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174 9 VVVVVVVVVVV Conversion to Native Spirituality in the Andes From Corpus Christi to Inti Raymi R ACHEL COR R In 1991 I was interviewing “Pablo,” an indigenous man from highland Ecuador who had grown up poor and illiterate, took night classes with Catholic nuns to learn to read and write, had converted to Evangelical Christianity, and was now a father of two and sold traditional weavings and farmed. Pablo allowed me to record his life history; he taught me some Quichua and told me about how shamans cure people and how believing in God and not being fearful can protect one from the phantoms that lurk in abandoned places. In return I introduced Pablo to “Diego,” a man from another region of Ecuador who was an advocate for indigenous cultural and political movements. Diego had purchased several weavings from Pablo, and, in a typical move to solidify social networks, Pablo used the compadrazgo system and asked Diego to become the godfather of one of his children. Diego replied that he did not believe in church baptisms, that he would do the baptism but it would have to be at a spring or waterfall or some sacred natural place. Pablo looked confused. He later told me how strange he found it that someone would do a baptism at such a place rather than in a church. Today, such a suggestion in an indigenous Andean town might not seem so strange. Here we have an indigenous man relying on a traditional indigenous practice in order to ritualize his relationship with an outsider, and the outsider views the practice as a Christian imposition on indigenous religion. The system of forming “co-parenthood” bonds by selecting godparents developed around the Catholic sacrament of baptism, but anthropologists often argue that compadrazgo should not be considered a Spanish institution. CON V ER SION TO NAT I V E SPIR I T U A LI T Y IN T HE A NDES 175 Indigenous people have made the compadrazgo system their own way of extending social networks with other indigenous people, with mestizos, and with foreigners. Furthermore, indigenous people choose godparents not only for Catholic sacraments, but for Andean rituals such as the first hair cutting or for cutting the baby’s umbilical cord. The compadrazgo system serves as an example of how indigenous people appropriated and reworked colonial Catholic practices within their own traditions. No wonder, then, that Pablo was confused when he relied on this time-honored indigenous tradition to expand his relationship with his new friend. The idea of performing such a rite at a spring was unheard of to Pablo, but indicates an increasing trend toward practices that are perceived to represent autochthonous Andean spirituality. In this chapter I present native Andean spirituality as one choice in the religious arena of alternatives to traditional Catholicism for indigenous people in the Andes. I analyze the discourse and organized religious activities of indigenous intellectuals who study and reflect on what it means to be indigenous in a globalized world. Neonative spirituality involves a self-conscious, reflexive discussion of indigenous cosmology based on intellectual exchanges with other native peoples and readings about pre-Columbian religion in the Andes. New theoretical approaches to conversion provide analytical tools for understanding religious transformations among Andean indigenous people . The approaches to conversion illustrated in the chapters in this volume and in the book The Anthropology of Religious Conversion, edited by Andrew Buckser and Stephen D. Glazier, focus on conversion as an ongoing process and show that converts often accept aspects of more than one church or sect rather than making a clean break from one religious affiliation for total immersion in another. A significant aspect of new approaches to conversion is the relationship between individual consciousness and social transformations . The social context in which I analyze conversion to native spirituality is one of increasing social movements and political organizations based on identity; one in which indigenous people proclaim pride in their unique cultural heritage, a heritage that connects them in time to a pre-Columbian (pre-Christian) past and in space to all native peoples of the Americas. The case of Andean neonative spirituality is best understood through new theoretical approaches to conversion in that (1) the process is one of continuous transformation rather than a sudden and definite break from an old religion and (2) there is not an organized religion to which people are converting, but rather a change in attitudes, discourse...

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