct
access to God, they are free to offer prayer and praise to God themselves. They are
encouraged also to read the Bible, which they hold to be the infallible word of God on all
matters of faith and life, and so discover for themselves its instruction and encouragement
regarding the issues of daily life (Ruiz 1988:102-1 10; Sepiilveda 1988:302-303). Until
the Bolivian government made elementary schooling available after the revolution of
1952, the Bible was almost entirely in the hands of Catholic priests who interpreted it for
their congregations. The rising literacy rate coincided with the publication of the Bible in
Aymara by Evangelical missionaries who also made it available, along with a Spanish
translation, at minimal cost (Chapter 5). Converts to Evangelicalism thus had the ability
and opportunity to read for themselves.
Life Hereafter
The Aymara have a concept of life in the hereafter. At death a person's soul
separates from the body. Some informants thought that souls then alternately spend the
six months from Carnival in February to August (the "month of Pachamama" or the
"month of the earth") in the earth (manqha pacha) and the six months from August to 124
bring pacha). Souls are very important as they may February in the realm of the air (alajj
on treatment they receive from surviving relatives prosperity or disaster depending on the
it becomes person is thought to be sad until earth. The soul of a recently deceased
October During the fiesta of All Saints from 31 accustomed to its new mode of existence.
which they from the skies for two days to the homes to 3 November, the souls all return
the grave site where they were laid to once occupied (Cole 1969:93, 270, 274, 276) or
rest.
and soul also separate at death. Souls The Bible teaches Evangelicals that the body
unimaginable bliss where they live in perfect of believers go to heaven, a place of
One of the things which make heaven a harmony with God, nature, and angelic beings.
absence of evil, including one's own innate paradise is the complete and permanent
qualities which transformation of one's soul into godly propensity for it. The progressive
of of unbelievers, those that reject God's offer began on earth is completed. The souls
hell, a place are consigned by God to eternity in salvation during their lifetime on earth,
there will be no of evil, the Bible promises that of indescribable suffering. In the absence
1949:736-737; Strong 1979:1029-1033). The suffering of any description (Berkhof
for them anticipated by people who know that life fulfillment of this promise is eagerly
poverty. Not surprisingly, heaven is a on earth only holds the prospect of miserable
pastors and a number of informants, when common theme in the preaching of Aymara
earnestly expressing their hope in the recounting their life stories to me, finished by
no more tears. Bible's promise that in heaven there will be 125
Summary
The lot of the peasantry is seldom an easy one and life in the Andes is no exception. Added to the ecological challenge of making a living in the difficult and demanding environments of those mountains are hardships resulting from illness and injury, malnutrition, unfair legislation and other forms of governmental corruption, the loss of family members during military crack-downs on people protesting against injustices, poor education, high rates of unemployment and underemployment in urban areas, and the host of sufferings which attend people struggling to make even a meager
living. Life, it seemed to me, was often more difficult for city dwellers as rural people are better nourished. Like people the world over, highland Bolivians often turn to the spiritual realm in the hope of exerting a measure of control over their lives or, at least, not
letting it get too out of control.
Their folk religion encompasses a considerable range of beliefs and practices and consumes a great deal of time, energy, and expense for many people from every stratum of society and for a variety reasons. The fiestas, in particular, constitute a colorful, vibrant, and for many Bolivians, a necessary part of life. Ostensibly religious occasions, with religious origins or strong spiritual overtones acquired in the course of their evolution, they serve other purposes as well and thus mean different things to different people. For vendors they are a great economic opportunity; for many they are a happy social occasion, the annual visit to family members and friends in other towns; for some, fiestas are a keenly anticipated time of drinking and/or licentious indulgence; for the thousands who dance through the streets with other members of their troupe they are the culmination of several months of practice and a time of great excitement and 126
camaraderie; for those involved in an official capacity they are occasions when their self-
esteem is very evidently at an all-time high; for some they are sacred times for solemnly
venerating deities and/or opportunities for petitioning them concerning one's needs. For
many they are a welcome break from the daily grind and a distraction from the worries of
life which are not a few in Bolivia's oppressive political, social, and economic climate.
Rituals of Aymara origin typically involve participating in the functioning of the cosmos
by reciprocating with primarily benevolent spirits in order to maximize one's possibilities
of good luck, placating and warding off essentially malevolent spirits, and helping to
maintain the equilibrium, and thus the more or less harmonious operation, of the
interconnected natural, social, and spiritual worlds of the universe.
Though folk religion is clearly profitable in different respects for some individuals
and families in the various sectors of society, it was soundly criticized and even despised
by informants some of whom are Catholics. With the exception of one Catholic couple,
none had a good word to say for any aspect of it. The harm done overshadows anything else. For them it was all falsa and some commented passionately concerning expenditure on costumes and travel which, added to lost earnings from time off work, worsens the economic plight of poor families (Chapter 8). Now that a cheap form of alcohol has become readily available, the fiesta is also another occasion when those who habitually drink to excess once again harm themselves and bring disorder to the lives of friends and family members.
Into the religious milieu described in this chapter came Evangelical missionaries with a message of hope for this life and the next. They spoke of the God of the universe who had the power and the intense desire to release people from the power of enslaving 127
habits; to restore those who allow him mastery over their lives to a relationship with him; and the power to restore the broken lives of people to the wholeness, dignity, and peace which they deeply yearned. It was a religion fundamentally different in many respects
the next from folk religion. The first missionary arrived in 1 827 but, as we will see in chapter, powerful forces were at work in highland Bolivia which prevented him and his successors from freely speaking there for more than a century. CHAPTER 5
PEOPLE WITH POWER IN THE YEARS 1 825-1952: HACENDADOS, PRIESTS, POLITICIANS, WAR VETERANS, CAMPESINOS, AND EVANGELISTS
"There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." —William Shakespeare "Julius Caesar"
Introduction
For 420 years following the Spanish entrada, Catholic priests sought to dominate the religious life of the Andes (MacCormack 1990). They vigorously repressed the indigenous religion where possible during the colonial era (Arriaga 1968) but were too
few relative to the vastness of the Andes region to extirpate it altogether. The spiritual life of the indigenous people became a syncretized religion involving obeisance to Andean deities (mediated by yatiris when ritually prescribed), participating in fiestas, and attending services conducted by a priest or by a hacendado if a priest seldom or never visited his property. Hacendados held rural Bolivia in the grip of serfdom from the time of the Conquistadors until the mid-twentieth century. They owned vast tracts of land and
had rights to the services of the resident peasants. Former serfs with whom I spoke referred to themselves as having been esclavos (slaves), their lords having held them in bondage to unimaginably heavy workloads. Many serfs never had the time or energy to travel away even briefly from the hacienda of their birth. The priests, depending on their availability and time-distance considerations, visited some haciendas for baptisms and services and legitimated the hacienda system. Thus the hacendados and priests held sway over the populace. Political and economic control resided in hacendado hands; religious power in those of the priests and yatiris.
28 129
Following the wars of independence in South America, the victorious generals Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar encouraged religious toleration in the newly constituted republics. Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia were the last to grant this freedom. It was quite unacceptable to conservative Catholic clergy and laymen who entrenched and doggedly continued the colonial era practice of maintaining Roman Catholicism as the official and exclusive religion in their countries. They contended that religious unity was the only means by which those nations, which were so divided by geography, race, and class, could hope to be unified internally (Kuhl 1982:453, 464). It is more likely that they were afraid a policy of religious freedom would loosen their clerical grip on the populace.
When Bolivia gained national status in 1825, its constitution not surprisingly contained this clause: "The Roman Catholic Apostolic religion is the religion of the Republic to the
exclusion of all other public cults" (Wagner 1970: 14). Practising any other religion was
strictly prohibited and enforced by the country's Penal Code which stated that, "Everyone who, directly or through any act conspires to establish in Bolivia any other religion than that which the Republic professes, namely, that of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church,
is a traitor and SHALL SUFFER THE PENALTY OF DEATH" (Dabbs 1952:12). Late in the nineteenth century the Liberal party rose to prominence and after a protracted and
sometimes bitter struggle with the Conservatives, it finally managed to legislate religious freedom and other reforms into Bolivia's constitutional law (Kuhl 1982:446-449).
When missionaries arrived on the altiplano in the 1 800s they were vigorously
opposed by those in power who rightly perceived them as a real threat to the status quo.
Hacendados did not want people coming on their land preaching any form of freedom,
spiritual or otherwise, and the priests were angry at the sight of their hitherto 130
they despisingly unchallenged spiritual hegemony being assailed by members of what
authority of Rome. Some regarded as the rebellious sect which had broken away from the
and vigor as their priests persecuted followers of the new faith with the same vehemence
that they had a predecessors in the colonial era, and, like them, they may have believed divine mandate to do so.
conviction The Evangelical missionaries, for their part, held unswervingly to their
earth and were as that they had a divine mandate to extend the kingdom of God on
from it. They were determined to fulfill their calling as the priests were to keep them
the devil, going about outraged at the priests, whom they regarded as deceived agents of
people keeping them in spiritual bondage lording it over helpless and illiterate peasant by
which the priests and sanctioning the horrendously oppressive hacienda system from
which derived an annual income. Thus the stage was set for an unavoidable conflict
would embroil people from every socio-economic level in Bolivian society.
It presents a This chapter examines the struggles of these various interest groups.
reviewing those brief historical background to the work of the Seminary Mission by
and by noting the events which led to the freedom of religious expression in that country
does not permit individuals who pioneered the gospel in the nineteenth century. Space
Seminary even the briefest mention of the many missionaries who preceded the
with a note missionaries or worked contemporaneously with them. The chapter concludes
us concerning the on the lessons which this chapter in the history of humanity holds for
was a long one, conversion phenomenon itself. The road to religious freedom in Bolivia
well into the twentieth. It took, as extending as it did through the nineteenth century and 131
was spilt along its length. In we shall see, some unexpected turns and not a little blood the end, though, the Aymara Evangelical church was born.
The First Evangelists, 1825-1902
Luke Matthews, a colporteur The first Evangelical missionary to enter Bolivia was
That was in the (travelling Bible salesman) for the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Bibles in Potosi, Sucre, years 1827-28. He travelled overland from Buenos Aires and sold
Cochabamba, and La Paz. Though he was received honorably in public by President
people. He Marshall Sucre, he made, in his own estimation, little impression on the
murdered and travelled on to Colombia where he disappeared, thought to have been
second missionary to robbed by his guides (Hamilton 1962:38; Wagner 1970:19). The
travelled widely and obtained visit Bolivia was Captain Allen Gardiner in 1846. He also
before he could permission to evangelize the native peoples but the permit was revoked
the frigid wilderness of Patagonia (Wagner act on it. He died while journeying through
1970:20).
martyred there was The third Evangelical missionary in Bolivia and the first to be
name was Jose also a colporteur for the British and Foreign Bible Society. His
Monguiardmo and he entered Bolivia in 1877. He travelled widely and sold over a
he was thousand Spanish Bibles. As he was returning to Argentina for more stock,
They tied a large attacked and stoned to death by two men near Santiago de Cotagaita.
the identity of the criminals, rock to his neck and threw the body into a river. On learning
the six miles to the town of the civil authorities ordered them to cany the dead man
the body to be Cotagaita for burial but the local Catholic priest refused permission for
reported that the buried inside the town's limits. Francisco Penzotti, another colporteur,
thereafter one was murderers were set free on the insistence of the priest, but shortly 132
dragged to his death by a mule and the other died when lightning struck him (Wagner
1970:20).
The fourth pioneer was Italian-born Francisco Penzotti. A convert to Methodism
from Catholicism, he accompanied the American Bible Society agent Andrew Milne to
Bolivia in 1883. Wagner (1970:21) says that, "when they reached Monguiardino's grave
outside the town of Cotagaita, they removed their hats and rededicated themselves to the evangelization of South America." The two men travelled through highland Bolivia and distributed between 5,000 and 6,000 Bibles and scripture readings. Penzotti returned to
Bolivia in 1884 and settled for a time in Sucre where he rented a house and held the first
Sunday school recorded in Bolivian history. The Archbishop tried to oust him. Two children were converted, followed by their mothers. These are the earliest recorded conversions in Bolivia (Wagner 1970:21).
Another colporteur, Karl Hanson from Denmark, worked in Bolivia around the rum of the century. When he reached a village or town he would play his harmonica in the
plaza and sell Bibles when a crowd gathered to hear him. He was jailed once and sold all his stock to the prisoners (Wagner 1970:23).
Of this phase in the late nineteenth century when Evangelical Christianity was being pioneered in Bolivia, Bolivian governments officially protected the Catholic
Church while tolerating Bible sales and privately held Evangelical services. In the years between independence in 1825 and the Liberal Revolution of 1889, around 8,000 Bibles were sold. Government officials and the populace at large were not concerned about the colporteurs but opposition came from Catholic priests who incited mob violence on the
pretext that the constitution was being violated (Kuhl 1 982:464-465). 133
societies which were seeking to put down In the 1 890s, members of missionary
these were roots in the Bolivian Andes and start national churches began arriving. Among
the Methodists representatives of the Brethren (1 895), the Canadian Baptists (1898),
Adventists (1901), Andes Evangelical Mission (1903), and the Seventh Day (1907)
(Wagner 1970:27-87). These missions all arrived in an era when Bolivian Liberals in parliament were struggling toward reforms including religious liberty. Missionaries who
the were conscious of tnis moment in Bolivia's history, interpreted the coincidence as
(Dabbs orchestrating hand of God working inexorably to open the country to the gospel
nevertheless a 1952:44). Though they had a sense of God working with them, this was
priests dangerous time to be an Evangelical. In September of 1902, Roman Catholic
instigated an attack on the Brethren missionary Will Payne in Cochabamba. A mob
to drag him attacked his home, made a bonfire of his furniture and books, and tried
intervened (Wagner 1970:27- through the fire. He would have died had some soldiers not
28).
Evangelical Christianity, then, had a difficult entry into highland Bolivia. At least
daring to one evangelist paid with his life and others narrowly escaped harm for
beginning to challenge the status quo but the tide in the ecclesiastical affairs of men was
rum.
The Road to Religious Freedom in the Years 1890-1906
that it could In the 1890s, the Liberal government sought to establish control so
implement some reforms. Finalizing border disputes with Brazil and Chile, stabilizing the
liberties, economy, instituting a national education system, extending and protecting civil
Catholic and granting religious freedom were priorities on the Liberal agenda. The
In 1901, Church stood powerfully in the way of this last reform (Kuhl 1982:446-447). 134
President Jose Manuel Pando advised Mr Bridgman, a diplomat from the United States,
that that Congress was likely to pass freedom of worship into law but strongly feared another civil war would immediately ensue. To the State Department, Bridgman communicated his concerns that "An act permitting general freedom of worship might
so also pass, but the priests would surely then incite the indians [sicj to violence and
render it inoperative" (Kuhl 1982:447).
In 1901, an event occurred which went a long way toward breaking the power of
1898- the Catholic Church (Kuhl 1982:447-453). Two years earlier in the revolution of
the village of 99, a detachment of 130 soldiers from Cochabamba was passing through
Mohoso. The local priest invited them to attend mass before going to battle. They
church accepted his invitation, dismounted, and at his request left their guns outside the
the building. After the service the priest promptly exited the church, some Indians barred
doors, and in the course of that day they dragged the soldiers out one at a time and
then bludgeoned them to death. One soldier survived by hiding in the thatched roof and
outraged making his way back to Cochabamba. His story of the massacre shocked and
300 the nation. President Pando sent government soldiers to Mohoso where they executed
Indians and arrested the priest who was held in jail and executed two years later
the supremacy of the following a trial. The jailing and execution of the priest established
liberty still had state when it clashed with the church but proponents of religious
insufficient votes in Congress to pass it into law.
In 1904, Ismael Montes was elected president. The Liberals continued gaining
power and, finally, during a congressional session on 6 August 1906, Congress voted to
amend the constitution to permit freedom of worship. The constitution was changed to 135
read, "The state recognizes and sustains the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, permitting the public exercise of all other cults" (Kuhl 1982:453). Though religious freedom was now officially safeguarded by the constitution, attacks by individual priests on Evangelical missionaries, including one of my informants, and their converts continued. Of this period in Bolivia's history, Peter Wagner (1970:15) says
Before the advent of religious liberty, the Bolivian soil had been impenett-able to the gospel message. Seed fell from time to time, but the birds came and ate it up, as Jesus' parable suggests. Religious liberty did not make Bolivia receptive to the
Gospel, but it did open the way for more extensive seed-sowing.
We noted earlier the five pioneer missions which entered Bolivia when the Liberals were coming to power. Missions continued arriving in the country until, by 1970, thirty- five societies were working there (Wagner 1970:15).
The Chaco War, 1932-35
In 1932, Bolivia and Paraguay went to war over ownership of the Chaco territory.
The war had profound and permanent consequences for Bolivia and the Evangelical movement. For the country there was the huge loss of men (around 60,000) and territory
and a deeply felt national humiliation over the war's final outcome. The infant
Evangelical Church was by no means divinely insulated from the horrors of the conflict.
In fact, the Evangelical churches in the highlands suffered terribly as the government
conscripted many thousands of men in the mountains. The Baptist missionary Norman
Dabbs reported a noticeable drop in church attendance for his denomination. At one
point, the Oruro church had 50 men at the front (Dabbs 1952:144). Some congregations
lost every man, others were hardly affected. Some which lost members in the war grew
substantially in 1935 when men converted at the front returned home and joined churches
(Wagner 1970:46-47). Two missionaries, Frank Beck and Peter Home, the former a 136
doctor, worked on the battlefields. Beck labored tirelessly to alleviate suffering and
Home was instrumental in making converts some of whom later returned from the war and served in their churches (Wagner 1970:1 16-1 17).
The Chaco War also had clearly identifiable ramifications for the Evangelical
Church long after the cessation of hostilities. First of all, the struggle with Paraguay over the rumored resources of oil in the Chaco occasioned a sense of nationalistic pride throughout the country. Perceiving this, Baptist missionaries foresaw that unless national believers were given overall responsibility for their denomination, the Bolivians might become resentful of missionary leadership. To avoid this eventuality, the first convention of the Bolivian Baptist Union was called during the Carnival holidays of 1936, and the nationals were given the helm of their denomination. Bolivia's first national Evangelical organization had been born (Dabbs 1952:152-153; Wagner 1.970:47,53).
A second important development, and one which arose from the first, was that the national church, having been properly constituted with its own governing body, was now
encouraged to take responsibility for its own expansion. The national believers were to think of themselves as missionaries to their own people. They rose to the challenge and
the Bolivian Baptist Union, begun in 1 898, numbered 3,435 members by 1967.
A third consequence of the war for the Evangelical churches arose as a direct
consequence of the government drafting thousands of men in the highlands to fight in the
Chaco. The uprooting, social dislocation, and mobility of people during the war exposed
thousands to new ideas. Nationalism, revolution, agrarian reform, education, economic
progress, labor unions, social justice, and profit-sharing in the mines were ideas that
imbued them with hope for the future. As military authorities herded them about lowland 137
Bolivia, some of the highlanders encountered foreign and native evangelists preaching immediate and eternal hope, and some were converted (Wagner 1970:1 17). The Chaco
War quickly politicized the men at the front (Lagos 1994:42-43). The experiences of the
highlanders "shocked (them) ... into a more general awareness of their exploitation than the Indians in any other Andean country... Revolutionary nationalists blossomed
,, everywhere (Whitaker and Jordan 1966:142,146, in Wagner 1970:1 16). Returning veterans began demanding social justice from the government (Wagner 1970:116). The likelihood of revolution on a national scale significantly increased as a result of the
Chaco War but the storm clouds were a long time gathering. When the storm finally broke in April of 1952, chains of events were immediately set in motion which greatly favored the growth of Evangelicalism.
Before proceeding to consider the effects of the revolution though, we need to understand the plight of the peasant people. In rural areas they were feudal serfs. Of them, Wagner (1970:122) says that
With no education, no health facilities, no contact with the outside world, no hope for advancement, no economic power, nor even a vote in national affairs, little wonder that the Indian became a passive, almost fatalistic, introvert, living from fiesta to fiesta. Although these feudal Indians usually passed through the Catholic
rites of baptism, confirmation and extreme unction, they had little heart commitment to the religion of the oppressors. Pachamama, Mother Earth, was their most immediate God... Those who had heard of the Protestant religion showed little interest. They were too suspicious to accept new ideas, especially when advocated by the very whites and mestizos who had enslaved them.
The politicization of the peasantry during the Chaco War began to erode this deeply ingrained suspicion of new ideas. The Revolution of 1952 marks the beginning of an era continuing to this day when peasants have been increasingly free to explore and apply them. 138
The Murder of Norman Dabbs, 1949
Before the Revolution, though, something happened which brought the struggle for
that religious freedom in Bolivia to international attention. Boots (1971 : 186) observes
In general, it is valid to say that the history of Protestant missions in Bolivia, until
very recently, is a long story of continuing conflict with Roman Catholicism. From the earliest days when Protestant missionaries faced rent boycotts as they searched for houses and preaching places, there has been an ambient of hostility in a wide variety of relationships.
Opposition was common and at times became overt. Some of the attacks on
Seminary missionaries and their converts are described, and their significance discussed, in Chapters 8 and 9. The following account of the murder of the Canadian Baptist missionary Norman Dabbs and eight Bolivian Evangelicals is taken from Boots
(1971:187-190) and a chapter posthumously appended to a book written by Dabbs
(1952:250-258). On 8 August 1949, Dabbs and eight national believers including the president of the Bolivian Baptist Union and the pastor of Llallagua church went in the missionary's truck to the village of Melcamaya to preach. Dabbs was the pastor of a large church in Oruro and had recently been elected as director of the Cochabamba Bible
College. The pastor of the church in Melcamaya held meetings on Monday nights in the home of a believer. The visitors set up a projector powered by the vehicle's battery and were projecting slides of the life of Christ onto the wall of the house when they heard a
loud mob approaching. The believers tried to escape in their truck but were somehow
stopped on the road by the mob and nine were beaten and stoned to death. Not content
with that, the mob turned its attention on the nearby dwellings of several believers and
burned them down before the police arrived. One of the assailants testified that the mob
had been drinking and, once under the influence, they were instigated to murder by a
Catholic priest. The murders invoked such public outrage that they attracted international 139
attention. Catholic authorities in the United States sent Father Albert Nevins to investigate. His report exonerated the Catholic Church saying there was no local priest
(Boots 1971:190) but witnesses gave the name of the priest as Father Tumiri (Wagner
1970:50). Opposition from priests on the altiplano continued at least until January 1956 when Doris Wan-en, one of the Seminary missionaries, was forced to leave her home in the rural village of Umala when local priests instigated mob violence (Chapter 7).
The National Revolution, 1952
"There is a tide in the affairs of men," wrote William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar ,
"which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." In the years 1952-1953, the tide of revolutionary-induced change was running in full flood. Justifiably fearful for their lives, hacendados who lived in the countryside fled with their family members to the cities where they lived in permanent exile. Less fortunate hacendados and family members were caught by marauding mobs of angry peasants and summarily executed. Peasants under the lash one day were sitting next morning on the hacienda porch drinking wine from the cellar. Many rural priests, who were hated by the campesinos for having
legitimated the hacienda system and for profiting from it materially at the expense of the
already overtaxed peasants, also fled to the cities. Writing on priestly legitimation of
Ecuadorean haciendas, Muratorio (1981:508) cites Hurtado (1977:69)
Catholic ideology regarded the hierarchical order of the universe as ordained by God; poverty existed in the world as a blessing to be accepted with resignation, thereby transforming the existing class structure of the hacienda into a "sacred" order. Furthermore, the belief in the racial inferiority of the Indians—taken for granted in colonial times and still prevalent in the nineteenth century—contributed to the disguising of class relationships, legitimizing the social order of the hacienda as "natural." The link between these two components of the ideology was recognized as part of the legal order. The Constitution of 1830 put the Indians under the control of the Church, ordering that parish priests be nominated "tutors and natural fathers of the innocent, servile and miserable indigenous race." 140
Not content with receiving a modest and reasonable income from the peasants, at least some of the priests wrung as much from the peasant population as they could, justifying themselves on ideological and constitutional grounds. They expropriated a tithe of the peasants' surplus; exacted rent by collective work projects (mingas); received payment in cash or kind for officiating at baptisms, marriages, and funerals; and drew down on peasant surpluses by requiring that sponsors (priostes) underwrite religious services performed during fiestas (Muratorio 1981:508). A Peruvian serf, Asunta Quispe
Huaman, speaks of other means of extortion in her biography. Overseers used trumped up charges to strike from work records the days that peasants worked on hacienda lands. At one point Asunta' s widowed mother was unable to perform her allotted work on the hacienda lands so the head priest of the local monastery penalized her by confiscating some of the land that she needed to feed her family and ordered her to work at the hacienda and her oldest daughter to cook in the monastery. "Year round, you'd spend month after month working at the hacienda. Those priests did all that—what hellish times
those were!" (Gelles and Escobar 1996:11 1).
When hostilities commenced on the altiplano in 1952, some priests hastily fled and opposition to Evangelical activity from that quarter greatly declined. In the days of the hacienda, evangelists had been able to preach in those free communities where they were welcome but seldom preached to peasants in communities under the ownership and jurisdiction of patrons who, for reasons of their own or, fearful of the ecclesiastical and spiritual sanctions threatened by the priests, prohibited Evangelicals from preaching on their lands. The Revolution of 1952 freed foreign missionaries and Aymara evangelists to preach in any community on the altiplano, village authorities permitting. With the 141
abolition of serfdom, emancipated serfs were also free to travel and for the first time in their lives many ventured beyond the boundaries of their former patronal haciendas.
