Quichua Christianity:

An Indgena History from the Cross and the Sword to Pentecost

Submitted to Regent University

School of Divinity
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Renewal Studies

Eloy H. Nolivos
March 2011
 ii

School of Divinity
Regent University
This is to certify that the dissertation prepared by:
Eloy H. Nolivos
entitled
QUICHUA CHRISTIANITY: AN INDIGENA HISTORY FROM THE CROSS
AND THE SWORD TO PENTECOST
Has been approved by his committee as satisfactory completion of the dissertation
requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

__________________________________________________________________
Vinson Synan, Ph.D., Chair Date
School of Divinity

__________________________________________________________________
Estrelda Alexander, Ph.D., Committee Member Date
School of Divinity

__________________________________________________________________
Ana Mara Bidegain, Ph.D., Committee Member Date
Florida International University Department of Religious Studies
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QUICHUA CHRISTIANITY: AN INDIGENA HISTORY FROM THE CROSS AND

THE SWORD TO PENTECOST

ABSTRACT
One of the challenges for Latin America, as well as for other peripheral regions of
the developing world, is to locate its space and voice in response to the great lack of
historiography from indigenous Christianity. In Ecuador, as in many other Latin
American countries and elsewhere, most written histories have followed the Western
rational pattern. This study submits an Ecuadorian indigenous church history, and its aim
is to understand the mechanisms of an oral Quichua traditions encounter with
Christianity and consider how that encounter empowered and/or hindered its indigenous
nature.
This dissertation reflects on the methodological shift in historiographyfrom
modernitys Eurocentric pattern to a polycentric paradigm in order for a particular history
of Christians in Latin America to be situated in time and space. Although Christianity in
Ecuador exemplifies a conservatism inherited from Europe and North America, some
Ecuadorian believers are moving away from this inheritance toward a contextual model
of indigenous Christianity. The new emphasis points to the aspiration for an indigenous
hermeneutic in order to go mas alla (beyond) a Western ontology.
There are positive signs that open Ecuadorian Christianity to the discovery of
multiple understandings and to a future they can direct. Standing upon this new horizon
of Ecuadorian church history, a backward glance is in order. This study presents a faithful
account of the Quichua Christian tradition and examines the indigenous discovery of
Christianity through Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal evangelizations. At first, the
Quichua encountered the Christian God with Western help but, recently, their Andean
context has been the appropriate reservoir for a Quichua Pentecost. The renewal has
been transmitted mainly in oral form, and no written account exists. Through the
recounting of Quichua Christianitys narrative, the historical, missiological, and
pneumatological implications can be critically explored.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract iii
Dedication vi
Preface vii
1. Introduction 1
1.1 The Issue
1.2 Purpose and Historical Perspective
1.3 Delineation of Chapters

2. A Mas Alla Path 6

2.1 Mas Alla/Beyond the West
2.1.1 Domination of the Center
2.1.2 A Cry for Transformation from the Periphery
2.2 Trans-Modernitys Polycentric Scholarship
2.2.1 A World Christianity: A New Departure
2.2.2 A Pluritopic Hermeneutic of Latin American Colonialism
2.2.3 Criterions for a Latin American Church Historiography
2.3 An Indigenous Quichua Pentecost
2.4 Conclusion

3. Eclipse in the Land of the Equinox 19

3.1 First Contact: Shadows Begin
3.1.1 Columbus a Prophet?
3.1.2 Initial Encounter with Ecuadorian Indgenas
3.1.3 Spain Like No Other, Early Historiography
3.2 A Spiritual Conquest: Total Eclipse
3.2.1 Evangelization of the Indgena
3.2.2 Indgena Land and Labor: Repartamiento and Encomienda
3.3 Rediscovering the Other, El Indgena: Beyond the Eclipse
3.3.1 By a New Pentecost, Vatican II and Medellin
3.3.2 Monsignor Leonidas Proao: Bishop of the Indgenas (19101988)
3.4 Conclusion

4. The Message: Lost in Translation 52

4.1 Lost in Translation: The Case of Atahualpa
4.2 James Thomson, Pedagogue of Bible Distributors and Educators
4.3 The Gospel Missionary Union Message
4.4 A Message of Acculturation
4.5 Conclusion

5. Translatability of Quichua Protestantism 70

5.1 The Translatability of Christianity: A Rebalance in the Discourse
5.2 The Vernacular Impulse
5.3 Indigenization
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5.4 Quichua Protestantism: A Message of Liberty

5.4.1 Protestant Evangelization Synonymous to Liberty
5.4.2 Quichua Historiography
5.4.3 Faith and Politics
5.5 Conclusion

6. Pentecost at the Middle of the Earth 90

6.1 First Pentecostal Pioneers
6.2 Guayaquils Trailblazers: Foursquare Legacy
6.3 The Assemblies of God Pillars
6.4 Church of God Pioneer to the Quichuas
6.5 Conclusion

7. Quichua Pentecostalism: A Renewal of the Spirit 103

7.1 The New Evangelization
7.2 Appropriation of the Spirits Manifestation
7.3 Quichua Pentecostal Churches
7.3.1 Independent Churches: Open to the Spirit
7.3.2 Bilingual Churches: A Transcultural Bridge
7.3.3 Indigenous Churches: An Autonomous Move of the Spirit
7.3.4 Mission Churches: A North American Pentecostal Heritage
7.4 Conclusion

8. Postlude: Historiographical and Missiological Conclusions 132

8.1 Contributions
8.2 Areas for Future Research

Bibliography 137
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To
Eloy Manuel and Zoila,
loving and sacrificial parents,
and to my brother Ron
for their love and support
 vii

PREFACE
In 1996, my educational vocation and return to my country of origin, Ecuador, led
me to the Quichuas and the historiographical concern for recording their Pentecostal
experience, specifically of the early 1980s. The autonomous nature of the phenomenon
among the descendents of the Incas intrigued me. Originally my motive to write the
narrative was its non-Western origins but after I learned that the story survived mainly in
oral form the need for a written account became the primary objective. When I began to
teach Quichua Christians, I was unacquainted with their history of Christianity. My
original idea to write an Indigenous Pentecostal history later expanded to record the
Quichua voice and memory of the effects of Christianity and the role the Holy Spirit in
the process.
In the course of writing this Quichua history, I have throughout the study when
necessary altered spelling and punctuation of passages quoted for the sake of clarity.
Translations of citations from Spanish to English are mine unless otherwise indicated. I
also selected the Spanish term Indgena (native, aborigine, etc.) instead of Indian to
accentuate the preferred nomenclature by the Quichuas when referring to their ethnicity.
The English term indigenous is used but it does not carry the same cultural and
explanatory weight as Indgena, which in Spanish reflects more fully their auto-
determination and local expression.
There are many people I would like to acknowledge and thank for helping bring
to fruition this version of the Quichua Christian history. I would like to express my
appreciation to all the pani kuna (sisters) and huaki kuna (brothers) of the Quichua
Church that allowed me to share their story. Special thanks to the Quichua pastors,
leaders, and organizations that entrusted to me their people and documents.
I am especially indebted to my Ph.D. Committee for their gracious service of
support, guidance, and readiness to direct my dissertation research. Dr. Vinson Synan,
my dissertation chairman, was not only instrumental in the initiation of the doctoral
program but also in my coming to Regent University. Dr. Estrelda Alexander and Dr.
Ana-Mara Bidegain contributed valuable encouragement and critique that strengthened
my work. Three additional scholars that deserve special recognition are Dr. Dale T. Irvin,
Dr. Amos Yong, and Dr. Graham Twelvetree: Dr. Irvins insights assisted me in
 viii

grounding my project methodologically; Dr. Yongs support provided me several

opportunities to publish; and Dr. Twelvetrees academic standard and discipline are an
inspiration I aspire to follow.
This Quichua history became a reality gracias (thanks) to Semillas Latin
American Leadership Program scholarship and its Founder and President Jose L.
Gonzalez. Joses commitment to Latin American Christian leadership development has
allowed me to benefit from Semillas partnership and his spiritual mentoring and amistad
(friendship) over the past seven years.
I would like to express my appreciation to Trish Lyons for her editorial work on
the manuscript. My deepest gratitude is extended to my family: my parents, Eloy and
Zoila, my brother, Ron, my wife, Virginia, and my daughter, Zoe, who were all in many
ways my cheerleaders and my biggest supporters.
My greatest debt is to God who in the early 1990s placed the Latin American
Indgena upon my heart and has sustained me throughout my studies and research.
ELOY H. NOLIVOS
 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 THE ISSUE
Quichua events are absent from the history of Christianity, and historical
scholarship omits knowledge and inclusion of an indigenous phenomenon in the history
of civilization.1 Western historiography has often silenced peripheral events ignoring
Ernst Troeltschs historical sense that there is a mutual interrelation of all historical
developments.2 This study endeavors to consider and recover several developments of
the Quichua Christian story that may have previously gone unnoticed in past accounts. In
this historical task, I follow Ana Mara Bidegains recommendation of the historical
recovery process:
the social function of the historian as one not merely reduced to writing and
disclosing history but it also intended to help diverse communities to recover their
collective memory. In other words, this project does not wish to dictate to the
group and/or the individual what is its history, but more importantly the role of
the researcher is to place themselves at the disposal of the group/individual to
facilitate the interested party to take control of their own memory while affirming
their identity so as to rethink their efforts to construct a better world, helping them
help themselves recover their historical memory.3

To recover this marginal Amerindian narrative and its collective memory of Christianity,
a twofold historiographical challenge exists: 1) there must be a methodological shift away
from a Western ontology, and 2) the indigenous proposal must be undertaken and placed
at the forefront.4
The twentieth century brought about a methodological shift in historiography
from a historical methodology that presupposes a Eurocentric (Europe and the United
States) paradigm when Christianity is interpreted through a Western perspective to a
broader and more global interpretive method. Although this is not to negate the European

1
Spanish and Quichua terms will be used throughout the study with the English translation of the
word, concept, and/or idea presented.
2
Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History, trans. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 13.
3
Ana Mara Bidegain Steps to Recover the Future, (paper presented Harvard University, School
of Divinity, Cambridge, Mas., n.d.), 130.
4
The indigenous proposal calls for social, political, economical, and religious auto-determination
for all non-Western indigenous people in order to embrace a holistic freedom. For a detail view of a Latin
American indigenous proposal, see Juan Bottasso, ed., La Iglesia y Los Indios 500 Aos de Dilogo o de
Agresin?: Reflexiones (Quito: Abya-Yala 1990).
 2

and North American Church and its influence, Indigenous Christianity does not follow
European/Western thought, ontology, and praxis, which established modernity.
Ultimately, modernity fell short of its Hegelian intuition, the view of universal history
(from a European perspective) that attempts to show the progress of the consciousness
of freedom.5 The shift dislodges Western historical isolation in order to include the
peripheral, the Others story and history. This study utilizes the methodological shift
from modernitys Eurocentric paradigm to a polycentric pattern so as to recover a
particular/local history of Christians in Latin America.
The auto-determination and holistic freedom that the indigenous proposal seeks
can no longer be ignored. For example, Indigenous Christianitys exponential growth in
the second half of the twentieth century of the non-Western world has changed the
religious landscape where local and national churches are the new majority and leaders of
the Church. With this expansion and escalation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,
peripheral regions face the challenge of writing their Christian histories, which range
from initial development through the formative stages. Alongside a shortage of
historiography and compounding the quandary, the oral cultures of many of these
autonomous movements challenge attempts to textualize the orality of language and
community. The process of writing must embrace and partner with the narrative and oral
culture to develop a literary history taken from an oral one.

1.2 PURPOSE AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

This history of Quichua Christianity presents a case of an Indgena
(native/indigenous) culture Christianized and incorporated into a series of Western
evangelizations (Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal)6. The indigenous pulse was almost
extinguished by religious westernization, yet through resistance and appropriation of God
on their terms, there emerged a Quichua syncretistic and autonomous expression of

5
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibtree (New York, 1956), 341.
6
The approximate 3 million Quichuas in Ecuador are the largest out of ten indigenous people
groups. The majority live in the highland region but they have migrated throughout the country and
internationally. They form part of the Quechua dialects found in the Andean region (Peru, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Columbia, and Argentina). Christianity has been formative agent in their identity.
 3

Christianity. The Quichua Christian story begins in the 1530s on the Ecuadorian coast
and later moves to the Andean Mountains.
The exploration of the history of Quichua Christianity will advance indigenous
historiography in several ways. First, this investigation seeks to reveal the role
Christianity has played in the indigenization of Quichua culture. Furthermore,
examination into the response and appropriation of Christianity by the Quichua will
highlight the need to articulate the indigenous discovery of Catholic, Protestant, and
Pentecostal Christianity. This step will confirm the present missiological shift that is
expanding missions history beyond the missionaries experiences to include the
experiences of the non-Westerners.7 Thus, this study moves the focus away from the
center to the margins. Third, this research seeks to highlight the importance of an
indigenous historys contribution to the ongoing missiological dialogue. The case of
Quichua Pentecostalism will help define the parameters of a local indigenous
(Pentecostal) account and highlight the differences between this history and a Western
(especially an Evangelical) one. And finally, because of the lack of Latin American
historiography, I intend that this scholarship contribute to indigenous historiography and
hope it will enable the Quichua Christian tradition to speak for itself within the larger
Christian faith.

1.3 DELINEATION OF CHAPTERS

The initial methodological challenge of writing a Quichua Christian history is
addressed and articulated in chapter 2, A Mas Alla Path. The twentieth century
demonstrated important developments for Latin America, especially in the area of
philosophy. At the beginning of the century, a positivistic philosophy (Comtean initially
but later Spencerian and Haeckelian) dominated Latin America. This was followed by
other streams such as the anti-positivistic philosophies (of the Latin American
Founders), phenomenological ontology (Husserlian and Heideggerian), Marxist, Latin-
Americanism (corresponding to the ontological influences of Jos Ortega, Gasset, Sartre,
Dilthey, and Heidegger), the Frankfurt School and, finally, culminating in the sixties with

7
Dale T. Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning: Rendering Accounts (Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 1998) and Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003).
 4

the birth of the philosophy of liberation (Enrique Dussel and Juan C. Scannone). In this
chapter the interpretative basis is set, and throughout the dissertation, the hermeneutics of
the ontological horizon of the Other in Latin America is engaged. This hermeneutical
approach of interpreting reality from the locality of the Other is vital for the Latin
American being and spirit. It affirms a path for the inclusion of Latin America in world
history and methodologically supports the framing of the Ecuadorian/Quichua ontology.
After conceptually outlining the historical and hermeneutical method applied in
this study, chapter 3, Eclipse in the Land of the Equinox commences the retrieval of the
first phase of the Christianization of the Indgena.8 The Catholic evangelization through
the Spanish conquest of the aborigines and their world is explored through the metaphor
of an eclipse.9 This chapter observes the detrimental Western ethos of the conquistadors
and its effect on the native people, their first contact with Ecuadorian Indgenas, and
early Spanish historiography. The indigenous discovery of Christianity was a harsh
awakening to a spiritual and religious conquest, where its evangelization objectified the
Indgena throughout the conquest, colonial, and republican periods. However, if the
portrayal of the Quichua story only highlights an antagonistic Catholic Church without
including its significant contribution to the indigenous cause, such history is flawed and
inaccurate. Therefore, this chapter concludes with the impact of the Councils of Vatican
II and Medellin and the Ecuadorian Monsignor Leonidas Proao, who in the second half
of the twentieth century, rediscovered and advocated for the Indgena.
The subsequent chapters enter into the complex anthropological and missiological
issue of and debate on Christianity and culture. On the heels of the Catholic message,
chapter 4, The Message: Lost in Translation observes the Protestant evangelization and
its translation of the gospel message from the anthropological critique (acculturation).

8
Christopher Columbus discovery of a new world which he believed was the West Indies led to
the erroneous nomenclature Indian given to regions inhabitants. Intentionally throughout this study
unless in a citation the term Indian is not utilized but rather other words that reflect the Spanish idea of
Indgena (native) or indigenous are implemented in solidarity with Latin American indigenous people.
During the entire investigation, the term Indgena is capitalized to emphasize the proper name of the
original inhabitants.
9
During research for the Christopher Columbus lunar eclipse account in chapter 3 (3.1.1
Columbus a Prophet?), the conceptualization for the chapters title emerged. The eclipse metaphor has been
utilized elsewhere to convey the same idea. After completing the chapter, the author came across Enrique
Dussels The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of the Other and the Myth of Modernity, trans. Michael
D. Barber (New York: Continuum, 1995).
 5

The Eurocentric mistranslation of Christianity and Andean culture is examined in the

examples of Inca Atahualpa, James Thomson, and the Gospel Missionary Union. In order
to rebalance the Christianity and culture discourse, chapter 5, Translatability of Quichua
Protestantism follows Lamin Sannehs missiological contribution of the concept of
translatability of Christianity. Sanneh moves the focus away from the Western
evangelization of the gospel (missionary) to the indigenous response and appropriation of
Christianity (indigenization). This chapter ends by applying Sannehs shift to Quichua
Protestantism, an indigenization of the Protestant evangelization, historiography, and
civic participation.
The last phase of the Quichua Christianization, Pentecostalism and the
Pentecostal evangelization in Ecuador, is addressed in chapters 6 and 7. A historical
sketch of the movements North American impulse (arrival), the early explosive growth
and Classical Pentecostal presence (Foursquare Church, Assemblies of God, and Church
of God) in the Andean country are surveyed in chapter 6, Pentecost at the Middle of the
Earth as the background for the ensuing chapter on Quichua Pentecostalism. Chapter 7,
Quichua Pentecostalism: A Renewal of the Spirit explores the revitalization of Quichua
Christianity as a new evangelization of the Holy Spirit. This studys indigenous
appropriation of Pentecost contributes to a unique pneumatological interpretation of the
Spirits work within the indigenous culture (both rural and urban) and an emergent
Quichua ecclesiology. The tension between Christianity and culture, acculturation and
indigenization, and the West and non-West is palpable in the pentecostalization of the
Quichua Church.
The final chapter (8) on Quichua Christianity briefly affirms the implications and
limitations of an Ecuadorian Christian tradition. Although I am an Ecuadorian-American
and not an Indgena, I conclude the study with historical, missiological, and
pneumatological contributions and recommendations as a modest step in writing, from an
indigenous perspective, their Christian story. Hence, this study aims to encourage
Ecuadorian Indgenas to recover and write their thoughts and words so as to enrich
secular and sacred history with their indigenous memory and voice.
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2. A MAS ALLA PATH

For centuries, the Western Church controlled Christianitys theology, history, and
philosophy presuming that the West was the standard (center) for the religion. This
chapter methodologically reveals the false assumption underlying this premise in order to
record the Quichua Christian story. Catholic philosopher and historian, Enrique Dussel
uncovers the ontology behind Western Christianity that for Dussel forms part of the
Myth of Modernity:
Western theology has for centuries accepted a certain kind of philosophy: the
ontology of Kant which postulates faith as something rational, that [of] Hegel
which includes faith within the scope of reason, or that of Heidegger which sees
faith as the understanding of Being. Each of these ontologies prescribes the
Totality of being as the only limit to thinking. Being-in-the-world, however, is
the fundamental, primary, original fact, and existential theology parts company
with rationalists who view the world as a Totality. A more objectionable feature
of Western philosophy, however, is the assumption that Totality is mine, ours, the
Europeans Totality which belongs to the center. The unrecognized
conclusion of this kind of thinking is that I negate other Christian worlds or
totalities and other equally valid experiences, and I negate the anthropological
Other as my point of departure for thinking theologically.1

In the past four decades, Latin American thinkers like Dussel have advocated a
decentralization of the Eurocentric paradigm with its limited epistemology of
dominance.2 Although the above myth of modernity can be affirmed in its rational
concept of emancipation, its breakdown of developing an irrational myth, a justification
for genocidal violence must be rejected.3 Violence and destruction has not been a myth
nor an allegory but rather a harsh reality of Latin American history, both sacred and

1
Enrique Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation (1492
1979), trans. Alan Neely (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 15.
2
See Enrique Dussel, Criterios generales para una periodificacin de la historia de la iglesia en
Amrica Latina, Cristianismo y Sociedad 82 (1984): 724, and his Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-
System and the Limits of Modernity, in The Cultures of Globalization, ed. Fredric Jameson and Masao
Miyoshi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History,
Politics and Salvation, rev. ed., trans. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
2002); Leonardo Boff, Ecclesiogenesis: The Base Communities Reinvent the Church, trans. Robert R. Barr
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986); and Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy,
Territoriality, & Colonization (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995).
3
Quoted in Mignolos, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, xxi. For Dussel, postmodernists
condemn modern reason for it is a reason of terror; whereas, he parts with modern reason for concealing
the irrational myth it bears. See also Critique of the Myth of Modernity, in Dussels, The Invention of the
Americas, 63-72.
 7

secular. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, Friar Bartalome de Las Casas, an early
modern protagonist, initially observed and participated in the overwhelming devastation
of the New Worlds Amerindian civilizations. The Spanish Crown rationalized their
divine role at the dawn of the modern age to justify their atrocious tactics of
evangelization over the indigenous peoples. Las Casas soon stripped himself of the myth
of the Crowns divine role in exchange for the role of a protagonist against Spanish
domination of the anthropological Other, el Indgena. Like Las Casas, modern
twentieth and twenty-first century protagonists against Western/European supremacy are
found in fields such as ethics, philosophy, history, literature, theology and missiology
advancing a World or Planetary paradigm.
The term methodology derives from the Greek meta (from) + hodos (way), which
describes the thinking method used to acquire an objective. In other words, it is the
process of observing a systematic modus operandia way of operation. Throughout this
study, there is a methodological shift in historiographyfrom a Eurocentric to a
polycentric paradigm in order to locate a particular/local history of Christians in Latin
America in time and space. The following discussion navigates through the totalizing
Hegelian construct of the modern West to the new horizons of todays plurality and
diversity. The new wineskins of Dussels analectic method, Walter Mignolos
pluritopic hermeneutics, Dale Irvins faithful histories, and Lamin Sannehs World
Christianity serve as reservoirs to hold the new wine, making the case for rendering a
particular indigenous story of an Ecuadorian Christian narrative.

2.1 MAS ALLA/BEYOND THE WEST

European/Western ontology established modernity and made a name for itself in
history. Its philosophical tenets inscribed in geoeconomics, geocultural enterprises, and
geopolitics have deeply influenced society, but ultimately fell short of its Hegelian
intuition, or rather false aspiration of mankinds self-creation,4 a creation solely defined

4
My emphasis. Hegels view of universal history (from a European perspective/interest) attempts
to show the progress of the consciousness of freedom. The Modern age and Spirit (German) best
exemplified this consciousness. He saw the German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its aim is the
realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of FreedomFreedom which has its own
absolute form itself as its purport. See Hegel, The Philosophy of History, 341. Hegels philosophical
methodology helped systemize History and, as a result, gave legitimacy to the discipline which then entered
 8

as a totality of being that belongs to the West (center) alone. From a phenomenological
standpoint, it is a self-realization within the context of world history being the
progression of the awareness of freedom.5 Hegels totalizing and limited loci (modern
reason/awareness) would become historical awareness in isolation.6 It is a phenomenon in
recent history where modernity, exclusively European and later to include the United
States (i.e., the North Atlantic), spread throughout the world attaining global significance
and value.
Modernitys Eurocentric force posits that Europe had exceptional internal
characteristics that allowed it to supersede, through its rationality, all other cultures.7
This rationality emerged from the developments of the Middle Ages, and its effects have
carried well into the present day. This Western civilizing force enters into Troeltschs
mutual interrelation principal of unique forces within history:
At every point there do indeed emerge unique and autonomous historical forces
that, by virtue of our capacity for empathy, we perceive to be related to our
common humanity. At the same time however, these unique forces also stand in a
current and context comprehending the totality of events, where we see
everything conditioned by everything else so that there is no point within history
which is beyond this correlative involvement and mutual influence.8

Although Troeltsch saw modernitys uniqueness and powerful impact (he desired to keep
it together), he also saw its fragmentation and relativism as trouble for the modern
project. All historical developments are interconnected in multiple directions - not only
from the top down. History does not escape such correlation, and a new historical force is
emerging mas alla (beyond) the West to place significance and value on the Other.
Before observing scholars of the mas alla force and their contribution to a polycentric
paradigm, I will examine the historical Domination of the Center and the peripherys call
for transformation.

the German university early in the twentieth century and would further impact future historical thinking.
See Dale T. Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning, 66, 67.
5
Quoted in Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 19.
6
Ibid., 184.
7
Dussel, Beyond Eurocentrism, 3.
8
Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History, trans. James Luther Adams and Walter F. Bense
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 14.
 9

2.1.1 DOMINATION OF THE CENTER

Perception is truly in the eye of the beholder, whether she sees near, far, focused,
blurred, meaningfully, or with blind biases depends on the condition of her eyes.
Western and Northern images do not present metaphors or imagery useful to cultures
outside the predominant mythical axis. The center rashly and sometimes foolishly
imagines itself speaking to and for those on the periphery. A Eurocentric standard negates
the Others assumptions that, their reality, truth, and experience are valid. In thinking and
methodology, this dominant culture has commanded the modern period of civilization
from its early stage of conquest to todays social enterprise of globalization.9 It is a
chronology that geographically began centering itself in Europe: Italy (Renaissance),
Germany (Reformation and Enlightenment), and France (French Revolution) with eyes
only to behold itself.
In church history, such short-sidedness has also afflicted Christendoms vision. In
the case of modernity from 1500, the beginning of Western expansion, Europeans
believed it was their task to Christianize and civilize the world.10 Naturally such self-
absorption even found its way onto fifteenth century maps. During this period,
cartographers placed Europe as the center of the world where Jerusalem had once been.
The civilizing mission Europeans (Christians included) embarked upon was founded on
the European Enlightenment. An ethnocentric view blinded them to the fact that other
civilizations (like the Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Incan, Aztec, and Mayan) had been in
place for centuries before a group of ascending barbarous communities began to posit
themselves as a new center of the world, in the name of Christianity and of Europe.11
Mignolo correctly distinguishes the concept of civilization by Europeans versus other
cultures conceptions. The former represses and conceives itself as the standard by which

9
A term difficult to classify and yet given diverse meanings among modernist and postmodernist.
Fredric Jameson attempts a balanced definition when he asserts, globalization as an untotalizable totality
which intensifies binary relations between its partsmostly nations, but also regions and groups, which,
however, continue to articulate themselves on the model of national identitiesBut what we now need to
add to the other qualifications implicit in the formulationis that such relations are first and foremost ones
of tension or antagonism, when not outright exclusion: in them each term struggles to define itself against
the binary other, in The Cultures of Globalization, xii.
10
Norberto Elias researches this European story in terms of what he calls the civilizing process
and is quoted by Mignolo, Globalization, Civilization Processes, and the Relocation of Languages and
Cultures, in Jameson, The Cultures of Globalization, 32.
11
Ibid., 3233.
 10

others must measure up to be civilized. Christian Europe dominates from the center all
other peripheral cultures and societies.
Dussel likens this domination to a five-hundred-year-old scale where the balance
has consistently swayed to one side of its structure. The European center expanded
toward the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century to include the United States
and later Japan, thereby, creating colossal margins at the edge consisting of Latin
America, the Arab world, Black Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and China.12 Although
during the same period, these margins were overcome by a European and North
American missionary movement, a westernized gospel was planted. The cry and
challenge from regions like Latin America, Africa, and Asia are arising to transform the
center.

2.1.2 A CRY FOR TRANSFORMATION FROM THE PERIPHERY

The cry of the fringes rings loud for a Christianity or a Christian perspective that
addresses with clarity their social, economic, political, and spiritual context. B. J. Van der
Walt records letters written to him of Africans seeking such a worldview, which
resembles the similar call of other parts of the world:
Why do I still doubt who I am? Am I still a true African if I do not believe in
traditional culture and religion any longer? Have I perhaps become a black
Westerneror a Westernized black man? Is my identity determined by my
Christian faith? Or am I perhaps not any of these three ? (A final-year student
at the University of Oxford, England)

Is the kingdom of the Lord as limited as the church? Do we have to enclose

ourselves within the walls of the church? May we, apart from the Bible, read only
elementary catechism books, sentimental evangelizing pamphlets and feeble
ecclesiastical newsletters? Do we as Christians have nothing to say about
urbanization, corruption, one-party rule, social injustice, unemployment, art,
education and many other problems? I would like to write about these things for
my newspaper, but it seems as if Christians are hesitant of talking about these
things. Is there nobody who is willing to speak up? Or do people simply not know
that there are Christian alternativesand what they look like? (A female
journalist from Malawi)

I have no idea where to turn any longer. What is development? How does one
develop? Why does one do these thingsare people not happier left alone to live

12
Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin America, 4.
 11

as their forefathers did? Why is the process so slow in taking off in spite of all the
dollars which we have already invested in it? Is neocolonialism to blame? Is it
merely a result of Africas climate? Or is there a basic cultural-religious cause?
What I mean is this: Would Africa not perhaps begin to modernize when people
have changed their worldview? Do you think that the Christian lifeview contains
elements which can unlock the African culture? (An American development agent
from the Ivory Coast)13

Van der Walt explores Africas history before and after Western Christianity and
European colonialism to begin to address the poignant inquiries sampled above. The
questions demonstrate that Africans are clearly experiencing a loss of religious unity in
their lives, a clash of values, a tension between different worldviews.14
Although the periphery has outgrown her imported ontology; yet in subtle ways, it
willingly borrows from or makes use of the ontology as it chooses. Latin America and
Asia find themselves at the same crossroads reflecting and challenging the established
Western yardstick for a plumb line of their own. Stephan B. Bevans offers a methodology
where theology is contextualized, and describes it as the attempt to understand Christian
faith in terms of a particular context; a contextual theology remains a theological
imperative that allows the theology of others to speak for themselves.15 Bevans models
of contextual theology are examples of a polycentric paradigm that contests the center
while spatially locating heterogeneous margins as many centers of liberated ontologies.
The next section considers polycentric scholars, in particular Latin Americans, who have
entered this methodological shift.

2.2 TRANS-MODERNITYS POLYCENTRIC SCHOLARSHIP

The crisis of modernity has considerably slowed its momentum as a dominating
force. The end has arrived to a civilizing system (of capitalism, liberalism,
Eurocentrism, machismo, racism, and ecological destruction), which has exhausted all
inertia conceding to a liberating movement of the oppressed and excluded.16 Abstract

13
B. J. Van der Walt, The Liberating Message: A Christian Worldview for Africa (Potchefstroom:
The Institute for Reformational Studies, 1997), 13.
14
Ibid., 5.
15
Stephan B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003), 3.
16
Dussel, Beyond Eurocentrism, 19. See also Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The End of the
World as We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1999).
 12

universality from the center no longer holds tightly its ethnocentric position as once
envisioned by Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Furthermore, a Eurocentric hegemonic
worldview no longer forcefully dominates the planet as before. Trans-modernity, in
contrast (to modernity), demands a whole new interpretation of modernity in order to
include moments that were never incorporated into the European version.17 Dussels
new interpretation should also include future non-Western moments and not only recover
the historical past of the many cultures, traditions and voices. The multicultural and
polycentric excluded ones become the new starting point for redefining modernity
anewa mas alla/beyond (trans) modernity. Dale T. Irvin, Lamin Sanneh, Walter D.
Mignolo, and Enrique Dussel are formulating a new interpretation of a trans-modern
polycentric approach in an age of globalization, pluralism, and diversity of the Other.
Irvin and Sanneh ground a global methodological approach in its broader context, while
Mignolo and Dussel localize the paradigm in Latin America to a particular situationto
incorporate an indigenous Ecuadorian Christian history in the end.

2.2.1 A WORLD CHRISTIANITY: A NEW DEPARTURE

Irvin and Sanneh propose a new departure in the study of Christianity. Both begin
with the question: Whose tradition (Irvin) and/or religion (Sanneh) is Christianity?18 The
interrogation confronts the old methodologys limitation and out-datedness explicitly
directing the discussion into an alternative coursetoward a polycentric ontology.
Although the singular response in the last five centuries has been the global phenomenon
of Western Christianity (prompted by modernity), the success did not occur in a vacuum.
Both authors part with this exclusive logic and posit inclusiveness mas alla of the West to
admit the faith experiences of Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans. Irvin moves the
discussion from a singularity of history to the always present but not always seen
historical diversity in the context of Christian tradition.19 This singularity is portrayed
in the metaphor of a cultural prison, which shuts out any possibility of a more holistic

17
Dussel, World System and Trans-Modernity, Nepantla: Views from the South 3:2 (2002):
223.
18
See Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning and Sanneh, Whose Religion is
Christianity?
19
Ibid., 2.
 13

understanding of the embodiment of tradition.20 Sannehs contribution steers

missiological methodology away from Western missionary transmission and direction
of the gospel to a prioritization of the indigenous response and appropriation of it; he
argues for the indigenous discovery of Christianity rather than the Christian discovery of
indigenous societies.21 Each new departure for a World Christianity will now be
observed.
The richness of Christian tradition, Irvin consistently asserts, is not a totalization
of one tradition and truth, but, rather, great wealth is found in the multiple faith customs
and doctrines of todays and tomorrows Christian movement. The question arises: how
can the many be sustained without losing truth, tradition, and especially faith? To such an
inquiry, Irvin seriously responds in an articulation of faithful histories. A clear and
straightforward adjective is utilized to qualify that the multiplicity of Christian
traditions, which the author maintains as his main thesis throughout, are full of faith.
Irvins use of this modifier borrowed from I. D. Stewart carefully establishes the
numerous benefits from which the reader profits. Yet, for historians responsible of
rendering the accounts, he unpacks a most valuable twofold understanding of the term:
faithful implies the proper use of scientific and empirical methodology, and just as
importantly, insists that the term full of faith allows the scholar and his erudition to
encounter the divine.22 For Irvin in his polycentric paradigm, it is important for the
faithful historian to find Gods footsteps in human historyextending his embrace to
include histories other than explicitly European, or even Christian, ones.23
Sanneh assists localizing World Christianitys particular reply and appropriation
of indigenous Christianity. The Western missionaries propagation and transmission of
the gospel often differs from what indigenous converts retained and appropriated as their
own. Opting for the poor from a socioeconomic and sociopolitical praxis (Liberation
Theology) does not reach far enough, but rather the point of departure and fundamental
truth of Indigenous Christianity is a multicolored reality beyond mere social ontology.

20
Ibid., 3.
21
Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity?, 10.
22
Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning, 56.
23
Ibid., 7. See also in Irvin, History of the World Christian Movement Volume I: Earliest
Christianity to 1453 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003).
 14

Its here that Mignolo parts with Dussels analectic methodology because Dussel
conceives the margins as fixed and ontological rather than as a movable and relational
concept.24 Their story after Western Christianity reached the indigenous people has
more significance and value to faithfully render. It is their discovery of Christianity:
local people encountering the religion through mother tongue discernment and
in the light of the peoples own needs and experiences. The indigenous discovery
places the emphasis on unintended local consequences, leaving the way open for
indigenous agency and leadership.25

The indigenous emphasis of this polycentric approach moves beyond a Eurocentric

paradigm. It is a methodological shift in Missiology that expands missions beyond the
missionaries experiences to include the experiences of the non-Westerners.26 From this
standpoint, a multiple cultural hermeneutic can be observed from a Latin American
context.

2.2.2 A PLURITOPIC HERMENUETIC OF LATIN AMERICAN COLONIALISM

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a Mestizaje emerged from the
Spanish Crowns civilizing process of the New World. The term Mestizaje can be
understood as:
Latin American history record[ing] that an ethnic fusion commenced in 1492
when Spanish Conquistadores amalgamated their religion and culture with those
of Amerindians and Africans of the continent. A New World was not discovered
as the Spaniards believed, but rather a Mestizo World (the genetic mixing of
European men with native women) was birthed. As a result, the struggle and
oppression of a people began.27

Mignolo focuses his literary scholarship in this colonial period to address the plurilingual
and multicultural results found in todays Latin American societies and Latino cultures in
the United States.28A twofold front emerges against a European epistemology of the
center: first, the need to decolonize scholarship and decenter the epistemological

24
Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 12.
25
Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity?, 55.
26
Dale T. Irvin, Global Faith: not made in the USA, review of Whose Religion Is Christianity?
The Gospel beyond the West, by Lamin Sanneh, and Enlarging the Story: Perspectives on Writing World
Christian History, by Wilbert R. Shenk, ed., Christian Century 121 no 15 (July 27, 2004): 2831.
27
See Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, s.v. Hispanic Pentecostalism.
28
Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, viii.
 15

center by re-inscribing the darker side of the Renaissance;29 and second, to address
globalization in the region by implementation of a theorizing from the bordera
border epistemology.30 It is a Third-World theorizing of Elias civilizing process, a
theory that the border can formulate from the Third World but not exclusively for the
Third World; it is also for the First World.31 Since colonial situations imply plurality of
traditions, Mignolo proposes a pluritopic mode of understanding and interpretation to
advance his polycentric hermeneutic.
The concept of diatopic or pluritopic hermeneutics is borrowed from Raimundo
Panikkar. It is not the telling of the story from various points of view in order to establish
its significance or relativity. What a pluritopic approach emphasizes is not cultural
relativity or multiculturalism, but social and human interests in the act of telling a story as
political intervention.32 It is not only a radical thinking of the object to be understood
(Dussels analectic method) but also an ethical evaluation that arises as the understanding
subject can be called into question for his positionality and homogeneity. Therefore,
from a Latin American perspective, the colonial situations of language, memory, and
space help to rethink Latin Americas hermeneutical inheritance.33Although this
Western legacy is embedded still in Latin America, Mignolos pluritopic hermeneutic
aims at uprooting the monotopic mode of understanding from the regions colonial core
to affect a trans-modern polycentric approach. The ensuing examination of Dussels
criterions of Latin American historiography aids in developing a local indigenous
methodology.

