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02/22/2006:

"Chavez Saves "The Fierce People" - the Yanomamö"

"The Venezuelan government has given a Christian missionary group from the US until Sunday to leave the country."
- The BBC, Feb 12

The BBC news report (provided below) refers to the government's expulsion of U.S. missionaries from the Amazon region of Venezuela where they work to convert the Yanomamö Indians to christianity.

Napoleon A. Chagnon is a Professor Emeritus of Sociobiology at U.C. Santa Barbara. He first made contact with the Yanomamö Indians in Venezuela's Amazonia, in 1964. An editorial review of the Fifth Edition of his book, Yanomamö, The Fierce People speaks of its author, Napoleon A. Chagnon,"He gives an unforgettable portrait of an extraordinary people in this eloquent, meticulously detailed, and often passionate book."

Based upon my first reading of the Third Edition of the book many years ago and third reading again this year, this editorial description of Chagnon's book is modest. When the 3rd Edition was published, Chagnon had lived with the Yanamomo for about 4 years. In the last chapter of the 3rd Edition, Chagnon describes the effects of the missionaries - Catholic and Protestant - on these amazing human beings.

In addition to their "contribution" of "civilized" clothing to the Yanomamö culture, the missionaries brought with them a number of other less benign gifts: disease, guns, tourism and a systematic eradication of their way of life. Some would disagree with my use of the term - but I think of it as a form of genocide. This "systematic erasure" of their culture has never been complete. The Yanomamö are a strong and resilient people. Nonetheless, the overall effects of the missionaries' attempt to convert these people from their way of life and view of the world to their own brand of christianity is a modern tragedy.
axisoflogic.com