From Tupã to the Land without Evil: The Christianization of Tupi-Guarani Cosmology

Author(s): Judith Shapiro

Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 14, No. 1, Frontiers of Christian Evangelism (Feb.,
1987), pp. 126-139
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/645637
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 from Tupa to the land without evil: the
Christianization of Tupi-Guarani cosmology

JUDITH SHAPIRO-Bryn Mawr College

Gens sans foi, dirent des Tupi leurs premiers observateurs. "Theologiens de I'Amerique du Sud', ecrivait-
on recemment des Guarani. Entre ces deux jugements contraires, quatres siecles d'histoire . . ."
Helene Clastres, La Terre sans mall

Missionario ate usava a lingua do Indio na reza.

At6 usava os cantos do Indio.
Ate usava a danca do Indio na reza.
Mas a reza era de branco.
Nao era reza de Indio . . .
missionary textbook2

It has been a common practice, throughout the history of missionization, for missionaries to
appropriate items from the cultural repertoires of the missionized in the interests of successful
evangelization. Despite the acknowledged danger of this strategy-that the Christian message
would be bent to the shape of the local culture rather than the reverse-it found its justification
either in considerations of practical necessity or, better yet, in a belief that the elements of
indigenous culture chosen for translation into Christian terms were, in reality, adumbrations of
the Christian message, seeds of the Gospel planted by God so that peoples all over the world
should recognize and accept the true religion when they were fortunate enough to encounter
it.

The Catholic missionary priests who attempted to spread Christianity among the Tupi-Gua-
rani peoples of Brazil and Paraguay sought to translate their message into a language their po-
tential converts could understand. Thus, they referred to God as Tupa, a figure from Tupian
cosmology who was believed to cause thunder, lightning, and rain from his home in the sky.
The Devil came to be known by the name used for a variety of malevolent forest spirits-Yu-
rupari, or Giropari. The culture hero who, according to the Tupi-Guarani peoples, had taught
them how to plant their crops and had given them the rules to organize their society, was also
assimilated to the Christian project: where the Indians saw the hand of Maira-Monan, their
creator, transformer, and lawgiver, the missionaries saw a first contact with God. And so the
creed could be preached to the Tupi-Guarani peoples in a version of their own language:
Arobiar Toupan I believe in God
Toue opap katou maete tirouan the Almighty Father

Throughout history, missionaries have appropriated items from the cultural rep-
ertoires of the missionized in the interests of spreading Christianity among cultur-
ally diverse peoples. Missionaries in eastern South America during the early co-
lonial period translated the Christian message into terms taken from the cosmology
of the Tupi-Guarani peoples. Recent cultural borrowings by progressive mission-
aries, however-notably their use of the Tupi-Guarani belief in an earthly para-
dise-have a different purpose, aiming not at the conversion of the Indians, but at
the conversion of the church. [South America, missionaries, colonialism, religion,
culture contact]

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 Mognangare ybouy Creator of the earth
Jesus Christ and in Jesus, His only Son3
Tayre oyepe vae

Four centuries later, at a very different moment in the history o

have again turned to Tupi-Guarani cosmological themes in ord
Gospel. This time, the element of native religion chosen for tra
the belief in an earthly paradise, a land without evil. While the
of this belief, they could not put it to their own uses for reaso
It is only now, as radical missionaries seek ways to extricate th
past, that the indigenous Tupi-Guarani quest for utopia in this wo
for Christianity. From benighted savages in thrall to Satan, th
of liberation theology.

early encounters

The first Europeans to arrive along the coast of what is now

region inhabited by peoples closely related to one another in th
of life. These peoples, referred to collectively as Tupi, or Tupin
Paraguay,4 subsisted on slash and burn horticulture, hunting, fish
in villages composed of several multifamily longhouses grouped
a center for community activities. There were headmen, who
longhouse groups, and chiefs, who exercised authority at the v
a position of special prominence, mediating between the human
egories of spirit beings that inhabited the Tupi-Guarani cosmos
warriors whose practice of roasting and consuming their cap
feasts provided the dominant image Europeans came to have of
In the view of most of the early travelers and missionaries, th
people totally without "religion." None of their beliefs and cust
category as the Europeans understood it. Father Manuel Nobrega
Brazil, described the natives in early letters written shortly aft
with no knowledge of God, who worshipped nothing, and had n
he could teach them religious concepts when the appropriate
from their own language (Leite I 5, 6; 9, 3).5 Andre Thevet, the
ited the Tupinamba in 1554, characterized them as being witho
nized forms of prayer, and without any knowledge of the divin
tives of eastern South America were seen as lacking even those
tuted the false religions of other tribal peoples. This made them s
and savages elsewhere; some European observers wondered w
whether there was any hope of reaching them with the Christia
greater ignorance, or innocence, they could also be seen as m
Nobrega put it in his famous Dialogue on the Conversion of the
the ignorant than to convert those who are malicious and prou
tractable as the Brazilian natives may seem, the Church's prospec
with heretics or Jews (Leite II 51, 11).
While the Tupi-Guarani were not credited with having any au
they were often seen as having some awareness, albeit fragmen
Christian religion. Their beliefs about Tupa were commonly inte
ity, while their fear of various forest-dwelling spirits was seen
Aside from these identifications, which will be discussed in gre
myth about the destruction of the world by water offered appare
about Noah and the Flood.6 The missionaries also believed that S
eastern South America, introducing the natives to the Gospel

