Abstract

OSPINA ENCISO, Andrés Felipe. The true spirit and the false enemy. Evangelical and indigenous religious beliefs and ethnic recomposition in Nasa Wesx, south of Tolima. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.45, n.1, pp.197-217.  Epub Dec 08, 2023. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v45n1.90229.

This article aims to give an account, from an anthropological perspective, of the interaction process between the Protestant evangelical creed and the indigenous spiritual tradition of the Nasa Wesx people of Gaitania, in southern Tolima. These belief practices take shape in a region colonized by peasants, indigenous people, institutions, armed groups, and religious communities. These actors have mediated between the armed conflict, divergent political positions and the sense of faith, elements that influence the conformation of an ambivalent collective character, the development of territorial tensions, and also agreements and consensus between the indigenous community that coalesces in their social formation diverse religious motives in commonly accepted forms of belief. The ritual and cult actions of the evangelical creed, in an atmosphere of religious congregation, spirituality and ethnic tradition, produce social and territorial appropriations, as well as balances and exchanges that consecrate spaces of otherness. The article focuses on the role played by the Alianza Cristiana y Misionera de Colombia, an evangelical congregation that has had a long activity in this region, and has developed processes of mission, preaching, but also participation and advocacy in social organization and Nasa Wesx community policy. This does not mean that the indigenous community as a whole bow to the doctrine and provisions of the Church. It suggests more that the practices of faith and worship are incorporated into the ways of interacting with the conflict, generating the processes of colonization and social organization in the region. The research was developed as an ethnographic fieldwork that, through informal dialogues in the situated experience, accounts for the point of view of the actors of these creeds promoting a qualitative analysis around how to believe in a disputed region in politics and religion.

Keywords : armed conflict; Christian and Missionary Alliance; indigenous spirituality; Nasa people; religiosity; southern Tolima.

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