Evangelical indigenous radio stations in Colombia: Between the promotion of social change and religious indoctrination

Abstract

This article refutes dominant views that define evangelical indigenous media as intrinsic tools for religious indoctrination. The case of the Colombian Misak community shows that evangelical radio stations can contribute to community building. However, the degree of the positive or negative contribution of evangelical media depends on the dominance of evangelical presence at indigenous localities. The rapid expansion of indigenized evangelical groups via the provision of social services has radicalized Evangelicals against views different from their own. As a result, these evangelical media are progressively leaving their role as promoters of positive social change to become tools for religious indoctrination.

The Quest for Indigenous Autonomy: Communication Media, Internal Conflicts, and Policy Reform in Colombia

“…I argue that the case of the Colombian Misak (Guambiano) evangelical media offers an excellent example of a successful negotiation of the “centripetal” and “centrifugal” forces. Since the 1980s, the Misak's Evangelical Church Alianza Cristiana Misionera Guambiana (the Misak's Christian Missionary Alliance) has been running a radio station and other institutions to provide emotional support and mental health services to the indigenous Misak community that neither the neoliberal state nor the indigenous authorities have been able to provide (Cortés 2020). To create and maintain these institutions, Evangelical leaders have reached out to external supporters without compromising their local agendas and appealed to the constitutional “right of communication” to contest the state's attempts to close their unlicensed radio stations.…”

“…This has triggered increased competition and radicalization of religious factions and groups. Hence, the Evangelicals—some of them local agents of radical religious views—began to disrupt the earlier balance between “local indigenous practices” and “external influence” and, consequently, threatened the militant indigeneity that had propped up the Misak's struggle for cultural survival (Cortés 2020).…”