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name bore a fortuitous resemblance to one of the terms of address for the Tupi-Guarani culture
hero-transformer (Sume or Zume),7 was thus credited with having brought to the Indians those
aspects of civilization they currently enjoyed. The sacred rocks, which, according to Tupi-
Guarani legend, bore the imprint of their hero's footsteps as he passed from the world of men
to the world beyond, were seen by the Christians to mark the previous passage of the Apostle
(Leite 1 8, 3; 9, 7; 9,9; d'Evreux 1864:338; Metraux 1928:16-17; Clastres 1975:27-28).
The Indians likewise found a place for the Europeans in their own order of things. White men
were generally referred to as "Maira," or "Caraiba," the term the Tupi-Guarani used for their
most powerful shamans, who were felt to be descendants of Maira-Monan. Their legends tell
of how Maira had left earth and gone to live in the sky. One myth tells of his death at the hands
of men; others recount his anger and disappointment at how they lived (Metraux 1928:10-14).
The Europeans, with their power and resources, seemed to be the people Maira had turned to
instead, whom he had elected to favor with his gifts in the place of those who had failed him
(Thevet 1575 11:913-915).
Missionary letters and travel accounts repeatedly note the curiosity and enthusiasm with
which Indians responded to the preaching of the priests, whom they considered to be potential
sources of power and knowledge. Conversion, however, was another matter. The recorded
dialogues between the traveler Yves d'Evreux and various Tupi-Guarani headmen and sha-
mans, which offer much valuable information on native perceptions of Christianity and provide
a particularly rich vein for anyone wishing to mine the ironies of missionization, document the
disparity between what the priests wanted to teach and what the Indians wanted to learn
(d'Evreux 1864:325ff.).
The conditions of Tupi-Guarani life presented serious obstacles to evangelization. What was
most frustrating to the missionaries was the ease with which the Indians could abandon their
villages and move to another location. The lack of a centralized political authority was also a
major problem. As one Jesuit brother noted, "if they had a king, and he were to convert, the
rest would do likewise" (Leite I 26, 2). Instead, the missionaries, who were few in number, were
forced to travel from village to village and had to begin anew in each place. The work that they
put into a particular community, moreover, often came to nought, since the people simply dis-
appeared into the forest. The strategy of itinerant preaching and mass baptism seemed to be
producing little in the way of enduring results.
If the Indians were going to be converted to Christianity and made to give up their heathen
customs-cannibalism, polygamy, improper marriages between cousins and between uncles
and nieces-the missionaries had to be in a position to exercise more control over the native
population. Addressing himself to the governor of Brazil, Nobrega wrote
You must make laws that prohibit them from eating human flesh and going to war without the permission
of the governor; that permit them only one wife; that oblige them to wear clothing . ..; that outlaw their
sorcerors .. .; that make them live in one place without moving around [Leite II 66, 11].

He stressed that the Indians could not be converted until they had first been subjected to co-
lonial authority (Leite III 13, 4). Jose de Anchieta, Nobrega's fellow Jesuit and the most famous
of all missionaries to Brazil, argued that "for people of this kind, the best form of preaching is
with the sword and the spear" (111 74, 8). It was also important to protect the Indians from the
local colonists, who sought to enslave them and who set such a deplorable example of what
so-called civilized Christians were like.
In Brazil, the Jesuits were able to carry out their program with the support of Mem de Sa, who
became the third Governor of Brazil in 1557, and devoted his energies to subduing and paci-
fying the Tupinamba. Large numbers of people were gathered together into fixed communities,
or aldeias. In Paraguay, reducciones were set up by the Jesuits among the Guarani from 1610
on; Montoya established 11 between 1622 and 1629. The history of the Paraguayan missions
is a particularly violent one; the reducciones were repeatedly attacked by slavers and colonists
in search of labor, and frequently had to be abandoned and reestablished elsewhere. Raids and
forced migrations took a heavy toll on the native population. By 1707, however, the Jesuits had

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succeeded in setting up a total of 30 "cities," which together formed what came to be called
"The Paraguayan State of the Jesuits."8
Life within the Jesuit communities was highly regimented in terms of village layout, work
organization, schooling, and punishments meted out to those who broke the rules. Religious
observances were carried on with great pomp and ceremony.9 Elaborate performances were
staged for visiting civil and religious dignitaries, so that they could bear witness to the Jesuit
project of creating rational, divinely ordered utopias among the savages of the New World.
In 1767 the Jesuits were expelled. The reducciones and aldeias were invaded by colonists
greedy for the resources and labor they harbored. By the early 18th century, the Tupi-Guarani
peoples had disappeared completely from the eastern coast of South America.

Tupa and Yurupari: missionary and shaman

Jesuit missionization among the Tupi-Guarani, as elsewhere, involved a certain amount of

adaptation to the local culture. Native music and dance were used in religious ceremonies.
Language learning was a constant preoccupation, since the missionaries were anxious to
preach effectively to the natives in their own language. The methods used by the Jesuits brought
them into conflict with the first Bishop of Brazil, who arrived in June of 1552 and shortly there-
after complained to Nobrega's superiors in Lisbon. He was most disturbed to see Christian Eu-
ropeans aping the customs of savages, felt that the missionaries were too lax about how the
Indians dressed and wore their hair, and objected to such practices as hearing confessions
through interpreters (Leite 1 49). Nobrega defended himself in a spirited series of letters in which
he noted the unreasonableness of many of the Bishop's demands and argued for the effective-
ness of the order's missionary strategies (Leite I 51; 54). As things turned out, the Bishop's own
involvement in local custom went beyond his worst fears, since he and about a hundred trav-
eling companions were captured and eaten by a group of Tupinamba after being shipwrecked
off the coast of Bahia in 1556-an event that led to serious reprisals against the native popu-
lation and provided particularly compelling justification for the tight system of colonial control
sought by the Jesuits.
In adapting their evangelical practice to the local culture, colonial missionaries looked for
native terms that could be used to translate Christian concepts. First and foremost, some way
would have to be found to refer to God. The term chosen by the missionaries, Tupa, was taken
from Tupi-Guarani lore about a spirit who lived in the sky and was believed to cause thunder,
lightning, and rain.10 This particular figure, associated with the heavens and possessed of a
power that provoked fear and awe among the Indians, soon attracted the attention of chroni-
clers and missionaries, who saw Tupa either as a convenient point of attachment for explaining
about God or an actual prefiguration of Christianity in indigenous beliefs. Thevet, who saw
Tupi-Guarani beliefs in Tupa as the closest these people had come to religion, noted that
the poor savages believe there is a Toupan up above who makes thunder and rain, although they don't
pray to him or honor him in any way. Yet, the name of God is so sacred that if you speak to them of it,
they listen attentively, with admiration [Thevet 1575 11:921-922].

