Are Preachers becoming Shamans? Eschatology, Conversion, and Visions in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Abstract

This paper discusses the relationship between shamanism and preaching by the missionaries of the Summer Institute for Linguistics in the context of conversion to Christianity in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The missionaries had demanded that the Secoya people abandon shamanism and convert to Christianity, and by the end of the twentieth century, they had apparently left it behind forever. However, shamanism is now reappearing. My hypothesis is that when the Secoya believers broke away from their shamanic past, they also abandoned their postmortem conviviality, which is updated and renewed through visions of their ancestors induced by drinking yajé. Hence, within the Secoya communities there is a division between those who embraced the faith and, therefore, renounced postmortem coexistence, and those for whom shamanism is an indispensable condition for ensuring that their dead are not lost in the depths of oblivion