AMAZON CULTURE CLASH

Evngelical Christian missionaries have long been involved in a culture clash with the primitive Indians of the Amazon. A story on the missionaries in Brazil was featured last week on ABC World News. It reminded me of what I experienced in 1991 during a special expedition deep into the Venezuelan Amazon.

The ABC news story dealt with the activities of the American evangelical group, Youth With A Mission, and its work with the primitive Suruwaha Indian tribe in the Brazilian Amazon. The Brazilian government claims that the missionaries are trying to convert the Suruwahas to Christianity, thereby destroying an ancient civilization in the process.

The missionaries claim that they are only trying to stop the Suruwahas from committing infanticide of newborns with deformaties and they insist they are not trying to convert the tribe's members. But the Brazilian government, like everyone else, knows that the real reason for the Youth With A Mission group to be there is to evangelize the Indians, not to stop infanticide.

The Amazon rain forest is about 1.6 million square miles in size, covering about 40 percent of South America, including parts of Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru and Ecuador. A number of stone-age-like Indian tribes live within the Brazilian and Venezuelan Amazon. It is common practice for these primitive Indians to kill any newborns with deformities. In an environment where it is hard to survive under the best of circumstances, these infants are killed because experience has taught the Indians that deformed babies have little chance of surviving in the harsh jungle environment.

In 1991, my son and I, and a friend of mine, received special permission from the Venezuelan government to visit the Yanomamo Indians who live deep in the Venezuelan and Brazilian Amazon. The Yanomamo men are still warriors and have been known to attack outsiders. As a matter of fact, the military in Tamatama (the last outpost in that region) warned us that we would be at some risk by venturing into their habitat. We managed to safely find and visit two Yanomamo villages. In one of those villages most of the Yanomamos were suffering from malaria, with several infants and adults near death.

The evangelical mission on the Padama River is the mission that is nearest to the Yanomamo's habitat. When we stopped there on the way to and from the Yanomamo villages, it was quite obvious that the missionaries were there for the purpose of converting the Indians to Christianity. While there, the missionaries told me about the infanticide of deformed Yanomamo infants and, even worse, that multiple birth babies were buried alive because they were believed to be an evil omen.

Like the government of Brazil, the Venezuelan government accuses the missionaries of destroying the ancient civilization of the Indians. Let's face it, the missions exist for the purpose of converting the heathens to Christianity. To their credit, the missions do provide an education and badly needed medical services to the Indians. But what happens to the Indians after they've been converted and educated. They leave the jungle and head for the cities to seek employment. Unfortunately for them, jobs are few and far between and they find themselves in surroundings far different from their former jungle habitat.

I spent a few days in Puerto Ayacucho, the state capital of Venezuela's Amazonia territory. It was sickening to see what the Christianization of the mission Indians has done to them. Just as with our American Indians, alcoholism runs rampant among the former jungle inhabitants. I saw hundreds of drunken Indians, quite a few passed out on Puerto Ayacucho's sidewalks and in its street gutters.

I don't know about the Suruwahas, but I do know that the Yanomamos are between a rock and a hard place - they are being decimated by malaria. It was estimated that they numbered around 65,000 in the early 1900s. Their numbers have dwindled down to a few thousand. If they cannot be saved from malaria they will die off. If the missionaries save them for Jesus they will probably end up dead drunk on the streets of Puerto Ayacucho. In either event, the ancient Yanomamo civilization will have been destroyed.