Missionary group denies CIA link

October 14th, 2005 at 17:09 Björn Hallberg

Venezuela seeks to eject the New Tribes Mission, claiming it harbours CIA agents.

BBC – President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday that the New Tribes Mission would have to leave because it had been sharing sensitive information with the CIA.

The missionaries said they respected Venezuela’s laws and their only goal was to help its indigenous peoples.

The group said it hoped to be allowed to stay once it had explained its activities to the Chavez government.

In fact the reality seems to be much worse than a simple case of espionage. Indeed, one cannot tell if Chavez is serious about the accusations or if it is a clever way of getting around the embarrassment of booting out a Christian missionary. On the surface that might look like a blot and fuel his critics. The information I found about NTM suggests they facilitate transculturation (often erroneously called transculturization) in native Central and and South American tribes and “illegal activities such as gold and silver extraction employing underpayed natives.” Ecological Direct Action provides a not so flattering account and describes NTM as follows …

The New Tribes Mission (NTM), set up in 1942, is one of many fundamentalist Christian missions that is trying to peddle its message to vulnerable groups, in this case the remaining tribal peoples of the world. It sets itself the ambitious and frightening target of continuing with this “until the last tribe is reached”. It is active in nineteen countries.

Missionaries in general are a scourge and the New Tribes Mission has an appalling track record. That by itself is enough reason to expel them and I can’t imagine that the Venezuelan government is blind to these effects either. As for the loose CIA connection, since the organization is based in the US and it certainly wouldn’t be beneath the Americans .. well .. the jury is still out on that one. But suffice it to say, it has struck my mind that the US may use faith based organizations to proactively spread US hegemony, foster pro-US sentiments and incite coups. The indirect dissemination of the same happens continuously and “naturally,” kind of like background radiation, of course. But when the two phenomena of US national interests and US based faith organizations converge, such as when the Church of Scientology held a convention in Taiwan, it makes you wonder. It would certainly be no more or less despicable then some of the other things the US has been up to, such as for instance using USAID and humanitarian assistance to peddle foreign policy.

Hegemony is many things and I fear it has dawned at on many that US financial policy can’t be directly adapted by many nations without first breaking down their respective cultures, and effectively injecting vital catalytic parts of the American recipe for obedience. One could stand around arguing all day that cultures aren’t static, but this is clearly an artificial attempt to abuse indigenous peoples. Not just deprive them of their way of life, but in the case of the New Tribes Mission, their very lives, should they refuse to accept this cultural and religious contamination. NTM notes on their web site that the Ayore (in Paraguay) are praying for Venezuela. The same Ayore that were slaughtered and herded like cattle under the colonial jackboot of these supposedly pious missionaries not long ago.

Entry 278 filed under: South America. This entry was posted 4 years, 4 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.