{"id":245248,"date":"2017-08-22T15:35:58","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T18:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=245248\/"},"modified":"2017-08-22T15:47:41","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T18:47:41","slug":"negotiated-christianity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/negotiated-christianity-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Negotiated Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY<\/span><\/a> A 16th century European print representing the devil enslaving indigenous people of the New World: echoes of the strategy of catechization adopted by the JesuitsJOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Published in November 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

Evangelization of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon by Europeans involved more than a passive absorption of western thought. Christian ideas had to be translated into Amerindian languages and, thus, acquired meanings that the missionaries were unable to control, especially because many of the religious duties were actually performed by the natives themselves, given the scarcity of priests. Conversion was not in fact a unilateral imposition, but rather an \u201cintercultural dialog\u201d through which indigenous peoples adapted Christianity to their own belief systems. The breadth of this intellectual exchange has been the subject of study since 2013 by historian Francismar Alex Lopes de Carvalho in a postdoctoral fellowship at the USP School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP). His study encompasses the Maynas and Mojos Missions, established by Jesuits in the service of Spain in what is now known as Ecuador and Bolivia. The material analyzed by the researcher, to a large extent unpublished, was found in archives and libraries in Spain, Italy, Portugal and the United States.<\/p>\n

The first stage of Carvalho\u2019s work has been completed and, in 2015, resulted in an article in the journal Varia Historia, published by the Federal University of Minas Gerais. A second article has been accepted by the School of Hispano-American Studies of Seville (Spain) for publication in the journal Anuario de Estudios Americanos. Carvalho says that the Mojos Missions were established in 1682 and prospered as a result of the production of cocoa, tallow, wax, sugar and textiles. Together, these missions baptized 24,914 indigenous people by 1713. The Maynas Missions, established in 1638, did not fare as well. Devastated by successive epidemics, they were unable to survive without financial support from the colonial administration. They produced grains, cocoa and sarsaparilla but always in small quantities. By 1719, only 7,966 inhabitants remained.<\/p>\n

Carvalho became interested in the intercultural dialog between Europeans and indigenous peoples when preparing his dissertation entitled Lealdades negociadas: povos ind\u00edgenas e a expans\u00e3o dos imp\u00e9rios ib\u00e9ricos nas regi\u00f5es centrais da Am\u00e9rica do Sul (segunda metade do s\u00e9culo XVIII) (Negotiated loyalties: indigenous peoples and the expansion of the Iberian empires in the central regions of South America (second half of the 18th<\/sup> century), defended in 2012 at the Department of History of FFLCH and published as a book by Alameda Press in 2014. In this study, he notes that the Portuguese and Spanish conquest of the Amazon was based on a policy of co-optation of tribal leaders through which the caciques bargained for material advantages in exchange for their support of the colonizers.<\/p>\n

Once Carvalho\u2019s dissertation was completed, he began to study how the indigenous peoples of the region appropriated Catholicism, finding that the negotiations between Europeans and natives also extended into the ideological realm. The natives adopted Christian concepts, but they endowed them with meanings that were foreign to the original interpretations, leading to the emergence of a hybrid Christianity.<\/p>\n

This \u201cspiritual bargaining\u201d began with the \u201carrival of missionaries\u201d, a practice that probably dates back to Father Manoel da N\u00f3brega in 16th<\/sup> century S\u00e3o Paulo: surrounded by soldiers, the Jesuits would \u201cinvite\u201d the Indians to migrate to their settlements; if they chose not to go, \u201cthey would be subject to a \u2018just war\u2019 promoted by the troops,\u201d Carvalho explains. The goal of these arrivals was to force the natives to accept \u201cfaith through fear,\u201d as political scientist Jos\u00e9 Eisenberg writes in his book As miss\u00f5es jesu\u00edticas e o pensamento pol\u00edtico moderno (The Jesuit missions and modern political thought) (UFMG, 2000).<\/p>\n

