FaithWorld

Amazon infanticide video and U.S. Christian missionaries

Stuart Grudgings

Mar 20, 2009 13:41 EDT

The video shows a near-naked Indian in a remote Amazon village as he digs a large hole. A terrified child is pulled out of a hut and placed in the freshly dug grave. Soon his body and face are covered in earth.

Is this a powerful indictment of the practice of infanticide by Indian tribes in the Amazon, or a distortion of the truth and an incitement to hatred by U.S. Christian missionaries?

The tribal rights group Survival International hit out this week at the “Hakani” video, which has several edited versions online,  calling it faked and a dangerous exaggeration of the problem of infanticide practiced by Indian tribes.  The video, made with the support of a U.S.-based evangelical missionary group Youth With A Mission, seems to be an attempt to rally support for a proposed Brazilian law that would ban infanticide and other harmful practices by indigenous tribes. When contacted by Reuters, Youth With A Mission said it wouldn’t comment on what it called baseless allegations.

Enock Freire, one of the makers of the film that was shot with members of the Suruwaha tribe, defended it when contacted by Reuters. He said it was no secret that it was fiction, acted out by local Indians, but that it was aimed at drawing attention to the very real and what he said was the common problem of infanticide by Amazon Indian tribes. He said there is a widespread belief among tribes that children with “bad souls”, including those who are disabled, need to take their last breath underground to avoid them coming back to haunt the village.

The controversy raises fundamental questions about society’s relations with indigenous people and the role of religion. Should tribes be contacted and brought into line with national laws and customs, and should foreign missionaries be the ones doing it?

Proponents of the law say that children are vulnerable to cruel traditional practices. Groups like Survival accuse some missionary groups of trying to “civilize” Indians.

Llama sacrifices in a Bolivian mine at carnival

Fiona Ortiz

Feb 21, 2009 08:56 EST

Oruro, Bolivia – I’m walking through a mining tunnel in Bolivia, dark but not too narrow, with a deafening brass band marching behind me. A stumbling drunk miner stops to urinate on the wall near me. The choking smoke of a bonfire inside the mine mixes with the sharp tea-like smell of the coca leaves the miners are chewing. Just ahead of me other miners are carrying four trussed-up llamas, drenched with beer and festooned with ribbons and confetti. The miners forced firewater down the llamas’ throats in a ceremony at the mouth of the mine and now they are bringing them into the mine to sacrifice them and ask for safety and abundance in the dangerous shafts.

The llama sacrifice is a ritual at the heart of Bolivia’s carnival, which also includes more familiar trappings such as parades, masks and carnival queens. The Quechua Indians who run the tired old Itos mine above the city of Oruro make offerings to two different protectors during carnival. As Catholics, they have a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the mine. As Quechuas who observe pre-Columbian religious beliefs they make sacrifices to “uncle,” the spirit who owns the zinc and tin and silver they blast out of shafts 300 meters deep. It’s dangerous work because they run aging equipment on a shoestring budget – each miner gives 10 percent of his earnings back to the cooperative. Commercial miners abandoned Oruro long ago, having sucked the biggest riches out of the mountain. The Quechua cooperative miners make a hard living off of the leftovers but if things go well at the sacrifice it could mean better days ahead.

For the sacrifice, dozens of miners and several journalists walk into the mine and stop in a cavern about 25 meters in. The atmosphere is serious, as befits a religious ceremony, but also joyous and a little unhinged as the miners drink heavily and their children run around squirting everyone with gigantic pump-action water guns (which is something children in Oruro do during carnival week). Some of the miners are in Andean ponchos, others in coveralls and helmets and headlamps. Most of their wives are in traditional Bolivian Indian wide skirts and bowler hats and shawls.

Deep in the mountain around me, miners are taking creaky lifts into other mines this day to make their own sacrifices asking for safety and abundance for the next 12 months.

“We must do this with all our faith,” says Jorge Gutierrez, the head of the mining cooperative, speaking through a wad of coca leaves. Then a Quechua witch doctor, Jose Morales, takes over the celebration, sprinkles sugar over the crowd in the dim cavern and blesses the eggs, alcohol and other offerings that were pushed into the mine on a trolley.

As he speaks people cheer, raise their 1-1/2-liter bottles, sprinkle beer on the floor and then drink deeply and drag off of cigarettes that were handed out as part of the ritual. I hear the rustle of hands in green plastic bags as the miners grab coca leaves from their stash and stuff them in their cheeks. They drink, chew coca and smoke at the same time.

The witch doctor, in a long red poncho, prays that the miners who cut the llamas will have “steady hands.” This is because the goal is to take out their hearts still beating – which is a good sign for safety in the mine. The brass band starts up again with gusto.