In a well-known letter describing his early impressions of Brazil and its native inhabitants, No-
brega wrote that

[t]hese people worship nothing, nor do they know God except for the fact that thunder, whom they call
Tupana, is considered in some way divine. And since we have no other convenient word to convey to
them the knowledge of God, we call him Father Tupana [Leite I 9, 3].

Montoya, the most famous of the Jesuit missionaries to Paraguay, developed a folk etymology
for Tupa, arguing that the term was composed of tu, signifying "admiration," and pa, an inter-
rogative (Clastres 1975:22).
The Indians soon came to use the term in the missionary fashion, for the mysterious and
powerful deity of the Europeans, and produced their own interpretations of Tupa's capabilities.

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Yves d'Evreux reports a particularly engaging discourse on Tupa by a man intent on demon-
strating his knowledge about the Resurrection:

when Toupan gives everyone back their bodies, if a man wants to wear his hair long and have a woman's
body in heaven, then he can pray to Toupan to give him one, and he will live in heaven in the company
of the women rather than the men [d'Evreux 1864:262].

As a complement to the choice of Tupa as a Tupi-Guarani name for God, the term Yurupari,
or Giropari, was used to refer to the Devil. In this case, the borrowed term was one used by the
Tupi-Guarani for a variety of dangerous and malign spirits who lived in the forest and were
believed to cause harm to those who encountered them. These spirits, also referred to in some
Tupi-Guarani languages by the term anhanga and its variants, constitute a heterogenous cate-
gory associated both with spirits of the dead and nonhuman beings. Since these spirits were
associated with the dark and since they were considered the major cause of human misfortune,
it was easy for the Europeans to make a connection with the Devil. Nobrega, for example,
observed that "[the Indians] know about the Devil and fear him, especially at night" (Leite I 8,
3).
The Devil was also believed to be present in native society in the person of the shaman,
whose exceptional powers were seen to come from the dark side and to reflect the cleverness
of the Devil in choosing the most gifted to be his servants.'1 This identification of shamans with
the Devil was one major strategy adopted by the missionary priests in their struggle to capture
the shamans' monopoly over the spiritual life of the Indians; the other was to deny that shamans
had any real powers at all and to view them instead as mere charlatans who engaged in low
forms of trickery. As Father Luiz de Gra wrote in a letter to Loyola, "[t]hey have a great many
sorcerors who are, in my view, only liars and deceivers, and do not have any communication
with the demon, despite what is often said by those who have been living here for a long time"
(Leite 11 25, 8).
The shamans, for their part, sought to make their own bridges to what they saw as a new
source of spiritual power. The famous dialogue between Yves d'Evreux and the great shaman
Pacamont documents the reality bargaining that went on in this respect: the Tupinamba leader,
well aware that the Europeans possessed power beyond his own imagining and anxious to ap-
propriate some of it for himself, was told that these were unworthy and evil motives, that ser-
vants of Tupa must be humble and not seek to set themselves above others (d'Evreux
1864:325ff.). One shaman shocked Nobrega with the appalling and blasphemous claim that
he was himself a god and a good friend of this God of the Europeans who lived in the sky (Leite
I 8, 10)-a claim rooted in the Tupi-Guarani belief that great shamans were descendants of
their culture hero. Since Europeans in general, and priests in particular, were seen in similar
terms, missionaries occupied the position of super-shamans, or "men/gods," to use Metraux's
term. Descriptions of visits made by the Jesuit Provincial to native villages show that he was
received with the same set of rituals used to welcome an important shaman (Leite III 41, 6). It
was the missionaries' task to benefit from this identification while transforming it into a new
structure of political and symbolic domination, and to refuse whatever bid native religious
practitioners may have made to be treated as professional colleagues instead of spiritual de-
pendents.

land without evil

Ethnohistorical and linguistic evidence shows that the Tupi-Guarani peoples encountered by
Europeans along the eastern coast of South America were themselves relatively recent arrivals
to the area. The large-scale and far-ranging population movements that brought them to the
coast have been chronicled in detail by Metraux and others.'2 These migrations, for which the
Tupi-Guarani peoples are famous, were commonly motivated by the search for an earthly par-
adise-a "land without evil," as the native term can best be translated.

