ABSTRACT
The Seventh Day Adventists are fundamentalist Protestants, distinguished from other fundamentalist denominations by their insistence on Saturday as their day of religious observation and rest. The Adventist center in Puno acts more in an administrative than authoritative capacity. Protestants in largely Catholic societies have been portrayed in anthropological literature as marginals, as possessed of anomie and disillusionment, as pawns of capitalistic imperialism. The large majority of Soqa Adventists were born Adventists, the third or fourth generation. The Adventist school was formally begun in 1916 with about twenty students in Pedro Cutipa’s house. In 1921, Pedro himself went to Lima and successfully secured authorization for the school from the Ministry of Education. Since education is universally available, and even the superior Adventist education is available to Catholics willing to pay tuition, the educational motive can no longer be sufficient cause for conversion to Adventism. The founders of the Adventist church had to be progressive, relative to the times, than the Catholics.
