Indigenous Rebellions, Socio-Religious Movements and Processes of Territorialization. God Luciano and the United Evangelic Church in Argentina

LiLiana E. Tamagno
letama5@yahoo.com.ar
Laboratorio de investigaciones en antropología Social LIAS/FCNyM/UNLP, Argentina.

Abstract:

This work aims to analyse the socio-religious movements that emerged in Gran Chaco in the beginnings of the 20th century, and the process of gestation, consolidation and being in force of the United Evangelical Church since the 1940’s, as significant moments in the set of responses to the subjugation of indigenous peoples in the Argentinian Chaco, as a product of conquest and colonization. In order to do that, the paper reflects on how the “religious” and the “political”, the “mitical” and the “rational” is articulated to strategies of identity reconstruction and territory redimensionalization in the context of the quest for firming up indigenous rights. We propose thinking of indigenous rebellions in the context of the so-called social movements, highlighting its political content without being limited to the idea of “new social movements”.

Keywords: indigenous peoples, religion, territories.