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 According to Tupi-Guarani belief, the land without evil was a place where crops grew by
themselves, people spent their time feasting and dancing, and no one ever died. The land with-
out evil was the permanent abode of the culture hero, and the souls of exceptional individuals
were said to go there after death. It was also possible, however, for the living to reach the land
without evil by finding the right path and observing a stringent regime of fasting, chanting, and
dancing.13 They had to be willing to abandon their villages and gardens, to endure privation,
and to trust in the efficacy of their rituals.
There were differing traditions as to the precise location of the land without evil-it was
sometimes said to lie across the ocean to the east or, on the contrary, inland at the center of the
earth. The location of the land without evil was sometimes expressed as the place where the
sky and land met (Metraux 1928:26). If a journey proved unsuccessful, the pilgrims could re-
verse their direction, as frequently occurred.
Shamans with exceptional powers were believed to have the ability to find the land without
evil and lead others there. These great shamans (carai or caraiba) considered themselves to be
descendants of Maira, the creator/transformer. So different were their powers from those of
ordinary shamans (paje) that it is perhaps misleading to call both by a single term; contempo-
rary chroniclers commonly referred to the caraiba as a "prophet." The paje and headman ex-
ercised their respective forms of influence and leadership over particular villages. The authority
of the caraiba, on the other hand, transcended the level of village organization and intervillage
politics. The caraiba inhabited a place apart from the ordinary social sphere of kinship ties and
political alliances. He was able to move freely between villages, even those at war with one
another. The visit of a caraiba was a major ceremonial event, commonly highlighted by long
speeches in which the land without evil figured as a central topic.14
At various times in Tupi-Guarani history, such a shaman/prophet would undertake a journey
in search of the land without evil, gathering around himself a large number of followers. Among
the more famous of these migrations is one that brought a group of coastal Tupi to Chacha-
poyas, Peru, in 1549, after a decade of travels (Metraux 1927:21). Migrations in search of the
land without evil persisted up into the present century. They figure prominently throughout the
colonial period as a response to oppression. In some cases, they were led by Europeans or by
individuals of mixed Euro-lndian ancestry. Unlike many cargo cults and revivalistic movements
that followed colonial conquest in other parts of the world, however, the search for the land
without evil was clearly a part of Tupi-Guarani life in precolonial times. The prophetic tradition
surrounding belief in an earthly paradise has, in fact, been viewed by one ethnographer as the
heart of Tupi-Guarani religion (Clastres 1975).
The journeys themselves imposed extraordinary and protracted hardship upon those who
undertook them. Famine, epidemics, and attacks by hostile groups decimated the ranks of mi-
grants until they were reduced to small, straggling bands of survivors. The continuing eagerness
of Tupi-Guarani groups to undertake these utopian quests, given that they inevitably ended in
failure at best and catastrophe at worst, was a source of amazement and exasperation to the
Catholic priests. The migrations, and the shamans who led them, stood in the way of missionary
efforts to control local populations, and the priests were continually trying to convince people
that the shamans were charlatans or agents of the Devil, who were leading them down the path
to destruction.
The relationship between Tupi-Guarani ideas about the land without evil and Christian no-
tions of Paradise was viewed in a number of different ways by European missionaries and trav-
elers. In Nobrega's view, the Tupi-Guarani had no knowledge of heaven or hell, just a belief
that the deceased go to a good place (Leite I 9, 5). Thevet provides a pidginized version of the
land without evil as a place where souls go after death to live with Toupan (Thevet 1575:923).
Yves d'Evreux, writing at a later time, argues that important elements of Christian belief are
already to be found in Tupi-Guarani lore, though he calls attention to the fact that the Tupi-
Guarani paradise is an earthly one:

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 They have always believed that there was a Hell where Giropari lived, and where the wicked
went... Similarly, their tradition held that God lived happily in the heavens, and that those of good
spirit lived with him: as for those of their ancestors who had lived well, they went to a place of delights,
an earthly one, however, where they lacked for nothing. Because of these beliefs, it was easy for us to
make them understand what they were supposed to believe about Paradise, about Hell, about a third
place, where souls were purged before entering Heaven, a fourth place where little children who had
never been Baptized because they died before the age of reason were received so that they would not
have to endure suffering, but where they could also never see God, since Baptism is the key to Heaven
[d'Evreux 1864:322-323].

While relationships of the sort discerned by Yves d'Evreux were occasionally noted in Eu-
ropean accounts, the Tupi-Guarani myth of the land without evil did not generally figure among
those elements of indigenous belief appropriated by missionaries for the purpose of proselytiz-
ing. The picture of life in the land without evil, its location in this world, and its association
with migration, with shamanistic power and indigenous messianism, no doubt made Tupi-
Guarani belief in an earthly paradise a less than suitable vehicle for conveying Christian doc-
trine.

When we turn, however, to the current phase of Catholic missionary activity in South Amer-
ica, we encounter a historical moment at which this native myth has become particularly suited
to the Church's own ideological needs and purposes. The prophetic bent of Tupi-Guarani re-
ligion and its dream of an earthly paradise provide an indigenous scenario for a Church seeking
to reclaim its own prophetic role and to locate the struggle for salvation in the unfolding of
human history.

the "new church"

In order to provide a context for understanding recent invocations of Tupi-Guarani cosm

ogy in Catholic missionary discourse, it is useful to review briefly the major changes that h
taken place in the Brazilian Church over the last few decades, and to consider their effects
missionary practice.5
Up until the 1950s, the position of the Church in Brazil was based upon its institutional
tablishment as the official national religion and on its alliances with local elites at the c
munity level. In the course of the 1950s, the Church was forced to acknowledge that the ur
working classes, and sectors of the rural peasantry as well, were slipping from its grasp. T
need for change was first argued in terms of a struggle against the menace of communism, bu
by the beginning of the 1960s, more radical voices began to dominate the Church's call
social reform. Catholic Action, which had been established in Brazil along traditionalist lin
in the 1930s, became the focus for a socially active, progressivist laity. Its various branche
notably Juventude Operaria Catolica, the factory workers' youth group (JOC) and Juventu
Universitaria Catolica, the university students' group (JUC) played a central role in the de
opment of Catholic radicalism. In the Kubitschek era, Catholic bishops were involved in pla
ning and carrying out the government's regional development program for the Northeast.
Movimento de Educaao de Base (MEB), a popular literacy program that grew out of rad
schools started by the Bishop of Natal in 1958, involved the Church in a system of popu
education based on political and social consciousness-raising. Many Catholic activists be
to explore possible linkages with Marxist approaches to social change.16
The coup of 1964 put a brake on Church activism and ushered in a period of repression j
as the Second Vatican Council was providing a new charter for the Church along the gener
lines of changes already in progress in Brazil. Despite persecution of the Church by the go
ernment, however, the legitimacy that the Church enjoyed enabled it to continue serving a
channel for social protest and political opposition at a time when other outlets had ceased
exist. Moreover, after the Second General Conference of CELAM, the Latin American Bisho
Council that met in 1969 in Medellfn, the Latin American Church had a well-formulated p
of action in line with the principles of Vatican II.

