A expansão do protestantismo no contexto indígena: um olhar para São Gabriel da Cachoeira (Brasil) e El Alto (Bolívia)

Abstract

This study aimed to examine how evangelical churches have expanded in the city of São Gabriel da Cachoeira in recent years. It exposes the power and authority relationships these churches have with local politics and the ancient indigenous cultures of the Upper Rio Negro. The growing expansion of neo-Pentecostalism is currently thriving and strongly impacting the direction of representative politics in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, advocating a conservative and discriminatory agenda. This agenda includes indigenous people and their beliefs, women, people of African-based religions, and the LGBTQIAPN+ segment as social groups who face prejudice and exclusion from these churches. As part of a scholarship internship in El Alto, Bolivia, we contacted the Aymara indigenous people of that city, with whom this research establishes some connections. The methodology adopted is based on qualitative approaches inspired by oral history, in an interdisciplinary framework with Sociology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology. Among the findings is the high level of discrimination against social minorities and other religions, supported by prosperity theology, the central axis of the expansion of neo-Pentecostalism in São Gabriel da Cachoeira. This result also reflects the expansion of these churches in El Alto, concluding by showing that evangelism is growing, both in Brazil/São Gabriel da Cachoeira and in the Andean highlands, under the strategies of prosperity theology.