2.2.3 CRITERIONS FOR A LATIN AMERICAN CHURCH HISTORIOGRAPHY

Throughout this study, Enrique Dussel is a consistent dialogue partner on Latin
American Christianity. In particular, his historiographical method outlines a rationalistic

29
See Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Colonization and the
Discontinuity of the Classical Tradition, Renaissance Quarterly 45:4 (Winter, 1992), 823. For Mignolo,
this metaphor serves the purpose to frame an emerging field of study whose proper name oscillates
between colonial discourse and colonial semiosis. Scholars of this new field of study observe the
relationship between discourse and power during colonial expansion.
30
Mignolo, Globalization, Civilization Processes, 50.
31
Ibid., 5051.
32
Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 15.
33
Ibid.
 16

ontology grounded in reality and praxis: Our point of departure is not, therefore, what
the theologians have said about the real situation, but rather what reality itself shows
us.34 His historiography has been classified as an Ecstatic Rationality for the
correlative workings of his liberating praxis and authentic theological thinking
dynamic partners in true historical writing.35 Historical reality is explored on three
levels of being: the political (brother to brother relationship), the erotic (man to woman
relationship) and the pedagogical (parent to child relationship). Here is where reality
originates and develops for Dussel, as all three anthropological levels represent reality
as a paradigmatic point of departure.36
As Liberation Theologys main historian and ethicist, Dussel believes that Latin
American theology is, therefore, a reflection on the praxis of the liberation of the
oppressed by Christians who are politically committed.37 Furthermore, from it emerges a
theological ethic formulated by the poor of the periphery, the marginalized, and the
outcasts of the world. It is clear that the historiographical method explicated above stems
from an agenda for the Latin American poor. Liberation Theology as a contextual model
(Bevans) represents a tradition (Irvin), an indigenous Christianity (Sanneh), one of many
pluritopic modes of understanding (Mignolo), and a historiography (Dussel) of a
polycentric point of departure. It is a Third World theorizing about the poor who have
been accepted and heard by First World scholars. Although one does not need to embrace
all of Dussel and Liberation Theologys tenets (e.g., socioeconomic status of the poor
equates to salvation), there are beneficial criterions that will be engaged in the following
Ecuadorian Christian story.
Dussels guidelines encourage more Latin Americans and Hispanics in the United
States to write critical and concrete histories and theologies. We must be prepared to
look at reality respectfully and attentively if we truly want to render creative, responsible
service.38 The challenge for Latin America as well as other peripheral regions is to
inscribe and locate their space and voice in response to the great lack of historiography

34
Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin America, 3.
35
See David P. Whitelaw, Ecstatic Rationality: Enrique Dussels Latin American Church
Historiography, St. Hist. Eccl., XIX:2 (1993), 113.
36
Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin America, 6.
37
Ibid., 19.
38
Quoted in Whitelaw, Ecstatic Rationality, 121.
 17

from indigenous Christianity. The case of Ecuador is multiplied many times over in Latin
America and elsewhere, where most written histories follow the ever-present Western
intellectual dominance. The foregoing discussion methodologically makes the case for
the rationale for inclusion of an indigenous Quichua story amidst abundant Western
narratives.

2.3 AN INDIGENOUS QUICHUA PENTECOST

As stated in chapter 1, to record a marginal Amerindian narrative, a twofold
historiographical challenge exists: 1) there must be methodological shift away from a
Western ontology, and 2) the indigenous proposal, must be undertaken. The first
challenge has been the main topic of this chapter while the latter will be discussed in the
remaining investigation. The indigenous proposal places the Indgena as subject and
protagonist of their world. The journey of self-determination and autonomy over the past
five centuries has not been easy. But the following study of the Indgena Christian story
provides a glimpse into the Quichua religious struggle and emancipation.
Fifteen years ago, when I first arrived as a missionary educator in Ecuador, I was
assigned to coordinate educational programs among Quichua Christians for the Church of
God (Cleveland, TN). The short version of the story is that I located a group of believers
who in the early 1980s had experienced a tremendous spiritual awakening that touched
their lives and community. The outstanding account, and especially its indigenous
character, gripped me. The outpouring of Gods Spirit had occurred without outside
influence even from the West. After the renewal, the Church followed New Testament
growth as thousands were converted and many churches plantedagain without Western
assistance. Since I first met my sisters and brothers of the Church Rios de Agua
Viva/Rivers of Living Water (RAV), my heart was burdened because there was no written
account of their story. Concern for this historical omission compelled me to begin to
write a faithful history of the footsteps of God, or of Gods Spirit, in their [Quichua
Christian] history.39
In chapter 2, steps have been taken to methodologically establish the theoretical
and historiographical processes that will be followed in this study. RAVs unique account

39
Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning, 7.
 18

grew from a rich cultural, religious, and historical Ecuadorian tierra (soil). Chapters 3
through 7 explore Quichua Christianitys multifaceted narrative of Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Pentecostalism respectively, which are all part of the Quichua
Churchs story. Although Indigenous Christianitys homegrown impulse wrestles to
maintain autonomy against institutionalization, its validation requires historical
continuity for self-preservation and stable growth. At times, the temptation to disconnect
is fierce; however, a subtle malleability between major (established order) and minor
(periphery) traditions is indispensible for both in order that their relationship and legacy
may be ongoing.40 Such is the story of the Church in the land of the Equinox.

2.4 CONCLUSION
Throughout this chapter, a methodological course has been pursued in order for a local
history (Ecuadorian/Quichua) to recast its story into the historical narrative. It is a
paradigmatic shift to the peripheral and a rethinking of the Eurocentric pattern. Dussel
would remind us that a new interpretation of modernity is needed. Only a mas alla
(beyondtrans) the center, the West, and the modern project can address todays
globalization, pluralism, and cultural diversity. Hegel and other modern thinkers could
not sustain the absolute spirit of reason and historical awareness. The Eurocentric
paradigm is the myth of modernity. The peripheral is presently rising and meeting the
challenge of modernity and needs spatial locality and time. Irvin, Sanneh, Mignolo, and
Dussel provided samples of what a polycentric paradigm could look like. The
methodological shift from Eurocentrism to polycentrism will allow projects like Quichua
Christianity to reveal that through an indigenous history one can discover Christianity.

40
See Stanley M. Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions (Peabody: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2002), and Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion, 5th ed. (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). Burgess demonstrates the tension positively from a
pneumatological perspective while Knox prefers to separate them at the expense of the minor traditions
existence.
 19

3. ECLIPSE IN THE LAND OF THE EQUINOX

Five centuries of Roman Catholic tradition and presence in Ecuador cannot be
understated nor ignored. The churchs influence on the majority of Ecuadorians, in
particular, el Indgena continues to be embedded in their daily lives. While historians of
Ecuador acknowledge early hagiographical sources, they differ on Catholicisms view of
the Indgena.1 M. David Sills comparative study of religious movements in Ecuador
views Catholicism among the Indgena as a syncretistic movement while Jorge Villalba
prefers to view the initial aboriginal evangelization as peculiar, it was not a result of a
conquest and the subjection to the superiority of the newly arrived European masters;
but rather, it was first discussed and then, solicited, requested, and welcomed by the
natives.2 This chapter will examine the Indgena-European relationship and its effects on
the Indgena. It is the authors intention to demonstrate how a Western (old) world
eclipses an Andean3 (not new but other) world. The following survey is not
comprehensive in scope; yet, in order to show the overshadowing of the Indgena, the
analysis specifically observes portions of the Iberian arrival, the colonial establishment,
and the modern Roman Catholic Church period in Ecuador.
Aboriginal culture is difficult to reconstruct from only Spanish chronicles because
the Indgena world is a different world. Prior to 1493, with the beginning of the Spanish
discovery of the new world, the indigenous world was autonomous and West-free.

1
See Francisco Xerez, A True Account of the Province of Cuzco, Called New Castille, Conquered
by Francisco Pizarro, Captain to His Majesty the Emperor, Our Master, Salamanca 1547, trans. Clements
Markham (London: 1872); and Pedro Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru: Chronicles of
the New World Encounter, trans. Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998). Another hagiographic source penned by The Inca, son to a Spanish noble and an
Inca princess, is Garcilaso de la Vega's, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, and General History of Peru,
trans. H. V. Livermore (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966). Critiques on Ecuadorian Catholicism can
be observed in Michael H. Handelsman, Culture and Customs of Ecuador (Westport, CT.: Greenwood
Press, 2000) and M. David Sills, "A Comparative Study of the Three Major Religious Movements of the
Highland Quichuas in Andean Ecuador from the Inca Conquest to the Present" (D.Miss. Diss., Reformed
Theological Seminary, 1997). Positive Ecuadorian accounts of the period are found in Jorge Villalba, La
Primera Evangelizacin del reino de Quito, in Historia de la Iglesia Catlica en el Ecuador, tomo 1, ed.
Jorge Salvador Lara (Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 2001); and Carlos Freile, La Iglesia ante la Situacin
Colonial (Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 2003).
2
Villalba, La Primera Evangelizacin del reino de Quito, 142143.
3
Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina (known as Andean States)
have the longest mountain range in the world, the Andes. The Andean range is a continuous chain of sierras
along the western coast of South America. Since the investigation examines an Ecuadorian indigenous
group (Quichuas) that live in this highland, Andean will be used to refer to the group and to the region as a
whole.
 20

Throughout the coastal regions, the highland mountain chains, and the tropical jungles,
Pre-Columbian inhabitants settled in the land of the equator. Tribal groups like the
Esmeralda, the Manta, the Huancavilca, and the Puna lived along the coastline while the
Pasto, the Cara, the Panzaleo, the Puruha, the Caari, and the Palta tribes populated the
unforgiving highland region that runs north to south. Although many ethnic groups
occupied the Amazon terrain, of all the tribes, the infamous Jivaro tribe was best known
in the territory that is present day Ecuador. These Andean societies developed, for the
most part, isolated from to the rest of the world. The Andean phenomenon and
civilization does not suggest absolute seclusion; rather, scholars postulate that
Polynesians over millennia may have visited the Andean coasts.4 The pre-Inca period
presents challenges to reconstruct because of 1) a short Inca occupation, and 2) the
Spanish chroniclers inability to distinguish between Inca customs and the cultural
patterns of peoples conquered.5 Of all the peoples that the Inca Empire subdued (1438
1533), the Ecuadorian tribes were the last to be conquered. Consequently, their full
assimilation into the Inca system was not achieved. Their religious, cultural, social, and
political pre-Inca history was long-standing and did not emerge in an Incan vacuum.
These Indgenas embraced and directed their own destiny. The Indgena soul lived within
a natural balance in the land of the rising and setting sun.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, another civilization began to cast an
abiding shadow on the continent as the Andean worlds sunlight began to diminish. In
Iberia, the peninsula region of southwestern Europe, Spain embarked on its Iberian
project of the New World. The Spanish push towards extension and replication was
viewed as providential and a God-given right. John Mackay suggests the Iberian
(Spanish) spirit was one of an intense individuality and passion, an abstract sense of
justice and a concrete sense of man, one of Catholicity, and a soul Iberian by
nature.6 By January 1492, the Spanish spirit raged high as victory was won over eight

4
See John V. Murra, Andean Societies, Annual Review of Anthropology 13 (1984): 119141;
and Donald W. Lathrap Our Father the Cayman, Our Mother the Gourd: Spinden Revisited, or Unitary
Model for the Emergence of Agriculture in the New World in Origins of Agriculture, ed. Charles A. Reed
(The Hague: Mouton, 1977).
5
See Handbook of South American Indians, s.v. EcuadorThe Highland and Coastal Cultures.
6
See chapter 1in John Alexander Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ: A Study in the Spiritual
History of Spain and South America (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933).
 21

hundred years of Moorish rule in Iberia. Fueled by triumph over what they considered
infidels, Spains project of finding new routes to Asia while annexing lands and peoples
to their political and religious territory put them on course to the Indgena world.

3.1 FIRST CONTACT: SHADOWS BEGIN

A brief sketch of Christopher Columbus view of Spains role in the New
World, Francisco Pizarros search of the Inca Empire, and early historiography of the
Conquest of Peru follows in order to understand the Spanish ethos behind the domination
of the natives. At different times and locations, the natives sightings of the
conquistadores and their interactions with themboth Columbus (1493, Hispaniola) and
Pizarro (1525, Atacames)were initially peaceful and hospitable. The tranquil nature of
these first encounters illustrates the Indgenas awe of the visitors and success of the
crusaders reconnaissance strategy. First impressions shortly dissipated and true
motivations surfaced.
A succinct description of the meeting between Indgenas and Bartolom Ruiz
provides one an understanding of an Indgena-Spaniard encounter. The conquistadors
mindset demonstrates the spirit and driving force of the Western modern era that forged
the unavoidable contact between the two civilizations. The indulgent Iberian spirit found
in Columbus belief and aspiration to discover a new path to the West Indies is an
example. As a product of the Enlightenment, he saw Europes, in particular Spains,
position to God, the Church, and the Indian as distinctive and privileged. The Iberian
meta-narrative is descriptive of the conquistadors(s) ideology. Columbus reflection of
the discovery and conquest years after is insightful and foretelling.

3.1.1 COLUMBUS A PROPHET?

In 1492, the same year that Spain reclaimed Granada from the Moors, Christopher
Columbus inspired the Spanish crown, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, to complete
their divine destinyto recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims by funding his travel
campaign to the west. Like Old Testament prophets, the Genoese mariner did not doubt
his quest or his illumination originated from the Holy Spirit. In Columbus small codex,
Libro de las Profecas (Book of the Prophecies), a reinterpretation of the first voyage fills
several pages:
 22

All who knew of my enterprise fought by ridiculing it and denying it. None of the
sciences approved nor did the authorities. In only Your Highnesses remained
the faith and perseverance. Who doubts that this light was not of the Holy Spirit
rather than of me, who, with rays of marvelous clarity, counseled with his holy
and sacred Scripture, with a loud and clear voicereviving me to continue
ahead?7

Columbus, a controversial historical figure, seen as a genius, a great explorer, a mystic,

an imperialist, and at times an opportunist, believed in biblical prophecies and their
fulfillment. Throughout this rare manuscript, he argues with the Old Testament scripture,
church history, and the Apocrypha that Spains conquest of the new world birthed
Isaiahs prediction (Isaiah 42:1, 4, and 6) of the Gospels propagation to all nations.8
Even though Columbus does not claim to be an oracle, he ultimately sees and makes a
case for the restitution of the Holy House [Jerusalem] to the Holy Church [Roman
Catholic] by Spain.9 In summation, he believed Spain fulfilled prophecy when he wrote,
I have already said that in the implementation of the Indies enterprise neither reason,
mathematics, nor world maps helped me; [rather] what Isaiah said was fulfilled
completely.10 In Columbus eschatology, a dual mission of exploration and
evangelization of the Indies formed part of the ensuing Iberian colonization.
Was Columbus a prophet? The answer depends on the identity of the respondent,
Indgena or Iberian. On 29 February 1504, Columbus predicted a lunar eclipse that saved
his life and the lives of his men. Almost two years earlier, 11 May 1502, on the fourth
expedition to Central America with his ships infested with worms, the admiral and his
crew were beached on Saint Annes Bay, Jamaica awaiting assistance. Because the
visitors initially intrigued the aborigines, the aborigines helped them with supplies of
food and resources. The hospitability came to a halt a few months later and turned into
hostility when Columbus men abused their welcome. In order to survive, the navigator
utilized Regiomontanus almanac to fearfully convince the natives cacique (chief) and

7
Christopher Columbus, Cristobal Colon, Libro De Las Profecias, trans. Kay Brigham (Terrassa,
Barcelona: Libros CLIE 1992), 33.
8
Ibid., 22.
9
Ibid., 33. As Columbus writes the King and Queen, he finds support from twelfth century French
mystic Joaqun de Fiore, The abbot Joaqunsaid that out of Spain one would come to rebuild the House
of Mount Zion, 39.
10
Ibid., 38.
 23

his people that his (Columbus) God would destroy the rising moon in three days if the
aborigines no longer fed them. The almanac was produced by Johannes Mller von
Knigsberg (14361476), which in Latin was known as Regiomontanus. Knigsberg
created astronomical tables for the years 14751506 that were widely used by sailors.
Columbuss study of it informed him of the forthcoming total lunar eclipse. In the end,
the eclipse occurred as predicted, furthering Columbus interest(s).
In Columbus dealings with the natives, he observed that the superstition within
Indgena spirituality paralleled that of European medieval cosmology. The cacique and
his people responded with great fear as the manipulated truth (predicted eclipse)
terrorized them as Columbus knew it would. If the natives had known the truth, there
would have been a different outcome; yet, apparently for the Christian navigator, the
natives worldview was inferior to his and consequently rejected. Although Columbus
celestial prophecy may be considered a sign from God, a genius plan, or simply a farce,
his anticipation (prediction) of the Iberian spirits destiny in America was accurate. Soon
the Spanish West would eclipse the people, culture, and life of the Indgena. It is evident
today that Latin American Christianity has its origins mainly in the Spanish Roman
Catholic Church.11 But, at what cost and at whose expense? History attests that the
Other, el Indgena, paid the price. The conquistadors would also reach the shores of
Ecuador, the gateway to discovery and conquest of the Inca Empire. The initial meeting
depicts the visitors goals and utilization of the natives to accomplish their end.

3.1.2 INITIAL ENCOUNTER WITH ECUADORIAN INDIGENAS

In 1511, when Vasco Nez de Balboa crossed through the jungle of the Isthmus
of Panama, he became the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean. He, and other
adventurers that followed, obtained reports of a great empire to the south whose wealth
and power equaled Hernando Corts Aztec acquisition. Spaniards sailed across the
Atlantic in hopes of finding fame and fortune, but often found anonymity and ruin. Most
of them wanted to see what was there [in the New World] and if they could find more

11
Though Portugal would Christianize Brazil, both Spain and Portugal are countries that make up
the Iberia region of Europe.
 24

gold, which is the aim of those of us who come from Spain to these Indies.12
Furthermore, De la Vega explains:
The Spaniards were filled with the desire to find other new lands and others even
newer; and although many of them were rich and prosperous, they were not
satisfied with what they possessed or even weary of their labors and the dangers,
wounds, diseases, starvation, and hard days and worse nights they had
experienced by land and sea, but always set their hands to fresh conquests and
made fresh efforts to immortalize their names with even greater deeds.13

Early chroniclers like Cieza de Len and Xerez acknowledge that the main motive in the
Indies enterprise, above that of proselytization, was the adventurers reward. The
Spaniards quest blinded them to fully seeing and accepting the Indgena as persons
rather than merely expendable goods. This was so with captains Francisco Pizarro, Diego
de Almargo, and Bartolom Ruiz, who were among the first Iberians to step onto
Ecuadorian soil in route to conquering the celebrated empire of Peru. Francisco Pizarro,
Diego de Almargo, and Father Fernando Luque were the legal partners of the Conquest
of Peru. They officially entered into a contract in Panama on 10 March 1526 which gave
the three full authority to discover and subdue the countries and provinces lying south of
the Gulf, belonging to the Empire of Peru.14 On the expedition, Bartolom Ruiz,
experienced and determined pilot from Andalusa became the first European to sail across
the equinoctial line.
Since Ecuadorian history is part of the Peruvian conquest narrative, historians
begin with that account. In 1526, after three years of difficult expeditions (death, hunger,
and hardships) along the Pacific coast in search of the Tahuantinsuyo,15 Pizarro and
Almargo sent Ruiz to explore further south. From the San Juan River,16 Pizarro remained
with his crew; Almargo returned to Panama for more men and supplies while Ruiz
explored the Ecuadorian shoreline. On the excursion,` the latter pilot saw other inhabited

12
Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 74.
13
De la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 633.
14
See William Hickling Prescott, The History of the Conquest of Peru. V 1, ed. John Foster Kirk
(Philadelphia: Lippincott Company, 1893).
15
Tahuatinsuyo originates from two Quechua terms: tahua (tawa), which means four, and suyo,
which means states, nations, or regions. Tahuantinsuyo was the original name of the Inca Empire. It was
composed of four suyos: Chinchasuyo to the north, Collasuyo to the south, Antisuyo to the east, and
Contisuyo to the west. The capital of the empire was Cuzco, known as the belly button of the world.
16
The San Juan River lies on the Colombia coast.
 25

places, very rich in gold and silver, and inhabited by more intelligent people than they
had previously met.17 He additionally discovered San Mateo Bay,18 where he captured
five Indgena men on it [a large balsa or straw boat] and two boys with three women
who became prisoners on the ship in order to train as interpreters.19 Cieza de Len also
offers a description of the Ecuadorian Indgenas habitat and an interpretation of the
native response to the visitors. He [Ruiz] saw on the river a large village full of people
who were astonished to see the ship and were watching it, believing it fell from the sky,
but were unable to guess what it might be.20 The capture of Indgenas to train as
interpreters was a common practice from the inception of the Spanish Conquest. When
the prisoners confirmed the existence of the Inca Empire, they were initially mocked and
doubted. It appears that in previous Indgena-Spanish interactions, the formers distrust
led them to hold back the truth. Yet, these natives, Cieza de Len affirms, told the truth;
therefore, the pilot and his men had found proof to hopefully renew their abating hope.21
Ruiz returned to the San Juan River, and, on 21 September 1526, Pizarro and Almargo
were led to see the Ecuadorian natives for themselves. Encounter may be the operative
word utilized to describe the meeting of these two worlds, European and Indgena; but, it
does not reveal nor tell the genocidal effect the former had on the latter. This aspect will
be examined further in the colonization section. Who were these new natives and what
were they like?
Murra proposes that the Indgenas of Ecuador, at the time of the Spanish
conquest, were sedentary, agricultural people.22 Land was, and continues to be, the
most important issue and commodity for Ecuadors Indgena. In the highlands, maize,
beans, quinoa, and many species of squashes and potatoes were cultivated; while in the
warmer lowlands, fruits like avocados, pineapples, and chirimoyas were farmed to the

17
Xerez, A True Account, 6.
18
San Mateo Bay discovered and named by the adventurers is located at the mouth of the
Esmeraldas River in northern Ecuador.
19
Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 75.
20
Ibid., 75.
21
The Indgenas were from Tumbez (Northern Peru) who carried clothes, gold, silver, and
emeralds. Their items and news of Cuzco and Huayna Tupac validated their expedition. Cuzco was the
capital city of Tahuatinsuyo and Huayna Tupac king of the realm at that time. During the early years of the
discovery of the Inca Empire these terms became distinguishable words to the Spaniards. See Xerez, A
True Account, 8.
22
See Handbook of South American Indians, s.v. The Historic Tribes of Ecuador, 791.
 26

Europeans culinary dislike. Xerez remembers well, they supported themselves on the
savage food of the people, who had no knowledge of bread or wine, suffering on a diet of
herbs, fruits, and roots.23 At the time of the Iberian contact, the coast was populated by
advanced groups that were culturally related. Ruiz capture of the balsa boat with many
items like spun wool and raw wool of llamas, that Cieza de Len described, indicates
continual contact through coastal trade between the groups. Xerex describes the land
there [was] abundant [in] supplies, and the people lived well-ordered lives, the villages
having their streets and squares24 though with the arrival of the Europeans, the life and
the culture of these peoples would completely change. Spanish historians show that the
turning point of the discovery and conquest of Peru occurred in Ecuador when Pizarro
and thirteen other conquistadors pushed forward against great odds.
The story of the thirteen occurred after the balsa capture. As Pizarro and Almargo
regrouped to plan the conquest of Peru, the three years of starvation, mosquitoes,
mangrove groves/forests, constant rain, and death depleted the crews desire to continue.
When the captains agreed that Almargo should return to Panama and Pizarro remain on
Gallo Island with the men, the Spaniards insisted to return instead of perishing
miserably where they did not even have sacred ground for burial, affirmed Cieza de
Len.25 Since they were denied and held captive, they wrote Governor Pedro de los Rios
a couplet that said:
To the Lord Governor.
Look it well over,
There goes the herder [Almargo]
While here remains the butcher [Pizarro].26

The governor sent Juan Tufar to rescue the men and to give Pizarro a concession that
allowed him to continue with the discovery even if he had few men to follow him. Cieza
de Len says the men wept from joy because with Tafurs arrival they were leaving a
worse captivity than that of Egypt.27 With a serene disposition, Pizarro told his men it

23
Xerez, A True Account, 2.
24
Ibid, 7.
25
Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 87.
26
Ibid, 89.
27
Ibid., 93.
 27

was their choice if they wanted to return to Panama or remain on the expedition.
Everyone hurried onto the ship except for thirteen that agreed to accompany him.
Cieza de Lens account preserves a more authentic Pizarro and even includes
some Indian men and women along with the thirteen. Although he does not specify
how many Indgenas went on the expedition. Xerezs account is so brief one almost
misses it. He differs from Cieza de Len in that he numbers the companions at sixteen
instead of thirteen. But most Spanish chroniclers have embellished the narrative at this
point. De la Vegas record exemplifies the epic proportions he gives to Pizarros role:
To end their doubts and to see which of them would declare themselves his
friends, he took his sword and traced a line on the sand with it, facing the
direction of Peru, the goal of his desires, and turning to them, said: Gentlemen,
this line stands for the labors, hunger, thirst and toil, wounds and sickness, and all
other dangers and trials that must be undergone in this conquest, risking life itself.
Those who have the spirit to face them and to prevail in this heroic enterprise, let
them cross the line in proof of their courage and in open testimony of their loyalty
to me. And let those who feel themselves unworthy of so great a task return to
Panama, for I do not wish to force anyone against his will, and with those who
remain, even though they are few, I trust that God will aid us to supply the want
of those who have gone, to his greater glory and honor and to the perpetual fame
of those who follow me.28

The Spanish chroniclers immortalized the insurmountable quest begun on Ecuadorian

soil. The adventurers elevated Spain in their writers eyes, above the rest of the world.

3.1.3 SPAIN LIKE NO OTHER, EARLY HISOTRIOGRAPHY

In the first records, the Spanish ethos elevates a Western story of crusaders and
the Indgena world into epic sagas of victory and conquest. In the Conquest narratives,
Indgenas and Africans, key characters, are de-emphasized or completely overlooked. For
instance Hernando Cortes and his six hundred men are praised for their Aztec victory,
while the 3000 Tlaxcalteca natives, who marched into battle with them at Cholula, are
given minimal recognition. Spain and her sons are the real subjects of honor and worth
in these triumphalistic accounts:
Oh, glorious name and race of the Pizarros, how much do not all the nations of the
Old World owe to you for the great riches you have brought from the New World!
And how much more do not the empires of Peru and Mexico owe to you in return

28
De la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 651.
 28

for the labors and deeds of your two sons Hernando Cortes and Francisco
Pizarrowho brought those people out of the infernal darkness in which they
died a living death and bestowed on them the evangelical light in which they now
live!29

In an age where literature, art, and learning were revived from a medieval cast, Spanish
literature expressed a rebirth in the human (Spanish) spirit. De la Vega, in the above
quote and Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote embody the Spanish cultural horizon of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cieza de Len and Xerez likewise exalted their
country and countrymen in the conquest of Peru.
Pizarro and the thirteen Christians [who] almost miraculously discovered it
[Tahuatinsuyo], and then proceeded to win it in a war where no more than 160 fought
have been the main subject of early histories to the exclusion of Indgenas and Africans
without whom the mission would not have been successful.30After the Ecuadorian coast,
the venture went south to Peru. Cieza de Len notes that the captain [Pizarro] ordered
Alonso de Molina and one Black to go to shore at Tumbez.31 This occurred because an
Inca official who boarded their ship requested for a few Christians to go with him so the
people could see them. In this edition and translation, Alexandra and Noble Cook note
that by the 1520s African slaves were in Panama and participated in the Peruvian
endeavor. The records do show that Indgenas participated in the conquest but did not
hold a primary place in the documents; yet, in doing justice, one needs to remember the
indian for his silent but indispensible contribution.32
From the chroniclers perspective, the Inca Conquest elucidates how Spain fared
in history and in the minds of sixteenth-century Spanish Europeans. Xerezs account in
1534, addressed to King Charles I, claims Divine Providence as a main reason for the
victory in Peru. To Pizarros secretary, no other empire equaled Spain:

29
Ibid., 636.
30
Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 39.
31
Ibid., 109.
32
Agustin Moreno, El Primer Sacerdote que piso Tierra Ecuatoriana, Instituto Ecuatoriano de
Histoira Eclesiastica 1 (1974), 11. Moreno suggests that at least 600 Indgenas accompanied Pizarro and
Almargo in the conquest of Peru. On the other hand, the accounts are almost silent on the African slaves.
See Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 15241650 (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1974); and James Lockhart, The Men of Cajamarca; a Social and Biographical Study of the First
Conquerors of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972).
 29

For when, either in ancient or modern times, have such great exploits been
achieved by so few against so many; over so many climes [climates], across so
many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown?
Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Not surely those of the Jews,
nor of the Greeks, nor even of the Romans, of who more is written than of any
other people. For though the Romans subjugated so many provinces, yet they did
so with an equal number of troopsBut our Spaniards, being few in number,
never having more than two hundred or three hundred men togetherhave, in our
times, conquered more territory than has ever been known before, or than all the
faithful and infidel princess possessed.33

Spain, even in suffering, could not be outdone by other countries: I will say that only
Spaniards could have endured what these men went through. They can compare
themselves only to each other and not to people from another nation.34 Cieza de Len
further compared and contrasted the conquistadors negative traits. He suggests that Sulla
and Marius (Roman dictators) and other conspirators of history failed in comparison to
the Spaniards treacherous actions against each other in Peru. Of the three Inca Conquest
partners, Pizarro, Almargo, and Luque, De la Vegas account aspires to immortalize the
three sons of Castile as more honorable than another trio of antiquity:
The triumvirate formed by these three Spaniards at Panama seems to me
comparable with that established by the three Roman emperors [Mark Antony,
Lepidus, and Octavian] at Laino near BolognaAnd when we consider the
results of the two triumvirates, we see that the Romans were three tyrants who
oppressed the world, whereas the Spaniards were three generous leaders whose
deeds were such that any of them would have made a worthy emperor. The
Roman league was intended to destroy a world, which it did; the Spanish, to
enrich one, and this it did, and still does every day.35

As Renaissance men, the conquistadors and chroniclers sought classical models for
inspiration to emulate and exceed.36 In their revived eyes, their expeditions did not
destroy the Indgena but rather enriched her. Mackay captures this Iberian loss of sight as
a delirious thirst for power and blind unstudied loyalty: these are the knights of Spanish
historyboth in the old world and new.37 Such were the thirteen, who on Ecuadorian

33
Xerez, A True Account, 12.
34
Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 75.
35
De la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 635.
36
See A. MacC. Armstrong, The Conquistadores and the Classics, Greece & Rome 22 no. 65
(June 1953): 8889.
37
Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 22.
 30

soil eagerly resolved to find the path to Tahuantinsuyos wealth at the Indgenas peril.
In their accounts, these historians embraced and built upon the same ideological starting
point as ColumbusSpain; yet, they selected to minimize and leave out the Other, the
Indgena and the African from their narratives.
In the Indgena world, a different history evolves; a history of shadows
(discrimination, exclusion, and apprehension) emerges early in the exploration of Peru
and generally in the Spanish Conquest. In a pachakuti, a cataclysm begins.38 The
agricultural, sedentary, and industrial Indgena met captivity, imposed labor, and false
categorizations at the hands of Christians. Assenting characteristics of Indgenas fill the
pages of historiography like intelligent, peaceful, [who] lived orderly lives, and their
villages have streets and squares but only as backdrops to support Iberian aspirations.
The Spanish ethos conveyed in Columbus, Xerez, Cieza de Len, and De la Vegas
accounts communicate fame and glory for the old world extracted from the new. On the
other hand, the Indgena story transmits a revolution, an eclipse, a covering over of the
Indgena. The latter process can be observed subsequently in the colonization period.

3.2 A SPIRITUAL CONQUEST: TOTAL ECLIPSE

The second ecumenical pastoral consultation of Latin American Indgenas
convened on 30 July 1986 in Quito, Ecuador. In lieu of the approaching fifth centennial
celebration of Christopher Columbus discovery of the new world, a manifesto articulated
the participants total repudiation to these triumphalistic celebrations.39 From an
Indgena perspective, the narrative is not one of discovery and evangelization, but rather
of an invasion. The Indgena ministers repudiation was founded on the following
implications:
- Genocide from the war of occupation, [infections] transmitted [through]
European diseases, death by excessive exploitation, and separation of parents
and children caused the extinction of more than 75 million brothers of ours.

- Violent usurpation of our territorial dominions.

38
In Inca cosmology, Unu Pachakuti was the name of the flood that Viracocha caused to destroy
the people at Lake Titicaca. He allows two people to survive in order to bring civilization to the world. The
idea of destruction and reconstruction are intimately linked together like in the term revolution.
39
Botasso, La Iglesia y Los Indios, 13.
 31

- Disintegration of our socio-political and cultural organizations

- Ideological and religious subjugation to the detriment of the internal logic of
our religious beliefs.40

For the Indgenas, Spanish imperialism of coloniality solidified the darker side of
Amerindian history. The Indgena narrative is the history of the Others story. Indgena
history confronts and rejects the European privileged version that in order to have
history you have to let yourself be colonized...willingly or not, to be subsumed by a
perspective of history, life, knowledge, economy, subjectivity, family, [and] religion.41
The origin of modernity for Mignolo is the discovery of America and the genocide of
both Indgenas and Africans instead of the French or Industrial Revolutions. To
understand the Indgena, their past struggle and oppression must be embraced and
included in the record.
The indigenous nationalities of Ecuador insist that after the Iberian arrival, the
colonial systems coercive regimen of exploitation and death destroyed the socio-
political organization, the productive forms, the barter system, the religion, the
knowledge, etc. of the Indgena.42 For these Ecuadorians, 1992 represents five hundred
years of resistancean opposition to los blancos (the whites) history as normative.

3.2.1 EVANGELIZATION OF THE INDIGENA

In considering colonialisms contribution toward Ecuadors darker side of
Indgena history, multiple facets of coloniality can be studied. For the purpose at hand,
however, the religious dimension is what is important. Two areas of the Spanish spiritual
conquest are particularly important to comprehend the Indgena repudiation and
resistance to colonialism: the evangelization of the Indgena and the allocation of their
land and labor.

40
Ibid., 1314. Duplicated in Bottassos monograph are the consultations declaration, manifesto
(above citation), and letter to third world theologians.
41
Walter Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (Malden, MA ; Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2005), xii.
42
Las Nacionalidades Indgenas en el Ecuador: Nuestro Proceso Organizativo, 2. ed. (Quito,
Ecuador: Editorial TINCUI/CONAIE: Ediciones ABYA-YALA, 1989), 23.
 32

From the onset, the Christians who came to the Indgena world were a novelty for
people who had never seen white bearded men traveling on ships. When the Indgenas of
Tumbez first saw Pizarro and his entourage before hearing their message, they were
quite astonished, believing that such people [Spaniards] were sent by Gods hand and it
would be proper to give them a warm reception.43 Before truly knowing the identity and
intentions of these people, on occasion, natives kindly received the strangers and heard an
unusual message:
He [Pizarro] would like to inform them about something very propitious for them.
They should forget their fallacious beliefs and the useless sacrifices they made
because it was only expedient to honor and serve God with sacrifices of good
deeds and not with the shedding of blood of either men or animals. He declared
that the Sun they worshiped as god was no more than an object created to
illuminate and preserve the world, and that God Almighty had his seat in the most
prominent place in the heavens, and that the Christians worshiped this God, whom
they call Jesus Christ. Further, if they did the same, He would grant them
heavens glory, and if they refused, He would cast them into hell forevermore. He
concluded by telling them that he would try to return quickly and would bring
priests who would baptize them and preach to them the work of the holy gospel.
And then he told them that they should know they were all to acknowledge as
their lord and king the one who was that of Spain and of many other kingdoms
and realms.44

After listening to the visitors message, typically, the Indgenas responded with unbelief
to such declarations. In the above instance, the caciques laughed at Pizarro since they
thought it was a joke to say there was someone greater then Inca Huayna Capac. The
above evangelization also served the Spaniards as reconnaissance, which in due course
led often to horrific actions against the Indgenas. Conversion to Christianity was a
physical, religious, and theological affront to the Indgenas throughout the colonial
period.
For more than three hundred years, the church was an important institution of
Spanish colonial bureaucracy that wielded more power in the conquered lands than in
Iberia. Although the colonial churchs primary goals in the Americas were Indgena
conversion and theological justification for Iberian occupation, the Spaniards were

Cieza de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 107. Pizarros arrival at Tumbez
43

confirmed the Inca Empires existence as the captured Indgenas had originally told Ruiz.
44
Ibid., 123.
 33

roving far and wide with massacres, violence, and oppressionenslaving and inflicting
the worst of burdens on the Indians, a continual obstacle for the church.45 Inhabitants of
these lands received violence instead of peace when they heard Christianitys gospel for
the first time. To support a violent spiritual conquest of the sword and the cross, Spanish
conquistadors embraced the Old Testament warrior imagery as well as Jesus words in
Matthew 10:24, I did not come to bring peace but a sword. It was this partnership,
formed in the name of evangelism, in which the sword opened the way for the cross, and
the cross sanctified the work of the sword, that constituted the originality of Spanish
Christianity.46An unfair war raged between a people trained to kill versus one who did
not view death so unconscientiously. Witnesses confirm the brutal evangelism
implemented during the conquest of Peru and its colonization.
On 6 December 1534, the Kingdom of Quito (Incas second capital) came under
control of the conquistador, Sabastian Benalcazar on behalf of the Pizarros. In 1548,
Quito became part of the viceroyalty of Peru and in 1563 Phillip II created the Real
Audiencia de Quito (Royal Audience of Quito). The Audiencia of Quito was a colonial
administrative unit that covered the region of Ecuador and southern Colombia. By 1535,
administrative offices were functioning in the Indies and, by 1570, were fully operational.
Viceroyalties and later audiencias administered the political and financial interests of the
Spanish crown, judicially arbitrated for Indgenas and colonists, and managed the
distribution of political offices, native labor, and land.47
I, Friar Marcos de Niza, one of the first members of the religious order
[Franciscan] who with the first Christians entered these provinces [of Peru]48 personally
witnessed senseless atrocities against Indgenas in Quito:

45
Bartolom de Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians; the Defense of the Most Reverend Lord,
Don Fray Bartolom De Las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa, against the
Persecutors and Slanderers of the Peoples of the New World Discovered across the Seas, trans. Stafford
Poole (DeKalb,: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), 7.
46
Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 26. See also Luis N. Rivera, A Violent Evangelism: The
Political and Religious Conquest of the Americas (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992).
47
See Burkholder and Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 71; and Richard F. Pattee, The Role of
Catholic Culture in Ecuador, The Catholic Historical Review 25 no. 4 (Jan., 1940).
48
Bartolome de Las Casas, Fray Bartolome de Las Casas: Brevisima Relacion de la Destruccion
de las Indias, Grandes Autores (Barcelona: BIGSA, 1992), 80. Niza wrote to Las Casas regarding what
was taking place in his region (contemporary Ecuador).
 34

They burned Chamba, another very important lord of the province of Quito who
was innocentlikewise they burned Luis, a great lord among those in Quito.
They burned his feet and did many other torments in order to get him to tell them
where Atabalibas gold was located which he did not know. Likewise in Quito,
they burned Cozopanga, the governor of all the provinces of Quito. Sebastian de
Benalcazar, captain of the governor [Pizarro], made certain requirements of him.
[Cozopanga] came in peace but because he did not bring as much gold as they
requested, they burned him with many other caciques and leaders. As much as I
know, the Spaniards intentions were to leave no lord in all the land.