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 In the course of the 1970s, a number of special organizations were formed within the Bra-
zilian Church devoted to various marginalized sectors of the population. The first such orga-
nization to emerge in the post-coup period was CIMI the Conselho Indigenista Missionario
(CIMI), which brought together Catholic missionaries working with Brazilian Indian groups.17
Given the general climate of political repression, activism on behalf of indigenous populations
provided a less dangerous focus for social protest than activism on behalf of the rural peasantry
or urban proletariat. In later years, similar organizations were formed to bring these other
groups under the social and political umbrella of the Church. The Comissao Pastoral da Terra
(CPT), formally established in 1975, focused on the common land-rights problems faced by
peasants, settlers, and Indians-an issue that had become central to Church workers in frontier
areas. Church involvement in struggles over land rights was brought into the cities with the
formation of a pastoral unit devoted to favelados, the inhabitants of Brazil's urban squatter set-
tlements. The Pastoral Operaria was organized to coordinate the pastoral effort with factory
workers. These various organizations were placed under the general authority of the National
Bishops' Conference (Conferencia Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil, or CNBB), which emerged
as a prominent voice in national affairs as the Church developed a more independent and crit-
ical position vis-a-vis the state. In local communities, activist clergy became involved with the
small Christian base communities (comunidades de base, or CEBs) that merge evangelical re-
flection with planning for community development.18
At the time of its founding, CIMI was not a markedly radical organization. Its broadly based
membership reflected the full range of missionary orientations from the most conservative to
the most progressive. In succeeding years, however, CIMI's activist members were able to de-
termine the directions taken by the group, just as in more general terms the progressives were
able to become the articulate voice of the Brazilian Church, their influence far outweighing
their numbers.19 CIMI has played a major role in fostering a pan-Indian political movement in
Brazil, sponsoring meetings of tribal leaders, helping to organize land-rights campaigns, pub-
lishing a series of bulletins and a newspaper on Indian affairs, and organizing training confer-
ences for missionaries.

The leadership of CIMI has also been concerned with formulating a new ideology of evan-
gelization in line with the new role that Christian missionaries are being urged to adopt. The
result has been a radical reorientation away from proselytizing toward political advocacy,
which is itself seen as the most authentic form of evangelization possible at this moment in
history. In accordance with the general tenets of liberation theology, whereby working to re-
alize the Kingdom of God requires engagement in the actual political struggles of the day, the
missionary acts out his vocation in the arena of land claims cases and confrontations with state-
supported multinational corporations.
This form of engagement is further legitimated by a new reading of the doctrine of the Incar-
nation: the assumption by Christ of a historically specific human existence becomes the charter
for a culturally relative missionary practice. Just as Christ took on and shared in the condition
of those among whom he lived, so the missionaries' first task, before they can begin to think
about proselytizing, is to "incarnate" themselves in native society. The Christian message that
they bring as a result of this incarnation will thus be a historically appropriate response to the
Indians' own needs and strivings. Relativization transforms missionary practice and, at the same
time, justifies its continued existence in a postcolonial era.
A conceptual distinction between "religion" and "faith" also informs this new definition of
the missionary vocation. Whereas religion is viewed as the ideology of a particular sociopo-
litical system, faith is seen as the universal essence of Christianity that transcends cultural
boundaries. The Marxist critique of religion is thus accepted, absorbed, and neutralized. Pro-
gressive missionaries can admit the critique of religion as a set of mystifications that serve to
mask and perpetuate exploitative social and economic relations, and at the same time locate
the Christian message above and beyond the range of this critique.20

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 The rhetoric of entering into the cultural universes of Brazil's tribal peoples must be placed
in perspective. Radical missionaries do not, in fact, generally acquire a deep understanding of
native cultures nor do they usually become fluent in native languages. On the contrary, what
is happening is that missionaries are encountering Indians on the common ground of a political
conflict the terms of which are set by the missionaries' own society. Indians, rural peasants,
and the urban poor are brought under a single rubric by the "New Church," which seeks to
address the plight they share vis-a-vis the Brazilian state. Programmatic statements about the
need for missionaries to become like Indians represent less a project for crossing cultural
boundaries than a nativist statement of political support.21
At present, the progressives within the Brazilian clergy are struggling against what one his-
torian of the Brazilian Church has described as a "conservative restoration" (Della Cava 1986).
This conservative movement, which has been gathering momentum over the last decade, re-
ceives support from an alliance with important sectors of the European clergy, from the pow-
erful Archbishop of Medellfn, Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, and from the Vatican. The New Church,
or People's Church, has, for its part, joined forces with various secular left-wing political
groups. Its fate over the coming years will be an important part of the wider history of the Cath-
olic Church in the late 20th century.

