Amazon tribe wonders why missionaries who help them are being expelled (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

here is the link:

http://www.thedailyjournalonline.com/article.asp?CategoryId=10717&ArticleId=202295

Quoting phil cash cash <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>:

> Amazon tribe wonders why missionaries who help them are being expelled
>
> Deep in the jungle, Indians wearing loincloths and beaded necklaces
> gather in a hut to hear their leader question why the American
> missionaries who help them are being told to leave the country.
>
> The missionaries have been here for years, offering Bible lessons,
> helping cure the sick and painstakingly learning the Indians’ language.
>
> Now, President Hugo Chávez says their U.S.-based evangelical group has
> links to the CIA, and he ordered all missionaries working with the New
> Tribes Mission to leave Vene-zuela.
>
> “They’ve always helped us, they’ve lived among us,” said tribal leader
> Timoteo Tute, 42. “How can they send them away?”
>
> Four American families assigned to live in Cano Iguana say they hope to
> stay, but are preparing for the worst in case they are evicted. During
> 18 years among the Joti Indians, missionary Susan Rodman said she and
> her husband, Dave, have raised three children, learned to deal with the
> isolation and battled bouts of malaria.
>
> “Now I just can’t imagine the thought of not being here,” said the
> 56-year-old Rodman, originally from North Carolina. “I’ve come to know
> (the Joti) and love them.” But for others in Venezuela, these foreign
> evangelists stir deep suspicions.
>
> The New Tribes Mission, based in Sanford, Fla., has settlements in
> remote, mineral-rich tracts of Venezuelan rain forests located far from
> the surveillance of authorities.
>
> Chávez – who has repeatedly claimed the United States is plotting to
> invade his oil-rich country – two weeks ago ordered New Tribes
> missionaries to leave, accusing them of exploiting indigenous
> communities and having links to the CIA through “imperialist
> infiltration.”
>
> No official order has reached the group yet, but one missionary family
> at Cano Iguana has already begun pulling out.
>
> A daughter’s visa is expiring, and they see little chance of getting it
> renewed.
>
> In addition, more than 200 foreign Mormon missionaries transferred out
> of the country a week ago, with the Church of Jesus Christ of
> Latter-day Saints citing visa troubles for some of them.
>
> The New Tribes Mission, which has 160 missionaries and other staff here,
> has long faced accusations of wrongdoing in Venezuela.
>
> Anthropologists, military officials and others have accused the group of
> watching indigenous people die of malnutrition while living in luxurious
> camps, forcing communities to give up ancestral traditions and creating
> a sophisticated enclave of airstrips and settlements to exploit gold,
> quartz and even uranium deposits.
>
> “This is not a problem that has developed in the Chávez government,”
> said Alberto Muller, a retired general and ex-governor of the region
> who left office in 1985. “Since my time as governor, (the missionaries)
> have really alarmed me.”
>
> Since first establishing a presence in Venezuela in 1946, the group has
> repeatedly been investigated, though each time the controversy fizzled
> out.
>
> Vice President José Vicente Rangel started calling New Tribes a security
> threat as early as 1981. Tomás Antonio Marino Blanco, a navy captain,
> recently revived claims first made in 1978 that New Tribes missionaries
> have helped U.S. defense contractors from Westinghouse conduct mineral
> prospecting.
>
> The group denies the accusations and is seeking to meet directly with
> Chávez to discuss the issue. It also says it is willing to open its
> camps to government observers to quell suspicions.
>
> Many indigenous leaders in Amazonas state defend the group, and on
> Friday hundreds marched through the southern town of Puerto Ayacucho to
> protest Chávez’ decision. Some said they support government efforts,
> including the granting of collective property titles to Indian groups,
> but do not see the sense in kicking out missionaries who help the
> tribes.
>
> Missionaries live in a cluster of rustic homes among the Indians’
> thatched huts in Cano Iguana, a village about 350 miles south of
> Caracas on the fringes of the Amazon basin.
>
> Speaking through an interpreter, Tute, the tribal leader, said the Joti
> people have come to know the white missionaries as neighbors.
>
> He said the villagers, who still speak only Joti, have not been
> pressured to abandon their beliefs and customs. They still hunt with
> blow guns and cook cassava over stone hearths in the ground.
>
> But some changes have come: The missionaries have invented a way of
> writing the Joti language, and many Joti have learned it.
>
> The missionaries say they stretch their donated funds to cover ex-penses
> of flying in food and supplies and airlifting tribe members for medical
> attention in emergencies via a short, grassy airstrip.
>
> “There was never anybody who helped us like this before,” Tute said. “It
> pains me to think of losing them.” AP