202557(en)/13 - Bells, Missionaries, and Shamans. Masculinities and Resistance in a Late 19th-Century Amazonian Settlement
BELLS, MISSIONARIES, AND SHAMANS. MASCULINITIES AND RESISTANCE IN A LATE 19TH-CENTURY AMAZONIAN SETTLEMENT
CAMPANAS, MISIONEROS Y “BRUJOS”. MASCULINIDADES Y RESISTENCIA EN UNA REDUCCIÓN AMAZÓNICA DE FINES DEL SIGLO XIX
Lisset Coba Mejía
This article revisits accounts published in the El Oriente Dominicano magazine about the Indigenous reductions of Canelos, in the north-central Amazon of Ecuador, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was a period marked by the Catholic
Church’s renewed missionary efforts and the reconstruction of the Mission House of Canelos, remembered by local elders as the Uras Mission. I focus on the missionary chronicle recounting the removal of the Pakayaku church’s main bell by the Kuraka and
Yachak (shaman) Cruz Hualinga, to explore the spriritual significance of sacred objects for both Dominican evangelization and the ayllu resistance.
Administering the reductions economically, politically, and morally, meant the formation of a dual political sphere: one imposed from above, where the priests appointed men of prestige as their representatives or kurakas; and another, rebellious one in which
those same kurakas subverted and incorporated the symbols of Catholic male authority within their own ecological-spiritual practices. This incorporation was not syncretic but rather a cosmogonic translation, an infusion of new powers into the shamanic
realm (Kohn 2004; Vilaça 2015). Through this political and cosmogonic struggle, both colonial and the Indigenous masculinities were reshaped.