Brazilian loggers 'tied eight-year-old Amazonian tribe girl to a tree and burned her alive'

[Judi Lynn]

47. Some among the missionaries in Latin America have been there to help everyone BUT indigenous people.

For God (And the CIA)

THY WILL BE DONE
The Conquest of the Amazon:
Nelson Rockefeller & Evangelism in the Age of Oil
by Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett

~snip~
The overlapping worlds of government, industry and religion follow each other across the globe as the needs of counterinsurgency, development and saving souls demand: Wycliffe entered the Philippines in the 1950s as the CIA combatted the peasant Huk rebellion, then moved to South Vietnam in the '60s, where the Rockefellers planned a massive development effort around a series of Mekong River hydrodams. But the greatest prize was the vast resources in the continental interior of the traditional US influence sphere, Latin America.

Cam Townsend began as a missionary among the Maya Indians of the Guatemalan highlands in the 1920s, while Rockefeller was directing private disease-eradication efforts in the region. In the 1930s, Townsend launched his own operation and won the heart of Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, then seeking to break the grip of the Catholic Church over Mexico's Indians. SIL and Wycliffe gained a first Latin beachhead in the revolutionary nationalist Mexico of Cardenas, ironically. But the Mexico operations were only a training ground for Townsend's real destiny--to bring light to the "green hell" of the Amazon, where whole peoples had yet to be "contacted."

Nelson Rockefeller also charted his course to global power through Latin America. In World War II, President Roosevelt appointed him chief of his own office, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). After a turf war with Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, Nelson's CIAA won exclusive rights to anti-Axis propaganda and espionage--as well as mapping and securing of vital resources for the war effort--in Latin America. CIAA disease-eradication and education projects were directed to those regions where oil, minerals, rubber and other resources needed to be exploited. But a compliant labor source also needed to be secured. Perhaps underestimating the actual degree of Axis intrigue in Latin America, the authors portray a CIAA that merely used anti-fascism as a cover for suppression of indigenous and labor struggles. Clearly there were such instances--as when striking Indian miners in Bolivia were brutally put down in 1942, at a cost of hundreds of lives.

Nelson also saw his operations in these years as a mere prelude to post-war ambitions. Beyond the mines and oilfields of Mexico and the Andes lay the untapped riches of South America's remote interior--the Amazon.

From these beginnings emerged a web of powerful men moving back and forth from the worlds of Rockefeller foundations and the top levels of government power. Rockefeller companies and ranches penetrated the Amazon as Wycliffe began operations there. Through tortuous routes of universities and foundations, Rockefeller money found its way into Wycliffe operations. So did money from US aid and intelligence agencies.

More:
http://www.morc.info/MORC_ThyWill.html

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(Missionary group known as "Summer Institute of Linguistics&quot

~snip~
John Perkins provides an example of criticism of SIL activity:

I had heard that (Jaime Roldos, President of Ecuador, 1979-81) accused The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an evangelical missionary group from the United States, of sinister collusion with the oil companies. I was familiar with SIL missionaries from my Peace Corps days. The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had in so many other countries, with the professed goal of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.

SIL had been working extensively with the Huaorani and Matsés tribes in the Amazon basin area, during the early years of oil exploration, when a disturbing pattern appeared to emerge. While it might have been a coincidence (and no link was ever proved), stories were told in many Amazonian communities that when seismologists reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The condition was that they had to deed their lands to the oil companies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~snip~
"The missionaries came in on the cultural, social, and political side of the conquest, their leader influenced by Rockefeller philanthropies and a counterinsurgency network shaped by Nelson Rockefeller's development goals. Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) was hired by military dictatorships and civilian governments, often headed by Nelson's allies, to pacify the tribes and integrate them into national economics increasingly being brought into the North American market. SIL used the Bible to teach indigenous people to "obey the government, for all authority comes from God.""


The massacre and genocide of, for example, the Indians of Cintas Largas, Brazil for the land, minerals and wealth of the land was for the most part officially ignored until 1968, although well documented today. According to Colby and Dennett, "the disastrous impact of missionary activity" remained officially ignored. 'in reality those in command of these Indian Protections posts are North American missionaries--they are in all the posts--and they disfigure the original Indian culture and enforce acceptance of Protestantism.' But officials of the American Fundamentalist missionary organization that worked with SPI [Service for the Protection of the Indian] among the tribes---the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), known in the United States by its less scientific alias, the Wycliffe Bible Translators--denied that any genocide took place. The head of SIL's branch in Brazil disclaimed all reports of genocide, and the founder of SIL, William Cameron Townsend, denied any knowledge of the massacres at all." [Colby, p.3-4]

http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/sil.html