Under serfdom, many peasants who had the actual freedom to travel could not afford the time to do so. Ezequiel Arcani Patty, pastor of a church at Santiago de Llallagua, was bom a serf and said that before the revolution those serfs who converted to
Evangelicalism had no time for proclaiming their faith if they wanted to as duties on the
hacienda consumed their lives. Hans Buechler ( 1 971 : 14) notes the following obligations incumbent on people in the community of Compi near Lake Titicaca in the pre-reform era. Each family was obliged to work up to 12-man labor days per week and was rostered along with other families to herd the landlord's sheep and cattle, cook in the hacienda, and transport produce to market. William Carter (1965:9), who also worked on the altiplano in the post-reform era, cites Victor Andrade, the ambassador to the United
States, reporting that serfs worked in the landowner's stables and kitchens for no remuneration except the use of a subsistence plot worked on days not required by the patron.
Marion Heaslip, a literacy worker among the Aymara for 36 years (1958-87, 1989-
96), observed that following the revolution, emancipated serfs had the time to travel freely and some of those who encountered Evangelical churches and itinerant evangelists were converted and returned to their communities where they started churches (pers. comm.). The dissolution of the hacienda system also permitted the propagation of the gospel in rural Ecuador and the church grew as a consequence (Muratorio 1980:42;
1981:506). 142
Table 5-1. Time-line of Events in the Years 1825-1952 Date Event
1825 Bolivia becomes a nation. Constitution strongly affirms Catholicism as the official religion.
1827-28 Luke Matthews is the first Evangelical missionary in Bolivia.
1890s A Liberal movement strongly agitating for freedom of religion gathers momentum in the halls of parliament
1895-1907 Five mission societies enter highland Bolivia
1901 Mohoso massacre; priest's trial and execution establishes supremacy of state over Catholic Church.
1906 Freedom of religion is passed into law.
1 932-35 Chaco War depopulates highland churches with the death of believers at the front; balancing the membership ledger, many soldiers are evangelized in the Chaco.Thousands of highland men travel beyond geographical, intellectual, religious, and social confines of their communities as the army shunts them about the Chaco. This politicization of the peasantry prepares the ground for the 1952 Revolution
1936 Baptist missionaries foresee nationalistic pride fomented by the Chaco War carrying over to church life by generating resentment of foreign missions so arrange to formally relinquish their leadership to Bolivian believers.
1949 Catholic opposition in highland Bolivia becomes apparent in the USA following the murder of Norman Dabbs and eight national co-workers.
1952 National Revolution ends the hacienda system and sacerdotal control of
hacienda peasantry. Evangelists are free to preach all over highland Bolivia; former serfs are free to travel and some encounter the gospel
1952 A presidential decree making elementary education mandatory coincides with publication of the Aymara New Testament and a missionary literacy program. Being able to read and reflect on the Scriptures in their own language was more meaningful than only hearing them in Spanish. (The Spanish Bible was already available).
1956 The last recorded incidents of priest-inspired mob violence and death threats against Evangelicals occur with the attacks on Doris Warren at Umala village on the altiplano.
Doris Warren, a missionary to the Aymara for 17 years (1952-62, 1968-75), told me of another development in the post-revolution era which affected the Evangelical
Church. After the revolution of 1952, the president of Bolivia decreed that all children were to attend elementary school and many attended long enough to leam how to read
and write. They were taught in Spanish even if it was not their native tongue. In the
1960s, missionaries conducted literacy classes in Aymara and Spanish in the highland 143
churches for the mothers and girls and trained Aymara literacy workers. The presidential
decree was very timely for the churches as it coincided with the publication that year of the Aymara New Testament by the Bible Society. Though the Bible had been on the
altiplano for four hundred years its use had been monopolized by the priests. Literate believers now had an important part of the Bible to read and think about for themselves
and illiterate people could hear it in their own language when it was read to them by family members and friends. As in Ecuador following the publication of the Quichua
New Testament (Muratorio 1981:515), some became believers. By these various means
and influences the Evangelical Church grew in the post-Revolution era (Chapter 8).
Conclusions
In this chapter we have seen societal-level structures such as the hacienda system, events in national life such as wars and revolutions and the passing of legislation, and the proselytizing or persecutory actions of determined individuals, exerting momentous
influence on the religious life of a nation. Conversion as understood by Evangelicals is a primarily spiritual experience in the private preserve of a person's mind and emotions
(Chapter 2), and while that may be so, it is not transacted in a social vacuum. It occurs
when a soldier on a train going to the front believes the message of hope that he is
reading in a pamphlet he was given; it occurs in the hearts of terrified men amidst the
insufferable heat, dust, and noise of battlefields strewn with the bodies of dead men; it is made permissible across the whole country after a decade of plotting behind closed doors and whispered conversations in the halls of parliament concerning efforts at legislating
religious reform; it occurs when people become literate following a presidential decree
and believe what they read in the Bible; and it becomes much more widespread in the mountains and valleys of highland Bolivia in the years immediately after revolutionaries 144
seize power and serfs bum their lord's houses to the ground. Conversion, then, while an eminently private and religious phenomenon (Chapter 2) is not to be considered apart
from the political, religious, and social contexts in which the gospel is propagated and
takes root. While the gospel powerfully transforms those individuals who embrace it, a
second conclusion to be drawn from the content of this chapter is that the gospel is not a
lawn-mower-like force irresistibly moving across social landscapes. Its progress in any given society may be powerfully withstood for many years. CHAPTER 6 DOCTRINAL AND EXPERIENTIAL MOTIVATIONS ENERGIZING THE EVANGELICAL MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE
"It is notoriously difficult to understand motives for a person's actions." —James Stamoolis 2002:4
Introduction
When one considers the myriad of lucrative and fulfilling career opportunities
proffered by Western society, it could be puzzling at first to leam of intelligent, gifted, and industrious people wholeheartedly, and in some cases for the duration of their lives,
dedicating themselves to the task of changing the belief system and related way of life of
people in other parts of the world. Surely it is better to leave people in foreign countries alone, stay at home, and mind one's own business. Before beginning to explore the
motivations driving proselytism I want to dwell a little on the personal costs of the cross-
cultural evangelist's vocation for what a person is willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of
something is the measure of both its value to that person and the strength of whatever it is that motivates him.
The missionaries in this study left family members and friends, some of whom they knew they might never see again, to live among strangers in a foreign land. They were often misunderstood and subject to the endless curiosity and at times ridicule and even malice of the very people whom they sacrificed so much to help. When the Seminary missionaries befriended people, they sloshed through muddy, filthy streets in slum neighborhoods or the business district of El Alto during the rainy season to tend them
when they were ill or to help in some other way. Sometimes they ate what for them were
145 146
strange and nauseating foods as guests of honor in the homes of Aymara friends. They left the comfort of the familiar and predictable life of their beloved, clean, and safe homelands to live a way of life which taxed them physically and emotionally to the utmost. They suffered every day, some of them, living out their lives in uncomfortable and disease-ridden highland Bolivia and they went knowing that their predecessors, Jose
Monguiardino and Norman Dabbs, had been murdered for proclaiming the gospel.
Considering their objective, one could legitimately wonder if there is, in their minds at least, a rational basis for their endeavors. Some of them sacrificed financially rewarding careers for a way of life which often demanded frugality as they always depended on the charity of others. Perhaps some were escaping from suffocating family obligations or expectations or perhaps they had been spectacular failures in some respect at home and were seeking a fresh start overseas. One might wonder also whether some were, subconsciously perhaps, seeking to meet their personal needs for fulfillment and significance by helping people needier than themselves or whether, on the other hand, they were fulfilled and selfless people who genuinely wanted to give their lives in the service of God by serving other people.
In this chapter and the next, we will ask what kind of people the Union Seminary missionaries were and why they did what they did. The well springs of their motivation must have been powerful and comprehensive as they went on paying, some for many years, the multifaceted price tag which accompanied their goal of helping establish the
Evangelical Church in Bolivia. In this chapter, we will examine the doctrinal and
experiential sources of their motivation. As they are motivations typical of Evangelicals, I have drawn from scholars in that tradition as well as correspondence with my missionary 147
informants. The theologian George Peters (1984:135) prefaces his observations on the
subject with this statement.
It is never easy to do justice in an analysis of motivations. They are not singular but become dynamic in constellations. Some are evident while others remain hidden and unrecognized. Some surface and become dominant at one occasion and others
at another time. Thus even the best analysis is a penetration only in part.
The Motivating Power of Belief and Experience
The Inerrancy and Authority of the Scriptures
Evangelical faith is based squarely on the teachings of the Bible which are held to
have been written by men who, at the time they were writing, were under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the triune God. As with the other persons of the
Trinity, (God the Father and God the Son), the Holy Spirit is believed to be infallible. It is
held that the Spirit of God so influenced the minds of the men who penned the writings
which were eventually gathered into the Bible that the writers recorded the very thoughts
of God himself. This is not to say that God dictated his thoughts and so bypassed the
personalities of the human authors or their writing styles, but he did clearly and inerrantly
communicate what he wanted preserved in writing for posterity. The writings, being
inspired by an infallible God, are thereby infallible. The Scriptures also reflect other
attributes of God—his immutability, perfection, and goodness—which taken together
with their inspired, inerrant, and infallible nature, renders them utterly trustworthy and
authoritative in all matters pertaining to Christian life and faith. This is not to say that the
Bible teaches on all things in encyclopaedic fashion; just that it is reliable in what it
asserts.
The Scriptures are the main source of comfort, guidance, and confidence for believers in all that they promise, predict, and teach. Two instances will suffice. The 148
missionaries going to Bolivia could have confidence that they, their colleagues, or successors, would win converts from among the Aymara people on the basis of the assertion in Revelation 5:9 that the day would come when God had people in heaven
". from . .every tribe and language and people and nation." They could take confidence
also in the trying vicissitudes of personal, mission, and national life from the many
promises that God is always helping and sustaining his people.
The Gospel: The Heart of Evangelicalism
1 The word "evangelical ' is from the Greek "euaggelion" meaning "good news, "a
reference to the central belief in Jesus Christ as savior in this life and the next. In years gone by the Greek-derived word "evangel" was sometimes used for "gospel." Today the
word "gospel" from the old English "godspel" (good tidings) is used. In its broadest
contours, and there is a great deal more to the gospel than I have sketched here, the gospel message proclaims that God created the heavens and the earth and every form of
life. The first family of human beings lived in perfect harmony with God, with nature, and with each other. This state of things changed very suddenly when the woman was deceived by Satan, the implacable enemy of God and mankind, into disobeying a specific, and the only, stipulation given them by God. An immediate consequence of their disobedience was that a power which the Bible calls sin entered their minds, emotions, and wills and became the wellspring of recognizably harmful thought patterns, attitudes, feelings, motives, speech, and actions. All mankind has descended from this original family so every person ever bom has inherited a sinful nature and suffers the consequences of their own self-destructive behavior and the hurts inflicted intentionally
—and unintentionally by other people. The possibility of a human being living out his 149
life pain-free, in purity, peace, and innocence died with the first act of disobedience.
Man, the patriarch Job observed, is born for trouble as surely as sparks fly upwards.
The initial disobedience also cost human beings their close relationship with God in this life as he was now hugely offended with sinful mankind. God and man were now at enmity with one another. People were no longer able to communicate with God or did so with difficulty as sin seriously weakened the desire to relate to God. Moreover, Satan and his horde of underling evil spirits continue to this day harassing and afflicting human beings every way possible—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The Bible can be read as part of the history of a cosmic struggle between God and Satan for the temporal and eternal wellbeing of human beings.
The possibility of living forever also died as the reality of inevitable physical death
now entered the human equation. It is a great and grief-filled tragedy for humanity that
we all die. But worse than mere physical death is the fact that God, who is utterly and always pure and righteous in every respect, cannot tolerate the presence of sin and, though he loves people intensely, destines sinful individuals to live, in the hereafter, away from his presence in hell, a place of unthinkable and eternal suffering.
The gospel is a proclamation that while human history can not be undone, people
now living need not suffer the worst of the consequences of the "Fall" of mankind as it is
called. Sin need not dominate a person in this life and hell need not be our destiny in the
next. The gospel message is that the Father, in his love for mankind, sent his Son, Jesus,
to pay the price of salvation. Jesus lived a sinless life which qualified him as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of mankind by dying on a cross. His resurrection three days after his death demonstrated God's power over sin and death. He ascended to heaven and will 150
return to earth again to reign as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Salvation is a gift,
it cannot be earned, and is freely extended to all human beings everywhere as long as they are living and can be appropriated by faith which God graciously works in a person's consciousness as they hear and think about the gospel. People thus saved experience the relief of forgiveness for sins in this life, the beginning of a personal relationship with God, and an assurance of eternity in heaven in the next.
This is the gospel as it relates to the problem of sin. It was foretold repeatedly in the Old Testament (e.g. Isaiah 52:7; 6:1) and is encapsulated in the New Testament in verses such as John 3:16-17: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved
through Him." Ephesians 2:8-9 is another such encapsulation: "For by grace you have
been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." With verses like these in mind, Evangelicals speak of
"being saved," "unsaved people," and Jesus as their Savior.
The gospel is much more than having one's sins forgiven. Dieter Zander
(2004:46) puts it this way
The good news that Jesus announced is that we can live our lives with God which
is the best kind of life that is humanly possible. We don't have to live life alone taking care of ourselves, being afraid that we don't have what we'll need, being intimidated and controlled by things we can't seem to change, wondering if there's
anything or anyone who can make sense of it all. Jesus' message is, simply, 'Turn
around and step into a life with God, the kind of life 1 lived and I invite you to live with Me.' When we accept Jesus' invitation, believe that what he is saying is true, and follow Him with our whole life, we experience freedom from past sins and future fears—along with contentment, joy, love, and power today.
The gospel is multifaceted and unbelievers who hear it may be attracted initially to
one aspect or another. The reconciliation to God which it promises may appeal to people 151
suffering the pain of bitter and broken relationships. Regeneration, the doctrine that we can be renewed from the inside out, attracts people suffering from shame and wanting renewal in person and circumstance. Justification, the doctrine that God declares new believers righteous and innocent in his sight as Jesus has paid the price for sin, is appealing to people struggling with the "weight of a lifetime of guilt and worthlessness when we embrace the truth that God views us as perfect in Christ" (Lindblom 2004:45).
Finally, the doctrine of God's unconditional love for the believer has wide appeal in a love-starved world.
The people of the Seminary Mission knew the gospel as an ongoing reality in their
own lives and from it continually sprang sources of motivation to action. We will
consider two of them. The first was ongoing service out of gratitude to God for salvation
in this life and the next. In the words of the English theologian F. B. Meyer (1847-1926),
"Recognize that Jesus bought you to be his by shedding his own blood as your ransom-
price. . . Then give yourself entirely to Him . . . present yourselves to Him (as) living
sacrifices ... (of) service" (Meyer 2003:106-107).
Another motivating force is a deep and abiding sense of concern for the wellbeing of others and their eternal wellbeing in particular. The missionaries were not living a
theory or a philosophy which did not deliver on its promises. They believed the folk religion of the altiplano was spiritually bankrupt and of no eternal value, destining its adherents to continued misery in this life and a dreadful existence in the next. Their beliefs engendered a sense of real urgency observable in reports of the kind written in
1946 by Samuel Smith Sr. five years after the mission entered Bolivia: "There are
Catholic churches on every farm, and the priest goes there once a year or less. We must 152
supply the gospel and its grace to every place that will permit us. The door is wide open.
Now is the time to enter."
Peters (1984:328) argues that considering the eternal destinies which Evangelicals
believe are at stake, the word "urgency" in the sense of an actual everyday life or death
"emergency" most accurately conveys the seriousness of the situation. "It is," he says,
"an emergency of infinite significance involving the eternal bliss or misery of countless multitudes."
Whether it is the urgency of the commission (which Jesus gave his disciples), the coming night (of eternity) when no man can work, the great and plenteous harvest, the whitened harvest fields, the fleeting day of salvation, the imminent return of the
Lord, the uncertainty of life, or the fast closing doors (of evangelistic opportunity in
some countries), there is a divine must involved, a must which creates an emergency from the divine point of view. Delay (missionary procrastination) may prove disastrous and fatal (Peters 1984:330-331).
God
God's nature is too multifaceted and complex to relate here the totality of his being
to missionary life, so far as the Bible teaches it. The subject receives chapter-length
treatment in some theologies of mission. Rather, by way of example, we will consider
one attribute—his power as the creator and ruler of the universe. The unimaginable
dimensions of the universe, the huge forces at work in it, its breathtaking beauty, and the
precision of its design are, for Evangelicals, always a source of wonder at the genius,
magnificence, and power of its creator. When coupled with belief in the omnipresence
and perpetual love and goodness of God, faith in the power of God is a very powerful
force as the missionary can, at any time, prayerfully count on the limitless power and
willingness of God the Holy Spirit to do good in the situations of real need which he is
constantly encountering in the course of his work. 153
Eternity
When God created the first human beings he gave them the power to live forever and intended that they live eternally in the state that he created, namely in perfect harmony with him, with each other, and with nature. The power to live forever was not
lost in the Fall as life continues beyond the grave either in heaven, which is a paradise in every respect, or in hell, a place of endless and unimaginable suffering. Hell is pictured in the Bible as a place burning with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:12; Mark 9:43), eternal fire (Matthew 18:8), eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46), torment day and night forever
(Revelation 20:10), and a lake that bums with sulphur and fire (Revelation 21:8). Hell,
being eternal, is inescapable (Luke 16:26) a place of "eternal conscious torment" (Piper
2000: 1 1 9). This is not to imply that God takes delight in punishing people or is
indifferent to suffering. Quite the contrary. His attitude is conveyed in his word, his actions, and his people. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel spoke for God in this regard.
"As surely as 1 live," declares the Sovereign Lord, "1 take no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live" (Ezekiel 33: 1 1). The three persons of the Godhead suffered intensely, each in their own way, to bring the gift of salvation to mankind and God goes to extraordinary lengths calling, equipping, sending, and supporting some of his people in the rescue work of missions.
Believing that "one's eternal destiny is determined through conversional change"
(Gillespie 1991 : 16) and that Christ is the only way, is a powerful doctrinal force in the constellation of forces motivating the missionary. The metaphor of mission as rescue needs no elaboration. The sense of urgency attending any kind of rescue operation is quite evident in some of the newsletters sent from Bolivia. "Please pray," wrote Jessie
Hickey to her friends in Indiana in 1953, "that the Lord will use us to gather in many 154
precious souls as we know that the coming of the Lord is very near at hand." (The
"coming of the Lord" is both the day of a person's death and the return of Christ to
earth). In his report on the first five years of the mission, Samuel Smith said, "... the
work which we are pushing now is right along the Pan-American highway. . . (There are) other points which we want to occupy and to which we want to send pastors as soon as possible. When we think of so many dying we wonder how we can wait until the pastors
are trained." (The "dying" referred to is the ongoing spiritual death of eternity in hell).
The doctrine of the eternal destinies of all people was firmly in the mission's
consciousness and it was a powerful motivator to action.
The Temporal Plight of People
Missionary work is sometimes attacked on the basis that people are happy as they are and should be left alone. Responding to the argument of opponents to Evangelical
proselytism that it is "cruel and wrong to disturb and confuse them with another man's
religion," Peters (1984:33 1) says that
the man outside of the gospel ... is not a perfectly happy creature. The lostness of
man apart from Christ is much more keenly felt than it is possible to describe. Man
is born with eternity in his soul. He is created for God and cannot find contentment
and peace until he finds it in God. He has neither meaning nor destiny of life, neither peace nor hope... The sense of loneliness, of being forsaken, of fear, guilt, dread, emptiness, lostness, insecurity and meaninglessness are all living realities in the heart and mind of the man apart from Christ.
The missionaries knew the reality of this in their own lives, in greater or lesser
measure, before their own conversion and thought they discerned it in the lives of
Aymara people, many of whom were suffering the particularly cruel fate of having been bom into serfdom and into a culture which promised them occasional escape from their plight in the excesses of the fiesta system and raised their hopes through sacrificing to 155
Pachamama, Tio, and the achachila (ancestral spirits inhabiting mountain tops), but
which left them worse off than ever (Chapter 4).
The argument that people are quite happy and that evangelists should leave them
alone has two problems. First, it is not substantiated by data from three quarters (74.4%) of the informants in this study who testified to being in a crisis (Table 7) at the time of their conversion which neither their own resources nor those of secular life or folk religion could resolve. They were unhappy and some were desperate to the point of being
suicidal (Chapter 8). Had they been happy in their secularism or folk religion they would not have considered converting. Second, the argument wrongly implies that the evangelists were harassing happy people, badgering them into conversion. The strategy of the Seminario Biblico evangelists was to preach the gospel, making clear the Bible's offer of hope for peace in this life and the next and then instructing further those who believed. Moreover, the evangelists believed that conversion only occurs when the Holy
Spirit decides of his own free will to enter the soul of a person and that no amount of badgering, therefore, can convert another person.
The Exclusivity of the Gospel
The Bible categorically states that Jesus alone is the way of salvation. "I am the way and the truth and the life," said Jesus. "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). He did not say that he is one of a number of ways but "the" way. Again, in the words of the apostle Peter (Acts 4: 12), "Salvation is found in no one else, for there
is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." The
exclusivity of salvation is a doctrine which carries with it for thinking believers a sense of responsibility to share one's discovery of faith and gives point and force to the message. 156
The Universality of the Gospel
The belief that the gospel is for all living people everywhere is a powerful source of confidence for the preacher. The theologian John Piper (2000:129) speaks of salvation
through Christ as "the divine answer to the plight of the whole human race . . . (part of
which is) ... the universal human misery of death." The Bible teaches that in response to the preaching of the gospel there will one day be people from "every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:8) in heaven. What Tegenfeldt wrote concerning the foreign missionaries to the Kachin people in Burma applies equally well to the
Seminary Mission and to Evangelical missionaries in general. Their "unshakable
conviction that it was God's gracious purpose that the Kachins should hear the gospel and believe gave strength and determination to each of the missionaries, especially in the days when discouragements were numerous" (Tegenfeldt 1974:354).
The doctrine of universality does not imply that all will be saved. If that was the case, missions would be unnecessary. Rather, missionaries are motivated to seek those who will respond to their message. They are rather like fishermen who know there are fish in the sea but not which ones they will catch. Jesus used this very metaphor when calling four fishermen to be his disciples.
The Motivation of Being Indispensable
A person is converted the moment that the Holy Spirit enters a person's soul and
begins to indwell him. That is the moment of salvation. A person, therefore, cannot be converted by human agency alone; evangelists can not impart the Spirit of God to another person. Packer (1991:108,1 12) makes this point in his book Evangelism and the
Sovereignty of God . 157
However clear and cogent we may be in presenting the gospel, we have no hope of
convincing or converting anyone. Can you or I by our earnest talking break the
power of Satan over a man's life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead?
No. . .. Man's heart is impervious to the word of God.
Knowing the indispensability of God to a person's conversion, the missionary proceeds to seek conversions by concentrating on being faithful to his calling by working
hard at the work of preaching and leaves the results to God (Packer 1991 :1 12). He remembers the rhetorical question of Romans 10:14 "How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"
The second thing the Bible exhorts evangelists to do is to pray. Spiritual results are
obtained by spiritual means. Prayer, among other things, is an expression of the missionary's dependence on God. In the first instance he looks to God for help in his own life. He has the duty of living day by day under the Holy Spirit's control, needs his help to understand biblical truth, meet material needs, guide him in perplexing situations, and
protect him in times of need. Then he prayerfully depends at all times on God for success in his work. The personnel of the Seminary Mission asked God for results when they were seeking converts and starting churches; when the work was going forward they
praised God in prayer; when it was suffering from persecution and other reverses they prayed expressing their trust that he was in control; and they asked their friends in
America to support the work in like manner.
The Holy Spirit and the missionary, then, co-labor in complementary and interdependent fashion, each playing his role in the conversion of people, each
indispensable to the process. The missionary prays and preaches knowing that while it is 158
not all up to him, yet he is, nevertheless, an essential part of the equation and is motivated
knowing that he is working with the God of heaven and earth.
The Motivation of Being on the Winning Side
The Bible teaches that the earthly and spiritual realms are the staging grounds for a bitter and ongoing war between two great and, to human eyes, invisible armies one of
which is good and the other evil. God and the angels at his command are ranged against
Satan (the Devil) and demons (evil spirits). It is a war for the allegiance of men's souls in
this lifetime and their eternal destiny in the next. People are born blind to this reality as a consequence of the Fall, and Satan and his minions work to maintain people in their
blindness lest they come to the light (as they do in conversion) and switch allegiance.
God seeks to use his people, believers, in the war for the conversion of people's souls. He calls some people to perform this work in other cultures. By prayer the missionary addresses the spiritual realm; by preaching he addresses the mind and will of anyone who shows an interest. In all this he has a tremendous advantage as the Bible teaches that Christ legally defeated the powers of Satan, sin, and death by leading a
sinless life (he never yielded to temptation), and by overcoming the power of death by his resurrection in the power of the Holy Spirit and then sending the Holy Spirit into the world to work with believers in the war for the souls of people. The Bible teaches that in
the future this war will cease and that God will consign evil spirits and evil people to
places where they can no longer wreak havoc. God will thus have finally triumphed over
evil. This is part of what the missionary preaches and it is along these lines that he prays.
Believing you are on the winning side is a powerful source of motivation both
encouraging the missionary to persevere in tough times and giving him a message of
strong hope for any unbeliever weary of the drudgery, disappointments, and evil in this 159
world. God is God; he has won and is winning the great cosmic struggle for the souls of
many men which is being played out on the stage of human history.
