The Summer Language Institute and the Spirit of Mission: Notes on a Controversy, Colombia, 1960–63

Gregorio Hernández de Alba (1904-1973), one of the first anthropologists in Colombian history, was head of the Division of Indigenous Affairs when controversies in the early 1960s over the work of the Summer Language Institute with indigenous populations in Colombia, grew bitter. According to the Catholic Church, what was portrayed as a scientific endeavor with the mission of studying native languages was in fact “religious proselytism” that undermined the “historical truth” of Colombian society’s Catholicism. Indeed, the agreement the Colombian government of the time signed with the Institute stated that the latter’s mission was to foster, not only the social, economic, and sanitary development of the indigenous communities; it also allowed the Institute to work towards their “moral improvement.” The Church felt this interference on moral terrain was meant to undermine the evangelizing work carried out by catholic missionaries for over a century. Of special contestation was the Institute’s use and translation of the Bible outside the knowledge hierarchy of the Church. This was seen as a great threat to the catholic missions, whose financial resources paled in comparison to those of the Institute, and thus left them in clear disadvantage against the latter’s “Biblical campaigns”. Exploring this controversy as an epistemological struggle, this paper analyzes how the Church reframed its definition of “mission” in order to face the challenge of Protestant evangelization, and how it was received and interpreted by Hernández de Alba’s liberal viewpoint.