The same methods were used in the Amazon region, but because the borders there were still fluid, the Portuguese and Spanish needed to compete for the loyalty of the natives. Convincing them, however, meant going beyond mere violence. Pedro Puntoni, a professor at the FFLCH-USP and dissertation adviser to Carvalho, noted that \u201cthe context of the border is critical\u201d in explaining negotiations with tribal leaders, and it resulted in the concession of economic benefits and in a certain degree of administrative autonomy to the local ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

Since there were so few of them, the missionaries assigned various tasks to the Indians, such as those of the catechist, sacristan, musician and overseer of doctrine. Delegation of these tasks, nearly all spiritual in nature, seriously limited the Jesuits\u2019 power to impose their ideas. \u201cIn the Maynas Missions,\u201d explains Carvalho, \u201cthe missionaries had to deal with alternative interpretations of Christian doctrine as conceived by the Indians, a fact the priests could not entirely avoid because they depended on the concepts available in the local languages and on help from natives to carry out the conversions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY <\/span><\/a> Cover page of a glossary of the Tucanoan Indian language written by a JesuitNEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

To the missionaries, this resistance by the natives to European thought manifested as the work of the devil. Thus the profusion of its figure in reports by the Jesuits. However, as the author writes in his article published in Varia Historia, such mentions did not constitute a rejection of the indigenous beliefs but rather \u201can attempt to establish analogous points through which intercultural dialogue and negotiation of the sacred universe could flow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did the figure of the devil become the focus of the intercultural dialog? According to Carvalho, it all began because a number of the priests shared the conviction that, following the Christianization of Europe, \u201cthe devil and its infernal horde had moved on to the Americas.\u201d The New World was under the \u201ctyranny of Satan\u201d, thus the obsession in identifying traces of the demon in exotic beliefs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in this scenario of \u2018demonization\u2019 of indigenous deities that the priests accomplished a metamorphosis of the spiritual entities that were damaging the Christian figure of the devil,\u201d Carvalho says. The Christian concept experienced important changes during this metamorphosis, however. The Indians either incorporated the Christian demon as just one more god in their pantheon or simply began to refer to certain known evil spirits as \u201cthe devil\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Jesuits could not always avoid changes in the meaning of the term \u201cdevil\u201d because of the linguistic strategy they had adopted. To extol the Christian ideals, says Carvalho, \u201cthe Jesuits preferred to keep the Spanish words for positive fundamental terms for the church, such as God, the sacraments, etc., while allowing native words to describe negative things.\u201d Such subtlety entailed unexpected consequences because the missionaries were unable to control the meanings attributed to the former indigenous entities, neither could they prevent the natives from using these negative terms to denote the Spanish people themselves.<\/p>\n

Translation of the European concepts into tribal thought also faced other limitations. While the natives were happy to accept the idea of the devil, the same cannot be said regarding the notion of hell. \u201cThe concept seemed absurd to the indigenous people,\u201d the researcher explains. \u201cHow could they believe in the existence of hell, a place where their ancestors, who had not known Christianity, would suffer eternally together with the most prestigious warriors and shamans?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jesuits\u2019 troubles did not stop there: attempts to eliminate the role of the shamans as intermediaries to the spiritual world also failed. \u201cThe missionaries were unable to completely destroy the common belief in the power of the shamans because they themselves were accepted in the communities as shamans who were more powerful, generous and effective,\u201d Carvalho notes. \u201cThe missionary was seen as someone who possessed the unusual ability to manipulate spiritual forces. Therefore, he was a provider of blessings as well as plagues and curses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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OLIVEIRA LIMA LIBRARY<\/span><\/a> An 18th century view of a town in the Maynas MissionOLIVEIRA LIMA LIBRARY<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In other words: the indigenous peoples respected priests, partly because priests had assumed duties, such as the distribution of goods, and served as intermediaries with the supernatural world, which fell into the realm of the shamans. According to Carvalho, the Jesuits were unable, however, to weigh in against some native patterns of thought that were ensuring their acceptance. Thus, they attempted to ostracize indigenous sorcerers except in those cases where, because they did not object to gospel teachings, they could be embraced as helpers.<\/p>\n