The Spaniards gathered and locked in a lot of indians as many as could fit in three
great houses. Without any cause or wrong doing against the Spaniards, they were
set on fire and all burned.

I attest that I personally saw before my eyes the Spaniards cut hands, noses and
ears of both indian men and women without reason but because they felt like it.
[They did this] in so many places that it would be too long to recount.49

The Indgena resistance and refusal of Christianity resulted from the

conquistadors/colonists sadistic conduct. The Indgenas were made to accept another
religion, language, and culture by force. From Pizarros arrival to Benalcazars conquest,
the first evangelization in the kingdom of Quito narrates positively in Villalbas account.
The Catholic scholar deems that the evangelization was requested by the natives and was
not imposed on them. From Villalbas estimation, a non-Indgena Eurocentric
perspective, the Indgena made an abrupt advancement and a transcendental step into
modernityinto the age of steel, of Scripture, of European civilization, and also of the
Christian faith.50 Interpretations that stand alone as true without the Others version
miss, but more importantly exclude, the Indgenas painful story. The evangelism
narrative begs to be told and interpreted as well from this darker side. For the Indgena,
Christianization was not sudden progression but instead an unexpected encroachment.
If physical assault were not enough, a religious war, common for Iberians,
threatened to extinguish Indgena spirituality. Contrary to Villalbas position that
colonists held a high view of evangelismthey themselves carried other treasures that
they needed to shareabove Quitos gold, which had enticed many to follow

49
Ibid.
50
Villalba, La Primera Evangelizacin del reino de Quito, 145.
 35

Benalczar, Iberian evangelization began to eradicate Indgena culture.51 Because of their

sixteenth century Western worldview, early missionaries demonized aboriginal mores:
They saw the idolatries, superstitions, immoral costumes, drunkenness, idleness,
lies, human sacrifices, cannibalism, etc. as works of the devil; therefore,
consequently their main activity had as its central objective, to save the souls (not
always holistically) from the hands of their chief enemy, the devil.52

As a result, evangelism turned into a religious conflict against the devil and his works.
This translated into obliterating Indgena religion and Christianizing native practices.
Indgena temples and huacas (holy places) were destroyed. In fact, in 1545, the
Archbishop of Lima, Jernimo de Loayza, gave his priests the following obligations: 1)
build the church, 2) seek and destroy pagan documents, 3) refute idolatry, and 4) provide
religious instruction.53 It is not surprising that the destruction of documents was a higher
priority than discipleship within the colonial church. Another mechanism to exorcise the
enemy was baptizing Indgena religious expressions. For example, images like Mary
were placed wherever aboriginal worship (of trees, rocks, etc.) occurred. Also, Christian
churches and chapels replaced former Indgena holy places.When Indgenas celebrated
ancient festivals, the church endorsed a patron saint as the main focus of the celebration.
Even as evangelizations spiritual fight was explicitly directed at Amerindians, the
syncretism of Catholicism and the Indgena religion became a form of resistance by the
natives.54Indgenas subversively veiled their religious rites and practices in Christianitys
spirituality.
Sixty years after Columbus discovery, physical and religious wars continued
against the Indgena. The violent and compulsory evangelism was ontologically driven
by the nature of the Indgena. From the beginning, a theological struggle ensued between

51
Ibid., 148.
52
Freile, La Iglesia ante la Situacin Colonial, 18.
53
Ibid., 19.
54
See Nidia Arrobo Rodas, Religin Indgena en Ecuador: Exclusin y Resistencia in Teologa
Andina: El Tejido Diverso De La Fe Indgena, ed. Josef Estermann, 1. ed., 2 vols. (La Paz, Bolivia: ISEAT
and Plural Editores, 2006). Sills A Comparative Study of the Three Major Religious Movements of the
Highland Quichuas in Andean Ecuador from the Inca Conquest to the Present, suggests Catholicisms
syncretism negatively formed a hybrid Highland Quichua Roman Catholic Church that is extremely
superstitious and animistic. On the other hand, Rodas sees the same syncretism optimistically as being
utilized as a survival strategy of the original [Indgena] religion, a form of resistance adaptable to the
changing world around them, (39).
 36

church leaders in support of the conquest and those against it in regards to the Indgenas
place and role in colonial society. As early as 1511, Dominican Friar Anton Montesino
preached a fiery sermon against the Spanish colonists base view and treatment of natives
in Hispaniola:
You are all in mortal sin! You live in it and you die in it! Why? Because of the
cruelty and tyranny you use with these innocent people. Tell me, with what right,
with what justice, do you hold these Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude?
On what authority have you waged such detestable wars on these people, in their
mild, peaceful lands, where you have consumed such infinitudes of them,
wreaking upon them this death and unheard-of havoc? How is it that you hold
them so crushed and exhausted giving them nothing to eat, nor any treatment for
their diseases, which you cause them to be infected with through the surfeit of
their toils, so that they die on you [as you say] you mean, you kill them
mining gold for you day after day? And what care do you take that anyone
catechize them, so that they may come to know their God and Creator, be
baptized, hear Mass, observe Sundays and Holy Days? Are they not human
beings? Have they no rational souls? Are you not obligated to love them as you
love yourselves? Do you not understand this? Do you not grasp this? How is it
that you sleep so soundly, so lethargically? Know for a certainty that in the state
in which you are you can no more be saved than Moors or Turks who have not,
nor wish to have, the faith of Jesus Christ.55

What it meant to be an Indgena was under examination. To colonists, they were not
entirely human but rather were individuals who were barbaric, uninstructed in
letterscompletely ignorant, [and] unreasoning, and as nature teaches, they are to be
governed by the will of others as slaves.56Juan Gins de Seplveda, the Spanish crowns
theologian and historian articulated from an Aristotelian perspective Spains right to
subsume Amerindians as slaves.57 Las Casas, in defense of the Indgena, forcefully
argued for their humanity and rights to accept or deny Christianity. Although during
15501551, in Valladolid, Las Casas debated Seplveda over the theological problem of
the Indgena and unofficially prevailed, the harsh reality of the unabated violent
evangelism persisted in the Americas under colonists and the church. Like Las Casas and

55
Las Casas reports the sermon in Historia de las Indias here quoted in Gustavo Gutirrez, Las
Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993), 29.
56
Las Casas, In Defense of the Indians, 11.
57
Seplveda wrote Democrates Segundo (Second Democrates - 1547) and Tratado sobre las
justas causas de la guerra contra los indios (Tract on the Just Causes of the War Against the Indians-
1550). He argues in them that since the strongest rules over the weakest; there are some by nature who are
masters (Spaniards) while others are slaves (Indgenas). Seplveda became the colonists champion.
 37

Montesino before him, not all evangelistic efforts and missionaries wrecked havoc but
some instead stood to defend and fight on behalf of the Indgena.
Indgena distrust and rejection were responses to an anomalous salvific message
that was brutally imposed. Spanish Christianitys gospel communicated to the indigenous
masses religious intolerance: ethnic, socio-political, and cultural barriers were erected
instead of removing walls as Christ, its founder, had initiated and commanded disciples
to accomplish. Christopher (Bearer of Christ) Columbus and Spanish colonists brought
over a different Christ, the other Spanish Christ, who by Spanish methodology severed
His religion loose from morality while making him a fetish, one among many.58 But,
nonetheless, in the eyes of the Indgena, it was a Christ that valued them less than human,
making them slaves whose lives and lands were fundamentally a commodity to absorb.
Since Indgenas were objects to the Iberians, as expected, the usurpation of their lands
came next. The ensuing section examines land and labor distribution in colonial America.

3.2.2 INDIGENA LAND AND LABOR: REPARTAMIENTO AND ENCOMIENDA

The decades following Columbus invasion of Hispaniola and the other islands
served as a colonial testing ground and saw the accumulation of capital for future
colonists of Mexico and Peru.59 In order to realize the Spanish settlers dream of wealth
and nobility, power over Indgena land and labor was central. Prior to his Peruvian
expeditions of the Inca Empire and as early as 1509, Pizarro was a successful
conquistador and colonist who owned Indgena laborers/servants in Tierra Firme
(Isthmus of Panama).60 By 1524, Xerez confirms Pizarros successful and established
colonist career as the first expedition of Peru left Panama:
At this time the Captain Francisco Pizarro, son of the Captain Gonzalo Pizarro, a
knight of the city of Truxillo, was living in the city of Panama; possessing his
house, his farm, and his Indians, as one of the principle people of the land, which
indeed he always was having distinguished himself in the conquest and settling,
and in the service of his Majesty.61

58
Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 47.
59
Burkholder and Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 27.
60
Tierra Firme is Spanish for dry ground.
61
Xerez, A True Account, 2.
 38

Spanish colonists who migrated to the new world anticipated that Indgenas would work
for them. Partially because of their lack of work ethic, Mackay calls Spaniards untrue
colonists: They did not leave their motherlands to work, but to make others work for
their profit.62 In a discourse on whether Indgenas were ever truly Christianized (if only
in external rites of Catholicism) juxtaposed to Christian colonists being completely
paganized in their religious praxis, Mackay gives another reason why Spaniards were not
true colonists: marital infidelity and its devastating effects. He explains:
They came, moreover, unaccompanied by their wives; and from the time of their
arrival in America they did everything in their power to keep their legitimate
partners from following themInstead he formed alliances with Indian
womenThe children of these unions were brought up by their untutored
mothers. Home life was lacking. The absence of the sacred and uplifting influence
of religious homesformed one of the gravest problems of colonial life in Ibero-
America. The lack of such homes was another cause of the failure of the Crown
and the Church to produce a truly Christian society in colonial days.63

After discovery of new territories, the appropriation of lands and peoples by enslavement
and demanding tribute payments became normative colonial practice of repartamiento
and encomienda.
Along with the political and religious projects; the colonial enterprise consisted of
the commercial venture which also centered its efforts on Indgenas and their lands. After
the lure for adventure, glory, and wealth subsided with the overthrow of the great
Amerindian civilizations, the stable economic undertaking of colonial mercantile
altogether dependent on (enslavement of) natives and Africans kept coloniality apace.
The Spanish crown authorized and granted conquistadors and their men allocations
(repartamientos) of an Indgena cacique and his people to an encomendero, the title
given to the recipient to work whatever properties the Spaniard held.64 Early settlers
coveted repartamientos since it guaranteed the needed labor to work the land along with
a privileged status. This colonial institution became known as encomiendas, the
development of the economic and social order being set up in the Indiesa concept

62
Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 48.
63
Ibid., 49.
64
Burkholder and Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 28.
 39

already used in Spain. In Spanish America, the encomienda became a labor system
utilized for centuries, the structural root of the injustices of colonial society.65
If destruction, confiscation, and exportation of Amerindian lands wealth of gold,
silver, emeralds, and other minerals were not enough, there was also excessive
exploitation in forcing labor upon Indgenas to work their own lands. Colonists
exchanged the copper-colored Indgena and the production of his hands into economic
capital. It was not uncommon for an Indgena community to lose their men as they were
relocated to mining fields (gold or silver), plantations, and farms because they
[encomenderos] coveted our work, but at the same time they rejected, abhorred, and
denied our state of being human, legitimizing the brutal oppression and exploitation that
we were subjected to by encomenderos.66 Encomenderos as business men chose
temporal power as more profitable than the spiritual conquest. Pizarros experience as an
encomendero in Panama was a precursor to the Inca Conquest where he grew in
cruelties and deaths, without faith or truth, destroying peoples, intimidatingbeing the
cause of great evils that have occurred in those lands of Peru.67 Las Casas also was an
encomendero (Saul, the persecutor of the Amerindians) before becoming the
anticonquistador (Apostle Paul to the Indgenas) of the Americas. When he saw the
success of the Portuguese project, African slavery in Brazil, Las Casas advocated the
same for the Spanish territories initiating African slavery in the region. Latter Las Casas
lamented his error and confessed, I have bought Christand they did not give Him to
me for nothing! I had to pay for Him!68 Under the repartamiento and encomienda
system, the Indgena had been diminished to slavery by men to whom they were unjustly
given when the land was distributed.

65
Gutierrez, Las Casas, 280.
66
Las Nacionalidades Indgenas en el Ecuador, 24. Indgenas were also exploited with extreme
demands for labor, food, and, in the case of women, sexual favors; and even sold, in Burkholder and
Johnson, Colonial Latin America, 108.
67
Las Casas, Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, 77. Las Casas alludes to Pizarro as another great
tyrant of the encomienda system. Mackay categorizes encomenderos as Landlord Evangelists who were
charged by the Spanish crown to convert the Indgenas to the Holy Catholic Faith. If they fulfilled the
commission, they were granted spiritual and temporal authorityabsolute power over the indigenous
race. See Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 4344.
68
Cited in Mackay, The Other Spanish Christ, 47.
 40

The Indgena in no way wanted to submit to the inhuman treatment and

enslavement of the encomienda and attempted to get free from its yoke. Resistance took
the forms of lying, fighting, uprisings, fleeing, and even the silent resistance of death:
suicide. These types of protests exemplified the indigenous determination and fight to
defend their culture and customs. Though the land was no longer theirs, the Indgenas
connection to it could not be expropriated. As a testament to this quiet resistance, today
in Ecuador, Indgenas are still spiritually connected to Pachamama (Mother Earth) as in
pre-Columbian times.69
Traditionally the Indgena has been linked to the earth with which he feels united
not only in a physical sense by his labor, but mystically through beliefs and
ritualsThe earth is in itself an object of special treatment, [a] sacred treatment
by which [one] seeks to obtain from her all that she can give. The earth is invited,
petitioned, implored to be generous, that she offer the maximum abundance that
she can offer.70

Ecuador syncretism has helped to preserve original Indgena religion and culture to
defend against the colonial acculturation mechanism, the church. Although the Spanish
crown, conquistadors, and encomenderos conquered, murdered, and exploited them, the
Indgena today stands amidst dispersing shadows (political, religious, and commercial) to
a new dawn.

3.3 REDISCOVERING THE OTHER, EL INDIGENA: BEYOND THE ECLIPSE

In the modern period of the Ecuadorian Catholic Church, particularly the second
half of the twentieth century, Vatican II (Rome) and the second General Conference of
Latin American Bishops (Medellin, Colombia) point to a new direction and view of the
Indgena. Also the bishop of the Indgenas, Monsignor Leonidas Proao, contributes to
the renewal of the church.
Ultimately the social, political, and religious structures established in the
continent kept the bourgeois, the populace, and the poor beneath (covered by) aristocrat
(social elites) control. For over four centuries, the church and state focused on amassing

69
In Inca mythology, pachamama is the fertility goddess over agriculture (planting and
harvesting) and still worshipped by Andean people today.
70
Luis Fernando Botero, Chimborazo de los Indios: Estudios Antropolgicos, 1a ed. (Quito,
Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 1990), 1516.
 41

power and wealth above their primary goal of serving the people. As a result, the
Catholic Church in Latin America became a collaborator with the status quo, a
contributor to a violent society, and an extremely rich and powerful proprietor. The poor,
in particular the Indgena, were subsumed into an oppressive system in need of
deliverance and rediscovery. In the 1960s, a transformation began within the church
(Vatican II and Medellin) that gave the region and the Indgena hope. This section
examines the dire condition of the church and the regeneration that ensued.
From the beginning, in Latin America, interdependence between the colonial
church and political structures have resulted in what Penny Lernoux calls, a Church of
accommodation, which continued to the twentieth century.71 Spanish Catholicism
became a vehicle of acculturation, transmitting white European social traditions and
customs as normative. The colonial casta system emerged and suppressed the Indgena,
negro, and mestizo into appropriating Iberian and later criollo (pure Iberian ancestry)72
culture. Catholicism in its medieval European form, the mechanism of conquest with its
violent gospel, was established in Latin America. The alliance between church and state
fashioned the centralization (upper tier) of a small wealthy minority (white Europeans)
living exceedingly well whereas the rest of society subsisted in utter poverty. Today
Ecuador, like the rest of Latin America, lives this reality.
Violence, the conquistador legacy, remains a part of modern Latin American
society. Throughout the region, human rights abuse, torture, and assassinations are
commonplace in the American republics. In 1987, a book entitled Los Derechos
Humanos en Ecuador (The Human Rights in Ecuador) compiled reports from human
rights agencies and the press on President Len Febres Corderos 19841986 violations
of Ecuadorian human rights.73 This total disregard of human life originated with Spanish
and Portuguese colonialism. According to Lernoux, the oppressive nature of colonial
society has lived on through both the independence and industrialization eras and up to
the present:

71
Lernoux, The Long Path to Puebla, in Puebla and Beyond: Documentation and Commentary,
ed. John Eagleson and Philip J. Scharper (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), 3.
72
Criollo signified that a person in the Spanish colonies was born pure and linked to Iberian
descent. The term literally meant limpieza de sangrecleanliness of blood.
73
Corderos regimen of terror is illustrated in Remigio Rivera and Juan Ortz, Los Derechos
Humanos en Ecuador, 1a ed. (Quito, Ecuador: Fundacin Ecuatoriana de Estudios Sociales, 1987).
 42

Today the principal values of the ruling class in Latin America are still those of
the white conquerorsbrute force, or machismo; a contempt for the law
(businessmen are expected to pay bribes but not taxes); disdain for manual labor
(only the poor work with their hands); and racial discrimination (the level of
education, income, and social standing is directly related to the color of a Latin
Americans skin, avowals to the contrary by white government officials
notwithstanding).

It is a land, Lowry said, without compassion overrun by predators. First Spaniard

exploits Indian, then, when he had children he exploited the halfbreed, then the
pure-bloodedcriollo, then the mestizo exploits everybody, foreigners, Indians,
and all. Then the Germans and Americans exploited him; now the final chapter,
the exploitation of everybody by everybody else.74

The Latin American Catholic Church up through the middle of the twentieth century
endorsed the status quo (the oppressorwhite, rich, and upper class) albeit for the few
clerics in between that followed the example of Montesino and Las Casas.
As the early nineteenth century wars of independence freed colonists from
Spanish rule, the new republics inherited control and Catholic patronage. Yet,
Catholicism remained the same transported socio-cultural religion that currently directs
the very ontological fabric of a continent. Toward the end of the second millennium it is
not surprising, then, that few Latin Americans understand the teachings of Christ, even
though 90 percent of the regions 320 million people are baptized Catholics.75 Rubn
Daz defines it as a religious-cultural convergence and frames it within the term
confesionalismo (confessionalism): it appears that the religious in Latin America and in
Ecuador is partly constitutive of the peoples identity.76 In addition to Catholicisms
cultural import, there are other factors which contributed to a radical change, a needed
renewal of the modern Catholic Church.
By the end of the 1800s, the Catholic Church, as the state religion, had become
extremely wealthy and complacent. Its power was challenged only by politicians,
university professors, and students, and other free-thinking individuals who were
labeled liberals. Resolute to keep control, the church sided with ultra reactionary
parties, euphemistically called conservative, which ran tyrannical governments and

74
Eagleson and Scharper, Puebla and Beyond, 56.
75
Ibid., 4.
76
Rubn Daz, Evanglico Poltico O Poltica Evanglica? (Quito, Ecuador: FESO, 1990), 53.
 43

combated liberals.77 Altercations between both parties continued until the 1930s,
weakening the churchs reign. In some countries, the church lost its monopoly in areas of
education and separation of church and state, and civil marriages and divorce became
legal.
Another factor during the 1950s was Communism. Fidel Castros successful
revolution of 1959 in Cuba threatened the West (Rome and Washington) and brought
global attention to Latin America. Although the Cold War ignited worldwide fear, it also
created an atmosphere for change. At the beginning of the 1960s, Latin America was
ready for Pope John XXIIIs convocational prayer: Renew your wonders in our time, as
though by a new Pentecost, and for the Second Vatican Council that opened a new
chapter in the history of Catholicism.78 No one knew Pope Johns specific reasons for
calling the council; but, in general terms he wanted to bring the Church up to date; it
was to throw open windows and let in fresh air.79

3.3.1 BY A NEW PENTECOST, VATICAN II AND MEDELLIN

The Second Vatican Council (19621965), a historic event for the Roman
Catholic Church, marked what Catholic scholars call a New Christendom. It proposed a
radical revitalization by attempting to contextualize the church to the modern world. Pope
John XXIII wanted to renew the church in a very clear and well-defined correspondence
with the spiritual needs of the present hour.80 A fresh direction and model was
envisioned by the ecumenical council that:
set out to impart an ever-increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to
adapt to more closely to the needs of our age those institutions which are subject
to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ;
to strengthen whatever can help to call all mankind into the churchs fold.81

77
Eagleson and Scharper, Puebla and Beyond, 6.
78
Thomas Hughson, Interpreting Vatican II: A New Pentecost, Theological Studies 69, no. 1
(Mr 2008): 5.
79
Douglas Woodruf, The Second Vatican Council: At the Third Session, International Affairs
41, no. 2 (Apr., 1965): 226.
80
Ibid., 12. Papal address 25 January 1959.
81
Sacrosanctum Concilium, 4 December 1963. See Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The
Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed. (Boston, MA: St. Paul Editions, 1992).
 44

The reformist outcome transformed the churchs doctrine in areas such as liturgy, attire,
and openness to other faith traditions. Sociologists, historians, theologians, and
philosophers, laud the noteworthy effects that the council had on doctrine, practices,
identity, and [the] strength of Roman Catholicism.82
Particularly significant for Latin America, by the end of the council, a
consciousness for the poor had transpired across the church from Mexico to Argentina.83
Recognition of the worlds poor and their oppression motivated Pope John XXIII and
Vatican IIs call for a renewed church, a church of the poor. Globally, and especially in
Latin America, the cry of the poor was no longer ignored or eclipsed. A church
committed to the poor and justice was one of the momentous reforms:
You hear rising up, more pressing than ever, from their personal distress and
collective misery, the cry of the poor. Was it not in order to respond to their
appeal as Gods privileged ones that Christ came, even going as far as to identify
himself with them? In a world experiencing the full flood of development this
persistence of poverty-stricken masses and individuals constitutes a pressing call
for a conversion of minds and attitudes, especially for you who follow Christ
more closely in this earthly condition of self-emptyingThat cry must, first of
all, bar you from whatever would be a compromise with any form of social
injustice. It obliges you also to awaken consciences to the drama of misery and to
the demands of social justice made by the gospel and the church. It leads some of
you to join the poor in their situation and to share their bitter cares.84

Catholicisms renewal, as by a new Pentecost (novum veluti Pentecostem) signaled a

restoration impulse to primitive Christianity in its initial position toward societyof
social protest against the established order. The Catholic Church, after centuries of
Constantinian preservation of the status quo, rediscovered its original religious, social,
and political function, to side with the Other, the poor, the Indgena. The Latin
American church advanced the new social call theologically (via Liberation Theology)
and ecclesiastically with the Second General Conference of the Consejo Episcopal

82
Melissa J. Wilde, How Culture Mattered at Vatican II: Collegiality Trumps Authority in the
Council's Social Movement Organizations, American Sociological Review 69, no. 4 (2004): 577.
83
See Enrique D. Dussel, From the Second Vatican Council to the Present Day, in The Church
in Latin America, 14921992, ed. Enrique D. Dussel (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), 154.
84
Evangelica testifacatio, 29 June 1971. See Flannery, Vatican Council II, 688689.
 45

Latinoamericano (Latin American Episcopal Conference, CELAM),85 held in Medellin,

Colombia in 1968.
Medellin sought to appropriate Vatican IIs conclusions within the Latin
American context. For the 130 assembled bishops who entreated the Holy Spirit for
illumination and persisted in prayer as Vatican II exemplified, the mystery of Pentecost
has been renewed in the exploration for a new and dynamic presence of the church in
the present transformation of Latin America.86 Because of the epidemic proportions of
poverty and injustice among Latin Americans, the future requires of us a creative labor
in the process of development.87 Historically unprecedented, the Latin American
hierarchy moved the church into a post-Constantinian position thus committed to the poor
and to social construction. Medellin envisioned freedom from oppression (Egypt) as true
development, which is the passage for each and all, from conditions of life that are less
human, to those that are more human.88
In the churchs rediscovery and embrace of the Other, a major contribution of
Medellin, and for this study, was breaking with the established social/political structures
thereby shifting power to poor Latin Americans. Many scholars concur with the need for
the reallocation of authority and express the impact of Medellin. According to Lernoux,
the present system, the continents situation of sin of the upper class and foreign
monopolies institutionalized violence, was recognized by the bishops. Yet, Hennelly
views the shift, the renewal of empowering the poor, as the essential material (better
expressed as essential subject) of Medellin. For Dussel, the historic meeting in Colombia
delineated the impulse by which the Latin American church would develop in the
future. And for the Bishop of the Indians, the late Ecuadorian Leonidas Proao,

85
CELAM was forged in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1955 as a continental structure that networked
the national episcopacies. The meeting itself was of little consequence except that it signaled a meager first
step away from Romes tutelage. See Lernoux, The Long Path to Puebla, in Eagleson and Scharper,
Puebla and Beyond, 1011; and Dussel, From the Second Vatican Council to the Present Day, in Dussel,
The Church in Latin America, 14921992, 153154. Since CELAMs Second General Conference of Latin
America Bishops was held in the Colombian city of Medellin, its namesake will be used throughout to refer
to the meeting.
86
The Church in the Present-Day Transformation of Latin America in Light of the Council
(August 26September 6, 1968), in Liberation Theology: A Documentary History, ed. Alfred T. Hennelly
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), 96, 97.
87
Ibid., 90.
88
Ibid., 96.
 46

Medellin was foundational in the construction of a community church to replace the

Catholic vertical church.

3.3.2 MONSIGNOR LEONIDAS PROANO: BISHOP OF THE INDIGENAS (1910

1988)

The modern Roman Catholic Church in Ecuador is a powerful institution, a

pyramidal church that, from the beginning, has sided with the established order resulting
in paralytic Ecuadorians. Bishop Proao takes the term paralitico (paralytic, cripple,
lame, etc) of Acts 3:2, Now a man crippled from birth as a metaphor to describe
Ecuadors reality: Ecuador contains its man lame from birth: its whole person.89
Catholic clergy and scholars acknowledge that the church in Ecuador was for too long a
collection of institutions (Espn), solely a church of priests, bishops and nuns
(Ricchiardi), and a rich church allied to the powerful (Proao).90 Vatican II and
Medellin helped the Latin American church (including the Church in Ecuador) refocus
attention from an exclusive preoccupation with spiritual problems to a greater
awareness of temporal realities surrounding them. In Ecuador, Bishop Proaos work
in the Diocese of Riobamba exemplified the renewal affecting the church. His objective
was to edify the church as community and as a community committed to solving the
problems of men.91
All of Proaos writings communicate a practical contextual theology,
anthropology and ecclesiology which exhibit a belief in a better humanity and church.
His autobiography Creo en el Hombre y en la Comunidad (I Believe in Man and the
Community) affirms his personal creed and enduring legacy. The situation of the poor,

89
Leonidas Proao, A Church and Politics in Ecuador, in The Unifying Role of the Bishop, vol.
71, Concilium: Religion in the Seventies, trans. Paul Burns, ed. Edward Schillebeeckx, (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1972), 100. For the original in Spanish, see Equipo Seladoc, ed., Panorama De La Teologia
Latinoamericana I (Salamanca: Ediciones Sigueme, 1975), 186.
90
See P. Rafael Espn L., La Iglesia Ecuatoriana y el Orden Establecido: Breve Anlisis
Histrico de la Situacin de la Iglesia, in Del Vaticano al Ecuador: Teologa desde America Latina, ed.
Jaime Ruiz N. and Leonardo Boff (Quito, Ecuador: Fundacion de Investigaciones Sociales Luis Chusig,
1984), 257-261; and Luis Ricchiardi, ed., "La Iglesia Ecuatoriana como Parte del Pueblo," in Anunciar
(Quito: Colegio Tcnico Don Bosco, 1984); and Leonidas Proao, The Church and the Poor, in The
Dignity of the Despised of the Earth, vol. 130, Concilium, trans. Dinah Livingstone, ed. Jacques Pohier and
Dietmar Mieth (New York: Seabury Press, 1979).
91
Leonidas Proao, La Evangelizacin e la Dicesis de Riobamba in Iglesia y Fe en Amrica
Latina: Reflexiones desde el Ecuador (Quito, Ecuador: INEDES, 1979), 55.
 47

specifically the Ecuadorian poor of the province of Chimborazo, was upmost in his heart
and mind:
In Latin America the poor are the Indians, the negroes, the peasants, the slum-
dwellers, the unemployed or under-employed, the workers and many skilled
craftsmen.92

[In 1979] the province (or the diocese) has about 400,000 inhabitants. The urban
population is scarce at about 18% total. The remaining 82% make up essentially
the rural population. In it, the most important constituency in regards to numbers
is represented by the Indgenas. There are close to 220,000 to 230,000 full
blooded Indgenas that live in the province. The situation of this population is the
following: there is a large percentage of illiteracy because of the neglect given to
the Indgenas. Practically there have been no schools for them, yet the situation in
the last few years has been changing. They live in a deplorable economic
condition because they live, you could almost say, like slaves in the haciendas
[ranches]; they were treated as machinery, like property tools of the haciendas,
like objects. This is the result of the huasipungo [peonage] system like it was
called and established a long time ago (in the colonial period).93

Growing up poor with his parents who were concerned for the poor, the Indgena, created
in Proao an appreciation and love for them:
I know like all poor [people] what it is to suffer of need and hungerThe poor
almost spontaneously feel solidarity with other poor, with all those who suffer.

Often they [my parents] instilled that same love and respect [for the poor] through
their words. My father as much as my mother had a great appreciation for the
IndgenasFor example, when we had ascertained that the Indgenas were the
object of disdain, of mockery, of exploitation by other people, they made me see
the wrong of such behavior, telling me that they also were Gods children and
brothers [and sisters]This love and respect for the poor, particularly for the
Indgenas, came to form part of my very existence. This is why later on I have
said that I never want to be a traitor to the poor, since I was born in a poor home
and learned in that very home to love the poor.94

92
Proao, The Church and the Poor, 64.
93
Leonidas Proao, Creo En La Fuerza Del Espritu: Entrevista Con Monseor Leonidas Proao,
Obispo De Riobamba, Ecuador, Cristianismo y sociedad 17, no. 34 (1979): 90.
94
Leonidas Proao, Creo En El Hombre Y En La Comunidad (Bilbao: Descle de Brouwer, 2001),
18, 22. In 1936 when Proao was first ordained a priest he was greatly influenced by JOC (Juventud
Obrera CristianaYoung Christian Workers). This organization was founded by Father Joseph Cardijn in
1912 in Belgium as Jeunesse Ouvrire Christians (Jocists or Jocism). Today, it is an international Catholic
youth workers movement that fights for justice from their own reality and experience. For Proao their
methodology of Ver, Juzgar, Actuar (See, Judge, Act) became flesh in me. One starts by seeing the
reality of things (deeply) and seeks its causes in order to judge what is and what it should be within that
reality and Gods plan. For Proao, after observation and analysis, then action was taken to bring about
 48

His inherited devotion to the Indgena and the poor became a natural fit to the churchs
social renewal of opting for the poor in the years followingVatican II. Proao opted for
the Indgena because culturally he was illiterate, religiously he had been overlooked,
politically he did not have a voice, and psychologically the Indgena became timid,
distrustful, conformist, fatalist, resigned to his situation since he had no hope.95 He saw
understanding humanitys reality is the starting point for change and felt that the church
as community was to lead the way.
Espn rightly analyzes the Ecuadorian church as daughter to its historical past.
During the colonial epoch, the lines were blurred between church and state, while the
wars of independence split the church into royalist and revolutionary factions. Once
independence was achieved, the church returned to its previous relationship with the
state, which ended with Garcia Moreno and liberalism violently rupturing the union
and establishing the separation of church and state.96 In spite of half a millennium of
formation, the Latin American church, particularly, in Ecuador took two contradictory
stances. There is the rich church allied to the powerful, and the poor church which is
involved with the poor.97 After almost twenty years as bishop of the Diocese of
Riobamba (March 18, 1954 until April 11, 1985), Proao penned a critique of Ecuadorian
ecclesiastical structures in which the church as well as his diocese could be seen in three
ways: immobile (triumphalistic, conservative, and defensivealigned with the powers
to be), modernized (superficial, elitist, and accommodatingnot confronting the state
of sin), and dynamic (faithful, risk-taking, and committedchanging social
structures). He denounced the former two while the latter became the goal for his diocese.
Proaos second facet of his creed, his trust in community, convinced him to labor
throughout his pastoral career of fifty-two years (19361988) for a dynamic communal
church birthed to walk with the Indgena and the oppressed. In order for Proao to
implement a pastoral de conjunto (pastoral partnership, working with others), the
complicity with the immobile and modernized aspects of the Ecuadorian church

resolutions to change the reality of the situation(s). It was a method, which his parents had initiated early in
his childhood but that latter had full expression.
95
Proao, Creo en la Fuerza del Espritu, 9091.
96
Espn, La Iglesia Ecuatoriana y el Orden Establecido, 257.
97
Proao, The Church and the Poor, 66.
 49

needed first to be renounced in the diocese of Riobamba. The Riobamba church

confessed its sin: 1) owned large tracts of land[therefore] defended the structures of
usurpation and maintenance of the established order; 2) devoted and still devotes
skilled personnel and economic resources to the education of the children of the
privileged few; and 3) has not made an effective contribution to changing the condition
of its people in such a way that they will be able to participate responsibly in the political
life of the country.98After seeing and judging the reality of his region in partnership with
his pastoral team and the poor, he took actions to bring about social change. Politically,
the diocese led by Proao took actions to free itself from an oppressor role. The Church
resigned as landowner and helped bring agricultural reform. It became committed to
justice and community at all levels. In education, Proao helped the province of
Chimborazo implement techniques of educating towards freedom. All in all, a
conscientization, forming a critical awareness, among the people was sought.99
Although the bishops ways of overcoming the worlds systemic social and moral
crisis (reality) may be optimistic, for Proao, a communal church model employs
promising results. Such a church constructs a more human world as it incarnates itself
in humanitys reality.100 It combats desacrilization as it guides the world in consecration
to God. The ecclesial sin of authoritarianism, clericalism, and triumphalism
disappear in this type of church in which the long-term effect is a climate where true
peace, harmony, justice, and authentic progress rule.101 When everyone takes
ownership, there is an open and real experience of solidarity.
Indgenas took the model to heart and called Proaos church their own in spite of
how other individuals and organizations tried to tear it down. For them:
Because of[attempts to dissemble the church], we, the country people must
meet and organize ourselves. We, the leaders are the ones who must see, hear and
speak. We, all the country people, must collaborate [and] walk united in order to
advance liberation. The church of Riobamba is working to make a path. From
where is the church of Riobamba making a path?

98
Proao, A Church and Politics in Ecuador, 103.
99
Ibid.
100
Proao, Creo en el Hombre y en la Comunidad, 165.
101
Ibid.
 50

It is starting to make a path from the poor. We, the country people, are poor and
many. In cities and towns there are also many people. The church of Riobamba
has started from here to open a path. Where is this open path going? It is going
toward liberation so there can be justice, unity, love and respect.102

In the end, the bishop of the Indgenas did not apologize that his diocese was known as
the church of the poor. Rather, Proao was convinced that the Indgenas values were
extraordinary and had a redeemable quality for a society that with each passing day
becomes more individualistic and conflictive.103
Proao served the Indgena by removing the oppressors clothes for their native
poncho (mantle). The eclipsed Indgena had now a taitamito (dear father) who arrived
and made changes in the church and community on their behalf. He gave them back their
lands, instituted literacy centers in the communities by radio called Escuelas
Radiofnicas Populares (Popular Radiophonic Schools). He provided ways for them to
value their identity through the Centro de Educacion y Accion Social (CEAS or Center
for Education and Social Action).104 By the early 1980s, Proao had helped advance the
Riobamba church. In 1980 and 1981, he instilled Quichua missionaries (19801981), and
in 1982, he assisted in the foundation of the Movimiento Indgena del Chimborazo
(Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo). Ana Mara Huacho, an Indgena woman who
knew him personally remembered, Monsignor Proao always was an upright man and
poor among the poor, Indgena among the Indgenas; he suffered humiliation with the
Indgenas and participated of our food.105 Proao, Medellin, and Vatican II helped to
rediscover the poor, the Indgena. As a result, the Ecuadorian church moved beyond the
shadows to again embrace the light of justice, peace, and human dignity.