The Call of God
Missionary motivation arises not only from the Evangelical belief system but from
experiences in the course of a believer's life. Three such experiences in Christendom are
the various callings. One is the call to salvation given by preachers to whomever they
speak. Another is the call to discipleship given to believers to pursue through various disciplines the Bible's exhortation to mature in godliness, in the character of God
himself, so far as that is possible. A third calling is to spiritual ministry. All believers are called to serve in some capacity, some on foreign fields. The calling to missionary life
varies in its specifics with the individual but has some characteristics in common, each of which may motivate the recipient in some respect.
A divine summons
Missionary service is entered into following a call "sovereignly exercised by the
Holy Spirit. . . (It) is by divine appointment and call rather than by human choice, no
matter how much coveted. . . (It is an) honor, responsibility, and ministry" (Peters
1984:272-3) which men are forbidden to take to themselves. In his commentary on the book of Hebrews, William Barclay (1957:45) says
The priesthood is not an office which a man takes; it is a privilege and glory to
which he is called. The ministry of God among men is neither a job nor a career; it
is a vocation, a divine calling. A man ought to be able to look back and say, not, "I chose this work," but rather, "God chose me and gave me this work to do."
A personal summons
The Bible is replete with instances of God calling people to his service and so it was, as we will read in the next chapter, with the Indiana seminary missionaries. Calling 160
comes in such a way that the individual is left in no doubt that God has summoned him
personally.
A serious summons
With eternal issues at stake, Peters (1984:298) says of ministry that, "The call of
God is a most serious and sacred business and requires our best." It is a work, the quality
of which the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3:13-15, God himself will scrutinize and judge
after the minister's death. These things motivate the missionary to receive appropriate
training and to serve diligently in the work assigned him.
A specific summons
No one person is gifted for all the kinds of work which missions undertake in the
course of establishing the church in a foreign society. Linguists work at Bible translation
and literacy; evangelists propagate the gospel and may start and pastor churches; there
are teachers who specialize in instructing children and others who teach in seminaries;
there are medical personnel, administrators, and people with technical skills in
construction, aviation, and radio broadcasting. A person is usually called to a specific
task; something for which they are gifted and find fulfilling. Productivity and fulfillment
in one's work are themselves motivating by virtue of the rewards which follow from working where we excel.
A summons demanding obedience and promising blessing
Evangelical Christianity makes ethical demands of its adherents and requires
obedience to God's sovereign leading in their lives. The Christian life is about living with
God but on his terms and they include obedience to his revealed will. "Obedience," says
Peters (1984:142), "is a cardinal virtue and a proof of belonging to God... To the
apostles, obedience is not optional; it is occupational. It occupies all of their life..." In 1 161
John 2:3 the apostle John wrote, "We know that we have come to know him (i.e. God) if
1 we obey his commands.' When a person receives a calling they are not receiving a suggestion or a good idea. To receive a call to ministry is to receive specific leading from
God in the form of a command and, as such, it is given in the expectation that the recipient will respond with wholehearted obedience. Calling to missionary vocation thus
carries with it powerful inherent motivation. Once called, a person will seek to fulfill that calling motivated by the desire to live their life in obedience to God.
Obediently fulfilling one's missionary calling, though, should not be thought of in
terms of brutally gutting it out in some remote and unpleasant part of the planet though
that may be part of it. "Calling is intended as a gift—one to be highly valued, accepted, protected, preserved, and developed, but also thoroughly enjoyed and loved, as well as
one that can be relaxed in. It is not a cruel twist of divinely orchestrated fate intended as an unattainable goal bringing a lifetime of frustration" (Bruce Uren, New Zealand minister, pers. comm.). The missionary willingly obeys God out of love for him, gratitude for salvation, desire to be instrumental in bringing others into the sheepfold of God, and knowing that however difficult one's calling may be at times, it is what God in his love and omniscience knows is the very best use of that person's life in this lifetime and one which will bring him rewards in the next. The Bible is replete with promises of eternal and temporal rewards for those who lay down their lives to serve God and man as ministers and there are times when these promises are a comfort to the missionary suffering hardship and a motivation to continue enduring.
The Desire to Glorify God
The perfections of God's nature together with his creation and maintenance of the universe and the salvation which he holds out to mankind constitute the glory of God. Ian 162
Hay, former director of The Society of International Missions (SIM), says that "when we have the glory of God as a motive, what we really are saying is that the glory which is the
fullness of all that He is so grips our hearts in our understanding of Him that we have to make other people, too, understand Him as he really is" (Hay 1990:55). With this in mind, Robert Speer (1910:17-18, in Peters 1984:55) observes that, "It is in the very being and character of God that the deepest ground of the missionary enterprise is to be found."
The Bible commands believers to proclaim God's glory. "Proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples"
(Psalm 96:2-3).
Conclusion
Thrilled and deeply grateful at having discovered through personal experience that one can be saved, forgiven, cleansed, and reconnected with the Maker of the heavens and the earth, and believing the promise of eternity in heaven, Evangelical people naturally want this for others. Powerfully motivating, also, is the doctrine that unbelievers will not be spared an eternity in hell. In this light, evangelists, being rescue workers, have a sense of real urgency in their work. Their message is for all people everywhere and, like all
messages, it must be spoken and heard before it can be acted upon. Moreover, being
clearly written in inerrant Scriptures, it is a message in which the envoy has unswerving confidence. Also powerfully motivating for evangelists is their personal spiritual experience of having been called by God to perform a specific work aimed at advancing the gospel. The experience of salvation, the knowledge of having been divinely called, and the promises of the Bible, are sufficiently comprehensive when taken together to sustain evangelists in every phase of their life and work. In the next chapter, we will read 163
of a small band of missionaries who, unequivocally convinced of their divine and personal calling, went about fulfilling their vocation in the highlands of Bolivia. CHAPTER 7 THE EVANGELISTS: PEOPLE MOTIVATED TO SEEK CHANGE IN OTHERS
Christianity, from its inception, has been an evangelical and proselytizing religion. Jesus Christ preached the spiritual conquest of the world and both the Old and New Testaments relate the epic story ending in the last day ofjudgment. Conversion is
essential to its very nature and missionaries are the life blood of its survival. —James Axtell "The Invasion Within" 1985:xvii.
Introduction
In November of 1941, Samuel and Gladys Smith left the United States hoping to establish some Evangelical churches in highland Bolivia. Before considering the various
means by which they sought to reach their goal, it is illuminating to first consider the realities of the circumstances they were up against. What the Smiths and those who joined them attempted was very ambitious in its geographical sweep, taking in as it did several hundred square miles of country which was sometimes dangerous and always
difficult to live in. It was hard enough just living there let alone trying to bring about radical and permanent change in the lives of people all of whom spoke a different language. Many thousands of them, moreover, lived as serfs on haciendas which were
off-limits to the evangelists. From a human standpoint it was also a very uncertain
venture depending ultimately for its continued existence on the deeply and ongoing self-
sacrificial work of Aymara people not yet converted to its cause. The missionaries, then, went to Bolivia to create something from nothing. Their vision of a series of self-
sustaining native churches was also ambitious in that its fulfillment depended on the
eventual availability of enough literate native clergy to staff institutions for training their
own ministers at a time in Bolivia's history when the great majority of altiplano natives
164 165
were illiterate. More than this the mission had it strongly in mind to expect and strongly challenge this as yet non-existent native church to take initiatives and make whatever sacrifices would be necessary to go beyond its geographical comfort zone to propagate the faith among Aymara people living in other regions and so extend Christendom on
earth. In the 34 years of its existence, the mission was never staffed by more than a dozen people, half of whom at any one time could be suffering from debilitating illnesses, and
all of whom were supported by slender charitable donations, and acting in obedience to a
Deity who is only seen with the eye of faith. Yet the mission reached its goals. By working as a team and cooperating with personnel in other missions and national evangelists, 33 churches were established by the time the Smiths left Bolivia in 1956.
(The mission closed its doors in 1975 when the last member, Doris Wan-en, returned to the United States). The believers continued multiplying.
In the last chapter we examined the belief system and spiritual experiences which
continually motivate Evangelical missionaries. What the individual missionaries did to
help their society achieve its goal is the substance of this chapter. To understand their
individual contributions, and those of the Aymara converts who labored alongside them
as evangelists and pastors, it is necessary to consider their personalities, talents, calling,
preparation, goal, strategy, and their relationships one with another. The society's history
was largely constructed from personal correspondence with the missionaries and from
their newsletters to Union Bible Seminary in Westfield, Indiana.
The Lives and Work of the Missionaries and Aymara Evangelists
Samuel E. Smith (1904-84) and Gladys Smith (d.1987)
In the early decades of the twentieth century, members of the Friends Society from
the United States worked over a wide area of highland Bolivia. Personnel of the Central 166
Friends branch of the society established churches in La Paz, on the altiplano, in the town
of Coroico in the yungas valley region northeast of La Paz, in the tropical lowlands at
Rurrenabaque, and on the border of Brazil. An Oregon branch of the Friends established a Bible school in the Max Paredes area of La Paz, a church in La Paz, and owned a farm at Huatajata near Lake Titicaca where missionaries learned Aymara from a linguist, Ellen
Ross.
Another Friends-sponsored mission, the subject of this project, established
churches in La Paz, El Alto, and on the altiplano. It was pioneered by Samuel Smith and his wife Gladys who were members of the Ohio branch of the Friends Society. They both graduated from Union Bible Seminary in Westfield, Indiana. Samuel was a pastor and worked with his brother Elim in their father's printshop in North Carolina for two years
(1937-38). Sensing the call of God to Bolivia, Samuel and Gladys returned to Westfield where they were commissioned by the mission board of the Central Friends Society in
Indiana. After raising their own financial support from various Friends Society churches,
independent churches, and individual people, the Smiths left the United States on 21
November 1941 with their 14-year old son, Samuel Joshua, and arrived in Arica, Chile, on 6 December 1941.
The Smiths say that before they went to Bolivia the conviction grew that "the Lord was calling us to this land for three specific tasks: to find an unevangelized territory and there preach the Gospel; to open a Bible Training School for the preparation of native
pastors and evangelists; and to print the Gospel." They were not the first Protestants to evangelize the Aymara. Several societies had preceded them (Wagner 1970:27-87). In 167
1941 though, there was still a huge number of Aymara people in La Paz and the altiplano south of La Paz whom the Smiths believed had never heard the gospel.
Shortly after their arrival in La Paz they bought a large two-storey building at 60
Teniente Oquendo Street. It was renovated and used to house missionary personnel, a chapel, a grade school, a seminary (which opened in 1945), a dormitory for the seminary students, a medical clinic for treating Aymara people, living quarters for the manned couple who cooked for the students, a printing press which the Smiths took to Bolivia, guest rooms, and store rooms.
The Smiths worked at learning Spanish and when they had grasped enough they turned their attention to evangelizing in La Paz. Samuel Joshua describes how his parents
started their first church. Within a year of their arrival, and while they "were still
floundering in a maze of verbs and vocabulary, and still wondering what made Spanish tick, (an Evangelical Aymara) family invited them to hold regular services in their dwelling." Twelve years earlier the family had moved from a country village to La Paz.
They lived in a few rented rooms in a patio down a narrow and dirty alleyway and started a bakery. The Smiths accepted the family's offer and held services with them for several weeks.
From there the little congregation moved into a rented room near the city cemetery.
"Every Sunday it meant a trip clear across town, a morning service, a cold lunch eaten in
the mission, an afternoon service, and so it went plus two prayer meetings a week till that
little room was crowded," said Samuel Jr. From the perspective of evangelism, the incipient church was in a strategic location as visitors thronged to the cemetery every
Sunday affording the Smiths and their national co-workers opportunities to meet people 168
and to share the gospel with those who wanted to hear. The congregation grew "mainly through (these) street meetings. The rented room was used for some years. "For many years we worshiped in a crude tabernacle shelter, and children's classes met out under the clouds" on a lot bought with money raised by a man in another mission. The lot is a block away from the city's main cemetery. The new church, which was given the name
Callampaya, was built piecemeal as funds came in from churches and interested
individuals in the United States. It was completed in 1957 and is an impressive building
with seating capacity for 500 people. Samuel Sr. wanted it to rival the Catholic edifices in
La Paz. When Samuel Jr. returned 38 years later with his wife, Mary Ellen, they were
"amazed to meet such a high percentage of the congregation we had left." In the 1940s and 1950s, Samuel Sr. also bought land for building churches in the altiplano provinces of Aroma, Ingavi, Viacha, and the yungas.
Within two months of their arrival in Bolivia, the Smiths became aware of a demand for Evangelical literature. Samuel, who was a trained printer, had brought a small printing press with him and started producing pamphlets in Spanish. In the late 1940s, a missionary woman, Ellen Ross, reduced the Aymara language to writing, and in the early
1950s she began teaching some of the missionaries the Aymara language. In 1949, the
Smiths visited the States to raise money for more printing equipment. On returning to
Bolivia they produced two large editions of songbooks in Aymara and Spanish. The
printing shop was very busy at times; one year it provided work for eleven of the twelve seminary students living at the mission station.
The Smiths and their colleagues, conscious of Catholic opposition to Evangelical missions, were concerned to produce a self-sufficient indigenous church which would 169
continue functioning if the government expelled the mission from the country. A year
after their arrival in Bolivia, the Smiths had grasped enough Spanish to begin teaching
people interested in being ministers. In 1945, the La Paz Bible Seminary was opened at
the mission headquarters for training converts who sensed the call of God to ministry.
The first student was Gregorio Coro. Doris Warren, a colleague of the Smiths told me, "A
dormitory was built for the students and an Aymara Christian woman cooked their main
meal. I can remember once when a number of students had lice. I helped Gladys to kill
the lice in their hair and wash their clothing by hand."
Another step forward was taken when Dr Sid Hillyer of the Canadian Baptist
Mission and Mr Carlson, founder of the World Mission Prayer League, set up La Cruz
del Sur radio station in the Seminary Mission's headquarters building so the gospel could be broadcast over the airwaves. A wing of the building was remodelled to house a studio, control room, library, and office. The Canadians owned and directed the station and a
Lutheran missionary, John Mickaelson, served as the engineer. The station produced some of its own music with Mary Ellen playing the piano and Samuel Joshua accompanying her in song. Some of my informants decided to convert after hearing
broadcasts from the station. An Evangelical radio station in Ecuador is described by
Muratorio (1981:515) as having become "a very powerful form of ideological penetration among the Indian population".
Another important aspect of the mission was its medical work. Gladys had been a nurse in the United States and qualified as a registered nurse in the Bolivian medical system. She vaccinated many rural school children against smallpox and whooping cough and rendered a great deal of assistance to her colleagues, to people in the churches, in her 170
neighborhood, and in the seminary. Her Christmas newsletter for 1954 noted that many times that year half of the mission staff had been sick at the same time. Her work with the locals was often made more difficult because "Many times the people wait until terrible infection sets in from a cut, bum, fight, dog bite, etc, then expect to be cured in a few days." In addition to her nursing duties, which alone kept her very busy at times, she ran a household, helped her husband with his duties, and played the piano accordion when
she and Samuel preached in the open air.
In 1946, after five years of service, the Smiths returned to Indiana for a sabbatical.
They met with their mission board and expressed their desire to extend the work out from
La Paz into the vast region of the altiplano but the board did not approve the proposed
initiative for reasons I did not learn. Samuel, determined to expand the work, approached the board of Union Bible Seminary, an interdenominational school in Westfield, Indiana, which served a conservative branch of the Friends society. Samuel's father was the president and his brother Simeon taught there for many years. The seminary board voted to support Samuel's proposal so the Smiths left the jurisdiction of the Ohio Friends to work under the seminary directors. They were not guaranteed a salary by the school but continued trusting God to meet their needs, as they had done for the previous five years, through the voluntary donations of interested churches and individuals. The board acted as a forwarding agency for the funds which donors designated for the work in Bolivia and
" allocated space in its monthly publication, The Gospel Messenger." for newsletters from mission personnel.
Through its association with the seminary in Indiana, the mission came to be
known as the Bible Seminary Mission or by its shorter Spanish name, Seminario Biblico. 171
Following the mission's separation from the Central Friends, it took on the
interdenominational nature of the seminary in the composition of its workforce. The
Smiths returned to Bolivia with their mission newly reconstituted and people started arriving to work with them. Samuel also met with representatives of five missionaiy societies then working in highland Bolivia to divide the region among them to give people everywhere an opportunity to hear the gospel. In 1955, Samuel left Bolivia with
health problems. His wife still had responsibilities to discharge and did not leave with him at that time. She, Samuel Jr., and his wife Mary Ellen all left in 1956 and Leland
Trussell was appointed to direct the mission.
Samuel J. Smith and Mary Ellen Smith
Samuel Jr. went to Bolivia with his parents in 1941 at age 14 and returned to
Indiana in 1947 to attend Union Bible Seminary where his grandfather was president. He returned to Bolivia in 1948 and married Mary Ellen Jackson in January 1949. His parents
went on furlough to the United States in 1 949 leaving him and Mary Ellen to direct
Callampaya Church, the Bible school, printing shop, and the string of preaching points and small groups of rural believers from Calamarca to beyond Sica Sica and back into the mountains. They were helped by Rev. Marshall and Catherine Cavit of the World Gospel
Mission who had just arrived in Bolivia. After six years of service, Samuel, whose health was never good in Bolivia, was forced to return to the United States.
Doris Warren
Another missionary who played a significant part in establishing the Seminario
Biblico movement was Doris Warren. Bom of Evangelical parents in 1924, Doris says that she realized early in life that her parents' experience of salvation was not sufficient to save her. She needed, she says, her own "personal relationship with the Lord" and was 172
converted at the age of thirteen. After high school in Cincinatti, Ohio, she worked in an
office for two years but "was not satisfied for I felt the Lord had a place in His harvest
field for me."
She left the office in 1944 to attend Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute in Vancleve
where, she says, the Holy Spirit began talking to her about going to South America. "I
prayed much, the vision enlarged, and the burden increased. When 1 settled it and knew it
was God's will and choice for my life He gave me some promises including Isaiah 41:10
"Do not fear, for 1 am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen
you and uphold you." Her sense of calling gave her a steadfast sense of purpose while at
Bible school and led her into further preparation at Marion College (later Indiana
Wesleyan University) where she enrolled in 1947. Doris worked her way through both
schools and prayed about what she could not earn, seeing in her circumstances an
opportunity to trust God. "I felt that if I could not trust Him for finances while in school,
neither could I trust Him for them when I was on the field."
Following graduation in 1951 from Marion with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of
Science in elementary and high school education, she sought some practical experience before going overseas by teaching grades 1-4 for a year at a Christian school in
Anderson, Indiana. During that year Mrs Billheimer, the wife of the school's founder, received a letter from Samuel Smith Sr. telling of the need to replace Jessie Hickey, a children's worker, while she was home on furlough. Doris applied to the mission and was accepted. She needed $2,000 and equipment for four years. Doris and her friends prayed about her needs and she mentioned them on the school's radio program. Pledges for 173
financial support came in from listeners to the radio broadcast, from people in the
Wesleyan Methodist church that she attended, and from individuals in other churches.
Doris went to Bolivia in September 1952. She lived at the headquarters building in
La Paz along with Samuel and Gladys Smith, Samuel Jr. and Mary Ellen, and Mr and
Mrs Skinner and their three daughters. Doris lived in a large room where she cooked,
slept, and studied. She held children's meetings while Jessie Hickey was in Canada on furlough. When Jessie returned, she resumed the children's work and after some
discussion with the senior Smiths, Doris moved in 1953 to Umala, a village of about five hundred people 50 miles south of La Paz, and lived there until January 1956. There were many villages around that area where the gospel had not been preached. The day after she
arrived in Umala, Doris was greeted by a group of boys with, "Buenas tardes, Senorita,
queremos visitarle." They formed a line and came marching into the patio and on into
her room for a short Bible class. There were 17 of them. That same afternoon the bishop
and the priests convened a special meeting in the Catholic Church. They wanted the
newcomers to leave but the villagers wanted them to remain arguing that there was now
religious freedom in Bolivia. Doris says that when she and the two Aymara girls who had
gone with her to Umala as Bible teachers heard that potential opposition was brewing,
they prayed and nothing eventuated.
The three women lived in an adobe house, drew water from a well, cooked on a
gasoline camper's stove, and used a gasoline pressure lamp for lighting. Electricity was
available from seven to ten at night but the supply was cut off to the whole village when
people did not pay their electricity bill. A room in another building was rented for
services. To give Doris more independence, she, Samuel, and Gladys prayed about her 174
buying a car and getting a licence. Laws concerning foreigners obtaining driver's licences
made it expedient for her to return to the USA in December 1954. She got her licence and did some deputation work which resulted in several couples being called to Bolivia. Doris returned to Bolivia and moved back to Umala in September of 1955.
On Sundays she preached at different (sometimes three) churches, held Bible classes for youth and prayer meetings with a Bible study for adults during the week, and often travelled to villages on market day. She went with Aymara pastors and believers and while they held open-air meetings, gave out pamphlets, and explained the gospel to interested people, Doris gathered children together and taught them songs, a simple Bible message, and some scripture verses. Sometimes people invited them to preach in their villages. If a group of people was converted, Doris invited them to send one of their number to the mission's Bible school for pastoral training and in this way some churches were founded.
She often carried medicines with her when she went travelling to sell at cost price.
They were over-the-counter medications for colds and arthritis, laxatives, vitamins, and eyedrops. Sometimes she received eggs, potatoes, or sheep cheese as payment. People suffering from serious conditions frequently sought her assistance but only rarely could she help. There were, she says, few rural clinics in those days. (I saw none 25 years later).
Doris also sold Bibles and pamphlets.
The work of the tiny mission at Umala did not go unopposed. On one occasion the local headmaster threatened to cane any children who attended services at the mission.
Doris recalled that "Some few braved the threat... One night I saw him pass slowly by our door. We prayed and later thanked the Lord that he returned home and didn't molest the 175
children. Neither did he molest them next day at school. Later I understood he was working with the priest. We made the matter a subject of much prayer." That crisis
passed but three years after the Umala mission opened its doors another crisis developed which closed them for good.
The local priests, angry about the number of people attending the Evangelical
services and the number of young people enjoying the Bible studies, directly issued Doris with death threats and incited some youths to attack the mission. This was in February
1956. By then it was known that a Catholic priest, Father Tumiri, had been responsible
the previous year for instigating the attack on Evangelicals during a service in the village
of Melcamaya which cost the lives of eight believers including the missionary Norman
Dabbs (Wagner 1970:50; Boots 1971:190) (Chapter 5). As Doris was now living alone at
Umala, the director of the mission withdrew her to La Paz to teach in the Bible school.
Shortly afterwards the villagers ousted the priests from Umala. They went to the town of
Patacamaya where they threatened Evangelical converts with a fine if they did not attend
confession and mass and gave the converts' children Christmas presents.
In 1957, Doris moved to Patacamaya, a small town 50 miles south of La Paz. She
lived there for three years on a property the mission had bought two years earlier. There had been much prayer about buying the properly. A train served the town every day
during the rainy season when the roads were impassable so the missionaries could travel
year-round to and from the town. Its proximity to many villages in the central altiplano
made the town a strategic location for a rural mission station and Bible school for the rural pastors. Local believers cleaned out the buildings on the property and prepared one
as a residence for a national pastor, another as a dormitory, and another for services. They 176
dug a well and built outside rest rooms. Doris started a Bible school and taught there for
1 , Maurice Tolan, who had been a builder in the United States, added a three years. In 96 1
second storey to the dormitory for use as classroom space.
in In December of 1961 , Doris had surgery for the removal of a benign tumor the
stomach muscle. Dangerous complications arose when blood clots in her left leg moved
to the lungs and left arm and in May 1962 she returned under doctor's orders to the
United States to recuperate fully. The Tolans ran the school at Patacamaya in her
absence. She learned on returning home that her father had been diagnosed with Lou
Gehrig's disease. The mission board gave her permission to stay home indefinitely and
help her mother. Her father died in late 1967.
The year 1968 saw much coming and going in the mission. Two nurses (Betty
Brown and Charlotte Bates) returned to the States due to poor health; Doris returned to
Bolivia as did Ruth Haan who had been home on furlough working in Union Seminary's
kitchen. Later that year, Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer. She returned to the
States for surgery and never returned to the field but prayed often concerning Bolivia and
wrote to Doris every week which she really appreciated. From 1968 until 1972, Doris
lived at the mission headquarters in La Paz and taught theology classes with Jose Poma at
Patacamaya after the planting and harvesting seasons.
In 1972, the Union Bible Seminary board sold the La Paz headquarters building
and turned the property at Patacamaya and all other church titles over to the Seminario
Biblico church association along with a sum of money. Doris moved to a two-roomed
place in Pura Pura, a section of the city near the Friends Society base. A large 177
schoolroom was built on the patio of the base to serve as a Bible school for pastors and leaders from both missions. She returned home to Michigan in 1975.
After two years of rest, Doris says she "felt led by God" to apply to the
Evangelistic Faith Missions Society based in Bedford, Indiana, for service in Honduras.
The director also "sensed the Lord's leading to open a work in La Paz, Bolivia" and
Doris was asked to go and start the paperwork. She was there from 1977 until 1980 when blood clot trouble again forced her to leave. She returned to the United States as the
mission was not working in places at lower altitude. Samuel Jr. described Doris as "a tireless, brave, and fine missionary."
Marion Heaslip and Fran MacNeill
By 1950, Evangelical missions had been established on the altiplano and in La Paz for half a century and there were thousands of believers. The Bible Society had translated
the gospels and Acts and produced three hymn books. In 1 952, the Aymara New
Testament was published so literate Aymara could read, and the illiterate could hear, this part of the Scriptures in their own language. The few believers who had lived in "free" communities or on haciendas where the patron had permitted a schoolhouse spoke elementary Spanish. At most, 20% could read Spanish and most read poorly. Very few could read Aymara. Every mission faced the problem of training illiterate men who
wanted to enter the ministry. It was not uncommon to find a completely illiterate pastor.
