MISSIONARIES, AMERINDIANS AND THE DEVIL
by Renato Athias
The relationship between the indigenous peoples of the Americas and missionaries dates back to the 15th century, therefore, a history of more than five hundred years. Much has been written about this, and it seems that it is more current than ever, at least in Brazil, when the Government seeks to hire missionaries for public office as part of a government action. At the very least it is not knowing the story.
Perhaps the most impressive book on this relationship between Indians and colonization was the book by Dominican Friar Bartolomeu de las Casas, Bishop of Chiapas: “La Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias”, book published in 1552. Bartolomeu de las Casas was the main defender of the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the 16th century. He denounced the first results of European colonization in the New World. Soon after, Pope Paul III declared that the indigenous people are the possessors of souls, therefore, they are people, human persons, with their own rationality.
Another important book to know this story of the relationship of missionaries, conquerors with indigenous peoples in the Americas is the book “Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno” by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, (1534–1615). He is an Amerindian chronicler, Inca, from the time of Peru’s viceroyalty. He dedicated himself to describing this relationship in one of the most original books in the historiography of world literature. The book contains 1,180 pages and 397 engravings, it shows the vision, the indigenous perspective of the Andean world and, above all, it allows to reconstruct aspects of Peruvian society in great details after the conquest, illustrating the history and genealogy of the Incas with texts in Castilian from the 16th century and in Quechua.
On June 2, 1537, with the “Bula Sublimis Deus”, Pope Paul III forbade the Spanish and Portuguese to enslave the Indians. He defended their rationality, as human person, and declared that they had the right to total freedom, to dispose of their goods, and to embrace the faith, which should be preached peacefully, avoiding all kinds of cruelty. This issued Papal Bull, in reality, did not prevent the Portuguese and Spaniards from promoting, with the direct support of the missionaries, the carnage in “just wars” and “rescue wars” against indigenous peoples across the entire length of the Amazon. São José da Barra do Rio Negro (Manaus) will be born in this confluence of wars.
Missionaries have always been present throughout the history of the Amazon, we can tell countless facts about this historical relationship between Indians and missionaries. However, here I would like to remember one of them that seems to me to be emblematic of this relationship and, above all, reminds me of what I am experiencing these days here in Italy, where I am, at the time of writing this text. This is the Franciscan Fray Illuminato Coppi, who in 1884 was in the country of Tariana, in the region of Iauareté, in the municipality of São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM), which, in fact, I know very well. There he removed from the indigenous village one of the masks used for holding ritualized parties. Such masks, women can not see. He took the mask, showed the women and committed sacrilege. The indigenous leaders, seeing this, decided to expel the missionary. The missionary arrived back in Italy with the mask he still finds today in the Pigorini Museum in Rome. He wrote a diary in which he invented stories of rituals that indigenous people do with the devil. This diary became known to many missionaries. For years the missionaries forced the indigenous people to burn their communal houses where they hold their festivals. Many of these objects removed from these communal houses are now found in missionary museums, and in other national museums in Europe. For, in the name of the devil, the most profound changes have been brought about in the social organization of these peoples, who live in all the rivers of the great watershed of the Upper Rio Negro. See, for example, the testimonies and texts produced, where the figure of the devil is associated with everything that is traditional and cultural of the indigenous peoples of this region (in some places until today). It is necessary to indicate that in the language Nheengatu, the language of colonization, the term Jurupari is translated by devil.
A few weeks ago, I visited museums by missionaries that display objects from the culture of indigenous peoples with whom I work and have been working for the past 47 years. In those same days when I was making these visits (related to my anthropological research project on ethnographic objects), in this museum, in Italy, I saw with great emotion the amount of ritual objects of the indigenous peoples kept in drawers in the reserve and, in exhibitions in museums. Evidently these objects show the action of the missionaries who brought out of the indigenous territories a hundred things that were left by the mythological ancestors to the indigenous peoples and interpreted by the missionaries as objects of the devil.