102
Ibid., 228.
103
Ibid, 232. Furthermore, Proao believed an Indgena contribution could redeem a westernized
and capitalistic world.
104
CEAS was another project (another radio station) to serve the Indgena (poor) population as a
whole. Here they could learn to create radio programs and provide consulting services to cooperatives (co-
ops) and other associations. It gave Indgenas an avenue to recover their language with programs aired in
Quichua. Cultural values were accentuated as Indgena musical groups were incorporated in the
programming. Promotion of community development projects and the formation of leaders were other
beneficial projects for the Indgenas. See Ana Mara Huacho, El Siempre fue Indio entre los Indios, in
Leonidas Proao, Obispo de los Pobres, ed. Francisco Enrquez Bermeo (Quito, Ecuador: Editorial El
Conejo, 1989), 86.
105
Ibid, 89. She further adds, He was neither indifferent nor racist. He helped us be self aware, to
value our identity, and to little by little come out of our oppression and marginality.
 51

3.4 CONCLUSION
The eclipse metaphor of this chapter renders the overshadowing of the
Indgena. The imagery attempts to cast the how, when, and why a people (Iberian-
Spanish/Portuguese European) conquered, colonized, evangelized, and modernized
another people (aboriginal society). Religious, political, and cultural origins are
significant for understanding todays Ecuadorian Indgena. Sometime after the idea for
chapter 2 was formulated, Enrique Dussels monograph, The Invention of the Americas:
Eclipse of the Other and the Myth of Modernity, was located. In the text, the author
expounds philosophically upon the concealment of the Indgena: Europe [Spanish
Conquistadors] never discovered (des-cubierto) this Other [the Indgena] as Other but
covered over (encubierto) the Other as part of the Same: i.e., Europe.106 The
conquistadors, the Spanish chroniclers, and the Roman Catholic Church embodied the
covering over.
Not all of Latin Americas Catholic record is a history of the Others obliteration.
Vatican IIs landmark council initiated a renouncement of an immobile and
modernized church to a dynamic and renewed one. The option for the Other (the
poor) revitalized Roman Catholicism globally but especially in Latin America. Medellin
took wings and contextualized the churchs new impulse throughout the region.
Leonidas Proao and his Riobamba Diocese is an example of how opting for the poor, a
personal creed of belief in humanity and community, aided an Ecuadorian church to cast
off clouds of inequality for bright rays of solidarity, egalitarianism, and love.

106
Dussel, The Invention of the Americas, 12.
 52

4. THE MESSAGE: LOST IN TRANSLATION

In the historical annals, Christianity and culture have separated like water and oil
at times and other times complemented each other like wine and food. For example,
anthropologists and missiologists continue to debate over religion and culture. The
formers separatist view guards against religions that sequester and obliterate indigenous
culture. While the latter affirms that a heterogeneous union can coexist between both for
the betterment of culture as the gospel serves as a kneading agent. During five centuries,
evangelization in Latin America has fluctuated between communicating a message of
violence and a message of peace as chapter 3 on Catholicism demonstrates. Which
message have los evanglic1 in a predominant Catholic continent favored? Is the
evangelization and message relevant to Latin Americas reality? What impact has
Protestantism had on the Indgena? Chapter 4 focuses on these inquiries as it explores
how, from Ecuadors independence era to the present, Protestantism has been translated
into a message of acculturation. Specifically, the chapter examines the role of the Bible
and the missionary on the Indgenas of Ecuador.

4.1 LOST IN TRANSLATION: THE CASE OF ATAHUALPA

One of the first recorded accounts of Indgena contact with the Bible was the
meeting of Inca Atahualpa and Friar Vicente Valverde moments before the Spaniards
conquered Peru at Cajamarca.2 In 1529, the Queen of Spain sanctioned Francisco Pizarro
to conquer the Incas and appointed him Governor and captain of all conquests in Peru.
According to Xerezs chronology on 16 November 1532 in the city of Cajamarca, the
above interaction and capture of Atahualpa transpired. At the plaza, Governor Pizarro
waited to ambush the Inca as he arrived with his large entourage. The governor sent friar
Valverde with an interpreter to speak to Atahualpa before the surprise attack.

1
Both evanglicos and protestantes (Evangelicals and Protestants) are synonymous and used
interchangeably in Latin America. Early on in the movement, Pentecostals were ostracized, but since
Pentecostalisms exponential growth in the second half of the twentieth century, today Latin American
scholars bracket them within Protestant ranks. Chapter 4 observes the recent acceptance and categorization
of Pentecostalism.
2
See Pedro Pizarro, Relation of the Discovery and Conquest of the Kingdoms of Peru, trans. Philip
Ainsworth Means (New York: The Cortes Society, 1921), 181182; Xerez, A True Account, 54; and Cieza
de Len, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 211212.
 53

The narratives of eyewitnesses, Francisco Xerez and Pedro Pizarro, cavalryman

and cousin to the governor, in their narratives record in epigrammatic detail how
Valverde spoke to Atahualpa via an interpreter (Martinillo) and he preached unto him
the matters pertaining to our holy faith.3 The exchange exemplifies how the Christian
message was lost in translation as Valverde started by saying:
I am a Priest of God, and I teach Christians the things of God, and in like manner
I come to teach you. What I teach is that which God says to us in this Book.
Therefore, on the part of God and of the Christians, I beseech you to be their
friend, for such is Gods will, and it will be for your good. Go and speak to the
Governor, who waits for you.4

Eight decades later, De la Vegas account gives Valverdes two-part discourse as follows:
It is proper that you should know, most famous and most powerful king, that it is
necessary that Your Highness and all your subjects should not only learn the true
Catholic faith, but that you should hear and believe the following: First, that God,
three in one, created heaven and earth and all things in the world, and He offers
the prize of eternal life to the good, and punishes the wicked with perpetual
suffering. In the beginning this God created manin his own likenessThis man
Adam sinned by breaking the command of his creator, and with him all men
hitherto born and to be born till the end of the world have sinned. No man or
woman is free of this taint, nor will be, with the exception of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who, being the Son of the true God, descended from heaven, was born of
the Virgin Mary to redeem the whole of mankind and free it from the bondage of
sin. He at last died for our salvation on a wooden cross like the one I have in my
hands for which reason we as Christians worship and revere it. This Jesus Christ
rose by His own virtue from the dead, and after forty days He ascended into
heaven and sits on the right hand of God, our Almighty Father. He left on earth
His apostles and successors [to preach the gospel]It was His will also that Saint
Peter, His apostle, should be the prince over the apostlesand that all other
pontiffs of Rome, the successors of St. Petershould have the same supreme
authority God gave him.

Therefore the holy pope of Romehas conceded the conquest of these parts to
Charles Vso that, having subjected these peoples and their kings and lordshe

3
Pizarro, Relation of the Discovery, 182.
4
Xerez, A True Account, 54. Chroniclers mention that Valverde carried in one hand a cross
(possibly a crucifix) and a book in the other. For Xerez, Juan de Betanzos, and De la Vega, it was a book
while Cieza de Len, Pedro Pizarro, and Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala state it was a breviary. See Jaun de
Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton and Dana Buchanan (Austin: University
of Texas, 1996), 263; De la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 678679; and Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala, The
First New Chronicle and Good Government, trans. David Frye (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 2006),
112, 114.
 54

alone may reign over and rule and govern these peoples, bringing to them the
knowledge of God and obedience to His churchThus the great emperor Charles
V has chosen as his lieutenant and ambassador Don Francisco Pizarro, who is
now here, so that Your Highness kingdoms may also receive the same benefit.
He will establish a league and alliance of perpetual friendship between His
Majesty and Your Highness, so that Your Highness and all your realms will
become tributariesand become his vassal and deliver your kingdom wholly into
his handsThis comes first. Secondlyyou shall give true obedience to the
popeand receive and believe the faith of Jesus Christand scorn and utterly
repudiate the abominable superstition of your idolsIf you refuse, know that you
will be constrained with war, fire, and the sword, and all your idols shall be
overthrown and we shall oblige you by the sword to abandon your false religion
and to receive [inevitably] our Catholic faith and pay tribute to our emperor and
deliver him your kingdom. If you seek obstinately to resist, you may rest assured
that God will suffer that you and all your Indians shall be destroyed by our arms,
even as Pharaoh of old and all his host perished in the Red Sea.5

Behind the message, political intentions are framed in a Spanish Christian idiom.
Valverdes intenton sufaces within his theological communication as identified by jurist
Juan Lpez de Palacios Rubios 1510 document, the Requerimiento (requirement or
demand). The declaration gave Spain sovereignty and the right to war.6 Secondly, the
tidings emerge from a textual form (book) and transmit a notification and edict rather
than good news between equals. For the Spaniards, the message was a mere formality
given prior to the real business of conquering.
Atahualpas interpretation and appropriation of the message broke down in the
following manner. After hearing the discourse, the Inca took the book and not knowing
how to open it, the Priest was extending his arm to do so, when [Atahualpa], in great
anger, gave him a blow on the arm, not wishing that it should be opened.7 Because of
the Indgenas oral tradition, there was no link to the book and its textual significance;
therefore, without any astonishment at the letters and paperhe threw it away from him

5
De la Vega, Royal Commentaries, 680681.
6
Throughout the Spanish conquest the requerimiento was read to Indgenas asserting that God
through the pope had authority to govern the entire earth. Further by means of the Papal Bull, Inter Caetera
(4 May 1493), the pope granted the Americas to the Spanish monarchs. For Spanish conquistadores and
colonizers, this document became a tool and legal loophole to conquer, war, and enslave inhabitants when
Christianity was rejected.
7
Xerez, A True Account, 54.
 55

five or six paces.8Another obstruction between them was the translation itself. Juan de
Betanzos account, from an Indgena perspective, affirms that Martinillo did not know
how to relate to the Inca what the priest Fray Vicente told him:
The interpreter said that [the] priest was the son of the Sun, and that the Sun had
sent him to tell the Inca that he should not fight, he should obey the captain who
was also the son of the Sun, and what was in the book and the painting in the
book said that.9

De la Vega also accentuates the mistranslation of Martinillo:

As to his translation, he did it badly and often reversed the sense, but this was not
done out of malice, but because he did not understand what he was interpreting,
and spoke it like a parrot. Instead of God three in one, he said God three and one
make four, adding the numbers in order to make himself understood.10

Even if Atahualpas oral tradition did not obscure the communication and the translation
was accurate, ultimately the conquistadors actions made the message incomprehensible.
For at the conclusion of the interaction, any possible agreement between them was
dissolved because I know well how you [Spaniards] have behaved on the road, how you
have treated my Chiefs, and taken the cloth from my storehouses.11 Clearly, the
Christian message of faith, hope, love, and salvation was missing in translation;

8
Ibid. According to Ayala, Atahualpa inquired who told him this. The friar responded the Gospel,
the book had spoken to him. Give me the book, so that it will tell me, replied Atahualpa. As he looked
through its pages the Inca exclaimed, Well, why doesnt it tell me? The book doesnt even talk to me!
Consequently Atahualpa then threw the book; see The First New Chronicle, 114.
9
In this account Atahualpas response differs from Ayalas version, hence a second explanation
for the Incas reaction. Because the interpreter translated that the book had a painting of the Spaniards as
sons of the Sun, the Inca wanted to see it for himself. But when he took the book and saw the letters,
Atahualpa responded: This speaks and says that you are the son of the Sun? I, also, am the son of the
Sun. In unison and in a loud chorus his entourage proclaimed: Thus, is Capa Inca. The king repeated
again his origin and threw the book as his people responded once more: Yes, he is the only lord.
Atahualpa declared he was their equal as if to say, You are gods so am I. See Betanzos, Narrative of the
Incas, 263.
10
According to De la Vega, Atahualpa appropriates a Christian pantheon as he interprets the
message: Moreover your mouthpiece has told me that you have mentioned five great men I should know.
The first is God three and one, or four, whom you call the creator of the universeThe second is he whom
you say is the father of all other men on whom they have all heaped their sins. The third you call Jesus
Christ, the only one who did not lay his sins on the first man but he was killed. The fourth you call pope.
[And] the fifth is Charles, whom you call most powerful and monarch of the universe and supreme above
the rest. See Royal Commentaries of the Incas, 682, 686.
11
Xerez, A True Account, 54. In Cieza de Lens account, Atahualpa resists in meeting with
Pizarro until they [Spaniards] return and restitute to him all the gold, silver, stones, cloth, Indian men and
women, and everything else that they had stolen, see The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, 211.
 56

furthermore, the Spanish version communicated the arrival of new lords (viracochas-
gods) to the Americas.
Did the Protestant advent follow the Atahualpa-Valverde pattern? Whose Book
did the Ecuadorian Indgenas hear speak? In subsequent centuries, Latin America
recognized Protestantism as another Christian tradition on its terra firma. After over four
centuries of Roman Catholic proprietorship, the movement began imperceptibly as Bible
societies, immigrants, and mission agencies entered during the nineteenth century.
German sociologist Elizabeth Rohr considers Catholicisms monopolistic control and
alliance to the status quo as a cause of Protestantisms success and growth in the region.
In the Americas, the movement encountered a heterogeneous world of many cultures
Indgena, negra, mestiza and criolla, exclusively Catholic. Commencing from the
Ecuadorian coast up to the highlands, Protestant messengers (Bible distributors,
missionaries, and church leaders) planted and communicated the gospel.

4.2 JAMES THOMSON, PEDAGOGUE OF BIBLE DISTRUTORS AND

EDUCATORS

James Diego Thomson and early missionaries demonstrated what type of

message arrived in the initial stage of Protestantism. During the nineteenth century,
global tension between Catholicisms medieval moorings and modernitys progressive
advance motivated Latin America to pursue independence from Iberia. Late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century liberal principles of the French and North American
revolutions influenced South American revolutionary wars (18111825), constitutions,
and governments. Jean-Pierre Bastian rightly suggests any history of Latin America
needs to recognize Protestantisms role (one of various protagonists) in the formation of
Latin American modernization.12 Until 1739, the Andean territory was part of the
Viceroyalty of Peru, and then it became a member of the Viceroyalty of New Granada
(Colombia). Ecuador gained its independence from Spain in 24 May 1822 when General
Antonio Jos de Sucre defeated the royalists in the battle of Pichincha, and Ecuador
formed part of Liberator Simon Bolivars Gran Colombia. The federation only lasted

12
Jean-Pierre Bastian, Editorial in Protestantes, Liberales y Francmasones en Amrica Latina,
siglo XIX, Cristianismo y Sociedad 25/2, no. 92 (1987): 7.
 57

eight years until in 1830, when Ecuador and Venezuela became republics. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, European and North American Protestantism were
awakened by a new missionary zeal and organized agencies and societies to evangelize
(sow the message throughout) the world. Founded in 1804, the British and Foreign Bible
Society (BFBS) represented one of many organizations that entered Ecuador at the
inception of independence. Bible societies like the BFBS and the American Bible Society
(ABS) which came in 1816 are credited with distributing the Bible in the vernacular. Jos
Miguez Boninos typology, Four Faces of Latin American Protestantism, omits these
agencies in the early stage of Protestantism (18001880).13 For Bonino the first two
faces are Ethnic Protestantism (Protestant immigrants/merchants English, German,
Danish, Welsh, Dutch, and others) and Historic Protestantism (Methodist, Baptist,
Presbyterian, Disciples of Christ and Congregationalist missionaries) arriving in the early
phase of the movement. Evangelical Protestantism and Pentecostal Protestantism,
emerged in the twentieth century. Scotsman James Diego Thomson (17881854) was
an agent of the BFBS and the British and Foreign School Society, and a pedagogue of
Bible distributors and educators.14 In light of Thomsons Bible distribution efforts, the
message and perspective of the Latin American Indgena merits further observation in
order to capture the early Evangelical translation ethos.
Following successful visits in Argentina (18181821), Chile (18211822), Peru
(18221824) and two years after Sucres victory secured independence, Thomson arrived
in the port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador on 30 September 1824 in route to Colombia and
Mexico.15 As a Bible colporteur and educator, foremost on his mind, was the single
object which I have in view in South America, is the promoting of our Lord Jesus

13
See Jos Miguez Bonino, Las Iglesias Protestantes y Evanglicas en Amrica Latina y el
Caribe: Un Ensayo Interpretativo, Cuadernos de Teologa vol. 14, no. 2 (1995), 3032.
14
James Thomsons Latin American work lasted from 18181838, consisting of Bible
distribution, translation, and establishing Lancastrian schools with the Protestant message. See James
Thomson, Letters on the Moral and Religious State of South America, (London: James Nisbet, 1827); Juan
C. Varetto, Diego Thomson, Apostol de la Instruccin Publica e Inciciador de la Obra Evanglica en la
America Latina, (Buenos Aires: Imprentea Evanglica, 1918); Donald R. Mitchell, The Evangelical
Contribution of James Thomson to South American Life 18181825, (Th.D. diss., Princeton Theological
Seminary, 1972); and Arnoldo Canclini, Diego Thomson, (Buenos Aires: Asociacion Biblica Argentina,
1987).
15
Thomson, Letters, 7.
 58

Christ.16 Thomson accomplished this objective by his dual methodology: the education
of youth and the circulation of the Holy Scriptures by allowing himself to be
guidedby the various circumstances and occasions which the providence of God
open[ed] up from time to time.17 For the Protestant courier, divine intervention
situated him in a continent just as the first wave of liberalism emancipated her people.
Hence, free to sow the message, Thomson utilized the Bible and schools to propagate the
gospel. During his whirlwind two-month visit, he sold New Testaments in Guayaquil,
Guaranda, Riobamba, Ambato, Latacunga, and Quito.18 His Evangelical faith and
ecumenical acumen with diplomats, Catholic clergy, and leaders aided his mission and
contributed to his success.
Although Thomsons early achievement occurred in a region intolerant of things
not Catholic, the Latin American liberators liberal ideology saw in Protestantism and in
Thomson an ally to the new political/cultural enterprises triumph.19 The Latin American
independence movements and Protestantism were mutual partners for progress, a
pragmatic dyad with different visions of freedom. As an eyewitness of South Americas
liberation from Spain, Thomson found he could not forbear mentioning to you the
singular interposition of Providence on behalf of the cause of liberty in this quarter
[region].20 The emancipation process (revolutions and wars) in the emergent American
republics delayed Thomsons efforts at times; yet, belief in a larger spiritual shift, a
grand moral and religious revolution of the world through the great prophet who was to
come, connected both physical and religious revolutions and kept the forerunner of

16
In Letters dated Guayaquil, 5th October, 1824, 161.
17
Ibid.
18
The above cities are located in the Highland region of Ecuador except for Guayaquil.
19
For a concise enumeration of Protestantisms impact in Latin America, see Sidney Rooy La
Evangelizacin Protestante en Amrica Latina, 150 Aos: Una Evaluacin, Boletin Teologico vol. 24, no.
47 and 48 (December 1992): 237258. For Protestantisms impact in Ecuador, see Washington J. Padillas
chapter 2, Precursores del Siglo XIX (I) (La Gran Colombia 18221830) in La Iglesia y los Dioses
Modernos: Historia del Protestantismo en el Ecuador, 2nd ed. Biblioteca de Ciencias Sociales Volumen
23 (Quito, Ecuador: Corporacin Editora Nacional, 2008), and his La Actividad de las Sociedades
Bblicas en el Ecuador durante el Primer Liberalismo, Cristianismo y Sociedad, vol. 25/2, no. 92 (1987).
20
Thomson, Letters dated Guayaquil, 5th October, 1824, 167. The above statement is a reflection
of the battle at Junin, Peru on 6 August 1824, where royalists had an early victory but in the end Bolivar
and the patriots obtained a complete victory.
 59

Protestantism focused and motivated.21 For Thomson, the continental egalitarianism was
a transcendental event:
I firmly believe that the deliverance of this country from bondage and oppression,
and the mental emancipation of its inhabitants, depend upon the success of this
revolution. The Spaniards, as is well known, have greatly impeded, not to say
prohibited, the progress of knowledge and of true religion in America.22

According to the Bible vender, after three hundred years of occupation, the consequent
lack of spiritual and intellectual progress exposed Spains faux pas. Thomson determined
to be an authentic sower of true (Protestant) religion and curator of the legitimate
message and translation.
Throughout the period of patriotism, independence from Iberia did not benefit all
Latin Americans. Criollos or creoles23 profited from the transition and freedom more than
Indgenas whose troubles did not change; the only thing that altered was the creditor.
From the beginning, we notice Indgenas were not architects, protagonists, nor
beneficiaries of liberal reform; changes in the situation of the Indgena did not occur in
their favor. 24 In light of the rearrangement (new masters, peonage, slavery, etc.),
inhumane treatment of natives and Afro-Americans continued unabatedly. In 1886, over
a generation and a half later, Juan Montalvo (18321889), renowned Ecuadorian essayist
and polemicist, depicted the undiminished entrapment:
Consciously I would not write if I try to justify the manner in which hispano-
americanos [Latin Americans] still treat the Indians. The Indians are free
according to law, but how can I deny that they are slaves of abuse and custom.
The Indian, like his donkey is property without owner, belongs to the first
occupantThe soldier occupies him in order to make him sweep the barracks and
the filth; the mayor occupies him to deliver a letter twenty leagues [60 to 80
miles]; the priest occupies him to carry portable platforms of saints in the
processions; the priests housemaid occupies him to go and fetch water from the
river, all of it [accomplished] with a bucket, if its not done in this manner he
receives a beating, so that he remembers and goes for another. And [still] the

21
Ibid., 169. In an earlier letter, Thomson exults that There is a great revolution going forward in
South America. I speak not of the revolt from under the Spanish Yoke, for that in the present day may be
said not to be going forward, but accomplished. The revolution I speak of, is a moral one, from Lima,
December 2, 1822, 69.
22
Thomson, Letters dated Guayaquil, 5th October, 1824, 167.
23
Criollo (Creole) is a person of European descent born in the Spanish American colony.
24
Israel Ortiz Ch, Dignidad e Identidad Indgena: Una Critica Evanglica sobre los 500 Aos,
Boletn Teolgico vol. 24, no. 47 and 48 (Diciembre 1992): 170171.
 60

Indian returns because this is his condition when whipped, shaking on the floor;
he gets up thankful to his tyrant [and says]: Diu su lu pagui, amu [God repay
(bless) you, master] while he struggles with [pulling up] his underwear. Innocent,
wretched creature! If my pen had the gift of tears, I would write a book titled
The Indian, which would make the world weep. No, we have not made this soul
humiliated, morally broken, abandoned by God and his luck; the Spaniards left
him this way, how he is and how he will be forever and everThe oppressed and
violated races during three hundred years need eight hundred in order to recover
and return to their right of equality before God and justice. Moral freedom is the
truthful and fruitful one. To say to a black: You are free, and continue to sell
him; to say to an Indian: You are free, and continue to oppress him, is to mock
the heavens and the earth. For this infamous tyranny everyone unites; and the
whites do not have shame to collaborate with mulatos and cholos in one and the
same act of perversity and barbarism.25

Within this socio-religious noose, the Indgena attempted to decode Christianitys

message one or two linguistic tiers (Spanish or Latin translations) away from their own
idiom. As mentioned in chapter 3, the first evangelization (cross and sword) was
interpreted as a violent message by the natives and the African slaves. Compounding the
effect, early colonial missionary activity evangelized Indgenas in Spanish and/or Latin.
In order for the messengers to avoid heretical formulations by the Indgenas, the
monocultural method for practical and theoretical reasons was utilized.26 In similar
conditions, Thomson found Peruvian and Ecuadorian Indgenas, descendants of the
Andean peoples who did not know such exploitation under the Incas.
Thomson saw in all Americans, North and South, rich and poor, Indgena, black,
cholo, mulato, creole, and white in need of the liberating message of God, but on
Thomsons arrival in South America, the message among Quechuas/Quichuas was, in
part, lost like it had been in Atahualpas mistranslation; but, mainly, lost because it was
nonexistent. In addition to the Indgenas tragic existence, God appeared not to speak their
tongue. Thomson determined that the lack of the vernacular was the primary obstacle in

25
Juan Montalvo, El Espectador, tomo II (Paris: Librera Franco-Hispano-Americano, 1887).
Although polemical for his critique of Ecuadorian societys treatment of Indgenas, Montalvo like
Thomson imputes Spain for the Indgena problem. Mulato (mulatto) is the offspring of a white person and
Afro-American while cholo is the progeny of a white person and Indgena.
26
Xavier Albo, Dominar o Servir? Hitos de una Larga Busqueda Eclesiastica en el Mundo
Quechua y Andino, Cristianismo y Sociedad 26/3, no. 97 (1988): 10. Although Albo suggests such
practice was still evident in 1988 among Catholic clergy, his study from the colonial period up to the
twentieth century quantifies the more innovative lineage that produced Andean (Quechua and Aymara)
linguistic and grammatical tools.
 61

conveying the message. The Indgena reality of social, moral, and spiritual entrapment
did not detour Thomson but rather impelled him to include Indgenas in the change
[that] has been begun, a happy change in the region. In 1823, his findings were that the
Bible was not in Quechua,27 the medium of communication, making it unavailable to
two-thirds (one million Indgenas) of the population. Therefore, he urged BFBS and
friends to help because Lo! The poor Indian [is] begging from you the bread of life.28
Burdened but not detoured, Thomson envisioned being able to plant schools among
them, and also to hand them the word of God in their native tongue.29 Moved by the
need, Thomson elucidates:
I have had my attention turned to those parts of this country where the Quichua
language is spoken ever since I came to Peru. I have had a great desire to
communicate, in one way or another, to this ancient people, the blessings of
education and the light of the Sacred Word.30

By November 1823, Thomson had translated Luke, Matthew, Acts, 1 and 2 Peter in
Quechua and in mid-May 1824, the New Testament was completed.31 A year later in
Ecuador, he discovered how providential the new translation was, you will see here [in
Ecuador] a still more ample field of usefulness for this translation and we see the field
to be watered by it increased.32
Thomsons remarkable sales ability also became a determent. Amid the brief
period of political transition, the successful yet too expeditious Scripture and school
implementation lacked the necessary cultivation to contend with Catholic conservatism.

27
Quechua is the widest Amerindian language spoken today in the Americas with over 8 million
speakers. In the Andean region of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Argentina there are dialect zones
of Quechua. For our study, Ecuador Quechua primarily known as Quichua is spoken in the highlands and
Amazon River valley that differ to Central Quechua found in Peru but generally these speakers can
understand each other. Thomson came across both of these groups in his travels.
28
Thomson, Letters dated Lima, 25th November 1823, 104.
29
Letters dated Lima, 26th May 1823, 82.
30
Letters dated Lima, 8th August, 1832, 96.
31
Letters, 96, 102. Thomson recruited five men as translators; two were of Indgena descent and
one a clergy while four of the five were Peruvian congressmen. See also William Mitchell, James
Thomson and the Bible Translation in the Andean Languages, Bible Translator, vol. 41, no. 3 (July 1990):
342343.
32
Letters dated Guaranda, 25th October, 1824, 194, and Riobamba, 31st October, 1824, 198. The
above quote is taken when Thomson reached the Ecuadorian highlands (Guaranda) traveling from the
coast. From Guaranda, he traveled to Quito traversing through Andean cities (Riobamba, Ambato, and
Latacunga), which the majority of the populace was Indgena. In Ecuador, Thomson is encouraged by the
potential of adding thousands more to the million Indgenas in Peru who are in need of the Quechua
translation.
 62

Consequently, the work went dormant. Then, the process of germination more than half a
century later and Protestantism would be harvested. Thomsons pioneering effort portrays
that of an early forerunner of Latin American Protestantism. It would not be until the end
of the nineteenth century that faith missions like the Gospel Missionary Union (GMU)
would enter Ecuador and continue watering the Andean field; yet another fifty years
would transpire before any Ecuadorian Quichuas found an adequate translation to be
appropriate.

4.3 THE GOSPEL MISSIONARY UNION MESSAGE

Ecuadors early years (18301860) as a republic staggered under caudillismo
(Presidents Jose Flores, 18301835 and Vicente Rocafuerte, 18351839), anarchy, and
international conflict. Not until Garcia Moreno was elected (18611875) did the young
nation settle and partially embark on the path to modernization. Morenos administration
personified Catholic conservatism through his version of Catholic theocracy and
dictatorship. In order to set apart his country to God, he dictated two Catholic
constitutions, devised a severe penal code, and negotiated a concordat with Pope Pius IX
which ultimately recreated the union of Church and state.33 Under Moreno, Ecuadors
religion was exclusively Catholic. Two decades after Morenos presidency a second wave
of liberalism emerged under Eloy Alfaro (18951912) providing an opportunity for the
establishment of Protestant missions in the country.
Although Alfaros tenure opened Ecuador to a new period of advancement under
liberal control, the political/religious climate was combative and difficult. Up to this
point, the republic was all but closed to Protestantism. Padilla observes that social and
political forces (economic and political raison d'tre) and not Ecuadors spiritual
condition per se, opened the door for Protestantism.34 Albeit subject to political turmoil,
Protestantism and the propagation of its message were sanctioned under Alfaro. Hence,
on 7 July 1896 the Gospel Missionary Union (GMU) was the first faith mission to enter
Ecuador, and the following year the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) was
founded in Guayaquil. George S. Fisher (GMU Director), J. A. Strain, and F. W. Farnol

33
Robert L. Gold, Problems of Protestantism in Ecuador, 18661873, Journal of Church and
State, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1970): 6162.
34
Padilla, La Iglesia y los Dioses Modernos, 163.
 63

(GMU missionaries) arrived to initiate the work among Spanish-speaking Ecuadorians.

Both at home and in Ecuador, there was concern for their safety in the small Catholic
nation. In the GMU magazine, a call was made stateside for Christians not to abandon the
missionaries but to pray for them.35 By the dawn of the twentieth century, the Protestant
Church had put down roots in Ecuador. In 1902, the GMU Quichua work began in central
Ecuador in the region of the ancient Puruha nation, the province of present day
Chimborazo.36
An important element in the unfolding story is the impact made by the first GMU
translation (communication) and subsequent Quichua appropriation.37 George Fishers
fervor for world evangelization not only led him to help found in 1892 the Worlds
Gospel Union (changed in 1901 to GMU), but also in Ecuador, while traveling to the
interior, a burden for the Quichuas took a hold of him. When the GMU director saw
Indgenas in various parts of Ecuador scattered in the open markets, Fisher insisted and
urged his missionaries because These people need Jesus ChristDescendants of the
Incas the GMU needed to do something.38 While arriving in Quito on 5 September 1896,
he in a field assessment letter observed the Quichuas were Ecuadors workhorse
forasmuch as they did almost all of the citys labor.39 Ben Nickel further explains
Fishers concern, He saw that they were mistreated by the white population, used only
as servants who were bought and sold with a farm, and were not permitted to learn to
read.40 Not unlike Thomson, Fisher also believed the Protestant gospel (message) could

35
See The Gospel Message, vol. V (June 15, 1896): 3. Fisher also relates how U.S. General
Consul in Guayaquil, G. G. Dillard, recommended that they continue south to Peru were there was less
danger and political unrest than in Ecuador, see The Gospel Message, vol. V (August 15, 1896): 45.
36
Throughout the study the term Indgena has been utilized instead of Indian. From this point
forward, since the focus will center on the highland Indgenas of Ecuador, the name Quichua (Ecuador)
and Indgena will be used conversely. In the previous section, James Thomson used Quechua and Quichua
interchangeably when referring to Peruvian and Ecuadorian Indgenas. He was not aware of the variations
between the two. Quichuas prefer the reference indigenous (indgenas) rather than Indian (indio) and
with each other they use Runa, Quichua for human being, see John Maust, New Song in the Andes
(Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1992), xi.
37
The intent of this chapter is not to offer a comprehensive account of the Protestant movement in
Ecuador. For a comprehensive history up to 1988 of Ecuadorian Protestantism, see Padillas La Iglesia y
los Dioses Moderno.
38
Ibid., 3. In Fishers mind, Roman Catholicism had not done much to free the Quichuas from
spiritual bondage or nothing to inspire personal liberating faith in Jesus Christ, 4.
39
The Gospel Message, vol. V (October 15, 1896): 8.
40
Ben J. Nickel, Along the Quichua Trail (Smithville, MO: Gospel Missionary Union, 1965), 24.
 64

liberate the Quichua from spiritual (moral), physical (peonage), and intellectual
(knowledge) oppression. From the beginning, the GMU desired to present the message to
the Quichuas but the work did not commence in Chimborazo until 1902.
Fisher appointed two women, Julia Anderson and Ella Ozman, because The
mission feels strongly that we must take the gospel to the Quichua IndiansAnd we
think it best to send women missionaries. They will be less threatening to the Indians than
men.41 By this point, Anderson had already been a GMU missionary in Ecuador since
1898 while for Ozman it was her first year. Julia already had learned Spanish while Ella
had not, yet both needed to learn Quichua. Both pioneers started the first GMU mission
station in the village of Caliata located south of the city of Riobamba.42 But within a year
(1903), Ozman contracted pneumonia and died leaving Anderson to continue alone. The
one distinct difference between Thomson and the GMU was the latter stayed.
In 2010 after one hundred and fourteen years in Ecuador, the GMU had translated the
Bible (New Testament), established clinics, instituted schools, and provided the Quichua
Church with the Protestant message. In the beginning because of the obvious obstacles of
Catholicism, acquisition of the Quichua language, and translation, the GMU patiently
sowed for over half a century before a Quichua was converted. The journey was not easy.
For example after learning the language, Anderson struggled with Quichua spirituality, a
mixture of Catholicism and animism, which obscured her message:
It is pitiful to see him [Thomas] try to comprehend the gospel, and it is
discouraging to me not to be able to make him see the way of salvation. That,
however, is Gods work. His knowledge of the saints, mass, etc., and also what I
tell him, confuses him, and he asks, But to which shall I pray? Who can hear
best?And then he asks what to pray- The creed, the Lords prayer, Hail Mary or
some other?43

In spite of obstacles like Ella Ozmans death in 1903, Anderson envisioned a day when:

41
Maust, New Song in the Andes, 5. Mausts account of GMUs initial hesitancy to send men
raises doubt for Quichuas: According to Maust, missionary Fisher had thought the presence of men would
cause trouble, therefore he said it was important to initiate the evangelization through women. Is this true or
was it because of fear? See Matas Mullo, ed., El Semillero: Iglesia Evanglica Beln, Troje Ecuador
1954 2008 (2008): 15.
42
The village of Caliata is several miles south of Riobamba. Riobamba is the capital city of the
province of Chimborazo in central Ecuador, 125 miles south of the nations capital, Quito.
43
Maust, New Song in the Andes, 28.
 65

Oh! How glorious it will be when His love dawns on their heartsand they
behold Him with the veil lifted from their darkened eyes. May God hasten that
time and glorify His Son among our Quichua people.

At times I think of the futureand I fancy that I can see souls saved and hear
Indians singing the GospelThen I cannot but wonder who will be the first, and
when: if it may be that my own eyes shall see and enjoy such blessedness as a
worker among them, or if, like Moses, I must see it as from a distance and let
others be partakers of its joy.44

Not aware of the foresight of her words, Anderson, when she retired in 1953 had not
heard many Quichuas sing the gospel nor accept the message; but from a distance, by
faith I can count on one hand the number of Quichuas I am sure to see in heaven.45
According to Jacob Peter Klassen, Until 1954 there were no baptized Quichua believers
in the province after fifty-two years of witness in spite of the GMU having three mission
stations: Caliata, Pulucate, and Colta; and one outreach mission in El Troje.46 Was the
message again lost in translation? Why was there so little result with no baptisms during
the first period (19021954) of Protestant evangelization? The following paragraphs
explore the critique scholars associate with Protestantism and the movements message, a
message of acculturation.