land without evil and kingdom of God

On 22 April 1979, in the Cathedral da Se in Sao Paolo, the first celebration took place of a
mass entitled "The Mass of the Land Without Evil" (Missa Da Terra sem Males). Set to native
music drawn from various regions of South America, the mass is primarily the work of one of
the most famous of Brazil's progressive bishops, Dom Pedro Casaldaliga. Dom Pedro, a polit-
ical essayist and poet, has served as the bishop of the frontier prelacy of Sao Felix do Araguaia
since 1971. By the time of his inauguration as bishop, he had published a fierce denunciation
of Brazil's development policies, in which he focused on the activities of multinational cor-
porations and agribusinesses in the Brazilian interior and chronicled the devastation they had
brought to rural and indigenous sectors of the population.22 At his investiture, he wore a peas-
ant's straw hat in place of the traditional episcopal mitre, and carried for his crosier a cere-
monial club given to him by the Tapirape Indians. From that time, Dom Pedro has consistently
been in the forefront of the progressive Church's struggle on behalf of Brazil's Indian peoples
and rural settlers.
The Mass of the Land Without Evil was composed during the year that was declared by the
Brazilian Church as the Ano dos Mairtires (Year of the Martyrs), 1978. This commemoration
involved a pointed redefinition of the notion of "martyr" to focus specifically on those mis-
sionaries who had lost their lives in recent years struggling for Indian rights and, more signifi-
cantly, on the thousands of Indians martyred by the Church-supported colonial enterprise over
the centuries.
The major part of the mass is taken up by a denunciation of colonialism and a nostra culpa
on the part of the Church itself. The Indians are represented as being closer to Christianity in
their pristine state than they became once the missionaries took charge of their lives. At one
point in the mass, a voice representing the Indians says:
Eu adorava a Deus, I worshipped God,
Maira em toda coisa, Maira in all things
Tupa de todo gesto Tupa in every gesture
[Casaldaliga et al. 1980:43]

The equation of Christian faith with Tupa and Maira, a persisting legacy
ization, is made to serve new missionary purposes. The projective system of
intact, but in an inverted form. Native societies have become the reposi
tianity; they have been transformed from manifestations of the Devil's w

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of God's, while the colonialists, including earlier missionaries, are seen as agents of destruc-
tion. This view is expressed in the strongest possible terms:

E n6s te missionamos, And we missionized you,

infi6is au Evangelho. betrayers of the gospel,
cravando em tua vida driving the Cross into your lives
a espada de uma Cruz. like a sword,
Sinos de Boa-nova, the Good News ringing
num dobre de finados! a death knell.
Infi6is au Evangelho, Betrayers of the Gospel,
do Verbo Encarnado, of the Word Incarnate,
te demos por mensagem, we gave you as a message
cultura forasteira. an alien culture
partimos em metades We tore asunder
a paz de tua vida, the peace of your life,
adoradora sempre . . . your always worshipful life ...
Quando n6s te ferramos Our Baptisms branded you
cor um Batismo imposto, like human cattle
marca de humano gado,
blasf6mia do Batismo, a blasphemy of Baptism,
viola,ao da Graca, a violation of Grace,
e nega,ao do Cristo ... a negation of Christ ...
E n6s te diziamos, Who were we to speak to you?
portadores da Morte, We, who were carriers of Death
missionarios do Nada. missionaries of Nothingness.
[Casaldaliga et al. 1980:43-44]

The general message of the mass is that the Church must face up to its past sins and com-
pensate for them with a new commitment. As Pedro Tierra says in his preface to the mass,

The same Church that blessed the sword of the conquistadors and sacramentalized the massacre and
extermination of entire peoples in this mass covers itself with ashes and makes its own profound pe-
nance .. . [despite the past] history continues and the Church maintains deep ties with the oppressed of
America. Let our penitence contribute to transforming this tie into a march forward, side by side with
the people on the path to their liberation [Casaldaliga et al. 1980:23]

The Church confesses and, having confessed, moves on.

The special significance of the land without evil theme for the contemporary Church is re-
vealed in this same preface, in an insistence that the belief of the Tupi-Guarani peoples "was
not [in] a 'Heaven-without-evil', but a Land-without-evil, a possible utopia" (1980:23). Tupi-
Guarani beliefs are thus mobilized in support of a particular interpretation of the Kingdom of
God. Though not fully realizable in this world, the Kingdom of God must be struggled for first
of all in this world, since its meaning is to be understood not within a purely apocalyptic/mil-
lenarian frame of reference, but through locating God's purposes in human history.
The authors of the mass have found a powerful point of attachment between the Tupi-Guar-
ani belief system and their own, namely, a search for paradise that is an activity of this world.
There is, to be sure, little of the specific substance of Tupi-Guarani cosmological beliefs to be
found in the mass. On the contrary, the native Brazilian experience takes on its positive mean-
ing by being read into the Judeo-Christian narrative. The Tupi-Guarani migrations that were
once opposed and, when possible, suppressed by the Church are in this mass interpreted in the
light of the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt: they represent the sacred journeys of a suffering
people in search of God. The destiny of the Tupi-Guarani peoples, like the destiny of the Jews
themselves, is universalized by the Christian message and brought down to earth by liberation
theology. To quote again from the preface to the mass, the land without evil is a "utopia con-
structed by the struggle of the oppressed; the liberated land of all men" (1980:23).
The symbolic appropriation of the native American experience, its translation into the lan-
guage both of traditional and contemporary Christianity, culminates in the final lines of the
mass:

