Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-mwwwr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-09T11:57:06.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religion, Authority, and Identity: Intergenerational Politics, Ethnic Resurgence, and Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Barry J. Lyons
Barry J. Lyons*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This essay examines the ambivalent interaction between liberation theology and notions of ‘respect’ among Quichua speakers in highland Ecuador. It focuses on three ways that notions of respect rooted in local history inform and transform current Catholic practice and ethnic politics. First, indigenous Catholic activists and mestizo priests appeal to respect for elders to argue for ethnic and religious loyalty. Second, the memory of hacienda-era discipline partly underpins current models of community authority and “indigenous law.” Finally, many villagers bring expectations shaped by hacienda prayer meetings to the Bible reflection that liberation theology promotes. This complex interaction contributes to local redefinitions of modernity.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , 2001 , pp. 7 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

I must express my deep thanks to the residents of the community called “Caparina” here and to the other villagers, Catholic activists, and pastoral agents as well as other friends and informants who facilitated my fieldwork in the province of Chimborazo. Thanks also to John Hamer, Pat Heck, David Holmberg, Gananath Obeyesekere, Richard O'Connor, and Mae Wallace for their comments and encouragement. The anonymous reviewers for LARR also provided constructive comments on an earlier version. My fieldwork in Ecuador from 1989 to 1992 was partly financed by a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council and an American Council of Learned Societies International Doctoral Research Fellowship. The University of the South supported subsequent trips in 1995 and 1996 through Faculty Research Grants.