4.4 A MESSAGE OF ACCULTURATION

The rationale behind examining GMUs message is twofold: 1) they were the first
Protestant organization in Ecuador; and 2) the evangelization venture has had the most
results of any Protestant group among the Quichuas. The Kansas City, Missouri, based
faith mission was emblematic of twentieth century North American fundamentalism.47
Julia Anderson-Woodward, Ella Ozman, and GMU missionaries after them transmitted a

44
Ibid., 29. 34.
45
Ibid., 38.
46
See Klassen, Fire on the Paramo: A New Day in Quichua Receptivity (M.A. Thesis, Fuller
Theological Seminary, 1975), 96. For detail accounts of the GMU missionary story, see Nickels Along the
Quichua Trail, 1965; Maust, New Song in the Andes, 1992; Klassen, Fire on the Paramo, 1975; and
Donald R. Dilworth, Historical, Ethnological and Sociological Factors in the Evangelization of the
Quichuas of Ecuador (M.A. Thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1967). The accounts by Nickel and
Maust are GMU missional monographs while missionaries Klassen (CMA) and Dilworth (GMU) from a
church growth perspective record the history.
47
Because of changing times and the longstanding church planting mission among unreached
peoples, the GMU in 2003 officially changed its name to Avant Ministries. See Gospel Missionary
Union Name Announcement Newsletter (Kansas City, MO: Avant Ministries, n.d.): 1.
 66

simple gospel. The communication was Christocentric, soteriologically directed, and

hinged on a vigorous view of the authority of scripture. The priesthood of all believers
and the intrinsic value of the individual were part of its practical tenets.48 The GMUs
fundamentalist inclination emanated from a shared puritan-pietistic-evangelical ethos
bred in the United States.49 Critics, most of which are respectful of the heroic missionary
efforts, mitigate GMUs kerygma as a message of acculturation.
By the mid 1960s, Protestantism had covered Latin America with its gospel and
presence. Although the rise and momentum of the movement was stronger in some places
(Brazil, Chile, Central America, and Mexico) than in others, scholars took note and
explored the religious phenomenon. Centuries of Catholic domination now faced a
formidable Protestant Church on the continent. Studies arose from both sides of the
spectrum. From a positivistic predilection, church growth theorists ascertained and
investigated the causes of Protestantisms present surge.50 On the other hand, plenty of
social scientists followed Max Weber and his sect theory to quantify and counter the
Western (North American/European) ideological affront to the Global South. Sect
theorists postulate that the Protestant message imposed Western cultural traits and social
patterns upon the poor, the Quichuas.
In Ecuador, conspiracy theorists labeled GMU and other Protestant groups as the
invasion of sects, an incursion of proselyte snatchers that altered Quichua culture. For
Elizabeth Rohr, fundamentalists were a true invasion of sects and missionary groups of
conservative character [that arrived] from the United States.51 Because of Catholic

48
For a detail description of GMUs message, see Catalina Santos La Union Misionera
Evangelica entre los Quichuas del Ecuador, Boletin Teologico tomo 26, no. 53 (March, 1994): 1920.
49
See Pablo A. Deiross chapter, Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America, in
Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appley (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1991), 151.
50
Church Growth advocates of Ecuadorian Protestantism are Dilworth, Historical, Ethnological
and Sociological Factors, 1967; Wayne C. Weld, An Ecuadorian Impasse (M.A. Thesis, Fuller
Theological Seminary, 1968); Peter C. Wagner, Look Out! The Pentecostals are Coming (Carol Stream:
Creation House, 1973); Jerold F. Reed, A Componential Analysis of the Ecuadorian Protestant Church
(D.Miss. Thesis, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1974); and Klassen, Fire on the Paramo, 1975.
51
Rohr, La Destruccion de los Simbolos Culturales Indgenas: Sectas Fundamentalistas,
Sincretismo e Identidad Indgena en el Ecuador (Quito, Ecuador: Abya Yala, 1997), 99, 102. For other
sect theory accounts of Ecuadorian Protestantism, see Tomas Bamat, Salvacion o Dominacion? Las
Sectas Religiosas en el Ecuador (Quito, Ecuador: Editorial El Conejo, 1986); Mara Albn Estrada and
Juan Pablo Muoz, Con Dios Todo se Puede: La Invasin de las Sectas al Ecuador ([Ecuador]: Planeta,
 67

proclivity, Rohr acknowledges in Latin America all the non-Catholic communities were
(and still are) categorized as sects. In spite of communicating the New Testament in
Quichua, the GMU message was still tethered to fundamentalist principles. For instance
GMU hermeneutics grounded on the authority of the Bible was one of the missionary
inheritances passed on to Quichuas.52 As a result of the sectarian practice, Rohr
categorically holds GMU as one of many responsible for destroying Quichua symbols. It
is dogmatism, a tyrannical devotion to the Bible resulting in a dictatorship of the
Word and a totalitarian censorship to all types of fantasy.53 When missionaries only
decoded the message, the Quichua lost the right to interpret the Bible and the world.
Although acculturation proponents concede reading the message in the vernacular vital;
yet, the imposed exclusivist interpretation caused Quichuas to back pedal and once more
be denied their Quichuaness.
An important development within Latin American Protestantism has been the
indigenization of the church, the national church. Samuel Escobar articulates, it is only
natural that new churches when they are free to live their life and testimony for Christ
within their own context, will enter sooner or later in the task of developing their own
theology.54 Ecuadorian scholars introspective search to understand Ecuadors Protestant
identity has also examined the missionary message. Catalina Santos observation of the
GMU follows French sociologist Pierre Bourdieus Marxist structuralism critique. In
light of the acculturation process, Santos moderate position on the issue concludes that
GMUs proposal of semi-autonomy flourished among the people [Quichuas,
and]pushed them to assimilation of the missionary message.55 For historian Padilla,

1987); and Alvin M. Goffin, The Rise of Protestant Evangelism in Ecuador, 18951990 (Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 1994).
52
The author further develops in detail the bequeathed conservative hermeneutic in Eloy H.
Nolivos, Hermeneutics and Missions in the Land of the Equinox, Evangelical Review of Theology 35:1
(January 2011): 4150.
53
Rohr, La Destruccin de los Smbolos Culturales Indgenas, 130. When historic
denominations: Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, [and] Lutherans are considered, interestingly Rohr
steps cautiously and does not include them within the sect category. The exclusion contradicts earlier
characterizations, see 102, 103.
54
Samuel Escobar, The Role of Translation in Developing Indigenous TheologiesA Latin
American View, in Bible Translation and the Spread of the Church: The Last 200 Years, ed. Philip C.
Stine (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 82.
55
Santos, La Union Misionera Evangelica, 24.
 68

from a non-Western hermeneutic, the missionaries made the same mistakes as their
Catholic counterparts as they failed to translate a holistic gospel:
[In]life and certainly in missionary work it is never black and white; it is
always ambiguous and is part of the limitations that all human beings suffer. It is
interesting to note how these foreign missionaries with the best intentions to save
the souls of the indgenas, and at the cost of great personal sacrifice, committed
the same errors against the native cultures the Spanish missionaries enacted
during the colony. [They] confused conversion to the Christian faith with the
deculturalization of the indgenas and their assimilation of the national
culture.56

From a Quichua perspective, Guamn further critiques Protestant evangelization. For

him, the message utilized Quichua elements and their culture in order to accelerate
Protestantisms growth in the second half of the twentieth century. Today the dividends
are noticeable among Quichua Evangelicals:
Like in their thinking and actions, they express fundamentalist characteristics:
the literal interpretation and dispensationalist criteria of the Bible, a moralistic
ethic in the absence of social and ethical commitment, a fatalistic and millenarian
eschatology, and dogmatism instead of doctrine and theology. In other words,
theres a debate between being an indgena and being an evangelical
fundamentalist style.57

Obviously, the above acculturation critique predisposes Western Christianity and

missionaries as imperialist and cultural exterminators of Third World cultures. The
anthropological assessment focuses and holds responsible religion for the lack of cultural
concern and sensibility. This chapter reflects one side of the Christianity and culture
debate.

4.5 CONCLUSION
Were GMU missionaries in Ecuador bent on mutilating Quichua culture? Was
translation into vernacular inconsequential and more of an apparatus to embed Western
ideology? In this light, gospel and culture appear mutually exclusive. Social scientists
answer the above inquiries in the affirmative and would suggest Protestantism has largely

56
Padilla, La Iglesia y los Dioses Modernos, 320. Padilla promulgates an ecclesiology that has una
misin integral (a holistic mission), see his Hacia Una Transformacin Integral (Buenos Aires: Fraternidad
Teolgica Latinoamericana, 1989. See also Nolivos, Hermeneutics and Missions in the Land of the
Equinox, 49.
57
Julin Guamn, El Movimiento Indgena Evanglico (Quito: CLAI, 2002), 52.
 69

harmed rather than helped indigenous culture and identity. Viewed from this perspective,
the case of Atahualpa, James Thomson Bibles and schools, and the GMU gospel
demonstrate the mistranslation of the message of Protestant evangelization. However, the
following chapter examines and follows African historian Sannehs hypothesis of
Christianitys translatability in order to level the religion/culture and Christian missions
debate. Once the Quichua hears and applies (translates) the Bible and its message for
herself and himself, indigenization of Christianity results.
 70

5. TRANSLATABILITY OF QUICHUA PROTESTANTISM

The setbacks in the early stages of the Protestant evangelization would at first
glance suggest Christianitys irrelevance to Quichua culture and life. Moreover, an
innovative missiological view to Christianity and culture opens the debate to new
possibilities and interpretations of Quichua Protestantism. Observing the translatability of
the Protestant message brings equilibrium to the discussion. The missionary (GMU)
acquisition and use of the vernacular language (Quichua) to evangelize and GMUs
subsequent indigenization rebut the acculturation critique. After the first part of this
chapter examines Sannehs premise, the study focuses on the Quichua indigenization of
Protestantism highlighting their appropriation and interpretation of the message,
historiography, and civic participation.

5.1 THE TRANLATABLITLY OF CHRISTIANITY: A REBALANCE IN THE

DISCOURSE

As a result of Christianitys dynamic growth amid the Global South (Asia, Africa,
and Latin America) at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the movements new non-
Western majority has overtaken the Western church. Christianity has not ceased to be a
Western religion, but its future as a world religion is now being formed and shaped at the
hands and by the minds of its non-Western adherents.1 In view of two billion believers,
over three thousand languages, and countless ethnic groups that cohere to the movement,
Christianity is one of the fastest-growing, diverse, and pluralist religions in the world.
The Christian missionary movement has translated the Bible into over 90 percent of the
worlds languages thus pioneering arguably the largest, most diverse and most vigorous
movement of cultural renewal in history.2 Seeing a return to the movements genius,
consequently has brought to the forefront the paradigmatic shift. Christianity as a
translated and translatable religion addresses modern historiographys notion of
Christian missions commissioned by Western colonialism destroyed indigenous cultures. 3

1
Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), xx.
2
Ibid.
3
See Sanneh, Encountering the West: Christianity and the Global Cultural Process (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 150; and Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 4.
 71

The proposal counters conspiratorial theory and parts from the conventional
critique of Christianity. Christian missions are instruments of religious and cultural
pluralismthe realnot imaginaryworth of missions, according to the Gambian
American scholar.4 The conjecture disconnects the missionary from the alleged
ideological motive of domination and infers a radical shift in methodology. Christian
missions intent was not destruction of Indgena culture; but rather, through linguistic
investigation and acquisition, to transmit the Christian message. The need for the Bible,
the source of salvation, in the vernacular was the impulse that led to indigenization of
Christianity. Accordingly the ensuing sections observe the translatability of Christianity
in Ecuador.

5.2 THE VERNACULAR IMPULSE

Although Fray Valverdes preaching communicated an incongruent gospel to Inca
Atahualpa, a bright spot emerged during the colonial phase of Indgena subjugation.
Evangelization of the Indgenas led some Catholic missionaries like Fray Domingo de
Santo Tomas in 1560 to produce a Quechua grammar, lexicon, and religious works.
Shortly after the first Quito Synod in 1570, a mestizo clergy, Diego de Sosa, witnessed
how some [indgenas] have so much desire and diligence [to learn] that they are taught
in their own language the catechism.5 The synod purposed to secure the purity of the
faith and morality while giving unity to their methods of evangelization. It would not be
until 1787 that Father Juan de Velasco labored on the Quichua idiom of Ecuador.6 From
the beginning, the vernacularization of the message was vital to the Christian
proclamation and teaching in the Americas.
Not unlike Luther whose vernacular impulse contributed to European (German)
religious and cultural renewal, Protestantism (the Bible and missions) became a
principle of indigenous reconstruction and an integral part of Africas [and Latin

4
Sanneh, Christian Mission in Pluralist Milieu: The African Experience, International Review
of Mission 74, no. 294 (April 1985): 199.
5
Jos Mara Vargas, La Organizacin de la Iglesia en Ecuador, in Historia General de la Iglesia
en Amrica Latina, VIII: Per, Bolivia y Ecuador, ed. Enrique Dussel (Salamanca: Ediciones Sgueme,
1987), 99.
6
Albo, Dominar o Servir?, 10.
 72

Americas] pluralist heritage.7 For the continent of Africa, David Livingstone (1833
1873), the renowned Scottish missionary desired reformation (abolition of slavery) for
the Dark Continent through a threefold union of civilization, commerce, and Christianity.
Pundits have found in Livingstones aphorism proof of Western colonialism but all the
while overlooked Christianitys pioneering role in the Africanization process.8 As seen
earlier, Thomson believed Latin Americas reconstruction, a moral revolution, was
possible by the agency of the Bible in the language of the people. He was pleased to be
an instrument of peace by putting into their hands the only book which can effectually
cheer the heart with solid comfort.9 For indigenous people, and particularly for the
Quichuas, mother tongue translation not only put the book in their hands but, more
importantly, elevated them as subjects in control of their future.
As a rebuttal to the cultural superiority critique of missions, Sanneh highlights the
fact that Missionary adoption of the vernacularwas tantamount to adopting indigenous
cultural criteria for the message.10 Protestant missions did not utilize natives at the risk
of objectification as was the general custom. On the other hand, Quichua homoousia
(being, Quichuaness) challenged GMU missionaries to embrace an Indgena worldview
and hence seek partnership in the cultural and linguistic procurement for translation.
Learning Quichua was not the totality of missionary ethnographic work, rather the
aimwas to obtain as complete a picture as possible of the total culture.11 Within daily
Quichua life, the cultural portrait was the context for learning the language. Opportunities
constantly presented themselves. Whether Anderson and Ozman where at home in a
one-room straw roof hut and the Quichuas came by for medicines; or on walks and visits
when they handed mishqui (candy) to children; or [o]ut on the hillside [as] they pastured
sheep and pigs [they] often sat among them pretending to crochet or knit; or they went
to a potato digging; or helped a family from Flores [who] wanted [Anderson] to teach

7
Sanneh, Christian Mission in the Pluralistic Milieu, 200.
8
For a detailed account of the complex bifurcation between Christian missions and Western
colonialism in an African context, see Roland Oliver, The Missionary Factor in East Africa, (London:
Longman, 1970).
9
Thomson, Letters dated Quito, 26th November, 1824, 219.
10
Sanneh, Translating the Message, 3.
11
Marie Fetzer Reyburn, Applied Anthropology Among the Sierra Quechua of Ecuador,
Practical Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 2 (1953): 15.
 73

their daughter preparatory to her going to school in the city, they listened, recorded
words and phrases, until it began to seem possible to learn their language.12 Quichua
criteria allowed for Christian translatability into the language that reaches the hearts of
the people.13 The vernacular impulse enabled the Quichua, as much as it did the
missionary, transforming the latter into an agent of indigenization.

5.3 INDIGENIZATION
The argument that North American/European missionaries are indigenous
agents or figure[s] of crosscultural significance does not negate their Western
religious DNA as being part of the package.14 Rather, the Western worldview raised
limitations (identity crisis) within the missionary task. Even after the United Bible
Societies (UBS) missionary, William Reyburn, learned Quichua, ate their food, dressed
in Indgena attire, rode a burro (donkey), lived in a mud-and-thatch hut, slept on beds just
like the people of the village, and even worked alongside them for two months to
complete a road, the Quichuas still identified him as meester (mister) or patroncito (boss)
to his dislike. In spite of all he did to identify with them and when he asked: Why do
you still call me patroncito? A leader stated the obvious, We call you patroncito
because you werent born of an Indian mother.15 Or as GMU medical missionary,
Donald R. Dilworth chose to say, The Indian prefers a foreigner with love and
understanding to a half-baked copy of a Quichua.16 In order for indigenization to
commence, like Reyburn and Dilworth, missionaries on the field experienced the
shattering of ideals (religious, cultural, etc.), the removal of ideological obstacles that
obstruct the task. Elizabeth Elliot, writer and former missionary to Ecuadorian Indgenas
(Quichuas and Huaorani), in 1966 wrote a novel called No Graven Image which portrays
in Margaret Sparhawk the process of the destruction of illusions (idols) that must be

12
Nickel cites Julia Andersons diary in Along the Quichua Trail, 2829.
13
Reyburn, Applied Anthropology, 18.
14
For the complete discourse see Sanneh, Christian Mission in the Pluralistic Milieu, 201204.
15
William D. Reyburn, Identification in the Missionary Task, Practical Anthropology, vol. 7,
no. 1 (January 1960): 6. William and Maria Fetzer (cited earlier) Reyburn were a missionary team of
husband and wife. He was a linguist and she an anthropologist in Latin America and Africa.
16
Dilworth, Historical, Ethnological and Sociological Factors, 109.
 74

removed from the missionarys cargo.17 In spite of the package, the missionarys role
remained a vernacular one in order to translate Christianity.
Not only did contact with Quichua culture highlight obstacles of Western identity,
but it also revealed ideological defense mechanisms missionaries had once the vernacular
was comprehended and appropriated. For example, when Dilworth heard an early
Quichua convert from El Troje say, I never understood the New Testament until I read it
for myself, he and other GMU missionaries did not fully anticipate the indigenization
that ensued.18 On another occasion, the first convert of San Antonio, Pablo Suqui
theologically challenged missionary Henry Klassens resistance to the Quichua
conversion method:
There are twenty-two families in San Antonio who have accepted the Lord,
Pablo told Klassen one day. Twenty-two persons or twenty-two families?
Klassen wanted to know. Twenty-two families, Pablo repeated. How can
families accept the Lord? [Klassen said]. The Bible says to believe on the Lord
and you and your house will be saved, said Pablo. Well, yes, but Klassen
stopped. The idea of families converting did not fit into his frame of spiritual
reference. Thats the way we Quichuas do it, Pablo explained. Usually the
head of the family makes a decision, and then after he explains it to the others,
and they make the same decision with him.19

Maust affirms GMU missionaries were perplexed and astonished with family conversion
compared to individual confessions. Dilworth reflects on their openness thereafter:
Involved in all missionary endeavor is the proclaiming of a Redeemer. The heart
of the message is one of Salvation. People oppressed as are the Quichuas must
hear this expressed in terms of their experience. Their decisions are thought of in
terms of families in relationship. When they speak of family, it is the relation of
father and son, brother and sister, and the experience in relationship must be used
to carry the Good News of the Gospel. This message must arrive to the Quichua
father in such terms that he immediately applies it to his family and becomes
creatively critical of their standards.

17
Elliot, No Graven Image, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1982), first published in 1966. The
fictional novel appears to be based on similar experiences/lessons learned from the authors own
missionary career. Elizabeth was the wife of Jim Elliot, one of the five missionaries who were killed by the
Aucas (Quichua name for savage in reference to Huaorani) on 8 January 1956 in the jungles of Ecuador.
18
Dilworth, Historical, Ethnological and Sociological Factors, 61.
19
Maust, New Song in the Andes, 7677. Above Klassen exemplifies Western conceptualization of
soteriology while unaware of its irrelevancy for Quichua appropriation. For Escobar The rise of
indigenous theologies is a principle at work all through the history of Christianity, see Indigenous
TheologiesA Latin American Perspective, 83.
 75

We missionaries must be aware that we blur the evangelical message with too
much of ourselves. When the Quichua restates the Salvation story, it must not be
given in our peculiar patterns and thus present a peculiar story. The thoughts of a
rural Indian of Ecuador are formed in a context different from ours. Therefore, we
must preach in the light of his experience.20

From the translated scriptures, Quichuas supported a soteriological method of group

conversion by using the jailer familys example in Acts 16:31. Subsequently, the
vernacular scriptures created a Quichua Church on Andean soil. Although the
missionary helped form the church, the indigenization process required them to abdicate
control.
Dilworth enabled and supported the new shift. On baptism, for example, he
helped Quichuas emphatically understand they were not simply baptized into a mission
(GMU) but rather becoming part of the Quichua Church. The missionary who
encourages an indigenous church must stimulate the mind of the Quichuas and therefore
do away with every temptation to impose his own way even through the use of subtle
influences.21 When missionaries allowed indigenization, the Quichua Bible (initially the
N.T.) not only formed the indigenous Quichua church but also contributed to the
formation of a new Indgena identity in Chimborazo.22 Dilworths position confirms
Sannehs affirmation: Having uncapped the springs of indigenization, missionaries
could not stand in the way of that surge.23
The current surge of Christianity throughout the Global South is a direct result of
what Sanneh coins the vernacular translation movement activated by missions.
Although Christianitys translatable message originated in Jerusalem, it adapted and
spread to other cultures: Antioch, Athens, and even advanced to capture Rome. The
continuous translatability has left it as the only major world religion that is peripheral in
the land of its origin but yet has embraced and included marginalized cultures.24 This
section has brought balance to the one-sided view that Christianity is a message of
acculturation. It is true that Christian missions have had a westernizing effect on the

20
Dilworth, Historical, Ethnological and Sociological Factors, 107108.
21
Ibid., 106.
22
See Mitchell, Traduccin Bblica y Culturas Indgenas, 115.
23
Sanneh, Christian Mission in the Pluralistic Milieu, 207.
24
Sanneh, Translating the Message, 4.
 76

Third World; but, this is not the only message offered. From the inception of the
Christian faith, the vernacular impulse put into motion the process of indigenization.
From indigenization, a Quichua Church resulted and, further, a message of freedom
developed. The acculturation and indigenization posited by the Protestant message are
perspectives from observers. What about the participants, the Quichuas, the story of what
the missionary message communicated? The history of Quichua appropriation of the
gospel emerges from oral and written accounts of Quichua Protestantism. The final
subdivision draws from the sources and observes Quichua emancipation and a brief
sketch of Indgena Protestantism in Ecuador.

5.4 QUICHUA PROTESTANTISM: A MESSAGE OF LIBERTY

Quichua Protestantism developed as a three facet corollary: Protestant
evangelization (19021954), the payoff of first converts did not come until the 1954
1964 decade, followed by quantitative growth, and indigenization of Protestantism
(1965present).25A little more than a generation of GMU efforts (translation of New
Testament, medical attention, education, increase of personnel, Quichua radio
broadcasting, etc.) helped chip away at the impenetrable wall of mistrust that had
separated Indgenas and whites for over four centuries. The three intervals of barrenness,
conversion, and growth have been analyzed by missionaries and scholars alike so as to
determine religious, social, anthropological, and cultural causation. Nevertheless, this
section concentrates on the indigenous interpretation and realization of Protestantisms
message of liberty and its indigenization:
By this, it is primarily meant that there was an awareness on the part of Quichua
Protestant believers that their new faith was no longer a foreign faith; on the
contrary the new faith began to be adapted into Quichua culture.26

In order to survey Quichua formulation of the new faith, believers of Chimborazo where
Protestantism originated are examined. Subsequently, the appropriation of the Protestant

25
Ruben Elias Paredes-Alfaros periodization is followed with minor modifications, see A
Protestant Movement in Ecuador and Peru: A Comparative Socio-Anthropological Study of the
Establishment and Diffusion of Protestantism in Two Central Highland Regions (Ph.D. Diss., University
of California, Los Angeles, 1980), 141.
26
Ibid., 151.
 77

message inspired Quichua Protestant accounts (histories) and integration of faith and
politics, a resulting indigenization of Quichua new found freedom. In discovering their
voice, place, and identity, in the process, Indgenas found themselves in translation (in
the story).

5.4.1 PROTESTANT EVANGELIZATION SYNONYMOUS TO LIBERTY

Social, economic, political, and religious factors contributed to the Quichua
appropriation of the Protestant message. As already observed, the vernacularization of the
Christian Bible narrowed the chasm between Christianity and the Quichuas. Both the
Catholic Spanish Romanism and the Protestant (North American) mission system were
foreign cultural configurations for the Quichuas.27 The cultural gap was bridged once the
Quichuas heard God speak Quichua. They heard a message which both valued them as
human beings and forged a new identity of self-respect and dignity. In Santos exposition
on the GMUs role in Ecuador, she signals Quichua appropriation of Christianity. She
states the Evangelical Indgena Church is another history to be told.28 I concur with
Santos that Quichua Christianity is an Indgena account and, because I do not pretend nor
claim to be a Quichua, I cannot explicate it exhaustively. The following paragraphs
attempt to render an Indgena version of Christianity that sketches the Quichua struggle
for freedom and the role the Protestant message had in its realization.
Quichuas confirm the 1896 GMU arrival in Ecuador as the genesis of the
Protestant movement in Chimborazo. Guamns 18961960 timeline situates Protestant
installation in the Andean country. For this Evangelical activist, the period exemplified
the objectives and practices of [Protestant] evangelization where acts of social
assistance, medical clinics, literacy, teaching the indgena language, translating portions
of the Bible and evangelistic activities [had] few results.29 However, some recall the
1950s and 1960s as decades wherein the Quichua population continued to live a real
slavery. According to Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui, mayor of Colta, the Quichua

27
For an informative discussion on anthropological factors to Quichua acceptance of Christianity,
see Klassen, Fire on the Paramo, 1975, 7986.
28
Santos, La Unin Misionera Evanglica, 22.
29
Julin Guamn, FEINE, la Organizacion de los Indgenas Evangelicos en Ecuador (Quito:
Abya-Yala, 2004), 29.
 78

captivity withheld entry into knowledge, economics, politics/civics, and religion.

Yupanqui in the area of knowledge (thought and ideology) calls to memory how
Quichuas were totally colonized [and] dominated:
My grandmother told me how they could be going from the parroquia [district] to
the mestizo population and if an indgena was found learning to read, or to write,
or reading a book they could easily be denouncedplaced in jail, and kept there
until they promised not to read a book again. This was their reality in regards to
knowledge. I was born in the decade of the 1960s (1965) and remember how a
total adult generation [compared] to our generation was illiterate and only we, the
children could read since the educational system had just initiated. The total
obstruction of knowledge did not allow them to enter the reading world. There
was slavery at this level, no entry to different types of knowledgetheology,
philosophy, science [and] art.30

Almost a hundred years later, Juan Montalvos nineteenth century description of the
Quichuas grievous condition remained intact. Yupanqui ascertains that economically the
Quichua was still a means of production, a technology, a machine, while anthropologist
Blanca Muratorio seconds the notion that the Indians were literally treated as beasts of
burden and less than human.31 The Quichua burden weighed even heavier with their
denial of public participation in Ecuadorian society.
From the time Inca Atahualpa was conquered in 1532 and the ensuing four
hundred and sixty years, the Ecuadorian Quichuas were denied any political leadership
role. With pain, Yupanqui evoked the sad truth of how he saw Quichuas measured as
non-citizens:
It was not until the 1978 constitutional debate that an illiterate person from the
rural sector was qualified a citizen. But I also remember that there were two
classes of citizens: an effective citizen and a pseudo citizen. For the first time
an identification card with the color yellow was given, yellow labeled the person
illiterate and a citizen from the lowest class. But for my mother and father this
identification card which they then possessed brought so much joy and great
emotion because the state, the government qualified them citizens with rights.32

30
Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui, interview by author, audio digital recording, Riobamba, Ecuador,
25 June 2009.
31
Blanca Muratorio, Protestantism and Capitalism Revisited, in the Rural Highlands of
Ecuador, in The Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, ed. Jorge I. Dominguez (New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1994), 50.
32
Yupanqui, interview.
 79

The second class identification marginalized the Quichuas. Whether cultural, social, or
racial motives instigated the discrimination, political and civil segregation was part of the
Indgena yoke. In addition, religious coercion also encumbered the Quichuas and bound
them for most of their lives.
Many Quichua Evangelicals remember how Catholicisms system of domination,
fiestas (celebrations, carnival), religious processions, and sponsorship of these
extracted/exploited them of their Quichuaness. After drunken celebrations, violence and
indebtedness remained. For a Catholic comunero (commoner), social and religious
obligations tied them to such oppression from the time of marriage until death. A
commoner from Majipamba remembers the intemperance of these events:
Before the fiestas used to be with bulls and for about four to five days long; there
would be four chicha kegs. Men and women dancing, men mounted on horses, the
veta hanging to the point of causing fear, drunks later getting into big fights. They
did the rod at the dances while their clothing was full of silver; they danced
everywhere.33

Quichua pastor, Francisco Tenemasa Guamn, describes the reigns of religious control:
For the most part Quichuas had fiestas and drinking in honor of a saint because
their bosses or priests forced them [to do so]. If they did not comply with this
obligation, their punishment was poverty, physical suffering, and the need to hear
the gospel to avoid condemnation.34

A Quichua Evangelical leader explains the harmful tradition while growing up in

Columbe:
Our ancestors had some good customs and other vain onesunfortunately they
were preoccupied with a bad habit: drunkenness in bars and processions. At that
time, we belonged to the Columbe Parroquia where processions took place on
Holy Week. The captains [sponsors] spent a lot of money on drinking and inviting
friends and neighbors. Because my father was a captain, we ended up clothesless,
malnourished, shoeless, [and] with our feet cut. Even though I cannot express this
well in Spanish, we suffered because my father was not concerned with educating
us.

33
Cited in Susana Andrade, Protestantismo Indgena: Procesos de Conversin Religiosa en la
Provincia de Chimborazo, Ecuador (Quito, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 2004), 166. Chicha is a fermented
beverage made out of maize or quinoa by lowland and highland Indgenas. For millennia, the Andean drink
has been in existence.
34
Francisco Tenemasa Guamn, Trabajo de Misionologia (Bachillerato Superior Tesis,
Seminario Ministerial Intercultural Bilinge, 2002), 11.
 80

During this period, not only did my father get drunk but also other neighbors. In
the afternoon on Palm Sunday everybody was at the bar. They would get home on
Tuesday with their children waiting for them hungry with nothing and crying. In
addition when they arrived, they would beat and mistreat the children and
mothers. They spent a lot. When they did not have any more [money] for the bar,
they would take sheep or pigs, or on credit pay for liquor and chicha. For this
reason the indgena children died. When I was a child, I saw four to five children
everyday placed in the cemetery.35

Yupanqui critiques the fiestas because of their reinforcement of religious intimidation

and mestizo economic extortion. During these religious festivities, it became big business
to keep Quichuas drinking. Every year the priest forced them to have fiesta after fiesta
after fiesta which resulted in small fortunes squandered; the equivalent amount saved in a
year was gone in a matter of days.36 In spite of Protestant efforts during this phase of
evangelization, the Quichua population lived a dark existence.
For the [Quichua] population, [Protestant] evangelization is synonymous with
liberty, liberty in all the [above] areas which focused on spiritual liberty of their soul and
of their body.37Although Yupanqui acknowledges the complexity and manifold factors
of freedom, he conjoins Protestantism as being part of and a main reason for
emancipation. The comparison between former generations and his allows the mayor to
interpret the cadence of change as a 180 degree turn. In ethnic relations,
(Quichua/Mestizo) Quichuas can now freely walk into Mestizo cities and towns without
being forced to obey the every whim of townspeople. Yupanqui celebrates the fact that an
Indgena today can have a vehicle. This is an about-face compared to a short time ago.
There have also been other reversals in education, economics (land), and politics
(Quichua officials). This is a preamble of what really is evangelization; its like an icon,
like a symbol that has marked the life of Indgenas particularly to fashion change.38
Quichuas like Yupanqui grant Protestantism a central role in their deliverance, a
translated freedom but one they can actualize as their own. The following section

35
Cited in Hector Laporta, Protestantismo y Cultura, Boletin Teologico 26, no. 54 (Junio 1994):
87.
36
Yupanqui, interview.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
 81

observes Quichua historiography especially how Indgenas view their role in Ecuadorian
Protestant history.

5.4.2 QUICHUA HISTORIOGRAPHY

Quichua sources on Protestant history have been essentially non-existent until the
onset of the second millennium. Most accounts of the movement have been transmitted
orally by participants, recorded by Western missionaries, and/or scrutinized by other
observers (anthropologists, sociologists, historians, etc.). Taking into account the
commemoration of Chimborazo Protestantism and the celebration of local Indgena
church anniversaries, recently second and third generation Quichuas have produced
articles in magazines and pamphlets. The data utilized are a couple of promotional
leaflets on The First Centennial of the Gospel to the Quichua People of Ecuador
(Caliata, 2002) and the magazine El Semillero, which lauds Belen Evangelical Churchs
fiftieth anniversary (El Troje, 2008). The narratives read on Quichua Christianity
predominately forecasts the Indgena constitution of Protestantism. From a Quichua lens,
a brief examination of the movements origins and missionary recognition are surveyed
next.
Three GMU mission stations, Caliata (1902), Pulucate (1950), and Colta (1953)
were missionary centers for Protestant evangelization.39 Maust chronicles the following
events: 1954the New Testament translation was published and made available in
Chimborazo; 1955the first three Quichua converts were baptized in Lake Colta; and
1958the first Quichua church (Iglesia Evanglica Beln) was built in El Troje. The
preceding sequential list allows for a comparison and contrast between Western and
Indgena historical origins. From a Quichua perspective, the above centers including El
Troje figure as semilleros (seedbeds) of the Gospel, the triangle of Chimborazo
evangelization.40 While GMU would not disagree with the estimation, Quichua
perspective would further suggest indigenization catapulted the semilleros to evangelize
our communities, [the] provinceour dear Puruha nation and all of Ecuador through

39
Mausts chronology in New Song in the Andes differs slightly from Paredes-Alfaros.
40
Yupanqui, interview.
 82

Indgena pioneers and evangelists.41 Yupanquis triangle consists of Caliata, Pulucate,

and El Troje. He excludes Colta initially but later, as an appendage, includes it. At the
time of the interview, he was not asked about the rationale behind the arrangement. The
primary reason for the mayors selection is the gospels indigenization initiated in El
Troje; yet, another plausible explanation is El Troje is Yupanquis birthplace. Although
Quichua historiography highlights the triad and borders on triumphalism, a genetic
struggle amid the centers (churches) surfaces when each claims lineage to the GMU
mission.
In the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, all three centers built
churches. Not unlike Western ecclesiastical histories, the succession debate among the
Quichua centers (churches) are found in tribute material of both Caliata and El Troje.
Caliatas account identifies their church as fountainhead of Quichua Protestantism.
Seeing that 24 January 2002 marked a century since GMU work began among Ecuadors
Quichuas, the Iglesia Evanglica Caliata commemorates its centennial. On 24 January
1902 the first Evangelical Quichua church was founded.42 Despite the fact the church
was constructed in the early 1960s (1963?), Caliata asserts a 1902 provenance. On the
other hand, 8 September 2008 in El Troje, Iglesia Evanglica Beln, celebrated its fiftieth
(golden) anniversary. It was in this village where they started to build the first Indgena
Evangelical church of Ecuador on 8 September 1958.43 El Troje likewise believes they
are the original Quichua representative of Protestantism in the country. The Belen church
upholds the GMU of Ecuador considers the Belen Church of Troje [to be] the first
Indgena Evangelical church of Ecuador.44 Both churches adduce primacy to their
Protestant origins. Caliata may hold the longest trajectory to Protestant presence but
technically El Troje, as a Quichua Evangelical church, is the first in Ecuador. Quichua

41
El Comienzo de la Luz, El Semillero, 5. Yupanqui further adds, This is the triangle, seedbeds
of evangelism in Chimborazo and if I dare say of Ecuador, because what I know until now there is no other
province where Quichua evangelization originated.
42
Caliata Proclama el Primer Centenario del Evangelio en el Pueblo Quichua del Ecuador,
Iglesia Evanglica Caliata (23 y 24 de Enero, 2002). The two day jubilee consisted of a parade, revival,
open house of the facilities, workshops, Quichua cuisine and musical concerts. A second pamphlet also
claimed Caliata as the oldest Quichua Protestant church in the country, see 1902 Enero 24 2002:
Ashun, Sirviccunaca Tucuilla Caipi Pactalla Cachuncuna, Iglesia Evanglica Caliata (2002).
43
El Comienzo de la Luz, El Semillero, 6.
44
Ibid.
 83

introspection and interpretation demonstrates proprietorship of the new faith. In the

search of historical roots, Indgena accounts acknowledge GMUs contribution to
Quichua Protestantism. The accompanying paragraphs exhibit the abating role
missionaries have within Quichua Protestant history.
Quichua Evangelicals are grateful to GMU and the missionary contribution made
towards indigenous Christianity. Inside Indgena accounts, mission recognition plays a
minor role to Quichua appropriation and articulation of Protestantism. It is not another
Western missional history but rather a Quichua testimony. Notably in the Caliata 1902
Enero 24 2002 pamphlet Julia Anderson Woodward is the central character and the
only missionary mentioned in the historical review. The summarys concluding sentences
emphasize her legacy:
After her departure, her unselfish commitment of reaching the indgenas finally
had fruit. Today the greatest tribute of Julias labor is the hundreds of Evangelical
Indgena churches along the province of Chimborazo and in the rest of the
country. The seed of sacrifice is giving its fruit today.45

In the El Troje report, missionary prominence is considerably minimized. Credit is

granted to the messengers medical assistance, literacy classes, physical help, and
teaching music and songs; but the missionary task is a backdrop to Quichua
evangelization. For instance, after the contextual description of the deplorable situation of
Indgenas prior to Protestant ingress into El Troje, the narrative in one sentence
conveys then around that period the Evangelical missionaries from the Pulucate village
arrived in our community.46 Throughout El Semillero, a respectful tone is evident for the
GMU while general inferences to missionaries are secondary in order to accentuate
Quichua pioneers.
In contrast to missionary journalist Mausts account of the introduction of the
gospel to El Troje, El Semillero focuses on the Indgena role and, to that end, gives an
inventory of names like Trancito Guacho de Naula and the four Mullo Guagcha brothers
(Matias, Manuel, Jose, and Francisco) without any specific missionary identification as to

45
1902 Enero 24 2002, 1.
46
El Comienzo de la Luz, El Semillero, 5.
 84

those who evangelized them.47 After Mrs. Trancitos foot was healed by missionary
medical attention, GMU teaching led the brothers to conversion, the Quichua edition
underscores It is here that the first [Quichua] pioneers of the [Protestant] evangelization
originated. This [evangelization] started to shine like a light on the beautiful plains of our
community and province, and, why not say as well, our dear Puruha nation.48 Although
up to this point this study has not commented on the persecution GMU and Quichua
Protestants endured, religious discrimination throughout Quichua Christianity has
ultimately enabled the Indgena Church. Whereas the above delineation may follow
indigenous expressions of Indgena theology (Escobar), the chronicles are more
representative of Third Church history.49 Protestant indigenization among Quichuas not
only provided a message of freedom and an Indgena history but also enabled them to
hold together faith and politics in Ecuador.

