History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, 1492-1992

Fighting in a Different Way: Indigenous Resistance through the Alleluia Religion of Guyana

Susan K. Staats Fighting in a Different Way Indigenous Resistance through the Alleluia Religion of Guyana While 1was studying the Akawaio language with the Charles family, whose compound forms one of the small, dispersed settlements along the Middle Mazaruni River, fairly frequently someone would remove a plastic envelope from a basket hanging in the rafters and hand me a paper to read. They had tucked away decades of birth certificates, marriage licenses, and vaccination records. Victor, the old man who led the Alleluia services, had concurrent membership cards from no fewer than three of Guyana 's major political parties. Sometimes 1was asked to comment on a child's health record or to calculate someone's age, but usually this was a means of teaching me about Akawaio life. My friends had rightly perceived my dependence on paper (I rarely, for example, could recall words that 1failed to enter in my notebook), and so their documentary history added to my understanding of personal and regional history. Still, 1was rather surprised one day when a young fellow casually unfolded a certificate and handed it to me. Printed at the top was the inscription "Jizes Klaish, Alleluia Sochei," and below, "Jesus Christ, Alleluia Church." What followed was the record of John Winston's baptism at Amokokupai, the central holy place of the Alleluia religion, in Akawaio with English interlinear translations.1 Jengbadaugwazak Sochei dak Amokokupai Baptized in the Church at Amokokupai 162 The Alleluia Religion of Guyana Mazuling Yawuluta, Guyana yau Upper Mazaruni River, Guyana Baptismal records have multiple functions in Guyana's interior. Certainly, the record indicates that the bearer has a prior commitment to one church in the midst of many, including the Anglican Church and Protestant evangelicals like Seventh Day Adventist, Wesleyan, and Pilgrim's Holiness. Besides signaling spiritual affiliation, baptismal records serve as identification papers necessary for such things as admission to primary schools. Religious membership is also a prominent topic when negotiating partnerships in the back-stabbing world ofgold and diamond mining. Finally, the record summarized a century and a half of negotiated spiritual authority, a dialogue in which the leadership of the Alleluia Church had adopted a fundamental sign of European religious institutionalization. John Winston had been baptized in 1968 at the age of ten by Aibilibin, the last ofthe great Alleluia prophets, who takes his name from the Alleluia phrase meaning "God's Power." The document additionally recorded Winston's parents ' names, address, and the number which indexes his entry in the baptismal register at Amokokupai. It ended with the declaration: Seyla: ji seyla: enabailung jengbadaugwapa: kalidai John Winston This is a true copy of the baptism record of John Winston jengbadaugwazak lepa: tuna ke Paba ika:iba:na: ezek yau Imu baptized with water in the name of the Father, the Son, Yawala: nela:. and the Holy Spirit. The politics of religious revitalization is vigorously contested when indigenous people appropriate Christian ideology and signifiers. The familiar approach of isolating within religious practices a dialectic of resistance and accommodation was recently given depth with the suggestion that revitalization movements may respond as much to conflicts among indigenous people as to colonial domination (Brown 1991). Social and ideological differentiation is a commonplace at most times and locations, and so any religion that develops as an ethnogenetic movement must bring meaning to people following a variety oflife strategies. A central problem in the study of religious revitalization is to find the means by which a religion deals, through its organization and ideology, with the enduring conundrum of unity in the presence ofdifference, of resistance that tolerates factionalism. In the following essay I will document the development of the Alleluia religion as an ethnogenetic movement of resistance and discuss the treatment of The Alleluia Religion of Guyana 163 social difference through Alleluia symbolism and performance. Symbolic and performative considerations are keys to understanding that Alleluia is, for its adherents, a means of "poetically constructing a shared understanding of the past that enables them to understand their present condition as the result of their own ways of making history" (Hill 1992: 811). While reaffirming regional interethnic bonds, the followers of Alleluia were obliged to set upon, literally, a "way of making history," an abstract model of the passage of Amerindian culture through time. To see that Alleluia is rightly considered an ethnogenetic movement, it is necessary to specify the way it came to mold some aspect of social...