ABSTRACT
The conversion of native peoples to world religions is far from being a new phenomenon, although only recently have anthropologists become truly interested in the topic and produced detailed ethnographies on particular cases. In Brazil, Catholic missionaries were the main representatives of Christianity for centuries, the first arriving a few decades after Cabral. Anthropological studies of conversion have tended to focus on the continuity between native thought and the experience of Christianity, an approach criticized by some students of religion. The chapter aims to identify the points of convergence between this narrative and those that thematize the conversion to Christianity, emphasizing the adoption of the enemy's perspective and the institution of humans as predators of animals. Since the missionaries continued to be classified as enemies like all other whites, despite being brothers, their position can be likened to that of the captured boy in the myth.