5.4.3 FAITH AND POLITICS

Whether in form of resistance or emergent Quichua leadership, Christianity and
civic participation in Chimborazo have been an Indgena expression the past five
decades. In the previous chapter, Monsignor Proao and the Riobamba diocese
demonstrated Catholicisms social change advocacy for rural development on behalf of
the poor/Indgena. The Protestant church with far more consistently modernizing in their
outlook fostered a Western model of improved lifestyles, health care, and housing for
the Quichuas.50 Political scientist, Deborah Yashars study accurately transmits that
Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways to shape
their nations.51 The following paragraphs give an abridged view of how Chimborazo
Evangelicals through the Asociacion de Indgenas Evangelicos de Chimborazo

47
Maust gives a detailed report of the episode with names of missionaries and Quichuas alike.
See the Western narrative in chapter 8 of New Song in the Andes, 5663.
48
El Comienzo de la Luz, El Semillero, 5.
49
Escobar, The Role of Translation, 8182. For Escobar, indigenization in Latin America
produces Third Church theology and theologians. The idea of Third Church was borrowed from Swiss
missiologist Walbert Bhulman in The Church of the Future (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986), 6.Within
the Third Church idea, in addition to theology, history is another field to explore.
50
Marcelo Cruz, Competing Strategies for Modernization in the Ecuadorean Andes, Current
Anthropology, vol. 40, no. 3 (June, 1999): 380.
51
Deborah J. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements
and the Postliberal Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), ii.
 85

(AIECH)52 and civic leaders (Julin Guamn and Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui) have
impacted Ecuador.
Land, as aforementioned, was and is central to the Indgenas, the land is the
essential base of the social, economic, and spiritual life of Quichuas in Ecuador.53 By
1960, the colonial hacienda system tethered to the Indgenas remained lodged in
Ecuadorian society. Early in the twentieth century (1922), Pio Jaramillo Alvarado
succinctly explained that the Indgena dilemma was the problem of land distribution.54
Glimpses of freedom sparkled as the 1964 agrarian reform decreed that various haciendas
had to be divided and given to the peasants. Ruben Paredes-Alfaro points to how both the
shift of power in land and the Quichua limited autonomy created a vacuum which
Protestantism would take advantage and fill.55 In spite of inconsistencies within the new
legislation, for the first time in concrete fashion, Quichuas were faced with options that
would impact their future.
In 1966, when Colta Evangelical leaders wanted land for a church, Henry Klassen
accompanied the group to solicit land from a Riobamba official. In the process, it was
ascertained that land could be granted free if application was made through an
organization. The GMU suggestion was denied since land reform grants were not given
to foreign organizations but only to national groups. After considering the need,
opportunity and guidance, The Quichuas application was approved, and in 1966 the
believers got not only land for a church, but also their own organization, the Association
of Indigenous Evangelicals of Chimborazo (AIECH).56 Little did Quichua believers of

52
AIECH was constituted on 9 November 1966 and the following year, 1967, acquired its legal
status. In 2001, AIECH changed its name to a broader, encompassing title: Confederacion de Pueblos,
Organizaciones, Comunidades, Iglesias Indgenas Evangelicas de Chimborazo (CONPOCIIECH). For an
Indgena perspective, see Guamns FEINE, 5262; and for a missional account, see Maust, New Song in
the Andes, 8289.
53
Guamn, El Movimiento Indgena Evanglico, 1.
54
Lilo Linke, Ecuador: Country of Contrasts, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960),
58.
55
Paredes-Alfaro, A Protestant Movement in Ecuador and Peru, 168169.
56
Maust observes that Klassen had for some time wanted the Quichuas to have their own
organization. In addition to giving the Quichuas autonomy in religious matters, they would also have legal
status to defend themselves in situations of persecution, New Song in the Andes, 84. Jose Antonio Lucero
adds, Moreover, whatever its North American connections, Protestantism, like other external forces,
entered a particular historical situation and was interpreted and appropriated in such unforeseen ways that it
can no longer be considered a Western imposition, see Representing Real Indians: The Challenges of
 86

Chimborazo realize the provincial and national ramifications the new association would
create. Chimborazo as the primary (original) center of Quichua Protestantism became a
model for other Evangelical Indgenas throughout Ecuador to emulate. For scholars,
AIECH was the prototype of Evangelical organization; it has oriented and initiated the
articulation of doctrine and ideology of the countrys Evangelical indgenas.57
Indigenous motivations in the 1966 bylaws, sample a move beyond an imported faith to a
Quichua belief system that seeks to Elevate the moral, cultural, economic, sanitary and
professional levels of the indgenas of Chimborazo.58 Not only did Chimborazo produce
an organizational flagship but civic leaders were also birthed in the region of the Puruha
nation. Julin Guamn and Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui are proud sons of Chimborazo
who will be considered next.
A second-generation Evangelical activist, Julin Guamn, an Indgena born in
Flores, canton Guamote in 1970, is a product of Protestant evangelization and the
Quichua Church. From age eight, he and his family migrated to the Amazon (Tena) and
lived there until he graduated high school. His undergraduate work focused on
anthropology (Ecuador), theology, and Latin American studies (Costa Rica, 19931999),
while his graduate studies were in international relations (Ecuador). Guamns academic
preparation, especially in Costa Rica, was consequential to the liberationist ideology
imprinted in his writings and thought. His commitment to social change led him to work
on developmental projects and organizations, advocacy for children rights and as the
currently elected president of the Council for Civil Participation and Social Control.59
Guamn spotlights Indgena culture and Quichuaness over Western missions and its

Indigenous Authenticity and Strategic Constructivism in Ecuador and Bolivia, Latin American Research
Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (June 2006): 37.
57
Guamn, FEINE, 53.
58
Ibid.
59
On 28 January 2009, Julin Guamn was elected president of Consejo de Participacin
Ciudadana y Control Social (Council for Civil Participation and Social Control) of the state. Under
Ecuadors President Rafael Correas new administration and constitution, article 206 stipulates the
formation of this entity. This new function of the state [Quinto Poder Fifth Power] seeks to articulate a
national plan to fight against corruption within state entities, as well as individuals of the private sector that
develop activities in the publics interest. In addition and according to the constitutional mandate, it will be
in charge of motivating civil participation and protecting the exercise and fulfillment of their rights, in
Julin Guamn Preside la Cuarta Funcin del Estado, Diario Hoy, 16 Abril 2009- [cited 30 October
2009]; available from http://www.hoy.com.ec/noticias-ecuador/julian-guaman-preside-la-cuarta-funcion-
del-estado-343669.html; INTERNET.
 87

partner, fundamentalism. In this light, Protestant evangelization and its Indgena

appropriation is better said [to be] the utilization of visible cultural Indgena elements
(language, system of relationships, organization, production).60 Although clearly on the
acculturation side of the debate, Guamn embodies a face of Quichua indigenization of
the gospel. One of Guamns contemporaries and also another dialogue partner in this
chapter is Yupanqui.
Julin Guamn and Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui were chosen because of their
profile and Quichua perspective. They are Indgenas (Quichuas), Evangelicals, educated,
statesmen from Chimborazo who espouse a Protestant hermeneutic
(translation/interpretation). In contrast to Guamns acculturation view of Christian
missions, Yupanqui, on the other hand, acknowledges North American Protestantisms
positive indigenization affect upon the Quichuas. I believe not expressing gratitude to
missionaries would be like being blind and not recognizing the value of the
missionary.61
Yupanqui was born in 1965, in the middle of the epicenter of Protestantism (El
Troje, canton Colta). As an eight-year-old boy, along with hearing Quichua Christian
radio, he would also listen every evening to Radio Nacional (National Radio) as
Congress deliberated over daily business sessions. During this time, the desire to be a
member of Ecuadors Congress was birthed. When he was about fourteen, he professed
the following one day I will be in the national congress. Although Yupanqui has not
made Congress yet, throughout the decade of the 1990s, he worked with the Department
of Education, which facilitated contact with the executive branch (Presidents Sixto
Duran, Abdala Bucara and Jamil Mahuad). In 1998, he was appointed Chief
Parliamentary Advisor of Congress, where he and his team synthesized the laws
congress was to review; and I was at the pinnacle of national politics.62 From 2000
2009, Yupanqui returned to Chimborazo and was elected to two terms as mayor of Colta.
His strong Evangelical roots can be seen in a publication the Municipality of Colta edited
in 2008 under his direction:

60
Guamn, El Movimiento Indgena Evanglico, 51.
61
Yupanqui, interview.
62
Ibid.
 88

The Lord will place you at the head, never the tail. You will always be at the
summit, never at the bottom as long as you give attention to the commandments
of the Lord your God. In connection to this divine promise, the entrance into the
fascinating world of political power commencedFor the transcendental
steadfastness of the facts [and] for the governors of Colta, it is an immense
responsibility to pay attention to Gods commandments and bathed in the pool of
values like obedience to God, honesty, solidarity and love toward the people.63

While mayor and reflecting on his political career, Yupanqui avows his faith was
foundational:
When I lost, I prayed. But I know it has been Gods will for me to be in
politicsPolitics is a school that allows one to serve Him and society. To govern,
one needs to be in total contact with God and have high levels of friendships with
society. I believe its like being sandwiched, precisely in the middle, in order to
draw near to God and be a channel of blessing to society. In order to accomplish
this, the person needs to first have certain principles and values in politics, in the
act of making decisions where you dont have someone controlling you, your wife
does not control you or your parents or your grandparents who I have always had
in my life. No one controls you in the decisions you make only the principles you
receive as a child serve as rails to stay on track. This has been my experience in
politics.64

In the last forty-four years, Indgenas have emerged to embrace faith and politics in the
likes of AIECH, Guamn, Yupanqui, and many others to recapture a community,
province, and nation that once was ruled by the Inca Atahualpa. These are the fruits of
indigenization, Quichua Protestantism, and freedom in the equatorial land.

5.5 CONCLUSION
Christianitys impact in Latin American, particularly upon Ecuadors Indgena,
has been both harmful and constructive, lost and found in translation. The Protestant
chapters like chapter 3 demonstrate the human paradigm of limitation (frailty) within
the process of communicating the message (gospel), the evangelization of the Indgena.
The modern critique of imperialism by Protestant missions and missionaries has
dominated the debate in the scientific disciplines. Like Sanneh in Africa, the preceding
exposition exhibited the acculturation affect but also attempted to balance the Latin

63
Pedro Curichumbi Yupanqui, Gobierno Municipal de Colta: Liderazgo y Participacin
Ciudadana, (Riobamba: Editorial Pedaggica Freire, 2008), 5.
64
Yupanqui, interview.
 89

American discourse by placing emphasis on the indigenization of the Evangelical

Quichuas. In the vernacular translation, the Quichuas found a message of their own, a
liberating message of human dignity and salvation. At that point, the Protestant message
became relevant to the Quichuas, when, in Quichua, they heard the message of liberty,
when Indgenas wrote their own Christian history, and when their faith empowered them
to actively participate in the public arena. The Quichua Church presently is in an
adolescent stage with a future in which they can learn and fail, and which they can
ultimately direct. The subsequent chapters observe the Pentecostal impact in Ecuador and
especially upon the Quichua Church.
 90

6. PENTECOST AT THE MIDDLE OF THE EARTH

The advance of Latin American Protestantism in the 1850s, only thirty years after
the era of independence, began gradually but, within a century (1960s), had reached
epochal force.1 Evangelicalisms mid-twentieth century impetus, Pentecostalism, not
always acknowledged as the momentum, is now accepted by academics as the force
behind Christianitys shift to the Global South, the new center. In the previous chapter,
Sannehs evaluation of Christianitys new non-Western vitality is primarily represented
by Pentecostal and Charismatic adherents. In the twentieth century, the pneumatic
movement pentecostalized much of Latin Americas Protestant churches. Currently
renewal currents continue on the rise. Approximately 75 to 90 percent of the Protestant
community (40 million) is Pentecostal, and out of the 66 million Classical Pentecostals
worldwide, half of them are found in Latin America.2 North American Pentecostalism
traces its origins to two revivals in the beginning of the twentieth century: Topeka,
Kansas in 1901 and Azusa Street in 1906. The term Classical Pentecostalism emerged
during the 1960s to distinguish Pentecostal churches from the mainline churches and
Roman Catholic churches that were experiencing Pentecostalism- Neopentecostal
churches eventually were called Charismatics. The movements popularity and growth
among the masses, mostly the urban poor, reveals Pentecostalisms validity and
pertinence for addressing and responding to the socio-economic and spiritual needs of a
region in transition.
For Latin American scholar Edward Clearly, Pentecostalisms emergence in the
early 1900s ignited sparks simultaneously throughout the globe including Latin
America. He asserts that Foreign missionaries helped to spark, not create, a new

1
David Martin, Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1990), 49. Martin and other scholars observed the new dynamic transpiring in the region. See
also David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth (Berkley:
University of California Press, 1990), and Pablo A. Deiros and Carlos Mraida, ed., Latinoamrica en
Llamas: Historia y Creencias del Movimiento Religiosa ms Impresionante de Todos los Tiempos (Miami:
Editorial Caribe, 1994). Each of the scholars compares the catalyst to a hurricane (Martin), a
reformation (Stoll), and a fire (Deiros and Mraida).
2
Everett A. Wilson, Latin America, in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal
Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Ed M. Van der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2002), 157.
 91

religious tradition within Latin America.3 Bernardo Campos prefers to call the new
religious tradition a religious movement. For Campos,
[the]Pentecostal movement isa worldwide socio-religious phenomenon as well
as an alternative movement in the life and mission of the Christian Churchfrom
this basic premise: Pentecostalism is, above all, a religious movement and not a
denomination nor a religious organization.4

Grassroots movements and indigenous churches burgeoned soon after the first phase of
Pentecostal missionary efforts took root. Acknowledging the indigenization at the heels
of Pentecostalisms commencement, Everett A. Wilson classifies this stage as
establishing the indigenous character of the initial movements, whereas Campos
prefers to designate the period as the implantation of Pentecostalism.5 Unlike Campos
use of the dependency model, Wilsons depiction acknowledges the initial missionary
contribution without excluding the movements natural indigenous progression. To some
degree, all the Latin American nations followed Wilsons characterization, but not all had
the equivalent growth, development, and impact in the manner of Brazil, Chile, and
Guatemala.
Ecuador provides an example of Campos classification in which the movement
was slow to develop prominent indigenous churches, but Classical North American
Pentecostalism was more influential. Since Ecuador sits on the equator at 0 degrees
latitude and crossed longitudinally by the Andes Mountains, the Andean state boasts
itself as the Middle of the Earth. Although religion in the small nation is predominately
Catholic (95 percent), like most Latin American countries, the total renewal of
Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neocharismatics numbers about 1,410,000
communicants.6 The groundwork early Pentecostal pioneers established at the Middle of

3
Edward L. Clearly, Latin American Pentecostalism, in The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A
Religion Made to Travel, ed. Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Peterson (Oxford:
Regnum Books, 1999), 134.
4
Campos, Experiencia Del Espritu (Quito: CLAI, 2002), 13.
5
See Wilson, Passion and Power: A Profile Emergent Latin American Pentecostalism, in Called
& Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective, ed. Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and
Douglas Peterson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 68; and Campos, Experiencia del Espritu, 4.
6
Ecuadors Catholic Church has 4 archdioceses, 10 dioceses, some 140 religious orders,
approximately 1,000 parishes, 4 universities, 2 radio stations, and 2 television stations, in Michael H.
Handelsman, Culture and Customs of Ecuador (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2000), 23. The breakdown of
the total Ecuadorian Renewal: Pentecostals number 129,230 (9 percent), Charismatics 1,218,821 (86
 92

the Earth is the content of the present chapter; and provides the setting for the next
chapter on Quichua Pentecostalism. This exploration centers on the work among
Ecuadorian mestizos by the first Pentecostal pioneers and three Classical Pentecostal
groups: the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel (ICFG), the Assemblies of
God (AG), and the Church of God Cleveland, TN (COG), which would latter incorporate
the indgenas of the country.

6.1 FIRST PENTECOSTAL PIONEERS

Pioneers can be defined as a unique group of people who dig out paths that others
follow all the while establishing the vision that drives them. At times with little or no
recognition, these pathfinders help succeeding generations build upon their efforts.
Although all Christian pioneers (Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal) share the above
quality, scholars have viewed Pentecostal founders as being more radical and fanatical
than most. Pentecostalisms manifestation (miracles, speaking in tongues, ecstatic
religion, etc.) for some pundits exhibit what Ronald A. Knox over half a century ago
labeled pejoratively enthusiasm or ultrasupernaturalism.7 In spite of the critics, the
intrepid confidence, the sense of vocation to present the full gospel, Wilson asserts, led
them typically [to be more] aggressive and iconoclastic, often violating religious
customs and social mores.8 Wilson insists that their uncompromising personalities
accompanied with their labors influenced people around them. But their greatest
contribution was identifying with the people and empowering nationals in leadership and
the new emerging churches. Yet, the goal for Pentecostal innovators was proliferation of
Gods word in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Vinson Synan recognizes that early in the movement many pentecostal pioneers
who received tongues at Azusa Street in 1906 went back to their homes to spread the
movement among their own people.9 In Latin America, there were also a few
Pentecostal missionaries from North America that made the continent their new home

percent) and Neocharismatics 61,949 (4 percent), see David D. Bundy, Ecuador, in The New
International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements, 83.
7
Knox, Enthusiasm, 1, 2.
8
Wilson, Passion and Power, 68.
9
Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic
Renewal, 19012001 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001), 5.
 93

and spread the Pentecostal power and fire everywhere they went. Despite this general
early impulse, few Pentecostal pioneers entered Ecuador in the early part of the twentieth
century; the inflow of the movements missionaries arrived in the country mainly during
the 1950s.
Howard and Clara Cragin were the first Pentecostals to arrive in Ecuador in 1911.
As a result of the Cragins two short terms (19111913 and 19171922) in the country,
any vestiges of their work are nonexistent today.10 In the first interval, they opened a
mission in Quito and worked for two years prior to transitioning to Bolivia in 1913, while
the mission was left under the care of the CMA.
Nonetheless, in 1911, another Pentecostal couple, L. B. Sly and his wife, came
from Argentina where they had been working. Since local print shops would not produce
materials for them, they acquired their own printing press and generated pamphlets.
While headquartered in Quito, the Slys helped establish several groups of believers as
they visited nearby towns and villages distributing Bibles and pamphlets. In 1915, Sly
records, We praise God for the progress that is occurring among the Pentecostal saints
and the efforts being accomplished toward unity. Pray for the Pentecostal House in
Quito.11 Silence on this Pentecostal effort ensues after L. B.s last letter describes the
difficulty of both the altitude for his wifes health and the evangelization of Ecuadorians.
Luisa Jeter Walker suggests that the impenetrability of the field and the lack of growth
and workers were reasons for the cessation of information on this early Pentecostal
mission.
In August 1917, the Cragins under the auspices of the CMA returned to Ecuador
with their daughter Rebecca, a newborn Bolivian-American. In May 1918, they founded
the Misin Evanglica Quichua (Evangelical Quichua Mission), an Indgena work in
Agato. Like the early GMU and CMA missions, examined in chapter 5, the Cragins also
worked in evangelism, church planting and social outreach to all in need. 12 The
mission housed a school and a clinic where people never left without prayer. Because of

10
Bundy, Ecuador, 83. See also Luisa Jeter Walker, Siembra y Cosecha: Resea Histrica de
las Asambleas de Dios en Brasil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Republica Dominicana y Cuba, tomo 3 (Deerfield:
Editorial Vida, 1996), 228.
11
Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 228.
12
Ibid., 229.
 94

religious opposition to outsiders, the Cragins faced on three instances uprisings from
Indgena community leaders literally threatening to kill them. On one occasion, they
escaped by crawling out the back window of their home, while in another instance the
authorities stopped the attackers. In September 1922, they left Ecuador for its southern
neighbor, Peru, where they served the rest of their lives with the Assemblies of God.

6.2 GUAYAQUILS TRAILBLAZERS: THE FOURSQUARE LEGACY

Latin America gained global attention during the late 1950s and 1960s as
socialism and capitalism battled for prominence in the region. The Cold War came south
when Fidel Castros 1959 revolution in Cuba succeeded, and the subsequent spread of
guerrilla movements throughout the hemisphere threatened Latin America especially
affecting Rome and Washington.13Anti-communist supporters filled the streets of Latin
American cities in protest of the revolution and its menace upon the Americas. In
Guayaquil, the media announced rallies and processions to counter Marxism:
ALL GUAYAQUILENOSWill be present this afternoon at four thirty in the
Plaza Centenario in order to manifest the most energetic rejection of the barbaric
and atheistic communism.14

THE COMUNNIST THREATShould create a civic reaction of all men and

women of democracy. Attend this afternoon at four thirty at the Plaza
Centenario.15

Penny Lernoux points to Chiles Christian Democratic President Eduardo Freis popular
phrase a revolution of freedom to defuse communism and promote development
(capitalism) for Latin America. During this period, as Pentecostalism was exploding onto
the scene in Ecuador, both fear of communism and hope in capitalism inundated the
populace at the Middle of the Earth.
At the close of the twentieth century, the International Church of the Foursquare
Gospel (ICFG) registered over 40,000 members in Ecuador. Although two other
Pentecostal denominations, the Assemblies of God (AG) and the Church of God (COG)
Cleveland, TN, respectively have more adherents than the Foursquare, the Foursquare

13
Lernoux, The Long Path to Puebla, 7.
14
El Universo, Thursday, 01 November 1962, 20. The invitation was a small advertisement among
many throughout the newspaper.
15
Ibid., 24.
 95

Church has the legacy of being the first Pentecostal group in the country.16 In 1927, the
Foursquare Church founded in Los Angeles, California by Aimee Semple McPherson
sent their first missionaries thirty years later to Guayaquil, Ecuador.
In 1957, Arthur Gadberry and his family began pioneer work among the urban
mestizos of Guayaquil. Despite the lack of language fluency, missionary experience, and
help from workers, by 1962 the Gadberrys had established two congregations on the
coast: one in Guayaquil, and the other in the city of Milagro. The implanting of the
churches originated prior to the Pentecostal surge that same year in Guayaquil, an
emergent beachhead for the movement in the following years. Some insight on the
Gadberrys and the early beginnings of the Foursquare Church in Ecuador come from
Wayne C. Welds interviews with Rev. Roberto Aguirre. Regarding the denominations
preparation for sending the Gadberrys:
Unfortunately, contrary to usual mission policy, they were sent out alone without
previous missionary experience and, more seriously, without fluent Spanish.
Added to these initial disadvantages was the fact that some of the established
evangelical groups already in Ecuador did not welcome Pentecostals.17

The resolute determination of missionaries like the Gadberrys is what makes pioneers
peculiar kind of peoplehe/she rises up to adversity, obstacles, and limitations and
forges ahead to create and establish something out of nothing. The Gadberrys pioneer
efforts for the Foursquare Church consist of laying the groundwork for others that would
follow later. The Gadberrys work and the month-long healing crusade that enlarged the
denomination almost overnight make up part of the Pentecostal origins in Ecuador. In
1961, the Gadberrys returned from furlough and moved to Quito to plant another church.

16
My 2003 visit to the Assemblies of God Sierra headquarters in Quito, Ecuador resulted in
denominational leaders not being able to provide current membership figures, only estimations. I
experienced similar outcomes with the Church of God and the Foursquare Church. The AG and COG judge
their numbers to be over 40,000. Statistics has been a weakness for the national Pentecostal churches in
Ecuador; yet leaders of all three denominations are willing to cooperate in future research projects. The
numbers suggest the denominational growth parallels the World Christian Encyclopedia 1995 statistics:
AG (37,500), COG (31,100), and Foursquare (23,300). See David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd
M. Johnson, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the
Modern World, 2d. ed., vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 249.
17
Wayne C. Weld, An Ecuadorian Impasse (Chicago: Evangelical Covenant Church of America,
1968), 61.
 96

As significant as were the first evangelical entry in 1824 by Thomson18 and the
Quichua group conversions after 1964, the Pentecostal Renewal of 1962 was the first
spontaneous Christian growth in Ecuador. In 1962 while working in Panama, Roberto
Aguirre and his family were appointed to help the Gadberrys in Ecuador. Once in
Guayaquil, Roberto, a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, organized a citywide crusade
with the help of only the AG since the citys evangelical churches viewed the new sect
(Pentecostals) suspiciously. According to Weld, the crusade appeared doomed for
disaster:
Failure seemed inevitable since the small Foursquare congregation could not even
provide many counselors for the campaign. There was no choir, no musicians, no
seats in the rented football [soccer] stadium, and relatively little publicity before
the campaign.19

The first positive sign materialized when,

Finally just before the campaign was to begin an event occurred that was to turn
defeat into victory. The manager of a local radio station offered to broadcast all
the services for operational costs of some fifteen dollars per night.20
Aguirre invited Roberto Espinoza, an AG healing evangelist from California, to be the
crusade speaker. On the first night, only 1,000 people attended, but as the news spread of
the healings, multitudes began to flock to the stadium and continued to attend in the
following weeks. The second night 5,000 appeared, the third night 10,000; by weeks end
over 20,000 people filled the stadium. At the end of the six-week revival, 30,000
witnessed 1,500 people being baptized.
Espinozas healing ministry attracted reporters that publicized the unusual
events and broadcasted the meetings throughout the country. 21AG missionaries
remember that it was an extraordinary visitation of the Holy Spirit with signs, wonders,

18
See Thomson Letters dated Guayaquil, 5th October, 1824, 180; Padilla, La Iglesia y Los
Dioses Modernos, 399; and chapter 3 of this study, James Diego Thomson, Pedagogue of Bible
Distributors and Educators.
19
Weld, An Ecuadorian Impasse, 62. Because of the remedial commencement of the event,
Aguirre was very discouraged and dejected, ready to throw in the towel and cancel the meetings. Peter
Wagner adds, When the Foursquare brethren in Guayaquil, Ecuador, launched their evangelistic crusade
in 1962, they were, like many of us, ye of little faith. C. Peter Wagner, Look Out! The Pentecostals Are
Coming, 1st ed. (Carol Stream: Creation House, 1973), 53.
20
Ibid. The media coverage would be a major factor in the success of the crusade.
21
See William R. Read, Victor M. Monterroso, and Harmon A. Johnson, eds., Latin American
Church Growth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), 122.
 97

and miracles that [throughout] 42 days shook the conscience of many lives and multiplied
at least five times the Evangelical population of Ecuador.22 Read explains that after the
event, the thirty-plus member Foursquare congregation received 600 new converts,
mobilizing it to open seven more churches in the city:
The church in Guayaquil had to move from the small building to an open lot
where a simple roof was erected until a central church could be built. In 1965 this
congregation had grown to 900 members with a church school of 600 as well as
twelve other congregations in the city.23

Weld records that in 1966 the membership in Guayaquil had grown to 1,674 and by 1968
well over 2,000. Using the 1968 census, he affirms that the Foursquare denomination,
has maintained the impetus which it received from the campaign in Guayaquil in 1962.
The census indicates total membership of 2,698.24
After the crusade, Lucila Garca de Montoya25 remembers worst of all there were
no pastors, nobody only Pastor Aguirre to manage the plethora of new converts.26
Whether Aguirre knew Platos memorable words in The Republic that necessity is the
mother of invention, the visionary saw the need for ministers and called lay leaders to
the pastorate. The Protestant Reformation doctrine of universal priesthood (all believers
are ministers) has been a normal praxis of Pentecostalism, at times its genius while in
other occasions its weakness. In the late 1980s, Padilla observed the significance the
Pentecostal model had initially and continued to have for the Christian church as a whole:
Here we see in the last several years one of the main reasons of Protestant growth
in the country. If one desires to understand this movement, the participation of
laity should be considered as one of the principle secrets of the growth of the
Protestant groupsIn this we have to thank our Pentecostal brethren because in

22
25 Aos de Labor Misionera en el Ecuador de las Asambleas de Dios, (1987): 3.
23
Read, Monterroso, and Johnson, Latin American Church Growth, 122.
24
Weld, An Ecuadorian Impasse, 64. Wagner uses the Foursquare numerical increase to support
his Church Growth hypothesis, in four years the one church in Guayaquil had become forty-two churches
all over the republic. See Wagner, Look Out! The Pentecostals are Coming, 56.
25
Lucila and Eusebio Montayo are pioneer leaders of the Foursquare Church. The Montoyas are
one of the first converts the Gadberrys received in September 1958 (Eusebio on September 7, Lucila on
September 14). They were founders of the Foursquare Church, pastors of the Central Church in Guayaquil,
church planters of twelve congregations, and Rev. Montayo served as President of the Foursquare Gospel
Church in Ecuador (197173, 198687, and 199094).
26
Lucila Garca de Montoya, interview by author, audio digital recording, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 7
November 2008. See also Lee Schnabel, Eusebio Montoya, A Man of Simplicity and Power, Foursquare
World Advance (JulyAugust 1992):1415; and Siervos Amados, in Revista Conmemorativa: Iglesia
Central del Evangelio Cuadrangular de Guayaquil, 40 Aniversario (4 Noviembre 2002): 6.
 98

their practice they restore a principle of the Protestant Reformation, more than
that, a biblical principleIn general, the rest of the Pentecostal denominations are
characterized by laity participation and are in the Protestant groups that grow
most in Ecuador.27

The inexperience of the workers was evident to Aguirre; yet, he believed in establishing a
national (indigenous) church and encouraged the neophyte pastors to rise to the task.
Hence, the need for workers in the incipient Pentecostal explosion, created opportunities
for indigenization early in the movement.

6.3 THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD PILLARS

Another organization from the North that emerged from Hot Springs, Arkansas in
1914, was the Assemblies of God, which since the 1960s has contributed to
Pentecostalisms impact on Latin America. By 1964, in Latin America alone, the AG had
a total of 207 missionaries, 8,814 national workers who occupied 10,130 mission centers;
converts and sympathizers amounted to 1,104,737 of which 372,914 had experienced
Spirit baptism.28 The AGs presence and growth in the American republics developed
strong national churches subsequently forming mission departments which sent
financially supported missionaries to other countries. Missionaries first came to Ecuador
from the United States in the early 1960s and later from Costa Rica, El Salvador, and
Panama.29
Some credit Fernando Moroco, a Peruvian AG evangelist who visited Guayaquil
in 1960 and preached for a period of two weeks, for starting the AG in Ecuador.30
Concurrently, Hector Chavez Yepez, a pastor of a small Ecuadorian church wrote and
solicited assistance from and affiliation with the North American AG mission department
in Springfield, Missouri. He requested that more missionaries be sent. Bundy identifies
that under Yepezs leadership the Pentecostal denomination developed. As a result of
Yepezs petition, Henry Hall, missionary in Peru went to evaluate the situation. He

27
Padilla, La Iglesia y Los Dioses Modernos, 401.
28
Roswell J. Flower, El Orign y Desarrollo de las Asambleas de Dios, in La Historia de la
Iglesia Cristiana, ed. Jesse Lyman Hurlbut, Roswell J. Flower, and Miguel Narro (Springfield: Editorial
Vida, 1964), 217.
29
25 Aos de Labor Misionera, 2.
30
Bundy places Moroco in Ecuador in 1956 crediting him for starting the AG in this nation, see
Bundy, Ecuador, 83. See Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 230, and 25 Aos de Labor Misionera, 5.
 99

needed to determine whether the denomination needed a work in this city since a sister
organization (Foursquare Church) already was present. After realizing that both groups
could work in Guayaquil, Hall recommended that Springfield establish a work and send
workers to Ecuador.31 Yet, Walker asserts two other factors launched the AG: the arrival
of the Dowdys and the Espinoza crusade. Bundy and Walker differ regarding the AG
origins in Ecuador; the former presents more of a Latin American view while the latter
supports a Western missionary perspective.
In 1962, the first AG missionary family, Lowell, Virla, Jonatan, and Marcos
Dowdy, arrived in Ecuador. Unlike the Foursquares first family, the Dowdys were well-
prepared for ministry in Ecuador. They were missionaries with 18 years of experience in
Venezuela and Chile; consequently, they were fluent in Spanish, and Lowell had been
AG Superintendent in Chile. On September 13, 1962, six weeks prior to the crusade, the
Dowdys reached Guayaquil to establish the AG and participate in the crusade:
[They arrived] determined to initiate the missionary work for the AG in Ecuador.
The days were [filled] with intense activity as everyone in Guayaquil awaited the
arrival of Roberto Espinoza, an AG Mexican pastor of the city of San Fernando,
California, invited by Pastor Roberto AguirreBrother Dowdy had the
opportunity to participate in brother Espinozas crusade. At the conclusion of the
[event], on December 16, he [Dowdy] opened two locations for meetings: a small
one located at Alcedo and Esmeraldas a few blocks from the Unamuno stadium,
and another larger one, at Luque and Rumichaca.32

Dowdy strategically used the momentum of the crusade as evangelistic force to bring in
preachers (Fernando Moroco, Watson Argue and others) to hold more revivals. In March
1963, Argue held meetings with attendance ranging between 500 and 1,300 every
evening at Luque and Rumichaca. By July 25, 1963, both groups were officially
organized as AG churches.33 In January 1965, the National Evangelical Conference of the
Assemblies of God in Ecuador was organized consisting of four churches, five preaching
centers with ten ministers, 206 baptized members, another 143 adherents, and 487
registered Sunday School attendees.34 Moroco, Yepez, Dowdy, and Espinoza helped

31
See Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 230.
32
25 Aos de Labor Misionera, 3. See Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 232.
33
These two churches plus a third one in Quito (founded by the Dowdys) were the three
pillar/pioneer churches of the AG in Ecuador.
34
Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 235.
 100

pioneer this denomination whose Pentecostal force would continue to gather momentum
in the following decades.

6.4 CHURCH OF GOD PIONEER TO THE QUICHUAS

Operation World reported that in 1960 Ecuador had the smallest Evangelical
presence of all Latin America; but, since then, steady growth mainly among urban
mestizos (within the CMA and Pentecostal churches) and the Quichuas of the Andes
highlands had been reported. Protestants increased in Ecuador from 19,000 to 363,000 in
the first thirty years (19601990).
A third North American Pentecostal group, the Church of God, Cleveland
Tennessee (COG) started the work among the highland Quichuas through the efforts of
Panamanian missionary Guillermo Vasconez. In 1970, eight years after the Pentecostal
proliferation, the work of the COG commenced, and, by the end of 1972, the
denomination had 2 churches with 60 members.35 Three decades later (2003), there were
purportedly almost 200 churches and about 43,000 communicants, half of which were
Quichua.36 As the 2000 John W. Kennedys survey affirms The Quichuas, at 4.5 million,
are slightly more than 40 percent of Ecuadors population, the COG found the Indgena
territory a vital field to also establish a work.37
On January 15, 1989, Guillermo Vasconez, Panamanian missionary married to an
Ecuadorian, was appointed Overseer of the Indgena Territory. The need for a second
administrator in the area arose when approximately 3,000 Quichua Christians sought
affiliation with the COG. Dr. Carlos Ramos, COG minister and political activist, met
with the Indigenous Evangelical Association of Tungurahua resulting in the subsequent
annexation of some Quichua brethren and their churches. With the addition of new

35
In 1970, Alfredo Bochan, a COG pastor from the Dominican Republic arrived to establish the
work. After two years, he was appointed overseer, serving from 19721984. The Church of God in
Ecuador, So All May Hear 2, no.2 (October 1994): 3.
36
Angel Mendoza, interview by author, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 13 December 2003. At the time
Administrative Bishop Angel Mendoza, National Overseer of the COG in Ecuador offered the above
figures as current. The ensuing chapter will discuss the accuracy of the statistics given. Mendoza in 1992
was appointed the first national to preside over the denomination in Ecuador. Although at first glance, his
successor (Richard Mendoza, his son) would suggest nepotism, in 2006 the Ecuadorian COG pastors voted
for the new administration.
37
John W. Kennedy, Out of the Ashes: In the Land of Volcanoes, Persistent Missionary Efforts
Finally Yield Fruit, Christianity Today 44, no. 1 (2000): 67.
 101

members, an administrator, and a territory, the COG doubled within a few weeks of the
affiliation from 2,856 to almost 6,000 adherents.38
Vasconez, his wife Monica Benavides, and their three daughters, Ginny, Lilibeth,
and Daniela, served in the city of Ambato, a central region for the vast indigenous
population of Ecuador. The ethnographic approach he applied for seventeen years (1989
2006) undoubtedly made him a beloved Pentecostal pioneer to the Quichuas, and he was
endearingly known among them as Hermano Guillermo (Brother Guillermo). Although
appointed to set up the Indgena work, the mountain people came to love and honor him
as one of their own because Vasconez, rather than imposing change, accepted them along
with the Quichua language, culture, and worldview. When asked what had made the
COG so successful compared to other groups in the region, Vasconez replied there are
two reasons: 1) we share with allthere are no denominational agendas emphasized, and
2) we offer a contextual proposalit is not a COG plan (coming from the outside), but
rather a COG Indgena proposal, one coming from inside their own culture and
context.39 The salient difference between the two approaches is their emphasis- the COG
agenda places institution above context while Vaconezs proposal focuses Indgena
culture over denominational loyalties. In 2003 under his leadership, the COG Indgena
Territory had 160 churches and nearly 22,000 members, and the work continued to
extend throughout Ecuador.

6.5 CONCLUSION
During the twentieth century but especially in the second half, Ecuador became a
fertile field for the Pentecostal message. Visionaries and pioneers arrived at the Middle of
the Earth and worked hard to plant the Pentecostal seed deep into Ecuadorian soil.
Notwithstanding the lack of initial quantitative results, the Cragins and the Slys are part
of the historical record as the first Pentecostals to arrive at the beginning of the twentieth
century. 1962 marked the first major boom of Ecuadorian Pentecostalism by the
Foursquare (Dowdy and Aguirre) and the Assemblies of Gods (Yepez, Moroco, Lowell,
and Espinoza) collaborative efforts in a healing crusade. In the following decades,

38
Guillermo Vasconez, interview by author, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 7 December 2003.
39
Vasconez, interview. Further observation of Vasconezs dual objectives will be examined in the
following Quichua Pentecostalism chapter under the typological section.
 102

Pentecost spread to Spanish urban centers (initially in Guayaquil, Milagro, and Quito) as
well as to the rural Andean highlands among the Quichuas. And towards the end of the
twentieth century, the COG Quichua membership increased under Vasconezs leadership.
These Pentecostal men and women forged ahead and helped establish Pentecostalism in
the country of Ecuador.
These pioneers were followed by others who expanded the Pentecostal message
and experience. The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the Assemblies of
God and the Church of God (Cleveland, TN.) were initially an implantation of
Pentecostalism by North American organizations. In the following decades, all three
struggled through various stages to formalize national churches while being dependent on
U.S. headquarters. In spite of this familial tension, they have developed into a national
classical Pentecostal presence.
Samuel Escobar states that most of the Latin American evangelicals are slow at
looking at the Spiritthus they need to be open to the new wind of the Spirit in the
church, perhaps through unexpected cross fertilization from others who have already
entered in some measure into this reality.40 The Pentecostal denominations are the
others who are assisting the non-Pentecostal sector of the Church to appropriate
Pentecost. For example, the Pentecostal priesthood of all believers is not only part of the
pneumatological reality taking place in Latin America, but also it has been a major reason
for Ecuadors Protestant growth. The preceding sections have set the phenomenological
background in order to examine next Quichua Pentecostalism. The final chapter provides
a tentative definition, description, and typology of the Spirits manifestation among the
Quichuas of Ecuador.

