ABSTRACT
The introduction describes how this book addresses the ways in which indigeneity, Christianity and state-led colonization became intertwined in the Colombian Amazon throughout the 20th century. Catholic and evangelical missionaries were key actors in processes of state and frontier making in Amazonia. At the same time, missionaries crafted representations of the Indigenous societies they encountered and developed ideas and practices about how those groups were supposed to be governed or included into the body politic. Evangelical missionaries questioned the tutelage the state had given to Catholic missionaries over Indigenous groups, bringing their own notions of civilization and Christianity to the region. This introduction explores how indigeneity in the Colombian Amazon was forged through Indigenous appropriations of Christianity that mediated processes of colonization and state-making. The meanings and nature of indigeneity in the Colombian Amazon were thus under dispute between different actors, including Indigenous communities. Finally, this introduction situates the book within broader theoretical discussions regarding the ways frontiers can be understood as places of “fractionated sovereignty” where there is a “dispersal of official state functions among various non-state actors” and different actors “perform as the state.”
