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At the end of the 1940s, Sophia Müller, a North
American evangelical issionary of the New Tribes Mission
(NTM), began to evangelize among the Kuripako in Colombia,
extending this work to the Baniwa of the Içana in 1949
and 1950. At least in the beginning, the conversion of
the Baniwa bore all the signs of a millenarian movement,
consistent with the prophetic traditions of these Indians
beginning in the XIXth Century and continuing up to and
concomitant with her introduction of fundamentalist evangelicalism.
With her anti-Catholic propaganda, and her messages which
preached redemption and the end of suffering, the missionary
sparked a movement which led to the conversion of the
majority of the Indians of the Içana. Many Baniwa considered
Muller a prophet, and came from all over the region to
hear her preaching and convert to the new faith. Greatly
exploited by the rubber bosses and river merchants, while
they sought to keep their distance from the whites, the
Baniwa accepted evangelicalism as a form of resistance
to white domination.
In this period, the Salesian Mission of Assunção
was built on the lower Içana, in an effort to contain
the advances of evangelicalism. It had no influence,
however, over the evangelical communities upriver. Thus
was produced a division between ‘crentes’ [believers]
and Catholics which has lasted until today.
The indigenous evangelical communities of the
Içana integrate a system called United Biblical Churches,
administered by locally selected indigenous elders and
deacons. Along each stretch of the river, a group of
communities participates, on a rotating basis, in a
system of monthly Santa Ceias [Holy Suppers, comemorating
the Last Supper]. Every three or four months, there
are “Conferences”, events promoted by the communities
of two contiguous stretches of Santa Ceia communities
and open to invited guests.
For more information on the process of evangelization
on the Içana see the item “History of Contact” of the
entry on the Ethnic
Groups of the Içana.
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