When it came time to preach during a service, he called on his school-age son or daughter to read a portion in Spanish and then he expounded. Illiteracy and impoverished knowledge of the Scriptures made for very repetitive evangelistic messages, but the pastors did the best they could and the churches grew. 178
To begin addressing this problem, Mrs Irvena Hibbs of the Northwest Friends
society asked the director of Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1957 if his mission could loan
a team of specialists to help the different missions m Bolivia with literacy classes. Dr
Alan and Iris Wares came from Mexico and, with their Aymara helpers, they prepared a
primer in Aymara. In 1958, Mary Grantham and Marion Heaslip used it to hold trial
classes for the Canadian Baptists in Achacachi and the Methodists in the Ancoraimes area. Marion is a Canadian. She trained as a rural schoolteacher, served three years in
Saskatchewan, and then taught missionary children for seven years in Peru and three years in Bolivia before beginning literacy work among the Aymara in Bolivia. She was joined by Fran MacNeil in 1960. The two women, who were members of Wycliffe Bible
Translators, rented rooms at the Seminary Mission headquarters previously filled with
Samuel Smith's printing equipment and set up a print shop in them. They printed pamphlets, songbooks, and Sunday school teaching resources in Aymara and Spanish.
The work grew into a publishing business called Comision de Alfabetizacion y Literatura en Aymara (CALA) which their Aymara co-workers took over in 1996 when Marion retired. (Fran retired in 1987). Marion was in Bolivia for 36 years and Fran for 27.
In the spring of 1959, the two women began training Aymara literacy teachers.
They designed the simplest curriculum possible and advised the different missions that
they were ready for business. The Northwest Friends in the Cordillera Zone were the first to request teacher training classes. They visited the five churches in that zone one Sunday and asked the people to select their teacher and send him to the central church the following day for three days of training. The churches would recompense him. Everyone seemed delighted that at last they had the opportunity to learn to read. The curriculum 179 was very simple—read accurately what each primer page contained, identify what was being taught on each page, and teach their students how to print the corresponding
writing lesson. It seemed simple enough but the literacy students had little self- confidence and were reluctant to teach. The problem was that while their grade two or three level education had equipped them to read the words on a printed page, all informational teaching involved rote learning. They had not been taught, therefore, by precept and example that learning also involves thinking, comprehension, and evaluating and assimilating new information and ideas. They struggled to understand why
comprehension is as important as correctly reading the words on a printed page and then rote learning the information. To the end of their years in literacy, Marion and Fran
continually faced this problem but had to overcome it so converts could profit from their
Bibles by thinking how to apply their readings to life on the altiplano. The two women persevered and, in time, as their teaching resources and techniques improved, they began to see results. "It was," said Marion, "a great pleasure to see men, women, and young people begin to enjoy themselves as they began conquering the printed page." Young people who had never attended day school coped best. After learning to read Aymara and
Spanish, many enrolled in government evening classes and earned diplomas.
The literacy work was largely in the rural areas as most churches were out there and almost every denomination participated. For the first time many congregations had pastors who could read the songs in the hymn books when leading the worship and could now read the Scriptures in Aymara. Being literate, albeit at an elementary level, gave some pastors the confidence to attend Bible school and receive formal ministerial training. The next phase of the program was to produce simple literature in diglot, with 180
Aymara and Spanish on every page, even though the majority had no interest in the
Spanish.
It was not long before CALA's work extended beyond elementary literacy to teaching Aymara and in this work the two women enjoyed their greatest success. The class was open for those who knew the syllables of Spanish but not the twelve consonants peculiar to Aymara. Since there were now government schools within reach of almost every family and the schools only used Spanish reading materials, a never-ending stream of people sought help with reading Aymara. Many men accepted church leadership after mastering the extra letters in the Aymara alphabet. They naturally wanted to minister in their own language.
Another project involved producing and distributing Aymara literature. The believers especially sought hymn books, Sunday school materials for all ages, and Bible teaching resources. Literature production was carried out in the CALA office and printshop by believers whom Fran trained. Marion focused on literacy but spent a lot of time distributing literature in rural schools, markets, and churches. To transport their literature they replaced the rear seats in their truck with shelving and cupboards.
Jessie Hickey
Jessie Hickey was a Canadian who worked from 1948 to 1956 primarily in children's ministry. A letter in 1953 describes her weekly schedule. On Mondays at 5:30 pm she had a class of about 45 children at the mission home. She took the Bible study for the Tuesday night prayer meeting at Callampaya Church. On Wednesday afternoons she taught a class of about 15 adults and children in the mountains above Villa San Antonio.
(Nine people were converted there in the first few months of classes). Wednesday
evening she had a class for 35 to 40 children in the district of Pura Pura in the home of a 181
believer, Mama Espinosa. When not engaged with the Wednesday groups, she helped seminary students with their practical ministry training by accompanying them to the home of a believer where they gave a short message. Then she taught using colored pictures as illustrations. Friday at 5:30 pm Jessie took a Bible study at the mission home with a group of 12 to 15 teenagers. On Sunday mornings she taught Sunday school to about 55 children in Callampaya church. Besides this she taught two classes each morning when the Bible school was in session, visited people at home, and handed out pamphlets on the streets. The Bible classes which she held in La Paz were for the children who worked at the main food market in town carrying baskets for people who came to buy fruit and vegetables. Jessie's health suffered in the high altitude and after eight years with the Seminary Mission, she relocated to Cochabamba city and continued working there.
Ruth Haan
Of this woman, Doris wrote: "God called her when she was young to be a missionary in Bolivia but due to her mother's poor health and helping her sister to train as a teacher, Ruth never got to the mission field." She graduated from Evangelista Bible
School in Chicago and spent many years working at the Kentucky Mountain Bible
Institute in Vancleve as a cook. When Gladys Smith left Bolivia in 1956 due to poor health, the mission recruited Ruth as a helper and companion for Doris as the mission
leaders did not want Doris left alone. Ruth heard about the vacancy when Doris was home in the States on furlough, applied to the mission board of Union Bible Seminary, raised her financial support from various friends, and went to Bolivia in 1956. She was
55 years old. Doris says that her "bright cheery attitude, compassionate heart, and godly attitude made her a great blessing to nationals and missionaries alike." She never learned 182
to speak Spanish well but "knew the language of love. She mixed the two languages, used gestures, and accomplished more than many of us who had the language. She was more mature than some of us, and had more experience of working with people. The believers loved her." Ruth and the two nurses cared for Doris in Bolivia when she had surgery in 1961. In 1968, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and returned home for surgery. She was not allowed to return to the field so helped care for Fran MacNeill's aged parents which released Fran to continue working overseas.
Betty Brown, Charlotte Bates, the Tolans, Trussells, and Skinners
In 1958, two single nurses, Betty Brown and Charlotte Bates, arrived from Indiana.
They lived and conducted most of their work in La Paz and travelled to rural churches to
hold clinics and teach women and children. They left in 1 968 due to poor health and presently live in Indiana.
The Tolans and their three sons were with the mission for one term of three years
(1959-62). Maurice graduated from Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute and went to
Marion College (now Indiana Wesleyan University). Churches of their denomination
(they were Wesleyans) supported them financially. Maurice was a builder and did a lot of
construction work on the buildings at the Patacamaya property readying them for use as a
Bible school. Maurice also helped build churches, worked with the pastors, visited rural churches, and preached. He helped evangelize new areas by driving Aymara believers to places where street meetings were held and to open-air markets to talk with interested individuals. The Tolans managed the Patacamaya Bible school when Doris Warren was in the United States nursing her father.
The Trussells served one term (1956-60). Before coming to Bolivia, Leland attended Union Bible Seminary. He and his wife lived at Patacamaya where they pastored 183
a church and taught in the Bible school. They travelled and visited the various churches
and participated in open-air services at markets. After their first term they returned with the Church of God Mission. Their daughter and one of their sons and their spouses are missionaries in Bolivia. Leland and Mary presently live in El Dorado Springs, Missouri, where Leland helps his son pastor a church.
The Skinners also worked one term with the mission (1950-1953). They visited the churches and helped with the Bible classes in La Paz. They wanted to work at a lower altitude and went to Arica, Chile.
Table 7-1. Time-line of Missionary Involvement with Seminario Biblico Date Work 1941 Samuel and Gladys Smith arrive in La Paz. Set up a printing press within two months of arrival and begin publishing Christian literature. Buy a large building in La Paz to serve as a headquarters for housing personnel, a radio station (La
Cruz del Sur) which is owned and directed by the Canadian Baptists, and a Bible school for training Aymara ministers. They begin evangelizing, often at open-air markets. Mrs Smith begins medical service. Samuel buys a lot near the municipal cemetery and begins raising funds to build a church.
1942 The Smiths found a church in La Paz with a small group of believers.
1 945 A seminary for training Aymara ministers opens at the mission base in La Paz.
Feb. 1946 Samuel Smith buys a lot and begins construction of Callampaya Church. It has seating capacity for 500.
1 5 Aug. 1 946 The first Junta Anual of Seminario Biblico pastors in La Paz. 1946 Smith meets with leaders of four other mission societies to divide the huge La Paz and altiplano region among them for purposes of evangelism.
1948-56 Jessie Hickey evangelizes and teaches children in and around La Paz before going to Cochabamba.
Mid-1950s Smith buys land at Patacamaya with the intention of starting a Bible school.
1952-61; Doris Warren teaches in La Paz, Umala, Patacamaya; evangelizes in the 1968-75 altiplano; and helps begin churches.
1954 Seminario Biblico has grown to 33 churches by this time.
1955 Samuel E. Smith leaves Bolivia with health problems; replaced by Leland Trussell succeeds him as mission director.
1956 Gladys Smith leaves Bolivia with health problems. 184
Table 7- 1 Continued Date Work 1957 Doris Warren starts a Bible school at Patacamaya.
1961 Nurses Charlotte Bates and Betty Brown work in La Paz and rural areas.
1 958-68 Maurice Tolan extends and improves the Patacamaya Bible school buildings.
1970 Seminario Biblico receives its Personerfa Juridica No. 155135 from the Supreme Court.
1972 The board of Union Bible Seminary sells the mission headquarters building. The Patacamaya property and all church property titles are turned over to Seminario Biblico along with a sum of money.
1 975 Doris Warren, the last missionary in Bolivia under the auspices of Union Bible Seminary, leaves Bolivia. She had worked on her own since 1968. The Seminario Biblico denomination becomes independent of foreign government, ministerial support, and finance.
The Aymara Evangelists
While the mission personnel are mentioned here by name and some indication is
given concerning the nature of their involvement, far more Aymara converts than
missionaries contributed to the growth of the Seminario Biblico movement. To give some
idea of their number, 33 were pastoring churches when Samuel Smith Sr. left in 1956. In
there 2003, were 54 churches. As pastors commonly serve two-year terms, the denomination held far more ministers than these statistics indicate. Then there are converts who served as musicians, church elders, administrators, and members of denominational committees. Many sought to evangelize family, friends, and neighbors.
Some taught in the Bible schools. Jose Poma from Chunllanga, a small village between
Patacamaya and Sica Sica, pastored a church, preached the gospel in open-air services, and taught for a number of years at Patacamaya. He taught certain days of the week at
Patacamaya and then rode his bicycle home to be with his family. Others such as
Prancisco Mamani, whose biography is given in the next chapter, worked voluntarily for 185
years winning converts and building churches in remote places. Many others helped in
practical ways by laboring voluntarily on church building sites, using their vehicles for
unremunerated church business, and donating food and giving up whole days preparing
meals for annual denominational conferences and local church celebrations. All of this
activity was still going on when 1 was there.
Some children were directly instrumental in the conversion of their parents.
Ezequiel Arcani Patty, is whose biography given in Chapter 8, was converted at age 6/4 .
His father violently opposed his decision but in later years Ezequiel led his aged father to
convert. Martin Mamani influenced his grandfather, who was a yatiri, to convert and
Antonio Quispe similarly influenced his parents.
Analysis
At the outset of this chapter we asked what kind of people the missionaries were as personality and ability are crucial factors determining the outcome of ambitious
undertakings in every sphere of human endeavor. (Though most are still alive, 1 speak of these people here in the past tense as we are considering a phase in their lives which ended long ago). In the first instance they were talented and industrious people who had been successful before entering the ministry. They included a builder, a printer, three nurses, two teachers, a cook, and two ministers. Each had a strong sense of calling to missionary work and to Bolivia in particular. Some were adequately prepared for their calling by their pre-field occupations; others further equipped themselves with degrees in theology so they could teach.
The founders of the mission went to Bolivia with the clearly defined goal of being instrumental in planting self-sustaining Evangelical churches among the Aymara and they started sensibly by first establishing a mission base, a print shop, and a Bible school to 186
train ministers. The missionaries were people of faith who really believed the Bible's
statement that God would build his kingdom on earth with believers from every tribe and
tongue. This was the source of their unshakable conviction that if they preached the
gospel some Aymara people would, sooner or later, be sure to convert and among the
converts some would be called to pastor churches and administer the fledgling
denomination for such is the experience of the Evangelical movement as it spreads
around the globe. Yet though they had faith, they knew there was nothing automatic
about establishing the church in foreign lands (or at home for that matter). The task called
for hard work and the determination to see it through to completion, enduring the
hardships of travel and daily life in La Paz and on the altiplano during an often turbulent
time in Bolivia's history, and courage and commonsense in the face of potentially life-
threatening opposition. No doubt the missionaries frayed each other's nerves at times but
the picture emerges of a mission that was a caring community. The nurses looked after
the sick among their number, tended to the immediate medical needs of hundreds of
Bolivians, and immunized hundreds more; when the life of one of them was threatened,
she was pulled back to safety; one who had retired to the States voluntarily cared for a
missionary colleague's aged parents so she could return to Bolivia; and the whole
mission was continually sustained by each other's prayers and the prayers and financial
support of friends in Canada and the United States. The mission existed for the express
puipose of communicating the love of God by word and deed. It preached the love of
God for mankind in providing salvation in this life and the next and practised the love of
in God daily life among themselves and toward the Bolivians. It was love expressed by self-sacrifice—in the first instance by sacrificing promising careers, in some cases by 187
living for a lifetime away from country and km, and by living, sometimes alone and
under primitive conditions, for extended periods of time. But it was not all grim.
They were adventurers who took hardship in stride; the translators and teachers
enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of their work; some in the mission were endlessly
fascinated by aspects of the culture in which they lived; some became life-long friends
bound by mutual respect and being comrades-in-arms and trusted co-laborers in what
they saw as a great cause. In their tiredness they were often refreshed by the enchanting
scenery of the mountains and altiplano and all of them enjoyed the deep and abiding
satisfaction of spending their lives doing what they believed was the will of God for them
personally. All these personal factors contributed to the longevity and cohesiveness of the
mission and thus the achievement of its goal. We consider that goal next and the
strategies deployed to achieve it.
Goal and Strategies
The overall objective of the mission was to create a self-sufficient body of Aymara
Evangelical churches. Said Doris Warren, "We were working towards the time when the
nationals would take charge." The mission patterned its strategy on that of the apostle
Paul, whose objectives and strategy are set forth in the book of Acts and are normative
for Evangelical mission work. A considerable volume of research has been poured into
this aspect of missionary praxis (Allen 1979; Kraft and Wisley 1979; Tippett 1987:371-
The 386). missionaries sought to develop self-reliance in four respects—government,
instruction, finance, and propagation. Their strategy was, therefore, multi-faceted.
Geographic Strategy
In its first five years of operation (1941-46) the mission concentrated its church- planting efforts in La Paz and along a road (in those days a mere track that became 188
impassable in the rainy season) which traverses the altiplano south of La Paz. None of the many villages adjacent to the road had an Evangelical church and considering the
presence of many believers in other parts of the highlands it was possible that people south of La Paz would respond to the gospel also. The mission also evangelized along the
northern shores of Lake Titicaca. Its strategy involved regularly preaching in the open air on market days in villages where they hoped to start a church. If converts were made who later wanted more Bible knowledge or wanted to train for the ministry, they could apply for admission to the mission's Bible schools in La Paz or Patacamaya. The La Paz school was strategic in being located in the nation's capital; Patacamaya was strategic in being the largest altiplano town south of La Paz and accessible by train all year. Once trained, graduates usually returned to their home villages to start churches.
Sufficient Commitment
Time is necessary to see a project through to completion in every field of human endeavor. Table 7-2 indicates that 17 missionaries served a total of 182 years. A good length of time was necessary to demonstrate the stability and staying power of
Evangelical Christianity to the indigenous people of the altiplano who had followed the religion, albeit greatly changed with the advent of Catholicism, of their own culture since time immemorial. Sufficient time was also necessary to give enough opportunities for manifesting the nature of God and the Christian belief system through experiences of the miraculous and the kindness and other virtues of the missionaries. A third factor, so argued James Fraser of the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionaiy Fellowship),
is that in regions where the gospel has not been heard, years of intercessory prayer are needed to overcome the demonic spirits which prevent people from believing the gospel message (Taylor 1976:188). 189
Table 7-2. Length of Service for Missionaries Associated with Seminario Biblico Name Years No. of Years
Samuel E. Smith 1941-49; 1950-55 13yrs Gladys Smith 1941-49; 1950-56 14 yrs * Samuel Joshua Smith 1 949-56 7 yrs
Mary Ellen Smith 1 949-56 7 yrs Jessie Hickey 1948-56 8 yrs Doris Warren 1952-62; 1968-75 17 yrs
Rev. Leland & Mrs Trussell 1 956-60 4 + 4 yrs Ruth Haan 1956-68 11 yrs Boyd & Neva Skinner 1950-53 3 + 3 yrs Rev. Maurice & Fern Tolan 1959-63 4 + 4 yrs Betty Brown 1958-68 10 yrs Charlotte Bates 1958-68 10 yrs Fran MacNeill 1960-87 27 yrs Marion Heaslip 1958-87; 1989-96 36 yrs
* Accompanied his parents to Bolivia in 1941 at age 14; began ministry in 1949.
Literacy Training and Publishing Literature
As a major goal of the mission was a literate indigenous church capable of instructing itself from the Bible, a major thrust of the work involved training people in literacy and selling Bibles and tracts to people who wanted to read the Scriptures in their own language. Until Aymara believers had their own copies of the Bible, the missionaries and their converts supplied Scripture by way of preaching.
Prayer
Prayer is a prominent theme in the Bible and was taken seriously by the seminary
missionaries. They prayed about every aspect of their work in the belief that this is the means God has ordained for releasing his power in human situations. Prayer was also made for divine wisdom in difficult and perplexing situations, and, when contemplating ministry initiatives, prayer was made to God for the knowledge of his plan and the
resources of soul and substance to see it through. Converts were taught to pray and the mission earnestly sought the prayer support of friends and family in the United States and
Canada by publishing prayer requests in Union Seminary's bulletin. As the missionaries 190
and their supporters well understood the importance of intercessory prayer there was no need for them to specify the procedures and dynamics of prayer in their communications
to each other. Samuel Smith Jr. made this request in 1 954.
"Since the middle of September till now, or let us say a period of six weeks, we
have hardly missed a Thursday night prayer and Bible study ... (without a drunk wandering) into the service. The same one hasn't come twice... One time a drunk came into our service and tried to take up an offering... Please pray for these (men). One of our main elders was drunk the first time he came to church. Now he is an elder and the chairman of our monthly business meeting."
Preaching
The missionaries were convinced that they stood a better chance of achieving their
objective if they focused on preaching directly rather than approaching their goal in a
roundabout way by trying to show Christian character through aid programs or starting
hospitals and schools. Once the mission was established in La Paz, the workers began
preaching as widely as possible through the highland region. They cooperated with
personnel in another mission to start a radio station, preached in open-air markets, and in
private homes when they were invited. The idea was to speak to as many people as
possible as one never knew who might respond and which places would prove most
responsive.
In March 1943, Samuel Smith received money from supporters in the States to buy
a car and a loudspeaker system. The speakers were mounted on the roof of the car and
were used for preaching in the open air in La Paz and in rural areas. They preached five
times in a day on some trips and sometimes slept in the car when itinerating in the
country. Wherever they went, Bibles were sold and pamphlets given out. Unexpected
turns of events attended some trips. Though seldom permitted to preach on haciendas,
one hacendado treated the missionaries very courteously, gave them a rabbit as a gift, and 191
welcomed the offer of services on his land for his serfs. On another occasion the sheriff of a town promised the missionaries land if they would build a school and teach the local children the Evangelical faith.
In speaking of preaching as the priority 1 do not mean to imply indifference to the plight of the poor as that was not the case. The mission rendered a great deal of help with medical aid (Charlotte Bates, Betty Brown, and Gladys Smith) and literacy (Fran
MacNeill and Marion Heaslip). It made preaching the priority out of Evangelical
conviction that the salvation of souls for eternity is of first importance and they used charitable assistance to that end.
Training Leaders
Among the converts were some who wanted to be ministers. The Seminary Mission made a priority of discipling them by opening two Bible schools. Graduating required some determination and sacrifice as the three-year residential program necessitated living away from home for extended periods of time. By preparing people capable of assuming responsibility for pastoring and evangelism, the schools multiplied the missionaries'
efforts. Training the next generation is the commonsense strategy in every sphere of life
and the missionaries well knew it was the method of Jesus and his mandate to them.
During his time on earth he had carefully instructed a select band of disciples in the ways
of God and his plans for mankind and told them to "make disciples of all nations." It was
by means of discipleship that the new faith would be propagated. It had been the strategy
of the apostle Paul, the church's first and its most famous foreign missionary.
An integral part of Samuel Smith's discipleship involved giving pastoral interns ministry experience. When he visited rural churches on Sundays, he took theology students with him and left them in churches along the way to help with Bible classes, 192
preach, or evangelize. Later in the day he picked them up on the way back to La Paz. He also made trips to open-air markets and took believers with him to help in open-air services. Some churches were started in this way.
The training of converts as evangelists and teachers proved a sound tactic for several reasons. First, some of the converts had the personal qualities needed for rural evangelism being zealous, determined, and accustomed to enduring all manner of hardship. Second, they knew native protocol and were not hindered by language barriers.
Third, there were infinitely more people than the mission could hope to reach with the gospel. Training native workers multiplied the efforts of the missionaries and greatly extended their geographical influence. Fourth, the work of missions was perpetuated as the vision for evangelism and discipleship was transmitted to the converts. Fifth, hearing the gospel from Aymara preachers meant that unconverted Aymara people perceived
Evangelical Christianity as a religion which they could see some of their fellow countrymen seriously believed was relevant to both European culture and their own.
Self-propagating Native Churches
The missionaries encouraged the converts to proselytize their own people and
disciple their converts. In so doing the missionaries served as catalysts and were
following the commonsense strategy of the apostle Paul, teaching faithful people who would, in turn, teach others. In time, the missionary zeal of the Aymara converts proved
more important than the efforts of the foreign missionaries in spreading the gospel. There
were two reasons. First, when the Bible schools began producing graduates, the number
of national evangelists soon surpassed the number of foreign missionaries. Second, the
native workers, full of zeal and determination and trusting God to help them, carried the
gospel forward into regions beyond the geographical reach and time constraints of the 193
missionaries. Sometimes the nationals settled in a village and set about establishing a
church there. Johannes Warneck, who worked among the Batak tribespeople of Sumatra,
observed that
when the native Christians vigorously and systematically undertake the evangelization of their countrymen, the mission enters upon the period of large results, for it is only through the native missionary that heathenism can be overcome on a large scale. The European remains a foreigner to the heathen, even
when he has gained their confidence. . . On the other hand, the very existence of the native missionary is an impressive sermon to the heathen. Around him an indigenous Christianity can crystallize more easily than around the missionary (Warneck 1911:37).
Self-funding Native Churches
Churches were started when the missionaries or Aymara evangelists won a few
converts in a particular locality. Typically the believers would meet in a home for
worship and Bible study until the numbers grew and the need was felt for a church
building. If the believers were in town, land would be bought; in the country one of the
believers often donated it. Workdays were set for making adobe bricks and building the
walls. The mission helped by paying for windows and tin roofs but money was only
given when the church members had built the walls. Metal was greatly preferred to thatch
as it was permanent and gave more security against the incursion of thieves. As a rule,
this was the only financial help the churches received as the mission wanted them to be
financially self-supporting. Church property was registered in the name of the mission
until the denomination received governmental recognition.
The mission encouraged believers to help pastors with the expenses of travelling to
the denomination's quarterly meetings and to support the Easter conference in La Paz, when about 1,100 people gathered, by contributing food and money for meals. The 194
churches were also encouraged to tithe from their offerings to help the association
president with expenses incurred travelling to different congregations in the weekends.
The mission did not salary the pastors. Had they done so, the churches would have
become an ever-increasing financial burden to the mission which itself depended on
charitable donations. By not salarying the native pastors, the mission also avoided
suspicion arising among outsiders that people were being bribed to convert and then work
for the mission. Not salarying pastors also removed the allurement of pecuniary gain as a
motive for seeking pastorates. Men were more likely to enter the ministry for reasons of
personal calling. (The churches all have male pastors. One is co-pastored by a husband
and wife). The infant churches were also encouraged by the missionaries to be financially
self-supporting for spiritual reasons. They wanted their converts to experience for
themselves the blessings and privileges of sacrificing for the work of God and knowing
the self-respect and satisfaction which comes from being financially independent.