References

REFERENCES

BURDICK, JOHN 1993 Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil's Religious Arena. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
CFI (CENTRO DE FORMACION INDIGENA) 1994 “Primer Encuentro Provincial de Servidores de la Pastoral Indígena.” Transcribed by Lola Rosero. In-house report of a meeting sponsored by the Centro de Formación Indígena, Santa Cruz (Riobamba), 4–5 April.Google Scholar
CORNEJO MECHANO, DIEGO, ed. 1991 Indios: Una reflexión sobre el levantamiento indígena de 1990. Quito: Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales (ILDIS).Google Scholar
DISKIN, MARTIN 1991 “Ethnic Discourse and the Challenge to Anthropology: The Nicaraguan Case.” In URBAN AND SHERZER 1991, 156–80.Google Scholar
FIELD, LES 1991 “Ecuador's Pan-Indian Uprising.” NACLA Report on the Americas 25, no. 3: 38–44.Google Scholar
GRANDIN, GREG 1997 “To End with All These Evils: Ethnic Transformation and Community Mobilization in Guatemala's Western Highlands, 1954–1980.” Latin American Perspectives 24, no. 2: 7–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GUERRERO, ANDRES 1990 Curagas y tenientes políticos: La ley de la costumbre y la ley del estado. Quito: El Conejo.Google Scholar
JACKSON, JEAN E. 1995 “Culture, Genuine and Spurious: The Politics of Indianness in the Vaupés, Colombia.” American Ethnologist 22, no. 1: 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
KLAIBER, JEFFREY L. 1992 “The Posthumous Christianization of the Inca Empire in Colonial Peru.” In Race, Gender, and Rank: Early Modern Ideas of Humanity, edited by Maryanne Cline Horowitz, 3–16. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
KOROVKIN, TANYA 1993 Los indígenas, los campesinos y el estado: El crecimiento del movimiento comunitario en la sierra ecuatoriana. Documento de Trabajo no. 11. Quito: FLACSO Sede Ecuador. Published in English as “Indigenous Peasant Struggles and the Capitalist Modernization of Agriculture,” Latin American Perspectives 24, no. 3 (1997):25–49.Google Scholar
LANCASTER, ROGER 1987 Thanks to God and the Revolution: Popular Religion and Class Consciousness in the New Nicaragua. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
LENTZ, CAROLA 1986 “De regidores a alcaldes: Cambios en la estructura socio-política de una comunidad indígena de Cajabamba/Chimborazo.” Ecuador-Debate 12: 189–212.Google Scholar
LEVINE, DANIEL, ed. 1986 Religion and Political Conflict in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
LYONS, BARRY J. 1994 “In Search of ‘Respect’: Culture, Authority, and Coercion on an Ecuadorian Hacienda.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
LYONS, BARRY J. n.d. “Discipline and the Arts of Domination: Rituals of Respect in Chimborazo, Ecuador.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
MACCORMACK, SABINE 1985 “The Heart Has Its Reasons: Predicaments of Missionary Christianity in Early Colonial Peru.” Hispanic American Historical Review 65, no. 3: 443–66.Google Scholar
MAINWARING, SCOTT, and WILDE, ALEXANDER, EDS. 1989 The Progressive Church in Latin America. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
MALLON, FLORENCIA 1995 Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MANNHEIM, BRUCE 1991 The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion. Texas Linguistics Series. Austin: University of Texas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MONTOYA, ROSARIO 1995 “Liberation Theology and the Socialist Utopia of a Nicaraguan Shoemaker.” Social History 20: 23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MOODY, ROGER, ed. 1988 The Indigenous Voice: Visions and Realities. 2 vols. London: Zed and IWGIA.Google Scholar
MURATORIO, BLANCA 1980 “Protestantism and Capitalism Revisited in the Rural Highlands of Ecuador.” Journal of Peasant Studies 8: 37–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NASH, JUNE 1995 “The Reassertion of Indigenous Identity: Mayan Responses to State Intervention in Chiapas.” LARR 30, no. 3: 7–41.Google Scholar
ORTA, ANDREW 1996 “Ambivalent Converts: Aymara Catechists and Contemporary Catholic Missionization on the Bolivian Altiplano.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
RAPPAPORT, JOANNE 1992 “Reinvented Traditions: The Heraldry of Ethnic Militancy in the Colombian Andes.” In Andean Cosmologies through Time, edited by Dover, Robert, Seibold, Katherine, and McDowell, John, 202–28. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
RAPPAPORT, JOANNE 1994 Cumbe Reborn: An Andean Ethnography of History. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
RASNAKE, ROGER NEIL 1988 Domination and Cultural Resistance: Authority and Power among an Andean People. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
RICCIARDI, RAMON, and HURAULT, BERNARDO 1989 La Biblia latinoamericana. LXXVIII edition (edición pastoral). Madrid and Navarra: Ediciones Paulinas, Editorial Verbo Divino.Google Scholar
ROMERO, CATALINA 1989 “The Peruvian Church: Change and Continuity.” In MAINWARING AND WILDE 1989, 253–75. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
ROSE, NIKOLAS 1995 “Toward a Critical Sociology of Freedom.” In Class, edited by Joyce, Patrick, 213–24. Oxford Readers. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
SANCHEZ-PARGA, JOSE 1988 Aprendizaje, conocimiento y comunicación en la comunidad andina. Quito: Centro Andino de Acción Popular.Google Scholar
SANCHEZ-PARGA, JOSE, and PINEDA, RAFAEL 1985 “Los yachac de Ilumán.” Cultura 21:511–81 (published in Quito).Google Scholar
SANTANA, ROBERTO 1990 “El Protestantismo en las comunidades indígenas del Chimborazo en Ecuador.” In Etnia, poder y diferencia en los Andes septentrionales, edited by José Sánchez-Parga, 197–215. Quito: Abya-Yala.Google Scholar
SHAPIRO, JUDITH 1981 “Ideologies of Catholic Missionary Practice in a Post-Colonial Era.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23, no. 1: 130–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SMITH, GAVIN 1991 “The Production of Culture in Local Rebellion.” In Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, edited by Roseberry, William and O'Brien, Jay, 180–207. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SOCIEDAD BIBLICA ECUATORIANA 1989 Dios Rimashca Shimicunami. Quito: Sociedades Bíblicas Unidas and the Sociedad Bíblica Ecuatoriana.Google Scholar
STERN, STEVE J. 1983 “The Struggle for Solidarity: Class, Culture, and Community in Highland Indian America.” Radical History Review 27: 21–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
TAUSSIG, MICHAEL 1987 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
THURNER, MARK 1993 “Peasant Politics and Andean Haciendas in the Transition to Capitalism: An Ethnographic History.” LARR 28, no. 3: 41–82.Google Scholar
TOLEN, REBECCA 1995 “Wool and Synthetics, Countryside and City: Dress, Race, and History in Chimborazo, Highland Ecuador.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
URBAN, GREG, and SHERZER, JOEL, EDS. 1991 Nation-States and Indians in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
WARREN, KAY B. 1992 “Transforming Memories and Histories: The Meanings of Ethnic Resurgence for Mayan Indians.” In Americas: New Interpretive Essays, edited by Stepan, Alfred, 189–219. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
WEISMANTEL, MARY J. 1988 Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
ZAMOSC, LEON 1994 “Agrarian Protest and the Indian Movement in the Ecuadorian Highlands.” LARR 29, no. 3: 37–68.Google Scholar