Reports

This collection of essays by 14 anthropologists from around the world details the activities of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a missionary organization ostensibly dedicated to translating the Bible into indigenous languages.

SIL and its sister group, Wycliffe Bible Translators, make up the world's largest Protestant missionary society in terms of members sent abroad. Its efforts in several Central and South American nations are discussed in these reports.

Together, they show how SIL's "linguistic" methods isolate and evangelize individual tribespeople, who often become the missionaries' first converts and literacy teachers, spreading religious and economic propaganda within their villages. Luis A. Pereira F., in his essay on SIL in Bolivia, details how selective literacy creates a village elite which is in turn used to promote SIL's social values while discrediting traditional ones.

Ethnographic reports by Richard Chase Smith on Peru and by Jan Rus and Robert Wasserstrom on Mexico focus on SIL's creation and use of local unrest to increase its membership.

Two articles by David Stoll document SIL's use of different justifications and self -descriptions to assuage governments, contributors, scientists, and the general public; and its function as an obstacle to simple reforms and to Indian defenses against exploitation.

Studies by William Vickers and Robert Hahn follow the histories of missionaries in Ecuador and Brazil respectively, concentrating on the Jesuit influence, and Andre-Marcel d'Ans, concentrating on Peru, indicts SIL for the paucity of its published ethnographic and linguistic studies.

The editors, in their introduction, recognize indigenous cultures as dynamic, and all "non-natives ...(as) potential agents of ethnocide;" SIL's singleminded dedication to a "divine mission" is seen as a particularly dangerous barrier to native selfdetermination.

The ongoing appropriation of Indians' labor, land, and resources by outside (national and multinational corporate) interests has "made political and humanitarian assistance for the indigenous groups... necessary" the study points out, and the missionaries "have exploited the situation to advance their own goals rather than improve the position of the Indians." In one eyewitness account, an ethnographer expresses his indignation at the contradition between the missionaries' "well polished goodness" and the "confused and broken remains of a people that result from their work."

For a copy of the study, write:

Survival International
2121 Decatur Place, N.W.
Washington, DC 20008

- Douglas Stone