Self-governing Native Churches
Though it was always the purpose of the mission to eventually produce a self-
governing association of churches, local churches took one of several pathways to governmental independence, depending on their geographical location and origin. Those begun by local believers located in remote rural areas difficult of access were governmentally independent from their inception as involvement in local church politics by mission personnel was logistically impractical. Urban churches started by missionaries were governed by them until the advent of an Aymara leader. Others such as Callampaya
Church near the mission headquarters in La Paz were in missionary hands until the mission closed in 1972. Churches were typically begun only when a trained Aymara pastor was available. 195
The number of churches grew in the 1940s and 1950s and the need for a national
organization became apparent so the mission organized them into an association
administered by quarterly pastors' meetings (juntas pastorales). At the juntas the pastors
received theological instruction and those with personal or church problems were prayed
with, counselled, and encouraged. Every Easter a junta was organized for all the believers
to attend (Chapter 9). With the passing of time, more responsibility for the leadership of
the fledgling denomination was delegated to the nationals and the missionaries worked
increasingly at their behest.
Emilio Willems (1967:249) considers egalitarianism and indigenous leadership to
be important reasons for the spectacular growth of Pentecostal churches in Brazil.
The organizational pattern of the Pentecostal sects seems to express a protest
against the Catholic Church and its ally, the ruling class. It does so by pointedly expressing egalitarianism within the sect and by opposing the Catholic principle of an ecclesiastical hierarchy and a highly specialized priesthood with the principles of the primacy of the laity, the priesthood of all believers and a self-made charismatic leadership sanctioned by the Holy Spirit. Pentecostalism thus turns out to be a symbolic subversion of the traditional social order.
I saw nothing in the Seminario Biblico or other Evangelical denominations to indicate protest against Catholic doctrine and ecclesiastical praxis though there may have been in the past. Willems is right, though, that the appointment of local indigenous leadership is a major factor in the expansion of Evangelicalism. Self-government, like self-support, has some distinct advantages and no apparent disadvantages. First, mission
personnel were released to start churches elsewhere. Second, it was an expedient strategy because mission personnel were in short supply. Third, the converts, being on their own, quickly gained confidence in governing their own churches and deploying workers and
resources as they saw fit. 196
In 1970, Doris Warren received papers (Personeria Juridica No. 155135) from
Bolivia's Supreme Court granting the Seminario Biblico denomination governmental
recognition as a National Pastors' Organization. The missionaries had requested special
prayer concerning this from their supporters in the United States and Canada as official juridical recognition was necessary before the Seminario Biblico organization could
legally own property. Mission societies in Bolivia at that time were facing the strong
prospect of expulsion from the country by the government so they took initiatives to
legally transfer church properties to national organizations and have them assume
responsibility voluntarily and in a premeditated manner rather than waiting and having it
forced on them. The Seminary Mission was now only represented by Doris Warren. In
November 1971, she finished her part in the revision of a new manual for church
discipline. In 1972, the board of Union Bible Seminary in Indiana sold its mission
headquarters building in La Paz and turned over church property titles to the Aymara
leaders along with a sum of money. In 1975, Doris left Bolivia and the Seminario Biblico denomination was entirely independent.
Service of People in the United States and Canada
Mission personnel were very conscious of their dependence upon friends and
family in the United States and Canada. In the first instance, theirs was a faith mission meaning that their financial support came not from a salary but from charitable donations of people at home wanting to support the work of God overseas. Second, the mission was administratively dependent on the seminary in Indiana to process and channel financial
support. The seminary treasurer disbursed all the funds which donors designated for
Bolivia. Nothing was taken for overheads, not even postage. Third, the missionaries were deeply committed, by virtue of their belief in the Bible's teaching and their ongoing 197
personal experience of life and work, to belief in the efficacy of prayer and frequently
kept supporters in the States apprised of the mission's plans, work, progress, sufferings,
and reversals of fortune in newsletters which the seminary published in its bulletin.
Knowing that conversion is a spiritual work in the heart and mind of a person, Jessie
Hickey, for example, asked her friends in Indiana in 1953, "Please pray that the Lord will use us to gather in many precious souls." A fourth supportive connection with the States arose from the visit to Bolivia of Mr and Mrs Carlyle. They took photographs and used their experience to arouse interest in the mission field among people at home.
Conclusions
The Seminario Biblico denomination was the direct consequence of a strategy planned and undertaken by a number of individual people. They were men and women of sterling character whose courage, determination, and vision arose from and were continually undergirded by unshakable doctrinal convictions and whose capacity for enduring hardship enabled them to lead lifestyles of self-sacrifice and suffering for the sake of others. Forsaking the prospects of ministering at home in ease and comfort, they risked everything and suffered considerably as they labored year after year seeking to glorify their God by bringing to the people of Bolivia the good news of the temporal and eternal blessings of salvation which he freely offers the world. That they succeeded in
their objective of establishing self-sustaining Aymara churches is quite apparent. In the beginning, an outsider looking on may have considered the mission's vision merely wishful thinking and the strategies, ministerial practices, and personnel woefully
inadequate for its fulfillment but it has come to pass. The baton of vision and self- sacrificial service was handed on to the Aymara converts and some of them are running 198
with it. In the next chapter we turn our attention to the lives of some of the converts themselves and probe the reasons for their conversion. CHAPTER 8 THE CONVERTS: PEOPLE MOTIVATED TO SEEK CHANGE IN THEMSELVES
"Where we find trauma and tragedy, we often find religion." —Pargament and Park 1997:43
Introduction
When Aymara people began converting to Evangelical Christianity in the early
twentieth century, their actions set in motion for them and those close to them profound
and far-reaching consequences. In this chapter and the next we will read of fellow villagers murdering some converts, twice destroying the house of another, and beating and ostracizing others. One man disinherited his young son and whipped him many times; another man's wife threatened to divorce him. Sixty per cent of my informants suffered some form of persecution when they converted. In this chapter we will explore as well as we can, given the personal and complex nature of the conversion experience, the reasons why people converted to a seemingly foreign religion and doggedly adhered to it when faced with so much unpleasantness and even danger. Other people in this study converted under circumstances which were not socially threatening.
All of those who heard the gospel were free to choose how they would respond.
There was no indication of coercion or browbeating of potential converts and the missionaries and Aymara evangelists could not compel people to listen or attend church as priests did in the centuries before the Revolution of 1952. Such tactics would have contradicted their message of God's love for all people. The chapter starts with six thumbnail biographies recounting conversion experiences. Biographies were constructed
199 200
from questionnaires, formal interviews, and informal interviews. They show how the
Evangelical movement spread through the establishment of local churches by the
immediate efforts of a few individuals. Then follows an analysis of data from all the
informants in this study.
The Lives of Six Converts
Francisco Mamani
Francisco was born in 1 923 and has been a campesino-farmer all his life in the
region of Viscachani about 50 miles south of La Paz. He lives in an adobe cottage with his wife and adult son and daughter. His parents and grandparents were born in
Viscachani and lived as farmer-serfs under the hacienda system. Though his grandfather instilled in him a strong sense of right and wrong when he was a boy he nevertheless developed the habit of drinking heavily as a young man and became an alcoholic. He served in the Bolivian army, married in 1944, and has five sons and one daughter.
In 1954, Francisco Mollo, a community leader in the nearby village of Ayo Ayo, was converted after hearing an Evangelical missionary preaching the gospel in La Paz.
Mollo became an audacious preacher of the gospel. Once he surreptitiously distributed gospel tracts behind the altar at a Catholic feast. Mollo told Mamani of his decision to convert and impressed upon Mamani what the latter already knew from experience, that
drinking heavily was an empty and destructive way of life. Mollo so thoroughly convinced Mamani that following the teachings of Christ offered hope for a new start in this life and hope for the next that Mamani agreed to convert and signed a personal declaration of intention to do so. This was in 1954. Mollo held Mamani to his word and the latter converted. Mamani told his patron that he had decided to renounce drunkenness and become an Evangelical. His patron, who was a benevolent man as hacendados went, 201
was very pleased and gave him a Bible by way of encouragement but Francisco was
illiterate. Francisco Mollo and his son, who had also converted, were not so fortunate.
They were killed by the people of their own village in 1955 during the years of agrarian
reform when land formerly owned by hacendados was being distributed among villagers
on the altiplano. The villagers murdered them on the pretext that Evangelicals did not
deserve to receive any land. The killers subsequently received from the government the
land which would have been allotted to the Mollos. Francisco Mollo's wife and mother-
in-law remained steadfast in their faith in the face of the persecution. The villagers who
murdered the Mollos also wanted to kill Francisco Mamani but he eluded them.
Francisco's wife, Concepcion, rejected her husband for his new-found faith and
wanted to divorce him. Shortly thereafter she became mentally ill. Her father was a yatiri
and sought to heal her with various remedies but to no avail. In the ensuing months
Francisco often prayed and fasted for her healing but Concepcion, though consciously
suffering mental turmoil and anguish, steadfastly refused to show any interest in his
earnest ministrations. Then, one morning they awoke at 4 am and, in her desperation,
finally agreed to pray with her husband to his God about her condition. They prayed and eventually she went off to sleep. When she awoke she was healed. Her dramatic experience firmly convinced her of Christ's superiority over the spirits whom the yatiris looked to as healing agents and of the validity of Evangelical Christianity as a way of life. She has suffered no relapses in the years since her conversion.
Though Francisco was delighted with the various freedoms which his new way of life brought, he was illiterate and frustrated at being unable to read the Bible for himself.
He prayed often 3'/ in the 2 years following his conversion and promised God that if he 202
gave him the ability to read he would faithfully preach the gospel all his life. He did learn to read and kept his word. When I interviewed him on 19 February 2001, he was 78 years old, still enjoying vigorous health, and preaching regularly in the district's rural markets.
In 1956, Francisco started preaching in public. He went first to the village of K'ata and so enraged the village mallku (elected headman) and another official with his declaration of faith in the power of Christ to deliver from habitual drunkenness that they seized him and tried to forcibly pour a large cup of alcohol down his throat. The cup was suddenly knocked away by an invisible force which Francisco and his assailants instantly perceived as spiritual intervention on Francisco's behalf and he was released.
Francisco was directly instrumental in the conversion of his brother Pedro and another man, Francisco Flores. Together the three men won converts and built churches at Patacamaya (1954), Viscachani (1955), Araca, and two other places. In the years 1972-
1977, Francisco started or helped to start four churches in Loayza province at K'ata,
Kalachapi, Hichuraya, and Kollira. He also helped start one in the Esmeralda Valley.
Preaching at K'ata involved fasting and praying for three days for a man afflicted with paralysis who worshipped spirits. On the third day he was miraculously healed.
Francisco's son, Julio, attended the second intake of students at the Patacamaya Bible
School and pastors the church in Viscachani which his father started.
Ezequiel Arcani Patty
Aged 63 in 2002, Ezequiel has been a campesino-farmer all his life. He and his wife, Anastacia Gutierrez de Arcani, live with some of their children in an adobe cottage about a mile from the village of Santiago de Llallagua thirty miles southwest of La Paz.
The family grows potatoes, has some cows, and tends a flock of sheep. I met Ezequiel at 203
a junta pastoral in 2001 and came to know him quite well in the course of subsequent
juntas and visits to each other's homes.
He was bom the son of a serf on a hacienda. The hacendado lived in the village of
Tumarapi about four miles from Santiago de Llallagua. On Sundays the peasants had to
attend the patron's chapel service at Tumarapi. There was no priest; the patron took the
service himself. He did not use the Bible. Before the revolution of 1952, many serfs did
not have the time to travel and thus encounter the gospel because they were forced to
work very long hours for their patron. Aymara believers who lived in free communities
had little if any opportunity to preach to peasants on haciendas as they were usually
prohibited from visiting by hacendados on the orders of Catholic priests.
l When he was 6 A, Ezequiel attended one of Samuel E. Smith's evangelistic
campaigns held in a tent at Calacachi village five miles from Ezequiel 's home and he
decided to convert. This was in 1954. Four other boys made the same decision - Basilio
Condori, Juan Patty, Fermin Patty, and Marcelino Gutierrez. After the campaign,
Ezequiel wanted to learn more but could not attend the Evangelical church in Tumarapi on Sundays as he had to tend his father's sheep. He prayed fervently that God would enable him to to go church and one night he had a dream that his charges were feeding in a cemetery. He made enquiries in the village and obtained permission to leave his sheep on Sundays in the cemetery of the local Adventist church. There was pasture and water sufficient for the animals and the cemetery was walled which kept them from straying.
With his animals secured and assured of sustenance on Sundays, Ezequiel was free to attend the Tumarapi church. His father was away from home for extended periods at this time working in a mine south of Oruro called XX Siglo and did not know what his son 204
was doing. Five believers in the church taught Ezequiel how to live the Christian life and
he subsequently found freedom from some personal problems which were troubling his
conscience. He also grew in confidence that God could help him with the sufferings of
daily life as a campesino boy which was just as well for him as his faith was not long in
being severely tested when his father returned from the mines. His father, he says, "lived
in fear of idols" which he believed controlled everything important in life including a
person's health, crop yield, and animal fecundity. He was very afraid that his son's
conversion would anger the spirits and bring their wrathful vengeance on the family. To
forestall this he punished his son himself by thrashing him over his whole body with a
whip every Sunday after Ezequiel returned home from church. This went on for many
months. Yet, unaccountably, one day his father brought a Bible home and gave it to his
son. Evidently Ezequiel's faith was very real to him but so was the pain. He says God had
a very strong grip on him in those days and enabled him to withstand his father. He was
crying as he told me his story.
Ezequiel's father disinherited him which cost him his share of the family's land and
cows but his mother gave him a piece of land, just sufficient for him to eke out a living.
He was hurt by his father but the reality of his ongoing experience with God held him
steady and he refused to recant his faith. Through many years of hard work and prudent
financial management, he gradually increased the acreage of his holdings and today they
sustain his family quite well. Forty years later as he sat in my living room contemplating the loss of his inheritance, he was he said comforted by the Bible's promise for believers of an eternal, permanent, and unshakable inheritance in heaven where there would be "no 205
more tears forever." In the next three years I heard this hope expressed in various ways a
number of times in the homes and churches of Aymara believers.
As a young person he attended part-time for four years the Bible school in La Paz.
Doris Warren was one of his teachers. Here he learned the doctrines of the Bible and
gained first-hand ministry experience as the missionaries took the students with them to
preach on Sundays. He also helped Maurice Tolan to build Callampaya Church.
Ezequiel recalls that two answered prayers greatly strengthened his faith in those years. The first was when he was 18 and attending Bible school. The missionaries were
encouraging the students to wear shoes but Ezequiel could not afford to buy some. He
earnestly prayed about this and had a dream one night that he received a white packet
containing a pair of shoes. Next day the doorbell rang at 7:30 am. It was a black man
from the United States and he was holding two large suitcases. He unpacked his belongings from one and then, from the other, he produced a white packet which he gave to Ezequiel. Inside was a pair of shoes. The second incident occurred when a drought and
famine on the altiplano forced him and his wife to move temporarily to the town of
Carrasco in the yungas, an area of subtropical lowland jungle north and east of La Paz. In
Carrasco, Ezequiel supported himself financially by selling monkeys. He lured the animals from the forest by making them curious, left containers of alcohol in their way, and caught them once they were inebriated. Ezequiel and his wife lived with family members and during their stay the date of his birthday approached. To show his appreciation to his hosts for their kindness he particularly wanted to treat them to a feast
including meat, which was and still is a delicacy for most campesino folk, but there was
none to be bought in the district. He prayed earnestly about it and the next day a plane 206
flying up to La Paz developed engine trouble and had to make a forced landing in
Carrasco. Its cargo hold was full of meat destined for markets in La Paz. Lhe pilot was
only too happy to sell the meat before it spoiled in the jungle heat.
After leaving Bible school, Ezequiel began church meetings on Sundays in a little house in his home village of Santiago de Llallagua. The villagers objected to this development in their midst for the same reason that his father had and opposed him so strongly during community meetings that his own children were afraid to associate with him. Time passed, the opposition lessened, and some people in the village were converted and began attending his church. In time he saw the conversion of his parents, two
brothers, and three of the men who had opposed him. As the church grew in number it became apparent that a more spacious venue was needed so he and five other men built a church building of adobe bricks. The carpentry experience he had gained working with
Maurice Tolan on Callampaya Church in La Paz proved invaluable. When the walls were built, Doris Warren financed the purchase of tin for roofing. His wife and children are believers and attend church with him. Several times he told me of his avowed intent to labor as a pastor in the work of God until he dies. "Yo tengo 62 anos. Yo trabajare hasta.
la muerte como pastor en la obra del Senor." ("I am 62. 1 will work as a pastor in the
work of the Lord until I die").
Marcelino Valeriano
Aged 62, Marcelino owns a small business manufacturing aluminium pots in the backyard of his two-storey house in El Alto. His wife, Isabela Mamani de Valeriano, makes and sells shawls. They have a daughter and four sons, one of whom, Mario, pastors a church in El Alto. 207
Marcelino grew up in the rural community of Pomasura, 35 miles southeast of La
Paz. He recalls that his family was so poor at times that they staved off hunger pangs by eating pieces of dirt. He did not believe in Pachamama as a boy. In 1983, he was living in
El Alto with his wife. He was suffering from many things, was sick of his life, and
desperately wanted to change. He was overworked and drank a lot. One night he came home drunk, had an argument with his wife, and was so miserable that he attempted
suicide by jumping off the balcony of his house but only broke a rib. This was a turning
point. His religious life at that time amounted to little more than a general belief in the existence and providence of God. As he recovered from his brush with death the conviction grew that he had miraculously survived only because God, in his goodness, had overruled and protected him in a time of foolishness.
He began attending a Catholic church in his quest for a wholesome life and earnestly questioned the priests about how to change his habits but they could not help him. There was a charismatic group in the church which worshipped God in a lively manner, clapping their hands and singing heartily. He enjoyed their freedom of expression in worship and joined in with them. Impressed by the obvious importance of
the Bible to these people, Marcelino took lessons in literacy so he could read it for himself. From his Bible and a tract which explained Christ's offer of salvation he became a believer. His life improved dramatically and his curiosity to know more about the Bible, the teachings of which were proving helpful, was now thoroughly aroused. He began inquiring of the priests again, this time concerning the salvation of his soul and the meaning of various biblical concepts. The priests did not oppose his conversion but had no answers for him and became so frustrated with his incessant questioning that they 208
eventually expelled him from the church. He joined the Seminario Biblico church in the
El Alto suburb of Villa Dolores several blocks from his home and eventually served a
term as its pastor. The church was started in 1 954 by Samuel and Gladys Smith and their
co-workers. In 1996, when I visited the altiplano for a week doing preliminary
investigation for this project, Marcelino was the president of the denomination which at that time comprised about 50 churches. In 2001-2003, he served as the pastor of Santa
Rosa church in El Alto. In 2002, he suffered a life-threatening attack of peritonitis from
which he made a slow and at times uncertain recovery. Annette and I visited him a number of times in his home so Annette could help him convalesce.
Samuel Corteza Quispe
Aged 38 in 2002, Samuel was bom in the village of Chejjepampa about 25 miles northwest of La Paz near Lake Titicaca. He is married to Zenobia Limachi and they have
two sons aged eight and three. Samuel worked as a painter in La Paz until a fall from a construction site nearly ended his life. He now owns a small butcher's shop in El Alto with about $100 worth of meat in stock. He and his family rent a room in a dark and veiy dilapidated apartment building choked with all kinds of rubbish which has been accumulating for years. The apartments are near Callampaya Church in La Paz which
Samuel E. Smith built. It is a trial to the senses climbing the flights of stairs to Samuel's room.
During his boyhood in Chejjepampa his mother practised witchcraft. Six of her ten sons died before the age of three. At one point she suffered a serious illness of two year's duration. The family grew desperate and frequently sought cures from yatiris though to
no avail. Someone advised them to worship the saints in the local Catholic church but this also availed nothing. Then someone advised the family to attend the Seminario Biblico 209
church in Chejjepampa which they did. Some of the members of this church had known
persecution but remained firm in their faith. Mobs of angry villagers had twice
demolished the house of the pastor, Francisco Calderon. Following prayer for healing,
Samuel's mother was miraculously and completely healed. She renounced her
involvement in witchcraft, and she, her husband, and Samuel all decided to convert. This was in 1990. Samuel says that in hindsight he believes "his family was very vulnerable to
the attacks of Satan when they were Catholics" and that it was for this reason alone that he lost so many siblings.
Samuel moved to La Paz where he became a member of Callampaya Church and studied at Seminario Biblico's Bible school for three years (1993-1995). He has served his church in the capacities of youth leader, choir director, and senior pastor and was elected to serve as the denomination's vice-president in 2001 and 2002.
Esperanza Rios Mamani
Aged 27 in 2002, Esperanza is the wife of Zenon Herrera. Until her conversion at the age of 19, Esperanza says her life was in "crisis emocional" largely because she was at odds with her parents whose dedication to participation in fiestas she regarded as
"false." Not surprisingly, she did not participate in them. She was a "Catolica," she says,
"trying to find God and his peace." Her quest led her to consult professional witches but to no avail.
When she was nineteen, some friends who were classmates in a course (she did not specify her field of study) invited her to a dinner at Villa Dolores Church hosted by people associated with CALA, the organization started by Marion Heaslip and Fran
MacNeill. 210
When I entered the dinner room I was surprised to find a lot of young people there.
I that thought Evangelicals were boring old people. At first I wanted to escape but I
stayed and, surprisingly, I began sensing an inner peace and I did not want to leave
from that place. I felt happy that God was working in my life and that night I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior.
Some of Esperanza's classmates who attended the dinner also decided to convert.
That was on 21 September 1993.
In the days and months which followed, her faith was strengthened by the peace
which filled her whenever she prayed. The desire grew in her to serve God in whatever
capacity she could and especially to preach the gospel herself. Some of her non-believing
friends tried to woo her away saying that her faith would not stand the test of time and
that her new religion was for old people and not for her. In time, Esperanza was
instrumental in the conversion of her mother and siblings but not her father. Her husband
is a pastor of Salem Church in El Alto and a much respected evangelist by the other
Seminario Biblico ministers. She teaches children's Sunday school in their church.
Andres Quisbert Sullco
Before my conversion I was a disorderly Catholic and always had problems.
After I began work as a driver for the government, I did ch 'alias at each festival and each August I offered a burnt sacrifice (mesa) to help with my work. My wife
had told me the gospel and some hermanos (male believers) used to visit me. I
noticed the peace in their lives. Sometimes I listened to the Evangelical radio
station in La Paz and once 1 found myself agreeing with the radio announcer who was speaking about the Bible's statement in Ephesians 5:18 that excessive drinking is a foolish waste of one's life. The same chapter also spoke about eternal life and I
started thinking about this also. During Christmas of 1995 when I was sleeping
after drinking for two days and two nights, I heard a voice say, "Andres, today you
must decide between your family and the friends you go drinking with." 1 was
greatly alarmed and, hardly stopping to think, I got up and went immediately to the
church (Callampaya) which my wife and children attended. I was very repentant
and after about half an hour of pouring out my heart in confession to God, I decided to convert. Though sorry for my way of life, my conversion was not an emotional
experience; I just knew what I had to do. I did not find it difficult to totally abandon
my former religious beliefs as I was already unhappy with Pachamama for not
doing what I thought I had a right to expect from her because every Friday I had faithfully performed the ch'alla. I had become bored with endlessly repeating this 211
ritual. I gave up drinking and dedicated myself to caring for my wife and four children.
1 began attending church with my family, and as my life had changed, the
desire grew to tell others about my changed life. I began preaching in the streets
and giving my testimony even though I was fearful at first. My conversion caused
problems with the men I used to drink with and they kept their distance from me
for a while but eventually I had the opportunity to tell them that I believed the life-
changing power of God had helped me to reform. I had a part in my mother's
conversion and have helped many other people. There grew in me the sense that 1
had a divine purpose in life to be a church leader. In 1998, while I was still studying at Bible school, 1 was appointed as an elder by the people of Callampaya Church.
In the year 2000, Andres, his family, and three other families decided to meet
together regularly in the rented home of one of the families for three months to test the
feasibility of starting a new church (avanzada). The infant church grew in numbers and when Andres submitted his pastor's report at a quarterly Seminario Bibhco pastor's meeting (junta), the pastors officially recognized the work and inaugurated the new church in September 2000. It is in the Zona Ampliation Alto Ciudadela of La Paz.
Andres was 42 in 2002.
Analysis
Of these six converts, two are peasant fanners, one is a mother and housewife, one is a government courier, one is a butcher, and one has a business making aluminium pots.
Three converted in the midst of a crisis with alcohol abuse, one converted when his chronically ill mother was healed, one converted during an emotional crisis, and another converted as a child. The five men are pastors (or have pastored) and four have served
their denomination in an official capacity. The woman's husband is a pastor. Four were persecuted following their conversion. Four were disenchanted with folk religion before their conversion. All six decided to convert of their own volition. Two converted at the same time as family members, one with some friends, the other three on their own. Four 212
saw immediate family members convert after their own conversion; one was the last in
his immediate family to convert; I have no data on family members of the sixth.
Analysis of Causation and Consequences
We rum now to consider factors influencing the decision to convert for all 1 02
informants. In the first instance, I found no evidence of anything akin to the
"brainwashing" or coercion techniques Richardson (1993:75-97) and Shinn (1993:195-
207) report for some religious movements. Nor were Aymara people mentally bullied
into conversion by the missionaries and native evangelists. The converts whom I met are
intelligent, sharp-witted people quite capable of deciding the spiritual direction of their
lives and at this time in Bolivia's history many altiplano Aymara were free to choose
their spiritual allegiance. Neither were people offered monetary, material, or other
inducements to convert. Such tactics would have countered the mission's goal of
establishing self-sustaining Aymara churches. Converts who wanted to train for the
ministry in the mission's Bible schools did so at their own expense and those who
subsequently pastored churches received no salary from the mission.