40
Samuel Escobar, MaanaDiscerning the Spirit in Latin America, Evangelical Review of
Theology 20, no. 4 (October 1996): 312.
 103

7. QUICHUA PENTECOSTALISM, A RENEWAL OF THE SPIRIT

In Latin America, Catholicism leveraged for four centuries all sectors of society
until Pentecostalism altered the religious landscape. Pentecostalisms advance since its
early entrance in the 1900s was significant. In the last two decades, scholars have
considered Pentecostalism a positive, cogent religious movement within the region.
Within the last ten years in Latin America, many conferences and meetings have
discussed the relevance of Latin American Pentecostalism. The following three
symposiums demonstrate the trend. The first was the 49th International Congress of
Americanists sponsored a symposium on Pentecostalism held at Pontificia Universidad
Catolica de Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador on July 1997. The First Latin American Pentecostal
Lecture organized by the Ecumenical Community of Latin American Theological
Education (CETELA), the Latin American Pentecostal Studies Network (RELEP), and
the Latin American Chapter of the Association of Third World Theologians (ASETT-AL)
was held in San Jose, Costa Rica on March 2002. And, the 10th Latin American Congress
of Religion and Ethnicity was on Protestantism and Pentecostalism in Latin America
realized in the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico on July 2004. 1
Toward the beginning of the 1990s Virginia Garrard-Burnett argued that renewal
in Latin America had come through the Pentecostal movement, as a reformation in the
most literal sense of the word: a reforming of the religious, social, and political contours
of contemporary Latin America.2 Pentecostalism has also been characterized as a social
movement that exhibits centrifugal and centripetal forces, to draw and to fragment

1
Consequently, all three forums published monographs of the papers presented, thus the rationale
for their selection. See Angelina Polla-Eltz and Yolanda Salas, ed., El Pentecostalismo en Amrica Latina:
Entre Tradicin y Globalizacin (Quito: Abya Yala, 1997); Daniel Chiquete and Luis Orellana, ed., Voces
del pentecostalismo latinoamericano (Concepcin: CELEP, CETELA, ASETT, 2003); and Carolina Rivera
Farfn and Elizabeth Jurez Cerd, ed., Mas alla del Espiritu: Actores, accionesy practicas en iglesias
pentecostales (Mexico: Colmich-Ciesas, 2007).
2
Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Conclusion: Is This Latin Americas Reformation? in Rethinking
Protestantism in Latin America, ed. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1993), 208. Pentecostalism is also impacting the family in Latin America, see Virginia T.
Nolivos and Eloy H. Nolivos, Pentecostalisms Theological Reconstruction of the Identity of the Latin
American Family, in Pentecostal Power: Expressions, Impact and Faith of Latin American
Pentecostalism, ed. Calvin L. Smith (Leidon/Boston: Brill, 2011); and Virginia Trevino Nolivos, A
Pentecostal Paradigm for the Latin American Family: An Instrument of Transformation, Asian Journal of
Pentecostal Studies, vol. 5, no.2 (July 2002): 223.
 104

resembling a fire,3 an explosion,4 a mutation,5 and mobilization6 as it has been

interpreted.
The tenets of Western Christianity have been transmitted to Ecuadors Indgena
since the sixteenth century. Waves of evangelizations (Catholic, Protestant, and
Pentecostal) have intersected with indigenous culture and transposed a specific Western
version of the Christian gospel. What remains to be demonstrated is whether there are
characteristics of Western Christianity still found in Quichua Pentecostalism and if so, in
what way(s)? In other words, is the Quichua pneumatological experience similar to or
different from the North American understanding? It is also important to ascertain the
role syncretism plays in the Quichua appropriation of the move or manifestation(s) of
the Holy Spirit so as to determine how Quichua Pentecostalism can be classified within
the broader movement?
Looking at the recent Quichua Pentecostal religious phenomenon among the
Andeans of Ecuador to delineate and delimit the indigenous Pentecostal movement, three
hermeneutical steps will be followed: 1) defining Quichua Pentecostalism within the
movement; 2) exploring the process of Quichua appropriation of Pentecostalism; and 3)
examining the types of Quichua Pentecostalism (churches) in order to analyze and
illustrate the indigenous contribution to Christianity.

7.1 THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

Within the context of this discussion, Pentecostalisms universal relevance lies
explicitly on the work of the Holy Spirit rather than on any specific spiritual gifting
and/or initial evidence of Spirit Baptism. The Spirits work affirms the legitimacy of
understanding and experiencing Christian faith through cultural mediations other than
Western rational and logo-centric culture.7 Juan Seplveda explains that the movements

3
Deiros and Mraida, Latinoamrica en Llamas.
4
Martin, Tongues of Fire and Padilla, La Iglesia y los Dioses Modernos.
5
Jean-Pierre Bastian, La Mutacion Religiosa de America Latina: para una sociologa del cambio
social en la modernidad perifrica (1997; reprint, Mexico: FCE, 2003).
6
Cornelia Butler, Pentecostalism in Colombia: Baptism by Fire and Spirit (Cranbury: Associated
University Presses, 1976), 18.
7
Juan Seplveda, Latin America: Future Perspectives, International Review of Mission, 87 no.
345 (April 1998), 191. The above paragraphs definition of Pentecostalism is borrowed from Seplvedas
broad delineation in order to include the heterogeneity of the movements global ethos.
 105

success in Latin America resulted from what Pentecostalism offers: an encounter with
God rather than doctrine; a new meaning to life through an experiential faith; a holistic
community; and a vernacular kerygma.8 The preceding definitions comprehensive
criterion accommodates the Andean Quichuas understanding of the Spirits operation
within their worldview.
The pneumatological expression, el mover y manifestacin del Espritu (the
move and manifestation of the Spirit) explains the significance and meaning of
Pentecostalism for Quichua Pentecostals. It is something different, strange, electrifying,
and brand-new, a new evangelization, or better said una re-evangelizacin (a re-
evangelization):
When the pastors began to study at the [COG Quichua] seminary in Riobamba,
they said, Now we are being re-evangelized. This word was heard and used for
several months. We are being re-evangelized because we are hearing things
weve never heard before; we are now being taught. They [Quichuas] had only
been evangelized [by GMU] and converted but they lacked discipleship. We [the
COG] began to disciple them [a Pentecostal discipleship]. Many of the youth
asked, Isnt there anything else beyond conversion and repentance? We were
lead to this point in the Lord and then they left us. No, I answered. That is
only the beginning. You need to be discipled and then formed into a leader.
When they were told this they were very surprised because this was something
new to them. There had not been any discipleship nor did they know one existed.9

To a culture with centuries of perpetual Christianization, evangelization or re-

evangelization symbolizes the process of adaptation, interpretation, and integration of
successive sets of beliefs and teachings. In other words, the indigenization of a foreign
religion resulted. In the case of Latin American Catholicism, a neo-Christianity emerged
and sanctioned syncretistic practices by indigenous groups.10 Before outlining Quichua

8
Ibid. For a further account of these characteristics, see also Seplvedas Pentecostalism as
Popular Religiosity, International Review of Mission, 78 no. 309 (Jan. 1989): 8088; and The Pentecostal
Movement in Latin America, in New Face of the Church in Latin America: Between Tradition and
Change, ed. Guillermo Cook (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994).
9
COG Administrative Bishop of the Indgena Territory, Lorenzo Jimenez, interview by author,
audio recording, Ambato, Ecuador, 22 June 2009. When the author on June 16, 2009, prior to conducting a
questionnaire to Indgena leaders, pastors and laity at the COG Quichua Pentecostal seminary (SEMILA
Seminario Intercultural Latinoamericano, Latin American Intercultural Seminary) inquired in conversion
about Pentecostalisms meaning, a respected Quichua Pentecostal leader and COG pastor, responded for
the group. He emphasized because of the laxity among Evangelical Quichua churches Pentecostalism was
the needed re-evangelization for the Indgena Church.
10
Bastian, La Mutacin Religiosa, 9.
 106

Pentecostalism, definitions and delimitations are necessary to narrow the focus and center
on the indigenous movement among the Indgenas.
As the preceding chapter observed, classical or traditional Pentecostalism
originated in the North. North American Pentecostalism traces its roots to two revivals at
the beginning of the twentieth century: Topeka (Kansas 1901) and Azusa Street (Los
Angeles 1906). The former developed the central theological axiom of glossolalia as the
primary evidence of Spirit Baptism, a definitive doctrine which remains among most
Classical Pentecostals. The latter revival became a fountainhead for modern
Pentecostalism. A beloved colloquialism of these Pentecostals affirms Christ is savior,
healer, baptizer, and soon returning king; whereas, Wesleyan Holiness Pentecostals
insert an additional attribute of sanctifier.11 Classical Pentecostals were the first
Pentecostal missions to arrive in Latin America. Besides being the largest group among
Quichua Pentecostals, their exponential growth in the continent makes them the largest
representation of Classical Pentecostalism worldwide.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Pentecostal movement in Latin
America commenced concurrently with North American Pentecostalism. Divergences
and parallels exist between both movements given that the former arose autonomously,
yet linked to Western Pentecostal missions. Pablo A. Deiros and Everett A. Wilson
correctly assert:
Latin American Pentecostalism represents a very rich combination of independent
Pentecostal strains that emerged from historical evangelical denominations, and
movements that originated the missionary work of European and American
Pentecostals in the first decades of the twentieth century.12

In 2009, Pentecostalism in Latin America celebrated a centennial inaugurated by Chiles

1909 Valparaiso revival. Independent from and no links to the 1906 Azusa Street revival,
Chilean Pentecostalism demonstrates a center of Pentecostal proliferation outside of

11
Historians agree North American Pentecostalism inherited many of the beliefs, practices,
polities, and thought from nineteenth century revivalistic tradition and evangelical movements (Reformed
and Holiness). Two school of thoughts emerged within Classical Pentecostalism: Wesleyan Holiness
Pentecostals and non-Wesleyan or Reformed Pentecostals.
12
Pablo A. Deiros and Everett A. Wilson, Hispanic Pentecostalism in the Americas, in The
Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 19012001, ed. Vinson
Synan (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001), 307; and Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Christianity, s.v. Hispanic Pentecostalism.
 107

North America. The origins of Latin American Pentecostalism and its formation
throughout the century differs from North American Pentecostalism particularly in Chile,
Argentina, and Brazil, which make up two-thirds of Pentecostals in the South.
Consequently, scholars like Allan Anderson advocate that the Latin American movement
is not a creation or importation of the North.13 Its heterogeneity (rapid change,
spontaneity, popular character, diversity, and fragmentation) make Pentecostalism
difficult to classify; yet, some Latin American scholars have labeled it in terms of the
pentecostalization (Bastian) of the church and according to Bernardo Campos
pentecostalismos (pentecostalisms).
The new evangelization of the Spirit among the Andean Quichua is nothing like
Catholic scholar Jorge Villalbas rendering of the first evangelization in the sixteenth
century:
It astonishes the imagination [how] the gestation of the new world marched with
sure steps toward its destiny. The incubation of a noble and sacred mestizaje
birthed in a special spring-like fashion the American and the Ecuadorian Indgena
Church. At their captivating words, the missionaries saw repeated the wonder of
the conversions of the first Pentecost. Here also operated the miracle of tongues,
the ones of fire and the ones of the gift of the word: the ones of the fire of the
Spirit that illuminated the souls of the peoples to open their hearts to the coming
of the Lord. The miracle of the languages [demonstrated] the extraordinary
manner by which the missionaries made themselves understood and achieved
transmission of the mysteries of Christianity. They spoke in the Castile language
mixing in gestures, crucifix, some paintings, and assisted by neophyte
interpreters.14

As already examined in chapter 3, the first evangelization was a mistranslation of

Christianity. Hence, Villalbas Pentecost offers a triumphalistic interpretation, while
Quichua Pentecostalism has been identified by some as a recent occurrence of the
pentecostalization of Quichua [Evangelical] churches,15 a Pentecostal religious
formation,16 or a religious and social movement.17 These modifiers characterize the

13
Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 64.
14
Villalba, La primera evangelizacin del reino de Quito, 149.
15
Susana Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 253.
16
Bernardo Campos dialogues with non-Pentecostals in Un Debate sobre Pentecostalismo y
Misin de la Iglesia en American Latina: Jornadas de Actualizacin Teolgica, ed. Manuel Quintero
(Quito: CLAI, 1997), 32.
 108

movement but, as an indigenous phenomenon, the Pentecostal outcome in the end will be
established by Quichua adherents.
Quichua Pentecostalism is an indigenous discovery of Christianity, an encounter
with the person and work of the Holy Spirit. More than the addition of a new doctrine, it
is a Quichua rapturous experience of renewal where visions, dreams, intense heat,
shouting, jumping, crying, glossolalia, prophesying, praying, fasting, healing, and singing
breaks in and out among a marginalized Andean culture and people:
That is why we want to shout in this writing so that the Holy Spirit will come over
us, the indgenas of Ecuador. Come Holy Spirit and fill again with your breath
the House of God, fill with your breath the hearts of the pastors, leaders, church
presidents and members in general, extract from us the old and rotten, [remove]
what does not serve God and what is contrary to him. [We pray] in order to also
have a true Pentecost in the church today just as in the primitive church and the
Church of God.18

Bacilio Maln frames it in the following manner that the Lord help us [the Quichua] in
this urgent and great task of restoration, restructuration, [and] re-evangelization of the
Quichua Church by the Spirit.19 The new evangelization of the Spirit among the Quichuas
is fully engaging the urban and rural churched and unchurched. For Quichua
Pentecostals, Spirit Baptism is not regulated to a canon of initiation, per se, but rather the
move of the Spirit is permitted to operate within an Andean worldview. Quichua
Pentecostalism is an indigenous augmentation and development of Christianity.
The emergent indigenous churches (grassroots movements and independent
churches) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are the fastest growing and newest non-
Western phenomenon in Christianity. The present study acknowledges the significance of
the independent churches in Ecuador, but the subject matter delimits their inclusion.
Furthermore, because Pentecostalism among the Quichuas is a recent event (early 1970s)
and a conclusive definition is still in the making, the study delimits the focus to a brief

17
For further discussion on Latin American Pentecostalism as a social/religious movement, see
Daro Lpez, Pentecostalismo y transformacin social: Mas all de los estereotipos, las criticas se
enfrentan con los hechos (Buenos Aires: Kairos Ediciones, 2000); and El Nuevo Rostro del
Pentecostalismo Latinoamericano (Lima: CENIP, 2002).
18
Fabin Vega Guashca, El Pentecostalismo en el rea Indgena Zona Juigua, (Bachillerato
Superior Tesis, Seminario Ministerial Intercultural Bilinge, 2002), 53.
19
Bacilio Maln, Participacion Misionera dentro de los Pueblos Indgenas del Ecuador,
unpublished paper, (1994, revised, Majipamba, 2008):14.
 109

discussion on Quichua appropriation of Pentecostalism and examples of Quichua

churches of the movement as a foreword to future investigations of the new
evangelization.

7.2 APPROPRIATION OF THE SPIRITS MANIFESTATION

Not unlike the westernization of the sixteenth century, modernitys bid for
development (industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism) in Latin America forced
indigenous peoples to integrate into societys dominant culture (white, mestizo, creole,
etc.) in exchange for and in loss of theirs. Modernization brought to the forefront the
marginal situation of the Ecuadorian Indgena: the overt poverty and inequality. The
social, economic, political, and cultural disparity consequently has led to an abuse and a
violation of Indgena dignity and rights. According to Israel Ortiz Ch, there have been
three main responses to the Indgena problem in Ecuador: 1) Indigenismo (Indianism)
the resolution is to integrate the Indgena to mainstream society; 2) National
restructuringto break with the relationships that impose the dominant economy; and
3) Reactionary Indgena groups that advocate for social and political rights of the
Indgena.20
Naturally, the interchange between Indgena culture and Ecuadors dominant
culture led to a blending of values, beliefs, practices, and customs mainly by the
aboriginal group. Although westernization and the Quichua Diaspora of migration to
cities domestically and abroad altered Quichua culture (e.g., preference of Spanish and
mestizo culture by new generations), the outer modifications did not deter the creation of
homogenous groups (ethnic neighborhoods and churches throughout Ecuador, Colombia,
and Venezuela). These groups continued the preservation of their cultural identity amidst
the vast market of ideas and materialism of globalization. Between this socio-cultural and
economic dislocation, Pentecostalisms Pneuma-centric ethos provided a cathartic,
empowering, and religious experience for the Indgena. Classic sociological works by

20
Israel Ortiz Ch, Dignidad e Identidad Indgena: Una Critica Evanglica sobre los 500 Aos,
Boletn Teolgico, vol. 24, no. 47 and 48 (Diciembre 1992): 173174; and Mario Ibarra, Poblaciones
Indgenas: Cul Desarrollo? Cuadernos de Derechos Humanos, vol. 3, no. 1 (Diciembre 1987): 3435.
 110

Christian Lalive dEpinay and Emilio Willems underscore Pentecostalisms religious

answer to Latin Americans social dilemma.21
The establishment of Quichua Pentecostalism originates from three sources: 1) the
pentecostalization of Indgena churches;22 2) autonomous Pentecostalism; and 3) North
American Pentecostal implantation. Because of migration to the Ecuadorian coast and
Colombia, sources situate the emergence of Pentecostalism among the Andean Quichua
between the late 1960s (Maln) and the early 1970s (Andrade).23 Contact with mestizo
Pentecostalism in these urban centers led some to accept the Pentecostal message and
praxis and to transport it back to the Andean highlands. Studies have demonstrated
Indigenous Christianity to be a syncretistic phenomenon, the mixing of two or more
religious systems. Is syncretism found in Quichua Pentecostalism? Prior to answering the
inquiry, a discussion on syncretism follows.
Syncretisms negative nuance within theological and missiological circles serves
as the reason for the evangelization of non-Western cultures. In Latin America,
Seplveda argues, anti-syncretism is Evangelical Christianitys rationale for being there:
...the cornerstone of the justification of Protestant Missions in Latin America has
been the qualification of the religion of the majority of Latin American population
as a sort of amalgamation between Christian and pagan elements, in most of the
cases, between the externals of Catholicism and pagan beliefs.24

Because pre-Colombian Andeans mixed their religion with subsequent religious systems
(Inca religion and Catholicism), M. David Sills maintains that Ecuadors Highland
Quichuas were syncretistic until the adoption of Evangelical Protestantism, an authentic
conversion movement compared to the previous two religions:

21
See Christian Lalive dEpinay, Haven of the Masses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in
Chile, (London: Lutterworth Press, 1969), and Emilio Willems, Followers of the New Faith: Culture
Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1967).
22
Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 253-281. Gastn Espinosas study on the pentecostalization
of the Americas and United States provides an insightful perspective on the phenomenon, see, The
Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity, Pneuma, vol. 26, no. 2 (Fall 2004).
23
Maln, Participacion Misionera, 4; and Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 253.
24
I am especially indebted to Juan Seplveda for directing me to the positive view of syncretism,
in particular to his dissertation, Gospel and Culture in Latin American Protestantism: Toward a New
Theological Appreciation of Syncretism (Ph.D. Diss., University of Birmingham, 1996), 195. The studys
positive evaluation of syncretism follows Catholic theologian Leonardo Boffs, Church, Charism and
Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church, (New York: Crossroad, 1985).
 111

In the last twenty-five years, an ever-increasing number of the HQ [Highland

Quichua] people have been moving from the mixture of the religious influences of
their history to become ProtestantsThere is a religious movement of thousands
of HQ from highly syncretized, animistic Roman Catholicism to Evangelical
Protestantism.25

As chapters 3 and 4 have demonstrated, Christianitys religious revitalization in Latin

America is largely a result of indigenization more than a Western missions
evangelization. Not only does Sills perspective fail to notice Protestantisms own
syncretisma Protestant syncretism acculturated to the Latin American liberal
values,26 but his comparative study of three religious movements overlooks a fourth,
Pentecostalism, which in the 1990s made significant inroads among Ecuadorian
Indgenas, notably the Andean Quichua.
Juxtaposed with the antagonistic theological/missiological definition, historical
and anthropological scholars have posited a functional characterization of syncretism.
Chapter 2 of this study narrated the violent evangelization of pre-Columbian people who
offered almost no opposition; yet, thirty-four years after the conquest of Peru (1532), the
Andean religion continued without missionaries being able to fully eradicate it.27 Nidia
Arrobo Rodas characterizes syncretism as a strategic function for Ecuadorian Indgenas
then and now:
thanks to the vitality of the ancestral cultural values and the capacity of
adaptation in light of adversity, the kichwa people of Ecuador have maintained
and live recovering their religious expressions that constitute genuine elements of
their millenarian resistance. In this sense, even the syncretism utilized has been a
survival strategy of the original religion.28

For Rodas, the process of syncretism operates as a religious-spiritual resistance29 by

which Indgena religion and Catholicism have fused. Patron celebrations exemplify the

25
Sills, A Case Study of Comparative,13.
26
The quote is from Jean-Pierre Bastian cited in Seplvedas, Gospel and Culture, 198. Sills
interpretation confirms Seplvedas assertion behind the anti-syncretism of missionaries was their own
syncretism.
27
In 1566 under Titu Kusi a resurgency of Andean religion commenced, see Ileana Almeida,
Historia del Pueblo Kechua (Quito: Proyecto EBI, 1999), 159.
28
Rodas, Religin indgena en Ecuador, 39.
29
See above chapter 2.2.1.
 112

mixture of indigenous and Catholic rites on the holiday of a particular towns patron
saint. Therefore, from the Indgena point of view, syncretism has a positive meaning.
Both Sills and Rodas studies display the polarity between missiological and
anthropological fields over religious syncretism.30 Within the much-traversed discourse
of Christianity and culture, Chilean Pentecostal theologian Juan Seplveda calls for a
redefinition of syncretism essential for Latin America to embrace its cultural and
religious identity. In order to move past the dichotomy, Seplveda draws attention to
syncretism as the cultural and religious process between two cultures when they come
together and produce something new:31
It is suggested that syncretism is a metaphor (Cretan with Cretan stand against
the foe) which refers to a quite widespread human experience, namely, the
process of redefining and reshaping cultural and/or religious identities and world-
views, which comes about when different human communities come into
intensive cultural contact. The new situation produced by the encounter between
different human communities, often full of tensions, provokes a crisis or even the
breakdown of previous identities and certainties, calling for such a re-definition,
which is normally elaborated with resources from either of the cultures in contact.
The type of interpenetration and the amount of borrowing vary depending upon
each particular context.

What differentiates this understanding of syncretism from other anthropological

concepts, as for instance acculturation, is that it addresses more clearly the
active and creative role played by the parties that came into cultural contact in the
production of new meanings, as well as the tensions and ambiguities of the
process of interpenetration. The advantage of the term syncretism over some
concepts used by post-modern anthropology, like hybridization and bricolage,
is that it has a much longer and meaningful history in the field of religious
studies.32

Theologically, Seplveda utilizes the historical event of the incarnation as the metaphor
for syncretism. Jesus Christ (God) by becoming human speaks directly to humanity, to
each human community fully in its own particularity.33 Thus, humanity is the medium
and mediation by which the gospel is incarnated, syncretized, translated, and transmitted.

30
See chapter 3.2 (GMU message) and 3.3 (message of acculturation) framed within the idea of
translation.
31
My emphasis.
32
Seplveda, Gospel and Culture, 225.
33
Ibid., 226. Clark H. Pinnock also uses the incarnational paradigm in biblical hermeneutics. See
his chapter Incarnation and Accommodation, in The Scripture Principle (1984; reprint, Eugene: Wipf and
Stock Publishers, 1998).
 113

Utilizing Seplvedas redefinition, the process of Quichua adoption of Pentecostalism is

an incarnation and syncretism of an indigenous kind.
Manuel M. Marzals view on the emergence of Quechua Christianity (southern
region of Peru) observes the Indgena syncretism of Catholicism. Although Marzal
addresses the Peruvian reality of Catholicisms acceptance through the making [of] a
series of reinterpretations of it from an indigenous cultural matrix, the threefold
successive Christianization (Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal) of the Ecuadorian
Quichua underwent a similar syncretistic process.34
Quichua Pentecostalism remains in a formative, incarnational, and syncretistic
phase with many Quichuas at different stages. Some Evangelical Quichuas annex the
manifestations of the Spirit (healing, vibrant music, ecstatic experiences, etc.) to their
Protestant faith without calling themselves Pentecostals, while others are making the
transition. There are certain Quichua Christians who have experienced an autonomous
Pentecost without previous contact with Western Pentecostal denominations. This
groups Pentecostal incarnation circumvents acculturation and fosters indigenization.
And, there is a final group of Quichuas that will be observed embracing the work of the
Holy Spirit through Western Pentecostal missions. The examples of these four types of
Quichua Pentecostals follow in the next section.

7.3 QUICHUA PENTECOSTAL CHURCHES

Campos, a Peruvian Pentecostal theologian, suggests that there are several types
or tendencies of Latin American Pentecostalism: international expansion (Swedish and
North American Pentecostals), nationalization (become independent), neopentecostalism
(charismatics), and iso-pentecostalism (third wave adherents).35 To better understand
Quichua Pentecostal ecclesiology, Eugene Nidas Latin American typology of indigenous
churches is helpful:

34
Manuel M. Marzal, ed., The Indian Face of God in Latin America, trans. Penelope R. Hall
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 94.
35
See Quintero, Un Debate sobre Pentecostalismo, 13. Found also in Campos, De la Reforma
Protestante a la Pentecostalidad de la Iglesia (Quito: CLAI, 1997). Campos rationale to utilize iso-
pentecostalism to group divine healing movements (Brazils Dios Es Amor and Iglesia Universal del Reino
de Dios churches) is that they take a lot of the Pentecostal form and almost the Pentecostal nature, but in
reality they have another nature,14.
 114

Protestant churches in Latin America are of four basic types: 1) mission-directed

churches, which make no pretense to being indigenous or under local leadership,
2) national-front churches, which are really mission-directed, but which make
use of local persons for leadership, 3) indigenized churches, in which missions
have previously had control but which are now being managed by national leaders
in various countries, though often with direct financial support and indirect
leverages on policy and programming, and 4) fully indigenous churches, in the
sense that they have developed exclusively with Latin leadership and funds.36

At this early developmental stage, Quichua Pentecostalism parallels a number of

Campos and Nidas types/churches. I propose four categories of Quichua Pentecostal
churches in Ecuador which include aspects of the above formulations: 1) independent
churches (nationalized and indigenized), 2) bilingual churches, 3) indigenous/ethnic
churches (fully indigenous), and 4) mission churches (international expansion and
mission-directed).
The categorization is not meant to confine or limit the movements heterogeneous
and homogenous elements but rather to provide a broad description of its adaptability. I
have chosen a chronological order emphasizing indigenization over westernization.
Thus, the ensuing case studies demonstrate each classification (but not bound to it) as the
author methodologically interviewed, acquired documentation, and traced historical
origins of the sampled churches.

7.3.1 INDEPENDENT CHURCHES: OPEN TO THE SPIRIT

In 2011, over sixty-five years since the first Quichuas converted to Protestantism,
the majority of the Chimborazo Indgena population is Evangelical as confirmed by
recent studies.37 Malns appraisal suggests that 95 percent of the comunidades
(communities/villages) and 92 percent of the Indgena population have been evangelized,
while Andrade quantifies 70 percent of Quichua Christians are adherents of the GMU; yet,
given that the Pentecostal expansion of the 1990s spread the new evangelization,
Pentecostalism has rapidly become the vibrant expression of Quichua Christianity. The
indigenous awakening in Ecuador is not an isolated case. In addition to this Andean nation,

36
My emphasis, see Eugene Nida, Understanding Latin Americans: With Special Reference to
Religious Values and Movements (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1974), 137.
37
See the above chapter 4.3; Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 115, 123; Guamn, FEINE, 32;
and Maln, Participacin Misionera, 13.
 115

other countries with significant indigenous populations like Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia,
Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina have experienced an indigenous/religious revitalization:
evangelical group membership has grown explosively, among pentecostalists, neo-
pentecostalists, and new churches.38
During 1965 to 1980, the Quichua Churchs extensive evangelization from
Chimborazo led the wake of mass evangelism of indigenous people throughout Ecuador.
As chapter 4.3.1 exhibited, the evangelization encouraged (directed) by missionaries
implemented social, medical, educational, organizational, linguistic, and evangelistic
activities utilizing emergent Quichua leaders. According to Maln all through the 1980s,
New tendencies emerged in [the indigenous] Christian celebration: church
anniversaries, the anniversary of the arrival of the gospel in a particular
community, thanksgiving campaigns [revivals, camp meetings], evangelization
campaigns, festivals and competitions of different types related to the church,
church service for the anniversary of deceased, church service for achieving a
certain level of education and/or profession, celebrating silver and gold wedding
anniversaries, and celebration of [leadership] appointments. But every activity
was associated with the church and above all to Praise God.39

Although the indigenized liturgy of the 1980s reinforced the evangelization period, from
the 1990s up to the present these celebrations have taken on different [characteristics] in
accordance with the congregation that has had contact with Pentecostal denominations
and missions.40
Renewal throughout the Quichua churches was observable only after the contact
with Pentecostalism enlivened their liturgical celebrations. Along with the religious
phenomenon, the social anomaly of urbanization (modernization) has brought to the
forefront the multifarious socio-economic, cultural, and spiritual transition. The upheaval
resulted in part from the progressive migration of Indgenas in general and Quichua
Christian families, in particular, during the early 1960s. Intensification of migratory labor
and trade continued up to 1970, while in the 1970s the diaspora encompassed traveling to

38
Cristin Parker Gumucio, Religion and the Awakening of Indigenous People in Latin
America, Social Compass 49, no.1 (2002): 71.
39
See Maln, Participacin Misionera , 7. See also Susana Andrade, De sueos, visiones y
dones: el pentecostalismo quichua en Ecuador, in Mas all del espritu: Actores, acciones y prcticas de
iglesias pentecostales, eds. Carolina Rivera Farfn and Elizabeth Jurez Cerd (Mexico: Colmich-Ciesas,
2007): 258.
40
Maln, Participacin Misionera, 7.
 116

provincial capitals, the Amazon basin, and to Colombia and Venezuela; whereas from
19802000, mobilization of entire families became a common practice.41 Because, as
Maln, asserts the Quichua Church is fully in the process of urbanization in the twenty-
first century, both the rural and, more rapidly, the urban Quichua Church is being
pentecostalized.
In the 1990s, students of Latin American Christianity popularized the term
pentecostalization, the en masse transfer to Pentecostalism and/or adoption of
Pentecostal practices by other churches. Bastian attributes Pentecostalisms success in
that it developed a kind of pentecostalization of popular religion.42 Because of
globalization, Campos finds the category limited and not ample enough to neither grasp
nor describe the global religious situation.43 Furthermore, he dislikes the terms
interpretation of Pentecostalism (pragmatically utilized to grow churchesto
pentecostalize churches), which overlooks theologically the universality of Pentecost and
its renewal of humanity and the church.44 My conceptualization of the term follows
neither Bastian nor Campos but rather is more in line with Espinosas apologetic behind
his nuance. His version highlights indigenization as the cause for Pentecostalisms
revitalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity juxtaposed to earlier
sociological studies (Martin and Stoll) that explain growth and expansion to Western
(North American) Pentecostal missions, and recent analysis that ascertains Pentecostal
growth is on a decline or gone flat in some countries.45
Initially in Chimborazo and eventually in other provinces where the GMU was
established, Pentecostalism and the pentecostalization of churches were intensely
resisted. A cessationist view (the gifts of the Holy Spirit and Spirit Baptism ceased with
the Apostles) was passed on by the missionaries to Quichua believers in order for them to

41
Ibid. See also Lawrence A. Brown, Jorge A. Brea, and Andrew R. Goetz, Policy Aspects of
Development and Individual Mobility: Migration and Circulation from Ecuadors Rural Sierra, Economic
Geography, vol. 64, no. 2 (April 1988): 147170.
42
Bastain, The New Religious Map of Latin America: Causes and Social Effects, Cross
Currents 48, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 332; and La Mutacion Religiosa.
43
Quintero, Un Debate sobre Pentecostalismo, 15.
44
Campos, En la Fuerza del Espiritu: Pentecostalismo, Teologia y Etica Social, in En La Fuerza
del Espiritu, Los Pentecostales en America Latina: Un Desafio a las Iglesias Historicas, ed. Benjamin F.
Gutierrez (Guatemala: AIPRAL y CELEP, 1995), 70.
45
Espinosa, The Pentecostalization of Latin American and U.S. Latino Christianity, 262263.
 117

remain biblical and avoid fanaticism; but, in spite of Pentecostalisms proliferation, the
sentiment still is prevalent among the first generation that believe that the GMU
champions la sana doctrina (the sound doctrine). According to Andrade, the first to
accept the new evangelization were the Evangelicals and the churches independent from
the GMU and the CONPOCIIECH (Chimborazos Evangelical association).46 While in
time, second- and third-generation leaders and churches of the association and the GMU
adopted the renewal. The following historical sketch of the Iglesia Evanglica Bilinge
Monte Ebal (Evangelical Bilingual Church Mount Ebal) provides an example of the
pentecostalization of an independent church of Quichua immigrants in Manta, Ecuador.
In 1982, three Chimborazo Protestant families (Lema, Cuvi, and Cuvi) migrated
for work to Manta, a coastal city of the province of Manab. As an Andean kinship-based
culture that developed from the pre-Incan ayllus,47 the Christian families longed both to
organize and look for a location to establish a church and to coalesce into what Tanya
Korovkin calls a communal ethnic resurgence within their reality of displacement.48
Eleven years passed until on 15 August 1993, the church (Monte Ebal) was established at
the home of Manuel Lema, where it met for seven and half years. In 1999, they
purchased land, built a church, and moved into it on 10 March 2001. Despite being an
independent church and denying Pentecostal pedigree, a pentecostalization emerged early
on and throughout their history.
In Monte Ebals documents and praxis, there are pneumatological expressions and
conceptualizations of an indigenous type. For example, when the church decided to select
the first leaders on 8 November 1993, they utilized the biblical passage of Acts 6:3 on the

46
See above chapter 4.3.3 and Andrade, Protestantism indgena, 254.
47
See Almeida, Historia del Pueblo Kechua, 53. The ayllu was a social institution prior to the Inca
state consisting of the primary social units of Andean society. They were grounded on kinship and
collective property of land for farming and shepherding. It was a simple communal form of cultivation and
distribution of the land and its products among everyone in the community. The Quichua continues to
operate under similar communal structures as their ancestors before them.
48
Historia de la Iglesia Evanglica Bilinge Monte Ebal, unpublished paper (Manta, Ecuador,
13 August 2006): 1.The Monte Ebal church board provided the author with this historical account of the
churchs first thirteen years (19932006). The board also entrusted the author with copies of the first ten
church board meetings minutes (15 August 1993 through 16 July 1996) and a copy of a recent church board
meeting minutes dated 16 May 2009. See also Tanya Korovkin, Reinventing the Communal Tradition:
Indigenous Peoples, Civil Society, and Democratization in Andean Ecuador, Latin American Research Review
36, no. 3 (2001): 47, 54.
 118

appointment of Spirit-filled deacons.49 Shortly after the selection, the deacons had two
visions of the churchs spiritual growth and the acquisition of their own temple that was
shown to them by the Spirit.50 Visions are very significant in Andean culture. Quichua
syncretism is found as they transpose the Pentecostal message (vision and dreams) to the
Quichua worldview. Andrades findings show that Spirit Baptism for Quichuas is an
experience of initiation that incorporates visions and other ecstatic practices.51 Visions
and dreams are seen as an effective way to know Gods will and to have solutions to
problems. In addition to exercising spiritual visions, fasts and prayers to know Gods will
for significant decisions (purchasing property, construction of the church, etc.), the Monte
Ebal church has had contact with Pentecostal churches and leaders that have helped them
open up to the move of the Holy Spirit. The example of the independent Monte Ebal
church demonstrates Pentecostalisms empowerment and creation of a new communal
ethnic resurgence from a situation of displacement. Pentecostalism and pentecostalization
also engender multi-cultural Quichua churches, bilingual churches.

