Servants of God or Masters of Men?
The Story of Capuchin Mission in Amazonia

Publisher:  Penguin Books, United Kingdom
Year Published:  1972
Pages:  304pp   Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX15814

Bonilla traces the history of a Columbian Indian tribe facing a Catholic missionary community, but see much larger implications in the subject matter: "the everlasting story of the West against the Indian."

Abstract: 
Bonilla traces the history of a Columbian Indian tribe facing a Catholic missionary community, but sees much larger implications in the subject matter: "the everlasting story of the West against the Indian." "That civilization i.e., the West), having exploited the Indian for centuries, and having taken a large part of his culture away from him without replacing it with anything at all of value, is still pursuing its work of pillage and destruction. And it always does it in the name of what it holds as its most sacred principles: democracy, progress, acculturization of 'primitives', Christian charity, and the expansion of the reign of God in Indo-America.


Table of Contents

Note to the Reader

A Prefatory Note

Part One: Pax Hispanica - Paxindia (1536-1906)
1. Two Races Meet on the Road to El Dorado
2. Three Centuries Safe from the West
3. The Indians Protected by Church and State

Part Two: The New Crusade (1906-30)
4. The Start of the White Invasion
5. Powers, Programme and Methods of a Catalan Crusader
6. An Open Road and White Barbarism
7. Fray Fidel Makes His Own Laws and Steals a Valley
8. The Great Crusader Sends a General Packing
9. Indian Culture and Christian Acculturization
10. The Critical Year
11. Theory and Practice of Missionary Colonialism
12. Evangelization in Upper Amazonia
13. Apotheosis and End of a Reign

Part Three: A State Within a State (1930-70)
14. The 'Agrarian Reform' of the Capuchins
15. Belated Fruits of Roman Imperialism
16. Confrontations
17. Seventy Years on

Appendix 1: Division of Land Ownership (1966)

Appendix 2: The Testament of Carlos Tamoabioy

Bibliography

Notes