ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different streams of opinion and reaction within a relationship: that between Apiao people, mostly Catholic, and the missionaries, evangelical and newcomers, and those families who decided to follow them in their religion. It explores the issues of conversion to evangelical Protestantism in a remote part of insular Chile, the archipelago of Chilo and specifically the island of Apiao. The chapter intends to present a summary of the activities of two evangelical Protestant missionaries on the island of Apiao, and the effect of their proselytising on the population. Apiao, like the whole Chilo archipelago, had been colonised and converted en masse to Catholicism by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. One of the commonly heard opinions on evangelical converts voiced by the rest of Apiao people was that their conversion was an act of convenience and opportunism.