However, the missionaries were not always successful at negotiating their insertion into the communities, and it was not rare to see cases of uprisings and martyrdom of priests. In the thesis entitled A express\u00e3o da vontade: rela\u00e7\u00f5es inter\u00e9tnicas e rebeli\u00e3o ind\u00edgena nas miss\u00f5es de Maynas (1685-1698) (The expression of will: inter-ethnic relationships and indigenous rebellion in the Maynas Missions (1685-1698), defended at the Pontifical Catholic University of S\u00e3o Paulo (PUC-SP) in 2009, doctoral candidate Roberta Fernandes dos Santos demonstrated the difficulties encountered by Father Enrique Richter in establishing a mission along the banks of the Ucayali River. \u201cIt appears,\u201d suggests Carvalho with regard to this incident, \u201cthat the priest had violated the terms of the initial negotiations that had granted him acceptance by the Indians, because he failed to supply the items he had promised, would be absent for extended periods and imposed a discipline that was not tolerated.\u201d The rebellion culminated in the 1695 murder of the Jesuit.<\/p>\n

It is precisely in these situations of conflict, however, that the \u201cdemonization\u201d of indigenous belief showed its positive side. In the article Contato, guerra e negocia\u00e7\u00e3o: redu\u00e7\u00e3o e cristianiza\u00e7\u00e3o de Maynas e Jeberos pelos jesuitos na Amaz\u00f4nia no s\u00e9culo XVII (Contact, war and negotiation: reduction and Christianization of Mayas and Jeberos by the Jesuits in 17th<\/sup> century Amazon), published in the Revista de Hist\u00f3ria Unisinos in 2007, Fernando Torres-Londo\u00f1o, a professor in the Department of History at PUC-SP, notes that the presence of the devil ended up absolving the indigenous people of any \u201cresponsibility when conflicts arose.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Jesuit perspective, explains Carvalho, a channel of reconciliation would be opened with the rebels because the rebellions could be blamed on Satan. \u201cStrictly speaking,\u201d the researcher concludes, \u201cattributing responsibility for martyrdom and the destruction of the missions to the devil made the Indians as human as the Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>
\nIndigenous rule: Iberian municipal institutions and indigenous identities in Maynas and Mojos missions (second half of the 18th century) (n\u00ba 2012\/06580-6<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Fellowships in Brazil \u2013 Post-doctorate; Principal Investigator<\/strong>\u00a0Pedro Lu\u00eds Puntoni (FFLCH-USP); Grant Recipient<\/strong>\u00a0Francismar Alex Lopes de Carvalho (FFLCH-USP); Investment<\/strong>\u00a0R$160,172.31.<\/p>\n

Scientific articles<\/em>
\nCARVALHO, F. A. L. de. Imagens do dem\u00f4nio nas miss\u00f5es jesu\u00edticas da Amaz\u00f4nia espanhola<\/a>. Varia Historia<\/strong>. V. 31, No. 57, p. 1-45. Sept.-Dec. 2015.
\nCARVALHO, F. A. L. de. Estrategias de conversi\u00f3n y modos ind\u00edgenas de apropiaci\u00f3n del cristianismo en las misiones jesu\u00edticas de Maynas, 1638-1767. Anuario de Estudios Americanos<\/strong>. In press.<\/p>\n

Book<\/em>
\nCARVALHO, F. A. L. de. Lealdades negociadas: povos ind\u00edgenas e a expans\u00e3o dos imp\u00e9rios ib\u00e9ricos nas regi\u00f5es centrais da Am\u00e9rica do Sul (segunda metade do s\u00e9culo XVIII)<\/strong>. S\u00e3o Paulo: Alameda, 2014. 596 p.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between the 17th and 18th centuries, Jesuit missions in the Spanish Amazon had to deal with indigenous versions of Catholicism ","protected":false},"author":594,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241],"coauthors":[1580],"class_list":["post-245248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/594"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245248"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=245248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}