The database with which I tackle the problem of determining the reasons for
conversion contains data from 102 converts, 92 of whom filled out questionnaires. Some
respondents did not answer all the questions. A sample of the questionnaire administered
is given in Appendix A. Of 82 people who indicated why they converted, 61 (74.4%) were in crisis at that time, 13 (15.85%) converted as children aged 12 or under due to the
influence of Christian family members or neighbors, and eight (9.75%) converted as adults who were not in crisis. We will consider these three categories in turn. 213
Causes: People Converting in Crisis
Sixty-one of 82 respondents (74.4%) indicated a personal crisis at the time of their
conversion (Table 8-1). A pre-conversion crisis is so commonly reported in the literature
that Rambo (1993:44) incorporates crisis as a typical stage in his schema for the process
of conversion. Ullman's (1989:xvii) major thesis in his book-length study on the
psychology of religious conversion is that "conversion is best understood in the context
of the individual's emotional life. It occurs on a background of emotional upheaval and
promises relief by a new attachment." All 25 informants in Lesley Gill's (1990:712)
study of Pentecostal women in La Paz, Bolivia, converted in the midst of a crisis.
Oksanen (1994:77) pooled the numerical data of 18 empirical studies conducted between
1902 and 1988. Of 650 converts, 499 (77%) were in crisis or tension prior to their
conversion which very closely approximates the Aymara statistic. The mean sample size
in the 18 studies was 36; the Aymara study sampled 82 people. Stoll (1990:106) notes
Jehovah's Witnesses targeting Latin Americans suffering a crisis.
In Bolivia, the poverty, ongoing injustices meted out by the dominant society,
substandard education and lack of opportunity for children, and the great and abiding
dissatisfaction with the politicians, holds many people to a lifestyle of suffering with all
of its attendant stress and discontent. Bolivia is a country permanently in crisis and
Bolivians naturally feel the stress of that. This is their lot and it is not something that I
write l about from having observed at a distance as I lived with them for 3 A years. When
informants say, then, that they had a crisis prior to conversion, it was something over and above their lifestyle of suffering, something appalling that was crushing the life out of them and may have done so had conversion not intervened. At some point before or
during their particular distress they heard the gospel's promise of help in this life, paused 214
to consider it, and found deliverance when they converted. Forty-three informants felt at
liberty to specify the nature of their crisis (Table 8-1 ).
Table 8-1. Incidence and Nature of Personal Crises at Time of Conversion No. of Nature of Crisis Persons 8 Family 7 Alcohol
1 Alcohol-related wife-beating
1 Alcohol-related depression 7 Depression (cause unspecified) 2 Full of problems 2 Internal emptiness 2 Personal and family problems (unspecified) 2 Sickness 4 Sickness of a family member Childhood trauma Moral, material, spiritual Poverty, hunger
Tired of life Weariness with one's own evil Insanity Emotional problems Total 43
Three points of discussion arise from the data. The first concerns hope in relation to
felt needs. These people were distressed with themselves and/or their circumstances and thus mentally and emotionally disposed to consider change. In their distress they clutched
at the hope that the gospel offers. The second is that informants were suffering more than
the data indicate. Trouble has its travelling companions. People who only acknowledged that they had formerly abused alcohol, for example, also suffered from battered self- esteem, financial impoverishment, physical debilitation, and the destructive effects of
their habits on the social fabric of family and community life. One informant admitted to
beating his wife but I saw in the course of my pastoral work that alcoholism and spousal
abuse are much more common than the data in Table 8- 1 indicate. Xavier Albo
(1996: 139) says that "In contrast to the countries in the First World, there are no alcoholics among the Aymara. The people drink basically in the context of important 215
social and ritual events." There are alcoholics among the Aymara. My informants
indicated their problems with alcohol on the questionnaires and when giving their
"testimonies" in church services. The ready availability of cheap alcohol has visited a
major problem on some Aymara people and their family members. The wife and children
of one of our neighbors in El Alto sometimes sought our intervention when he came
home drunk and violent and I saw other instances of alcoholism. Elizabeth Brusco's
(1993:147) research in Colombia revealed that unconverted husbands can spend 20-40%
of the household income on alcohol. In their study of Guatemalan Mayas, Goldin and
Brent (1991:328) observed "the suffering that drinking directly brought to the household
through its impact on family relations and family economics." In an earlier study of
Guatemalan Mayas, June Nash (1960:50) spoke of Protestantism as analogous to
Alcoholics Anonymous. Some Mayas were attracted to Protestantism on seeing
neighbors rehabilitated following conversion. "In the traditional community drinking is
not a private indulgence, but an essential part of ceremonials and a popular expression of
camaraderie. In extreme cases a drinking bout begun at a saint's festival might turn into a
debauch lasting several weeks. The loss of work along with the cost of the liquor could put a man into debt for years" (Nash 1960:50).
A third point to note is that people suffering crises in Western societies have a plethora of professional helping services at their disposal. Not so the Aymara. They needed power to change their lives but were personally powerless to help themselves and those like Marcelino Valeriano and Samuel Corteza Quispe who consulted Catholic
priests and yatiris were not helped by them either. Their testimony is that they found help when they looked to God for his power. R. Andrew Chesnut, who studied the Pentecostal 216
movement in Belem, a city in the Brazilian Amazon, found that the desire to overcome
alcoholism motivated 40% of his male informants to convert. It was the single biggest factor motivating conversion among males.
Alcoholism in Latin America is much more prevalent among males than females, in
part because it figures in the male prestige complex. The men at the barzinho
socializing over round after round of beer are asserting their masculinity. . . Given the limited options of secular treatment for alcoholism and the inability of the other major religions to provide effective spiritual aid, Pentecostalism has become Brazil's principal detox center (Chesnut 1997:57-58).
Religious conversion is a human behavior which sometimes meets with derision and doubt from those with no sense of needing God for anything but, as Robert Gordis
(1971:171) says, "Skepticism is a state of mind possible only for those who observe and
dislike evil, but are not its direct victims. Those who are direct sufferers are impelled to change the conditions or to seek to escape from them." At least three quarters of my
informants were suffering at the time of their conversion and all of them belong to a greatly disadvantaged ethnic group in a poor country always simmering with discontent.
Like the informants in David Lehmann's (1996:194) study of poor Brazilians, they were at the end of their tether. People have to do whatever they can to care for themselves and
their families when their society is deficient in social services. The Evangelical Church
offers help in a multitude of ways not the least of which is the message that God cares and has power to help.
Causes: Miracles and Crises
Eighteen informants testified to experiencing a miracle, an extraordinary and tangible supernatural event which the person believed to be entirely the working of God,
in relation to their crisis. Such miracles were powerful agents in the decision to convert.
The nature of those miracles is given in Table 8-2. 217
Instances mentioned in the case studies include the immediate healing of Francisco
Mamani's wife from insanity in response to prayer, the recovery of a paralytic man in the village of K'ata in response to Francisco Mamani fasting and praying for three days, and the healing of Samuel Corteza Quispe's mother. Sometimes miracles followed conversion and were interpreted by recipients as instances of God's personal benevolence toward them and as encouragements to remain in the faith. Ezequiel Arcani Patty spoke of the miraculous provision of shoes when he was a poor student and the provision on another occasion of fresh meat for a special dinner that he was hosting. One respondent anticipated at the time of her conversion that God would also miraculously heal her sick
mother. Three years later in April 2002, she was still an enthusiastic believer and still hoping for the miracle.
A distinction must be made between the miraculous and the gradual or rapid changes in personality, character, worldview, and circumstances which characteristically
follow conversion. Evangelicals refer to such change as "spiritual growth." It constitutes
part of a person's ongoing "testimony" of what God has done and is doing in his or her
life.
Table 8-2. Incidence and Nature of Miracles Number of Cases Nature of the Miracle 5 Physical healing
1 Hope of healing not yet experienced
1 Healing from insanity 9 Deliverance from alcoholism
1 Visions (daytime)
1 Dream Total 18
Miracles were also reported by Seminary Mission personnel. Doris Warren saw
Christians bringing very ill and unbelieving family members to church, being prayed for, and deciding to convert after being healed out of conviction that God had healed them. 218
This, she says, "caused others to seek the Lord." Others were converted after
experiencing what they considered to be miraculous deliverance from self-destructive
habits. Doris wrote in a letter to friends in Indiana, "drunkards have come to disturb, were
convicted and saved before they left the church because of God's power in the service."
Some converted after observing events in nature interpreted as divinely orchestrated
miracles in response to prayer. In a letter to me, Doris wrote: "People prayed that the
Lord would hold off the rain until the harvest was gathered in and He did, or that He
would send rain when it had been very dry. They also prayed he would heal their sick
animals." In a sample of 90 informants, Chesnut (1997:53) found that 45.8% of the
women had converted following healing from illness and 25% of the men. In Sterk's
(1992:378) sample of Tzotzil converts in Chiapas, 90% attributed their conversion to
divine healing and an even higher percentage acknowledged being initially attracted to
the gospel by the healing phenomenon.
Miracles and other experiences of spiritual power around the time of conversion may have a particularly powerful effect on the minds of people in tribal and folk societies which are particularly oriented, by reason of worldview, to the existence and dynamic
operation of spiritual power. With such consciousness of spiritual power, a demonstration
of what is interpreted as the superior power of God may be compelling evidence for the veracity of the gospel and so pave the way for evangelists or believing family members
and friends to receive a serious hearing from unbelievers. People such as Concepcion
Mamani who was healed of insanity following prayer to God, Samuel Corteza Quispe's mother who first sought healing for a chronic physical illness from yatiris and Catholic priests before being healed when an Evangelical person prayed for her, and Marcelino 219
Valeriano who sought the help of Catholic priests for his alcoholism and torment of mind and emotion before finding deliverance from God, were left with what to them was unequivocal evidence of the greater power of God so they did the rational thing and switched allegiance to the stronger side. In the words of the theologians John Stott and
Robert Coote (1980:327), "People give their allegiance to Christ when they see that his
power is superior to magic and voodoo, and the curses and blessings of witch doctors, and the malevolence of evil spirits, and that his salvation is a real liberation from the power of evil and death." The literature abounds with instances of people converting while or after experiencing what they consider to be God manifesting himself in a miraculous manner superior to their traditional deities (e.g. Warneck 1954; Hohensee
1979:85-87; Turner 1984:111-121; Sterk 1992:371-384). See Tippett's treatment of this in Chapter 2. The English theologian and pastor Matthew Henry (1992:7) expresses the not unusual Evangelical interpretation of the miraculous around the time of conversion in
this way: "God is pleased sometimes to favour young converts with such signs of his love as are very encouraging to them, in reference to the difficulties they meet with at their setting out in the ways of God."
Causes: Converting in Peaceful Circumstances
Twenty-one of 82 respondents (25.6%) were not suffering a personal crisis when they converted. Of them, 13 (15.85%) converted as children (aged 12 or under) through the influence of family members. All were 13 years or older when they filled out the questionnaire. The remaining eight individuals (9.75%) converted as adults and were not in crisis at the time. They converted having liked what they had heard and seen. 220
Consequences: Conversion as Revitalization
Three quarters of the informants in this study were conscious of being trapped, until the time of their conversion, with problems beyond the power of their personal and cultural resources to resolve. They were frustrated and some were helplessly watching themselves ruin their own lives and the lives of those close to them. Some difficulties could have been resolved with the professional help of specialists in La Paz but, even had
the informants known of these resources, few if any could afford them. (It would be interesting to know if the Andean worldview ideal of cosmic harmony and equilibrium earned over to the personal dimension of some people and intensified their search for resolution to the battles within).
Doris Warren wrote of the revitalizing effects of conversion thus. The new believers found "joy and peace. Their home life improved and they began valuing honesty in business and keeping their promises. This attracted some people in their
communities. . . Little by little their lives were changed. Other people began to see that
they could have more in their homes if, like the Cristianos, they didn't spend their money on drink and chewing coca." Those who abandoned the fiesta system were also better off
financially. Aymara Evangelical life carries with it no remunerated offices, ritual obligations, or communal events which people are required to support. Pastors and church officials serve without pay and communal events such as church aniversarios and quarterly pastors' meetings are supported by voluntary donations of food and money from those who can afford to do so.
The improvement of a person's lot materially following conversion is often remarked on. Doris Warren noted that converts had "more in their homes." Turner
(1979:254) reports liquor consumption for ritual purposes leaving Tzeltals in Mexico 221
1 "impoverished or hopelessly in debt to Ladino liquor merchants. ' Converts saved the
money they would have spent on drink and used it to buy better clothes, livestock, and
houses. In so doing "they are closing the gap between themselves and the prosperous
Ladino merchants." Turner (1984:1 19-120) made a similar observation on the highland
Chontal in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Being a Protestant is less costly than being a folk Catholic. A Protestant has neither the constant financial drain of paying for private rituals nor the sudden and substantial indebtedness of serving as mayordomo for a village fiesta. Certainly sobriety as a way of life for all converts has led to wealth accumulation and a rising standard of living.
Peasants, observes Eric Wolf (1966:15-16), typically live in the tension of a
struggle to balance the provisioning of their household with economic demands from the
outside world and are most certainly not averse to improving their economic
circumstances by escaping the expenses of ceremonial obligations when this is deemed
wise and when circumstances permit.
I will briefly consider two other instances of cultural practices being terminated
following the advent of Evangelical Christianity when the indigenous people came to see
them as wasteful. In the nineteenth century some Maori people came to regard as
wasteful the huge feasts which they were periodically obliged to give. Unconverted
people saw the moderation in consumption encouraged by the Bible as much more
sensible and some sought missionary assistance in ridding their culture of the custom
(Williams 1989:215). The second example is from the Kenyah tribespeople of
Kalimantan.
The Kenyah are dry-rice farmers dwelling beside rivers in the interior of the island.
Rice is the staple food. Its cultivation is therefore of great importance and involves intensive, backbreaking labor by organized groups clearing the jungle, planting, and 222
weeding. As spirits are believed to exert strong influence over the productivity of the rice crop, rituals of appeasement involving the sacrificial slaughter of expensive livestock attend each stage of cultivation—planting, the appearance of the first shoots, weeding, maturation, eating the first yield of the harvest, and harvesting. Despite the labor involved
in producing a rice crop and the expense of ritual sacrifices, a ripening nee crop will be completely abandoned if omens from the spirit world so indicate. Officials in Sarawak have reported whole areas suffering famine because unfavorable signs resulted in many
or all of the rice fields being abandoned (Conley 1976:247-8).
The dissonance of some tribesmen who were questioning this practice became
acute when Evangelical missionaries arrived in 1 929 and made them aware that
Christianity decries waste as foolishness and strongly encourages diligence for the purpose of maximizing productivity in whatever sphere of life a person is involved. Other
people were dissatisfied with their traditional religion as it held them in perpetual dread of evil spirits. They welcomed Christianity's offer of emancipation from fear and material impoverishment. Abandonment of wasteful practices became occasions for deliberately defying the power of the spirits when people were converted upon seeing their Christian neighbors harvesting good rice crops and not performing rituals to appease the spirits (Conley 1976:217-250, 267).
Not as measurable as economic revitalization but just as real for the Aymara converts was the revitalization of their personalities following conversion. William James
(1990:155-176) is one of the earliest proponents of the view that conversion helps people
find wholeness through the resolution of their internal conflicts. The divided self thus
becomes a unified self. This "integrating force within conversion for personality" 223
(Gillespie 1991:36), Evangelical theology identifies as the Holy Spirit. The Aymara informants in crisis at conversion found the integrating force for wholeness that they
were seeking and, their experience at least, is a compelling rebuttal to the argument that it
is wrong of evangelists to seek conversions as people are basically happy. Some, and
perhaps many, are decidedly unhappy with their lot in life. Concepcion Mamani's healing
from insanity is a dramatic case but a glance at Table 8-1 shows that many people were suffering mentally and emotionally before their conversion.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have examined the reasons people gave for converting. Analysis of 82 questionnaires reveals 61 (74.4%) informants suffering from a crisis immediately prior to and/or during their conversion. Some were actively seeking help. Their troubles left them tired of themselves and their circumstances and presumably more willing to consider the claims of Evangelical Christianity than they otherwise might have been.
Thirteen of the 82 respondents (15.85%) had childhood (aged 12 or under) conversions due to the influence of family members and/or neighbors and were not in crisis at the time of their conversion. Eight adults (9.75%) were not in crisis when they converted and were attracted into Evangelicalism because of what they heard from believers and/or saw in the lives of believers.
Three points arise from these findings. First, crisis commonly accompanied conversion, but was not an essential precursor. Second, a person does not need to be in
crisis to be converted. Nothing is to stop a person who is enjoying a good and peaceful life from adding what he or she perceives to be another good dimension to their lives.
That is precisely what eight adults in this study decided to do. Their conversions, though relatively few (9.75%), nevertheless help swell the Evangelical ranks. Third, the 224
testimony of those in crisis when they converted is that God met their need. Having found truth and power and peace, these people affiliated with Seminario Biblico and so the movement grew and continues growing. The testimony of all these people, whether in crisis or not, is that God is knowable in a personal and ongoing relationship. For those in trouble, he can and wants to help. The power to generate personal revitalization is a major internal dynamic of the Evangelical movement and a major reason for its expansion through Latin America. 1
CHAPTER 9 SOCIAL AND ANTISOCIAL DIMENSIONS: DIRECTING, SECURING, AND TESTING CONVERSION
From Malinowski came the insistence that intensive involvement with the (real) natives in terms of their culture was a necessity in field work. He stressed that such research would enable the investigator to demonstrate that man ... was not a puppet on cultural strings, but a decision-maker who at times opted to go against cultural rules and to accept the sanctions such behavior called forth. —Morris Freilich "Marginal Natives" 1979:1
Introduction
To this point we have studied the lives, objectives, and strategies of the
missionaries and Aymara evangelists, the doctrinal and experiential sources of their
motivation, the political and religious contexts in which they worked, the lives of their
converts, and the causes and some of the consequences of conversion. In this chapter we
will consider three additional factors which powerfully shaped the history of the
Seminario Biblico denomination. The first concerns the societal direction which
conversion took (and continues to take). The second helps explain why sufficient
converts have remained in their faith for the movement to have lasted sixty years and,
indeed, why it is still growing. It is a question which becomes all the more interesting in view of the third force which influenced the denomination, the opposition which has risen against conversion.
The Direction of Conversion
Through Families
Of great importance m rural Aymara life is the community (comunidad) to which one belongs. It is governed by leaders (autoridades) elected to serve two-year terms.
71ii 226
People in the cities may organize themselves similarly along occupational (sindicato) and
neighborhood lines. The organization, operation, and authority of community government
are taken seriously as the issues within a local ruling body's jurisdiction vary from
authoritatively adjudicating complicated and sometimes bitter land disputes and other
quarrels between community members to the weightier decision-making determining the
nature, extent, and logistics of member participation in protests up to the scale of armed
revolts such as the nationwide revolutions of 1952 and October 2003. The close (though,
it must be said, not always harmonious) nature of family, occupational, and community
members and the important issues they face make decision-making as a group quite
commonplace. Individual-level thought and initiative are being exercised also in all
spheres of national life including the religious. Individualism was stimulated in Bolivia's
history with the Chaco War, the emancipations of the 1952 Revolution, the various
pressures on rural people to migrate to the cities, and the advent of public education
generating a secular worldview and vocational aspirations unimaginable to earlier
generations of Aymara youth. Readily available in the Aymara mindset, then, is the
practice of decision-making by individual volition and group consensus. Both modes of
decision-making are exercised at community and family level and both were deployed
when people converted. The two modes of decision-making predispose the Aymara to
conversion by people movements (Chapters 2,9).
Wherever the Aymara live, family ties are important. Typically both parents work and children contribute in some way to the running and economy of the household. Rural children tend animals and help with crops and urban children may help parents with their shops. A few children in El Alto tend animals foraging on the weeds and rubbish in the 227
city streets. Elderly people may live with and depend on their family. As one might
expect, given the strong family orientation of Aymara society and the powerful nature of
the Evangelical imperative to see people "saved,'- the Seminario Biblico movement runs
in the family.
...... : ." •• ...... -
; : :" :•::« > : " —
Figure 9-1 . Hamlet, Ilavi District
The data which follow are from 82 questionnaires. Not all respondents answered all
the questions. Of 81 respondents to one question, 64 (79%) said that one or more family
members played an influential part in their decision to convert. Sometimes the members
of entire nuclear families such as Samuel Corteza Quispe's (Chapter 8), decided after
discussing the matter together, to convert simultaneously as a group. Six respondents
(4%) converted in this manner. Doris Warren noted the membership of some rural churches consisting of two or three families and observed that people "converted as 228
individuals but often the whole family was won for the Lord." Muratorio (1981 :523) also
noted that in Ecuador "recruitment of new converts takes place predominantly along
kinship lines. Usually whole families become converted as a group, and then their
extended kin are convinced to join." She observed that "several of the life histories of
converts reveal the sense of relief they felt when they became converted because it meant
re-establishing family and kinship ties with other members who were already believers."
Believers were also relieved, perhaps more so considering their conviction of the eternal
issues at stake, when family members converted. Eighty-one of 82 respondents (98.78%)
had at least one family member in the same or another Evangelical church.
Through an Ethnic and Socio-economic Channel
McGavran (1968:23; 1980:225) observed on the basis of 30 years of ministry
experience in the caste system of India that the gospel is propagated fastest when
converts are sought within the boundaries of ethnic, social, and economic strata rather
than across them. People of the same ethnic group, social status, or economic level he
describes as "homogeneous units," and, like kinship, they are channels of least resistance
along which the gospel most easily travels through a society. Nordyke (1972:132-133)
distinguished three homogeneous groups in rural areas and four in La Paz and El Alto
and noted that the Evangelical church was growing in each group at that time. We rum
now to consider the specific aspects of life which unite the people of this vast region
before discussing their implications for the life and expansion of the churches.
The Seminario Bibhco churches occur within a vast geographical region
encompassing residents of the altiplano north of Oruro city to the western shores of Lake
Titicaca, the Esmeralda Valley south of La Paz, El Alto city, and poor Aymara people of
La Paz. Four churches are also located in the subtropical yungas valley region a day's 229
drive northeast of La Paz. They were started when some Seminario Biblico people migrated from the altiplano in the 1970s and 1980s during drought-induced famines.
Denomination officials and other delegates from the highlands maintain contact with them by means of a four-day trip once a year to inform them of business issues and decisions, to teach, and now that the denomination owns a portable generator, to show a gospel film. Highland relatives of the migrants take advantage of these ministry trips to
visit kinfolk. The region is thus tied together along kinship lines as people typically have relatives in urban and rural areas. Professional and/or wealthy Aymara Evangelicals and mestizos constitute another homogeneous unit and attend several churches in the Union
Cristiana Evangelica (UCE) denomination in the south of La Paz.
Ethnically, the rural altiplano north of Oruro is Aymara. El Alto city consists of
550,000 Aymara and 50,000 Quechua according to the national census of 2003. The two groups live in harmony. (Mestizos and wealthier Aymara and Quechua live in La Paz).
Socially, the Aymara and Quechua are alike in being disadvantaged in their relations with
the dominant mestizo class. Ethnicity is not an issue in the Evangelical churches.
Seminario Biblico congregations may have Quechua musicians to perform on special occasions (Figure 9-8). Two predominantly Aymara congregations of the UCE denomination on the altiplano are led by Quechua pastors.
Economically, there is much hardship in the altiplano and El Alto. When family farms and rural businesses are too small to profitably employ all the members of a family,
the teenaged and adult children have little choice but to migrate and many move to El
Alto. A large and steady stream of people is moving from rural areas to El Alto in search of work and/or better educational and vocational prospects for their children. In the last 230
twenty years, and Altenos say especially in the last ten, the city has grown at a
tremendous rate and shows no indication of slowing down. Housing is typically slum
standard and infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Thousands of homes are without
indoor plumbing. Many streets are unpaved, strewn with rubbish picked over by packs of
starving dogs, and lack storm-water reticulation. Avenida Bolivia, a main street in El Alto
fifty yards from our house, becomes an impassable torrent of deep muddy water during
rainstorms. Carretera Oruro, the main road south from El Alto, has a pothole big enough
for cars to get stuck. One market day I saw a raptured sewer main rapidly disgorging its
contents across a plaza under the feet of hundreds of people buying and selling foodstuffs
from mobile stalls. A week later it was still unattended by workmen.
Rural people, Altenos often told me, are better off nutritionally as they usually
manage to stave off hunger in times of food shortage by sharing their stocks of food with
family, friends, and neighbors. Not so in El Alto. When individual families fall on
especially hard times through unemployment and underemployment, people can suffer
terribly from under-nutrition. This is not to say that Altenos do not help people in need
because they do. Some gallant people in my neighborhood were self-sacrificially helping
their hungry and destitute next-door neighbors.
Educationally, rural children are disadvantaged by comparison with their urban
counterparts. One two-roomed school on the altiplano ten miles northwest of Patacamaya
which I visited when it was in session had a motley assortment of chairs for the children in the classrooms, some chalk for the blackboard, and nothing else, not even a desk for the teacher. There was not one book of any description in the two classrooms. The teachers taught lessons from memory. Other rural schools are better equipped but not by much. Alteno children receive a better education than rural children but opportunity in
every sphere of employment is desperately lacking in El Alto and nearby La Paz. The people of this vast region are disadvantaged also in terms of health care. Thousands
suffer from easily treatable ailments for lack of affordable treatment.
Another commonality of Seminario Biblico constituents is that their country is permanently in crisis and they, like the majority of Bolivians, are forever suffering the
stress of that. A common means of protest is bringing the country to a standstill by blockading roads (bloqueos) with rocks, burning tires, and, during the revolution of
October 2003 which led to the overthrow of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, railway wagons were manually levered off an overhead bridge onto a main road through
El Alto (Figures 9-2 and 9-3).