7.3.2 BILINGUAL CHURCHES: A TRANSCULTURAL BRIDGE

Indigenous migration and immersion into mestizo Western culture resulted in the
disintegration of Andean communal structurespatriarchal hierarchy, collective work
ethics, language, and culture. For those dislodged from their indigenous mores, the
adoption of another worldview opened new horizons to consider and pursue. The
situation is an important challenge that the Quichua Church faces in the twenty-first
century. For Maln, the future of the third generation is dark [and] worrisome because of
the isolation from their roots, loss of values, acceptance of contemporary philosophy, and
their ignorance of Gods word.52 Thus, indigenous culture faced the challenge of
modernization and its impact upon Quichua identity, a risk for both the rural and urban
Quichua Church. The bilingual churches developed partially because of social pressures
to integrate Quichua cultural recuperation into the mainstream; however, a spiritual

49
Church Board Meeting Minutes dated Manta, Noviembre 8 de 1993. Selected as Spirit filled
leaders were Manuel Lema Cuvi as President, Jose Cuvi Vian as Vice President, Manuel Cuvi Vian for
Secretary, and Jose Manuel Lema as Treasurer.
50
Historia de la Iglesia Evanglica Bilinge Monte Ebal, 2.
51
See Andrade, De Suenos, Visiones y Dones, 260, 270, 273.
52
Maln, Participacin Misionera, 10.
 119

motivation inspired many indigenous city churches to have a church for all the Indgena
people and for the Manta [mestizo] community, a transcultural objective of these
emergent churches.53 Out of six Pentecostal and pentecostalized urban churches that I
visited, on the coast (Guayaquil and Manta; in the sierra: San Rafael, Ambato,
Latacunga, and Riobamba) three (Manta, Latacunga, and San Rafael) identified
themselves and functioned as bilingual/bicultural congregations, while the others were
bilingual/mono-cultural, or ethnic churches whose members spoke Quichua and
Spanish.54
The Manta and San Rafael churches have the word bilingual in their names
Iglesia Evanglica Bilinge Monte Ebal and Iglesia de Dios Bilinge Los Chillos. To
my surprise in Manta, I observed a couple of mestizo families attending an evening
service. In an ethnically charged country like Ecuador, it is more plausible to find
Indgenas attending an urban mestizo church rather than the latter sitting under
indigenous leadership.55 The San Rafael church attracts mestizo adherents because the
founders are North American missionaries and provide social programs for the
community.
The members of bilingual churches view racial unity as a miracle, a gift, and as
the power and the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. There are second-generation Quichua
pastors and many third-generation leaders who are open to Pentecostalism or have
become Pentecostals. These leaders of the congregations are politically moderate,
educated, and acculturated into the mestizo worldview. Pastor Fausto Cajamarca is an
example of the younger generation. Cajamarca, raised as a GMU leader in the province of
Cotopaxi, came into contact with the COG Pentecostal mission when Guillermo
Vasconez , COG Indgena Territory Administrative Bishop, and leaders of his

53
Historia de la Iglesia Evanglica Bilinge Monte Ebal, 5.
54
The six urban Pentecostal Quichua churches are: Centro Evangelistico Quichua Yo Soy La
Raz (Guayaquil); Iglesia Evangelica Bilinge Monte Ebal (Manta); Iglesia de Dios Bilinge Los
Chillos (San Rafael); Iglesia de Dios Esperanza Divina (Ambato); Iglesia de Dios Nuevo Pacto
(Latacunga); and Centro Evangelistico Quichua Ros de Agua Viva (Riobamba). The above churches
break down into church types: there was one independent church (Manta), two indigenous churches
(Guayaquil and Riobamba), and three COG Pentecostal mission (San Rafael, Ambato, and Latacunga).
55
Racial discrimination (implicit class system) is apparent in Ecuadorian society. The disregard of
social decency and proper conduct on the part of mestizos toward Quichuas reinforces their exclusion from
society such as even to be present in the same room with an Indgena.
 120

church/community developed a partnership and friendship. Because Vasconez saw

Cajamarcas potential, he offered to sponsor him to attend the Seminario Sudamericano
(South American Seminary) in Quito, which he did. He presently pastors a COG
bilingual church in Latacunga.
In the cities of Ecuador, most Quichua Pentecostal churches are bilingual, while a
few are bicultural or transcultural. The Manta church fits both the independent and
bilingual categories of the typology. As a bilingual congregation, the church is at the
initial pluricultural transition, yet retains an Andean communal governance system.56
Unlike most bilingual churches, the Iglesia de Dios Nuevo Pacto (New Covenant COG)
of Latacunga that Cajamarca pastors is a unique bicultural church with approximately
100 people comprising both Quichuas and mestizos. His educational journey is significant
to the development of the Iglesia de Dios Nuevo Pacto. During the first three years of
Cajamarcas seminary experience (19952000), his non-indigenous cultural pilgrimage
clashed doctrinally (GMU vs. Pentecostal) and culturally (Quichua vs. International
mestizo students) until a search for the Spirit Baptism led him to a Pentecostal
experience:
Although I reasoned that the seminary was part of a Pentecostal movement, I
desired the Pentecost of the Bible. I believe I am baptized in the Holy Spirit. My
experience wasnt like other people [students] who fall. When the [Pentecostal]
missionaries prayed for me, I asked them to pray that the Holy Spirit would take a
hold of me. I wanted the infilling [of the Spirit] but not to be knocked down. I
asked my friends [at seminary] for the meaning of the baptism of the Holy Spirit
and they responded, It is about falling down and speaking in tongues. I didnt
want that, I wanted something more. I wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The baptism of the Spirit was a different [type of] experience for me. It was the
Holy Spirit who chose how to baptize. At the seminary, it was customary on
occasions for the chaplain to wake us up at four in the morning for prayer.
During my search and in one of the prayer meetings, there was an exceptionally
good move of the Spirit that I had never encountered before in my life. It is

56
Korovkin, Reinventing the Communal Tradition, 42. The Quichua church has naturally
implemented the Andean community political institutions, represented by communal assemblies and
councils (cabildos) that have a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and three other elective
members conforming the council or board of deacons (Korovkin, 40). Therefore, within the church the
main authority lays in the body of leaders principally the president. The pastor has a secondary rule in that
he orders the church [liturgically]and indoctrinates [biblically] the congregation, in Iglesia Evanglica
Bilinge Monte Ebals Church Board Meeting Minutes No. 7, Manta 21 May 1996 on the topic of
Organizing the Church and Electing a Pastor.
 121

something unexplainable that I dont even have words to describe. In spite of the
very cold weather that early at the seminary, I had such an intense heat over me
that I began to sweat. There were two or three of us that the Holy Spirit was
touching. The heat was intense and we prayed non-stop from 4 AM to 6:30 AM.
In my case, there was a groaning, something beautiful. I did not speak in tongues
but I asked the chaplain if I had spoken anything. The words that only came out of
my mouth were papa (dad), gracias papa (thank you dad) over and over, and
gracias Espiritu Santo (thank you Holy Spirit) for your comfort. The chaplain
told me that this was a form of Spirit Baptism and that it isnt necessary to speak
in tongues [to be baptized].57

After seminary and the additional two years of internship with the COG for the
scholarship received, Cajamarca decided to leave the GMU and become COG. At the end
of 2003, he and his wife (Silvia, also formerly a GMU and from Colta, Chimborazo)
started a new indigenous work in Latacunga.
The original vision was to start a Quichua Pentecostal church that worked with
indgenas (Christians and non-Christians) from the communities that resided in the
city.58 By the end of the first year almost 200 people were in attendance, yet
Cajamarcas new understanding of ecclesiology now clashed with his Quichua tradition.
The congregation wanted the authority of the communal structure which was headed by a
president; however, Cajamarca supported what he saw as the biblical pattern of the
pastor having authority over the congregation.59 Finally, he allowed the congregation to
vote on the issue only four members of the congregation supported his position. Pastor
Cajamarca had come to see the primacy role of the pastor as the biblical model through
his seminary training. In his words,
I learned a lot at seminary especially on the Summer Ministerial Internship
practicum that I had every year. On my assignments, Brother [Guillermo]
Vasconez instructed the seminary to not assign me to Cotopaxi because I would
stay [in my province] and not return to the seminary. Instead they sent me to
Guayaquil, Manta, Esmeraldas, and Quevedo. I learned that in the Spanish
churches they dont have presidents. And when I began working with Pastor
Guillermo I was told that the denomination does not function like the
communities, but rather the pastor works with a council or a team of leaders. The
communal system became an obstacle when I started the church. The problem
lasted throughout the year. In spite of being appointed pastor, the members would

57
Fausto Cajamarca, interview by author, audio recording, Latacunga, Ecuador, 22 June 2009.
58
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
 122

regularly want to appoint a communal governance structure. They always asked

for a president. When they would arrive, they would ask: Where is the
president? Whos the president? It urges me to speak to the president? I
want to sit down with the president. The pastor was not important; he was like
any other person or member. The pastor would give them a scripture, words of
encouragement, and thats all. But to be the president, that was very important.60

Even with Cajamarcas social, cultural, and theological modernization, a collision course
with his Quichua culture was unavoidable.
At this impasse, the Quichua pastor believes the vision for a true bilingual
(intercultural) church was born. I told my wife if we continue to work with the
Quichuas, their system will not work. We need to change the mindset and the process of
evangelization. We decided to target the city with the gospel and work with the mestizos
and not only with Quichuas.61 As the original church dissolved, the pastors family and
the small Quichua remnant, initiated the new project on 10 November 2004 as COG
bilingual church. In 2005, the first mestizo family was won and, progressively, the
churchs transcultural congregation grew. According to Cajamarca, and as a result of
prayer, two distinct Pentecostal attributes of the Spirits manifestation in the church are
racial unity and healings/miracles that were significant and formational in the pastors
Pentecostal Spirit Baptism. As future generations welcome modernization and
Pentecostalism, the formation of transcultural agents, like Pastor Cajamarca, by the Holy
Spirit, will continue to impact Ecuadorian society.

7.3.3 INDIGENOUS CHURCHES: AN AUTONOMOUS MOVE OF THE SPIRIT

Scholars of indigenous Christianity have overlooked the significance of Quichua
Pentecostalism in the discussion of Pentecostal origins. Whereas, advocates of North
American Pentecostalism infer that the modern Pentecostal movement began and spread
globally from the United States; Indigenous62 Pentecostalism suggests the movement
advanced simultaneously and continuously from various centers in addition to the West.

60
Ibid.
61
Ibid. In the midst of the disappointment and setback of beginning over, Cajamarcas Pentecostal
discernment ascertained that God was speaking to him and saying, the city needs you, I have prepared
you, [go]!
62
The term indigenous here means native to the cultural, national, and regional context.
Pentecostalism in this sense emerged autonomously and independently from Western Pentecostalism.
 123

In Latin America, the cases of Chilean (1909) and Brazilian (1910) Pentecostalism
support the theory or an indigenous genesis from the Topeka (1901) and Azusa Street
(1906) revivals. Ecuadors unnoticed indigenous Pentecost of the early 1980s presents
another type of Pentecostal church, and more importantly, provides additional support for
the understanding of the indigenous Pentecostal origins.
Unlike the urban pentecostalization of the previous independent and bilingual
church types, the Pentecostal awakening within the Quichua community begins squarely
within the Andean rural context. The community of Pulucate, a vital indigenous
evangelical (GMU) center since 1950, became the birthplace of the Pulucate Revival, a
Quichua Pentecost in which an autonomous move of the Spirit ignited an indigenous
church, community, and movement.
The Pulucate community is nestled a couple of miles off the Pan American
highway, seventeen miles south of Riobamba and approximately five miles north of
Guamote in the province of Chimborazo. The surface area measures about seven miles
consisting of five sectors: Pulucate Colegio, Pulucate Centro, Pulucate Cuatro Esquinas,
Pulucate Canal, and Pulucate Sangolqui. Although the community was chosen as one of
three GMU mission stations utilized for Protestant evangelization as already examined,63
Andrade estimates the 1999 population of Pulucate approximately 600 families, 80
percent (480) of whom were Pentecostal while 20 percent were undecided but semi-
Pentecostal.64
From Pulucate Francisco Tenemasa Guamn, a leader and pastor of Mision
Evangelica Rios de Agua Viva del Ecuador (MERAVE) explains that Pulucate originally
was known as Pulucahuan. Pulucates etymology consists of two words pulu (sod, turf,
or ball of earth) and cate (together) descriptive of the indigenous dwelling of the
community made of pulu and arranged next to each other. Tenemasa enumerates the 2001
population at 5241 of whom 2997 or 56.2 percent were women and 2244 or 43.8 percent
were men. These statistics do not include the number of children.65

63
See chapter 4.3.2.
64
Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 274.
65
Tenemasa Guamn, Trabajo de Misionologia, 25, 28.
 124

In 1978, several leaders of the GMUs mother church in Pulucate, Iglesia

Emmanuel, left the congregation because of an administrative conflict and founded
another Quichua church, Rios de Agua Viva (RAV). The schisms natural progression
disconnected the new group from the GMU and the Evangelical indigenous association
subsequently leading to ongoing disputes between the two groups.66 As demonstrated in
the preceding section on independent churches, in a similar fashion, the new
independence afforded RAV an opportunity to develop an endemic Christian expression.
Several leaders sought a course on Pastoral theology and were given teaching on prayer,
fasting, and divine healing, which became both precursor and synergist of the revival.67
Pastor Francisco Pilataxi remembers,
I like to clarify that the Associations [Bible] institute [and courses] in Quichua
were too basic and lacked depth. So we searched [for] deeper teachings and
materials among Spanish [Evangelical] groups that would come and teach us
Pastoral theologythis is when (1982 and 1983) we discovered fasting, prayer
and divine healing.68

The RAV leaders desired more than what the former mentors and partners offered.
Another antecedent to the revival and in conjunction with the new spiritual but
controversial praxis was a crisis event in the church: during the days of carnival [either
early February 1983 or 1984] there were some youth that chose to celebrate [the festival
rather than] obey the pastors.
Because the youth didnt obey, the pastors decided (mainly the leaders) to fast and
pray for the youth.69 Gathered at the RAV church in Pulucate Centro (the central sector

66
At that time the association was known as Asociacin de Indgenas Evanglicos de la Provincia
de Chimborazo (AIEPC), but in 2001 its name became Confederacin de Pueblos, Organizaciones,
Comunidades, e Iglesias Indgenas Evanglicas de Chimborazo (CONPOCIECH). See above chapter 4.3.3
footnote 51.
67
Lorenzo Guamn (President) and Francisco Pilataxi (Pastor) of Misin Evanglica Ros de Agua
Viva del Ecuador, interviewed by author, audio recording, Pulucate, Ecuador 25 June 2009. Only Four
young RAV leaders (future pastors) including both Guamn and Pilataxi attended the courses. The new
doctrine sparked controversy with the GMU/Association and also within the church. At this juncture, a
harsh critique and accusation arose against those who adhered to the new doctrine and practice. The church
was divided in two camps, those against and for the teaching.
68
Ibid.
69
Ibid. Guamn explains that while they continued to put into practice the theology they learned
(prayer and fasting) fervency began to grow in their hearts. As an oral culture, two challenges were
encountered by the author: 1) written records are not plentiful and the churchs historical account was
supplied to the author by rote memory of principal leaders; and 2) although the author is an Ecuadorian
American, suspicion for being white and mestizo allowed initially provisional records and interviews. The
 125

of the community), several leaders decided to pray and fast for the churchs seditious
condition among the youth. The following testimonials depict the Pentecostal baptism
and manifestations:
Since things didnt change and in our strength nothing would change, we (the four
indoctrinated students) encouraged the people to pray in order for God to touch
them [the youth] and help us. We (fathers, some adults and several deacons)
decided to pray and fast. The deacons began at the church and notified us to fast
and pray putting the youth in Gods hands. When we came back [to the
community] from preaching a revival, people told us, Something is happening to
the brothers. It had already been three days and they were still in the church.
(Pilataxi)

Guamn remembers,
When I was at home I went out to the street [because] I heard screaming and
squealing. I live just a little ways up from here [the church] and I could clearly
hear these sounds. As I drew near the street, [the sound was like] Aaaayyyyy!!!!
Some people were screaming and others were crying out loud to God. [As] I
asked myself what is this I heard them saying, Father, thank you, thank you
father for this manifestation, thank you! People across the street and everywhere
came to the church. When we came down from our house and opened the church
door, we saw people screaming, others jumping, and some sprawled out on the
floor on their backs receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

According to Pilataxi, inside the door, the atmosphere resembled a fire:

It was like an intense fire pouring out! A lot of people on the outside were looking
in through the windows. There were approximately 15 or 20 inside. When we
entered, we thanked God for what he was doing. At that time, we did not know
the manifestation or the power of the Holy Spirit. We were concerned because we
did not understand what was happening. Then we noticed a sister, Rosa Guamn,
speaking in tongues and another sister who was illiterate grabbed a Bible and
began to read it. Others were prophesying, This is going to happen; this is
what the Lord is saying; to this young people, God is going to speak to them.
Some were singing and jumping and saying Glory to God. We did not know
these phrases Glory to God or Hallelujah until that moment.

The autonomous Pentecost at Pulucate impacted a church and community:

By themselves, the disobedient young people came in, knelt, and began to cry.
We felt Gods presence working. Everyone that walked into the church was
touched [as if] with electricity and began squealing. Everyone began to worship,

authors standing relationship with RAV leaders since 1997, granted access and materials to overcome the
ethnic exclusivity of Quichua communal safeguards. The same challenges are true for research done on
most indigenous groups, their churches, and communities in Ecuador.
 126

jump, feel the heat, and cry. God directed all of this. The meeting had started with
15 or 20, but now the whole church was full with people looking in from the
outside. The observers believed that the people were crazy not knowing what was
happening; they thought the people were not well or that something [bad] was
happening to them.70

In spite of the initial disruption the manifestations created, the revival renewed a
community and birthed an Indigenous Pentecostal movement. For the Quichua Church in
general, the Pentecostal awakening is unprecedented in that the autonomous outpouring
was not linked previously to any Western Pentecostal group or doctrine. Compared to
another independent move of the Spirit like the Chilean Pentecostal revival, there are
similarities in antecedents (schism, prayer, and fasting); and, as renewal movements, both
were completely unconnected to Azusa.71
The small band of leaders that initiated the prayer meeting represented part of the
RAV leadership, but the pastor, Jose Maria and several leaders were not part of the
group. Initially, the pastor, some members, and people in the community experienced
confusion, doubt, and fear about what was going on. When first apprised, Pastor Maria
critically responded that it was false and anti-biblical. He encouraged them to pray to
God. The manifestations (fire of the revival) broke out of the church and into various
homes of those who doubted the move of the Spirit. In spite of the pastors criticizing,
Inside his home, electricity [the Holy Spirit] got a hold of him and he was thrown onto
the floor for hours, validating the revival affirmed Pilataxi. Furthermore Guamn
explains that in other homes where people also questioned the occurrence, the Spirit
moved by giving dreams and visions of the truthfulness of Pentecost.
A Quichua discovery of Christianity (the doctrine and praxis of prayer, fasting
and healing) produced an autonomous Pentecost. As the original Acts 2 manifestation of
the Spirit birthed the New Testament Church, the Pulucate Pentecost engendered an
indigenous Pentecostal Church. The renewals igniting (drawing) effect and subsequent
centrifugal mobility cultivated the RAVs Spirit-filled and missional identity. According

70
Ibid.
71
Seplveda reflects on the origins of Chiles 1909 Pentecostal revival and the characteristics of
the indigenous (home grown or national) Pentecostalism that emerged, see Juan Seplvedas chapter, El
Principio Pentecostal. Reflexiones a partir de los orgenes del pentecostalismo en Chile, in Voces del
pentecostalismo latinaomericano, ed. Daniel Chiquete and Luis Orellana.
 127

to Vasconezs description of the RAV and COG first contact in 1992 and then affiliation
in 1994, the RAV Church, soon after the revival, came to the realization that there were
other (non-indigenous) Pentecostals like them.72 Contact with various Pentecostal
movements was imminent, initially incidental, but later planned. The accusatory and
censuring engagement by GMU and the association prompted and led to an alliance with
Pentecostals. Pilataxi recalls,
they [association] became our enemies on the radio: Those in Pulucate Centro are
crazy, they are fanatics, and they have another doctrine. We need to
preventwhat is happening. Because the criticism spread everywhere,
[Pentecostal] Pastor Jorge Mariscal [from the Iglesia Santidad de Dios (Holiness
Church of God)] came and visited without any of us inviting him. In Guayaquil,
he had heard all that was happening in Pulucate. He helped us understand
biblically the things that were happening.73

Because RAV began to establish works and other churches joined them, they legally, in
1987, became a denomination, Mision Evangelica Rios de Agua Viva del Ecuador
(MERAVE).
Andrade suggests a 1992 origin for the MERAV Church with two theories (a
schism or a spiritual manifestation) for its formation.74 Whereas, the author of this study
demonstrates and contends that both events are not mutually exclusive but rather
formative, his findings not only render a much earlier origination date of 1978 due to the
Iglesia Emmanuel schism, but also the provided MERAVE by-laws recognized by the
Republic of Ecuadors Minister of Government (Ministerial Agreement No. 2064)
records a 30 September 1987 date of official registry. Towards the end of the twentieth
century (1998), the MERAVE movement had twenty-two churches throughout the
province of Chimborazo and a few in the cities of Guayaquil, Quito, Riobamba, etc.; it
is organized by departments: Bible institute, pastoral council, distance education, ladies

72
Guillermo Vasconez (Administrative Bishop of the COG Indigenous Area), interviewed by
author, video recording, Ambato, Ecuador, 30 June 2006.
73
Guamn and Pilataxi, interview. Although in Mariscals version the invitation account differs
(they invited him), he affirms his Pentecostal mentoring role and validates the revival: It was a great move
[of the Spirit] that came and enflamed that place and there the power of the Spirit settled, thank God, Jorge
Mariscal, interviewed by author, phone recording, San Antonio, TX and Guayaquil, Ecuador, 03 January
2010.
74
Andrade, Protestantismo indgena, 275.
 128

society, music department, and district department.75 Vasconez highlights their impact
as,
A positive result is that among the indigenous Pentecostals, they are the most
mature [with] a clear vision of their mission in the kingdom of God. They have
impacted their community in a very particular way. It is a community that has
prospered materially and spiritually to the point that currently the majority [in
Pulucate] are Evangelical Pentecostal. They have a school, a high school, and a
daycare. [MERAVE] has a holistic process of development in their community
that one cant help notice how God has prospered them.76

The MERAVE movement depicts an indigenous church within an Andean context that is
impacting Ecuadorian society. Next, a brief survey of the Pentecostal mission churches,
in particular the COG, completes the fourfold church typology of Quichua
Pentecostalism.

7.3.4 MISSION CHURCHES: A NORTH AMERICAN PENTECOSTAL HERITAGE

North American Pentecostal missions (denominations) have influenced and
developed the largest segment of Quichua Pentecostalism. The rationale to list mission
churches last in the typology is intentional in order to accentuate indigenous historicity
and protagonism over Western missions historical primacy, an underlying objective
sustained throughout the study of the Quichua Christian story. Chapter 5 describes, after
the mid-1950s, the arrival of three Classical Pentecostal missions (Foursquare, 1957; AG,
1960; and COG, 1970) and the movements proliferation in Ecuador. These groups,
unlike the GMU, did not at the outset concentrate their efforts on the Indgena, however,
the indigenous projects commenced two decades later (Foursquare, 1978; AG and COG,
1989).77 Observation of Quichua adoption of COG doctrine and structure illustrates a
North American mission that oscillated between acculturation and indigenization.
Maln, Cajamarca, Pilataxi, and Guamn measured Quichua theological
formation under the GMU and found themselves wanting more. For Quichua
Pentecostalism, Classical Pentecostal faith stood able to supply a conceptual ready-to-
use decree for Spirit-baptized Indgenas or those yet to receive the Pentecostal blessing.

75
Ibid.
76
Vasconez interview.
77
Walker, Siembra y Cosecha, 246247, 256. For COG Indigenous origin, see above chapter 5.4.
 129

In the case of COG Quichua leaders, Western Pentecostal colloquialisms emerged after
adoption of doctrinal statements:
Before [in Chimborazo], the majority of churches were GMU, but now these
churches are drawing closer to the COG. [This is the case] in spite of the COG
belief in the move of the Holy Spirit, [and that] we believe in the gift of tongues,
divine healing, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The GMU does not believe in
these points. Within their doctrine and declaration of faith, they only believe in
ten points; but in the COG, we believe in three more: divine healing, speaking in
tongues, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.78

In Fabin Vega Gaushcas work on Quichua Pentecostalism in the Juigua region of

Cotopaxi, a COG interpretation becomes apparent as the Spirits role in regeneration and
baptism is evaluated in both declarations of faith (GMU and COG):
Article 4 on the Holy Spirit in the GMU doctrine tells us that the Holy Spirit is the
supernatural agent of regeneration. At the moment of conversion two things
simultaneously occur, [the Spirit] baptizes and seals. [While] in our COG
declaration of faith it tells usthat the person of the Holy Spirit is the agent of
regeneration, justification, and the new birth which are effective in the blood of
Jesus Christ. But we disagree when [the GMU] states that at the moment of
conversion the baptism and seal of the Holy Spirit commences. We believe that
at conversion the seal of the Holy Spirit occurs and afterward, according to the
sovereign will of the Holy Spirit, he gives the Baptism in the Kairos of the Holy
Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues like articles 8 and 9 of [the COG]
declaration of faith convey.79

Besides the allure of North American Pentecostalisms spiritual, financial, and social
patronage, pneumatological thought satiated the need of (more) knowledge to understand
the manifestation(s) of the Spirit. However, tethered to the new evangelization was a
Western biblical hermeneutic rooted in North American Evangelical fundamentalism.80
Quichua assimilation, in general, of non-indigenous Evangelical decrees and, in
particular, Classical Pentecostal doctrine (for example glossolalia as initial evidence)
circumvents Quichua ethos and culture thus obscuring the development of an Indgena

78
The authors emphasis in the above quote of COG District Overseer of Chimborazo Juan Lema,
interviewed by author, audio recording, Riobamba, Ecuador, 24 June 2009. The ten articles of the GMU
declaration of faith are: 1) the Bible; 2) the Godhead; 3) the Lord Jesus Christ; 4) the Holy Spirit; 5)
Angels; 6) Man; 7) Salvation; 8) the Believers Position; 9) the Resurrection; and 10) the Church and Its
Mission, see Avants (GMU) Faith Statement, [cited 08 January 2010]; available from
http://www.avantministries.org/faith-statement; INTERNET.
79
My emphasis, Vega Guascha, El Pentecostalismo en el rea Indgena Zona Juigua, 15.
80
See Nolivos, Hermeneutics and Missions in the Land of the Equinox, 4150.
 130

Pentecostal theology. A similar and related problem centers on the polity of the inherited
denominational structure.
In Ecuador, Pentecostal denominations operate centralized (democratic) forms of
government that appear to the non-Indgena analogous to Andean communal culture.
Since 1989, the Iglesia de Dios Mision Mundial (Church of God World Mission-
COGWM) administrated Hispanic and Indgena areas.81 During Vasconezs
administration (19892006), the frequent and repeated Evangelical Quichua affiliations
to the COG, attests to an indigenous advocacy instead of denominational control. The
agenda was not directed by a COG plan but rather a blueprint emergent from the
Indgena context-dictated policy:
A few years ago when we were planning the creation of our own seminary and
institutes, we said: we are going to form a few workers at the beginning, but
what we want is that these workers reflect theologically for themselves and that
they develop their own version of Indgena Pentecostalism. We did not want them
to depend on our thought, but that they develop their own expression. The COG
Indgena territory has worked in this direction. This is why our own Indgena
Church has different characteristics to the International COG. For example, we
work with a large group of national workers that dont have credentials from the
COG International. They have authorization to do all kinds of ceremonies because
they were already pastors. For many reasons, they have not pursued the
international credentials and yet the ministry is functioning.82

Vasconezs contextual approach was centered more on the Quichua need (church
buildings, education, social projects, etc.) than on COG indoctrination. According to
Lema, the COG came with these projects centered on the need of the Indgena people
and with this they won their loyalty.83
In 2006, when Vasconezs term concluded, the COG Indgena territory had over
200 churches with more than 22,000 members. In the last several years with a new
administration and its denominationally centered agenda (e.g., doctrinal imperative-
glossolalia), the focus has shifted to religious acculturation. Within the first year (2006)

81
The COG system of government is a centralized hierarchical episcopacy that is transplanted to
most countries where the denomination has been established. See the above chapter 5.4.
82
Vasconez interview (2006). See Vega Guascha, El Pentecostalismo en el Area Indgena Zona
Juigua, 910. Cajamarca saw Vasconezs work in two stages: 1) the urgent need of building churches; and
2) the theological/biblical preparation of pastors and leaders, Cajamarca interview.
83
Lema, interview.
 131

of the incumbent leadership, there was an exodus of more than 50 percent of the Quichua
churches and, by 2009, there were only 68 churches. Furthermore, in the July 2009 COG
Indgena National Convention, a restructuring of the governmental system was proposed
that would dissolve the Indgena Area in order to phase it into the Hispanic territory. The
implications of the latter will mean little representation for the Indgena constituency and
a long process to incorporate Quichua pastors (bishops) into the denominational
machinery.
The above doctrinal and structural analysis demonstrates the challenge
Pentecostal missions like the COG face integrating Pentecostalism with Quichua culture.
The assessment does not discredit Classical Pentecostalisms contribution (social
programs, theological and vocational training, etc.) to Quichua Pentecostalism. If the
Pentecostal mission churches place indigenization before their North American heritage,
Quichua Pentecostalism will be better served. Such awareness and vision from this sector
will enable an authentic indigenous Pentecostalism and indigenous theology and praxis of
the Spirit to develop.

7.4 CONCLUSION
Quichua Christianity exhibits historical continuity within the Andean story. The
twenty-first century Pentecostal phenomenon among the Quichuas is not the beginning of
their spiritual journey. Andean religion, Catholicism, and Protestantism form part of the
Quichua narrative that must be brought to light in order to appreciate Quichua spirituality
and, in particular, Quichua Pentecostalism. Therefore, to speak of Pentecostalism as a
new evangelization or re-evangelization as the Quichuas understand it is to
acknowledge the waves of religious evangelization that they have experienced. The
move of the Spirit or the manifestations of the Holy Spirit express a Quichua
discovery of Christianity as they understand and experience a pneumatological tradition
of the Church. Independent of or because of Western Pentecostal missions, Quichua
Pentecostalism is a concrete and visible Quichua Church that lives in the Spirit. It is a
recent movement of forty years with different faces: independent, bilingual, indigenous,
and mission-directed, but it is an indigenous manifestation of Gods Spirit at work in the
Andean people of Ecuador.
 132

8. POSTLUDE: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL AND MISSIOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS

The objective of this final chapter is to offer a few historiographical and
missiological contributions and recommendations as a general summation to the study of
Quichua Christianity in the Andean nation of Ecuador.

8.1 CONTRIBUTIONS
At the onset of selecting my research topic, Quichua Christianity was not the
original choice for the project; but rather the emergence of an autonomous Pentecostal
movement in the rural community of the province of Chimborazo (MERAVE) was the
preference. The influence of Troeltschs phenomenological correlation of all historical
events and Stanley M. Burgess recognition of the Holy Spirits continual involvement in
the life of the Church, forged the comprehensive (holistic) approach to this study of the
Quichua Christian story.1 In order to observe the Pentecostal development among the
Quichua and avoid historical exclusivism (isolation), the research led me to expand the
topic and recover the interaction of all [Quichua Christian] phenomena2 and locate the
full range of the Spirits activity in the life of the [Quichua] Church.3 Although for
Troeltsch the term all refers to interconnection of every historical event, I utilized it as
the interdependence (continuity) between the three significant Christian developments
(Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal) that influenced Quichua identity and culture rather
than highlighting only one historical phenomenon. On the other hand, Burgess rightly
affirms that the full range of the Spirits activity goes beyond accentuating solely the
gifts of the Spirit as many Pentecostals suggest. This contribution historically grounds the
research and provides a wider scope of Quichua religious knowledge to analyze
Christianitys historical, anthropological, missiological, and theological errors and
strengths.
In the pursuance of integrating the Quichua voice into the Christian tradition at
large and into the scarce publications on indigenous Christianity, and to proliferate
Indgena thought, this Latin American history was conceived. The Quichua perspective

1
See Troeltsch, Religion in History, 14; and Burgess, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian
Traditions, 4.
2
Ibid.
3
Burgess, The Holy Spirit, 5.
 133

(horizon/being) was central to the interpretative process and the contextual significance
of recovering and writing this particular account of Christianity. An overall contribution
of this study is heuristic, to generate a process of conscientization of the marginalized
Quichua reality. In this historical task, not only am I aware that I am not an Indgena, but
Quichua adherents held me accountable and assisted me beyond my horizon and reality
(white Ecuadorian-American) so as to capture theirs. This investigations analysis of
Quichua thought and identity reveals a darker side of Latin America and the Latin
American being as well as its renewal. Hence, the Western ontology is secondary to the
indigenous worldview within this historical portrayal.

In addition to the implications this research offers regarding the Christianization

of indigenous people and the Quichua indigenization of Christianity, the key
missiological contribution throughout the study is the perspective of an evangelized
indigenous people manifesting their belief in God, denouncing the violation of their
human rights, and defending and defining their Quichua identity. For instance, the
Andean golden rule of ama llulla, ama shua, ama quilla (dont be a liar, dont be a thief,
dont be lazy) that predates Christianity but is yet reinforced by it, demonstrates a
Quichua Christian expression. Neglect of this Christian history by Quichuas,
missionaries, and the Church, especially the Ecuadorian Church, has been detrimental
and results in overlooking the past or knowledge of origins, misinterpreting the present or
ontological confusion, and losing site of the future. Rediscovering this history allows us
to appreciate the life experiences from the point of view of the evangelized Quichua.4
The pneumatological contributions of the history of Quichua Christianity are
explicit in chapters 6 and 7: Pentecostal missions from the North revitalize the
Ecuadorian Church; an indigenous definition of Pentecostalism; the (autonomous)
Pulucate Revival; and a Quichua Pentecostal ecclesiology. Moreover, the Spirits activity
in this indigenous Christian tradition is implicit and embedded throughout the study. The
Holy Spirits work of renewal in this investigation sought to be more than a Pentecostal
perspective (interpretation) of indigenous history but rather understood the developments
that renewed and reordered the perception of the Quichua as within the Spirits realm of

4
Maln, Participacin Misionera, 8.
 134

activity.5 Historical events such as Leonidas Proaos indigenous advocacy and the
Catholic social reform; the Gospel Missionary Unions role in transmitting the Protestant
gospel; Quichua Protestantisms interpretation of a liberating message; and the
pentecostalization of the Quichua Church and the consequential indigenous Pentecostal
praxis exhibit the Holy Spirits reordering of a formerly dominated and eclipsed Quichua
people.

8.2 AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Considering the precursory effort to recover a non-Western account of the
Quichua discovery and appropriation of Christianity, my survey of the largest indigenous
group in Ecuador has limitations which prohibit it from covering more scholarly territory.
The following recommendations, therefore, address areas where future research could
contribute to the collective Quichua Christian memory and voice.
Throughout history, women have had as much and at times a more significant
role in religion than men. Within this discussion of the repression of the Indgena in the
Quichua Christian story, the contribution of Quichua women has been eclipsed. Recently,
there have been biographies written on Catholic social activists like Dolores Cacuango
and Transito Amaguaa;6 but a history on the role of Quichua women in Christianity
would be an essential contribution. Other Christian women (Protestant and Pentecostal)
like Trancito Guacho de Naula, Maria Estefa Mullo Sayay, Maria Yautibug, Rosario
Chicaiza, Dolores Baltazar, and Delia Guashca would unearth vital information that
gives face and voice to a few women whose testimonies enrich Quichua Christianity.7
Although this study has demonstrated some initial emergent historiography,
Quichua minds and pens must produce more and recurrent literature. Presently, the
numerous professional and educated Quichua Christians make it plausible that many

5
See authors notes of Irvin, Discussion on Troeltschs Historical and Dogmatic Method in
Theology (doctoral course lecture presented at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Va., June 15, 2004), n.
89.
6
See Raquel Rodas Morales, Dolores Cacuango: Gran lder del pueblo indio, Biografas
Ecuatorianas 3 (Quito: Ediciones Banco Central del Ecuador, 2005); and Cecilia Mino Grijalva, Transito
Amaguaa: Herona India, Biografas Ecuatorianas 4 (Quito: Ediciones Banco Central del Ecuador, 2006).
7
The recommended research should include Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal Quichua
women. The above citation is from Estrelda Alexanders The Women of Azusa Street (Cleveland: The
Pilgrim Press, 2005), 10.
 135

Protestant facets of Christianity can now be written and voiced by them. Future Quichua
historiography could explore topics such as: the construction of social capital and civil
participation; ecclesial histories; historical, theological and missiological critique of
Western missions and Christianity; the vital and significant role of music and dance in
Quichua worship; the challenges Indigenous Christianity faces in the twenty-first century;
and the role and impact the Quichua Church has had with other indigenous groups and
the Ecuadorian society.
The volatile relationship between religion and culture has been studied from
various perspectives. Nevertheless, a profitable psychosomatic study on the origins of the
Latin American identity commencing with the Indgena reality (crisis and victimization)
would not only uncover the impact of indigenous objectification but also the victim ethos
still prevalent among many Latin Americans. Such research could observe for example
the physical, social, psychological, and spiritual repercussions of the Amerindian
womans violation by the European conquistador its origins and foundational of the
social matrix of mestizaje (blending of Indgena and European blood), in the Latin
American family, community, and worldview deserve to be seriously considered, along
with the psychological theories, and the theological role of Christianity would be
examined within a historical framework.
A comprehensive study on Quichua Pentecostalism still remains to be undertaken.
This research provides an introduction to spotlight the issue and stir further dialogue.
While understandably most of the works on Quichua Christianity begin with the province
of Chimborazo, where the movement originated and significant events unfolded, case
studies on Pentecostalism in other provinces (Tungurahua, Cotopaxi, Bolivar, Pichincha,
Cayambe, etc.) can be compared to and juxtaposed with that of Chimborazo. Very little
has been written about the movements development within each province (rural and
urban) and outside the country (Colombia, Venezuela and United States).
Quichua Christianity is the history of an indigenous groups religious oppression,
struggle, and realization of the different incarnations (translations) of Gods message
within that context. In spite of vestiges of acculturation, colonialism, and imperialism by
Western Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal messengers, the Quichua Christian
 136

expresses in a loud, clear, autonomous and syncretistic voice her Andean side of the
story.
 137

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