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 America Amerindia, Amerindian America,
ainda na Paixao: Still living your Crucifixion,
um dia tua Morte One day your Death
tera Resurreico Will end in Resurrection
Os Pobres desta Terra We, the Poor of this World,
queremos inventar Struggle to create
essa Terra-sem-males The Land-without-evil
que vem cada manha. That dawns with each new day.
[Casaldaliga et al. 1980:67]

the missionary as convert

"aquilo que mais aflige o missionario e perceber-ou temer-que sua missao acabou ou q
pertinente."
Luiz Felipe Baeta Neves, O Combate dos Soldados de Cristo na Terra dos Papagaios23

The incorporation of Tupi-Guarani elements into the rhetoric of liberation theology, while
part of a general pattern of missionary attempts at cultural translation, at the same time repre-
sents a significant departure from usual missionary practice. In most cases, the appropriation
of indigenous cultural elements is done with the primary purpose of reaching the natives, con-
verting the missionized. In this instance, however, the true audience seems to be the missionary
community itself. While one might make the general point that missionaries have, throughout
history, been talking more to themselves and less to their culturally foreign audiences than they
have realized, we see here a discourse that is particularly and, indeed, explicitly self-directed.
Progressive missionaries are engaged in what might be called a revitalization movement.24
They are attempting to renew and redefine their vocation so that it can continue to be mean-
ingful and justifiable in a postcolonial context. Their task is to convince themselves that they
can completely transform their relationship to native peoples, and move beyond the dialectic
of power and subordination.
While it may be said that progressive missionaries are seeking their own way of exercising
control over Brazil's native populations, they are, at the same time, serving as crucial political
allies in the Indians' ongoing struggle for survival and autonomy. Their relationship to native
peoples, moreover, no longer revolves around the goals of proselytizing and conversion-ac-
tivities that have, after all, been the defining features of missionization throughout its history.
The outside observer may well ask what it can mean to be a missionary if one's vocation is not
centered around converting others to one's own faith. The answer lies in looking at where cur-
rent missionary efforts are directed. In brief, the pressing concern of today's radical missionaries
is less the conversion of the Indians than the conversion of the Catholic Church.

notes

Acknowledgments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a symposium on "Translations

Christianity," American Anthropological Association meetings, December 1982, Washington, D.C. and
the symposium "When the Saints Go Marching In: Past and Present Encounters with Christianity," Am
ican Ethnological Society meetings, May 1985, Toronto. I am grateful to Waud Kracke, Carol MacCorm
and Samuel Lachs for their helpful suggestions.
'Those who first encountered the Tupi called them 'a people without faith'; in recent years, the Guar
have been described as 'the theologians of South America'. Between these contrary judgments, four
turies of history. ... (Clastres 1975:7). This and all subsequent translations from the French and Portug
are my own.

2The missionary even used the Indian language in prayer. Even used the songs of the Indian. Even used
Indian dances in prayer. But it was the white man's prayer. It was not the Indian's prayer. The textbook was
prepared for the Tapirape Indians of Mato Grosso, who contributed illustrations.
3This Tupian version of the credo comes from Yves d'Evreux (1864:271-277), who also offers transcrip-
tions of other translated texts, including the Lord's Prayer, the Prayer to the Virgin, the ten commandments,
and the list of sacraments.

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 4Regional names for the various groups referred to here as Tupinamba include the Potiguara, Caete,
Tupiniquim, Tamoyo, and Tupina (see Metraux 1963a[19451:95-97); the Guarani include groups locally
referred to as Arechane, Itatin, Tape, Tobatin, Guarambare, and Taioba (Metraux 1963b[1945]:70). The
major sources of information on the Tupi-Guarani are traveler's accounts and missionary writings. Most of
the early information is on the Brazilian groups; less is known about those of Paraguay. Foremost among
the early chroniclers are Andre Thevet, cosmographer to the King of France, whose travels through Brazil
in 1540 and 1554 were recorded in his Cosmographie Universelle; Jean de Lery, a French Huguenot who
journeyed to Brazil in 1555; and Yves d'Evreux, whose travels in northern Brazil took place between 1613
and 1614. A unique and particularly valuable document is the memoir written by Hans Staden, a German
who was captured by the Tupinamba in 1545 and escaped after spending several months with them as a
prisoner of war. The most important missionary documents include the letters and other writings of Manuel
Nobrega, first Jesuit provincial of Brazil; Claude d'Abbeville, who wrote a history of the Capuchin mission
in northern Brazil; and Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, the most prominent Jesuit missionary to the Guarani.
The best known anthropological studies of the Tupi-Guarani, based on these and other early documents,
are the various writings of the French ethnologist Alfred Metraux and the Brazilian sociologist/anthropol-
ogist Florestan Fernandes. I have drawn especially on Metraux's description of Tupinamba religion (Me-
traux 1928) in the account presented here. Most relevant to the specific theme of this paper is Helene
Clastres' (1975) study of Tupi-Guarani beliefs in an earthly paradise, or land without evil. A good general
overview of Tupi-Guarani studies, with a particular focus on cosmology, can be found in Viveiros de Castro
(1984, chapter II).
5The source for this and other Jesuit documents cited here is Leite's three-volume collection, which was
published between 1954 and 1958. References begin with the volume number, followed by two numbers
identifying the document and the relevant section.
6For information on Tupinamba myths about the destruction of the world, first by fire and then by flood,
see Metraux (1928:44-47). Nobrega remarks upon their knowledge of the story of Noah and the flood,
though he notes that they have only a false understanding of it (Leite I 9,7).
7Metraux, who devoted considerable attention to this figure in Tupi-Guarani mythology-referring to
him alternately as a culture hero, civilizer, transformer, and man-god-argued that it would be an error to
see in the variety of names a variety of personages; Maira, Maira-Monan, and Sume should instead be seen
as various names for the same mythic character. The common missonary view that these were different
persons was due not only to the confusion over names, but also to an attempt to separate what were seen
as the good and evil aspects of the Tupian hero's character, and thus to replace an ambiguous and prob-
lematic figure with ones that could serve the purposes of moral contrast (see Metraux 1928:7-30).
8For a brief account of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, see Metraux (1 963b[1945]:77-80).
9See, for example, Baeta Neves (1978) and Leite III (61-63).
'OEthnologists differ about the importance of Tupa in Tupi-Guarani cosmology. Metraux sees Tupa as a
peripheral figure to whom the missionaries accorded a significance totally out of proportion to his actual
place in indigenous belief (M6traux 1928:52-56). Clastres, however, takes issue with this view and sees
native beliefs about Tupa as being tied to notions concerning the destruction of the world, and hence to
the prophetic tradition that lies at the core of Tupi-Guarani religion (1975:19-20, 33-37). Ethnographic
accounts of contemporary Tupi-Guarani peoples show variation in the importance accorded to Tupa.
Among the Kagwahiv, for example, Tupa has been described as being of relatively minor importance
(Kracke 1984:8). On the other hand, among the Tapirape, one of the major events of the traditional cere-
monial calendar was a battle between Thunder and the community's most powerful shamans, who en-
gaged in momentous ritual battles against him at the height of the rainy season. One of the last of these
ceremonies was viewed by Charles Wagley in 1940; the Thunder rituals ceased with the demise of sha-
manism. The Tapirape term for thunder is Kanawana, but they also have a term, topu, cognate with tupa,
which refers to Kanawana's spirit helpers (see Wagley 1977:199-21 1).
"When one shaman was able to give Yves d'Evreux a surprisingly accurate account of certain events
that were occurring in France, the chronicler was prompted to discourse at some length and in considerable
technical detail on the Devil's ability to move rapidly from one location to another (d'Evreux 1864:295ff.).
'2See Metraux (1927) for an overview of the various migrations known from the historical record. The
major source of ethnographic information on how the journeys were carried out and how the participants
conducted themselves comes from Curt Nimuendaju's study of the travels undertaken by the Apapokuva
and their neighbors, which began around 1820 and ended shortly before Nimuendaju's visit in 1912 (Ni-
muendaju 1914). A detailed discussion and analysis of the migrations can also be found in Clastres
(1975:65-103).
"3See Clastres (1975:104-112) for a discussion of the Mbya notion of kandire, which designates the
process of becoming immortal while remaining alive, and refers particularly to the ability of a living person
to arrive at the land without evil.