“Poranduba Amazonense” the book by João Barbosa Rodrigues (1842–1909) was recently reissued in a beautiful edition. He lived in Manaus when he created the city’s Botanical Museum in the late 19th century (1874). He was a profound connoisseur of the Nheengatu language, and in this book he edits, in a bilingual edition, in an exquisite translation, Nheengatu and Portuguese 54 myths of the peoples of this region. In this book he criticizes missionaries who insisted on seeing the devil in indigenous cultural manifestations. It is worth reading the wonderful text by João Barbosa Rodrigues, where he describes the translation of the term Jurupari as being devil, and, where he shows how the missionaries insisted on this linguistic and mythological error.
It was during this visit, in the museums, that I followed the news published by the Brazilian press, that FUNAI would place a missionary in the Coordination of Isolated Indians to give guidelines for actions and put into practice what has been organized by FUNAI in years in defense these populations. Seven weeks earlier, still in mid-November 2019, we anthropologists followed the dismantling that FUNAI has been doing, since this government took over, in relation to studies for the demarcation of indigenous lands. FUNAI’s presidency removed all anthropologists, researchers who have been working on these indigenous land tenure processes for decades, very well organized since the nineties, with all the smoothness that legal processes offer to give legitimacy to indigenous lands, with several years in use by FUNAI, regulated by Decree №1775 of 1996, you can see this legislation here (click on: http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/2014-02-07-13-24-53). Why alienate anthropologists? Of course, there is an interest in undermining ongoing study processes.
The history of Brazil that the Indians lived in their skins, in the past, are still present in the indigenous narratives, it teaches absolutely nothing to today’s rulers in Brazil. On the contrary, they have been repeating the same mistakes that they have been promoting for 500 years of prejudice against indigenous peoples. With Captain Jair Bolsonaro, it’s no different. He repeats what General Ismarth Araújo de Oliveira, then president of FUNAI, did in 1976, when it came to changing FUNAI staff by missionaries, organized in Manaus the famous “FUNAI-Missions Meeting” where he discussed with missionaries, without the presence of anthropologists, because the General had already expelled all who work at FUNAI, and in this event, he agreed how the missionaries should act. FUNAI authorizes the presence of the Summer Linguistic Institute (SIL) in Brazil, in the various indigenous lands, as well as the continuity of the Catholic and Evangelical missions in operation such as MEVA and the New Tribes Mission, whose Mr. Edward Luz is the representative maximum here in Brazil. Without meetings, without elaboration of protocols, missionaries, mainly evangelicals, will be hired, with public resources, to act more ostensibly together with indigenous peoples. The Project is, of course, to put evangelical missionaries into the public machine. In fact, as they have been working for some years through Brazilian evangelical associations, but receiving guidance from Transcultural Missions, an international organization that collects the necessary financial resources so that Brazilian missionary organizations, linked mainly to CONPLEI (National Council of Pastors and Leaders Indigenous Evangelicals) can have their direct role in public administration. Where undoubtedly, indigenous cultural manifestations will once again be associated with a devil who is still very present in the preachings and sermons of these fundamentalist and proselytizing missionaries.
The APIB Note on this situation is clear when it says: “We know that today there are proselytists and evangelical religious groups allied with criminal rural groups that plan to take over what remains of our territories. We are sure that the activity of proselytizing missionaries goes hand in hand with the destruction of our last territories. In our view, the appointment of this missionary to work with our isolated relatives means yet another attack by this racist and prejudiced government against our peoples, our families. We have the right to think and live differently from non-indigenous society. We have the right to our territories! We are not going to let these churches and these religious fundamentalists do to our isolated relatives what they did to our families in the past! ” (Note from APIB: http://apib.info/2020/01/31/nota-de-repudio-contra-a-nomeacao-de-missionario-da-mntb-para-o-setor-de-isolados-na -funai /),
Turin, 01/29/2020