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Figure 9-2. Bloqueo on Carretera Oruro, El Alto, October 2003 232
The plight of Bolivians is continually aggravated by learning from television, menial employment in the tourist industry, and other sources, that people in many other countries enjoy a much higher standard of living. Never in their lifetime do many
Bolivians take a holiday overseas or even a modest one at home, yet they see a steady stream of overseas tourists enjoying themselves for months on end travelling through the
Andes thinking little of spending what to the local people are fortunes on airfares and souvenirs. Bolivians are also conscious that their country has the natural resources to
afford them a much higher standard of living so it makes them angry seeing foreign companies from the wealthy nations making fortunes by extracting huge quantities of
Bolivia's raw materials. They see, too, that a major reason for their poverty as individuals and as a nation is that public servants, and politicians in particular, are siphoning off
Figure 9-3. Bloqueo, El Alto, October 2003 233
millions of dollars of aid money and public revenue. Cases of corruption in government
are always in Bolivia's newspapers. The conquistador is alive and well but today he
wears a business suit.
Another factor which united the far-flung Seminario Biblico constituency was their
lack of respect for the Catholic Church (Chapter 4). Lesley Gill (1990:71 1) concluded
that "weaknesses within the Catholic Church, an institution that is linked to class, racial,
and gender exploitation in the minds of many Bolivians" is a factor contributing to the growth of the Pentecostal movement in La Paz.
The residents of the altiplano north of Oruro, residents of El Alto and the yungas, and the poor Aymara people of La Paz, thus constitute one great homogeneous unit by virtue of having in common their ethnicity, poverty, oppression, rejection of Catholicism, and their anger concerning the corruption in government and the exploitation of their country by foreigners. There are no banners of ethnicity, class, or attitude to impede the spread of the gospel in this very populous, geographically and ecologically diverse region. Almost anyone living in this region would be comfortable, ethnically and
socially, attending a Seminario Biblico church. (Having said this, I know of two moderately wealthy families in El Alto who have fallen on hard times and can not now
afford to live in one of the better residential districts of La Paz and who might consider it beneath their dignity and station to attend church along with other Altenos).
The external homogeneity of the region is reflected in the life of the churches and
we will consider this next. First, the ethnic factor. Seminario Biblico is exclusively
Aymara though people of any ethnic group would be welcome. Another Evangelical denomination on the altiplano, the Union Evangelica Cristiana, has Aymara and Quechua 234
constituents but to my knowledge, and I worked with them as well as Seminario Biblico,
friction among members never has an ethnic basis. Ethnicity is simply not an issue.
Second, I saw no indications of friction or negative attitude between urban and rural people. Rather, urban people, many of whom are themselves migrants from the
country and still have family members and plots of land there, tend to hold rural kinfolk and fellow believers in high regard for their hardiness and courage, wresting a living year
after year from the land of the altiplano. The seven-man mesa directiva which is elected to govern the denomination for terms of two years, always includes rural pastors. Rural
ministers have served as its president and the current president for 2003-2004, Paulino
Yupanqui, lives in the altiplano village of San Antonio. At the quarterly pastors' conferences, the mesa schedules visits to churches, usually on the occasion of their
anniversary, so all the rural churches receive an annual visit. Visits are from one to four days and even the short ones can be exhausting with long services and many hours of driving. Urban churches, when planning their anniversaries, take pains to draw up and send rural churches formal written invitations requesting the presence of a delegation to
contribute items of music and Bible instruction. There is no sense of shunning the
country cousins. In fact, rural delegations to urban church anniversaries are warmly welcomed for making the effort to travel to town for the occasion and those which put on items using "traditional" Andean musical instruments are very appreciatively applauded by their urban brethren. Rural and urban people mix freely and harmoniously at church
anniversaries, quarterly pastors' meetings, and other functions, and everyone is addressed as hermano or hermana (brother or sister) Hermanos give each other preference in business transactions to prosper one another and because hermanos have a reputation for 235
fair dealing. This is not to say that squabbling, pettiness, and trouble resulting from
personal ambition does not exist because tensions do arise and people sometimes leave
for other denominations or stop attending altogether. However, there are mechanisms for
dealing with problems which threaten to become serious breaches in a congregation or
between leaders. By and large the movement is functioning smoothly and growing slowly
in membership size and numbers of churches. Muratorio (1981:524) observed that
hermanos in Ecuador have a reputation for trustworthiness, acting "like real brothers,"
willingness to share, honesty, and, being habitually sober, they are more reliable.
Very apparent was the often spoken concern and compassion of certain urban
individuals for their rural brethren. They accompany mesa members on their scheduled
rural visits for anniversaries, take building materials for churches under construction and
help in the work, and qualified urban ministers travel to the country churches to conduct
weddings. When Marcelino Huanca's term of office as the denomination's president
expired he travelled at his own expense by bus every Sunday for about six months to the village of Chua Cocani near Lake Titicaca to serve as the church's interim pastor. The return trip takes three hours. Urban believers also launch evangelistic initiatives
(avanzadas) into rural areas which are sometimes remote and difficult of access. All these initiatives are undertaken at personal expense.
A People Movement?
Commonly reported for tribal and folk societies is a partem of conversion that has come to be known as the "people movement." Specific instances reported from Asia,
Africa, Melanesia, Polynesia, and Latin America are given in Chapter 2. The people movement concept was coined and defined by the missiologist Donald McGavran
(1980:335). People movements result from 236
the joint decision of a number of individuals, whether five or five hundred—all from the same people—which enables them to become Christians without social dislocation, while remaining in full contact with their non-Christian relatives, thus enabling other groups of that people, across the years, after suitable instruction, to come to similar decisions and form Christian churches made up exclusively of members of that people.
People convert of their own volition as individuals or in entire or partial family, community, or tribal groups. Though large numbers of people can be involved, notice must be taken of McGavran's immediate reference in his definition to the fact that individual people are deciding to convert. Tippett (1977:204) emphasizes that people movements are not mass movements, which could convey the idea of something akin to mass hysteria, but multi-individual movements which stresses the importance of individual volition in the matter. He emphasizes, too, that while individuals are involved, they are not in geographic or social isolation, but belong to and act within groups and sub-groups. Families proved especially important in this study with 79 of a sample of 81 individuals (97.5%) being influenced to convert by family members and 98.8% of respondents having one or more family members in an Evangelical church. People movements can occur on a large scale demographically and may cover a wide geographic area but are confined to people of the same ethnicity and socio-economic level. While the
geographic area in this study is vast and varied, the necessary (though most certainly not sufficient) homogeneous ethnic and socio-economic conditions for a people movement exist in my study area.
The people movement strategy typically involves evangelists itinerating widely within an ethnic group seeking the conversion of individuals and entire families or villages. Converts are discipled in groups in their villages circumventing the problem of social dislocation. The indigenous churches thus formed are encouraged to be 237
independent from their inception with regard to government and finance, the missionary serving as occasional adviser. People movement churches also become self-propagating through the training and encouragement of converts to become evangelists and disciple- makers thus multiplying the missionary endeavors and increasing the potential for church growth. The origin and expansion of the Seminario Biblico denomination corresponds to in many respects to the people movement pattern of conversion.
The Structural Theory
It is axiomatic among scholars of conversion that people are more receptive to the gospel "in times of general societal unrest, in times of wars, epidemics and the like"
(Gillespie 1991 :1 15) and this study is no exception. A major source of social change in
Latin America in the last fifty years has been the migration of rural people to the cities. In numerical terms this migration has reached staggering proportions and has been causally linked to the equally remarkable explosion of Evangelicalism in the region. Martin
(1990:284) speaks of Evangelical Christianity as "a dramatic migration of the spirit matching and accompanying a dramatic migration of bodies." The two phenomena have been causally linked by postulating that the personally unsettling and disorienting effects of being uprooted by migration predispose people to changing their religion if they have one or adopting one if they do not (Willems 1967:13, 106-107, 249, 251, 368; Lalive
d'Epinay 1969:83; Read et al. 1969:108; Martin 1990:284; Wilson 1994:89, 99-100;
Escobar 1994:133).
A number of difficulties with the structural explanation for conversion are
immediately apparent. First, it reduces the Pentecostal movement "to a kind of social
adaptation mechanism, with little consideration for its religious specificity" (Sepulveda 238
1994:71). Lalive d'Epinay presents several theological distinctives of Pentecostalism in
his last chapter but, apart from mentioning the frequent occurrence of faith-healing as a
precursor to conversion, the theology of the movement is not related to its growth. Yet it
is immediately obvious to any outside observer, and as any Pentecostal person will
readily testify, Pentecostalism (like its Evangelical sibling) is first and foremost a
religious movement. Like the Evangelical denomination in my study, it is also a social
movement in that many people with a similar purpose are involved, but it is centered on
and undergirded by its religious specificity. It is socially adaptive when family life is
improved and converts are helped by business connections with church members but
when only part of a family converts it can be divisive and very disruptive of family life.
Conversion of people in villages can also be the occasion of great strife. Social
advantages accruing to people converting under those circumstances are offset by a costly
social price tag (Chapters 8,9). Conversion also generates discord in society when it meets with opposition. Sixty percent of my informants suffered opposition to their conversion.
A second problem relates to the role ascribed to anomie by Willems, Lalive d'Epinay, Martin, Stoll, and Mariz. The concept of anomie (from the Greek anomia meaning 'lawlessness') was pioneered by Emile Durkheim (1951) when studying
sociological correlates of suicide. Applied to society, anomie is a state of lawlessness and
normlessness; applied to the individual it refers to a state of personal disorientation, dislocation, anxiety, and social isolation ( Webster's New International Dictionary . 1976).
Proponents of the anomie thesis think rural migrants suffer both the effects of being uprooted from their rural communities and the alienation of living "in isolation on the 239
fringe of a brutal society" (Lalive d'Epinay 1969:48). However, my data do not indicate that societal anomie contributed to the decision of my informants to convert as all of them were converted before they migrated. Though not encountering anomie-related
conversion in my sample does not disprove its existence among Aymara migrants and
elsewhere, its operation as a common causal factor in conversion is questionable based as
it is on the unproven notion of rural harmony in contrast to urban chaos (Levine
1995:164-165). Nowhere does rural life conform to the neat and tidy categorization
underlying the idea of anomie. To maintain that it does is to revert to a reverse noble
savage idealism. Harmony and strife occur universally in all facets of rural and urban life.
Rural Aymara people commit crimes and suffer family squabbles, community tensions, power struggles, and land disputes, and they are forever generating chaos in national life by interrupting road communications within the country and commerce with Peru and
Chile in their unceasing struggles with the national government.
A third concern is the idea that rural migrants are typically disoriented in the city having been uprooted from their rural communities and then suffering the additional alienation of living "in isolation on the fringe of a brutal society" (Lalive d'Epinay
1969:48). Some may be confused during their first few visits but people adjust and many
rural people are well acquainted with city life and business. Aymara peasant people visit
El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba to celebrate annual fiestas and to visit friends and family and many regularly visit the cities to sell agricultural produce, fish, and hand- made goods and to transact personal and community business with banks and government departments. Rural community leaders (autoridades) go to La Paz to conduct community
business in groups of up to a dozen individuals which gives them all experience in city 240
life and conducting business with bank officers and government officials. The thousands
of rural Aymara who market their produce in El Alto and La Paz are very familiar with
the operation of those cities and quite at home working and moving about in them. Scores
of trucks bring agricultural produce and the fanners and family members to the cities
every day. Selling one's produce in town is seldom a simple matter of setting up a little
street-side stall as marketing is tightly controlled by fee-charging sindicatos so that rural
people wanting to market their produce in town are quickly inducted into the procedures
of urban commercial enterprise.
Fourth, the rural migrants whom I knew resided, initially at least, with relatives or
friends, and not in "emotional isolation" as Willems says. The local church, he says,
serves the social function of giving a believer an "opportunity to rebuild his personal
community" (Willems 1967:250). The Evangelical rural migrants I know, all of whom
were converted before migrating, did not report emotional isolation after moving to the
city as they initially joined an existing, albeit very small, community of relatives and/or
friends and extended their circle of friends, acquaintances, and business associates when
they joined a church (Chapter 9).
Another problem with the crisis of anomie model is that it "suffers from an unfortunate patronizing tone" (Levine 1995:165), underestimating by far the peasant's powers of adaptability and his capacity for commonsense planning within the scope of personal and family resources. Willems, however, is right in asserting economic uncertainty as a common source of anxiety for recent rural immigrants and long-term residents alike in urban areas. Unemployment or underemployment are easily observed 241
causes of despair in the urban areas of highland Bolivia but only one of my 43 informants
who specified their reasons for conversion cited economic difficulty as a factor (Table
8-1). The bottom line in this argument, as Levine (1995: 164-165) points out, is that
disorientation and anomie of rural-urban migrants have not been established empirically
as factors in conversion.
A final problem with the migrant model is that it does not account for the growth of
Protestantism in the rural areas of Brazil (Mariz 1993:28) and on the Bolivian altiplano.
Levine (1995: 1 64-165) warns proponents of the migrant model that they have not
established empirically . that "conversions . . are disproportionately centered in the cities."
The literature dealing with the explosion of Latin American Protestantism has such a
strongly urban focus that its coupling to rural-urban migration could give the impression
that Protestantism is almost solely an urban phenomenon. However, Mariz (1993:28) reports the movement flourishing in urban and rural Brazil and two Aymara denominations have more rural congregations than urban. In October 2001, Seminario
Biblico had 15 churches in urban areas and the Union Cristiana Evangelica (UCE) had three. Seminario Biblico had in rural 39 areas; and the UCE had 1 1 . Three-quarters of the churches (50 of the 68) were rural. Rural Seminario Biblico churches had 977 teenaged
and adult attendees; urban attendees totalled 601. 1 did not collect attendance data for
UCE. The rural predominance in the two denominations may continue for some time as rural churches continue to open. In 2001, Seminario Biblico started two urban churches and a rural one; UCE opened a rural one.
The rural churches were and still are being started by the initiatives of rural and urban-based evangelists. The latter are visiting rural areas during their weekends and 242
helping start and maintain churches where the local people want their assistance. The
Seminary Mission began in La Paz and expanded to the country areas so successfully that
it is today a predominantly rural denomination. Other scholars report this urban-rural
direction of church expansion. Read et al. (1969:242) reported expansion to rural areas for Brazil as did David Stoll (1990:108) but Stoll thinks growth in Brazil is resulting predominantly from fishing in the "streams of rural-urban migration." The literature gives the distinct impression that migrants to Latin American cities are being converted in the
cities and this may be the case for the region in general (e.g. Willems 1967:13; Read et al.
1969:240; Martin 1990:284) but that is not so for Seminario Biblico. All 14 of my 102 informants who migrated from the altiplano to El Alto or La Paz converted before they migrated.
Perhaps the Aymara case may serve as an encouragement to research specific localities and obtain data from many individuals before generalizing at national and
continental levels. There is a steady flow of rural-urban migration in Bolivia and it is true that churches have sprung up during the same historical time-span in barrios but we must not assume a close causal relationship between the two phenomena. Rural-urban migration was not the conduit by which my informants entered Evangelicalism; the evidence favors their entrance by the people movement phenomenon.
Securing Conversion: The Securing Effects of Church Life
The kinship, ethnic, and socio-economic channels along which the gospel flowed to
produce the Seminario Biblico movement, and continues flowing to enlarge it, end in the reservoirs of local churches. We will look now at the ways by which these churches complete the conversion process by securing converts in their faith. 243
Government
New converts are received into a well-organized denomination, not one which is floundering administratively and unattractive, therefore to people seeking order in their own lives. Churches are autonomous and led by a pastor elected by the congregation for renewable two-year terms. When there are willing and able believers, congregations may also appoint elders (ancianos), a president, secretary, treasurer, youth leader, and music director. The denomination is governed by a seven-man board of officers (mesa) consisting of a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and three members
(vocales). Neither the mesa nor the pastors are remunerated. (One church pays its pastor a small stipend). Mesas are elected for terms of two years at quarterly meetings of pastors and local church officials (juntas pastorales). At the juntas, officials and pastors hear a report from each church and mesa official, discuss business arising from the reports, receive money from the churches for the maintenance of the association, adjudicate breaches of discipline, nominate three-man search committees for the two-year appointment of officers, organize evangelistic initiatives and work days at construction projects, and schedule visits to churches by the mesa during the upcoming quarter, usually on the occasion of inauguration celebrations (aniversarios). Reports from mesa officials and some churches are read from prepared statements and then receive signatures of approval from all mesa members. Signatures are often elaborate and flourishing, and handwriting and the recording of numbers on reports and other documents are meticulous and almost calligraphic.
One junta is held during Easter each year. It is a special three-day event attended by around 1,100 people. Leland Trussell, who worked in the Seminary Mission in the years
1956-1960, estimated that the churches contributed 1,000 to 1,200 pounds of potatoes 244
and chunu, quinoa for making soup, onions, and meat (lamb) for the meals. Churches which for some reason were not sending representatives to the conference sent food for the event. Individual people contributed five to twenty-five pounds of potatoes. In the past the Easter junta was held at Callampaya Church in La Paz, the association's biggest venue, but in 2002 the junta was convened in the spacious grounds of the association's new headquarters on the outskirts of El Alto. A huge tent was hired for the occasion and catering needs were met by people bringing their own food and picnicking with the members of their own local church.
Services and Church Anniversaries
New converts feeling their way into church life find themselves participating in worship services and celebrations which are peaceful and joyous gatherings of friends and family members. Typically there are two services on a Sunday, one in the morning from 10am until 12:30am and another after lunch in the afternoon from 2pm until 4pm.
Finishing for the day in the afternoon means people can return home in the daylight; city dwellers do not have to traipse through streets which can be dangerous at night and rural people still have time to tend their animals. Services are orderly though relaxed enough for spontaneity as churches are typically small with 20 or 30 members all of whom know each other very well. The morning service starts with an opening prayer, the singing in
Spanish and/or Aymara of a few choruses or hymns, and a lesson from the Bible given by a congregation member. If someone is available to teach the children, they have a lesson in a separate room or outside. At around 1 lam the children rejoin their parents and older siblings and come to the front of the church where they recite a verse of Scripture that they have just memorized and then sing a song before sitting down with their families.
There is more singing and then any visitors present are asked to come to the front of the 245
church for a welcome from the whole congregation. While the welcome song
"Bienvenido" is being sung, the men file forward to shake hands with the visitors followed by the women. Everyone takes their seats again and the visitor may bring a short greeting and a few words of well-wishing from his or her church. Greetings are conveyed with a wave and the hosts receive and respond to the greeting with a wave.
Sometimes visitors give a testimony of something God has recently done and a few people in the congregation respond with "Amen!" Sometimes visitors bring notification
of deaths and hardships. Distressing news is received politely and attentively, commiserations are expressed and prayers regarding the people concerned may be offered. Thus the churches continually strengthen their ties. A sermon of about forty minutes follows, usually given by the pastor. At the end of the sermon the preacher often invites people to respond by coming to the front of the church and responding to whatever they think the Holy Spirit is speaking to them about. Eleven of ninety informants (9.9%) who specified the location of their conversion were converted in church in response to the pastor's preaching. The service closes with a prayer.
This leader-directed format for a service is more typical of Baptist or Presbyterian churches than those of the Friends Society in which congregation members may spontaneously contribute a message of varying length during the service. The Friends
missionaries abandoned their traditional worship service format, by which all those present are welcome to spontaneously contribute, in favor of a leader-controlled style when certain individuals who had not been elected to the pastorate by the congregations began using the services to bring confusion and division. The wolves in sheep's clothing, as they were called, had to desist. 246
After the morning service, people return home for lunch or have a potluck picnic
(aptaphi) at church (Figures 3-1; 9-5). If the weather is fine enough to eat outside and it
usually is, wooden pews are taken out and depending on the number present they are arranged in a circle. Women who have brought food in their shawls open them out on the
ground, the food is arranged, a prayer of thanksgiving to God for making the food is
offered, and everyone helps themselves. Depending on the season, there is dehydrated potato (chunu and tunta), fresh boiled potatoes of various sorts (papa), oca (a small, sweet, pink and yellow tuber), and pasta. Pieces of sheep's cheese or fried eggs are handed around by women if they bring these delicacies. The afternoon service begins
around 2pm and lasts about two hours. It consists of more singing, preaching, prayer, and
an altar call.
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Figure 9-4. Ensemble Playing Traditional Instruments, Santiago de Llallagua Church 247
Churches all celebrate their inauguration with an annual aniversario. It is an
important event on the church calendar. The church building is spruced up and written
invitations expressed in formal language are sent to nearby congregations requesting a
delegation of members to share in the celebration and perform items of music. Some
churches have brass bands with a dozen players; others have ensembles of singers and
traditional instruments (Figure 9-4); yet others send a choir accompanied by a piano
accordion. Aniversarios celebrated by the larger congregations attract around three
hundred guests from a dozen or more churches and extend through a whole weekend.
Church members may take advantage of the occasion to have a visiting pastor or church
official dedicate their babies to God. There are guest speakers and a specially made
birthday cake is cut up and served to all by the people who had been organized to sponsor
it a year earlier at the previous aniversario. This means of organization is borrowed
perhaps from the fiesta system the sponsorship of which Buechler and Buechler
(1971:73) noted is organized a year in advance. Those who can best afford to buy the
cake are asked to sponsor it but sponsorship is not obligatory.
Too poor to ever afford the kinds of holiday which people in wealthy countries
are accustomed to enjoy, the aniversarios of one's own church and neighboring churches
are eagerly anticipated events in the year and Sunday services are a welcome break in the week from the daily grind of working on the land or selling on dirty and overcrowded city streets. One Alteno man I know makes bread ten hours a day, six days a week; another works five twelve-hour shifts a week in a factory alternating days and nights.
They are fortunate in having regularly paid employment. People sometimes work only to be told that the boss has no money to pay their wages but they dare not protest and keep 248
on working lest they lose their job. One of my neighbors worked at El Alto airport for
three months without being paid. Had he complained he would have been dismissed.
Another neighbor worked on a construction site and was sometimes not paid at the end of
the week. They are family men and there is very little employment in El Alto. Lesley Gill
(1990:718), who worked "amidst the insecurities and uncertainties of daily life in the
marginal barrios of La Paz," heard an informant describe her church as "an island of
peace."
Converts who once attended fiestas find church services, and the aniversarios in
particular, to be wholesome and uplifting substitutes. By holding aniversarios on the
same day(s) as fiestas, churches provide an alternative celebratory activity involving
food, music, and friends for those who might otherwise be tempted to participate in a
fiesta. Muratorio (1981:527) remarks that believers in Ecuador "perceive the conferences as substitutes for the fiestas, without the hangovers or the large expenses." (See also
Nordyke 1972:141). Malinowski (1945:52) noted that, "One kind of institution can be replaced by another, which fills a similar function." Tippett (1987:183) dubbed them
"functional substitutes."
Like fiestas, aniversarios are solemn religious occasions yet times of fun and relaxation. They are both sources of self-esteem for participants, especially perhaps for those in official capacities. Important milestones in the history of a congregation, aniversarios are occasions on which the whole congregation takes pride in the accomplishment of seeing out "un ano mas" (one year more) and the sense of well-being and camaraderie that comes with belonging to a group of people united in a common purpose is very evident. Vibrant social occasions, they are for some people opportunities 249
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Figure 9-5. Aptaphi (Potluck Lunch), Ankara Church 250
for reuniting with family members and friends. Churches with a choir also celebrate the
aniversario of the choir's inauguration (Figure 9-6).
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Figure 9-6. Aniversario, Villa Bolivar Church, El Alto, 2002
This, then, is the church life which new converts experience. Conducted in a
typically warm and friendly social atmosphere, it is an uplifting time of worship, a
challenging time of instruction in the faith, a respite from the tedium of life, a time for releasing concerns in prayer, a time to relax with friends and family, and for those suffering from various temptations church life offers a means of escape. Table 9-1 gives the main events on the calendar of a church in El Alto. 251
Table 9-1 . Calendar of Special Events for an El Alto Church in 2002 Date Events
6 Jan Installation of leaders for the year—children's Sunday school, youth, choir, worship
14-17 Jan Church anniversary
2 Feb Evangelistic campaign in neighborhood by the church's youth
20 Mar Celebration of the Day of the Child
10-14 April Easter conference for the denomination—church members contribute items of music.
21 April Pastor of the church visits a church in the Esmeralda Valley
11-12 June Camp for the denomination's youth at Hichuraya Grande village
18-21 July Evangelism trip to llavi in the mountains near the border with Peru
6 Aug. Anniversary of the church choir
17 Sept Church hires a bus to picnic with Achocalla Church in the country
23 Sept Celebration of the Day of Youth
25 Dec Christmas service
31 Dec New Year's Eve celebration
The Communal and Personal Nature of Church Life
To be a member of an Evangelical church is to be involved in something very social. Members undertake many activities in groups. Children participate as a group after Sunday school by singing a song; youth groups put on special brackets of songs; men and women work hard together catering for guests during aniversarios; every church has a group of musicians; the whole church comes forward during the service to greet visitors; lunch is eaten together after the Sunday morning service in rural areas and after lunch everyone thanks everyone else; special annual celebrations honor mothers (El Dia de la Madre) and youth (El Dia de la Juventud); up to a dozen believers from different urban churches will go as a group to preach the gospel in villages wanting their own church; groups of delegates attend aniversarios; mesa members visit churches in twos or 252
-.:;.."- : «=-
"'•:''
-. .:::>=' , . -^.^ ,;&*»: •" "'.' ' .' '.'," .. ' .J..:,,,. ' " \
'
: :
: : :.