'4For a general discussion of Tupi-Guarani shamans, see Metraux (1928:78-93), and Clastres (1975:40-
64). These sources include specific information on shamanic discourses concerning the land without evil.
Nobrega (I 9, 3) describes a feast in which a shaman uses gourd rattles as the source for his messages about
the land without evil.

'5A detailed and comprehensive account of changes in the Brazilian Church's social policies and polit-
ical role can be found in Bruneau (1974, 1982).

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 16See de Kadt (1970) for a study of Catholic radicalism in Brazil that focuses on MEB and the various
branches of Catholic Action. The Church's role in the Northeast development program (Superintendencia
do Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, or SUDENE) is noted in Bruneau (1974:78).
17A chronology of the founding of CIMI, and its significant activities, is given in Ricardo (1979). See also
the account presented by Ant6nio Carlos Moura in Salem (1981:78-85).
s1The emergence of the CPT is described by Moura in Salem (1981:85-91). A brief description of the
structure and organization of the Pastoral Operaria can be found in Salem (1981:129). Bruneau (1974:107-
109) chronicles the history of the CNBB and analyzes the role it has come to play in Brazilian politics. For
information on Christian base communities in Brazil, see Barreiro 1977; Souza Netto 1979:17-29; Salem
1981:155-172; Bruneau 1982, chap. 8; Ireland 1983; Bruneau 1983.
"9See Bruneau (1974:107) and Salem (1981:39, 68, 70) for information on the spectrum of political
opinion represented within the Brazilian episcopal community, and for observations on the influence ex-
ercised by the "progressives."
20A particularly good source for information on CIMI's redefinition of missionization is a special issue of
the Boletim do CIMI, entitled "Evangelizacao e Mundo Indfgena," which appeared in September of 1977
and includes a programmatic statement by Carlos Mesters. See Shapiro (1981) for a discussion of postco-
lonial ideologies of missionary practice and a more detailed analysis of CIMI's views on evangelization.
See also Shapiro (n.d.) for an ethnographic study of progressive missionary practice, which includes two
case studies of missions in Central Brazil.

2'To give a fuller and fairer account of this situation, other factors must be noted as well. For one thing,
from the missionary point of view, studying another culture and another language involves a kind of sub-
ject/object relationship that many missionaries find morally objectionable. They have a critique of the an-
thropologist's role in native society just as the anthropologist has a critique of the missionary's role. More-
over, anthropologists and missionaries alike currently operate in a situation of chronic emergency, where
much of their effort must go into being of whatever use they can be in the crises that tribal groups are
constantly facing.
22This unpublished document, issued in 1971, was entitled "Uma igreja da Amaz6nia em conflito com
o latiftndio e a marginalizacao social" (An Amazonian Church in Conflict with Latifundia and Social Mar-
ginalization). See also Casaldaliga (1978 [1977]), a narrative of the bishop's political and evangelical ac-
tivities and his theological concerns, organized around the form of a diary, with occasional poems and
excerpts from his previous polemical writings.
23"What pains a missionary most is to perceive-or to fear-that his mission is over, or that it has no
relevance" (Baeta Neves 1978:26).
241 take this felicitous term from Wallace (1956), without adopting the psychobiological functionalism
that provides his theoretical framework.

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submitted 12 March 1986

accepted 10 June 1986

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