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Figure 9-7. Wedding, Ilavi District
threes; weddings (Figure 9-7) and high school graduations always involve church
members; and church construction is undertaken with all the members helping and often with the manpower of other churches. When the association bought a one-acre lot on the outskirts of El Alto, the pastors themselves held special workdays in early 2001 to
voluntarily build a wall around the lot. Volunteers from the association then built a two- roomed building; one room for a caretaker and his family and the other for cooking during juntas and for storing gear and began building a Bible school, association offices, and a facility for holding juntas. These many expressions of togetherness reinforce the group nature of individual local churches and inter-church cooperation strengthens the
connectedness of individual churches and helps maintain unity in the denomination. In
colonial times people worked for the priests under compulsion; Evangelicals work at
projects in their denomination of their own volition. Whereas the priest profited 253
personally, discipline would swiftly follow the effort of any Seminario Biblico individual to profit by exploiting church members.
Evangelical theology uses the metaphor of the church as a body to encourage unity
and interdependence in the structure and functioning of the church and demands the discipline of divisive people. Another often-used unifying metaphor of the church as a
family is based on the Bible's teaching that all believers are children of God also has a
unifying effect. For people with believers among their kin, there is a real sense in which it
is just that (Chapter 9). Terms of personal address do also. Boys and men are addressed
as "hermano" and girls and women as "hermana." When unbelievers spoke to me about
Evangelicals they sometimes referred to them as "hermanos." In the country, Evangelical
children may greet men in their church with whom they have no kinship tie as "tio"
(uncle) and women as "tia" (aunty).
Church life, though, is not so communal as to suffocate individualism providing its
expression conforms to New Testament standards of decency. Salvation is itself
experienced on an individual basis, believers are encouraged to cultivate a personal relationship with God through prayer and obedience to the Bible, and individual
initiatives in evangelism and participation in music, for example, are applauded. Church
leadership, music, organizational ability, teaching, and the construction and maintenance
of buildings. Like the Latin American Pentecostal converts of whom Read et al.
(1969:316) spoke, the new believer learns to pray and worship "in the anonymity of
collective prayer and praise (and) the warm, friendly fellowship of the church encourages
him to stand firm in his faith." This, then, is the secure, brotherly, and orderly
environment which new converts enter. There are, however, people who do their utmost 254
to deter new converts and to prevent the growth of the Evangelical church. We will
consider them next.
':'"". : '-7.\- .;.: . . .
Figure 9-8. Quechua Musicians at Patacamaya Church Conferencia
Testing Conversion: Opposition
As Evangelical Christianity spread among the Aymara, those who embraced it not infrequently encountered malice in varying measures of intensity from unbelievers.
Opposition in various forms continues to this day. Of 71 respondents, 43 (60%) reported opposition to their decision to convert. We will review the various quarters from which
opposition came, note the different forms it took, and consider its effects on the believers and onlookers. First, though, we will bring the subject of opposition alive by considering the experience of Alejandro Choque. 255
Aged 83 in 2002, Alejandro was the first convert in the altiplano village of
Topohoco about sixty miles southeast of La Paz. This was in 1965. Public reaction was swift and violent. A mob of Catholics beat Alejandro severely in the village plaza for converting and then nearly stoned him to death. When he recovered he began secretly meeting in the house of a family member to worship, pray, and read the Bible. Thus the infant church was born but when the other villagers discovered that the clandestine worship of a foreign deity was continuing in their midst they were enraged once again,
broke into the house where the meetings were held, took all the Bibles they could find, and burned them in the village plaza. Alejandro resumed his meetings and several other families joined. The villagers continued to harass the believers and sought, unsuccessfully, to turn them out of their homes and expel them from the community.
Alejandro often suffered painful "accidents" when he was working in the fields with people from his community. This continued until they were ordered to stop by the prefecture.
In May 1973, the believers sought permission to build a church in the village but the authorities refused them so they built on land about twenty minutes walk from the village. In 2002, fourteen families were regularly attending the church. Alejandro is in good health apart from being stone deaf. His fellow believers at Topohoco revere him for his courageous perseverance in the early days when he had to stand alone and honor him publicly by introducing him to the few people who visit Topohoco and tell his story with evident pride.
The Sources and Nature of Opposition
Strong and determined opposition greeted Evangelicalism when it entered Bolivia
in the nineteenth century (Chapter 5). Opposition came from yatiris and Catholic priests 256
angry at the challenge to their spiritual hegemony, politicians, hacendados, fellow villagers hoping to profit materially by the convert's death or banishment, and from family and community members concerned that such defection would incur the wrath of the spirits on the whole community.
The experience of the fledgling Evangelical Church in highland Bolivia at that time was microcosmic of region-wide opposition in Latin America. As Evangelicalism slowly gained a toehold in the region in the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic opposition began to mount. In Mexico in those decades, priests incited mobs to bum Protestant churches and kill converts. In Colombia in 1948-1950, mobs incited by priests killed hundreds of
Protestants, often on the pretext that they were fostering communism, and destroyed fifty churches and 200 schools (Stoll 1990:26; Escobar 1994b: 12). Fifty years after religious
freedom had been passed into Bolivian constitutional law in 1 906, foreign and indigenous
Evangelicals were still suffering sacerdotal malice. Boots (1971 :1 86) observes that, "the
history of Protestant missions in Bolivia, until very recently, is a long story of continuing conflict with Roman Catholicism."
In August 1949, the Canadian missionary Norman Dabbs and eight Bolivian
Evangelicals were killed by a mob incited by the local Catholic priest, Father Tumiri
(Boots 1971:187-190; Wagner 1970:50) (Chapter 5). Missionaries also faced priest- organized rent boycotts and had trouble leasing places in which to preach (Boots
1971:186). Doris Warren recalls that following the Revolution of 1952 Aymara converts
to Evangelicalism still faced a "lot of persecution from the Catholic priests and village leaders for not participating in the drinking and dancing at religious feasts." She 257
experienced some trouble herself in the altiplano village of Umala where she worked in
the years 1953-1955 (Chapter 7).
In the mid-twentieth century, altiplano residents nicknamed Aymara converts "toad eaters" (comedores de sapos or jamp'at mankini) for allegedly eating toads. The habit apparently makes the spirits so angry that they withhold rain needed for the crops. On the
altiplano it is a terrible thing to be thought responsible for drought. Two of my informants were ridiculed as toad eaters—one converted in 1952, the other in 1975. Samuel Smith
Sr. recalled that in the 1940s the relatives of one student (a white) threatened to send him to a Catholic seminary to train as a priest unless he recanted his new faith. He stood firm
and his family relented. Ezequiel Arcani Patty's father whipped him, out of fear of the
spirits, off and on for many months after the boy converted.
The first believers in a community typically suffered for their faith. The first
convert in the altiplano village of Hichuraya Grande was Pedro Quispe; the second was
Patricio Chino. This was in the early 1950s. Shortly after their conversion, a yatiri
confronted them and turned Pedro away from following Christ but said that he could see
Patricio was on the road to heaven and God and left him alone. The murder of Francisco
Mollo and his son in the village of Ayo Ayo and the persecution of Francisco Mamani is
described in Chapter 8. Francisco Calderon, one of the first believers in Chejjepampa, a
community along the northern side of Lake Titicaca, twice had his home destroyed by
fellow villagers ostensibly fearful that his conversion would invoke the wrath of the
spirits. He and his wife, he said, "just rebuilt and earned on." Francisco has pastored in
Chejjepampa for many years. In the 1940s, the missionary Norman Dabbs observed that
conversion cost some people job discrimination, family pressures, and forms of social 258
ostracism. The "pressures on the small Protestant minority from a closed and hostile society have been enormous" (Boots 1970:193).
In 1955, persecution broke out in Hichuraya after a man who professed to be a believer for a short time, renounced his faith and died shortly afterwards. People in the community began blaming one of the Evangelical families, saying they murdered the man with witchcraft. When some of Doris Warren's theological students returned home at the end of the school terms they were beaten and had land and livestock confiscated by family and/or community members for refusing to participate in fiestas and to pray for the dead.
In 1969, people started a church in the altiplano village of Enequella. The fledgling church was tested almost immediately when someone broke into the Catholic Church, stole a number of images, and some villagers accused the elder of the Evangelical group.
He was caught, bound, hung up by the middle fingers and beaten in front of all the men in the community. They expected that he would confess to the crime under torture but he steadfastly insisted on his innocence. In due time, a relative confessed to falsely accusing him because he had converted.
In 2001, the member of Congress representing the altiplano campesinos, Felipe
Quispe, publicly declared his hostility to Catholics and Evangelicals by expressing his hope that all churches on the altiplano would be destroyed in an uprising. This caused consternation among some believers as he has an armed militia amounting to a private army in the town of Achacachi. His threats were made the subject of prayer in some churches and as time passed, nothing harmful eventuated. His aggression served to 259
strengthen an already strong sense of fraternal unity among the Evangelicals and their
trust in God's protection. He resumed making threats in mid-2004.
The Effects of Opposition
Overt antagonism to the gospel took a variety of forms and always had
consequences. Sometimes it predictably served the opponents' purposes when fear of
backlash from kinfolk and community members effectively deterred would-be converts
and may be why some elderly people said they wanted to convert but were too old to
change. It resulted in the deaths of some believers and prevented the gospel from being
preached freely everywhere on the altiplano for 120 years following the arrival of the first
Evangelical missionary.
Opposition also served the purposes of the gospel if the tactics of antagonists
backfired. It exerted a positive influence on the churches by sifting out people pretending for one reason or another to be believers and had the effect of strengthening the resolve of
some converts. By strengthening the very religion it sought to destroy, persecution backfired on itself. The determined efforts of Catholic priests in Peru in the 1890s to intimidate and publicly discredit Evangelical missionaries likewise backfired when news media made the trouble known to the world and missionaries in other countries rushed to
the help of their beleagured brethren (Kuhl 1 982:471). Then, too, the suffering of the converts was not lost on some onlookers. Some campesinos who saw believers continue in their faith despite beatings and the confiscation or destruction of their property were, though still suspicious at the time, nevertheless impressed by the power of the new religion to sustain people in their times of difficulty. Perhaps there was substance in the faith of the Evangelicos after all. In time some of them became believers also. The thought that the God of the Evangelicals was powerful enough to sustain them in tough 260
times, was not insignificant in a worldview that takes spiritual power seriously. The
Aymara people know suffering; they have a long history of it, and it was evident to some that the Evangelicos believed they had something worth suffering for and that they were drawing on an unseen power to help them withstand the malice of those who opposed them.
A key to withstanding persecution was hope in the Bible's promise that beyond this
life is a life altogether perfect in every respect and it will never end. It is a life which only
believers will enter and it is worth being faithful to one's calling as a believer here on
earth, no matter what the cost. The hope of heaven is a frequent refrain in the teaching of
Aymara pastors encouraging believers to remain faithful. It is a promise and a perspective
which sustains believers the world over who are suffering trials of all kinds, and
especially trials that are inescapable. All of this recalls an aspect of Malinowski's view of
human nature, considered one of his lasting contributions to anthropology, that man is not
"a puppet on cultural strings, but a decision-maker who at times opted to go against
cultural rules and to accept the sanctions such behavior called forth" (Freilich 1977: 1 1).
Malinowski's observation of the capacity of some individuals to decide on a course of
action seen to be in their best interests and then pursuing it regardless of the opinions and
actions of others is a premise of the later proposed theory of human materialism
(Magnarella 1993:13). Though culture, family, and community exert powerful influences
on any person's mind and behavior, individuals will defy these forces if they perceive it
is in their interests to do so and if they have the courage and opportunity to carry their convictions through into action. If that means changing one's religion in favor of one
perceived to be more personally beneficial, so be it. In calculating life's choices, those of 261
my informants who were persecuted, thought it better to suffer the malice of men for their
conversion than to remain in their previous condition of life whatever that had been. They
had learned from experience that what the Bible had to say concerning conversion was
trustworthy and had no reason to doubt its other instruction. Conversion had so radically
changed many of them that their lives were turned upside-down. They were experiencing
within the community of believers what the artist who painted the mural in Cochabamba
was longing for—amor, igualidad, perdon, tiempo de construir una nueva comunidad,
justicia, and fraternidad (Page 1 and Figure 1). Though life in politically turbulent and
economically impoverished highland Bolivia would continue to try them, and being
human they would try each other's patience at times, they knew from their conversion
experience and subsequent instances of divine providence that God loved them and was
there to call upon in times of trouble. Of paramount importance in sustaining their
capacity for endurance, though, is the Bible's promise and perspective that beyond the misery so abundant in this life is the hope of heaven where, as Ezequiel Arcani Patty said,
"there will be no more tears forever." CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSIONS
"The end of a matter is better than its beginning. .."
Ecclesiastes 7:8
The dramatic rise in recent decades of conservative Protestantism all over Latin
America has been largely due to the explosive growth of Pentecostalism. Theorists have
naturally focused on the Pentecostals rather than their Evangelical siblings. I examined their theories m Chapters 2 and 9 for light they may shed on the growth of Seminario
Biblico, an Evangelical denomination in highland Bolivia. While those theorists may
have accurately understood their own study contexts, I learned of nothing to indicate that structural change in society, political factors, conspiracies, poverty, or the desire to escape financial and ceremonial obligations played directly causal roles in conversion.
(One person converted hoping that it would alleviate his poverty).
The conversions which led to the formation and continued functioning of the
Seminario Biblico denomination resulted directly and solely from the operation of dynamics within and arising from the worldview and practices of Evangelicalism. These include doctrine, proselytistic motivation and strategy, the power to tangibly revitalize lives, ongoing spiritual experience, church life, and cultural adaptability. Conversion among the Aymara is an essentially religious phenomenon being generated by people excited about what they believe is the ongoing revitalizing power of God in their lives communicating their faith to other people, some of whom also become believers. Other
262 263
dynamics which influenced conversion include family lines, Aymara decision-making
procedures, ethnicity, socio-economic level, and opposition.
In seeking to understand conversion to Evangelicalism, we are dealing with the
very heart of that belief system. A crucial tenet of Evangelical worldview with
methodological implications for the scholar is the belief that events such as conversion,
healings and other miracles, calling, and prayer, are indispensably superintended by
invisible supernatural beings. From the emic perspective, these events, and the spiritual
experiences arising from them, are of utmost importance. If these events do indeed have a
supernatural component, the phenomenon of conversion, as Evangelicals understand it, is not entirely available to empirical investigation.
One very visible dynamic, though, is that of the foreign missionary and native evangelist. Each had personally experienced the revitalizing effects of being connected to
God in a personal relationship beginning at conversion and each was motivated by the desire to cooperate with God and each other as agents of conversion utterly convinced of the temporal and eternal importance of their particular religious persuasion. Their belief in their cause rested on the claim of the Bible (which they regard as infallible and
authoritative) that it alone teaches the way of salvation and that the salvation of which it
speaks is freely available to all living people everywhere (Chapter 6). Their message, like any message, was not self-propagating but needed to be communicated. They went to
communicate it, not from personal initiative but at the behest of their God as his envoys of that message and as his ambassadors, believing they were personally called to do so.
Their experience of calling left an indelible impression on the consciousness of each and became a powerful and sustaining source of motivation to make the personal sacrifices 264
required of their vocation and to endure the hardships of daily life in the country of their
calling (Chapter 7). They were further sustained by the teachings and promises in the
Bible (Chapter 6) and by the love and support of colleagues and friends in Bolivia and at
home in the United States and Canada (Chapter 8).
That the mission society they formed left its mark in history is due in no small measure to its having the clear and attainable goal of being instrumental in establishing self-sustaining Evangelical churches. The dynamics at work here were doctrinal and
strategic. The doctrinal dynamic is the biblical injunction to make disciples, a goal to be achieved through the commonsense dynamic of applying an appropriate and practical strategy for its accomplishment. Mission personnel established a base for themselves in a city thronging with Aymara people and built a school there to train converts wanting to enter the ministry and another in a small rural town for converts unable to attend the city
school. Other strategies involved preaching in city streets, in rural market places, in private homes when curious people invited them, and on the airwaves from their radio station. To cover the age range of potentially interested Aymara, they recruited personnel from the United States and Canada to teach theology to seminarians and a woman to teach children. They also cooperated with specialists in another mission to train Aymara literacy teachers and to start a business publishing Bibles, songbooks, and pamphlets.
Three of the missionaries were nurses who sought to show the love of their God by tending sick Bolivians and by warding off sickness in hundreds of children by administering immunizations. In all these ways the missionaries and the Aymara evangelists who joined them proclaimed their message. That their strategies were successful in facilitating conversion was evident from converts mentioning them in 265
relation to their conversion. Some of the converts discerned a calling to join their foreign
brethren as co-workers and, like them, were motivated to live lives of ongoing self-
sacrifice for the sake of other people's wellbeing. They soon outnumbered the
missionaries and a made considerable and perhaps greater contribution to the formation
and functioning of what eventually became their own denomination (Chapter 7).
Of 74 informants, 37 (50%) converted from folk religion and/or Catholicism the
beliefs, spiritual power, and practices of which could not emancipate them from the
power of self-destructive habits or healing them physically, mentally, or emotionally.
Had folk religion or Catholicism helped, there may have been no reason to consider
abandoning, sometimes at the risk of life and limb, an element of their culture which had
been millennia in the making. None of the converts who spoke about folk religion and
Catholicism commented favorably and some were highly critical (Chapter 4).
For the evangelists, foreign and Aymara, the ongoing spiritual experience of the
working of the Holy Spirit was an indispensable dynamic in the process of making
converts. The evangelists were consciously dependent upon God, informed as they were
by the Evangelical doctrine that conversion only occurs when the Holy Spirit takes up
residence in a person's being. Hard work and sound strategy, the Bible told them, would
avail nothing if their did God not work with them by converting the people to whom they
were preaching (Chapters 2,6). Their correspondence to friends back home invariably
reflected this spiritual dependence by the inclusion of requests for prayer. Converts were
also conscious of spiritual dynamics in their conversion experience irrespective of the
circumstances under which they converted. Three quarters (74.4%) of them testified to converting after resolved God a personal crisis (Chapter 8). A major dynamic of 266
conversion which emerged in this study, then, is the Evangelical belief in the power of
God to noticeably revitalize people by directly addressing their needs and predicaments.
Some of those who did not convert in the midst of a crisis testified, nevertheless, to
having been revitalized by their conversion (Chapter 8).
At societal level, conversion spread along family lines all of which are within the
same ethnic group and socio-economic level. Of 81 respondents, 64 (79%) had a family
member play a significant role in their decision to convert. Socio-economic level also
exerted a strong bearing on the history and composition of the Seminario Biblico
movement in that while the denomination has dispersed widely on the altiplano and
through adjacent valley systems among campesinos and urban poor it has not entered the
wealthy upper social stratum though it has had sixty years to do so. There are Evangelical
churches in the wealthy quarter of society in La Paz but none of them were started by
members of Seminario Biblico suggesting it is difficult for the gospel to ascend the social
ladder. The familial, ethnic, and socio-economic data are strongly indicative of
conversion by the people movement pattern rather than through the conduit of rural-urban
migration (Chapter 9).
Once churches are established they become important dynamics of the conversion
process in themselves by providing secure, encouraging, and nurturing environments for
new converts and people who are just inquiring. Some informants (9.9%) were converted
during church services but for the most part church life is an opportunity for corporate worship, instruction, friendship, and service in a host of capacities (music, leadership,
administration, hospitality, teaching, and attending to practical matters). Church life
strengthens ties between members of believing families and substitutes for the fiesta —
267
system which helps people afflicted with alcoholism to avoid temptation (Chapter 9).
Church life is culturally appropriate and not, therefore, a hindrance to conversion abiding by the rulings of government; individual initiative and group consensus decision- making; belief in the power of supernatural beings; the sponsoring of expensive activities by better-heeled members of society; playing Andean instruments in worship services; eating meals together; and observing Andean niceties of etiquette in honoring the aged, leaders, and visitors. The church affirms the importance of family and for people whose
family members live elsewhere or are not believers, it may be a surrogate family as
everyone is hermano or hermana (Chapter 9).
Church life also deepens the commitment of converts by teaching them the doctrinal and praxical elements of their new faith in contradistinction to those of folk
religion. Foremost is the offer of salvation in this life and the next; the many, varied, and long-lasting benefits of prudent and ethical living; the promise for believers of an
eventual and permanent end to all evil and the suffering which that brings; a means of
victory over evil spirits; the peace of mind that God is ultimately in control of their circumstances and always works for their good; the peace that results from knowing the constancy of God's love in contrast to the fear of capricious spirits; willingly serving a benevolent God out of love and gratitude rather than relating to deities on the basis of
hoped for reciprocity; the encouragement for all believers to respect the privileges and
fulfill the responsibilities of being priests themselves; and victory over the universal and
deeply felt fear of death. Through teaching and spiritual experiences the worldview of
converts is gradually transformed into that of Evangelical Christianity (Chapter 4). 268
Reading about these dynamics could convey the impression that the progress of
Evangelical Christianity, once it enters a particular part of the world, is inevitable,
sweeping all before it, but this is not so. The Evangelical movement, though its
proponents were confident in their faith and continually fortified by it in different ways
(Chapter 6), was greatly hindered for 120 years in highland Bolivia by two national
circumstances, serfdom and constitutional laws strictly prohibiting the expression of all
religions except Catholicism (Chapters 5,9). The arrival in 1827 of the first Evangelical
missionary in Bolivia heralded more than a century of bitter and sometimes deadly
opposition from Catholic priests angry over their spiritual hegemony of four centuries
being challenged by men whom they regarded as heretics deserving little more than death
for adhering to doctrines and practices which arose during the Reformation. Evangelical
missionaries were effectively prevented from acting as agents of conversion in many
rural areas of highland Bolivia by their powerful and well-entrenched adversaries. In the
climate of agitation for widespread reform which prevailed in Bolivia at the turn of the twentieth century, liberals wanting reforms including freedom of religion battled conservative politicians, strongly backed by the Catholic Church, who were seeking to maintain the status quo. The two factions struggled with all their might championing their respective ideologies and protecting their personal interests. The liberals eventually prevailed and a bill granting religious freedom finally passed into law in 1906. Until then, priests could legitimately instigate the persecution of Evangelicals. Serious and sometimes deadly sacerdotal persecution nevertheless persisted in rural areas until the tide of circumstances suddenly turned in 1952. Evangelists then travelled everywhere and many peasant people travelled away from their natal community for the first time in their 269
lives and some encountered and responded positively to the gospel (Chapters 5,9). The
advent of these freedoms, though, was not attended by freedom from persecution and it
persists to the present day from yatiris, mobs of villagers, and influential family members
and friends. Of 71 respondents, 43 (60%) reported opposition to their conversion
(Chapter 9).
Through the years, a number of converts and one missionary were killed, some converts recanted their faith, and potential converts were deterred. Opposition sometimes backfired, though, when converts who withstood it were strengthened in their confidence that God could sustain them in tough times. It also backfired at times when onlookers and persecutors witnessed converts withstand onslaughts of malice. Wondering if there might be substance in the new faith after all, some were attracted to consider it in relation to
their own struggles in life. APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING CONVERSION TU CONVERSION
Nombre Fecha de hoy
Edad Ubicacion de entrevista
Ocupacion
Nombre de tu esposa/o
Nombre de tu comunidad
Nombre de tu iglesia
Tu cargo en tu iglesia
Fecha de tu conversion
Edad de conversion
Ubicacion de conversion
<<,C6mo era tu vida antes de conversion?
<^,Cual fue tu religion antes de convertirte al cristianismo?
;,Practicabas fe en Pachamama antes de tu conversion? ;C6mo?
270 271
Tu Testimonio - ^Como escuchaste el evangelio? <^,Que paso durante tu conversion al cristianismo?
^Por que rechazaste el catolicismo?
^Habia crisis personal en tu vida antes de o durante convertirte?
^Algunas personas se oponian tu conversion? <<,Que paso?
^Que te atrajo al cristianismo?
<^Fue tu conversion rapida o un proceso largo? 272
^Cuales cambios en tu vida ocurrieron despues de tu conversion?
,-Pecidiste convertirte por tf mismo o con otras personas? ^Si fue con otras, con quien(es)? APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE REGARDING THE FOUNDING AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCHES
LA HISTORIA DE SEMINARIO BlBLICO
Nombre de tu iglesia Fecha de hoy
Nombre del pastor de tu iglesia Numero de adultos
Numero dejovenes Numero de ninos El ano cuando tu iglesia comenzo
^Quien(es) comenzo tu iglesia?
;C6mo comenzo tu iglesia?
^Comenzo tu iglesia en hogar privado?
1 «:,Habia oposicion al comienzo de tu iglesia? ^,Que paso ;
^Como crecia tu iglesia?
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Bora in 1952, Ian Granville earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) in zoology in 1973 from the
University of Canterbury in New Zealand and graduated from Christchurch Teachers'
Training College in 1974. He taught high school biology for ten years and in that time he also assisted zoologists with their research on various species of seabirds. Then followed two years working for the New Zealand Wildlife Service pioneering research on the behavioral ecology of wild kiwis. In 1991, he graduated with an M.A. in theology from
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. From July 2000 to October
2003, he and his wife served as missionaries in Bolivia where Ian taught theology. His
wife of 24 years, Annette, is a registered nurse.
299 I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
AnthompOliver-Smith Professor of Anthropology
I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Deidre H. Crumbley ^7 Special Member
I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
X CU --C X V li a- zj^ a ^ Paul J. Mag^anjdla f \ Professor of Anthropology
I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
i
/y) k*^JLJ( V Cto / I Manuel A. Vasquez Associate Profesfsor of Religion
This dissertation was submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and to the Graduate School and was accepted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
December 2005
Dean. Graduate School